News you can use
News you can use
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Imagine pulling up to your local hospital and finding a “no vacancy” sign. You have COVID and need hospitalization, but no beds are available. Or you are barely able to walk due to intense chronic pain, only to find your hip replacement surgery is canceled because your hospital lacks the bed space or staff to help you. Since the beginning of the pandemic, health care industry leaders have warned repeatedly about the danger of being “overwhelmed” by the onslaught of COVID cases in hospitals. Well, that day may have arrived...
What is wrong with people? In one day this weekend, the state saw almost as many cases of COVID-19 confirmed as it saw in the first three months of its delclared medical emergency. Montana had its first cases of COVID-19 confirmed March 14 and its first COVID-19-related death March 26. By June 1, two-and-a-half months later, Montana had 519 confirmed cases, 17 COVID-19-related deaths and two hospitalizations at the time due to the disease. Sunday, the state had 14,635 confirmed cases, 4,851 active, 191 hospitalizations and...
Editor’s note: This version has been edited to reflect that people can make online requests for absentee ballots. Shame, shame on Hill County Commissioners Diane McLean and Mark Peterson. With a stroke of the pen, they have put people's health and very lives at risk. McLean and Peterson voted down a resolution that would have sent mail ballots to every active registered voter in the county, giving them the option to avoid going to the polls and risking being exposed to COVID-19. And praise goes to Hill County Commissioner M...
The Havre Daily News has received complaints, via Facebook, by telephone and now in an opinion column and a letter, printed on this page, about its coverage of people attending meetings in Havre held by People’s Rights Montana District 1. The complaints basically say the articles did not give enough credit to false claims made by People’s Rights and at the meeting that directives to slow the spread of COVID-19 are unconstitutional and illegal; the recommended actions don’t work and are harmful; and that the articles made...
Many claims and comments have been made about novel coronavirus 2019 and the illness it causes, COVID-19, from the start, and they are continuing. People need to be careful what they say. To start with, people shouldn’t call it “the flu,” whether it is with any racist modifier or not. Coronavirus is not the flu. Influenza is caused by the influenza virus. And that is one of the problems that has led to restrictions and shutdowns across the nation, and the world, to slow the spread of the virus. It is new. Evidence indic...
Editor's note: This version adds additional background. Two of Montana’s federal lawmakers need to start being straightforward with their constituents. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., both have been telling constituents what assistance is being provided by federal COVID-19 aid bills, without telling them some of that aid was added when Democrats delayed passage of the bills containing it to add to the bills.. Both Daines and Gianforte have blasted the Democrats in Congress for d...
As the death toll from the novel coronavirus rises, we are brutally faced with the reality that public policy directly affects the number of Americans and Montanans who are victimized by this modern plague. And also by the reality that, because of its nature, public policy is not always driven by cold hard facts, science and evidence, but is at least partially driven by politics. In some ways that is bad, but in other ways it is good and necessary. This is a time when people are called upon to join the communal effort to...
The novel coronavirus 2019 and the disease it causes, COVID-19, is now confirmed to be in Hill County. It probably was a matter of when, not if, it would be confirmed here. The important thing for people to remember is to continue the practices health officials and the government have been urging and requiring for more than a week now in Montana. The disease can cause serious illness and even death, but most people who acquire the virus will have relatively mild symptoms or...
Havre is a place we are proud to call home, where we enjoy spending our time and giving back to our community. We have been a part of many community activities and we are always willing to help when we can. We’ve been in your community for more than 100 years. We pride ourselves in bringing you the best local news and sports coverage. We will continue to be there for you. During this COVID-19 time, we ask you to share some core values with each other. We can all benefit from being helpful, friendly, courteous and kind to o...
Editor’s note: This version corrects the birthday of President Ronald Reagan and the home town of auditor candidate Troy Downing. I have to apologize to voters and to the Hill County Republican Central Committee, Republican candidates and Republicans around the state. Monday was Presidents’ Day, set to coincide with the birthday of Republican President Abraham Lincoln Feb. 12 and the birthday of the nation’s first president, George Washington, Feb. 22. It also sets the time for the local fundraising event the Reagan-Lincoln D...
Imagine for one unsettling moment what it would mean to Montana if Glacier, Yellowstone, the Bob Marshall, the Beartooth Mountains, and all other lands and waters belonging to the American people were sold off. It would spell the end of our outdoor way of life, including our ability to hike, hunt, fish, mountain bike and snowmobile; send our economy off of a cliff; and ruin the livelihood of our family ranchers. Who in their right mind would advocate for something so destructive as selling off our public lands? Believe it or...
Experience counts, and nowhere is this more true than the current race for the Clerk of the Montana Supreme Court. Rex Renk has been in the office for over 24 years and the Chief Deputy for 23 years. His knowledge and expertise are vital in the continued smooth running of this important state office. When we, as district court clerks, have a question or an issue involving the Supreme Court the first call we make is to Rex. We have come to rely on his intelligence, professionalism, and desire to serve all Montanans regardless...
On Jan. 11th of this year, I wrote a check for $15, filled out a form on the Secretary of State’s website and signed on the dotted line to become a candidate for the Montana Senate in District 14. Since that cold winter day over 290 days ago, I’ve had the unique opportunity of traveling the highways and dirt roads of this sprawling rural district, which encompasses a large section of northern Montana, from the Canadian border to neighborhoods in northern Great Falls. In addition to putting thousands of miles on my truck, I’v...
The National Rail Passenger Corp. — aka Amtrak — seems to be trying to drive passengers away, and people across the nation need to let their voices be heard. Thursday, a couple went to the Havre Amtrak station — ticket agentless since June 1 due to the wisdom of the corporation — to put their grandson on the train to go to Glasgow. They found out that not only was no one there to sell them a ticket, but also their grandchild couldn’t get on the train any longer unless an adult rode with him, since no ticket agents were ther...
The Havre Daily News is seeing an occurrence happening more-and-more frequently that it believes is a serious problem. In any representative democracy — and certainly under Montana’s laws and Constitution — public elected and appointed officials are the servants of the public, not the other way around. In the past year, some elected and appointed agencies have been deficient in letting the public know what they are doing. A little more than a year ago, the local fair board hired a new fairgrounds manager without letti...
The Havre Daily News is in the job of reporting news, reporting the facts, to its readers. We don’t always like what we have to report, and sometimes we have to make judgement calls on what we print. People don’t always agree with us. We printed a story Monday about a candidate for the U.S. Senate — who has registered as a planned candidate with the Federal Election Commission and has attended several events as a candidate — causing a lockdown when he tried to pull some children from school, in violation of a custody ruling...
Shodair Children’s Hospital deserves great thanks and praise for the work it has been doing for more than a century — and continues to do — caring for children in Montana. The hospital held an outreach reception in Havre Monday to let people know what it does to help children, and what they can do to help it in its mission. The hospital began in 1896 in Helana as an orphanage, primarily taking in parentless children brought from the east to the west on “orphan trains.” As time changed and more and more children were plac...
Many of us breathed a collected sigh of relief after the dust settled in Whitefish at the end of Dr. Matin Luther King Jr. Day last year. It’s been a year of intense upheaval, including the murder of a civil rights activist at a White Nationalist march in Charlottesville, North Carolina. That scene could have been in Montana’s beautiful mountain town, but it wasn’t, and there are lessons that we must carry forward. In some ways, last year’s national White Nationalist uprising began with a threatened armed march by Nazis o...
Enough is enough. Why has Congress delayed refunding basic health insurance and medical service to millions of people in the nation and thousands in Montana? With focus on issues like the attempt to repeal and replace the health care reform program known as Obamacare, the fact that the Children’s Health Insurance Program that provides low-cost health insurance to children in families that make too much to qualify for Medicaid was hardly even noticed at first. Something else that hardly anyone has mentioned is the failure to f...
On Veterans Day, we pause to remember the enduring sacrifice of our men and women in uniform and their families, the bravery they showed in service to our nation, and the unwavering responsibility we have to them when they return from war. From the Greatest Generation of World War II to the veterans of Vietnam and Korea, those who came before us courageously defended our freedoms and helped make America the nation it is today. And now, after more than a decade entangled in...
Dr. Marc Whitacre, who is facing Havre High School teacher Lindsey Ratliff in the race for Ward 3 in the Havre City Council election, is working to bring attention to the high suicide rate in the state and this region, and the Havre Daily News applauds him for his efforts. Montana is often in the running for the state with the highest suicide rate per capita in the nation, and is sometimes the top state for suicide rates. It is a tragic, disturbing issue which needs examination, and the Havre Daily is ready to work alongside...
The Havre Daily News extends thanks and praise to the response to the East Fork Fire in the Bear Paw Mountains. Residents in the original area of the fire jumped to action from the start, and since the fire burned out of its original area and mushroomed from Wednesday on, the response by officials and the community has been incredible. While the battle is far from over, the coordination of efforts on multiple fronts of the fire, of multiple agencies and volunteers, the outpouring of support from the community shows why...
The Havre Daily News is giving both a laurel and a dart to the Montanan in the highest government position in the country, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. Kudos to Zinke for saying he will recommend several monuments, including the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, not be changed. A dart for recommending one, Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, be downsized and for participating in a review that is a waste of time and money. President Donald Trump ordered Zinke review 27 monuments of 100,000 acres or...
The job of the Havre Daily News is to report to its readers what happens — fun, pleasant and exciting but also unpleasant, disturbing and upsetting. The paper tries to get the information to its readers as effectively as it can, including using social media. Earlier this week, a vehicle crashed through the wall of a local casino. The driver was taken to the hospital, where he died. The Havre Daily posted a photo a notice on Facebook and filed a story and photo on its website. A family member raised two complaints — first, fin...
It is an interesting time. People seem very interested in talking about what officials they like and who they don’t; what policies and proposals they like and what they don’t, and even sharing their own ideas on what should be done that hasn’t been proposed. And yet no one is showing any interest in stepping up to help their fellow residents in Ward 2 and their community in general by doing precisely that, making the decisions for the city. The seat in Ward 2 has been open since April 2 when alderman Brian Barrows resig...
