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Left, the new surgical tower under construction. Right, the hospital in deep twilight in early May, 2010.
The worst readability scores belong to Dave Strohmaier and Diane Smith, but that could change: I have yet to analyze Sam Rankin’s page. If he files, I’ll test his prose. And when Jason Ward, who has filed, opens his website, I’ll check its readability.
Before discussing the numbers, a caveat or two:Bob Fanning and Chuck Baldwin are taking the wrong approach to increasing Montana’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. They’ve joined an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the State of Louisiana’s challenge to the U.S. Census Bureau’s method of counting the population for apportioning the U.S. House.
When news of Dave Gallik’s departure as Montana’s Commissioner of political practices broke, I favored keeping political practices in a single operation, but led by a commissioner, such as a professor of law, without close partisan ties.
That would help, but my thinking has evolved over the past week. I now believe that CPP should not exist as a single agency; that its functions should be split between Montana’s Secretary of State and Montana’s Attorney General.
Erstwhile Commissioner of Political Practices Dave Gallik has his friends, and some are making themselves heard on Montana’s progressive blogs. They argue, without presenting convincing evidence, that CPP staffer Mary Baker is a Republican who set out to get rid of Gallik.
Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices, former Democratic legislator and PAC man Dave Gallik, resigned yesterday following accusations by the agency’s four permanent employees that he was misusing state resources and not spending enough time on the job. Intelligent Discontent and 4and20blackbirds are following the story and have extensive comment threads worth reading.
Gallik, some may remember, was treasurer of the Democratic Legislators Alumni Association back in 2010, an outfit accused of dubious contributions. Reported the Flathead Beacon’s Dan Testa:
Political Practices keeps track of campaign finance reports, and investigates complaints that Montana’s laws governing political campaigns were violated.
In my opinion, tracing campaign finance reports is more important than investigating complaints — and the current finance reporting system is an abomination. Yes, we can obtain online copies of the C-5 reports of contributions and expenditures, but those reports are graphic images in a PDF container. It’s a paper system. Digitizing the data and converting them to a database so that they can be analyzed is a labor intensive process, slow and as a practical matter out of reach of virtually everyone.
Is a vote against the Whitefish school bond a vote against education? Whitefish High School Principal Dave Carlson sure thinks so. Attempting to make a case for approving a new high school for Whitefish, Carlson told the Daily InterLake:
Jason Ward of Hardin, a 34-year-old construction project manager for the Crow tribe, and biodiesel farmer, filed yesterday for the Democratic nomination for Montana’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Whitefish’s school district is going for a $14 million school bond — and it’s not even waiting for spring. According to the Flathead Beacon, a mail ballot election will start on 28 February, when ballots are mailed to voters, and conclude on 15 March, a month in advance of the deadline for filing income tax returns.
Whitefish probably needs a new high school. But a new school is unlikely to be built any time soon if the school district puts a bond issue to the voters in the primary election in June. There’s a better chance, although still not a very good one, that a bond issue could pass in the general election in November, and that’s the election date the district should be considering.
That’s the only possible explanation for the County Commission’s decision to deny the county’ health department’s request to buy Apple iPads, state-of-the-art tablet computers that are increasingly popular in medicine in places like Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago; places with lots of smart people.
Two dead, 33 injured when a Rimrock Stages bus crashes east of Missoula. According to the Missoulian, the bus was tooling along at 65 mph on black ice when the driver lost control. The bus rolled, landed on its side, ejecting several passengers.
Politicians whose good looks are their chief asset should smile, not speak. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry learned that the hard way last night in the Iowa Republican Caucuses, finishing with five and 10 percent of the vote respectively. Both will fold their tents by the end of the week.
Perry’s chief misstep was trying to debate. Oops. He found too late that it helps to know the subject matter and to have the ability to articulate it. Bachmann floated serenely from fact-free statement to fact-free statement, in the end making Aimee Semple McPherson look like a Rachel Maddowesque polymath.
Neither will be missed.
