Tagged: Betti Hill

Posted: August 1, 2012 at 7:24 am

Jersey Shore Comes to Montana

Rick Hill is bringing New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to Montana help him close the lead Steve Bullock has built in fundraising. As the Billings Gazette reports, Bullock has about five times the funds.

Hill calls Christie “one of the biggest stars in the Republican party.”   Christie is definitely big, as big as a planet if not a star. As for his celebrity status among the national GOP, it’s easy to see how it has come about. For Christie has the basic prerequisites that all GOP stars must have: he’s run up a massive budget deficit –the second largest in the nation, he talks constantly about “less government,” and he makes a sport of beating up on public employees even though he once was one himself.

In fact, one of Christie’s favorite sports is to stage public events in hopes of getting some teacher or other civil servant to ask him why he has frozen or cut wages, or why he has cut school funding, or why he doesn’t send his children to public school (like the Montana governor).  Then, he pounces on the questioner, and shouts at them and tells them to go to hell, or berates them as stupid, lazy or undeserving.And so, into a state with the largest surplus in America, brought about by smart management by Democratic officeholders, comes this crude slob to talk about his idea of how to manage state finances, to try to raise money for a career politician.  This should be very enjoyable.  His trademark disrespectful behavior that causes the TEA Party to swoon has already worn thin on the Jersey shore, (his popularity has waned) and Montanans have no interest in it at all.

Christie is also coming into a state with leaders (like the Governor, Attorney General, and the three other statewide elected officials, all of whom are Dems) who understand that working with public employees is a partnership best served by a good working relationship and praise from the boss, so that workers take pride in doing a good job, no matter who is employing them.

The best part, though, is that he’ll be speaking to an audience that includes a bunch of angry people, cheering and whooping in a state of idiotic rapture when Christie slobbers about “too much government.”  Among these will be Betti Hill, who not only was a state employee for the better part of her career, but used the position to deliver a large sack of taxpayer money to her husband regularly while she was a top aid to Gov. Martz.

Posted: June 2, 2012 at 2:46 pm

Report: Rick Hill Used Wife’s Influence to Get Plum State Contracts

Dirty Betti

The Associated Press is reporting that Rick Hill not only made a king’s ransom renting office space to the Montana state government in the 1990s and 2000s, but that his wife Betti used her job in Governor Judy Martz’s office to steer business his way.  Thus did Rick and Betti Hill become very wealthy people.

E-mails from Betti Hill, obtained by the AP, show that she was using the influence of the Governor’s office to arrange meetings for Rick with high-level players in state government who dole out state rental contracts.  It stinks to high heaven.

Betti and Rick put pressure on the Martz administration to kill a plan to construct a new building. Martz put the new building project in her budget.  But shortly after Rick and Betti met with Lt. Governor Karl Ohs and several cabinet officials to complain about it, it got yanked from Martz’s budget.   Why did Rick and Betti want to kill the project? Because a new building in Helena would have brought down the price of rent in the Helena market, and landlords, naturally, do not like that.  Oops.

By the sound of it, Betti Hill was large and in charge, busting out her Helena GOP street cred, ordering people throughout state government (even the Lt. Governor) not to do anything that might compromise Rick’s business, and even going to bat for other landlords, including a “party leader” who owned a building and needed a favor.   As a result, the Hills’ business stayed sweet and they kept raking in taxpayer dough, more than a million bucks worth.

Hill also appears to have used his job as Congressman and his perch as State Fund chair to get similar sweet treatment, since these jobs overlapped with his sweetheart deals.  While sitting in these posts, ranting the GOP’s favorite rant about “less spending” and “less government,” he was guzzling down taxpayer money that should have saved rather than spent.  Montana taxpayers got bilked because the rent was too damn high.

Betti’s conduct might well be a violation of the ethics law, which says that a state worker may not use state facilities for a personal or business interest.

At any rate, the Hills are clearly no model of fiscal restraint.  Betti clearly interpreted her job in Martz’s office as nothing more than a nice opportunity to rake in some serious scratch for her and her hubby, so that they could fly first class to their posh Palm Springs crib.

These e-mails vindicate Corey Stapleton, Hill’s GOP primary opponent, who accused Hill of getting cake deals and special treatment from state government for his mega-landlord business.

But will any of this affect the outcome of Tuesday’s GOP primary?  I doubt it. Sure, it is in the newspaper, but most right-wing voters do not read the newspaper. Glenn Beck is unlikely to cover this story.

Stapleton and Miller and Livingstone should have done their homework, hit the pavement, and moved this damaging story a month ago.  It might have been a game changer.  But they were all either too lazy or too stupid (or both, probably) to bother.  Coming out on the Friday before the election, this story will have very little effect on Tuesday’s election.

However, these revelations will be center stage during the long general election battle ahead.  Rick Hill is now CORRUPT LANDLORD, INSURANCE EXECUTIVE, CONGRESSMAN, LOBBYIST (and let’s not forget ADULTERER).  Geez, if that isn’t a resume for success in politics, I don’t know what is.  These are just about the five worst things an American political candidate can possibly be.  Plus, Dems will be able to run TV ads against Hill that will simply repeat the accusations made against Hill by all of his GOP opponents.   That’s a rare opportunity in a general election, and it’s a very effective play.

Posted: April 29, 2011 at 5:10 pm

Sine Die

The legislature adjourned Sine Die last night, which in Latin means “without day” (and in Helena-speak means “we’re outta here”).

Dramatic reversal of fortune for Democrats, who came to the session as heavy underdogs facing the real possibility of becoming road kill. The GOP, upon sweeping the elections and achieving record majorities in both houses, came to town ready to make Montana Right Wing History.

Instead, Dems ran circles around the GOP for the better part of the session.

Jon Sesso and Carol Williams, the House and Senate Leaders for the Ds, thoroughly outclassed Jim Peterson and Mike Milburn, who spent most of the session looking dazed and confused, as the radicals in the GOP caucus dictated the terms and humiliated the Republican Party, an effect felt so far and wide that even Denny Rehberg’s numbers sank as a result.  Often the leaders could not even get commitments on votes from their own caucus, even when the GOP leaders had made commitments to Dem leaders that they would deliver votes.  From day one, Dems were disciplined and had a plan.  The GOP never recovered from their early advocacy of crazy and kooky bills that made their way onto national network news shows, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC and FOXNews.  Strangely, the GOP seems not to ever have felt at all remorseful about the bad publicity this gave Montana.

Schweitzer supplied some theatrics to put the nail in the coffin, with his wildly successful cattle branding veto party, one of the funniest stunts in Montana political history, one that left the GOP looking stupid, weak and deflated, and “bat-crap”crazy unable to respond in any meaningful way.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room the whole session was a several-hundred-million-dollar surplus created by Schweitzer and the Dems during previous sessions and over the last interim, which was bad news for the GOP because they showed up with a hammer but found no nails.   In the end, the GOP will do doubt try to brag about a minimal cut of government spending, hoping that nobody reads the fine print: the Schweitzer administration had already reduced spending–submitting a budget with a myriad of thoughtful cuts before the session even began. So it was a semantic reduction for the GOP’s talking points that was ultimately agreed upon.

On big ticket items, the GOP talked tough, like Tea Party types; but fortunately they got stared down, and blinked, in the end.  Like their effort, wildly popular among the Tea Party, to refuse all federal funds.  The funds were restored in the final agreement.

Also problematic for the GOP, and good for the state, is an overhaul of the work comp system.  Working hard in the backrooms throughout the session was Rick Hill and his wife Betti.  Evidently Hill believed that having his paws and prints all over a legislative fix of Montana’s very expensive worker compensation program (premiums were the highest in the nation as of the start of the session) would be beneficial to his upcoming campaign. That dream came crashing down when Schweitzer got Milburn and Peterson, in front of all the cameras at a press event, to admit that whoever the architects of the current work comp system were, they sure as hell screwed things up. Who was the architect of the current system? Rick Hill.  At the signing ceremony, I’m told that Schweitzer commended the legislators who produced the work comp fix, commended them for “their courage in being willing to admit that Rick Hill and Marc Racicot created one of the worst and most expensive work comp systems in the country.”

On the lighter side, good news that none of the famous “nut-job” bills–like the spear-hunting, the birther bill, the legalize discrimination bill, the militia bill and the nullification bill, etc.–became law. They were all either vetoed with a branding iron or died in the legislature at the hand of a coalition of D’s and a few moderate Rs. Whether these Rs can survive the Tea Party wrath in the next GOP primary is an interesting question.  I am sure Roger Koopman will weigh in on it.  Unfortunately, so much time was spent on nut-job bills–and an 18th century social agenda–that there wasn’t time to put together anything meaningful on jobs.

Plenty is left to be ironed out, and the Governor will do doubt be busy vetoing or signing bills for a while, including the medical marijuana revision that is very controversial. It also looks like some crap referenda will be on the ballot next fall.  But overall, in the 2011 legislature, it is safe to say that the donkey handed the elephant its ass, in a very unlikely upset.

Posted: April 16, 2011 at 2:38 pm

Rick Hill Responds to Adultery Charge by Religious Right

It has been fun watching the infighting among Montana Republicans–played out through a series of Christian conservative emails and on the right-wing Montanafesto blog–about whether Rick Hill’s extramarital activities with a barmaid, some years ago, are sufficient to disqualify him as a conservative worthy of nomination for governor.

Now it has gotten even better.  Yesterday, Rick Hill (surprisingly) issued a response to the blast e-mail about him his infidelities.  In doing so, Hill has not only taken the Religious Right’s bait, but he has also, in my opinion, made things worse by playing the old and tired “family card” and “victim card”.

Hill’s full statement can be viewed here.  In it, Hill decries the general practice of negative attacks in politics, and expresses outrage at “attacks on his family”– by which he means an e-mail from a right wing conservative, simply stating that an adulterer who touts his “family values” should not be the GOP nominee for governor, and that Rick Hill would lose a general election.

The e-mail from the apparently uber-religious Nancy Davis can be viewed here. It contains news articles from the 1990s, including one with a statement by Hill’s ex-wife, Jennifer Spaulding, who Hill cheated on, and who came public about Hill’s cheating because she couldn’t stand to see Hill hypocritically slamming his political opponents for “lacking family values.”  Spaulding says Hill was an emotionally abusive husband, and that he constantly ridiculed her for being unattractive and uneducated.

Hill admitted the whole affair, including a very disturbing story, related by Spaulding, about how she brought her kids to the bar to confront him, and Hill was hanging out with the cocktail waitress, took one look at his family, and told them to get lost.

And now Hill is playing the victim. This is a bad idea.

Why? Hill has a terrible record of very dirty campaigning. When he was running for re-election in 2000 (before he suddenly dropped out of the race), he trashed his opponent, Nancy Keenan, for “lacking an understanding of family values” because “she has no children of her own.” It was later revealed that Keenan had had a hysterectomy after cancer as a young woman. Hill’s accusation was a calculated and typical Montana GOP veiled suggestion about lesbianism. It was as ugly as politics has ever gotten in Montana.  Hill’s GOP henchmen made hundreds of thousands of robo-calls all over the state, asking voters if they were “concerned about an unmarried and childless woman representing Montana in Congress.”

Also, in 1998 it was revealed that Hill had deployed his new (second) wife, Betti Hill, to assist a shady, third-party group in producing a TV attack-ad against Hill’s opponent, Bill Yellowtail. This attack ad accused Yellowtail of (you guessed it) lacking family values, based on the fact that he’d hit his wife many years earlier.  Betti’s involvement was discovered when a memo surfaced, written by the head of the third party group (the TRIAD group), mentioning that it had been in communication with Betti Hill.

Hill has also deployed his sharp elbows against members of his own party, in primaries.  Those of us in the Ag community with a long memory will recall that Hill smeared Dwight MacKay, a rancher who ran against Hill in the GOP primary in 1998, by insinuating that MacKay was a fake rancher.  It was pure smear, and pure lies.  But Hill had lots of money and MacKay did not, so it worked. Montanafesto has a few more examples of Hill “going negative” in GOP primaries.

The other thing I love about Hill’s response is that he wants us to believe, to presume, that he was cheating on a young wife with very young children by saying because, in his own words, he “had a difficult marriage.”  This is an attempt to confuse the chicken and the egg.  Hill probably had a difficult marriage because he was was cheating on his wife with a hot young cocktail waitress.

Hill should just admit that he did it, explain that it was many years ago, and then move on.  Instead, he’s now blaming others, and blaming “politics”.  He should have let the whole issue remain in the blogosphere and just ignored it.