Independently owned since 1905
Independently owned since 1905
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“Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?” was the question posed by Confederate General James Longstreet after the American Civil War. During that war, the day after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to United States General Ulysses S. Grant, Lee was reunited with his old friend, Union General George Meade, the man who had led the Union forces against Lee at Gettysburg. Like Lee and Meade, General Longstreet and General Grant were also fri...
It was fascinating last week to watch as British legislators did what American legislators would be wise to do; stand up for principle. Boris Johnson had just become the British Prime Minister. Known for his dictatorial and arrogant style he immediately ran into a brick wall of his own making; he watched as the first six bills — very important bills — of his leadership were defeated. They were defeated because 21 members of his own party, most of them former cabinet members, voted against him...
“Any company that has a union probably deserves one.” “We didn’t need a union, Millar took care of us.” It seems almost a universal truth that we forget the reasons that caused great changes in society. The driving force behind the creation of labor unions was based on the simple concept that workers ought to be treated as human beings and not machines whose sole purpose was to enrich the company. The two quotes above neatly summarize the reasons for having a labor union; to take care of employ...
Years ago, when I was on the board of directors of my local hospital, I attended a seminar on the duties and responsibilities of a board member. One speaker pointed out that the board member’s loyalty was not to the physical structure of the hospital, but to the mission of the hospital; that is, our loyalty was not to the tangible aspect of the hospital, but to the idea of the hospital — what it stood for. I think that distinction is also what unites all Americans no matter how much we may dif...
When a large company decides to expand or move its headquarters it takes many factors into consideration; the labor market, transportation, the “amenities,” which means that there are things that make employees want to live there (or at least not leave there), and bribery. Bribery? Yes, absolutely. It is impossible to make a sound business decision on relocating without being offered a bribe. Well, “offered” is not quite the right word to use in this instance because the corporation actuall...
A crowd chants “send her back” referring to a United States congresswoman. They reason that because she is an immigrant and she criticizes the status quo, she is un-American. If those are the two criteria they are working on, then we might as well all go back. Except for the original Americans, the native peoples, we are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. No one asked us to come here, we just came, and ever since, every new wave of immigrants has been reviled and disparaged by the...
Representative Justin Amash, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, may be the most principled man in American politics. Unfortunately, he is most likely going to wind up in the ash bin of principled politicians, most of whom sacrifice their career and their influence for the small pleasure of being able to sleep well at night. Amash recently left the Republican Party to become an Independent. He believed that unquestioning loyalty to a political party had led to Congress ceding its Constitutional powers...
An inflammatory statement by an Oregon state senator has encouraged a militia organization to insert itself in a situation where they are neither needed nor wanted. This is of importance to Montanans because a similar militia activity in Oregon in 2016 elicited the sympathies of at least one prominent Montana elected official. Here’s the background. A bill having to do with climate change has been sent to the Oregon State Senate for a vote. It is assured of passage because there are enough s...
Ideological purity and consistency of opinion over time are two standards to which many Americans want to hold their political candidates. People want to elect candidates who think about things the way they do, sometimes it’s just about one or two issues, like abortion or gun control (whether pro or con), and other times it’s that people want their candidates to believe in everything they, themselves, believe in—no exceptions. People also expect that candidates do not change their opini...
There is concern among many conservatives about the “liberal bias” of the “mainstream media” which refers to the more widely circulated print and electronic media. If you substituted the word “establishment” for “mainstream” you would be on solid ground. Both words have a slightly negative tone that implies that the media does not represent everyday people; that they are elitist in nature, and indeed, the mainstream media is often referred to as “the liberal mainstream media” by its cri...
I suppose I shouldn’t be any more surprised than most taxpaying Americans to discover that I paid more in income taxes in 2018 than the behemoth retailer Amazon.com; but then I didn’t have a net profit of $11.2 billion, either. Nor did I get anything close to Amazon’s $128 million tax refund for 2018. This is the second consecutive year that Amazon has not paid federal income taxes. In 2017 it paid no taxes on an income of $5.6 billion. All this from the April 11, 2019, Fortune magazine which...
In the early 1990s I was at a county fair when an elderly fellow — a WW II veteran and a Democrat — rushed up to me and said, “Jim, come here, you’ve got to see this!” and he hurried me to a military style tent full of anti-government literature and pictures. He took me up to a photograph, pointed to it, and said, “Read it!” The handwritten caption said, “Soviet Bulgarian tanks on Democratic Senator Max Baucus’ ranch.” I could tell that they were tanks being transported on railroad flatcars,...
It was January 1991. I was a second term legislator who, for a reason I can’t remember, wanted to take on a leadership role and sought and won the position of running the first meeting of the House Democrats. That was the meeting where we elected our leaders. It was before term limits, at a time when newer legislators were expected to know their place in the pecking order, defer to their seniors and rise through the ranks. Even knowing that, I had nonetheless inserted myself into a minor leaders...
I was thinking this morning of the shrill sounds, threats and recriminations coming out of our nation’s capital. For some reason, perhaps because of the contrast, it reminded me of a meeting that occurred outside of Dillon, Montana, in 2007. It was the first meeting of the newly formed Interim Water Policy Committee of the Montana Legislature (An interim committee meets between the sessions of the Legislature and is made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats from both the Senate a...
I am writing this on St. Patrick’s Day, the celebration of Irish culture enjoyed by all Americans no matter what their ethnic heritage. This is worth thinking about because when the Irish came to America they were vilified, just as are millions of Hispanic immigrants today. The Irish even entered America legally. They couldn’t much help it, there were no national immigration laws until the 1880s when legislation was passed limiting the number of Chinese who could come here. Individual sta...
When does an Executive Order usurp the constitutional powers of Congress? Certainly when it directs distribution of funds for a purpose that has not been approved by Congress. Recently the House passed a measure that would revoke President Trump's Executive Order appropriating money to build a wall on the Mexican border. The United States Constitution gives Congress, and only Congress, the power to appropriate and spend American dollars; not the Judiciary, not the Executive. What President...
There is no other nation whose citizens are better equipped to make moral judgments about total strangers than Americans. After all, a good part of the first Europeans here were the Puritans whose religion was based on what one skeptic said was “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” So, when it comes to our government helping the poor, we are the experts on who should not be helped. We might categorize them as “those unwilling to work,” or deadbeats, or losers, or whateve...
The Republican controlled Montana Legislature is changing its rules in order to forbid the posting of “legal reviews” on the legislature’s website. This is good news for Representative Greg DeVries, (R-Jefferson City) who has introduced a bill to abolish Montana’s compulsory education requirement. (Where was this guy when I was in grammar school?) Legal reviews were notes attached to bills that pointed out that there might be a good chance that a bill might, say, violate the Montana Constit...
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal….” My very being swells with pride when I read those words by Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, and I think that I am no different in that regard from any other American. The marvelous thing to me is that Americans have taken the concept of equality far beyond what it meant in 1776, and that our country and the world are the better for our actions. In 1776 the “all men” who were created equal did not apply to...
If you are involved at all in running a government, the first thing you need to learn is the Law of Unintended Consequences. That means that whatever changes are made in one area will suddenly be found to wreak havoc in an area you thought was only remotely connected to the thing that you changed. No matter what you jiggle, no matter how little you jiggle it, it will mess something up somewhere else. If money is involved — especially if money is involved — the process generates what I like to...
If you want to get the attention of the powers that be, you have to do something radical to call attention to yourself. A couple of years ago working-class Americans did that by electing Donald Trump as president. It’s no surprise, anybody with eyes could have seen it coming, and maybe they did, but they didn’t do anything about it. From 2010 to 2013 the Association of Democratic State Chairs was regularly called to task by the Chair of the Wyoming Democrats for paying attention to every min...
Those philosophers who have wrestled with the concept of truth for centuries can take a break now that politicians have taken over the issue. As an example, recently a CNN reporter was accused of “laying his hands” on a female White House aide at a news conference while she was trying to retrieve the microphone from him. We are fortunate to have actual video proof showing that this really “did not” or “did too” happen; in the exact same video, no less. Some claim that the “did too” video wa...
You may have heard about it. A couple of days ago two black men in hoodies drove up to the Boston Library at one in the morning. The Boston Library is a place where many of Boston’s homeless people “live” — for lack of a better word. As the two men got out their vehicle, they began placing trays of cooked food on the pavement in front of the library. Then they walked around to the sides and back of the library to let the homeless, who were sleeping on cardboard mattresses, know that there w...
Most times I make my decision how to vote on a ballot initiative by looking to see what groups support it. Sometimes, it works the other way and I will cast my vote based on which groups oppose it. That last is the case on my decision to vote for I-135, the initiative to pay for an expanded Medicaid program by increasing the tax on tobacco products. The two major contributors (in fact, just about the only contributors) to the anti I-185 campaign are both tobacco companies — companies that h...
One of my favorite expressions is “often wrong, never in doubt.” I like to think it doesn’t apply to me—at least the “often” part—but I do come under the category of being overly certain in my opinions or in an event I swear happened. For instance, in the latter category would be my memory of where I left a tool. I will be looking for—say a left-handed monkey wrench—and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was last seen exactly where it now isn’t. Often that experience has to do with the...
