By the time I erect a small fake Christmas tree in the corner of my living room, decorate it and place presents by its plastic trunk, it is almost time to take it down again. So goes the speed with which the holiday season passes. From parties to shopping, from traveling to baking, December sure […]

Jane Howington has been the manager of Kalispell for about four months, but only lately have we begun to see how she may put her mark on the city. The former Ohioan has become increasingly visible as a new city council is about to be sworn in and a number of controversial issues have come […]

Problems with Montana’s medical marijuana law will only escalate from here. What’s odd is that it took five years from the time voters overwhelmingly approved legalizing the drug for medicinal purposes to reach this point. In Whitefish, after people began approaching the planning director about “caregivers” opening medical marijuana dispensaries within city limits, the first […]

Local protests against reappraisals have grown louder in recent weeks, while the way in which the formula for deciding these disputed property taxes came to be is all but forgotten. Every six years, Montana’s citizen Legislature is charged with coming up with a plan that determines how much the state collects from its citizens owning […]

President Barack Obama’s staff may want to rethink focusing on Montana in 2012. The president’s national targeting director Ken Strasma told the blog fivethirtyeight.com in August that he viewed our state as the “no. 1 pick to flip” from red to blue in the next presidential election. But according to an MSU-Billings poll released last […]

Montana’s tax collections are down. The Short-Term Investment Pool program is offering such weak returns that counties are pulling out their money. And the state’s pension system has lost nearly 21 percent of its value since last year and, at its current rate, will be more than $2 billion in the hole in 30 years. […]

It was not surprising that Tammi Fisher won Kalispell’s mayoral race, but the margin with which she did it certainly was. She beat incumbent Mayor Pam Kennedy by more than 25 percentage points (63-37) in a defeat that cannot be blamed on low turnout in an off-election year. At 31 percent, it was actually quite […]

In January, I posed a question on flatheadbeacon.com asking when the U.S. Highway 93 Bypass would be finished. Of the 127 readers who responded to the unscientific poll, 53 percent of them said “never.” And who could blame them? The idea of building a highway to circumvent downtown Kalispell had been discussed for decades. Then, […]

At a candidate forum last week, the moderator asked the six contenders for city council their opinion of downtown Kalispell. It was an area in which all of them agreed – they support its prosperity. Yet as someone who has worked in the center of the city, albeit for just over two years, it’s hard […]

In response to Democratic Sen. Max Baucus’ health care votes against the public option (or government-run insurance plan), liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas has aimed his sights squarely on Montana’s senior senator, vowing to strongly oppose him if he seeks reelection. In 2014, Moulitsas hopes to lure Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer as a primary opponent for […]

Years from now, historians may not agree on whether the federal stimulus plan was effective in reigniting the country’s flailing economy. What should be settled, however, is that the taxpayer-funded program – like others before it – is heavy on waste. This isn’t a referendum on the broader effectiveness of the so-called “American Recovery and […]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hopes to see it “modified.” Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi says it “spends too much, and it does too little to cut health care costs.” West Virginia Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller claims that it follows a model that has “largely failed.” Even the White House’s response to Montana Sen. Max Baucus’ […]

Just days after Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer issued his “Labor Day Report” that was cautiously optimistic about the state’s economy, the Federal Reserve struck the same tone in its regular government survey of the national one. But how this will trickle down into jobs for the hundreds of under- and unemployed in the Flathead is, […]

The argument that Congressman Denny Rehberg was to blame for the boating accident that seriously injured him and four others began long before investigators towed the vessel off the rocks it collided with. And while much of the criticism has merit, the majority of it doesn’t. A quick refresher, for those of you who have […]

Politicians who didn’t hold town halls last month had a variety of excuses as to why not. And those offered by Montana Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus were just as weak as any of their congressional colleagues. Baucus said he was listening to Montanans’ concerns while visiting public places across the state – […]