MINOT, N.D. — “I think there’s lots of opportunity for it.” That’s what Dusty Hillebrand, a North Dakota Job Service employee in Grand Forks, had to say about the potential for a four-day work week. I’m dubious. I should note, here, that I’m a workaholic. I have been continuously employed since I began a paper route in the…
Plain Talk: Moving North Dakota’s oil industry toward being carbon neutral
Earlier this year Gov. Doug Burgum raised a lot of eyebrows in the political world by announcing a goal for North Dakota’s carbon-based industries, including oil and coal, to become carbon neutral. Can we do it? There are no magic bullets to achieving that goal, but there are some promising endeavors. On this episode of Plain Talk…
When politicians take taxpayer dollars for themselves, they have to answer questions about it
MINOT, N.D. — When is a question an attack? When the politician it’s asked of doesn’t want to answer it. So it goes with Rep. Rick Becker, a self-described “rising national star of the freedom movement” (stop laughing) who took a quarter-million in taxpayer-backed Paycheck Protection Program loans and now doesn’t want to talk about them. Yesterday I wrote about…
Rep. Rick Becker, critic of big government, won’t answer questions about his government loans
MINOT, N.D. — Rep. Rick Becker, a Republican from Bismarck, is the strident ideological martinet who founded the Bastiat Caucus, a rump caucus of inveterate reactionaries whose governing agenda is whatever is being ranted about on the Fox News primetime lineup in a given news cycle. Becker and his acolytes are fond of attacking other Republicans for…
‘Badass Grandmas’ doth protest too much
MINOT, N.D. — The ballot measure which created North Dakota’s ethics commission was pushed by a front group for national left-wing interests called, ironically enough, North Dakotans for Public Integrity. The two women who were the face of this campaign, Dina Butcher and Ellen Chaffee, are rank partisans (the latter contributed financial support to the man who took an ax…
Plain Talk: Replacing the only elected Democrat in western North Dakota
Sen. Erin Oban is the only member of the Democratic-NPL to be elected in western North Dakota. To the extent that you can consider her Bismarck-area district to be “western North Dakota,” anyway. Oban announced recently that she will not be running for another term in that office. Hot on the heels of that announcement, Republican Sean…
Friday Mailbag: A Christmas tradition, defending Agatha Christie, common ground on EV, and our shifting political landscape
MINOT, N.D. — Decorating for Christmas might be my favorite family tradition. In my family, it’s a very specific tradition. Right after Thanksgiving we go and buy a tree (we’re a real tree family). Then we order Pizza Hut (it has to be that specific restaurant, which we don’t patronize any other time of the…
University system didn’t provide sufficient oversight on problematic Dickinson State procurement
At best, we have a university president who leaned a bit too heavily on some personal relationships while supervising a sloppy procurement. At worst, we have a significant contract that was deliberately steered toward some friends of the president. Even worse, when asked to provide oversight, the NDUS issued some superficial findings completely out of…
Could overturning Roe v Wade make North Dakota a blue state?
MINOT, N.D. — The answer to the question in the headline is “probably not,” but the political implications of the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court are enormous and could result in a political groundswell that will drive some unexpected outcomes. Allow me to explain why. Yesterday SCOTUS heard oral arguments in a case that involves…
Instead of censoring books, maybe we should try understanding them
MINOT, N.D. — In Fargo, a middle school student has found herself offended to read the term “Indian” in the famed Agatha Christie novel, “And Then There Were None.” Instead of using the situation to educate this child about language and culture and our always-evolving struggle to find comity on issues of race, the child’s mother took…