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Norman Bernstein Last month, after the fire and explosion in West, Texas, and shortly after one of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's business recruiting trips to California, to lure companies to relocate in "business friendly" Texas, a cartoon appeared in the Sacramento Bee, showing the governor making one of his pitches for businesses to come to Texas where there are "Low Taxes" and "Low Regulations" and where "Business is booming in Texas!" The next panel of the cartoon shows the blast at West Fertilizer, exclaiming a large "BOOM!"...
Little Chazlie Cripps, 4 1/2, and Tristan Riggle, 6, gave me a lot of hope Monday morning. They were standing on the sidewalk awaiting the start of the annual Memorial Day services at the Hill County Courthouse. John Kelleher Tristan was in his little car, and Chazlie was passing out poppies to the crowd, a fundraising event to help area veterans. Chazlie's grandma, Kim Cripps, and Tristan's grandpa, Keith Doll, were talking about how they can explain Memorial Day to kids that young. It's not easy to talk about death to...
When the Public Service Commission first proposed the repeal of its rule which mandates the disclosure of utility executives' salaries, commissioners proposing the repeal argued that executives have a constitutional right to privacy and that the PSC has no business being a clearinghouse for information like this. I disagree with those points, and voted against the repeal of a good, pro-consumer rule at the PSC. Travis Kavulla It is obvious that a vast majority of Montanans...
In 2015, Montana will say welcome home to one of our state's greatest public servants, United States Sen. Max Baucus. Max, an avid runner, announced this week that he will be sitting out the 2014 senate race and instead retire after 36 years in the Senate. As the longest-serving Senator in Montana history, Max's decision to sit out stunned everyone from Washington pundits to Main Street Montanans. It was even a surprise to those of us who have worked for him for years. In his announcement, Max cautioned that he's not...
Our Hill County Courthouse is a beautiful historic building worthy of preservation and deserves to be an active part of Hill County and Havre's future. I commend the Hill County Commissioners on their quest to preserve and maintain our courthouse and applaud their efforts seeking CTEP funding to keep our courthouse safe and beautiful. This is not to impugn the efforts of the Softball Association. Both projects are worthy of funding and assets to the community. Our Hill County Courthouse is the most beautiful piece of architec...
Everything is relative. That's what I always say. Sure it's no Albert Einstein's theory of relativity that my "Dictionary of Theories" explains as: "In non-inertial (accelerated) systems, certain fictitious forces make their appearance while also having a connection with the forces due to gravity, where the acceleration produced is independent of the mass." (I swear I didn't make that up.) Pam Burke But, really who all is smart enough to imagine something like that. I'm no...
The IRS tempest in a teapot should not be about how the IRS investigates political organizations that file for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Rather, it should be about why we have thousands, or, for that matter, any, tax-exempt political non-profits in the first place. This tax-exempt status, especially the 501(c)4 organizations, rather than the usual 501(c)3 nonprofits, is rightly subjected to more than the usual IRS scrutiny because these are the organizations most likely to misuse their status. They are not required to make...
Some members of Congress in Washington, D.C., have begun suggesting that coal companies are not paying the full amount of taxes they owe to the federal government; all in the name of helping shore up revenues for the struggling federal budget, of course. Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead and former Gov. Brian Schweitzer have disputed the accusations, and this appears to be more a part of the concerted campaign aimed at harming the coal industry than anything else. Congress has one simple solution if they are serious about increasing...
The focus of Havre Daily News is local news. We are a complete newspaper, but our emphasis — and our heart — is in Havre, the Hi-Line and north-central Montana. We love covering and being in the middle of the news developments, the sports stories, the interesting features and the commentary of our area. John Kelleher And we think that's what our readers are interested in. Our readers have a host of way of getting national and world news and ESPN and numerous other sources to keep track of the sports world. But, if we may be...
Volunteer — a person who is willing to undertake a service. This is a short definition for a word that profoundly affects an individual. I believe that volunteerism is actually a distinctive part of our being. Debbie Vandeberg Volunteering demonstrates who we are. Volunteering gives you an opportunity to change lives, including your own. If you'd like to support a cause but can't afford to donate money, you can donate your time instead. So how do you go about it? Find what's right for you. With volunteering you get to pick w...
Frequently, any legislative session is compared to a chess match. There are a huge number of moving parts. There are numerous players, with skill levels ranging from master to no skills at all. The challenge isn't so much whether one party or the other can secure checkmate against the other, but that the elusive goal of finishing our business within the allotted 90 days, balancing the budget and making sure that the services provided by government are done with value to the taxpayers who foot the bills. Sen. Greg Jergeson It...
We are now a few weeks into the Major League Baseball season, with the same, predictable steroid-laden lack of baseball, which is supposed to be a team sport, but has become a race for individual statistics, above all else. With so much money at stake, the game, itself, takes a back seat to the marketing of new records and new "superstars," and new products, designed to take more money out of your pockets and put it into the pockets of the billionaire owners and the millionaire players. The club owners were finally forced,...
Havre and Hill County are celebrating Historic Preservation Month, an especially meaningful commemoration because the Hi-Line is so rich in history. Havre and Hill County are relatively new on the scene. Most of the country was pretty well settled when Havre became a reality. But we have a rich and intriguing history. In the early days, it was a pretty wild town, and Havre Beneath the Streets tells the story of those crazy days. One of the nation's largest forts was located just south of town, and its remnants remain. Fort...
One of the most serious threats facing Montana's seniors and veterans is an acronym you've probably heard recently: Chained CPI. It's a policy you're going to be hearing a lot more of as the budget debate continues to heat up in Washington. Mary Williams In his most recent budget, President Barack Obama proposed changing the formula used for determining annual cost-of-living adjustments, called COLAs, that seniors, veterans and those with disabilities receive in benefits, including Social Security, federal and military...
I have to laugh every time scientists come up with another study about the intellect and emotions of animals. "Pet dogs show signs of empathy when owners are sad," they say. Shocker. And "Animals show signs of deductive reasoning." Y'think? I never would've figured out why my horse was pawing at the empty water trough while staring at my house, without that study. Pam Burke But nothing makes me laugh more than scientific studies which conclude that men don't understand women....
Norman Bernstein The Havre-Hill County Library has been a focus of social life in the city and county for the more than 30 years that Bonnie Williamson was the library director. She made the library the weekly center for dozens of public service and assistance programs and year-round free arts, humanities and current events programs. Children's programs brought dozens of young people into the library every week to enjoy the interactive story-telling, music, dance, poetry, and writing events. It was a vibrant and dynamic...
If talk is cheap, political talk is even cheaper. We can thank our governor for reminding us of this, when he vetoed two bills, unanimously endorsed by the PSC, that would have provided consumers with well-deserved protection against rising energy costs. Steve Bullock won the election by convincing enough people that his brand of Big Government would somehow help working folks and people on fixed incomes. But the game is over, the crowd went home, and the scoreboard reads: Radical Environmentalists: 2. Working Stiffs: 0....
On April 24, at 9 a.m., in a crowded suburb of the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka, the eight-story Rana Plaza building, completed in 2010, collapsed, killing more than 800 workers trapped in the rubble, with more still missing. In 2007, the local mayor had illegally issued a building permit for a five-story building. The owner, Muhammed Sohel Rana, a wealthy member of the ruling national Awami Party, had added another three stories, without adequate foundation, and without any permit. According to the building's architects,...
Looking east from Montana toward Washington, D.C., the view can be grim at times. Congress and the president are too often bogged down in rancorous bickering while solutions to our nation's most pressing challenges take a back seat to politics. But when it comes to protecting public safety, the 2013 legislative session showed we do things better here in Montana. When I took office as your attorney general in January. I supported and introduced legislation addressing issues such as child abuse prevention, repeat DUI...
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was buried last week at a small Muslim cemetery in rural Virginia, far away from the massive chaos he created while detonating bombs that disrupted the Boston marathon, killing and dismembering many people. During the search for him, a police officer was killed and a city was kept in terror. Tsarnaev is the face of evil, and it's easy to understand why people in the Boston area were reluctant to see him buried in their area. Still, I'm glad they found a place for him to rest in peace — the kind of peace t...
One thing you have to learn when you live in the country with pets, livestock and all manner of wild critters doing their call-of-nature things, you have to harden your heart to handle this life's realities. My husband, John, grew up on a farm and ranch operation so he knows this well, yet somehow he's managed to preserve this big, soft-hearted, squishy, I-don't-wanna-be-mean center where his toughened-up heart is supposed to be. Pam Burke Of course, you know who has to be...
There are several factors that make Beaver Creek Park a unique and special place. Ecological diversity The Bear Paw Mountains are one of the island mountain ranges of Montana. Each of our sister island mountain ranges have their own character. The Bear Paws were thrust up by volcanic activity and carved around by glaciers. Beaver Creek Park extends from a mountain topographic and vegetation communities to foothills and prairie environments in a short distance making it an interesting place for enjoyment and study of...
A few evenings ago, we were sitting in Vic's Place, on 1st Street, talking with Kurt Johnson, who, with his wife Candy, owns Vic's, the classiest joint in Havre. The "we" is my wife, Marged, the famous Havre poet, who inspires me in all things. Normasn Bernstein Vic's is named after Vic Spinler, of Hingham, who has kept the Park Hotel running for more than 50 years. He's 84 years old and can still tell you about every little quirk and oddity in the building, that was built in 1910, just across from the park in front of the...
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P.J. O'Rourke The dust hasn't totally settled on the legislative session ... we don't yet have the final fiscal results of Gov. Steve Bullock's vetoes. But the picture's beginning to take shape, and for those who believe in limited government and slower bureaucracy growth, that picture isn't pretty. Starting with almost half a billion surplus, a coalition of Democrats and swing-vote, squishy Republicans blew through that surplus p...
While in politics, I allowed myself to be bullied by the NRA. No more. I cannot help but feel like there is something I could have done to prevent this calamity. But I will no longer allow myself to be intimidated by groups like the NRA. I don't need an assault weapon to go hunting with my son. Ed Tinsley I am a lifelong hunter, a veteran of the United States Army, and a former elected official here in my home of Yellowstone County. But above all I consider myself a parent, and so I will be forever haunted by the slaughter of...
