I’d like to share a story I heard years ago that today sounds like a parable:

Jeb, a vigilant supervisor at an automobile engine assembly plant, got wind that a worker, Slim, was stealing parts, one piece at a time, to build a new car engine at his home. Sure enough, Jeb caught the man pushing a wheelbarrow full of bent and broken parts through the gate the very next day. Jeb carefully went through Slim’s junk pile expecting to find a new piston or cam shaft hidden in the mess but couldn’t find anything that looked like a useable part. This same ritual went on every day at quitting time for weeks without Jeb finding a single useable automotive part within the piles of trash. Suddenly, ‘ol Slim quit his job. Wanting to find out why, Jeb went to visit the former employee and found the man in his garage preparing to open a new business. “You got me good, Slim,” conceded the supervisor as he looked around at all the new wheelbarrows set out for sale. “I heard a rumor about you, but I never thought…” Slim chuckled and confessed to his former boss; “It was me who started that rumor, Jeb, and it worked, didn’t it?” (more…)

The Super-Committee failed to perform the task its members were assigned to do. If these federal employees worked for me at my place of business, all would be fired for failing to complete a critical work assignment that would stave off bankruptcy (including Montana Senator Max Baucus who demonstrated to the nation that he is lacking in leadership skills as much as the others on the committee). (more…)

I find it hard to accept people who complain about a problem and then offer no solution. I sadly find that too many politicians fit this description.

Combined federal and state tax rates on US corporations are the highest in the world. Further increasing taxes on successful entrepreneurs and struggling businesses, as promoted by our president and the Democrats in Congress, will only drive more jobs and investment capital overseas and consequentially cause more American businesses to fail, more jobs to be lost. Do you really believe financial advisors for professional sports stars like Kobe Bryant ($53 million annual income) or Alex Rodriguez ($35 million annually) will encourage them to invest in American businesses (i.e. U.S. jobs), as the White House pushes to raise tax rates to FDR’s peacetime ‘New Deal’ levels of 78%? Of course not. Can you say ‘tax loopholes’, ‘off-shore investments’ and ‘tax-free bonds’? But, hey, ‘Tax the rich”, has a nice re-election ring to it, don’t ya think? (more…)

Last January, The Daily Inter Lake printed a challenging puzzle, an enigma if you will, that I submitted which continues to generate passionate responses from readers. (The question came from a fictional novel I published; ‘The Time and Space Trilogy’). Interestingly, several of the responses side-stepped my remarks entirely and addressed subjects only remotely related to my question. I asked readers how a process as complex as photosynthesis, that continues to defy reverse-engineering by scientists and yet is essential to life, could have occurred on our planet at a time when Earth consisted of nothing more than barren rock and sterile water? (more…)

I am worried about our nation’s financial health. You should be too. Our leaders boast that the recent recession is over (Obama in his 2011 State of the Union speech), and we are on the road to recovery. Yet, as of today, we still have over 13 million officially unemployed. The actual number of adult citizens able to work but not doing so is almost 24 million. By comparison, the number of unemployed at the peak of the Great Depression was just over 11 million, so why am I so underwhelmed? Then, after assuring Americans that the economy has bounced back, the President strikes fear into all of us with the dire warning that failure to increase the $14.3 trillion dollar debt limit will catastrophically destroy the nation’s economy. If I read him right, our economy will fail if Communist China, and other nations that hate us, choose not to lend us any more money. So which is it, Mr. President: our economy is stable or it is on the brink of collapse? Any elementary-school student (at least back when I went to public school) could assert that any entity that must borrow to stay afloat is doomed. (more…)

The following opinion was published in the Daily Inter Lake on 4/27/11

The Flathead Valley Community College is obviously an asset for the county and for Montana. If the goal of the learning facility is to prepare our young adults for work in the service and retail industry, then the current Board of Trustees that is comprised of a banker, an events coordinator/account rep, a ski patroller and an attorney, will continue to see that the college churns out graduates with limited practical (marketable) skills. (more…)

According to a recent article in The Economic Times, China’s ownership of US debt reached a peak of $1.18 trillion in October, 2010. Since that time, the communist nation has been quietly reducing the total each month ‘to diversify their international investments’. Even though, as of March, 2011, the amount of US Treasury debt that they hold was still over $1.15 trillion, today’s number represents a substantially lower percentage of their overall foreign exchange portfolio. (more…)

I have a simple question for our Governor Schweitzer and his Democratic Party:
Why do you see nothing wrong with our state’s unemployment rate being over 8% (Flathead County is now over 13%), when right next door our neighbor, North Dakota, has the nation’s lowest rate (3.8%)?

The difference I can see is their governor, Jack Dalrymple (R), who follows another Republican governor, John Hoeven, is committed to fiscal responsibility with emphasis on infrastructure improvements and energy development (promoting private industry rather than public jobs). (more…)

Anyone who questions that God created life on Earth should take the time to understand the incredibly complex processes of photosynthesis. Someday scientists will finally succeed in duplicating all the interacting chemical exchanges that occur within this amazing system that sustains life. But when they describe how chlorophyll is able to capture the energy of sunlight and transfer it to simple molecules, they must also explain how this feat could possibly be devised without the guidance of a superior intelligence. The creation of life on earth occurred at a time when the planet consisted of nothing more than barren rock and sterile water. The evolution of life had to have a beginning and the process of photosynthesis is far too complex to be the simple consequence of random chance.

I recently returned home to Montana after a lengthy visit to the ‘lost coast’ state of New Jersey (opposite the ‘left coast’ of California). The Garden State has the highest property taxes in America. (more…)