One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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The United States cattle industry has been trying to provide a hungry population with protein while fighting off attacks from all sides. Unfortunately, we are losing: cattle numbers and the number of ranches keep declining. The complaints ranged from overgrazing to negatively impacting biodiversity (most ranches are vastly more biodiverse than any city or suburb) and the current ridiculous claim that cows burping is changing the worldwide climate (don’t other ungulates, including bison, also burp?). Now ranchers in the ecoregion called the N...
Dear Editor and PCN Readers, My name Is Richard Barnard, I am the American Legion Post Commander of Saco Post 79. I am writing today about a scholarship program many parents, and students are not aware of. That is The American Legion’s Oratorical Contest. This program, is for High School students, 9-12, in which thy could win up to TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in scholarships! With a college education costing over ninety thousand dollars, according to the latest figures, that is no small chunk of change. An ambitious student willing to put forth t...
“This is home. This community, this land.” “Land is not just a commodity to be bought and sold.” “They own the land and that's a heritage to their family.” “You’ll never be able to replace the land.” “We're just caretakers. [...] It's all going to last longer than we are.” “Land is everything.” These quotations are a sample of what we have been hearing from Phillips County residents as we visit with them at kitchen tables, ride along in their trucks, and listen at their community meetings. We are a trio of social science researchers from...
The two of us are from different political parties, don’t always agree on legislation and actually ran a spirited campaign against one another several years ago. Having said that, we are not enemies. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We are friends that actually get along and work together as much as possible for the betterment of the Hi-Line and those who live and work here. One legislative proposal we both were pleased to enthusiastically support, along with 86% of our House and Senate colleagues, was Senate Bill 442, sponsored by our fel...
The Founding Fathers had many contentious debates over the powers of the United States versus the States. Their goal was to avoid any suggestion of creating sovereignty. Section 8 of the Constitution of the USA limited the roles and powers of the Federal Congress to International issues, declarations of war, interstate commerce, etc. In Amendment X the powers not specifically delegated to the United States are reserved to the States. The Founding Fathers tried to design a system where power was not concentrated in any aspect of the government....
U.S. Senator Steve Daines today delivered the following remarks at the weekly Republican Senate Leadership press conference condemning Senate Democrats and President Biden for recklessly spending trillions of dollars and creating record-high inflation for Montana families. “Senate Democrats joined President Biden in greenlighting these multi-trillion dollar, purely partisan spending extravaganzas over the last two years. “In fact, even Democrats from the Obama administration warned that if this legislation were to pass, you would have inf...
Last Friday, the United States Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, which previously protected a woman’s choice to abort an unborn embryo or fetus. The decision resulted from a 5-4 ruling in the conclusion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392. The decision will allow states to make individual decisions on the lawfulness of abortion. Several states have already set in place laws that were triggered by the decision, while as of now, Montana has legal abortion services available until the Montana S...
In response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions today regarding President Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen issued the following statement: "The U.S. Supreme Court came to the only logical conclusion about President Biden’s mandate on private employers: it’s an abuse of executive power. Montana workers shouldn’t be forced to choose between a COVID-19 vaccine and their job. The decision to allow the mandate for healthcare workers to go into effect while the case is fully decided is as nonsensical as it...
On April 2, Montanans will join hundreds of other Alzheimer’s advocates from across the country in our nation’s capitol, meeting with Senator Daines, Senator Tester and Congressman Gianforte. The resounding message will again be loud and clear: Alzheimer’s is the most expensive disease in America and must be a public health priority. Indeed, it is the epidemic of our generation. An estimated 5.8 million people are living with the disease, and nearly 14 million will have the disease by 2050. Families are struggling under the emotional, finan...
Have you noticed that 'sustainability' is the latest buzz word related to ranching? Ever wonder what they are talking about? I have attended several workshops and read many articles in an attempt to determine what they mean by 'sustainable ranching'. To date I have not heard a specific definition. Generally, the ranchers on the panels will fall back on, "if the ranch has been around for over 100 years it is probably sustainable". However, after listening to the proponents of the program I am still not sure what they are planning to sustain....
The corporations bankrolling Initiative 185 want you to believe that only tobacco corporations will pay if their initiative passes. That’s simply not true. I-185 will create a huge, new permanent appropriation in the state budget without providing enough revenue to pay for it. That means that all Montana taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for it. The Affordable Care Act gave states the option of expanding Medicaid coverage to a broader population, including childless adults who are not disabled. In 2015, the Montana Legislature opted to e...
As fall approaches, American Prairie Reserve (APR) is getting inquiries about 2017 hunting opportunities on APR’s private lands. The following outlines this year’s plans and how they relate to our long-term goals. Our year-to-year hunting plans always take into account APR’s long-term habitat and wildlife goals which include improving the abundance and diversity of not just game animals, but also grassland birds, reptiles, pollinators and other non-game species. We measure our current and future progress on our private lands and Wild Sky™ ranch...
Big changes are occurring in the fields and prairies of Montana. For the first time since 2003, the state’s ranchers may be delivering their beef across the Pacific to China and the new agriculture secretary is taking the reins. With one eye on how these developments could enhance our future, we also can’t lose sight of what has got us to this point and is needed to sustain a strong agricultural economy today and in the future. Even the most experienced farmers struggle to anticipate the next challenge and need to have the best tools at the...
We began our service in the Montana legislature forty-six years ago when political differences were as real and sharp as they are today, but when the practice of politics wasn’t as political. Then there were old New Dealers who represented a viewpoint not unlike Bernie Sanders, and there were Barry Goldwater Republicans whose philosophy of the rugged individual would resonate with some of the Tea Party true believers of today. The similarity, though, may end there. The two of us recently invited our fellow former state legislators, legislative...
I serve as a commissioner in a county where nearly 50 percent of the land is federally owned. There are some Montana counties, such as Mineral and Sanders Counties, where the federal government owns more than 80 percent of the lands. While we all value our public lands and how they afford us our unique way of life, the issues that rural counties face is that, because so much of our land is public, it’s left off the tax rolls. Every year we have to fight for Montana counties’ share of funds to offset the loss of these funds. This is a vital iss...
The Insatiable Thirst for Access By Terry L. Anderson When the Montana Supreme Court issued its decision regarding access for floating the Dearborn and Beaverhead Rivers in 1984, no one could have imagined the battles that would ensue over the next 30 years. Not only did the court ruling open most Montana’s rivers and streams to recreation “without regard to streambed ownership or navigability,” it laid the foundation for invoking the “public trust doctrine” in a myriad of resource policy debates. That doctrine was invoked in the 1984 Supr...
A new set of rules being promulgated by the United States Department of Labor (DOL) has the potential to cause a major shift in the employment structure for most Montana employers. Unfortunately, it’s a change that many don’t yet know is coming. The new rules would alter who qualifies to be an “exempt” employee, that is, an employee exempt from tracking hours worked. Today, exempt employees are those who work in administrative, professional, or management roles in the organization and who make at least $23,660 annually. Exempt employe...
Governor Steve Bullock says he will look favorably on Middle Eastern refugees settling in Montana unless there are concerns about them posing a threat to our safety. Other Governors have also made their opinions known regarding Middle Eastern refugees in their states. The reality, though, is that state Governors have little actual authority in terms of foreign refugees. This would be true even if the Governors were attempting to enforce laws on immigration enacted by their legislatures. We are one nation in terms of foreign policy, which...
NorthWestern Energy (NWE) recently forecast that federal efforts to stabilize our climate by reducing the amount of carbon pollution are bound to do significant and permanent damage to the Montana economy. In NWE’s scare story, the only way that Montana can meet its obligations under the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is to shut down all four of the Colstrip electrical generators by 2022, eliminate the coal mine that fuels them, abandon the high voltage Colstrip power line, and build expensive replacements for them all. To get these dire results, NWE h...
