MATR Newsletter – February 2, 2023
The state with the best education wins!

Come Home Montana

• What The Least Populated Part of the United States (parts of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas) Can Teach Us About Climate Change

  Today’s information society should make the areas suitable for more population, right? There’s another problem with this arid area that has kept most people out until fairly recently: wild temperature fluctuations. Arctic air and hot air can both spread pretty easily in the region, making it just not a very pleasant place for people to settle.

• Montana Career Opportunities – Executive Director – Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation

  The Executive Director is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation’s work, ensuring effective operations to meet organizational goals. As the face of BMWF, the Executive…

• Montana Senator Jon Tester’s Bipartisan Bill Aims to Protect American Farmland from Foreign Entities

  In addition to protecting American agricultural land from foreign entities, the Promoting Agriculture Safeguards and Security (PASS) Act would add the Secretary of Agriculture as a standing member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to consider agriculture needs when making determinations affecting national security, and require a report to Congress from USDA on the risks posed by foreign takeovers of U.S. businesses engaged in agriculture.

• Want to start a business in Montana? Great Falls may be your best bet

  According to Motley Fool, in 2021, Montana was the #1 state for starting a small business. Some of the factors that go into such rankings include a state’s tax policies, consumer spending, business survival rate over five years, and labor laws.

TOMIS

• TOMIS – 2022 In Review, The Power of Chat Webinar, Sunshine Tribe Promo | January Newsletter

  If you run a tour or activity business, 2023 presents arguably the biggest opportunity you’ve seen. Right now there’s a wave of pent up demand for tours and activities being felt right across the globe. We’re seeing an unprecedented increase in international, domestic and local visitors across most destinations. People are travelling again in record numbers – and tapping into travel budgets that’ve gone unused the last few years…

Northwestern Energy

• NorthWestern Energy customers reporting scam calls in South Dakota, Nebraska and Montana

  Generally, the scammers demand a payment within an hour to avoid service shut off.

Big Sky Economic Development

• Big Sky Economic Development is excited to announce the launch of their PODCAST, The Vault at 201 North Broadway!

  The Vault at 201 N Broadway, podcast for innovators and problem solvers talking all things entrepreneurship, small business, and workforce development! Learn more about the Vault, our hosts, and the first three episodes (and how you can listen)

Great Falls Development Authority

• Great Falls Montana Economic Development Index 4th Quarter 2022

  Number of impressions Great Falls Tourism’s paid media placements generated in 2022: 27 million

• Upcoming Trainings: Government contracting, training for Farmers Market Vendors and more!

  Whether you’re just getting started, looking for new customers, wanting to grow sales through e-commerce, or focusing on workforce.
  We’re here to help.

Montana Business

• The environmental cost of beef vs. chicken? Tuna vs. salmon? Compare dozens of foods here.

  Knowing what to eat to minimize impact on the planet can feel like an impossible task: Eat locally? Skip meat? Opt for organic, free range, humanely raised?

• Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority Inaugural Newsletter January 2023

  Today, more than 2,000 miles from the Great Lake to the Pacific and 800 miles from Great Falls to Denver no longer have access to passenger rail service. It’s time to provide passenger rail service to all of America.

• Billionaire-backed Freedom Foundation launches in Montana

  “Washington recognizes (the Freedom Foundation) for what it is, which is this anti-worker group funded by billionaires who want to suppress wages and screw workers,” Yestramski said.

Next Generation Broadband in Montana

• Is broadband available near you? This updated FCC map can tell you. Maybe.

  A completely accurate map, however, could still leave a reader dismayed because it correctly conveys an unpleasant truth: At too many U.S. addresses, broadband either remains out of reach or is only available from one company.

Housing

• The Montana Housing Partnership is excited to invite you to the 2023 annual housing conference – May 15-17, 2023 – Helena.

  National, regional, and local experts are being lined up to address a wide variety of affordable housing issues including rental housing and homeownership, homelessness, rural communities, economic development, and community development.

21st Century Education Initiative – “You Should Care…”

• School privatization schemes are being pushed in Montana

  Montanans Organized for Education’s (MOFE) 16,000 members — including parents, students, community members and teachers — stand in opposition to school privatization (sometimes called “school choice” by proponents).

Miscellaneous Ramblings

• Great Valentine’s Day Gift Idea – Zoo lets you name a cockroach after an ex and have it fed to an animal.

  For the last four years, the San Antonio Zoo has offered a symbolic way to get over a former flame. For a donation, the zoo allows the scorned to name a cockroach, rodent or veggie after an ex. They are then fed to animals on Valentine’s Day.

Transportation

• Missoula now Montana’s 2nd busiest airport; service to New York, anyone?

  Missoula saw 425,000 passengers board a plane in 2022

• America’s Best New Bike Lanes

  PeopleForBikes highlights some of the most exciting new bike infrastructure projects completed in 2022.

• Cars are rewiring our brains to ignore all the bad stuff about driving

  “We wanted to demonstrate that when you talk about driving, people are not applying their normal values,”

Energy and Climate Change

• AI is predicting the world is likely to hit a key warming threshold in 10-12 years

  The world will likely breach the internationally agreed-upon climate change threshold in about a decade, and keep heating to break through a next warming limit around mid-century even with big pollution cuts, artificial intelligence predicts in a new study that’s more pessimistic than previous modeling.

VR/AR, Blockchain, Bitcoin, Artificial Intelligence and The Internet of Things

• Looking beyond phones, Samsung plans to make ‘extended reality’ devices

  Extended reality, or XR, is a blanket term to describe a handful of related technologies that include virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality.

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