MINOT, N.D. — Let’s do some math. The fall 2019 enrollment number for full-time equivalent students in North Dakota’s public K-12 schools was 110,797. All of those kids are North Dakota residents. The fall 2019 enrollment for North Dakota’s public institutions of higher education was 35,353 full-time equivalent students. Nearly half of them, something like…
MINOT, N.D. — I’ve been writing about higher education for a long time, and when it comes to budgets and how our state’s universities react to them, there are two simple truths. Any budget increase will be treated as a cut because it wasn’t as large an increase as the universities requested. Any actual cut…
Gov Candidate Lenz’s Pandemic Plan Amounts to Appointing Someone Else to Lead
MINOT, N.D. — The governor’s job is to govern. The governor’s job is not appointing other people to govern. After reading her plan for addressing the coronavirus pandemic, I’m not sure Shelley Lenz, the Democratic-NPL’s gubernatorial candidate, understands this. The plan was released this week. It tosses a few bones to placate the nascent authoritarians…
Democratic-NPL Says NDGOP Legislative Candidate Is Ineligible Because He Lives in Wyoming
MINOT, N.D. — Earlier this year the Democratic-NPL stubbornly refused to acknowledge that one of their candidates for statewide office, Travisia Martin, who was running for Insurance Commissioner, was ineligible for the ballot. Despite clear evidence that Martin had cast a ballot in Nevada in the 2016 election — something that, if done legally, requires residency in…
Superintendent Challenger Questions Incumbent Baesler’s Qualifications for Office
MINOT, N.D. — The race for North Dakota Superintendent is heating up, with challenger Brandt Dick taking a shot at incumbent Kirsten Baesler’s qualifications. In a recent Facebook post, Brandt questioned Baesler’s descriptions of her résumé and education experience. “If my opponent applied for a Principal or Superintendent job in any ND school district, she…
Are North Dakotans OK With Companies Paid to Collect Signatures for Ballot Measures?
MINOT, N.D. — I much admire my friend Tony Bender as a writer, but there’s no escaping the fact that he is a profoundly partisan thinker. For Tony, if Republicans are for something, then that something must be harmful, and there isn’t any need for a more thorough analysis than that. You can see how…
Today’s Coal Power Isn’t the Same as Yesterday’s
MINOT, N.D. — There are two myths about coal that need be destroyed. The first is that the economics of coal don’t work anymore. This is true only insofar as lobbyists promoting the energy industry have been successful in politicizing the energy markets. Coal is asked to compete with energy sources like wind and solar…
How Much Violence Are You Willing to Use Against People Who Won’t Wear Masks?
MINOT, N.D. — Monday, a man at a public meeting in South Dakota was frog-marched out of the venue by police officers for refusing to wear a mask. As the ugly and bafflingly political divide over masking grows, I think we have to ask ourselves how comfortable we are with that image. Because the path we’re on?…
Fargo Democrat Picks a Fight With Carrington Restaurant Over Native American Statue
MINOT, N.D. — Do you ever wonder, when you see people complaining about a business online, if that person even attempted to talk about the problem with the business before complaining about it online? Many people seem more interested in online griping than working with someone out in the real world to actually solve the…
Despite the Headlines, Experts Are Skeptical of Study Linking Sturgis to Over 260,000 Cases of COVID-19
MINOT, N.D. — There is a faction in the news media that would like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, held in South Dakota last month despite the ongoing pandemic, to be the “superspreader” event researchers at San Diego State University have said it was. Bikers are a largely white, mostly male and quite Trumpy demographic. They’re…