Thursday Thoughts

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Welcome to The Western Word, faithful readers! Today is Thursday, September 7, 2023, and here are the topics that received my attention for today’s commentary:

  • The Most Wonderful…
  • City of Great Falls
  • Mask On/Mask Off
  • A Record…

THE MOST WONDERFUL…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – NFL Football begins tonight!

My Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs will entertain the Detroit Lions at Arrowhead Stadium tonight.

The Chiefs and their fans will celebrate the franchise’s third Super Bowl title with a short on-field ceremony that concludes with the unveiling of a new championship banner inside the stadium. A flyover will be conducted by the 110th and 393rd Bomb Squadron’s B-2 Stealth Bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.

To welcome all fans back to football the Chiefs will host the World’s Largest Tailgate presented by Bud Light, a virtual tailgate and concert experience hosted live from the Ford Tailgate District and streamed to mobile devices, living rooms, restaurants, bars, and fan clubs in Chiefs Kingdom and around the globe.

The kickoff is at 6:20 p.m. Mountain time. The game is being broadcast on NBC.

CITY OF GREAT FALLS:

The Great Falls City Commission is raising our taxes again.

The Electric has a report posted online about the city budget. One of the things that caught my attention was the following:

The city didn’t increase taxes for two years during the pandemic, but city officials said last year that wasn’t sustainable and used all available tax increases in the last budget, according to staff.
This year, commissioners adopted the budget using all tax increases available.

Then, The Electric reports about the new taxable property and that the city finance director, said that it’s the biggest increase in newly taxable property since they’ve been tracking it since 2002. “This is an extraordinary amount,” she told commissioners during their Sept. 5 meeting.

A little further down in the article, The Electric reports: The city is also using the full inflationary factor, which is half of the average rate of inflation for the previous three years, which the Montana Department of Administration set at 2.46 percent for this budget year.

This commission appears to like every chance they get to raise our taxes. They seem to side with the city bureaucrats more often than they do the taxpayers. We can put a stop to it by voting against the Public Safety Levy and the Infrastructure Bond request that will be on the November ballot. We can also send a message by not voting for the commissioners who are running for reelection.

Check out The Electric report HERE.

MASK ON/MASK OFF:

Nothing much stirs the hatred from the MAGA folks than bringing up the possibility that masks may be needed to help curtail another outbreak of COVID.

With reports that some schools are mandating masks after COVID outbreaks, the MAGA folks fired back with both barrels. U.S. Representative Matt Rosendale (R-MT 02) even sent an email to his subscribers with a conspiracy:

This much I know for certain…
Montanans will not tolerate another lockdown and more mandates coming from unelected bureaucrats in the D.C. Swamp!
We see this push to bring back authoritarian COVID restrictions for what it is – simply one more attempt by Democrats to manipulate another election.

Rosendale posted a similar message on X (formerly Twitter):

Montanans will NOT comply with another attempt by unelected officials to control our communities.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte (R) posted the following message on X:

We ended our state of emergency from the pandemic over two years ago. We will not bring lockdowns and mask mandates to Montana.

For me, it’s always been very simple. I listen to the healthcare experts and make my decisions based on what healthcare experts say and not what some dumbass politicians say or what is said on talk radio.

Check out THIS STORY from the Washington Post.

A RECORD…

A follow-up from Tuesday’s column…

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced Tuesday to 22 years in prison for orchestrating a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 election, capping the case with the stiffest punishment that has been handed down yet for the U.S. Capitol attack.

Congratulations to Tarrio!

Up until Tarrio’s sentence, I believe the longest sentences given have been 18 years each for two Proud Boys members. (Source)

As I said Tuesday, I hope that these sentences are a deterrent for other MAGA nutjobs out there, but I doubt it. I think they should have received much harsher sentences.

## GO CHIEFS ##

6 thoughts on “Thursday Thoughts”

  1. I tend to ignore the experts if they recommend masking children. Masks just might be beneficial if worn properly but children are not capable of doing that.

  2. What struck me about The Electric story about the City tax increases was the commissioners voting to gobble up every last red cent of the “up to 17 mills” of the library levy. “Up to 17” was how the ballot question read, and we were told they wouldn’t necessarily take it all if the amount of money those 17 represent due to property value increases was more than the dollar amount the library asked for.

    Now we see that was nothing more than BS. They couldn’t wait to say “people voted for 17” and grab every available dime. Maybe even for non-library purposes, like covering City deficits. Even Tryon’s phony squawking about taxing less rang hollow – he voted yes.

    The safety levy is also written “up to” the 103.75 mills, and we’ve been told multiple times that means they wouldn’t necessarily take it all, either due to the lead time it takes to hire cops, or if the total dollars due to inflated property values exceeds the requested budget for the list of safety needs, etc. But at this point, after seeing what they just did with the library levy, how can we believe them? They WILL immediately take every available cent, some $2 million more than they said they were asking at the old property values, and spend it like kids in a candy store.

    These commissioners do not represent the taxpayers who elected them. They advocate for government. Period.

    • Maybe they realized the majority of voters who liked the library levy are the same voters they need to win their upcoming races. I didn’t vote for that levy.

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