Letters to the editor June 28

Making a difference

I am writing to express my thanks and gratitude to Detective Luke Foster of the Flathead County Sheriff’s Department.

Several months ago, my small business was the victim of an elaborate internet/credit card fraud scam. I ended up losing a substantial amount of money due to fraud which nearly torpedoed my entire business.

Detective Foster came to the rescue and was able to recover my property. For that I am extremely grateful. It is never fun to be the victim of a scam, but because of his diligence/hard work, I will be able to recover which makes a huge difference to my business as well as to my family.

I am not foolish enough to think that his case load is such that I was his only priority. He could have easily back-burnered my report and I would have never have recovered my losses. Instead, he took the time to track these thieves down all the way across the country and recover my property. In this day and age many people spend way too much time complaining about what law enforcement does wrong and not nearly enough time recognizing what they do to help their communities on a daily basis. Law enforcement officers like Detective Foster do things like this that make a real difference in the lives of real people, without even thinking twice about it.

I would like to recognize, commend, and thank Detective Foster and the Flathead County Sheriff’s department for their hard work and effort that they put forth every day, and for taking the time to help out a local business. I know I won’t forget it and I hope that others take the time to recognize the good that our local law enforcement does in our communities.

—Chris Wilcox, Bigfork

Votes put Rosendale in a rare club

I want to congratulate U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, who has now distinguished himself beyond my wildest expectations. This past week he joined a rarified club of some of the most bigoted, ignorant, conspiracy-mongering members of Congress. Rosendale was one of just six representatives both to vote against awarding medals to police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, and also to vote against recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, the day the last slaves learned they were free following the Civil War.

Not even notorious QAnon devotee Marjorie Taylor Greene opposed both of these overwhelmingly bipartisan bills. Instead, Rosendale has allied himself with luminaries like Andrew Clyde, the congressman who said that the mob who battered, pepper-sprayed, and stampeded their way into the Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and smearing their own feces on the walls, behaved like they were on a “normal tourist visit.”

Rosendale defended his vote against Juneteenth by preposterously claiming “the left” intends it “to replace the Fourth of July,” and baselessly asserting it was part of the left’s “larger efforts to make critical race theory the reigning ideology of our country.” He claimed he opposed medals for police because the bill also would have honored another officer killed in a separate incident — an argument so nonsensical it seems likely he really agrees with his accomplices who said they couldn’t accept the bill’s accurate description of the Jan. 6 perpetrators as “insurrectionists.”

Is Montana ready to embrace the shame, ridicule, and disdain the nation will shower upon us for sending a wackjob like Rosendale to Congress? Has Montana truly abandoned its proud independent streak and its bipartisan heritage, instead committing itself to cultishly following the most repulsive wingnuts in today’s authoritarian Republican Party? Nov. 8, 2022 is our chance to find out.

—Edward Salmon, Columbia Falls