Say Anything Blog

Brett Narloch, director of the North Dakota Policy Council, tells me that his group is looking for a full-time investigative journalist to help track down government corruption, government waste and conflicts of interest in North Dakota.

Here are the specs:

- Level of experience does not matter

- Will be paid based on that experience

- Must live in ND but doesn’t really matter where

- Main job will be to snuff out government corruption, expose wasteful spending, and expose conflicts of interest

Call (701)223-8155 if you are interested or email .

I know what you’re thinking. 

Who knew the WNBA was still around?

Update: Show’s over, click here to listen to the archived copy.

You can listen to our weekly podcast live tonight by clicking here.  To call in to the show, call (347) 677-0693.

Here are tonight’s topics, or call in with your own:

The North Dakota Democrat convention:  Who paid for it?  Was hyping the far-left Obama in a red state a good idea in the long run?

Oil in North Dakota: Is Byron Dorgan an oil hypocrite?

Abortion culture: Is it moral to customize our children as though they were accessories?

Earmarks: Good or bad?  What do they mean for North Dakota?

Scott Hennen going statewide: What does this mean for Joel Heitkamp and Ed Schultz’s careers?

Again, you can listen live by clicking here.  There will also be a chat room available at that link which I’ll be monitoring during the show if you’d like to discuss with other listeners or ask questions.  Before you come into the chat room, be sure to register first so that not everyone in the room is named “Guest.”

If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast feed, use the links below.

That’s the question being asked by Sarah Kincaid in today’s Bismarck Tribune, and it’s a good one to debate.

On one hand, earmarks do serve an number of legitimate and necessary functions of government.  Certainly most of us can agree that an earmark for things such as infrastructure, or even certain types of medical or technological research, are perfectly acceptable.  And in terms of overall government spending, all earmarks from any given year put together are but a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amounts of wasteful entitlement spending we do.

But the problem with earmarks is that the process is so convoluted, so opaque and fraught with quid pro quo corruption, that the bad earmarks routinely outweigh the good ones and often are approved not based on the merits of the spending itself but rather because it is attached to a high-priority bit of legislation that has to pass.

In North Dakota, earmarks are a particularly contentious issue as the state’s national congressional delegation - Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan along with Rep. Earl Pomeroy - pretty much get themselves elected every single year based on almost nothing other than their ability to bring home lots and lots of earmarks.  They are liberal Democrats representing a red state that has voted Republican for President since time out of mind, so their ability to bring home the bacon is essential.  It is undoubtedly why Dorgan says this in the Tribune article:

We don’t slip [earmarks] into bills. We send out press releases and we don’t call it an earmark, we call it a success.

Dorgan’s bald-faced lie aside (he and his colleagues weren’t ashamed to slip $4 billion of unnecessary agriculture pork into a must-pass spending bill for the war in Iraq), it’s worth noting that while earmarks may sound great in press releases in the long run they may not be great for the state in general.

After all, all federal money comes with strings attached.  The more our state is dependent on funds from the federal government the more leverage the feds have to manipulate state policies.  Ever wonder why farming has become such a complicated business?  It’s because farmers have become dependent on the federal government, and the government has responded with truckloads of regulations and red tape.

And, once again, there’s the question of corruption.  Certainly Dorgan and his cronies aren’t shy about using earmarks for a bit of mutual back-scratching either.  For instance, Dorgan secured a several million dollar contract for the family of one of his former staffers (and past Democrat Sec. of State candidate) Kristin Hedger.

So, in summary, I think it’s fair to say that not all earmarks are bad.  But the process by which they are approved is as it allows people like Conrad, Dorgan and Pomeroy to exploit the system for political gain.

From the Investor’s Business Daily:

The price of crude hit a record $112 a barrel last week, just about the time the U.S. Geological Survey released its assessment of the oil and gas potential of a region known as the Bakken Formation.

The USGS estimates that the shale formation straddling western North Dakota and Montana contains 3.65 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil.

The oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface. The USGS estimate may be conservative and is based on current technology.

Leigh Price, a USGS scientist, authored a study before his death in 2000 estimating that the entire formation, which extends into Saskatchewan and Manitoba, may hold up to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil, an amount that dwarf’s the 16 billion barrels in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). . . .

In a press release announcing the study results, North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan said:

“The substantial amount of oil that it estimates is in the Bakken Shale should attract significant new investment to this region. This is an exciting time for North Dakota’s oil industry. We’re going to see new growth that will boost our economy and help our country shed its dependence on foreign oil.”

Apparently there aren’t many pristine areas or caribou in North Dakota.

This is a senator who has opposed drilling in a tiny portion of ANWR’s frozen tundra.

There aren’t any caribou in North Dakota, outside of zoos anyway, but there are plenty of pristine areas.  And with a bit of government oversight of the oil industry those areas will remain pristine.

Which is how it would be in ANWR as well, which makes this observer wonder how Dorgan can oppose drilling in Alaska but support drilling in North Dakota.  Are there any really significant differences between the two situations, or is Dorgan just putting party politics ahead of what’s best for the country?

And they were so proud they sent out a press release about it!

BISMARCK - The Democratic-NPL Party has announced that it has filled all candidate seats for the upcoming campaign season.

“This shows tremendous strength,” said party executive director Jamie Selzler. “We’ve been working tirelessly to recruit the best candidates possible to take back the state Capitol. Today, I’m happy to announce that every candidate seat has been filled.”

Oh yes.  It shows tremendous strength. 

Tremendous.

In related news, McDonald’s sold lots of hamburgers today and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Actually if South Dakota would be willing to TAKE Dorgan, Conrad and Pomeroy I’d be willing to do without them. 

This is one confused article.  The eadline says South Dakota.  The first paragraph says North Dakota’s congregational delegation but two other references in the story say Dorgan, Conrad and Pomeroy are representing South Dakota.  (I would say Massachusetts if they really wanted to get accurate.)

I guess this is what passes for news in Louisiana. 

Where was Pilgrim from again? 

Last session Governor John Hoeven presented a budget to the North Dakota legislature that included a spending increase of $382,000,000 for state agencies over and above the spending increases those agencies requested.  The Governor’s increases, combined with the increases demanded by the agencies themselves, totaled a whopping $580,000,000.

Not all of these increases made it through the legislature, but by the end of the session the taxpayers still saw a 24% increase in general fund spending with only a paltry property tax rebate scheme in terms of tax relief.

Now, with tax revenues in the state continuing to soar, Governor Hoeven seems prepared to once again propose massive increases in government spending based on those increased revenues.

North Dakota agencies may use their existing budgets as a starting point for drafting new spending plans for the next two years.

Gov. John Hoeven has presented budget-writing guidelines to state agency directors. In some years, state departments have been required to suggest cuts in current spending.

Hoeven’s instructions this year say agencies should look for budget efficiencies. But they don’t require state administrators to identify cuts.

What Hoeven is doing, essentially, is giving every bureaucrat in the state a blank check.  But the question North Dakotans should be asking is: Can we afford those blank checks?

Sure, tax revenues in the state are high, but will those revenues remain high if we keep expanding the size and expense of government?  And what happens if the resurgent oil industry falters in the state as it has before?  We will be committed to massive increases in spending on state agencies (which is not, I would remind you, one-time spending) with dwindling tax revenues with which to pay for it.

Governor Hoeven gets a lot of credit for the economic success North Dakota has experienced over the last several years, and while we can debate whether or not he deserves that credit (I think it’s more owing to the resurgent oil industry and, more recently, high crop prices than anything Hoeven’s done), if he keeps opposing tax relief for North Dakotans and keeps increasing state spending we aren’t going to remain economically prosperous for long.

We may be able to increase spending for a few more sessions, and keep taxation high to support that spending, but doing so is just building a house of cards that will eventually collapse.

Currently in North Dakota there is a petition going around supporting an initiated measure for the next ballot which would cut individual income taxes by 50% and business taxes by 15%.  “Republican” Governor John Hoeven has already come out against this tax cut.  Some of the state’s newspaper editorial boards (including the Fargo Forum) have come out against it as well, and the reaction from legislators has to this point been fairly lukewarm (to put it mildly).

Even the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce has come out against the measure (mostly because the Chamber probably doesn’t want to see the tax-funded economic development gravy train come to a halt).

But now comes news, via a survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), that the overwhelming of North Dakota small business owners support the tax.

State Income Tax Cuts

Should an initiated measure to cut personal income taxes by 50 percent and corporate income taxes by 15 percent be approved?

Yes: 71%, No: 22%, Undecided: 7%

In North Dakota we spent a lot of time talking about how we can create jobs and keep people in the state.  Well, the people who actually employ people are saying they want a tax cut.  Why not give it to them so that they have more money to expand operations, open new businesses and ultimately create more jobs?

I love it when libs go after eachother.  Read all about it on Goon’s blog.

Apparently trying to fill the gap that Randi Rhoades left on the lunatic fringe of liberal talk radio, Ed Schultz maintains that John McCain is, in fact, a warmonger even after Obama disavowed these comments.

He said as much this morning on CNN’s American Morning.

What’s more, North Dakota Democrats are still inexplicably siding with Schultz.  Down with the ship, I guess.

Internally, though, I’ve got to think that the Democrats are ticked at Schultz for allowing their big event (two Presidential candidates visiting North Dakota is no small feat) to devolve into a controversy over a petty, small-minded insult.

When the North Dakota Democrats announced that Barack Obama would be speaking at their state convention, and that they’d be holding the event in the Alerus Center, many (including the snobby elites on the Fargo Forum editorial board) were quick to issue haughty statements about the surging state Democrat party and demoralized Republicans.  But a reader notes that the NDGOP actually had more delegates at its convention than the Democrats did:

I saw in the paper (Forum or Herald, I don’t remember) that the number of delegates for the Dems was 900.  The Republican convention had 1,100.

What happened to all the talk about how the energized Democrats were going to have so many more delegates than the demoralized Republicans?  Good thing the Dems had to use the Alerus for their convention...it’s not like they couldn’t have fit their thousands of delegates in a gym or somethin’…

Indeed.

The millions North Dakota Democrats get from out of state can certainly fund giant, attention-getting spectacles.  But those spectacles are just spectacles without the support of the people.

Ed Schultz called McCain a nasty name. 

Barack Obama initially thanked Schultz for his comments, but when pressured did like he always does and pretended not to be in the room to hear it.

Hillary Clinton lied about a pregnant woman’s death:

Hillary Clinton is honoring an Ohio hospital’s request that she stop retelling the tragic story of an uninsured pregnant woman who died after being denied care, after the hospital referenced in the story disputed the account.

Clinton noticeably dropped the story from her stump speech Saturday in Hillsboro, Ore. Since late February, she had weaved into her speeches the description of an uninsured pizza parlor employee who died after she couldn’t afford $100 to get treatment. . . .

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee acknowledged that the campaign had tried but hadn’t been able to “fully vet” the story before she began repeating it on the campaign trail. Clinton said she learned of the woman from a deputy sheriff whose home she visited while campaigning in Ohio. She told the story as recently as late Friday, at a rally in Grand Forks, N.D.

All of this brought to North Dakota by a political organization which gets 80% of its funding from people who don’t live in North Dakota, and likely haven’t ever even visited the state.

The Democrats may have drawn a crowd in Grand Forks this weekend, but then car wrecks draw crowds too.

A comment from a SAB reader:

When Ghallagher mocked Obama’s middle name, John McCain went in front of the cameras and rebuked him for his comments.

When Schultz called McCain a “war-monger”, Obama publicly thanked him and then had a surrogate issue a flimsy, slap-on-the-wrist statement.

Character matters.

Indeed it does, and I think both Obama and his supporters have a rude awakening coming along those very lines.

Classy, especially given McCain’s earlier condemnation of one of his own people who referred to Barack Obama as “Hussein” during an introduction at a similar event:

“It’s a free country and we have freedom of speech in America and Mr. Schultz is entitled to his views. I would hope that in keeping with his commitment that … Sen. Obama would condemn such language since it was part of his campaign,” Mr. McCain told reporters in Prescott, Ariz. “That kind of thing I don’t think is necessary at all in this campaign. I’ve made very clear how I feel about war and my experiences with it.”

[...]

In February, Mr. McCain was introduced at a rally by conservative talk show host Bill Cunningham, who harshly attacked Mr. Obama and repeatedly used his middle name, “Hussein.” Mr. McCain immediately apologized and condemned Cunningham’s remarks.

McCain criticized Cunningham.  Obama thanked Schultz.

Just more evidence of Obama’s character problems.