Montana's women have the nation’s third highest
rate of smoking during pregnancy

Women who really want healthy babies don’t drink, use only medications prescribed by their physicians, and don’t smoke. Smoking during pregnancy can lead to birth defects and other untoward outcomes. But a lot of women in Montana haven’t gotten the word, or have gotten it and don’t care.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, Montana has the third highest percentage of women — 16.5 percent — who smoke during pregnancy. Only in Kentucky (18.4 percent), a major tobacco producer, and West Virginia (25.1 percent), a minor tobacco producer, do a greater proportion of women suck poison tobacco fumes into their lungs while they’re with child.

Montana’s public health system is failing Montana’s mothers and children.

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Memo to School District 5: cut spending, do not raise taxes

Kalispell’s School District 5 says it needs to make up a million-dollar, or more, budget shortfall, and may ask voters to approve a levy or levies this spring. According to the InterLake, the owner of a $200,000 house could suffer a tax increase of approximately $100.

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Flathead legislative and county filings update

Incumbent Republican County Commissioner Gary Krueger filed for re-election at the end of last week. He has three challengers in the GOP primary: Jay Scott, whom he defeated in the 2012 primary; termed-out Rep. Randy Brodelh; and Ronalee Skees, who lost to Frank Garner in the HD-7 primary in 2014.

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Note to readers

The world has been going to hell all day, and, it seems, going to hell faster than usual. Figuratively speaking, I’m crawling into a hole with a good book and hunkering down for a short break. I’ll be back in a day or so. — James Conner.

Kathleen Williams campaigns in the Flathead today & tomorrow

Democratic congressional candidate Kathleen Williams, a former state legislator living in Bozeman, is in the Flathead today and tomorrow to raise money and hunt for votes.

She’ll be in Whitefish this evening, 1700–1900 MST, at the Whitefish Community Center, 121 E 2nd St, Whitefish, Montana 59937. The host and organizer is former Rep. Ed Lieser of Whitefish.

Tomorrow evening, she’ll be in Kalispell, beginning at 1700 MST, at the Central School Museum, 124 2nd Ave E, Kalispell.

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Why do medical offices hate email?

This is personal. I’m steamed, and I hope the steam scalds the Luddites who are making my life hell.

As my family, friends, and many readers, know, I’m hard of hearing. With amplification — a hearing aid — I can function almost normally. Without a hearing aid, a conversation is a shouting match that must be conducted face-to-face.

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Montana political briefs

Sen. Jon Tester, and Bozeman attorney Jared Pettinato, yesterday paid their filing fees for the Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House. I updated my 19 February post accordingly. All the previously announced major party candidates for federal office in Montana now have filed. Libertarians may file for both offices, probably just before the 12 March deadline.

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Flathead legislative and county filings update

Updated on 20 February 2018 at 1355 MST, and on 21 February 2018 at 1405 MST. It was mostly quiet on the Flathead filings front last week. David Dunn, a Whitefish resident, filed for the Republican primary in House District 9, the NE Kalispell/Evergreen district (map) now represented by Republican Randy Brodehl. The seat is open, as Brodehl is termed-out and has filed for Flathead Commissioner. Dunn has one primary opponent, Warren Illi, who filed on the first day of filing. No one has filed for a Flathead County office since 31 January. Flathead Memo’s chart of filings is below.

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Pusillanimous politicians are not the prime nemesis of sensible firearms laws

Gunpowder crazed voters are. Convinced that their survival and self-respect depend on owning firearms that are weapons of war, weapons designed for killing and maiming people as rapidly and efficiently as possible, these voters have decided that mass shooting, while deplorable, are an acceptable price for being able to own AR-15 rifles and other military style weapons. These voters are the reason there’s cowardice in Congress. The militant extremists at the National Rifle Association are also factors, but the NRA would not wield the clout it does if so many voters weren’t so crazy in love with guns.

The Parkland murders will not provoke reform. As described in The Atlantic by James Fallows, we’ll wringw our hands and wail — the ritual is well established — then wait for another mass murder committed by a lunatic armed with an AR-15. As a nation, we say we care, but we really don’t because we don’t act. At some point, perhaps, enough blood will be spilled, and enough brains will be splashed on the sidewalk, that our conscience is awakened and finally we melt all the AR-15s and their genre down to leg irons. But that day won’t break anytime soon. For now, as a nation, we choose to accept more spilled blood, and more splashed brains, because we think those are the colors of freedom.

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Montana candidates issue statements on the Parkland school murders

Updated at 1419 MST. Democratic candidates for the U.S. House John Heenan, Grant Kier, and Kathleen Williams, yesterday issued statements reacting to the Valentines Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 and wounded 15. Their full statements are below, along with the statement Lynda Moss issued today. I’ve offered Lynda Moss, the last of the four candidates who have paid the filing fee for the office, the opportunity to have her statement, if she issues one, published here.

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John Heenan has a big lead in Montana Post’s online poll

The online poll at The Montana Post of preferences in Montana’s Democratic primary for the U.S. House is not based on a random sample of voters. And at least one candidate, Kathleen Williams, issued Tweets urging her supporters to pack the poll for her.

But Williams is in third place, slightly behind Grant Kier, and well behind the leader, John Heenan. Lynda Moss and Jared Pettinato failed to break two percent.

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Missoula Rises’ lowdown attempt to sabotage the Cole Lecture

Missoula Rises, a left leaning political group, thinks highly of itself, but has a low opinion of Joe and Jane Citizen’s ability to think for themselves. Therefore, the Missoulian reports, the group’s self-appointed arbiters of what other people should be allowed to hear attempted to deny people access to this evening’s Jeff Cole Distinguished Lecture at the University of Montana (the university is the lecture’s venue, but not its sponsor).

Their tactic? Reserving tickets for the event they intended to boycott, hoping to keep the Dennison Auditorium at least half empty:

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45Q tax credits will not reverse coal’s decline

A generation ago, during the successful campaign to legislate a limited ban on phosphate detergents for the Flathead, the Soapers, led by Proctor and Gamble, argued, with straight faces, that instead of banning phosphates, we should remove them from the sewage before the effluent reached the Flathead River and Flathead Lake. Their premise — that it’s better to pollute and then clean up the pollutant than not to pollute in the first place — rightly provoked derisive guffaws, but one had to admire their chutzpah.

Today, the “pollute, then clean-up,” argument is being made by the people who dig and burn coal. Mine coal, they say, burn it, then capture the carbon dioxide and inject it into the ground, where it can’t function as a greenhouse gas. Not afraid to employ an oxymoron in support of their business, they call their burn and bury strategy “clean coal technology.”

Friday, they received a major subsidy when 45Q tax credits were included in the budget bill signed by President Trump:

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Flathead legislative and county filings update

Whitefish Democrat Mary Custer filed this week for House District 6 (map), challenging three-term incumbent Republican Rep. Carl Glimm, who has filed for a fourth and final term. Largely rural and suburban, HD-6 is deeply conservative, with a Democratic base of approximately 30 percent:

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Bullock wants a legislature that protects all hardworking
Montanans —but fails to call for a Democratic majority

In an oped published in most Montana newspapers late last week (Flathead Beacon), Gov. Steve Bullock said, “Throughout the legislative session, I repeatedly warned Republican leaders that building a budget on false revenue projections would result in even deeper cuts to services. And it did.”

Now Bullock is asking Montana’s voters to elect a legislature that will approve:

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Note to readers

More candidates file in the Flathead

Keith Stahlberg, Sid Daoud, and Gerald Cuvillier, filed for Flathead area legislative and county offices this week (master chart below).

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