Latest
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Racism
First I saw a Facebook post with a handful of folks out by the Four Corners, several masked, and with the Confederate battle flag. Then I noticed a comment from the Ranch Hand that the folks there don’t appreciate racism. And a third post looking at the identity of Hayden Lake. And I realized that the actions I’ve seen from individuals quietly opposing racism have been more typically Montanan than the racists ever could. Thirty years ago, there was a racist in Superior – I always suspected he picked the town for the name. He would schedule his rallies in…
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The Adventures of Blossom & Marmalade If anyone ever wonders what a homestead really looks like… It isn’t perfectly filtered Instagram photos. It’s sweat dripping into your eyes while trying to hold a board straight. It’s wondering if you’ve gotten more splinters today than you’ve had in the last five years combined. It’s looking at…
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That’s 40 followed by 12 zeroes. The article I read says that 28.6% occurred while Trump was in office. There’s a chart at https://www.us-debt-clock.com/presidents that shows the increase by President – and the most impressive thing is that, during Biden’s single term, the national debt increased by 30.5%. So far as a balanced budget goes,…
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PEW released a poll that shows American views on morality. It does a fairly good job of showing some of the splits in our society. The results on abortion intrigue me – by my memory, the 47-52 split doesn’t seem much changed from 1973 when Roe v Wade took out most of the state laws…
local
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We started the Mountain Ear (both times) because we wanted better coverage of local news. There are so many board meetings, and all of them are important. The Tobacco Valley News faces the same problem we do- not enough people and too many meetings, and their focus is on a larger area. So we started…
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An emergency meeting of the Trego school board was called again on May 4 at 4 PM to update the community on the methamphetamine contamination of the school grounds.. Although the meeting was poorly noticed, there were nearly 40 community members in attendance, these included parents, teachers, former students and teachers and interested community members.…
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Earlier this week, a meeting was held to formalize the existing long-term relationship between the TFS Community Hall and the TFS Fire Department. Tables were set to form a circle, and the meeting began with introductions. It was a joint meeting meant to prevent future problems, without any reason to expect them. The issue: an…
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An emergency school board meeting was held at the TFS Community Hall, Saturday at noon (which coincidentally is the time the Rendezvous Parade in Eureka began). The board acknowledged that they failed to provide adequate (48 hours notice) on the meeting, and cited the requisite MCA code allowing it in the event of an unforseen…
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When I went to get some repair work done, the person I was consulting advised fixing the structural issues and then putting the same ancient dilapidated siding back on the building. The rational? Property taxes. Last summer, we joked about how much the nice flowers my mother had on their porch raised their taxes. They…
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I spent most of a year away from the school after I finished my term. I attended a couple of board meetings because I was asked – on one hand, there was, at the least, the appearance of an unlawful board meeting . . . unlawful because it appeared to violate Montana’s open meeting law.…
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Historically, independent voters, and voters for minor third parties, do not get a large percentage of votes. Often, they’re considered “spoiler” candidates, who lose the election for someone by dra4wing critical support away during a close race. Or their thought of as simply “protest candidates” with no chance of winning. In Montana, for the presidential…
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Not many years ago, if you were faced with a cluster of unacceptable clowns on your ballot, you could write a name in and cast a protest vote. Hell, I guess you still can – the thing is, your write-in protest vote won’t be counted or reported. With the elimination of subsection 7 last year,…