Want to be notified when new episodes of Plain Talk are published? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast service . We all know how divided we are as a country. Politics has always been an ugly business, but it’s perhaps uglier right now than any time in recent memory. Given that, who would want to…
Writing may be on the wall for Rep. Rick Becker’s political career
MINOT, N.D. — Now that the holidays are done, we’re in an election year, and that means hopeful candidates are filing their paperwork to commence their campaigns. And there are some very interesting filings in District 7, which is home to state Rep. Rick Becker, a prolific Facebook memelord and founder of the Bastiat Caucus…
Coal Creek Station sale a victory for reality over politics
MINOT, N.D. — Regulators in Minnesota have cleared the last regulatory hurdle standing in the way of the sale of Coal Creek Station, North Dakota’s largest coal-fired power plant. The state’s Public Utilities Commission, eschewing demands from political activists to nix the sale, instead cast a unanimous 5-0 vote to approve it . That’s a remarkable turnaround.…
Wrigley launches attorney general campaign with emphasis on law and order
MINOT, N.D. — There are a lot of things a candidate running for attorney general in North Dakota could make their campaign about. Our attorney general does a lot of things, after all. The AG is a regulator, serving alongside the governor and the agriculture commissioner on the Industrial Commission which, among other things, oversees…
Plain Talk: The January 6 anniversary, and a North Dakota business owner talks about how he’s fighting the labor shortage
Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic malaise, America’s employers have been in a crunch. Not only are their costs rising due to supply line snaggles, but many of them are having trouble finding and keeping workers. Jonathan Holth is one a North Dakota employer. He is a co-founder of the Toasted Frog restaurant…
School districts should have to report bad teachers
MINOT, N.D. — The Crosby Journal has an excellent and eye-opening report about a teacher who has managed to bounce around school districts in western North Dakota for more than a decade despite some deeply troubling on-the-job behavior. What sort of problems are we talking about? According to the Journal, which obtained these facts through open records…
Port: Jan. 6 anniversary is a time for the GOP to reflect
MINOT — The Jan. 6 riot a year ago was a turning point for me. The violence filled my screens, and I found myself overwhelmed. At one point I muted everything and sat at my desk, with no sound other than the rhythmic mechanical gasping of the oxygen machine I still needed at the time…
Believing lies about political violence isn’t just a problem for the right
MINOT — “Less than half of GOP say 1/6 was very violent,” reads a somewhat misleading Associated Press headline . Though technically accurate, a more nuanced description of the results is less distressing. The poll, commissioned by the AP, indicates that 71% of Republicans admit that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was at…
Plain Talk: How worried should you be about North Dakota’s testing decline?
One thing I think about, as our kids return to school from a long holiday break, is how hard it can be to get them back into the education groove. That challenge is perhaps on the minds of parents more so now than before, given the way COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down. In…
Port: Sorry, but the executive and legislative branches are not the same as the judicial branch
MINOT, N.D. — All due respect to Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, who has announced that he’ll be winding up a wonderful and very consequential career in North Dakota politics at the end of his current term (listen to my interview with him at the link), but his recent opinion issued to the state Ethics Commission is bunk.…