Montana is under siege. And, no, I don’t mean by a bunch of politicians and their surrogates swarming all over the state pleading for votes. I mean Montana’s forests, both public and private, are being hit extremely hard by beetle infestations. There are different types of beetles such as mountain pine and Douglas fir as […]

During the opening reception at the Montana Republican convention last week, party chairman Erik Iverson called for unity. With continued infighting over which ideological direction his party is heading, it’s a lofty goal and one that he must approach delicately. How Republicans fare in the November elections may depend upon Iverson’s ability to appease different […]

London’s The Guardian newspaper (June 11, 2004) gave extensive ink to the words of Tony Hayward, CEO of BP-Global. This is the same BP-Global that intends to develop coal bed methane (CBM) just north of the U.S.-Canada border at the Flathead/Elk River divide near Fernie, B.C. Out of self-interest, we should pay attention to what […]

Al Gore narrated a movie, and for doing so got an Academy Award and a Nobel Peace Prize. From his global warming platform an entire worldwide industry has sprung up. Tens of thousands of jobs have been created to paint the world green. What about painting the ocean blue? Since the oceans cover more than […]

Welcome back, class. Let’s dig out that copy of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 (MUSYA) you saved in your computer from last time, specifically MUSYA Section 4(b): “‘Sustained yield of the several products and services’ means the achievement and maintenance in perpetuity of a high level annual or regular periodic output of […]

Detractors of Pres. Bush’s stimulus plan were forced to momentarily mute their criticism last week when retail sales posted a bigger-than-expected gain. It turns out that the 57 million Americans who have so far received their checks chose to spend them wildly. Some economists had predicted the opposite; that the majority of Americans would opt […]

It’s not supposed to happen this way. Challengers are not supposed to defeat entrenched incumbents in primaries. Yet on June 3rd, three little-known conservatives did just that, and Montana politics may never be the same. Running energetic, issue-driven campaigns, Mike Miller, Joel Boniek and Lee Randall defeated three heavily favored veteran legislators. Their basic message: […]

I was recently invited to Squaw Valley California to give a speech to the American Association of Professional Ski Patrollers. These are the men and women who keep ski resorts running. I talked to them about some of the things I had learned since I taught skiing at Squaw during the winter of 1948-49 when […]

One is a perennial political loser who has run at least 16 times prior for various offices, winning just once, and whom the GOP establishment is loath to support. The other is a politically aloof afterthought who filed for office at the last minute, is reluctant to campaign or raise any kind of money and […]

I recently read the series of newspaper articles regarding several new polls by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. One of the numbers that stood out for me was that only 11 percent of Montanans approve of the job Congress is doing. Montanans are tired of political games. They want Washington to change the way it […]

Well, did you buy Plum Creek stock on my suggestion last month? A few weeks ago, Congress passed HR 2419, the “Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008,” aka the Farm Bill. Deep within this 682-page pig were two impressive, and impressively stupid, pork slabs for corporate America: $182 million in tax breaks for Weyerhaeuser; […]

The National Rifle Association endorsed incumbent Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week, which forced him, for a day anyway, to wobble on his previous stated position that the organization is nothing more than a “fully-owned division of the Republican Party.” That’s what happens when the swirling political winds change direction. Not long ago, on April […]

Empty storefronts. Housing foreclosures. Skyrocketing gas prices. We are living with the constant reminder of economic uncertainty on a daily basis. Couple this with a geographic area that has yet to reach the critical mass needed to effectively sustain itself economically independent of transient consumers, and the following question must be raised, “What is driving […]

About three months after we began printing the Flathead Beacon, a grizzled man gripping a copy of our latest edition entered our Main Street office. Calmly, but directly, he asked me, “Are you ignorant or something?” I replied as best I could that I wasn’t, which then began a long conversation about the lack of […]

“What Makes You Think We Read the Bills?” was the tongue-in-cheek title of a book written about 30 years ago by long-time California lawmaker H.L. Richardson. The book is a chronicle of slip-ups, snafus and shenanigans from our national and state capitols. The stories are amusing but also outrageous. They amply illustrate the shortcomings and […]