Columns

Montana businesses are in an untenable position

On Thursday, President Biden announced the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the coming weeks will issue an “emergency temporary standard” that will mandate all employers with 100 or more employees to require their workers be vaccinated or undergo weekly Covid testing. This rule is estimated to impact 80 million private-sector workers, with businesses facing fines of up to $14,000 per violation.

APR’s proposal to BLM would set a terrible precedent

An important deadline approaches for Montanans fighting to stop the American Prairie Reserve from decimating the agricultural economy of Eastern Montana. The Bureau of Land Management will take public comment until Sept. 28 on APR’s proposal to “rewild” their federal grazing allotments by removing them from agricultural production. The stakes of this proposal are high due to the precedent it would set.

Congress is a deadly extremist organization

“What Drove 9 Moderate House Democrats To Hold Up Their Party’s Agenda?” Nathaniel Rakich asks at FiveThirtyEight. “[N]ine moderate Democrats threatened to vote no on moving forward with Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget resolution, unless the House first voted to pass the Senate’s bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package.”

Afghanistan: Taliban victories explain the wisdom of U.S. withdrawal

As I write this column, the Taliban are on a roll. They’ve taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals in a single week, including the country’s second and third largest cities (Kandahar and Herat), and Ghazni, which sits astride the main highway connecting Kandahar to the national capital of Kabul.

Government vaccine mandates: immoral and impractical

By Thomas L. Knapp

No whodunit here: the cause of inflation is not a mystery

In 1974, U.S. President Gerald Ford declared inflation “public enemy number one” and launched a public relations campaign against it. WIN (“Whip Inflation Now”) buttons were handed out. The administration suggested various ways of “whipping inflation,” such as carpooling and home gardening. It didn’t work. Double-digit inflation outlived the Ford administration by several years.

Congressional Proxy Voting? No. Do the job or quit the job.

“When the House revamped its rules in the early days of the pandemic to allow lawmakers to vote remotely,” Nicholas Fandos reports at the New York Times, “Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina was among 161 Republicans who sued to block the arrangement, arguing that it ‘subverts’ the Constitution.”

IN BRIEF

Concert group releases schedule

No, the Air Force is not ‘60% responsible’ for Devin Kelley’s crimes

On Nov. 5, 2017, Devin Patrick Kelley parked his SUV outside First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, got out, and opened fire. Kelley murdered 25 people outside and inside the church, wounding 20 others before he turned his gun on himself (after two good guys with guns opened fire on HIM) and saved Texas’s taxpayers the expenses of a trial and imprisonment or execution.

Facebook gives the most dangerous extremists a free pass

Facebook, USA Today reports, “is asking some U.S. users whether they may have been exposed to extremist content, or if they are worried that someone they know might be becoming an extremist.”