Swipe fees and "No Earmarks Ever" Tester

Poor old “No Earmarks Ever” Tester is really getting some bad press because of his stance on the “swipe” fees. While Tester is still protecting the financial interests of his Mega-Bank friends and he was happy to accept their substantial donations to his campaign he is now getting knocked about as a “turn-coat” amongst Montana consumers.

As Tester’s bill to overcharge consumers and protect the big bank interests move forward I find it interesting that his bestest buddy Harry Reid has now also bailed on poor Jon Boy. Isn’t Harry the guy that Tester repeatedly went to Nevada to campaign for?

You just never really know who your friends really are do you Jon?

Read a great story on the Tester / swipe fee dilemma over at the Flint Report here

Havre Passes Cell Phone Ban

Sad News from the Brown Shirt League down at Havre’s City Hall.


Our wonderful leaders approved the cell phone ban last night on a 5-3 vote. This new ordinance is to take effect on October 1st and then the police will be pulling you over and ticketing your criminal hide if they even spot you making like you were talking on the cell phone and driving. The best part of this new cell phone ordinance is that it EXEMPTS City Police, Firemen and certain other city employee’s. I guess they are cell phone safety trained and just plain smarter than the rest of us. Considering that the City taxpayers are already paying for a cell phone for each department head I wonder if the City will now be saving us a few bucks and taking those unsafe phones away from those employees.

To give credit where credit is due - Council people Janet Tretheway, Gerry Veis and Andrew Brekke voted No to this absurd ordinance. Kudos to those three for having actually put some thought into the Pandora’s Box this little snafu will be opening up. Also don’t forget former Havre Daily News publisher Val Murri who ceaselessly hounded the council until this was passed. Funny thing is he doesn’t seem to think that driving while holding his little poodle on his lap is at all dangerous – just cell phone use.

Deadline for Filing for a position on City Council is June 30th with 4 positions currently up for grabs

City Council Holds Hearing to Ban Cell Phones Tonight

Banning cell phone use while driving is on our brown shirt socialist governments “we can save everybody” City Council’s agenda tonight at 7 pm.    If you have an opinion about making yet another “crime” a primary offence while driving show up to voice your opinion.  More details here

Congressman On Recent Flight: TSA Patted Down Child, Little Old Lady; Ignored Man In Arab Garb

Congressman On Recent Flight: TSA Patted Down Child, Little Old Lady; Ignored Man In Arab Garb

Now this takes the cake.  Political "correctness" at it's finest

Wise use of your Tax Dollars by the National Science Foundation

Senator Tom Coburn just released a report on the National Science Foundation (NFS). The president’s budget proposes raising funding for the NSF by over a billion dollars. What do they do? This excerpt is from Colburn’s report

We are all concerned about America falling behind the rest of the world in math and science. As a result, numerous departments and agencies throughout the federal government spend tens of billions of dollars every year to support these fields. At least 15 federal departments, 72 sub-agencies, and 12 independent agencies currently fund research and development. With a $6.9 billion annual budget, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is our nation’s premier broad-based scientific research agency. NSF is the major source of federal backing in mathematics and computer sciences and spends billions more in important fields such as engineering, biology, physics, and technology.

This all sounds great and I think everyone agrees that we seem to lagging behind in developing new ideas but what do they really spend this money on? According to this report by Senator Colburn the “studies” financed with your tax dollars include such worthy topics as;
• A $315,000 study to determine if playing Farmville on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships
• Over one million dollars spent to analyze how quickly parents respond to changes in trendy baby names
• Expended $1.5 million to create a robot that can fold clothes
• Wasted over $581,000 to study whether online dating sites are racist
• Should you buy sporting tickets in advance or wait until the last minute? A $259,216 grant analyzes this dilemma for you
• Here is my personal favorite. The NFS spent $50,000 of your tax money composing the following rap lyrics. This “song” gets me that warm and fuzzy feeling.

The lyrics printed in full below

Working in the lab is a pretty sweet gig / The people are smart and the toys are really big / But we can't be chill when our homies are ill / So we write a new proposal to create another pill / If you have malaria we wanna take care o' ya / And if we succeed then no one has to bury ya / And so we beg for grants, even though it's so demeaning / 'Cause you need a good stash for a high-throughput screening

Chorus: We need money for drugs / We ain't no thugs / But it takes more funds / To kill more bugs (parasites yo!) We start with expression of recombinant protein / A soluble product is a reason for emoting / We quantify its function and look for inhibitors / And find the delimiters of active-site perimeter When the SAR is leaving us baffled / We call in the chemists to create a new scaffold / It's not like making meth—it's really hard to do it / But we've got to break through to a brand-new therapeutic Chorus (repeat and fade)

I can’t take anymore. Read the full report yourself here
H/T to America's number 1 taxpayer watchdog The Swine Line

Flooding Everywhere all over the State – Except in the High Land Park School Play Ground

Vast amounts of flooding are occurring all over the state. Lewistown and Roundup seem to be one of the hardest hit areas and the KRTV website has tons of reader photos of the magnitude of this flooding from all over the state. Take a look here Before you head out this weekend be sure and check the road report at the Montana Department of Transportation Safe Travel Website to view up to date road closures and travel information.

Interestingly Havre has had a ton of rain this week and the following pictures were taken of the Highland Park School Play ground a little after lunch today during the rain. These pictures are of the area our school officials have just decided to spend this year’s Mill Levy Bonus installing an interior playground drainage system to alleviate flooding and drainage problems. Look close – you can see a couple of buckets of water standing in one of these photos. This water will be drained via a new drainage system as reported in the official Havre Daily “News” paper for a trifling $141,000.

I am no expert but wouldn’t a few buckfulls of dirt fill the low spot this water is standing in? That’s how I cured the low-spot problem in my yard but then again I don’t have the luxury or using other people’s money to cure my problems.



EUREKA !  There it is!  There it is!   The $141,000 “Problem” Area



School Shenanigans

The following post was put together by our sources in the school system and is published just as we received it. The Corrector has agreed to keep them anonymous so our readers can get a little insight into how the “Top-Secret” tax-funded entity we know as our school system operates. Everyone reading this blog has at least one aquaintance working in the school system who you can call to verify this information.

Just one question comes to mind for our school administrators – What would be so hard about dispelling some budget and school decisions on your school website so all tax payers know what is going on?

Information as recieved by the Corrector

Last week, all staff of the High School was ordered to a last minute meeting where Andy Carlson announced that Dennis Murphy would be the interim principal at the High School for the next school. Murphy would also be retaining his job as activities director. Carlson would take absolutely no questions about the decision and the meeting lasted a whole of 5 minutes or less. Sources say that there have been no qualified people applying for the job. Hmm, strange or is it that prospective principals are doing a little digging and finding out things about our school district that are turning them away from applying here.

Apparently Murphy is so well thought of that numerous teachers are scrambling to find jobs elsewhere, with the present count of 2 definitely leaving for greener pastures with 1 more a high probable. The next couple of months could be interesting if the ones that are thinking of leaving actually do.

3 highly thought of people were told last week at the high school that their jobs were be eliminated, no reason why this was happening was given. One of the people in question sent an email to every school board member out lining the great job and professionalism of one of the other people and got call on the carpet by the administration for going over their heads to the school board. Apparently informing the school board of things administration is doing against the secrecy policy and will be dealt with harshly.

In another questionable move by Carlson, one that defies logic, all the IT techs are going to be based at Robins and will have to travel back and forth to the school buildings. Paying up more for travel in these times of high gas prices ought to be well worth the extra time need to get to the problem and fix it.

Of course, no questions were allowed on this decision by any of the principals or teachers either.

With 2 principals retiring and word on the school grapevine that 2 other principals are not being renewed, looks like the school district has only 1 principal out of 5 still in service.

Now that the mill levy is out of the way with overwhelming support from the community, it has been decided at the highest levels to replace every ink jet printer (regardless of how old it is, 1 year or 6) in the district and place a laser printer on every teachers, para, principal, secretaries, para and janitors desk.

Word out of the high school is that at least they are going to go with more centralized printing and accept a little inconvience to save some taxpayer dollars. Kudos to Jerry Vandersloot and the High School teachers for that move.

The queen of secrecy has finally retired from Robins, Zella Witter, she will not be missed. With her gone, maybe, just maybe there will be a little more openness out of the administration, but probably not, Carlson trained under her and if the appointing of Murphy is any indication, secrecy reigns supreme still.

She is rumored to be the reason behind the ouster of Dave Mahon, she and him didn't see eye to eye on secrecy and the things she wanted done.

It has been decided to install a wireless system at the High School, for $7000, that will benefit the administrators only, since teachers and students will not have access to it.

If you ask any teacher or principal what the reason they are where they are, they will say "We are here for the students" and they will mean it.

If you ask any of the administration the same question, they will basically give the same answer, but they would be lying, otherwise the whole secrecy thing would not be what it is over at Robins.

It’s too bad it has to be that way, maybe someone should make a sign to hang over the door at Robins stating the students are their reason for having a job. Maybe the school board should actually get more involved and not just listen to only the reports that the crew at Robins wants them to see.

Hope for the future

More of our Foreign Military Aid Blown to Bits

We give millions in support to the Pakistani people and what did they do to help in our search for Osama bin Laden? That’s right – nothing or even worse they actually aided him while taking our money. Yesterday Pakistani Islamist terrorists attacked a naval base with what was termed “a large scale” attack although there were only 15 actual fighters in the raid. What is interesting is that they threw the whole operation into disarray and managed to use their rocket launchers to destroy at least two Lockheed aircraft estimated to be worth 36 million each and it is reported that the city of Karachi, home to 18 million people, was plunged into a panic.

All this by 15 terrorist commandos? This is yet another story of the U.S. funding of foreign military being a waste of our tax dollars. Why did we give the very people that had been hiding bin Laden 36 million dollar aircraft in the first place?

Read the whole story over at the Times

New Medical Marijuana Law “adjusted” by DPHS

On April 29th Governor Schweitzer said he was going to allow HB 423 to become law without receiving the mark of his Veto brand although he wasn’t comfortable enough with the bill to actually sign it with his seal of approval. HB 423 vastly restricted the Medical Marijuana operations in Montana by limiting the amount of plants to 4 per patient and it took the profit out of the grower’s operations. In short – July 1st they are out of business.

Not surprisingly DPHS officials has taken it upon themselves to decide that the law is not feasible so they will continue to issue medical marijuana cards even though the law went into effect on May 14th.  Ray Kemp who is in charge of the card issuing process said they will continue to issue new cards until June 20th.

This is not surprising as we have many tax funded state employees that basically do as they damn please regardless of what the intention of the law are. I am not speaking for or against the recent changes to the MM law in this post but I find it disheartening that we have an alleged “citizen” ran government that allows our tax-funded bureaucratic wonders to do as they damn please with no consequences.  MM law is not the only regulation we have found state department heads “adjusting” to their way of thinking once it hits the implementation stage.


For the complete story check the following links
HB423
Bozeman Chronicle
Independent Record

It’s A Miracle



We are Broke            Can You Help?



 From Looming Budget Cuts to Operating in the Black


After listening to all the gloom and doom from the education folk this past session about having their funding cut imagine my surprise when I read this article in the Great Falls Tribune about building a new daycare facility at MSU-Great Falls. I am still scratching my head over how they went from “impending massive layoffs” to a position of being able to spend over a million dollars just a month or so later. I would love to take a business course from the genius that pulled off this financial miracle.

How did this miracle occur you ask? Well clear back in the 2009 legislative session the legislature appropriated money to construct a simulated hospital in the basement of the college. The people requesting the appropriation convinced the legislature they needed a million dollars and now it seems that the final cost of the project was only a mere $500,000 so they have all this additional money they can use towards a childcare facility. The College of Great Falls say they have a budget of $1.1 million to pay for this daycare center but will still be short $250,000 for furnishings.

It sure seems that people in the education systems around the state feign poverty and cry of budget cuts yet can always find ready cash for more and more projects.

What is wrong with this picture?