Thank you for donations to Curves fundraiser
To the editor,
We had our annual Workout for St. Jude's on May 16, and our club raised $940. Member Vicki Gove raised $830 on her own. Way to go, Vicki.
We would like to thank all of our members who donated during the fundraiser. Again, our members came through with flying colors.
Thanks to all.
Tammy and Flo
Your Curves crew
Thanks for support of Arbor Day Celebration
To the editor,
The Arbor Day committee would like to express a heart-felt thank you, along with the Columbia Falls Uptown Merchants Association and the First Best Place Task Force, to all the many sponsors, volunteers, artists, musicians, vendors and community members that supported and made the second annual Arbor Day Celebration and Fine Art Reception Fundraiser such a wonderful success.
Working together making these events a team effort not only created the opportunity for our whole community to experience something special by allowing Monte Yellow Bird to touch our lives and the lives of our children, but has also allowed us to see what we can accomplish together. Goals and visions that seemed doubtful at one time are now becoming a reality, a tree program that will allow for tree-lined streets, parks and a more beautiful community. We could not have done it without all your help and effort!
We thank the community and these Arbor Day Celebration sponsors: School District 6, Meadow Lake Resort, Plum Creek, FVCC, the City of Columbia Falls, Laff It Up Inflatables!, Arrowhead Fine Art & Framing, The Barber's Shop, Columbia Nursery, Funtastic Finds, Hungry Horse Forest District, Big Sky Water Park, Amazing Ventures, Flathead National Forestry, Glacier Bank, Whitefish Credit Union, Freedom Bank, B & F Excavating, Bill and Cindy Shaw, Alec Baldwin-tree planter, Roger Goodwin-tree spade, Special K Productions, Western Building Center, Nine Patch Floral, Hungry Horse News, The Daily Interlake, Rescue Marketing, The Valley Views, The Flathead Beacon, Glacier Lanes Bowling, Stageline Pizza, A & W, Dairy Queen, Laurie's Deli, Harvest Health Shop, House of Mystery, Monte & Emily Yellow Bird, Mark Ogle, George Bland, Allen Jimmerson, Lisa Schaus, Jean Hand Triol, Liz Bishop, Jaun De Santa Anna, Glacier Frame Shop, Charlene Launer & Ken Jones, Glacier Raft Co,. Great Northern Whitewater Raft, David Jenkins Sr., Melby's Home Interiors, Pro Shop Meadow Lake Resort, Bill and Sarah Dakin, Central Museum, Bad Rock Bed & Breakfast Inn, Gordly Family Chiropractic, Cimarron Cafe & Catering, Pizza Hut, Cakes By Debi, Los Caporales, Nite Owl, Canyon RV Campground, Imagine Health, Sitescape Associates, Fun Beverage, Smith's, Super 1, RE/MAX Mountain View, the Tree Board, Kaplan Law Firm, First Best Place Task Force, Columbia Falls Chamber, Civil Air Patrol, Robbie Goeden's Dance and Gymnastics, All Vendors, Rotary Club, Allstate, Fisher's Greenhouses, Wild Geese Gardens, Mission View Greenhouse, The Dollar Plus Store, Hometown Video, Search and Rescue, Midway Rental/Celebrate, Meg Linberg-the Monster, Northwest Energy, C.J. & Barbara Furwia, Insty Prints, Grandma Betty's Scrapbooking, Pepperidge Farms, Gail Baden-volunteer coordinator, Jonathan Jenkins, Danaris Gemmer and Charlie Fisher Family.
Barb Jenkins, Laura Bell and Terri Baker
Arbor Day committee
No way to solve a problem
Recently former Congressman Ron Marlenee and State Rep. John Sinrud formed a group to counter what they view as the threat to development of Montana's natural resources from "radical environmentalists" and "extremists." In their press release they then essentially tied the Democratic Governor and Democratic legislators to that faction by stating; "…the anti-development/anti-growth crowd controls the governor's mansion, has a razor-thin majority in the state Senate and is only one seat away from taking control of the state House…"
Whoa up guys, let's take a more measured view of things. Last I heard the governor was a big fan of coal development, done properly, and got his energy legislation through that same "anti-development/anti-growth" Senate and House. Just because some people give a care about doing things right doesn't make them anti-anything. Montanans care about our state, economically and environmentally, and a good place to see that Montana's current environmental laws were a non-partisan effort is by reading our Constitution.
Take a gander at Article II section 3: "All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment…."
And Article IX Section 1 on Natural Resources: "The state shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for future generations." Speaking in support of that clause during debate at the 1972 Constitutional Convention C.B. McNeil, a Republican delegate from Polson said, "Our intention was to permit no degradation of the environment of Montana and to affirmatively require enhancement of what we have now." [Verbatim Transcript of the 1972 Constitutional Convention, March 1, 1972]
Laws aren't made in a vacuum. They are made in reaction to events, and Montana's environmental laws were created in reaction to rivers that ran red with mine pollution, fish you could catch but couldn't eat, and air in Missoula that was, to be kind, "odiferous" from the Hoerner-Waldorf pulp mill that had been planted — unwisely — downwind of that city.
The Montana Water Policy Act and the Montana Environmental Policy Act were bipartisan efforts introduced by Rep. George Darrow, from Billings. Some of the principle opponents were Democrats. Darrow was a petroleum geologist, a profession not exactly famous for embracing strict environmental guidelines, but he had eyes to see what had happened to a vast and once pristine expanse of prairie and mountain and thought it worth protecting.
I wrote in a 2004 article: "Darrow considers 1971 a watershed year in Montana history without political parallel; firstly because a politically divided legislature was able to pass major, controversial legislation of great importance. The legislation received the highest scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans, and as such was truly and enduringly bipartisan and representative of the public will."
By making the environmental issue a partisan election year topic Marlenee and Sinrud are using the same divisive tactics of those "radical environmentalists" they disparage. Both parties are making the environment a black and white issue where you are either "for us or against us."
The biggest complaint I hear about politicians is that we fight all the time. "Why can't you just get along and get something done?" folks ask. Well, we could if we could take the election year politics out of the hands of political parties and their partisan minions. My experience is that most legislators are decent people who accept and respect each other's right to have their own opinions.
Economic development and a clean and healthful environment are not mutually exclusive. The principal reasons why we don't presently have the same resource economy in Montana as we once did are economic, not environmental. Some of the culprits are Canadian lumber imports; until recently, low metal prices; and federal underfunding BLM and Forest Service budgets to the point where they can't perform any of their duties well. That is not to say that obstructionism has not had an effect. It has, but it's only one of the elements, not THE element.
I'm a Democrat; I have run cattle, farmed and harvest timber off my land and I take pride in making an effort to do it properly. I know Republican ranchers who have religiously voted against any environmental legislation who have a better sense of the ecology of their ranches and care for them better than any "radical environmentalist" would give them credit for.
In a word or two, I am sick of this kind of malarkey. You do not get things done by calling people names and creating confrontation. We are not elected to create stalemate; we are elected to solve problems for the common good. So let's get to work.
Jim Elliott is a state senator from Trout Creek in his 16th year of legislative service, and is chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee.
How to understand Congress
A paradox comes into sharp relief each election year around this time: Americans in general look down on Congress, but tend to like their own representatives. Most years, in fact, some 98 percent of incumbents running again get re-elected. So why is it that we like the people who inhabit the institution when they're back home in the district, but have little patience for them when they're doing what we elected them to do?
I don't have a complete answer to this conundrum, but I do have a suggestion. Understanding the institution might help explain why it behaves the way it does — and why people you vote for act as they do when they get to Washington.
The first thing to remember about Congress is that it is a highly representative body. This may seem like a cliche, but think for a moment what it means to fulfill the Founders' intention that the people's voices be heard in the halls of government. It means that farmers in Iowa and ranchers in Montana, laborers in Boston, shrimping families in Louisiana, hotel maids in Los Angeles, doctors and lawyers in Minnesota and Georgia — all these and millions of others have someone in Congress who can speak for them. The full diversity of this country's beliefs, concerns, and desires gets funneled to Capitol Hill.
This makes arriving at a political consensus supremely difficult - yet it also guarantees our freedom. It means that, at least in the ideal, Congress acts with the authority that comes from representing the American people.
Congress is also our most accessible branch. You cannot call a Supreme Court justice or secretary of defense to complain about U.S. policy or lodge a grievance. Yet you'll get a response from your Congressman or senator. And legislators spend much of each week striving to stay in touch with their districts or states: traveling home for long weekends; hosting call-in shows; meeting both in Washington and at home with their constituents. They know what the people they represent are thinking.
You wouldn't want to change either of these characteristics, but when you combine them with a third — the fact that Congress is designed to be a deliberative body — you can understand why the institution often seems to drag its feet.
We've got a lot of differences in this country - regional, ethnic, and economic - and issues like taxes, health care, or guns don't lend themselves easily to compromise. People often complain about the process, but do we really want a system where laws are pushed through before consensus is reached? Or that lacks legislative speed bumps to ensure that multiple views get heard and Americans' rights are safeguarded? This is why Congress usually deals with issues incrementally rather than resolving them all at once. Its members have to practice the art of deliberation.
This is especially so because Congress is an extraordinarily political body. I mean this in both the unattractive and the appealing aspects of "political."
On the one hand, its members often sway too readily with the currents of public opinion; pay too close attention to the desires of donors; and support or derail legislation for reasons that have little to do with its merits, and much to do with politics. Yet politics as practiced in Congress also entails working hard to understand the concerns of myriad people and interests, bridging differences with an eye toward finding common ground, and building a consensus about how to improve the lives of ordinary Americans.
This is why it's so important that Congress fulfill its constitutional mandate as an independent and coequal branch of government — because it plays a role that the executive doesn't and the courts aren't supposed to. It is the only institution in our federal government charged with listening to the American people, sorting through our needs and interests, and applying both what it hears and its members' own views to the issues of the day.
It is an indispensable check on the power of the presidency, and by virtue of its procedures and legislative hurdles, it is a check on the power of runaway majorities and the passions of the moment. That is exactly what the Founders envisioned.
I don't mean in any way to whitewash the problems that burden Congress at the moment — from the power of moneyed interests to the excessive partisanship. Yet in the end, our Founders understood that the fundamental purpose of the Congress is to help maintain freedom in the land, and to search for a remedy for the challenges confronting the country. That is what Congress is about. If you understand this, then you understand that the messiness we find so frustrating about Congress may be what it has to go through to deliver on its promise.
Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.
Dismantling machine that's eating America
Dearest America,
How ya doin'? Not so good, I hear. Too bad we can't blame anybody else for all our problems, huh? It would make things so much easier, wouldn't it? The bad guys did all this, not us.
In no way, are we, American "consumers," responsible for any of our giant, looming, problems — it's gotta be that government thingie, over in that D.C. place!
Oh, sure, we put that government thing there (and walked away), but what else would we do? Actually, watch; monitor what that governing body is doing?
Nah!
We're all way too busy working hard, so we can consume five-hundred TV channels of dreck (while complaining about it), and spending ten times on what a shirt is really worth, 'cause it's got someone's name, or team number, printed on it…
See? We're busy people! We spend billions on those corporate logos we hang on ourselves and our kids; doesn't that mean anything? Yes, it does. They own us (or do they?). And, they are us; my sister, your brother, our parents, somebody's grandpa.
That is corporate/government America. Or is it me? Dutifully writing meaningless "reports" to be passed on up the company skyscraper; to be ignored, or used against my own family.
It took all of us to build this mess; it's gonna take all of us to dismantle the machine that's eating America… and the world. The machine wouldn't work at all, if we didn't (all) do our parts in keeping it running.
We, American citizens, human beings, have a chance to do something about this situation. Right now.
Not by expecting our government to do it; or by following our government down yet another path that ends in destruction and despondency.
We the people will tell that totalitarian dictatorship (China), that we (all of us) will not attend their little "sporting" event (Olympic games) — especially, while at the very same time, that dictatorship is torturing and murdering people that just desire their freedom. Kinda like us, actually…
We the people will not listen to our government, which will try to force us to attend those games. Yes, it will.
We the people, will talk directly to that totalitarian dictatorship, and tell them, "No, we will not be attending any part of your little party!"
Make no mistake, they, and the rest of the human beings on this planet, will hear us. Us, the citizens, the people; not our government. And, rather than try to be "victims" of politics, the athletes should be leading the non-attendance of the games. Those sport lovin' folk get to play their sports, because of our precious freedom. Do they want to represent that freedom; while purposely, intentionally, ignoring the violence that that government is visiting upon those people fighting for their own freedom?
That little torch, that flame that is now the symbol of a dictatorship, is being paraded around the world; surrounded by thousands of soldiers and cops, in totally locked down cities. Do you think they are watching which, (other) government are helping them further their cause of "enforced patriotic re-education?" (That's what they call it.)
They are.
Do we support, and condone the actions of this oppressive, suppressive government?
If we go to those games, we do. If we watch those little games on our TVs, we sponsor the torture and murder, too.
Tell the companies which place their commercials in those games; we won't buy their product, because of those ads. And really do what we say, this time.
So, are we gonna watch some kids run and jump; or, are we gonna make a stand; something we can (finally) say is Made in the U.S.A.?
It is our choice, for now…
J.M. Freeman I is a Columbia Falls resident.