Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
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The opportunity to serve as a volunteer on the High Peaks Federal Credit Union Board of Directors is one of the most significant differentiating factors that separates credit unions from traditional banks. They set the direction of the credit union and collaborate with the CEO to manage it according to the wishes of the membership. Credit unions are owned by their members, which allows them to have a say in how their financial lives are run. Instead of serving corporate stockholders, the Board...
"Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!" is a famous line turned into a cliché from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz used to express fear. In the 2020s, the fear of "Lions and Tigers and Bears" has been replaced with the fear of "climate change and anti-vaxxers and Article V of the US Constitution," which are strange bedfellows indeed. Oh my! There has been the same banter going on back and forth around a resolution that has been trying to get passed through our legislature since 2015 to add Montana...
Much like vote counting results in some places around the country, I am a little slow on delivery. However, local elections are officially in the rearview mirror. Approximately 58 percent of registered Jefferson County voters participated from the ten precincts within the county. The good news is that this was on par with the state, whose total turnout was just over 60 percent. Since it’s our number one responsibility as sovereign actors within our government, perhaps we should expect higher p...
I’m going to combine two stories, one fictional and one real. In the 1999 fictional film, The Green Mile, the “green mile” referred to the stretch of green linoleum that death row inmates walked to Louisiana’s electric chair. When I was a kid, my father used to refer to cash as “long green.” What do you get when you combine the two stories? Like the prison inmates, perhaps what you get is the worthy dollars’ inevitable demise as a productive public resource at the end of that analogous lin...
Most of you recall the famous quote from Ronald Reagan, “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Yes, that means real property as well, which tends to not move but is taxed to help cover the costs of running schools and local governments. My last article, “When You Find Yourself In a Hole Stop Digging” which is still available at www.montanadecides....
It was suggested that I could strengthen the logic of my last article, "To Record or Not to Record; Is that the Question?" which remains available at https://montanadecides.substack.com if you have not read it, by building on the principle that greater transparency helps to ensure accountability. The reason? It is in the individual's self-interest to have more information about issues that are relevant to them and serves the common good to have more people who are better informed. A great sugges...
Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter on January 8, 1789, “that wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” Jefferson’s intent was that if citizens were well informed, they could have the information needed to adequately participate in their government. It is, after all, our responsibility. This sentiment coincides with Article II, Section 9 of the Montana State Constitution which declares, “No person shall be deprived of the right to examine documen...
It's hard to say whether politics are in my future since I never considered politics in my past, even the recent past, like the last three months. I've never had any interest in politics and still do not. I realize that's an odd statement to make considering my attempt to become a county commissioner. For me, it was never about entering politics. It was about getting behind the curtain of government to better understand it and then acting accordingly within constitutional confines and...
Who is Jon Goff? Of course, I am playing off the opening line, "Who is John Galt?" from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged which serves as an expression of helplessness and despair at the current state of the novel's fictionalized world. John Galt is a character in the novel from 1957. Unlike John Galt, I am not a philosopher or an inventor. Although like him, I too believe in the power and glory of the human mind (meaning that we are fully capable of creating the future we want particularly when i...
