by Ken Toole | Jul 23, 2025 | Guest Articles
Guest Editorial from Anne Hedges, Director of the Montana Environmental Information Center
You can’t take your bird dog hunting on lands being mined or filled with oil rigs, even if they are “public” lands.
While Montanans were right to celebrate removing the sale of public lands from the recent Congressional budget bill, some may not know that our representatives still voted to put millions of acres of public lands on the chopping block. Selling public lands was just one of a dozen different ways that the billionaires’ budget bill privatized our public lands. Just try big game hunting, bird-watching, camping, hiking, or biking on public lands mined or fracked for corporate profit, and see how quickly you’re escorted away.
This is the bait-and-switch our elected representatives pulled on Montanans.
They crowed about removing provisions requiring the sale of public lands, but the new law mandates quarterly oil and gas lease sales on public lands, regardless of whether it makes economic sense. It slashes royalty rates, guaranteeing that the public does not receive the compensation it is due for public resources. It lets industry decide which land needs to be offered for oil and gas leasing – regardless of who else uses that land and for what purpose. It increases the duration of drilling permits so that companies can retain leases and tie up public lands for longer periods of time. And, appallingly, it reinstates the practice of allowing noncompetitive leases on public lands, ensuring that the public will not receive the true value of the public resources that are being given up.
But it gets worse. We know that coal mining has devastated huge swaths of public lands and waters that agricultural users depend on. However, instead of helping communities transition away from expensive, dirty coal towards cleaner energy, it incentivizes even more coal mining on public lands and slashes royalty payments for mining corporations. It expedites new coal leases and mining permits on public lands, even though coal mining is at historic lows and projected to continue declining. For example, the bill allows the notoriously corrupt Signal Peak mining company to mine more than 50 million tons of coal without consideration for the surface landowners whose water has been lost due to the mine’s operations.
And finally, the bill mandates the opening of four million acres of federal land to coal mining, without providing details about where those lands are, what resources they hold, or what the impacts may be.
In short, it’s a fire sale, thanks to our bait-and-switch congressional delegation. If they repeat the tired trope that they are trying to increase jobs or support “all-of-the-above energy,” I say hogwash. If that was true, they wouldn’t have gutted incentives that help create thousands of good-paying solar and wind jobs in Montana and across the country. And while our congressmen hide behind press releases hyping this new law, keep in mind that it will result in not only lost and destroyed public lands, but higher energy bills, increased wildfires, increased drought, more flash floods, and more intense heat waves.
A changing climate isn’t a conspiracy theory or a partisan issue; it’s a fact that we can and need to deal with. Heat waves are worsening, extreme weather is killing more people, and drought is reducing rivers such as the Dearborn to a trickle in June. This bill will set us back decades, so remember who to thank for making those problems worse now and in the future.
Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing, you’ve given us higher deficits, less public land, lower revenues, higher electric bills and more heat, wildfire and drought. You have jeopardized our public lands and our future for your rich friends’ profits.
We are definitely less safe thanks to you.
by Ken Toole | Apr 21, 2025 | Elections, Guest Articles
Ballots for the Great Falls School Board Trustee election will be coming out soon. There are
three positions to be filled, and four candidates. I’ve been asked by several folks in our
community who I support for these positions. These are my picks:
Gordon Johnson: incumbent, running for a third term. Gordon is our current board chair, one
of the best we’ve had. He is a strong supporter of public education, generously lending his time
and talents. He deserves a third term.
Paige Turoski: incumbent, running for a second term. Paige works with me on the Board
Budget and Policy committees. She’s a good hand. She is well-liked by our administrative
team. Her two sons are enrolled at Valley View Elementary. I support her re-election.
Craig Duff: newcomer, seeking to win the seat being vacated by Mark Finnicum. I’ve met and
spoken to Craig. He is retired law enforcement, and now volunteers at his son’s school,
Meadowlark Elementary, where he also serves on the school PTA. He has received the
endorsement of the local teacher’s union, and deservedly so, as he has a very strong commitment to our local schools.
Mail ballots will be coming out shortly. Please vote for Gordon, Paige and Craig.
Bill Bronson
Great Falls Public School Board Trustee
by Ken Toole | Apr 18, 2025 | Guest Articles
Guest Editorial By Judge Judith Roberts
As an attorney I’m deeply alarmed by an incident that occurred just this week and feel compelled to share it—to raise awareness of the legal and constitutional crossroads we are rapidly approaching.A co-worker of mine (who is a judge), traveled by train from Montana to North Dakota for work this week. The train made a stop in Havre, MT, where ICE agents—armed and dressed in full military-style tactical gear—boarded the train. They walked the full length of the train and questioned every single passenger about their citizenship status. According to the conductor, who has worked nearly 40 years on that route, this was a first. In all his decades of service, federal agents have never boarded his train like this.
This is not a hypothetical. This is not a scene from a dystopian film. This happened this week to my colleague, on U.S. soil, to U.S. citizens, legal residents, and foreign tourists here on holiday, without a warrant, without probable cause—based solely on geography.
Under current law ICE has expanded authority to operate within 100 miles of any border. But HOW that authority is being interpreted and exercised has chilling implications for civil liberties, freedom of movement, and equal protection under the law.
This isn’t about politics—it’s about the erosion of rights we’ve taken for granted, and the slow normalization of military-style policing tactics in everyday spaces. Even if technically permissible, these actions reflect a disturbing shift in the balance between civil liberties and governmental authority. The normalization of militarized immigration enforcement in public spaces, without individualized suspicion, risks setting dangerous precedents that erode the freedoms we are sworn to uphold.
This is not about ideology—it is about the integrity of our legal system. I am compelled to speak up because there is no justification for circumventing the very rights and principles that define our democracy.
The question is not whether you “have something to hide.” The question is how much unchecked authority we’re willing to allow before we can no longer call this a free society.
Judge Judith Roberts is a practicing attorney with 20 years of experience. She is currently a judge in North Dakota.
For a news story on this issue follow this link:
https://www.havredailynews.com/story/2025/04/17/local/amtrak-passenger-says-questioned-by-ice-in-havre-about-citizenship/547792.html
by Ken Toole | Apr 3, 2025 | Guest Articles
Two Cents
A few people got pretty crabby about my last editorial, which was skeptical about Donald Trump’s benevolence and competence. One reader called me a “liberal loon” and told me I just need to “get over it.”
Where was that advice on January 6, 2021?
A couple of people cancelled their subscriptions. Others told me I should stick to Montana issues, which is what I do, mostly, but we don’t live in a vacuum here. What happens in D.C. matters, and for generations our economy has been subsidized by the federal checkbook, now in the hands of Elon Musk.
Things could change.
The federal government manages about one third of this state. To atone for this, it pays us money. I won’t bog you down with details, but programs that go by the acronyms SRS and PILT sent schools and local governments $54.2 million in 2023. That’s a lot of cops and teachers.
Farm subsidies amounted to $305 million in Montana in 2023, making federal checks to farmers the state’s fourth largest cash crop.
Highway money? $225 million in 2023.
Medicare and Medicaid keep our rural hospitals and nursing homes afloat.
Our state universities rely heavily on federal grants, aiming to foster better crops, better health, a better economy. Nonprofits of all sorts win grants every year to feed, house and educate people. Cities and counties get infrastructure and planning grants. Many people earn federal wages and retirement benefits, and Social Security checks. Add it up and Montana gets about $1.50 for every dollar we send to D.C.
Elon Musk has a new axe and few restraints. His DOGE crew had batting practice with foreign aid projects, and trotted out many examples of silly or wasteful programs that needed to go. But they didn’t mention any babies when they tossed out all the bathwater.
Domestic programs are next. You can read on page 46 about an exciting project in Great Falls that is turning plant oils and beef suet into aviation fuel. It relies on a federal loan guarantee that employs words like sustainability and climate, so I suspect the DOGE team has it on a “woke” list. Will Montanans stick up for it? Will it help if they do? How about seasonal rangers and toilet cleaners in our overcrowded national parks? A lot of those jobs are in limbo.
The DOGE crew wants to leave the sorting to their AI software (what could go wrong?) and the wise and benevolent oligarchs (who also want a tax break). Here’s how rolling over for the oligarchy worked out in my little corner of the world: your winter edition of Montana Quarterly arrived as much as eight weeks late because the US Postal Service gave top priority, and a hefty discount, to “last mile” delivery of Amazon parcels. That means your magazines, Christmas cookies and pet medication moldered in a corner while overstressed postal workers delivered for Amazon. That means everybody who buys a postage stamp is subsidizing the rocket ships of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos.
So, no. I won’t pipe down.
Scott McMillion
Editor in Chief
Montana Quarterly
by Ken Toole | Mar 25, 2025 | Guest Articles, Legislature
Guest Editorial From Bill LaCroix from the Bitterroot Valley
On March 3, Hamilton vape store owner and legislator Ron Marshall (R-87) resigned his House seat in a huff, charging the predominantly-right-wing Republican majority with corruption for voting down HB 149 (his bill), which would have allowed him to sell toylike vape products from China designed to appeal to children.
Marshall Thinks Lobbyists Are Corrupt?
“The lobbyists run this capitol,” Marshall pontificates. “Don’t ever think that the people have a say up here, because you don’t….the people need to understand that, if you want your voice heard up here, you get rid of all these lobbyists. Get rid of them all because it’s the absolute worst thing that could happen to a citizen government.”
Well, duh, Ron, but which lobbyists are “corrupt” in your view? Apparently not the cultural-warrior and fossil-fuel-friendly ones like Montana Right to Life or A.L.E.C. , with whom you’ve consistently voted in lockstep. Just the tobacco-industry ones who are a little more reticent to openly sell Chinese tobacco toys to kids than yourself? So confusing.
But No Issue With Trump’s Corruption?
It’s appropriate to note here that the Ravalli County Republican Central Committee (RCRCC)—of whom Ron is currently a vice-chair—heartily endorses the most demonstrably-corrupt head of state in the history of Western Civilization…with the possible exceptions of Hitler and Caligula. “Oh, the hypocrisy,” I’d have a 21st-Century Joseph Conrad say about such a thing, but then, what do I know about hearts of darkness?
Marshall’s Replacement Is No Moderate
Well, how about this? Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Ron has been part of the uber-right/ John Bircher takeover of the already-ultra-but-not-uber-right RCRCC. And who did Ron (and Manzella, etc.) overthrow to form a more-perfect religio-fascist trainwreck of a committee? None other than Terry Nelson, who, as chair of the RCRCC, has orchestrated the far-right, Christian Nationalist takeover of our valley since 2010, and who has just been appointed by our right-wing-but-not-right-wing-enough county commissioners to fill Ron’s seat.
Terry is considered a “moderate” these days, because he’s only a “Tea Party” Republican and not a loopy John Bircher. That’s what the Republican infighting here in Ravalli County is about. But let’s be clear: Terry was honchoing the RCRCC when members in good standing, such as Jeff Burrows, were threatening sheriffs with “constitutional shootings.” His portrait has hung behind the booth at the Ravalli County Fair, where they display an uncapped, ready-for-action AR-15 they have auctioned off for years. He’s been the head of the planning office since 2011, but he’s a surveyor, not a planner, and was gifted the job of “planning office administrator” by his county-supremacy commissioner buddies in 2011 (I believe) as a prize after all the real planners were scared off by militia wannabes and rich guys wanting to build trophy homes IN the river. Stay tuned for more on Terry, but in the meantime, know this: the infighting in Ravalli County and Helena over where the Edge of the Flat World actually exists isn’t over here yet. I personally believe it’s just south of Conner, where tech billionaires ride long-necked Diplidons*, but again, what do I know about Dinosaurs?
The problem with being a Montana Republican these days is you gotta find someone in the room to hate. “Someone doin’ somethin’ dirty decent folks can frown on,” as the late John Prine put it. This is simple math: since you don’t have any real solutions to your constituents’ real problems, hate is your only sell-point to voters who, according to the latest statistics from the most well-heeled think tanks, are still paying top dollar for it.
This is a mere observation, and I wish I had a crystal ball to predict when the price of Hate will drop to, say, a pig in a poke or the price of eggs. But, for anyone gazing from afar at the 2025 Montana Legislature and wondering “WTF?,” look no further than Ravalli County.
On a personal note: apologies to readers of this blurb since, no matter how hard I try, I can’t put this stuff down into words without it sounding like a dark fairytale rejected by the Grimm brothers. because it was too unbelievable.
And I ain’t kiddin.’
*The actual dinosaur is called a Diplidocus, but I refer here to a fictional beast who is a metaphor to the well-worn truism: “Their brains were tiny and they died.”
by Ken Toole | Feb 16, 2025 | Guest Articles, Uncategorized
Senators Daines and Sheehy certainly can’t stand on principle when they can’t stand at all.
