Congressman Kelly Armstrong has come under fire this week for his background working and investing in the oil industry. Some say it should disqualify him from serving on a House committee tasked with addressing climate change. “Congratulations to the D.C. media. It took them two months to figure out I’m in the oil industry,” Armstrong…
Nearly Three Years After Standing Rock Protests North Dakota Signs Agreement With Tribal Government to Facilitate Oil Production
Three cheers for Governor Doug Burgum and Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation Chairman Mark Fox who, yesterday, signed a new agreement to share tax revenues from oil activity on tribal lands. It’s a big deal, and noteworthy coming as it does nearly three years after the beginning of the #NoDAPL protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.…
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…
Even at Its Peak Violent Crime in the Bakken Oil Patch Was About the Same as the Surrounding Region
Recently my colleague April Baumgarten produced a very thorough report on crime in the region of the Bakken oil fields during the oil boom years. A lot has been written about that topic. North Dakotans are pretty familiar with the “dark side of the boom” genre of journalism which were endemic to reporters covering the…
Roscoe Streyle: The Oil Industry Is Taxed Enough Already
This guest post was submitted by Minot resident Roscoe Streyle. Do more, pay more, we hear it every day from the Democrats. The only thing they know how to do is attack the Oil and Gas Industry. The question is why? This is an industry that directly and indirectly supports over 70,000 North Dakota jobs,…
Latest Tactic in the Environmental Left’s Drive to Obstruct Human Progress Is to Declare That Plants Have Rights
If plants had rights, would you even be able to mow your lawn? Laugh if you want, but that’s the direction far-left activists like Winona LaDuke want to take us. “Manoomin (wild rice) now has legal rights,” she wrote in a recent column. “At the close of 2018, the White Earth band of Ojibwe recognized…
Plain Talk: People Targeted by “Red Flag” Law Have to Pay to Defend Their Gun Rights, Oil Industry Pays Half of All North Dakota Taxes
Over the weekend I had an interesting Twitter conversation with state Rep. Karla Rose Hanson, the sponsor of so-called “red flag” legislation which would allow law enforcement, or even just friends/family, to initiate a process through which a person’s guns can be seized based claims that they’re a danger to themselves and/or others. During that…
Over the Past Five Years North Dakota’s Oil Industry Has Paid 50 Percent of All Taxes Collected in the State
“During the Bakken development oil extraction and production taxes are more than 44% of all taxes collected by the state,” a study commissioned by the North Dakota Petroleum Council and the Western Dakota Energy Association states. “During the Bakken development oil extraction and production taxes are more than 44% of all taxes collected by the…
State Rep. Pamela Anderson (D-Fargo) looks on as state Senator Merrill Piepkorn speaks at a press event. Via Facebook
Why Can’t North Dakota Democrats Stop Lying About Oil Tax Revenues?
During the 2015 legislative session state lawmakers made two changes to North Dakota’s oil tax code. First, the eliminated an enormous extraction tax exemption which kicked in when oil prices were low, almost cutting the combined oil extraction and production tax in half. Second, the lowered the extraction tax from 6.5 percent to 5 percent.…
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…