A few recent headlines in the regional media are interesting, given their juxtaposition. Our state’s battle to be reimbursed for the heavy costs of handling the violent and often unlawful #NoDAPL protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline continues. “North Dakota’s congressional delegation is calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to address the state’s year-old request…
Video: In Floor Speech Senator Cramer Thanks National Guard for “Defending Our State” From #NoDAPL Protesters
Today is Military Appreciation Day, so as you might imagine that means politicians giving a bunch of speeches about how much we all, you know, appreciate the military. These speeches wouldn’t be particularly notable, given how they tend to blend into one another, but I thought something in Senator Kevin Cramer’s address on the Senate…
Holding Political Extremists Accountable for Violence and Vandalism Is Not an Effort to “Chill Speech”
The ACLU opposes SB2044, a bill which clarifies law around tampering with critical infrastructure like power plants or pipelines and ups the penalties for doing so, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. According to the organization the bill is an assault on protected speech. They said, on the occasion of…
Plain Talk: Energy Transfer Partners Talks About DAPL’s Impacts, and Should the Christchurch Shooting Video Have Been Censored?
On this episode of Plain Talk, Vicki Granado from Energy Transfer Partners (the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline) talks about that projects impacts on North Dakota’s economy, taxes, as well as its impact on national politics. Also, in recent days there has been an effort by the tech industry and governments around the globe…
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez Says Something Pretty Stupid About the Dakota Access Pipeline
Yesterday the CEO of Wells Fargo appeared before a House committee where he was grilled by progressive media darling Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Her questioning, both juvenile and vapid, was an illustration of the left’s tactics in 2019. After demanding to know why Wells Fargo was “financing the caging of children” (no, really) she went on…
Minnesota’s Taxpayers Paid $10,000 for This Awful Painting Depicting the #NoDAPL Protests
In 2018, the Minnesota Arts Board gave artist Jim Denomie a $10,000 grant to “create a series of large paintings in response to Standing Rock and other contemporary events from a Native American perspective.” Here’s what Mr. Denomie produced (click for a larger view): I’ll admit that it’s…interesting. In the same morbid way that a car wreck…
This screenshot from YouTube shows so-called "valve turner" activists vandalizing an Enbridge facility in Minnesota YouTube
We Have to Hold the Groups Behind Valve Turners Criminally Responsible for Pipeline Tampering Before They End up Killing Someone
Yesterday a group of political extremists broke into an Enbridge pipeline facility in Minnesota and attempted to turn off two oil pipelines. Specifically the company’s Line 3 and Line 4 pipelines, which have a combined capacity of over half a million barrels of oil per day. The company is in the process of replacing the…
ACLU Calls North Dakota Bill Targeting Meddling With “Critical Infrastructure” Unconstitutional
Back in 2016, during the heights of the #NoDAPL protests against the Dakota Access Pipelines, a group of left wing activists calling themselves “valve turners” broke into pipeline facilities and, well, turned some valves. One of the valves turned was in North Dakota, along TransCanda’s Keystone line. This was a spectacularly stupid thing to do.…
Doing Bad Things to the Environment in the Name of Environmentalism
Certain very large, very noisy factions of the American left have taken to opposing the construction of pipeline infrastructure vigorously. I’m not just talking about political and legal obstruction. Roadblocking a pipeline by gumming up the regulatory process, or seemingly endless litigation, is one thing. But often these projects are opposed with violence and criminal…
Study: #NoDAPL Activism Cost Backers of the Dakota Access Pipeline Billions
According to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder’s First Peoples Investment Engagement Program, the activism against the Dakota Access Pipeline cost that project’s backers billions of dollars. The headline to an article about the study posted on the UC website states the #NoDAPL movement “cost companies at least $7.5 billion,” with that figure being…