Latest
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One Year. Countless Meetings. Unanswered Questions.
By: AmberLi Emery Government review commissions aren’t created to check a box. They’re created so citizens can thoughtfully examine how their government works, identify problems, educate the public, and recommend improvements after careful study. The people of Libby were promised exactly that. Instead, after more than a year of meetings, revisions, legal concerns, public criticism, and last-minute changes, many residents are left asking a simple question: How did we spend more than a year studying government only to arrive at the finish line with legal questions that still aren’t answered? A Year Should Have Produced Clarity No one expected perfection.…
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The Majority Whip (Tom Emmer) has called for Denaturalization and Deportation of every Somali engaged in fraud in Minnesota. My thoughts go back to 1981 and the denaturalization of John Demjanjuk in Chicago. Since his denaturalization is the only one I paid attention to, it provides the base for my thinking. Demajanjuk was a Ukrainian…
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I saw that Jane Fonda wrote a post about her life of protest. She’s only a little older than I, and has been in the news all of my life – and she has done some things right. First of all, she was Henry Fonda’s daughter – so she had an easy time starting out…
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,…