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What’s the brand for Whitefish?

During the Whitefish Planning Board hearing of Jan. 18 regarding the proposal for Fresh Life Church to construct a church on Central Avenue, a Whitefish resident commented that the church was inconsistent with the tourism brand and small town feel that is Whitefish.

That got me thinking about the Whitefish brand and what it is. It appears to me that the current Whitefish brand is about tourism. My conception of Whitefish is that it is a small town in Northwest Montana that has a ski area and a great lake. Historically the folks here have made their living working in the extraction, manufacturing and transportation industries.

Now with tourism it appears that we want to become a Disneyland for well off, second home and visiting white families.

The tourism industry encompasses low-paying, part-time and seasonal jobs and most with no benefits. This results in a work force that cannot afford to live here and in many cases has to rely on a government safety net to make ends meet.

I would like to see the city of Whitefish, along with the NIMBYs, encourage more commercial development in the extraction, manufacturing and transportation industries, which would provide more jobs that pay a living wage and offer benefits. Additionally, to promote more high and medium density residential developments that would result in more supply of affordable housing for the working class.

The branding of Whitefish as a tourism mecca and less of a real working town promotes a socio-economic white and well-off enclave with the second-homers and well-off whites being the preferred population and with the tourism workers the slaves who should be best moved off to the east to Columbia Falls or further afield. —John F. Connelly, Whitefish

A solution for water plants and water bottles

The following two items have been in the news lately. One, the green light has been given for a water bottling company in the Creston area. A sad day for a community and probably a valley. Two, recycle places will no longer accept plastic to be recycled mainly because we are unable to sort it properly.

It seems to me there is a fairly simple solution to both of these. Everyone could STOP buying bottled water. Imagine: If no one bought bottled water, there would be no reason for anyone to profit from a bottling company and there wouldn’t be any water bottles to recycle or throw in the landfill.

There are many different kinds of containers that are available to purchase for less than $20 that can be used for water and can be refilled an infinite number of times. They will even keep the water cold for many hours! —Twila Brenneman, Kalispell

On one day, death dominated the front page

Did you notice the front page of the Daily Inter Lake on Jan. 24 was entirely about death/damage/destruction? Every single article.

Murder, death and butchery of our most helpless innocents (abortion). The HHS strategic plan for the next four years states it will pursue policies that protect Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.

Mangled destruction of individual identity (transgenders).

Physical harm and damage to recreationists snowshoeing (collapsed cornice).

Yet another attempt at wholesale slaughter in a school setting in Kentucky.

Even Montana’s waterways (mussels). Or, is this one about one stage along the pathway to monitoring, conditioning, controlling, seizing and destroying Montanan’s freedoms? Montana has always had mussels. That’s what the Musselshell River is named after. In this day of fake news and fake science, it is not known to me whether or not the mussel invasion is real or is serving agendas like vaccine population control.

You don’t have many leaves left in your hedges of protection, Flathead Valley. Consider brushing up on Jonathan Cahn’s bestselling book, “The Harbingers.” This is just one of the lulls between the harbingers and the judgments.

The Trump administration is continuing to settle illegals across the country. They are being quietly flown in and settled into our communities with VIP treatment.

Law enforcement in the know, who I’ve tried to apprise of their precarious position with the U.S. military, are ducking and running. They are your last line of defense.

Perhaps practicing your desperately bright, rabidly vapid, plastered-on smiles (like the abortionists) and mandatory mustn’t-stop applause will work to reassure you, like it works for the people of North Korea. —Kathy Folden, Kalispell

Tester flunks the test for this voter

In January there was a Senate vote on continuing funding for the government, including the military. Sen. Tester voted “Yes,” right?

No. He voted for a shutdown to include the troops and their families. Why? Because amnesty for DACA illegal aliens was not part of the package. In other words, Tester put the welfare of illegal aliens ahead of that of our citizen soldiers. Why?

Well, in the immediate scheme of things Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, told him to, and of course House minority leader San Fran Nan Pelosi demanded the same. So Tester obeyed. But won’t the Dems’ platform of granting amnesty and promoting “open borders” hurt American workers in regard to both jobs and wages? Of course. But the Dems don’t care.

In the 1950s and 1960s and beyond, they were the party of the “little guy” and of “blue collar” workers, wages and jobs. But that was then and this is now. Today, the Dems have abandoned their traditional constituency and embraced a new strategy — i.e., to flood our country with an ocean of illegals, make them citizens, welcome them into the ranks of the Democrat Party and lead them straight into the voting booths. The Dems are shooting for a super-majority of the electorate, which will bring about a permanent one-party rule, i.e., theirs. And that will make voting irrelevant.

In speaking about the “dreamers” both Cryin’ Chuck Schumer and Pelosi have made highly emotionally charged pleas for amnesty. But is all of the teary-eyed rhetoric really about “compassion” for the “dreamers?” No. They are only “crocodile tears,” not real ones. And they are more about their lust for power than their empathy for people. —David Hadly, Kalispell