Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/david-crisp/page/21/)
If you are in the habit of watching cable news or the History channel, you probably have seen the ads: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the ads say, wastes money on lavish buildings and salaries, operates in a “plantation” atmosphere and is accountable to no one. (more…) Continue Reading →
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., really hates online sales taxes. I mean really. His April news release opposing a federal law on internet sales reinforced a similar news release in February. “Montana doesn’t have a sales tax for a reason,” Tester said in the release. “This law would supersede the rights of our state and the will of our people by forcing Montana’s small businesses to collect a tax we don’t support to benefit states we don’t live in.” (more…) Continue Reading →
On a winter day in 1943 warmed by winks of sunshine, Leif Hoklin, a ball turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, began the longest combat mission of his life. His ordeal officially ended in June 1945, and, like hundreds of thousands of World War II veterans, he came home, started a family, launched a career and rarely talked about what he had been through. But he carried the weight of his experiences until he died in Billings in 1986. This week in France, he will receive the honor for his service that he largely avoided in life. (more…) Continue Reading →
At the Montana Preservation Road Show in Red Lodge on Thursday, somebody asked Carroll Van West what he thought about the controversy over the Confederate memorial in Helena. What an off-the-wall question, I thought. But it turned out that West was the perfect person to answer it. He not only is a noted historian, author, college professor and preservationist, he served on the Tennessee Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission. He replied that had he been asked to testify about the Helena memorial, he would have said the same thing he said in Tennessee: “It’s important to keep these layers of history within the landscape.” Memorials like the one in Helena show where we were in the past and where we could end up again, he said. Continue Reading →
RED LODGE – Montana has made enormous progress in preserving and interpreting its history in the last 30 years, historian Carroll Van West said here Thursday. He wasn’t just being nice. He illustrated his point with dozens of slides of Montana buildings and sights that have been preserved or restored over the last three decades. The message was driven home afterward with tours of the Red Lodge cemetery, nearby homesteads, barns and Weatherman Draw, where efforts are going on to preserve Indian art far older than Montana. (more…) Continue Reading →
By their music shall you know them. The first presidential campaign to hit Billings this month was Bernie Sanders’. Pre-speech music was by Satsang, a local group with an indie rock vibe. Perfect. Sanders showed that he is independent, unconventional, in touch with the young voters who filled the Montana Pavilion at MetraPark. Continue Reading →
The population of Yellowstone County is getting larger and older. That’s the simple reason why, despite some disagreements on tactics, senior services groups are rallying behind a proposal for a 1.73 mill levy increase to support senior programs.
Voters will decide the issue during the June 7 primary election. If they vote for the new levy, property taxes on a $200,000 home would rise about $4.67 a year. (more…) Continue Reading →
Montana is a beef-raising state, and supporters of Donald Trump came to MetraPark on Thursday ready for red meat. Trump, speaking for about 50 minutes before perhaps 6,000 people in Rimrock Arena, served up several helpings in a characteristically rambling speech that consisted in large part of an account of his remarkable rise from political neophyte to the Republican nomination for president of the United States. (more…) Continue Reading →
Digging into the background of Title IX for yesterday’s column, I read that support for Title IX was included in the 1972 Republican Party platform. That year has special meaning for me, because it was the first and last year in which I got to vote against Richard Nixon, but I found this a bit hard to swallow. So I looked up the platform and, sure enough, it is there. I also found other amazing things that Republicans used to support: (more…) Continue Reading →
One thing about state Rep. Eric Moore, R-Miles City: When he gets things wrong, he gets them wrong in a big way. We all make mistakes, but rarely do we get as many things wrong in one place as Moore did in his guest opinion in the Billings Gazette on Tuesday. His first sentence, in which he describes the decrepitude of advancing age, is just about the last thing he gets right in a piece about transgender rights in public schools. (more…) Continue Reading →
