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 […]

After long and thoughtful investigation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ compact the county commissioners of Flathead, Lake and Missoula counties have issued letters of support for the CSKT water compact. The compact ties up water out of Hungry Horse for use in Montana. Eleven-thousand acre feet are already allocated to the state for […]

Well, Montana’s Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission finally issued its agreed-upon “Report on the Proposed Water Rights Compact” between Montana and the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes (CSKT). Shortly after, Lake County commissioners declared their neutrality on the Compact, a giant step back from their 2002 position that “state jurisdiction of water rights must be maintained for […]

Habits – at least the good ones – tend to help us get big things done that we might otherwise never accomplish. One of the things I do every day is read a page from “The Daily Drucker“. The Daily Drucker is a 366 page book of one-page-per-day excerpts from Peter Drucker’s books on business, […]

Any news article that mentions or proposes some form of wood harvesting from forests these days tends to draw out many opinions regarding what is good or bad for the forest. Words and concepts such as ecology, biodiversity, sustainability, science, and conservation are often used to oppose industrialism, greed, pollution, global warming, erosion and environmental […]

A recent editorial indicates that there may be quite a differential between Flathead and Kootenai National Forest policies regarding the work of collaborative groups. Noting that the Flathead National Forest’s team leader for forest planning remarked that the consensus reached by the Whitefish Range Partnership was commendable and that their recommendations “will be given a […]

Last week, during the kickoff to his campaign for his old U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota, Republican-turned-independent Larry Pressler said, “I think there’s an increased level of people wanting an alternative to the Republican-Democrat thing.” People have been saying this for a long time. And those people are right, but rarely does anything change. […]

By Tim Baldwin The contentious Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes water compact is no simple matter. The parties involved are the U.S. government, Montana and independent tribal nations, in addition to factors like existing compacts, as well as state and federal laws – not to mention tribal history that predates the U.S. and Montana. Notable […]

As I close out my mayoral term, I express my sincere appreciation to the residents and taxpayers in the City of Kalispell for your support over the past four years. With your support we accomplished one of the largest fiscal and ideological turnarounds this city has ever seen. With your help we: brought our reserve […]