Homeland Security officials recently told Montana that the licenses and identification cards it issues do not comply with a number of federal rules implemented by 2005’s REAL ID Act. Gov. Steve Bullock disagrees. And if this all sounds familiar, it should, since we’ve been waging this battle for several years. If you recall, former Gov. […]

By Tim Baldwin We’re a long way away from June 3, the 2014 primary election date here in Montana, but many political types are already hard at work recruiting candidates and jockeying for leadership roles. The positions and alliances now being forged may well determine much of our state’s future. It’s worth getting involved. In […]

New Year’s always brings guilty thoughts of resolutions we can’t keep. This time, I’m trying reverse psychology: I resolve to get older, uglier and meaner. Of course, all of us have resolutions we’d like others to make, and I’m no exception. Here’s a suggested resolution for our traffic engineering people: Please, think things through before […]

Does your business follow up with your clients and prospects like you should? You should probably consider what “like you should” means, before deciding whether you follow up properly or not. Having done that, let’s define “follow up” as continuing the conversation with that particular prospect or client, in exactly the context they are in […]

Young Belle Winestine described suffragist Jeanette Rankin as “magnetic,” with an “illuminous quality,” and quoted another observer of the charismatic Rankin as like a “young panther ready to spring.” A century ago this year, Montana women won the right to vote. Two years later, in 1916, with ardent support of Winestine and others like her, […]

Is it any wonder many of us are losing faith in government? Some of us are old enough to remember when presidents and congressmen in both parties were statesmen and could work together for the welfare of the nation rather than the Party. Our people are being victimized by dirty back-room politics in Washington, where […]

Will the growing dysfunction of America’s two-party political system destroy our collective future? Can we meet the evolving challenges of today’s economic and social landscape with a system that resembles trench warfare? We begin the 2014 election season bitterly divided by party ideology, while frustrated with government’s failure to develop practical solutions for today’s challenges. […]

On a recent visit, a relative asked why Christmas lights were still hanging over the streets in Whitefish. I explained that they would stay up a while and that the Winter Carnival is approaching. I then explained what that is, which didn’t explain anything at all. It went something like this: “It’s a month-long celebration, […]

By Tim Baldwin Understand first, the tea party is not a party. It is a faction of the Republican Party. It has no organization, platform or leadership. The tea party consists of anarchists and theocrats and everything in between, so their concepts and terminologies are not even consistent. Their commonality: they are extremely dissatisfied. This […]

In a country where the average CEO makes 354 times what the average worker makes, where we bail out banks, industries, governments, and we allow multi-billion dollar corporations to generate profits and store them in off-shore accounts so they don’t have to pay their fair share of taxes in America, surely we can provide the […]

I grew up riding dirt bikes, snowmobiles, and Willys Jeeps. Oil is in my family history. When I was barely a teenager, I pumped gasoline at my dad’s service stations. Later my dad returned to the Merchant Marines. He worked the super tankers that transported crude oil from some of the politically meanest places on […]

One of the most common marketing mistakes I see is focusing solely on new clients and doing so in a way that annoys everyone else who has (or had) a relationship with your business. This quote from Facebook (above) about a New England newspaper’s Groupon deal is but one example. The process The process goes […]

So what’s happened to the tea party movement some five years after the financial crises of 2008? It seems to me the tea party arose as a grassroots movement after the financial meltdown and subsequent U.S. government bailout. Basically, the American taxpayers had to rescue, in many cases, the very same people who almost brought […]

I have been observing the “back and forth” between the two sides over global warming and I realize that this is more than a “facts fight” – this is an ideological battle between the Left and the Right. I have my own comment and I feel educated enough to speak for the low-income earners who […]

By Tim Baldwin There is a serious effort in California to divide into six smaller states, according to a recent Washington Times article. The reasons seem obvious with its dire economic problems and politically opposing metropolitan and rural cultures. California’s background is different than all other states (except Texas): a treaty with Mexico ceded the […]