Governor Hoeven: Running to Power and Away From Responsibility

By Charlie Barber
Staff Writer

“Gov. John Hoeven…said that while he supports financial reform, the bill passed out of Congress isn’t tough enough on Wall Street. Hoeven said the bill doesn’t do enough to reduce systemic risk in the system caused by Wall Street firms offering hybrid investment products.” - Bismarck Tribune, 7/16/10

“Hoeven asked for Weiler’s resignation in late March after the second arrest. Hoeven could not be…reached; he was catching a flight back from Washington D.C., where he was attending campaign fundraisers.”
- Bismarck Tribune. 7/15/10

“The most important thing in Hollywood is sincerity, and once you’ve learned to fake that, you’ve got it made.”
- Attrib. to George Burns

There are few things more disgusting than a phony populist, and John Hoeven is providing a textbook example of such a political creature.

Straight from central casting for “cuddly charisma,” Hoeven and his handlers would have us believe that he is cut out to be Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith” who goes to Washington, when his behavior is more like that of the slick Senatorial character in the film, with business interests back home which conflicted with his public duties.

When Hoeven’s opponent, Tracy Potter, pointed out that the Governor had similar conflicts to the dubious Senator of Capra’s opus [Bismarck Tribune, 7/16/10], Hoeven’s campaign manager whined about a “negative attack.”

Potter’s response that Hoeven had done nothing “wrong,” ie. illegal, but that the wrong lay in lack of rules [thanks to a Republican Legislature] covering such conflicts, was a telling indictment of a political culture that Hoeven accepts without question.

Indeed.

Hoeven’s enormous profits from mixing private with public business are, therefore, not illegal in North Dakota, just unethical and dishonest to folks who still watch reruns of movies starring Jimmy Stewart.

The man Hoeven wishes to replace, Senator Byron Dorgan, fought in vain to maintain the tough Glass-Steagall Act, in place in 1999, and his book, “Reckless!” chronicles the Wall Street disasters he predicted would come.

Chances are slim that John Hoeven even understands a man of substance like Senator Dorgan. Given Hoeven’s tendencies to run away from tough issues as Governor for nine years, the chances are nonexistent that he even wants to learn how to walk, as well as talk, like a man and a Senator.

Nowhere is this spinelessness more evident than in the way Hoeven has run from issues conjured up by Representative Dave Weiler [R, District 30 in Bismarck] and the suicide of State Investment Board Director Steve Cochrane.

Hoeven and most leading Republicans want voters to forget that Weiler had already pled guilty to assaulting his wife last year, and that the present acquittal, to which he is entitled by law, involves a second “alleged” instance.

Republican politicians also want voters and media to ignore the fact that Dem/NPL House Minority Leader Merle Boucher approached Republican House Majority Leader, Al Carlson, last year, after Weiler’s guilty plea.  Boucher said that the Dem/NPL Party held their membership to a higher standard than current North Dakota law, and that under his leadership, five or six “bad actors” like Weiler were told that they would not be supported by the Democratic/NPL Party, and should go as quietly as they could.

Al Carlson spurned Merle Boucher’s collegial advice, and his stubbornness has made it unlikely that discretion will be an option in the matter of Dave Weiler.

One large exception to this callousness in Republican ranks is provided by Senate Majority Leader Bob Stenehjem, also from District 30. In the spirit of what Merle Boucher had suggested a year earlier, Stenehjem recommended that Weiler resign for:

“...the well being of the Weiler family…Weiler should still consider resigning if it would mean less stress on Nicole or their children…These family things are touchy on both sides of the issue…Love and hate can be pretty close.  Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between the two. [Bismarck Tribune, 7/15/10]

As I have written before, as a man, short of a life threatening situation, there are no excuses for a man hitting a woman.

I can’t speak for women, of course, but I have benefited from one assault victim’s point of view in Debra Marquart’s “Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere.” 

Bob Stenehjem speaks as if he has read the book. John Hoeven does not.

As bad as his failure to stand up for one of his employees, Hoeven’s lack of meaningful response in the matter of the State Investment Board [SIB] is even more shocking than his months-long reticence in the matter of Dave Weiler.

While his investments in private companies that provide services to the North Dakota Veterans Home are doing well, the savings of thousands of North Dakota public employees, tied up in the SIB, are nowhere to be seen by the public eye.

Maybe the funds are there.  Maybe they are not.

It is Hoeven’s job as Governor and key member of the SIB, to tell us what is going on, but he has not. With dubious constitutional justification, he has left that task to his Lieutenant Governor, Jack Dalrymple, who is equally mum about the nitty gritty concerning Wall Street investments of SIB funds possibly gone south in the 2008 crash.

With all due respect for the pain of Steve Cochrane’s family, the sudden death by his own hand last Spring of such an important official in charge of so many public funds cried out for an immediate, lockdown, “forensic performance audit,” favored by reputable private and public organizations around the United States.

The Grand Forks Herald and Democratic/NPL members of the North Dakota Legislature have called for heeding “local pension tsunami warnings” as the public employee pension fund is estimated to be short between $600 Million and $2 Billion [Minot Daily News, 6/13/10].

Failure by John Hoeven, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, State Rep. Rick Berg, and other governing Republicans up for election this year to get serious about the shortfall guarantees that no such audit will take place. Republican leadership in the Executive and Legislative Branches has blocked all attempts by Dem/NPL leadership and a few responsibly minded Republicans to carry out a “thorough performance audit.” [North Decoder.com, 6/25/10].

It is already too late to believe that all the important documents will see the light of day, even after November, 2010.

Instead we will get something this Summer called an “audit,” but more like a wringing of hands and closing the barn door after the horses have disappeared.

Maybe not even that, just more whitewash and the “mushroom treatment.”

So, where is the money?

Nobody who is unafraid to speak really knows.

Meanwhile, the Governor who would be Senator assures us that, if elected, he would keep his eye on Wall Street.

It would be more courageous if John Hoeven were to investigate losses of public employees’ pension money in the SIB.

Why hasn’t he?

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