Monica Lindeen and the Gold Diggers Part Deaux

Here she goes again.

The Commissioner of Securities and Insurance is showing a matinee of Gold Diggers: Investment Fraud in the Treasure State again in Havre tomorrow at 12:00 Noon at the Duck Inn, you can RSVP by calling 1-800-332-6148. A free all you can eat buffet luncheon is provided according to a personal phone call from Monica Lindeen's office.

If you recall people were turned away from the free prime rib dinner previously held at the Elks Club because of overwhelming response to the Lindeen campaign /slash/ investment fraud tour. Of course this free chow-down comes at absolutely no cost to the tax-payer because as I was told when I complained before - this treasure hoard of cash financing this fiasco comes from fines levied against those that have cheated investors in the past. So if you have been robbed and never saw a dime of restitution at least come down and gobble up a ten-dollar lunch compliments of Securities and Insurance Commissioner.

Just for everyone’s information Miss Monica is being challenged for her office by a guy named Derek Skees from Kalispell. Check out his website here and consider casting a vote for an end to this type of nonsense.

Smacking Congressman Rehberg's Wife

The Tester – Rehberg race for the Senate will be over and done with in less than 6 months and we have been seeing an increase in the old “who done it” finger pointing from both sides. Both the Democrat and Republican parties have held their respective conventions in the last two weeks and the media has been full of stories about the Senate race which has been polling at approximately 50% in favor of each candidate. Last Saturday Rehberg and Tester met in Bozeman for a debate hosted by the Newspaper Association that was attended by about 250 people. Nearly every newspaper and television station in Montana has posted some sort of story like this one on KRTV about the debate but what I have failed to see widely publicized was the altercations and general misbehaviors of the audience members.

Oddly an out of state news source called The Daily Caller was one of the first to publish a comprehensive story about the behind the scenes actions of the debate audience. I seems one Democrat enviro-nut became so agitated that she actually hauled off and smacked Congressman Rehberg’s wife with a Tester for Senate campaign sign. The Daily Caller also reported that this person and a couple of accomplices heckled Rehberg during the debate. Why is it that you can never attend a public forum without a couple of these dim-wits disrupting the process for everyone?

In addition, The Daily Caller reported that Rachel Vaughn, another local Bozeman democrat, had also heckled Rehberg during the debate and then after the debate slapped the wrist of Watchdog reporter Dustin Hurst in an attempt to make him drop his recording device to the ground. Hurst in turn has posted the audio version of his interview which turned into assault on the watchdog.org website. Hurst was interviewing her about her campaign sign she had posted on her car that read “Drunks for Rehberg.” Vaughn went on to tell the Watchdog reporter that she was upset that Rehberg drove his boat into the rocks at Canyon Ferry Lake seriously injuring one of his aides. Funny thing about her “facts” was that I seem to remember that Rehberg was a passenger in the boat rather than the driver and that the accident took place over in the Flathead. I guess real facts aren’t really all that important when you are a political operative and to tell the truth as I listened to the Watchdog audio this woman sounded rather drunk herself.

So much for civil discourse ----- Let the games begin.

If you missed the debate the  audio of the Rehberg-Tester debate can be heard online at the Bozeman Chronicle here

Citizen Watchdog Event

The Corrector recieved the following press release that may be of interest to our readers.  Everybody welcome

HELENA – The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, along with Montana Watchdog, invites all bloggers and the general public to a “citizen watchdog” event July 14 that focuses on online news and open government.

The Franklin Center will provide a full day of in-depth training to equip bloggers and citizens with the tools and skills to become a more effective activist and citizen watchdog. Participants will learn how to use investigative reporting skills, how to impact the state and local government budgeting process, and how to advance your message through social media.

The nonpartisan event is an opportunity for discussion and mingling among bloggers and citizens from throughout the state.  There will be an opportunity to ask questions.  Lunch is included in the $10 registration fee. Seating is limited and advance registration is required.

The event runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Red Lion Colonial Hotel, 2301 Colonial Drive in Helena.

To register, go to: http://citizenwatchdoghelena.eventbrite.com/

If you have questions, contact Watchdog editor Phil Drake at phil@montanawatchdog.org  or (406) 442-4561.

Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity promotes the education of the public about waste, corruption, incompetence, fraud and taxpayer abuse by public officials at all levels of government.

Franklin Center identifies, trains, and supports citizens and investigative journalists working to detect and expose corruption and incompetence in government at the state and local levels.

For more information on the Franklin Center, visit http://www.franklincenterhq.org/
Phil Drake
E-mail me at phil@montanawatchdog.org
Check out our Web site at: http://www.montanawatchdog.org/

North Dakotan Jokes Now Obsolete In Montana

The following excerpt From the Montana Contractors Association newsletter was forwarded to the Corrector by one of our Montana Legislators.  We think Mr. Hegreberg hits the nail on the head.  Why are we standing by and allowing this to happen while jobs vanish?

North Dakota must think we're nuts
By Cary Hegreberg, Executive Director, Montana Contractors' Association
An excerpt from the May, 2012 Newsletter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
North Dakotans must consider us Montanans to be a pretty humorous and goofy bunch of folks. They listen to us lament with envy the economic prosperity our neighbor to the east is enjoying as a result of the Bakken oil boom. Business leaders, elected officials and everyday Montanans routinely reflect out loud how "lucky" North Dakota is to have all that oil wealth.

Ironically, from the turn of the last century to the late 1990s, North Dakotans were envious of Montana's vast forest lands and the magnificent, fully integrated wood products industry that flourished here. We had thousands of people working in sawmills, plywood and particle board manufacturing plants, and working as loggers, or truckers, not to mention the myriad of related businesses that sprung up to serve the needs of the wood products industry and its workers.

North Dakotans watched dumbfounded as dozens of Montana sawmills and manufacturing plants closed, leaving behind thousands of unemployed workers and devastated communities, all victims of an insatiable environmental movement. Like many Americans, North Dakotans now drive through Montana witnessing mile after mile of dead, standing trees, wondering how we Montanans let this happen.

Similarly, North Dakota watched us decide at the ballot box to ignore the rich gold deposits known to exist in various locations throughout Montana. North Dakotans must have wondered why Montanans couldn't come up with a compromise to capture the economic opportunity of this gold resource while protecting the environment at the same time. At $1600-$1800 per ounce, imagine the revenues Montana could be enjoying today.

North Dakotans, with their relatively meager deposits of low-value, high-sulfur lignite coal, have undoubtedly wondered for decades why the state with the largest deposits of high value, low-sulfur coal in the U.S., allowed Wyoming to dominate coal markets, dwarfing Montana's production levels. We can only speculate on how North Dakota would have dealt with the world class coal reserves Montana has.

North Dakota was not blessed with millions of acres of forest land. North Dakota does not have huge deposits of gold tucked away in the hills. North Dakota does not have hundreds of millions of tons of coal that is in high demand throughout the world. They do have oil, however, and they must find it amazingly ludicrous to hear us Montanans expressing envy at their good fortune.

To be sure, environmental activists are still hammering away at what's left of Montana's timber industry. They are opposing any expansion or extension of the scant few gold mines here that escaped the regulatory pummeling. Nary a day goes by that some rag tag group is rallying to oppose coal trains, alleging all manner of atrocities in order to set the stage for a wholesale attack on coal companies planning to expand production in Montana.

And, it is a given that the promising new opportunities for oil and natural gas development in Montana will be met with the same onslaught of opposition our other resource industries have largely succumbed to.

Will we screw up our oil opportunity too? Will our North Dakota neighbors build new schools, new highways and bridges, and reinvigorate their communities as they watch us Montanans squander yet another chance to convert a natural resource into economic prosperity?

The MCA led the effort in sponsoring the highly successful Montana Energy 2012 conference and tradeshow in Billings Apr. 3-4 as our way to push Montana into a new era of optimism for the future. We don't need to be envious of North Dakota-we need to emulate their attitude to capitalize on resources and create opportunities for our people.

The huge turnout, fascinating presentations, and positive reviews of the energy conference prove that Montana is ready to embrace energy development as The Next Big Thing to reignite our economy. Thanks to a visionary Board of Directors, a supportive membership, and a dedicated staff of professionals, the Montana Contractors' Association stands ready to help lead the way. 

OBAMA: Give Me One More Chance

The Quote of the Decade: 
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America 's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America 's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

Graduation speaker turned away for fear he may be “too conservative”

The Hollywood Reporter says a Montana High School principal told Gerald Molen that he could not deliver his commencement speech to the graduating class in Ronan Montana even though he was the invited speaker because he is “a right-wing conservative.” Molen, who lives in Montana, is well known for winning a best picture Oscar for co-producing Schindler’s List with Steven Spielberg and has produced other Hollywood blockbusters like the Jurassic Park films. Molen has spoken at dozens of schools and never accepts a fee.

In a letter written to the Daily Interlake Molen said;

Recently I was invited to speak to the Ronan High School seniors. After three weeks of preparation, research and re-write after re-write, I arrived at the appointed hour only to be told my talk had been canceled. The reason: “some” callers had informed the principal that they were concerned about the scheduled speaker being too right-wing or having an opinion that might be counter to theirs or some other lame excuse.

When I was informed of the decision, I asked to speak to the principal and he agreed to meet with me. He apologized for the inconvenience of being canceled and said the decision to cancel was his alone. He was concerned about my presentation. No, he didn’t ask me of the content. No, he didn’t ask to read the speech for any clarification as to content. No, he would not tell me who the complaining party or parties were, nor would he give me any further explanation. Just that there would be no presentation by me that day.

I have to agree with the blog writers at 2 Helena Handbasket who suggest that it is time we get back to education over indoctrination and look for a new direction for our schools. Let’s make some changes in the status quo in our education system by getting behind a new thought process by supporting Sandy Welch for Public Instruction.

Thanks to 2 Helena Handbasket for pointing out this story and be sure and read the whole story by clicking on the links in red.

On the home front --  the word around town is that our local school is asking the school board to approve the purchase of approximately $250,000 dollars worth of new IPads for the upcoming school year. We have been told that this money is from budget savings and unused funds this past year. That seems rather odd considering that back in May of 2011 The Corrector reported that school officials were asking for additional mill levy funding to “keep our schools afloat.” The trustees ran a mill levy of $73,000 to address anticipated shortfalls and an additional mill levy of $370,000 for the building reserve. Both requests were given the green light just over a year ago under the threat of having to cut services and lay off teachers and yet now they seem to miraculously have an ending balance adequate enough to squander over a quarter-million dollars. Ever heard of refunding the over collected tax amounts back to the taxpayers?

I think we need a new direction from the top down. We need Sandy Welch to win the race for the office of Public Instruction for starters.

Canadian Health Care Utopia Questioned

I had to laugh when I read the article headlined “Benefis offers deep discounts to Canadians” in this morning’s paper. The jest of the article was about a Canadian man that needed surgery on his shoulder and was told by the Canadian doctors that he would have to wait 6-8 months for his surgery because of back-logs. Apparently socialized medicine in Canada isn’t all it was cracked up to be by all of the Obama Care Fan Club when they were shoving Obama Care down our throats.

Senator Max Baucus (the guy who wrote the bill yet didn’t read it) and Senator Jon (Never Tells the Truth) Tester both told us our plan was modeled after all the fine aspects of the Canadian plan and we would be in a state of utopia once the system is fully implemented in the United States.

Either they were sadly mistaken or we were told another out and out lie again. So what else is new? Time for a change in both the Senate and the White House.

EPA Defends Clandestine Spy Plane Operations on Cattle Ranches

New American Magazine reports that the EPA is adamantly defending the use of spy drones flying over farms in Iowa and Nebraska to check-up on farmers to make sure they aren’t abusing any of the thousands of Environmental Protection rules. When the Nebraska congressional delegation expressed their concerns about this invasion of privacy to the EPA administrator Lisa Jackson they were told that everything was within the law and they were being used simply because the drones are a cost effective way of monitoring potential environmental violators.

Apparently the EPA has been photographing farm operations and looking for potential violations and who knows what other information they have been collecting. You just never know when a cow might decide to break the law and relieve herself in the creek or heaven forbid a farmer would fire up the old chisel plow on a windy day and violate the new EPA dust rules. We have to be on top of our game to make sure these farm operators that are accustomed to living out in the boonies out of sight of government bureaucrats aren’t trying to pull any fast ones on us.

In addition when they start flying over Montana farms perhaps they can also monitor the Milk River and Fresno for potential terrorists. Maybe they could even be so lucky as to snap a few photos of that radical bunch of fishermen below the dam at Fresno illegally standing on their step ladders and trying to fish over the security fence into the forbidden spillway pool.

In addition the New American article stated that congress has already approved the deployment of around 30,000 drones in the U.S. by the year 2020. Think about this – 30,000 drones divided by 48 mainland states equals 625 spy planes per state. Considering we have 56 counties in Montana that number would suggest we might have up to a dozen of these babies right here in Hill County protecting us from the wrong doings of the farmers growing our food or the ungrateful anglers that want to get that last fish out of Fresno before they escape down the Milk River.

What's next?  Jackboots for everyone?


H/T to the Flint Report where I first noticed this alarming story.

Fresno Dam Story Goes Nationwide



Fresno Spillway
Outdoor Life Photo

 The Great Falls Tribune ran a story on Sunday about the restricted fishing access below Fresno Reservoir. Fresno is a popular local fishery about 10 miles west of Havre but access to anglers below the dam has been severely restricted since the 9-11-2001 terrorist attacks. The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) erected a chain link fence blocking access below the dam in 2002 because of concerns that terrorists just might travel to Havre Montana and could raise havoc with our water supply. While it is great that bureaucrats are concerned with our safety out here in these remote regions their action ruined one of the local’s favorite fishing holes. A local fisherman and retired fisheries biologist, Kent Gilge, has been leading the charge to restore at least partial access to this popular fishing hole.

Gilge says that

“Several hundred local and in-state fishermen have written letters and emails to the BOR and our congressmen to make a small change in a downstream closure boundary so we can fish the basin below the dam. The effort spans almost a year. The BOR has sent out form letters but has not responded to requests for information nor will they hold a public meeting as requested. Despite letters to the BOR from our congressmen, we are being ignored. A perfect example of the waste of time, money and personal freedom by our government.”

According to Gilge this story was given to the Havre Daily “News” over a month ago but they just haven’t found the time to get an article out in our local paper. In the meantime the story has gone national with an excellent article in OutDoorLife.com called “How Terrorism Ruined a Fishing Hole.”


Current and proposed access boundaries

(click to enlarge photo)

 Gilge, who says he is just the mouthpiece for several hundred irate local fishermen, recently again asked that the BOR open up a dialogue with local fishermen to at least consider moving the existing boundary back to allow access to the spillway pool. The Homeland security people have also been contacted and they claim that this is simply a BOR directive and they have no control over where the boundary fence restricting access was erected.

Senators Baucus, Tester and Congressman Rehberg have weighed in on this controversy but it appears the BOR have their heels dug in. We have attached the most recent letter from the Bureau of Reclamation to Mr. Gilge and also a picture submitted to the Corrector by Gilge showing the current boundary and the new boundary requested by the local fishermen. It certainly doesn’t seem to be any radical adjustment that would cause national security concerns. I would venture to guess that it is just another in the long list of lost freedoms we are enduring by a government run amuck.

FEEDBACK: We Need Reader Feedback

We need some reader feedback.

As you have noticed we have been lax in getting mew posts online. We have had complaints about the new format being slow to load and other issues so we have been devoting some time trying to figure out how to correct these problems and are looking at a new format that will be faster and easier on our readers. We have made some recent changes to try and correct some of these problems and would like to hear back from you so we can tell if our readers have seen any improvement. The whole Google Blogger is making changes that don’t seem to be for the better in our opinion but we will have to deal with them if we want to stay on this venue. We just got notice that additional “upgrades” on Google will be added in August also.

Please let us know if you are having any issues with our present format.

Rep. Mike Bost goes Nuclear

This State Representative loses his cool and makes a heck of a scene on the Illinois house floor a couple of days ago.  It seems that Representative Mike Bost is tired of the House Speaker forcing votes on bills no one has had a chance to even read.  While his antics are a bit over the top the first thing that came to mind was that if our own Senators Baucus and Tester would have insisted that all bills be read before the vote we wouldn’t have had Obama Care shoved down our throats.  Thanks again Jon for being the last vote needed to pass that job killing health care bill.

xx