A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Stanford and Dartmouth guilty as charged on election meddling. Remember that official looking card that rogue academics from Stanford and Dartmouth mailed to 100,000 Montana voters just before the election last fall? The card that tried to make incumbent Montana Supreme Court Justice Mike Wheat look like an Obama lovin’ big city liberal? The card that was mailed from Utah using a postal permit held by the now defunct Corinthian (for profit) College? The card that caused Montana Secretary of State Linda McCulloch to file a complaint with Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices? That card?
Well, MTCPP Jonathan Motl handed down his decision yesterday. He concluded the card was advocacy (the rogue academics contended it was research), and referred the unpermissioned use of the Great Seal of Montana to the county attorney for prosecution. I rather doubt that if convicted the rogue academics will get more than a timid tap on the wrist — but it would be fitting if they were sentenced to hard time behind the Great Iron Bars of the state’s penitentiary.
Is Whitefish headed for a tax revolt and a hard right turn? That’s certainly a possibility given the hefty increase in the city’s budget, plans for a tax increase, and discomfort with a proposed new city hall that seems extravagant (a parking garage?) for such a small town.
Whitefish just approved a 50 percent increase in the resort sales tax, and just a few years ago approved a big bond issue for a needed new high school. All of that adds up, and at some point voters will say “stop, that’s enough.” That point is reached sooner than later when voters question the need for a project, which is what seems to be happening with the $14 million city hall the community’s leaders want to build.
Whitefish’s mayor and city council should be mindful that elected officials with visions of grand civic architecture sometimes are viewed by the voters as spendthrift bums who must be thrown out.
Does the National Park Service want to ban private cars from the Sun Road? That question is raised by the review of the road that Glacier National Park is now conducting. I suspect this may be the beginning of a campaign to get park visitors out of their automobiles and into buses.
If so, count me opposed. I hate buses. They almost always don’t have seatbelts. Someone else is driving. The view is out the side window, not the windshield. And someone might sit next to you — a perfect stranger, fat, smelly, and pathologically chatty. I want to enjoy the park, which is why I prefer traveling the Sun Road alone in my Ford. Don’t ban private cars. Ban buses and those road-hogging red jammers.