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Support bill to ban puppy mills

We must stop the puppy mills!

Please read this letter and call your representatives and senators and urge them to vote YES on HB570. Also you may call in @406-444-4800 and tell them to vote yes. Voice your opinion: A live person answers and you can have them pass it on.

How many dogs and cats have suffered because of greedy people living off the flesh. It is thousands in my opinion. God did not give us these little animals to suffer as they do in puppy mills. There are puppy mills all over the areas around Kalispell. Report them! You do not have to be known. You could save so many innocents.

Please make the call today while the bill is in committee. Ask your legislators to please vote yes on HB570. Lets top the cruelty.

Blessings to you and blessing to the little innocents who are still locked in cages. Hopefully we will get them out before more are starved and bred to death! —Elinor Williamson, Seeley Lake

Vote no on Smith Valley bond request

?More money for “education”! Yes, once again, we, a mix of the hard working, the underpaid, the jobless, the retired, the senior, the childless, the empty nester, residents are being asked to provide yet more money to our school districts. Please take a good look at your real-estate tax bill in the second section denoted “taxes for education.” On my bill, an owner of a nothing close to spectacular home, my share of taxes JUST for “education” are $887.79 per year. My school district’s (#89) share of that amount is currently $333.02. In speaking with the school office recently I was told that there are 231 students enrolled in the Smith Valley school, serving grades K-8. I was also told that a homeowner whose home may be worth $200,000 would be taxed an ADDITIONAL $448.82 over and above what they are paying now for the school district tax should the requested $6 million bond be approved by us voters. $6 million for 231 students. We could probably home school each child for that amount and hire each their own teacher!

This is really unacceptable. Also, who is responsible for independently auditing how bond monies are spent and for accountability when that bond’s life is over. When money is categorized for a project, e.g. maintenance, how does that project then fall into a deferred maintenance position on the next bond proposal. Also, and obviously, those who are renters do not pay property tax. In that case, should they not be charged a tax for all the resources they are using in our county? How many students whose parents pay NO tax are we supporting? There are many more questions. Unfortunately I was unable to attend the bond meeting, so I am voicing my opinion and concerns here.

Perhaps, a small school, such as Smith Valley, should be closed and its students moved to other schools. Remember hearing of, or being a part of, those one-room schoolhouses that were all across Montana where students from K-12 were taught in one classroom by one teacher? Fast forward to now, hearing one justification for more money, that a small school needs money because its students have to change classes for different subjects ... oh my, those poor babies.

Please give this Smith Valley bond proposal your full attention. Vote no!

I digress from the subject of my letter, but you may also want to view the item on your tax bill that is called “FVCC permis med levy” and “Co perm med levy” ... this stands for permissive medical levy ... and from an excerpt from an archived article from The Daily Inter Lake:

“...statutes allow the board to impose medical levies without public votes as a method of providing health insurance for employees.” (“The board” in this article is specifically the FVCC board).

Do the research and VOTE NO on Smith Valley bond request. —Mary Ann Lavelle, Kalispell

How could U.S. vote for Trump?

Although 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump, the fact remains that approximately 62 million people voted for a person they would not put on a local school board or invite into their home. A man who has never held public office, never served in the military, and who would not provide his tax returns because he almost certainly pays no federal income tax. A man with a long history of exploiting and violating the rights of others. A man who took six companies into bankruptcy, and who set up a sham university for the sole purpose of scamming thousands of low-income people, to include veterans.

All of this meets the very definition of a sociopath. In this case, a pathological liar who is clearly mentally unwell. Witness Trump’s constant sophomoric tweets with no regard whatsoever for truth and his continual tirade against anyone who disagrees with him. Witness also his tirade against federal judges, most recently the 9th Circuit Court even before they could render a decision in the Muslim ban case, and his recent tirade against Nordstrom’s. Several of his flurry of executive orders are unconstitutional, and since he has not relinquished his ownership positions in his businesses, he is guilty of gross conflict-of-interest violations. Listening to Trump’s own words during the year-long campaign, the nature of the man should have been crystal clear to the American voters and to the entire world.

There is simply no precedent for this in U.S. history. Even the man historians universally regard as the worst president in U.S. history, James Buchanan, born in 1791, was a veteran, a five-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a former secretary of state, who could speak and conduct himself as an adult. So how could 62 million people vote for a man like Donald Trump? The answer is the fact that American voters rank among the most ignorant of any country in the industrialized world. Consequently, millions are easily swayed by fear-mongering, which is the Steve Bannon and Donald Trump stock in trade.

We now find ourselves in very dangerous and uncharted waters, with no precedent to guide us. Until the Republicans who put this man in office, we can no longer tolerate a mentally unwell person in the White House and must take action. All we can do as individuals is to stand up and speak out against ignorance, fear-mongering and intimidation whenever and wherever we find it, regardless of the consequences. And we can immediately buy stock in Nordstrom’s and every other company that displays similar courage. —Jim Lockwood, Whitefish