Letters to the editor May 4

Value of Vo-Ag Center

I wish to add my voice to others who are urging residents to vote “yes” for the School District 5 levy.  I too write in support of the Agricultural Education Center or Vo-Ag Center, which would face significant cuts if the levy does not pass.

While other worthy programs would be impacted, I have more direct interaction with the Vo-Ag Center and its students in my work at Flathead Conservation District.  

The Conservation District has supported the Vo-Ag Center over the years, primarily through supporting their fundraising efforts to replace farm equipment for the school farm.

The students also assist at our annual seedling delivery day for landowners in Flathead County ordering seedlings through the state conservation nursery.

Each April, the Ag Center kids stand out in the rain, snow, hail and wind to load thousands crates of seedlings. They do it with an excellent attitude, a smile, capable strength, and with a thanks and a firm handshake to customers. They are among the hardest working, most competent and polite kids I’ve ever met. I know their families play a big role in this, but the work ethic and capabilities of these students are a credit to the Vo-Ag Center and its teachers.  

The students are learning skills that are a key component to life in the Flathead Valley and our state, including hay production, cattle and sheep production, agricultural irrigation systems, fertilizer and soil nutrition, hay and forage analysis, agricultural mechanics, precision agriculture and GPS, and agribusiness management.  

We need more students trained in these areas if we want our way of life here to continue.

I encourage everyone to vote for the School District 5 levy. These kids and these programs deserve our support.  

— Jessie Walthers is conservation program manager at Flathead Conservation District.

Founding principles

I am incredibly impressed with our former Gov. Marc Racicot’s opinion piece in the Daily Inter Lake and stand with him and our country’s founding principles.  

Thank you for representing our true conservative and traditional beliefs and reminding us to stand for these foundational American values.

In contrast, I’m deeply disappointed in our state representatives Sen. Matt Regier and Sen. Carl Glimm who missed the memo that our state’s budget was a bipartisan bill approved by Republicans. We need to work together and this is what happened in our Legislature this year and I’m proud of them. Do we all get what we want? Probably not, but this year both Democrats and Republicans worked together to pass a state budget and frankly we need more of that to keep our great state moving forward. 

— Laura White, Whitefish

RINO Racicot

Former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot should definitely seek refuge in the lunatic Democrat Trump-hating party, rather than continuing to pretend to be a Republican or conservative.

His latest over 600-word rant (on the 300-word restricted opinion page of the Daily Inter Lake) excoriates everything President Trump is doing to course-correct our country while defending the activist judges’ attempts to block his every move, their actions fueled by Racicot’s longtime friends on the lunatic left. While he goes on and on about how the president and Republican supporters are subverting the Constitution, I am surprised he didn’t use the Democrat talking point and call it a “constitutional crisis.”  

I don’t remember him criticizing Biden’s obvious dementia. Perhaps he should have written then about the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, our founding document he so fondly describes in his letter.  Nor do I remember him penning any such lengthy diatribe when over 10 million (though no one knows the real number) illegals flooded across the border.  There was no concern from RINO Racicot about Biden or whoever was running the White House not following our long-established immigration laws.  

How many United States citizens must be raped or murdered, die of fentanyl overdoses, or suffer many other lesser travesties at the hands of people who should never have been allowed into our country before Racicot will voice concern?

I would continue, but since the editors need more space for Racicot’s letters which double the word limit (or perhaps some people such as former governors are exempt from laws or word limits) I will stop here. 

— David Myerowitz, Columbia Falls