Charging Federal sales tax on gasoline illegal

Before I was taught "New Math," I had learned that 2+2=4. Times, though, have changed and no American seems to know how to add any more. When I buy gas, it says on the pump I'm paying 60 cents for each gallon for support of the Federal government. That's a sales tax — which is illegal for the Feds to do. What does it do with all our taxes? They tell me I'm paying for a war, helping some Arabs create a government in a desert, that isn't going to last more than six months after we decide to leave.

It's now a third of a billion dollars of taxes every single day — that's in a day!

Like I said, "New Math" has replaced common sense — or should I say "common cents." And if you still have any, would you please send some to me… I'm now broke!

Neal Donohue

Vietnam veteran, DAV

Polson

Flathead drainage too special to put at risk

To the editor,

Recent news from Washington State sent shivers up my spine and struck too close to home.

The Columbia River, like our North Fork of the Flathead, is an international body of water, flowing out of British Columbia and into the United States. A lead and zinc smelter in Trail, B.C., just upstream of Washington State, suffered an industrial accident recently.

The result? A ton of lead and 100 gallons of acid escaped the smelter and dumped into the Columbia River — to be swept downstream into the United States. No doubt, it could have been worse. But it made me think of the promises British Columbia has made about its plans to mine in the Canadian Flathead.

British Columbia promises up and down that its standards are strict and no accidents will happen. But the recent industrial accident show that things do go wrong, no matter how careful we humans try to be.

I realize a smelter is not a coal mine. But BC plans to literally turn a pristine mountain north of Glacier Park inside out to dredge out the coal. There's plenty of opportunity there for things to go badly wrong. And the water flowing from that proposed mine site would flow into Glacier Park in hours and flow into Flathead Lake within days.

The people of Montana have much in common with the people of British Columbia. We are hard-working people who believe in both taking care of our natural resources and using them wisely. Many folks in the Fernie community do not want to risk ruining the North Fork, either.

Together, we need to convince the government of British Columbia that the North Fork of the Flathead drainage is simply too special to put at risk.

Roger Sherman

Whitefish

A farm bill for Montanans

When we first began debating the new Farm Bill last year, I said then that folks wouldn't remember how quickly we passed it but how well it was put together. I knew Montanans understood just how important this single piece of legislation would be for the next decade of farming and ranching. From conversations with our ag producers, I had a strong sense that no matter what current crop prices were, they wanted Congress to put certain safety nets in place to provide for whatever changes may come in the future. That's why we needed to spend a lot of time and energy to get it right. Well, I'm proud to say we came out with a darn good final product.

The Farm Bill is unique because it puts on display the different priorities of rural vs. urban members of Congress. For instance, when the bill first came to the House floor I was disappointed because so much of the legislation provided for food stamps in Manhattan, New York instead of ag assistance and rural development programs in Manhattan, Montana.

However, I worked with my colleagues and helped pass the bill realizing that finding something which would work for 435 different House members was going to take compromise. In fact, I was one of only two Republican House members asked to work with Democrats to help lobby for votes in favor of the original bill, as well as one of only nineteen Republicans to vote for passage, despite a veto threat from the Bush Administration. There are a few provisions I fought particularly hard for throughout the process and I'm glad to say I successfully got them included in the final bill.

The first provision would expedite Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) which requires a label to be affixed to meat products declaring the country where the animal was born, raised and processed. In 2002, I co-wrote and helped pass the COOL legislation, which President Bush signed into law as part of the 2002 Farm Bill. Unfortunately, though it was to have taken effect in September 2004, mandatory labeling opponents managed to strip the program's funding in subsequent appropriations measures, effectively delaying implementation. My provision in the new Farm bill establishes labeling requirements and ensures COOL will be in place by September 2008.

The second provision is language to stop the closure of Montana's Farm Service Agency (FSA) offices. In December 2006, the USDA announced it was considering closing several offices, arguing it would be more efficient to consolidate office locations. In response, hundreds of ag producers contacted my office in opposition to the proposal. Those of us who've made a living in agriculture knew the plan wasn't going to work. So, I made phone calls, sent letters, met with USDA officials, and ultimately included a measure in last year's Omnibus Appropriations bill to bring this plan to a halt. But it was only a one year fix. The Farm Bill provision will provide some long-term prevention by requiring any FSA offices more than 20 miles apart to stay open for at least two years. Additionally, after this two year period, the provision requires public meetings be held in proposed closure counties. As a result, local farmers and ranchers will have the same access to quality information and can continue to maintain a 1-on-1 personal relationship with their local FSA employees.

Input from Montanans was a critical part of the Farm Bill's success. That's why every step of the way I stayed in close contact with ag producers both in Washington, DC and across the state. In the end, I think we came up with something that works for Montana.

Montana's Congressman, Denny Rehberg, is a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

Sudden death in young athletes

In the news we are starting to hear more and more about young, apparently healthy athletes dying either during competition or immediately after. In recent months there have been a number of reported deaths in college age athletes, most recently a 19-year-old Alabama State basketball player collapsed after a pick-up game on campus. Last month a 26-year-old American basketball player collapsed and died at halftime of a game in Saudi Arabia.

There have been a lot of high profile cases of seemingly healthy athlete's collapsing and dying during and after completion. More and more it is getting the media attention it deserves but there is little dialog on why it is happening and what can be done to prevent such tragedy.

According to the American Heart Association, Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) is the leading cause of death in young athletes, accounting for 75 percent of all deaths. Other studies indicate that the incidence in high school athletes is between 1 in 100,000-200,000, and 1 in 65,000 -70,000 in college-age athletes. Traditional estimates are limited by the lack of a mandatory reporting system and likely underestimate the true incidence of SCA.

The leading cause of SCA in athletes is Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). This is the leading cause of Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) in the U.S., accounting for approximately 1/3 of the reported cases. Most athletes with ACM are asympomatic, with only 21 percent of athletes who died from HCM had any premonitory signs or symptoms of cardiovascular disease.

What can be done to reduce the incidence of SCD in our young athletes? The answer is a better and more comprehensive pre-participation physical and history. By standardizing the pre-participation physicals and making the medical and family history questionnaire more comprehensive we can help to detect this and other conditions that can lead to SCD. For instance, if an athlete has a close relative that has had a heart condition, this can and should be a red flag for that physician to take a closer look at this athlete. In patients with HCM, 90 to 95 percent have an abnormal electrocardiogram in some manner.

The next step is training our coaches, teachers and parents how to recognize this condition as it happens and what to do when it does. Many victims of SCD are initially thought to be having a seizure and proper and necessary treatment is delayed. In 50 percent of instances of SCD the individual displays with seizure like symptoms for approximately 30 seconds, after which many bystanders allow for some recovery time before even thinking of checking vital signs. There needs to be and should be an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) at all athletic participations, including practices. And all coaches and teachers should be trained in its proper use.

There are many other components to each of these solutions, including standardizing and improving the pre-participation physical in our schools nationwide, allowing our physicians to recognize the red flags in the athletes history. Educating our teachers and coaches on how to recognize this condition and developing and practicing an emergency action plan for this scenario. Educating the public and especially the parents, on the seriousness of this condition and what steps can be taken to help prevent this from happening to their child.

This is only a very brief release and not as comprehensive as it could have been. I would be happy to discuss this further and provide more detail about this subject. I can be reached at 862-8250 Monday through Friday for any questions that you may have regarding this release.

Mike Carey, ATC is a certified athletic trainer at the Flathead Performance Training Center.

Only the little people pay taxes

Now that we've all filed our income taxes for the year, and thereby paid our share of keeping America great, it seems like as good time as any to reflect on the fairness of the Montana income tax system. I don't know what you made last year, but if you had to pay any income tax at all I bet you paid more than fifty bucks. For comparison there were 78 out-of-state corporations that paid $50 in 2005 Montana Corporate Income tax. They wouldn't have had to pay even that much, but $50 is the minimum corporate income tax in Montana.

This and the following tidbits of information are the results of a recent information request I made to the Montana Department of Revenue. It's based on 2005 figures because that's the most recent year for which we have complete corporate income tax data.

Those 78 out-of-state corporations had 2005 sales in Montana ranging from $5,000,000 to around $900,000,000. I find it curious that a company with $5 million in sales only has to pay the minimum tax, but it beggars the imagination to understand how a company with almost a billion dollars in Montana sales winds up paying the $50 minimum. It staggers the imagination to find out that it paid that same 50 bucks from 2001 to 2005 — five years in a row — as did all the remaining 77 corporations.

That's right; 78 out-of-state corporations with Montana sales between $5 million and $900 million paid $50 in tax five years in a row. The average tax paid by Montana's working families is around $500.

Something seems a little off here, and I bet you'd like to know what it is so you can call your state legislators and get them to fix it. But I bet your state legislator doesn't know what it is either; in fact, I can guarantee it. I have been studying corporate taxes for years, and I don't know why they pay so little. Come to find out, the Montana Department of Revenue is pretty much in the dark, too; however, they have a leg up on us at least, because they know the names of the companies involved. But I don't know them and you don't know them, and we're not allowed to know them because Montana law, like almost every other state, does not allow citizens or legislators to look at corporate income tax information.

You might be wondering how or why we legislators write laws that allow large multi-state corporations to pay so little tax. Well, for the most part we don't write them because we base our corporate income tax on a percentage of federal corporate tax, so Congress writes the laws that permit corporations to skate on taxes. Actually, I think the mega corporations write the laws and just get Congress to rubber stamp them. However we can write laws that change the way corporate tax is figured in Montana. Some of us have been trying to do that for years, but have had little success getting them through the Legislature

I expect there will be a reaction to this column by the Defenders of the Status Quo, and one of the arguments in that reaction may be that these could all be corporations undergoing unusual financial difficulties, or just using legitimate deductions. They're guessing, of course, because they have no more ability to know which companies these are than do you or I, but I will grant you that there may be legitimate reasons why companies that large are paying hardly any income tax. And I'd really like to know what they are so I can either put my cynical suspicions to rest or have them confirmed.

Another argument will be that income tax isn't the only tax corporations pay, they pay property tax too. But so do I, and so do you, and so does every homegrown Montana business — and we still pay our income taxes. The point is not that out-of-state corporations don't pay taxes to Montana, or that they don't create jobs, or contribute to the community. The point is that the people of Montana deserve to know what's going on, and legislators need to know because they are supposed to write laws that protect us "little people."

"Only the little people pay taxes" was the philosophy of a very rich lady named Leona Helmsley. A couple of years after making that statement Leona was carted off to jail for tax evasion. A tax system that gives a tax advantage to the very wealthy and to large corporations at the expense of the "little people" is not fair and should be changed.

Jim Elliott is a state senator from Trout Creek in his 13th year of legislative service, and is chairman of the Senate Taxation Committee.