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Letting wealthy off the hook

Do you live in Montana and earn over $400,000 or $ 500,000 a year? Well, neither do I, but if we did we would be feeling so relieved! Why, you may ask. Because the House Taxation Committee defeated a measure to raise our taxes. Thank goodness!

Instead they are going to “trim and reset the dial.” According to House Appropriations Chairman Nancy Ballance that means targeting $120 million in spending cuts as a starting point. Folks, I think that translates into cutting services for the rest of us in the state. Taxes pay for our roads, schools, parks, law enforcement, programs to help our citizens who need help, hospitals, etc., all the things that make us a civil society.

Do we like to complain about them? Yes we do, but we all have to pay them and just imagine living in a society without all of the above. Isn’t it realistic to expect those who earn more to pay more? Even the governor’s tax proposal to increase taxes on wine from 27 cents a liter to 54 cents a liter met with opposition because industry representatives were concerned about having to raise prices. Does that mean the wealthy don’t even want to pay more for their wine? Just kidding, but isn’t paying a fair share of taxes your obligation as a citizen of this great state we all call home. —Marcia Peck, Bigfork

Budget should help the elderly

I am the administrator at Lake View Healthcare Community in Bigfork. Since 1973, we have provided quality health-care services to the Bigfork area.

Lake View was started in the 1970’ to right a wrong. Back in the day, Bigfork’s elders were shipped off to other communities because we did not have a local nursing home to care for our elderly. This led to greater isolation and challenges for families having to travel to visit elders.

Over the years, the facility has grown with the Bigfork community into a progressive skilled nursing facility. Our campus offers a continuum of care including short-term, long-term, adult daycare, respite and memory care.

Lake View is an important asset to Bigfork. We allow local residents to stay local and receive quality medical care near family and friends.

The Montana Legislature is currently considering steep budget cuts to the tune of $93 million to senior long-term care and Medicaid core services. The proposed budget reductions would directly impact Lake View Healthcare Community. Reduced funding for direct-care workers and the Medicaid patients served will weaken the quality care we provide to all residents.

If you agree that Lake View Healthcare Community is a treasure to our community, please join me in opposing the budget cuts proposed by the Montana Legislature.

Call 406-444-4800 from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday. You may leave messages for up to five individual legislators or one legislative committee per call. Ask to speak with your local legislators and the House Appropriations Committee. Help us be a voice for those who are too frail to speak up on their own. —Tyna Smith, Bigfork

What would Montana be without them?

Grizzlies, wolves, mountain lions, wolverines, black bears, lynx, foxes: These are the rare and endangered predators that still survive here in our state, and in very few others. I happen to love these creatures, but I know that others, with different attitudes, different interests do not.

If the preservation of these species, and the regulations required to do this, stand in the way of the timber, mining, livestock husbandry, or real-estate development, I understand that these critters and their undisturbed environment may stand between you and the way you have traditionally been free to make a living. I understand the frustration, the anger you feel when the value placed on the life of an animal is put above your need to make a living.

I can only say to you that the world is changing all the time. It always has. The impact of man’s incredible take-over of space and resources all over the planet has finally made people aware of the finite nature of our earth, all of its living things, and its resources.

We all have to find a way to live sustainably; otherwise, if we continue the way we have in the past, we will foul our own nest to the point that it will become unlivable.

Living sustainably means a huge change in almost every aspect of life. Hanging onto the past has never been a successful strategy. We need to restore, repair, retrain, rethink our whole system. Jobs come and go according to the times. Farming, industry, technology all evolve, and we should rise to the challenge of the future. We can develop a clean energy industry with its enormous demand for new jobs. We can rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of the U.S. and employ thousands. We can develop new technologies that help us to live in a less damaging fashion.

What we can’t and shouldn’t do is exterminate every creature remaining so that we can chew up, dig up, eliminate, pollute and invade every last piece of natural wilderness and wildness that exists to wring the last drop of value out of it.

We need to save whatever we’ve got left, and in Montana, what we’ve got left is one of the most beautiful and fascinating natural environments in the lower 48 states. You know it. Everyone knows it. That’s why our current economy is growing to the extent it has in recent years. Mine is not a sentimental argument. It is a practical economic social necessity.

Think about it. —Carol Edwards, Polebridge

Obama left country better

I am writing this letter in response to Doug Adams’ letter published Feb. 12. I thought that you would be speaking in empathy for those of us on the left that are as dismayed at President Trump’s election as you were at President Obama’s. The fact that you admittedly never got over it doesn’t make me want to take your advice. The right made obstruction and delay the hallmark of the last eight years, quite successfully I might add. They managed to sink the approval rating of Congress while maintaining their majority in both the House and Senate. It was an expert bit of politics, and I think the left is taking a leaf out of their playbook.

The question I have for you, though, is about the state the country was in on Jan. 20. You make the claim that President Obama was the worst thing that has ever happened to our country. Besides dismissing this as hyperbole (how are you qualified to make such a definitive claim anyway?), I genuinely want to know, by what metric is this the case?

It is absolutely the case that the rate of unemployment is half of what it was in the spring of 2009. The deficit had already been skyrocketing as a result of maintaining two wars we had no business being in. The Affordable Care Act has meant that millions of people who were not previously eligible for health coverage are now covered. The crime rate, while currently rising, is still much lower than it was when Obama took office.

Where is the evidence to the contrary? —Daniel Neely, Kalispell