Page 34 - Flathead Beacon // 7.16.14

34 | JULY 16, 2014
LIKE I WAS SAYIN’ Kellyn Brown
Summer Traffic
THE OTHER DAY, A COWORKER OF MINE quipped, “You know it’s busy in the Flathead when you have to sit through the same red light twice.” He’s right. It’s busy. Crazy busy for around here.
It’s that time of year again, when a fender-bender on North Reserve Street in Kalispell will back up traffic for miles – well, maybe just one mile. But it seems longer, be- cause we’re not used to this during other seasons, except perhaps the few days preceding Christmas.
It’s Christmas in July and there’s no end in sight. June was rainy and relatively sleepy and then July arrived and our northern neighbors flooded south to celebrate Canada Day in what is often referred to as “Canada’s Tijuana.” We call it Whitefish.
There seemed to be more bachelor and bachelorette parties than usual. I like Canadians, but there were so many downtown that weekend it was nearly impossible to maneuver the various establishments. Wait times for breakfast bordered on one hour.
Then it was Fourth of July. And the craziness contin- ued. I was off the grid in Polebridge, which still attracted hundreds of people, many of them locals looking to escape the crowds, so they found a smaller one. An employee there said July 4 was the Polebridge Mercantile’s biggest day ever, although I can’t confirm that.
To be sure, these are good signs for a valley that suf- fered through the recent recession, still needs the business and is mostly affable with the visitors and second-home- owners here. And while the Flathead has long attracted tourists from Canada, they are also venturing from other areas, too.
I sat next to a couple who drove from Texas to the val- ley last week and another visiting from Florida. They were heading to the park, which had a quieter-than-normal June but is surely experiencing a busy July now that the Sun Road is all open. Whitefish resort tax revenues were up in May. More people are flying in and out of Glacier Park International Airport this summer than ever before, with direct routes added to Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.
These visitors spend money, which goes into the pock- etbooks of local business owners, who, in turn, invest in the valley and provide jobs. It’s a good thing, really, but hasn’t July seemed exceptionally busy? In Kalispell, Thursday!Fest and Picnic in the Park are attracting large crowds. In Bigfork, the chamber of commerce sent out an email to its members a couple days before the Fourth of July weekend asking if anyone knew of any room vacan- cies.
We’ll be writing more on June and July’s tourism num- bers as they become available in the coming weeks, but I’d be shocked if they aren’t higher than recent years. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a few records fall.
Locals will debate whether this is good or bad for the character of Flathead. It’s more difficult to argue that it isn’t good for the economy. And right now, anyway, the in- conveniences are minor compared to the collective feeling that we have really turned a corner. Yet we are proceeding, more or less, cautiously.
While construction, both commercial and residential, is visible almost everywhere in the valley, building permits have not risen dramatically. Nor have real estate prices or number of homes sold. The growth in the valley, which lo- cals must live with all year around, has been steady, but not unhealthy.
It’s July, and rush hour in the Flathead means sitting through the same red light twice. It means adding five to 10 minutes to a trip across town. It means sharing a trail and your favorite restaurant with an out-of-towner. It will last a few more weeks, then it will largely just be us again.
And if that’s as crazy as it gets, and a lot of locals benefit from the increased traffic, I’ll take it.
OPINION FLATHEADBEACON.COM
TWO FOR THOUGHT
Local Topics, Opposing Views
Immigration Crisis
By Tim Baldwin
A nation without secured borders is no nation at all. This experience-proven maxim has been, however, attacked in recent years. Now, children entering the U.S. illegally are the focus of the im- migration discussion. Reality is, the recent ille- gal-children situation does not change the rule of law and the sound policy that we must enforce our immigration laws.
It is ludicrous to argue that Americans have the responsibility to care for illegal immigrants – children or not – when the government’s fail- ure to enforce immigration laws incentivized this immigration problem. American families, many of which are already struggling to support their children, are being forced to support illegal activ- ity. Meanwhile, opportunistic politicians benefit.
Americans are told that failing to support these illegal immigrants is somehow a breach of humanitarian duty. This is an insult to the hard- working American who must support himself and his family and who is required to obey the law and will be punished (many times harshly) for break- ing it.
Montana Code Annotated states, “A per- son may not take advantage of the person’s own wrong.” (§1-3-208, MCA). This is indeed an unde- niable universal maxim. I say this maxim should apply equally to public officials who helped cause our immigration problems and to those who enter America illegally.
By Joe Carbonari
Lo siento mucho. I feel for you. We feel for you, but we’re going to send you back – back to Honduras, to Guatemala, to Nicaragua, even though you’re on your own, high school age at best. Lo siento mucho.
We expect about 70,000 unaccompanied children at our border by the end of this fiscal year. Things are bad, very bad, back in their own countries. Violence is rife, opportunities slim. Corruption and gangs abound. In 2008 we passed a law saying these kids would be given the benefit of a hearing to see that they weren’t going to become the victims of some form of human trafficking, persecution, or other special risk if we returned them.
In effect this means that they have at least a year to connect with friends, family or whatever in the U.S. before they eventually have a hearing, to which only about half show up. About 6,500 cases were heard last year, about 4,000 deportations resulted, about 1,600 kids actually left.
This represents about 20 percent of the total immigration issue. We are a land of op- portunity, of security, of decency, of hope. In dealing with those that want to come here we need to maintain our sense of decency while at the same time protecting our own legiti- mate self-interests. It will take compromise. It will take leadership. It should begin now.
GUESTCOLUMN | EvanBarrett
America’s Newest Citizen - John Q. Corporation
On the Fourth of July the old red, white and blue looked a little more tattered compared to the past.
Thanks in great part to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), John Q. Citizen, the hu- man being citizen who is the bedrock of our unique experiment in self-governance, is being replaced by John Q. Corporation.
We anointed our citizens with many rights and protections: free speech and the right to assemble; freedom from unreasonable governmental search and seizure; the right of self-governance anchored by the right to vote.
We promised that our government would not im- pose religion and would not interfere with the prac- tice of any and all religions. And, we sought to pro- vide to the citizen the opportunity to earn a living for himself and his family by honoring and reward- ing the value of his labor and even his capital.
Then we created a legal vehicle – the corporation – through which he could, by investing his money, participate in commerce with some protections.
People – citizens – invested in corporations, but corporations were not people, corporations were not citizens.
But, rights of human citizenship are now repeat- edly being given to corporations by the current SCO- TUS, while at the same time the rights of individual American citizens are being eroded or eliminated by that same court.
It seemed laughable when Mitt Romney declared that “Corporations are people, my friend.” But we are increasingly seeing SCOTUS and various appel- late courts hell-bent on giving citizen rights to John Q. Corporation while cutting back on your rights as John Q. Citizen.
First case in point: voting rights. Just one year ago SCOTUS declared that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had achieved its goals and voter discrimination and suppression had ended. Since then an all-out assault on voting rights and extremely restrictive voter suppression measures emerged all across the country.
Contrast that with SCOTUS’ decisions in Citi- zens United and other cases where corporations not only have “free speech,” but their money is their free speech and corporations are entitled to spend what- ever an unlimited amount to influence elections. Hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle now purchase the best Congress and State Legisla- tures that money can buy, often in anonymity. SCO- TUS actually threw out Montana’s corporate cam- paign restriction that was passed by Montana voters in 1912 and had worked well for over a century.
Recently SCOTUS declared that John Q. Corpo- ration can now have religious beliefs that can con- trol the right of John and Jane Q. Citizen to access certain forms of reproductive health care.
I fully subscribe to the protection of each indi- vidual’s religious freedom rights and recognize that sometimes those rights, uniformly applied, lead to conflict. But this recent SCOTUS decision addressed that inherent conflict by unbelievably empowering the corporation itself – a non-human legal artifice – to have religious beliefs.
As I look at our slightly tattered flag of citizen- ship I can only hope that John Q. Citizen will some- day be restored to his place of honor in our country.
Evan Barrett is the director of business & commu- nity outreach and an instructor at Highlands College of Montana Tech.