This about sums it Up

Anyone else remember when Ronald Reagon delivered the knockout punch to President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential debates by simply asking the question " Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?"

Flash forward 32 years and ask yourself that same question

Merry Christmas!

As we pause this evening to give thanks and celebrate with our families, fiends and neighbors the birth of Jesus Christ, we here at the HDC are sadly reminded of the recent passing of Blaine County Undersheriff Pat Pyette and the lessons we all can learn from his tragic death.

First we cannot begin to express our sadness and concern for Deputy Pyette's family to lose their loved one at a time when we all should celebrate a happy and joyous time. Pat gave his life in service to the people of Blaine County and will be missed by everyone. We should all be reminded of the selfless sacrifice our law enforcement officers and their families provide to us for our personal and community security. They put their lives on the line each day for all of us.

We must also take some time to thank our men and women in harms way over seas defending our freedoms and fighting to make the lives of others more like ours. Once again they serve this nation selflessly and many families must endure their absence at this special time and we thank them as well for their sacrifice.

We can all be thankful we live in a free nation of independent thinkers and with our individual and civil freedoms of religion, assembly and speech. Freedom is not free. So as we pause to celebrate Christ's birth and the more secular and commercial spirit of the holidays as well with our friends and loved ones, take a moment to say thanks to those who provide the security we all share in.

Merry Christmas!

Havre "Award Winning" Journalists may suffer from Split Personality Disorder

Something just doesn’t make any sense to me. Back on December 5th we broke the story that our wonderful Mayor Dim had offered the Chief of Police position to an Arizona man. We raised some questions about why the Mayor had kept everyone in the dark and more pointedly we bemoaned the fact that some police department folk just may have hard feelings over these sole actions of our mayor. The local award winning folks over at the “professional” paper finally ran a story announcing that the mayor was near to selecting someone to be chief and then wrote one of their infamous anonymous blogs, err….. editorials on the 15 that said;

The mayor's political opponents quickly pounced on him for hiring from out of town. The mayor's opponents say he should have appointed someone from within the police department, most likely Matosich. An insider, they believe, would be more familiar with the department and how it operates. Solomon was duty-bound, they said, to appoint a hometown person.
Balderdash.
The mayor did just what he is supposed to do

Funny part is as near as we can ascertain these political opponents spoke of in the papers anonymous authored article are none other than us, one lonely Blog bunch, that are now elevated to the role of “Mayor’s political opponents”. Here I thought that professional journalists did some investigation of facts before publishing articles based solely off of information gleaned from some anonymous blog. My mistake. I guess I was confused by all the awards their journalist have been piling up because I assumed what I have been reading in print in the Havre Daily “news” was factual and researched.

Now move forward to today, Dec 22 and the anonymous editorial want to be blog author pens an editorial taking the mayor to task for keeping the Chief of Police hiring behind closed doors. WHAT???  You said just last week the mayor did just what he was supposed to do.

The paper only woke up to the fact that the mayor had hired someone when we broke the story on December 5th, they gave us the old BALDERDASH spanking on December 15th for speaking against the mayor and now on December 22 they are going after the mayor for meeting behind closed doors. First they are loving him up and now they are against him for doing the same thing we were complaining of from the get-go. Do these people have some sort of split personality going on over in their news office? Is the anonymous editorial writer suffering from a Dr Jekyll – Mr. Hyde affliction?  Better check your health plan to see if it covers split-personality disorders.

Lordy I am confused. For the record we at the Corrector are against the Mayor flying solo and hiding the fact that he was hiring Kirk Fitch from Arizona as our new chief of police. We also are not against Mr. Fitch and have heard many wonderful things about his experience and abilities and we welcome him to Havre. Furthermore we will continue to be against the things done at city hall in the back rooms and under the cover of darkness any time, all the time and every time, every day, all month long.

A big hat tip to the HD”N” commenter that coined the new Solo-man handle for our mayor. Mayor Dim Solo-man ……………… Now that fits!

Why Obama's Stimulas Failed

Very interesting take on the colossal failure we know as the stimulas.

Somebodys Got to Pay

Is this what is viewed as "Normal" nowadays?  I feel bad for these kids.  Apparently getting paid to take care of your kids is a right that you are entitled to.

Kitty Litter Police Nab D.C. Woman

Washington, D.C is a name synonymous with most of what we would call our problems in relation to our politicians’ and Government. This is the place where each state dispatches two senators and collectively send 435 representatives to look after our interests. Add to this number one President and nine Supreme Court justices that are approved by our ruling body and you have 545 individuals ruling rough-shod over the rest of the population numbering nearly 300 million people.

The city of Washington, D.C. has a population of over 585,000 people of which nearly half hold a Bachelor’s degree or higher which compares to around 27% of the United States population elsewhere. Some of the most educated people in the world live and work in our capital so you would think that this city would be the utopia of the free-thinking world. Along with all these people of superior intellect are also an above average number of people committed to saving us from ourselves by saving the environment. The following videos tell the tale of one lady trying to do her bit for the environment by recycling newspaper to be used as cat litter to only find herself getting fined when the garbage can inspector discovered she didn’t place her kitty waste in the appropriate recycling receptacle. You don’t suppose any of this “Washington Thinking” has rubbed off on our 545 ruling people’s thinking do you? Perhaps Tester is wrong and it is not the “Culture of Corruption” that is the problem so much as the influence these Washington citizens have on our congressional thinking when they are in this foreign land?

No matter what the cause I think you will agree after you watch these video news reports that what is needed to cure this problem is as simple as appointing a “Czar of Cat-Poop”

See the story video link here    (Sorry couldn't get the vid to post)

Public Works Department response to allegations

Public Works Defends Fine For Not Recycling Cat Litter: MyFoxDC.com

More Twisted Thinking from the Havre Daily “News”



Cover of Darkness

 I was a little dumbfounded when I read last night’s HDN editorial titled Our View: Options for Picking a New Police Chief. It seems this anonymous editorial article author just loves the way our mayor has been searching for a new police chief behind the scenes. You know – searching far and wide all the while keeping the whole process “Top Secret” from the poor dumb people of Havre. They think the mayor’s political opponents shouldn’t be saying anything about mayor Dim offering the chief’s job to an out of state person instead of picking acting Chief Gabe Matosich. It would appear this anonymous editorial was pointed towards our anonymous authored blog post but they just can’t come right out and say the Havre Daily Corrector name out loud for fear of giving us a free plug. Normally the newspapers are all about openness and transparency but apparently in this case their mothering instincts kicked in and here they came a running with a blankie and a ba-ba to sooth their fair-haired boy Dim as they protect him from the big bad people that are upset that he has kept everything wrapped in a cloak of darkness. Interestingly the Havre Daily “News” still didn’t reveal that the job was in fact offered to a former police officer from Arizona even though it is now common knowledge around town. Why are they working with Mayor Dim on this cover-up?

The HDN editorial said;

The mayor's political opponents quickly pounced on him for hiring from out of town. The mayor's opponents say he should have appointed someone from within the police department, most likely Matosich. An insider, they believe, would be more familiar with the department and how it operates. Solomon was duty-bound, they said, to appoint a hometown person.
Balderdash.
The mayor did just what he is supposed to do in accepting applications from within and outside the city, from within and outside Montana.

Balderdash? That’s a mighty big word for youse guys.
Funny thing is that most of the negative comments we hear about our local government entities involve the dirty deeds they do under the cloak of darkness which is exactly what went on here. We have no opinion on “Arizona guy’s” qualifications as we have been told absolutely nothing. Even after the “award winning “ blog journalist at the Corrector broke the story the local Havre Daily “News” and their award winning news journalists still can’t seem to get the real facts into print.

The most hilarious aspect of this sad HDN tale came tonight in the anonymous “Darts and Laurels” column where their award winning journalists give the big-ole dart to the Billings police department for their failure to disclose information about a personnel issue at their department.

So there you have it – the public’s right to know should only come into play if you are not one of the people adored by the local “professional” and “award winning” news people

The Publics Right-to-Know is not so Public After All

The Montana Policy Institute has made repeated requests over the last couple of years to the state Department of Administration to provide them with annual salaries and compensation information for all state government employees in Montana. Department director Janet Kelly has repeatedly made excuses and thrown up road-blocks to block public disclosure of this information. Kelly has given a host of excuses for not providing the citizens of Montana with what should be public information under our Freedom of information laws.

First she said there were privacy concerns. Then when that excuse failed to pass muster she went onto saying that the request would cost the department a burdensome amount of employee time and resources to comply with the information request and her department just plain didn’t have the budget to do it. Carl Graham, President of the Montana Policy Institute then said his group would pay for all costs of compiling the information. Once solutions to all of Kelly’s objections were made her next problem was that the multi-bazillion dollar computer system the state uses just couldn’t compile such reports. After months and months of excuses the Montana Policy Institute filed suit to compel the department to provide the requested information back in August of this year. Carl Graham had this to say in the Billings Gazette back when the suit was filed;

"We want to know what each state employee made, with bonus and OT (overtime) — the W-2 number," the institute's president, Carl Graham, said Thursday. "We started in 2010 and wanted the previous years. Now we want the most up-to-date numbers."

This week the Montana Watchdog reported that an attorney for the State of Montana told District Judge Dorothy McCarter that there are no statutes requiring the department to provide specific employee salary information. More evidence will be submitted to the judge in the next few weeks and McCarter is expected t render a decision in early 2012.

All this stonewalling makes me wonder what our state administration is trying to hide. Why shouldn’t the state taxpayers be allowed to know how much out state pays our public “servants”? I thought it was just a Havre thing but apparently expenditures involving our tax dollars are Top Secret throughout the entire state.

Senator Jon Tester is # 1

Looks like someone has Tester’s number. Sure doesn’t seem like the same guy that ran on big promises 6 years ago. We agree with President Obama


IT IS TIME FOR CHANGE!

HD 33 Representative Kris Hansen begins New Venture

A couple of months back House District 33 Representative Kris Hansen announced that she would be resigning her post as Deputy Hill County Attorney effective November 30th. Hansen at that time said she would begin work with a group of people interested in modernizing education in Montana and would be working on education reform legislation and policy. She also said she would run for re-election in 2012.

Since that time a few of her local political opposition have seen fit to begin to start telling folks she is leaving the area and are spreading untruths about her as they are wringing their hands in glee at the thought that they might regain the HD 33 seat. The fact of the matter is that this is what the political operatives call a “whisper campaign.” It is not a campaign that is ran above-board and honestly but rather a tactic that is used behind the scenes to sling mud in an attempt not to get any on yourselves or accept responsibility for untruths and outright lies.

Wikipedia defines a whisper campaign this way;

A whispering campaign or whisper campaign is a method of persuasion in which damaging rumors or innuendo are spread about the target, while the source of the rumors seeks to avoid being detected while spreading them (for example, a political campaign might distribute anonymous flyers attacking the other candidate). It is generally considered unethical in open societies, particularly in matters of public policy. The speed and anonymity of communication made possible by modern technologies like the Internet has increased public awareness of whisper campaigns and their ability to succeed. This phenomenon has also led to the failure of whisper campaigns, as those seeking to prevent them are able to publicize their existence much more readily than in the past. Whisper campaigns are defended in some circles as an efficient mechanism for underdogs who lack other resources to attack the powerful.

Contrary to what is being passed around by the behind the scenes “operatives” Representative Hansen will begin her consulting venture after the first of the year and will be concentrating on education issues in Montana. She will be staying in Havre and she will be filing for re-election in HD33. Hansen will be concentrating on school reform and other legislative issues full-time. Plans are being laid to contact people up and down the hi-line to start gathering information and ideas about what problems the schools are dealing with and where some changes need to be made. Hansen says she is hoping to work with teachers, parents, administrators, members of the public and MSUN to deal with issues schools are facing.

All we can think to say is that those of us at the Corrector think it is about time we took a new look at what can better our education system in Montana without being locked in to the same old same old that has proven to be a disappointment year after year. Perhaps, just perhaps there is indeed a solution to education funding issues other than just throwing more money at the problem.

If you have some positive, and I stress positive, ideas with regards to what can better Montana schools I am sure Representative Hansen would be glad to hear from you. She has always been very gracious in responding to the Corrector’s inquiries in the past even when we haven't agreed with her. Contact her via e-mail at krishansen33@gmail.com

Best Wishes on your new venture Representative Hansen

Tax Policy Explained for the Academics

Bozeman Building Contractor Leads Effort to “Buy American”

Montana has finally made the national news for something positive.  It seems all the wonderful proposals by both political parties to promote jobs fall short of making any notable difference and job expansions continue to go overseas.  A Bozeman building contractor has done his homework and contends that many jobs could be saved if only we would do something as simple as insisting on American made products.  Listen to the following ABC news report about this man’s efforts.

Free Range Bison in our Future?

I read with interest the one-sided article in yesterday’s Havre Daily “News” reporting that the Governor will not block the relocation of 68 bison to two Montana Indian reservations. The Governor had earlier gone on record saying no Yellowstone bison would be allowed to be moved anyplace in Montana for fear of potential brucellosis exposure. Apparently criticism of the Governor’s stance by tribal leaders did the trick and he is now going to allow them to be given to the Fort Peck and Fort Belknap Indian reservations.

Northern Ag Network ran a story on December 2nd that included a press release from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks that said in part;

Accordingly, management-plan agreements for each tribal site must include commitments to: (1) continue disease testing for five years, (2) properly contain bison, (3) immediately respond to any escapes of bison, and (4) provide Montana with disease-free bison for future conservation efforts. There are no infrastructure costs for FWP to pay associated with the recommended tribal lands.

The management plan sounds great but what will ensure it is being followed? You may recall that the Chinook Opinion-Journal ran a couple of articles last winter dealing with Blaine County rancher's frustration with the Fort Belknap tribe for failing to keep their current bison herd confined to their own range land. Ranchers adjoining tribal land said that the tribe failed to maintain their property line fences and the bison repeatedly were getting out and mingling with their cattle herds. To make matters even worse when the ranchers reported these incidents tribal officials many times didn’t even bother to come out to herd their animals back onto their own land. Are we to believe that they will now somehow miraculously change their ways with the addition of more bison?

The Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission will be holding a two-day meeting on this matter which will begin at 10 AM on Thursday, December 8. Northern Ag Network has published the names and contact information of each of the FWP commissioners if you would like to comment. Also the audio of these meetings will be streamed live over the internet.  See the contact information here.

As a side note I found the letter to the editor published in Monday’s Bozeman Chronicle highly enlightening as to what the ranchers are dealing with when it comes to the bison “free-range” advocates. This letter writer believes that Montana does not belong to cattle or ranchers. The buffalo is native to Montana and should be allowed to wander wherever they please. She believes it is shameful that the FWP is attempting to appease the livestock industry by participating in containment and slaughter.

You just can’t make good stories like this up. Read the letter to the Chronicle yourself here.

The following illustration is the recommended fence to hold bison. Does anyone recall a fence like this around any of the Fort Belknap pastures?

Click to Enlarge

Trouble is in the Making at the Havre Police Department

It appears that our infamous Mayor Dim has taken a few moments out of his busy love-fest with ousted councilman Kaul to stir the pot of ill-feelings over at the police department by finally appointing a new permanent police chief.

Former police Chief Jerry Nystrom tendered his resignation on May 2, 2011 and at that time Mayor Dim appointed Assistant Chief Gabe Matosich to act as interim chief. Gabe has over 23 years experience in law enforcement. He moved to Havre in 1997 and quickly attained the rank of Sergeant and was promoted to Assistant Police Chief in 2008.

Contrary to the popular belief amongst the Havre police force that Gabe would be permanently promoted to Police Chief we have just learned our beloved Mayor has taken it upon himself to offer the job to an out-of-state individual thus kicking Gabe back down to Assistant Police Chief. From what we can learn this came as a shock not only to the local police force but also to the city council members who have apparently been kept in the dark thru this whole sham.

What are you thinking Mr. Mayor? Hasn’t there been enough discontentment in our local force already? Leave it to a former sheriff to think he is the wisest of the wise when it comes to law enforcement issues but he should know above all others that this little behind the scenes maneuver will cause problems within our force.

We will bring you further details as we hear them.

Coming for You Soon - The Light Bulb Police

Only another month left of this year and we will be facing the so called light bulb ban which is set to take place in 2012. A bill requiring light bulbs to be more efficient was passed with bipartisan support back in 2007 and was signed into law by President George Bush. Because of these higher standards it became obvious that traditional light bulbs would have to be replaced by more efficient incandescent bulbs.

In July Republicans tried to rally the troops to stop this law from going into effect but fell short of the mark. In my opinion it is again too little too late. Least they forget this ban went into effect under George Bush in the first place. If these new bulbs were so great why haven’t the consumers fallen in line under the free market to make them obsolete? The truth of the matter is that they cost 5 times as much and produce poorer light.

Some say that the new efficiency standards will save enough energy to warrant the higher cost of the new bulbs but my experience with these bulbs hasn’t shown them to be that reliable and so far they have cost me much more than just paying to use the old style.

It appears to me to be just another example of our over-reaching government meddling in our freedoms. Just for once I would like to feel like I held enough common sense to decide for myself if something like using crazy curly light bulbs made sense for me without big brother looking over my shoulder.

Shame on both parties for this mess.