SAB's Top Posts For The Week That Was, Open Thread

These were the top posts, by page views, on SayAnythingBlog.com for the week that was. Feel free to talk among yourselves below.

SBHE Student Member Distributes Documents Full Of “Disturbing” Allegations Against Chancellor Shirvani – Fresh off helping orchestrate student votes of “no confidence” in Chancellor Hamid Shirvani (see our second ranked post this week), student member of the State Board of Higher Education Sydney Hull this week dropped a bundle of documents on his fellow board members which he claims shows “disturbing” allegations against Chancellor Shirvani. The documents, posted at the link, turned out to be little more than a collection of emails from former university system legal council Pat Seaworth who was fired by Shirvani last year. The most serious of the accusations seems to be alleged violations of the state’s open meeting laws.

Minutes Show Student “No Confidence” Votes Politically Motivated – The votes of no confidence in Chancellor Hamid Shirvani by the state’s students have been portrayed in the media as a sort of popular uprising of the students themselves. The minutes, however, tell a much different story. One that shows the votes were very much a top-down affair with student leaders such as Mr. Hull talking of “political benefit” to be reaped from taking it to Shirvani.

North Dakota House Mid-Session Legislative Vote Ranking – For the first time ever we here at SAB did a ranking of North Dakota’s legislators based on their votes through the mid-session crossover. Our ranking of House members was one of our top visited posts for the week (we ranked the Senators as well) and it created a lot of buzz down at the capitol too, we’re told.

Small Town Socialism – New Leipzig, North Dakota, has a government-owned grocery store. This week a controversy which saw the managers of that store resigning made headlines, but I found the growing trend in government-owned grocery stores in the state to be a little disturbing. As though the taxpayers have some obligation to keep open businesses that locals won’t support with their own commerce.

Guest Post: Rep. Al Carlson Is Right About Diversion Amendments – Our fifth most visited post this week was actually a guest post defending Rep. Al Carlson’s amendments to flood control spending in Fargo. Fargo officials are upset that Rep. Carlson put in prohibitions on using state funds for a proposed flood diversion project, but Rep. Carlson said he doesn’t want to commit state tax dollars to a project the federal government hasn’t approved yet. Later in the week Carlson agreed to some amendments allowing that local tax dollars be spent on diversion, and allowing state matching funds for home buyouts.