North Dakota Legislature

By Nathan Hansen
Contributing Writer

You have to love living in North Dakota. We got to see all these commercials last fall about how we need to send the Republican candidates to Washington to show them how lawmaking should be done in the greatest state in the nation. North Dakota has a booming economy and low unemployment and our lawmakers will make that a reality for the rest of the nation.

Now that the elections are over, we get to see some of this world-class governing first hand. And man, is it a letdown.

We have that one last kick to the dead horse that is the Fighting Sioux nickname. A legislator that missed 10 days of his 80-day session (and people call the Democrats in Wisconsin irresponsible). And gutting North Dakota’s higher education system when the state has money to spare, all show that we elected nincompoops to our state legislature. Not to mention the third - or is it the fourth - attempt to classify a small clump of stem cells a person.

First off, we have Al Carlson of Fargo sponsoring a bill that requires UND to keep the Fighting Sioux name and logo for its sports teams. After months and months of debate and argument and yelling we finally got over that controversy, until the North Dakota legislature brought it back up again. Don’t they have better things to do in the 80 short days each biennium than trying to piss off the NCAA and mandating what colleges name themselves?

This bill essentially takes the autonomy away from UND for choosing its own nickname and logos for all time and places it in the ND legislature. I would think the Tea Party protesters would have come out of the woodwork protesting such an intrusive government initiative. I realize the Fighting Sioux nickname is popular up here, but things change people. All this does is makes us look like cranky little children having a racist tantrum and in the end, if the Fighting Sioux nickname continues, you will be lucky to see UND playing against anything bigger than a community and technical college.

Next up is GOP majority leader Stenejehm, who decided to skip town for 10 days of the legislative session, then came back and said he couldn’t explain himself for personal and private reasons.

Finally, we found out he went to India at the request of a third-party organization. I don’t even know how you defend this. The legislative session is only 80 days during two years. That is 80 out of 730 days; only a little more than 10 percent of the biennium. You can schedule a trip to India to ogle the girls and smoke from a hookah some other time.

I just love this new Tea Party fiscal responsibility. In terms of the family budget, the new conservatives are cutting the retirement savings in order to keep going out to eat on Friday nights. That is the only way I can describe the cuts to education we are seeing in North Dakota and Wisconsin.

North Dakota’s economy is strong. The two things that make it strong are the oil boom and the state’s universities. Otherwise everyone else in the state is retired or an immigrant. The oil boom won’t last and not everyone in the state is going to be a roughneck, so it’s education that needs to be invested in to keep young people moving, living, learning and working in the state.

Instead, during a boom time economically, the legislature wants to drastically cut funding for higher education. As soon as tuition at NDSU and UND is no longer cheaper than Minnesota (and it is getting closer each year) no one is going to be coming here anymore. The Turf is an amazing bar and grill, but otherwise there really is no good reason to live in a place where there are no hills, the wind chill reaches 40 below and you won’t be staying after you graduate anyway.

Without the college boom we lose all those gooey college jobs that keep the unemployment rate down, and here we go, the economy goes belly up. And remember, we have a surplus still, so why the cuts? I just chock it up to the tea party, Bachmann, Beck crowd that actually believe that there is a conspiracy on our college campuses to violently overthrow the government and create a communist regime.

And the last item on the list in North Dakota’s next attempt to put a personhood bill on the books. At least we aren’t following in South Dakota’s footsteps and trying to ban abortion the other way; by making it self-defense to kill an abortion provider. But we are not many steps behind them.

Some of these bills are just completely ridiculous. One attempt in North Dakota labeled anything that has the genome of homosapiens a person. That means even sperm and eggs without having sex were people and could not be destroyed. I suppose it would make parenting easier; no one believes it makes you go blind or grow hair on your hand anymore. But in the end it shackled women with fewer options and choices and more burdens and left men high and dry because no would consider prosecuting someone for destroying sperm.

The North Dakota Legislature is in session for only 80 days people. Please try to make the most of your time, instead of making me glad I moved back home to Minnesota. Our legislators like Drazkowski may make write some despicable laws, but at least they don’t miss 10 days of work in a row or try to legislate what a university has to have for its mascot.

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