Last Word

Why so little empathy and compassion within American culture?

February 14th, 2018

By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas; the class which is the ruling material force in society is at the same time the ruling intellectual force.- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Setting aside the 3 to 4 percent of the U.S. population that can be classified as psychopaths (‘snakes in suits’ at the highest levels of government, business and the military), what can we say about an entire society that displays a culturally…

American politics: divided by a common language

February 14th, 2018

The Kremlin’s campaign to help Trump win the White House had a primary goal. That was to bring about an end to America’s economic embargo. (The secondary aim was to shove a finger in the United States’ preexisting social and ideological wounds. This had succeeded well enough.)…But it had backfired…Kremlin officials…had a poor understanding of U.S. institutional politics. They failed to appreciate the separation of powers or the constraints on a president—any president.
–…

Of Beards and women: a Fargo fable

January 17th, 2018

By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

“Kissing a man without a beard is like eating an egg without salt.”
— Dutch proverb, probably written by a man.

“Kissing a man with a beard is like going on a picnic. You don’t mind going through the bush to get there."
— Minnie Pearl, probably channeling her inner man

My first real girlfriend sported a Fu Manchu Mustache. My second let me brush, oil and trim her voluptuous full beard. But I’m already getting ahead of myself.

Long before American…

The Winter Olympics vs. A Nuclear Winter

January 17th, 2018

Minotaur– An ancient Greek monster with the head of a bull and body of a man.
- Encyclopedia Britannica

“Therefore, the tormented spirit that glared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Ahab rushed from his room, was for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being, a ray of living light to be sure, but without an object to color, and therefore a blankness in itself. God help thee old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking…

Basic healthcare is a right, not a privilege

January 17th, 2018

By John Phillips hpr@hpr1.com

In 2010 there were over 1.5 million individuals declaring bankruptcy. Although many courts decline to ask reasons for filing bankruptcies, many legal experts believe that over 60% of bankruptcy are the result of the inability to pay for medical bills in the United States. With such a large portion of bankruptcies being the result of exorbitant hospital bills, it begs the question "Why is the American healthcare system one of the most expensive in the…

One man’s tax break is another man’s betrayal

December 27th, 2017

“Treason – the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one’s country or of assisting its enemies in war.” – Webster’s Dictionary

“(Thomas) Jefferson seems to have had none of (James) Madison’s fear for the tyranny of majority opinion. Let everything come out, and the judgment of the common people will be sound. Over and over again, he writes of the essential ‘goodness and wisdom’ of the common people.”
– Alistair Cooke

The desperate and fearful hatred…

Tax incentives have outlasted their usefulness

December 13th, 2017

Downtown Fargo, Roberts Street - photograph by Sabrina Hornung By Tony Gehrig

tonygehrig@gmail.com

I do not blame any company for seeking incentives. Rather, I blame the government for giving them away. Incentives represent an unfair and unsustainable tax system that affects real people.

Some proponents, mainly those receiving the incentives, are attempting to rebrand incentives as a good thing for everyone. Many even advocate for expanding them even further and for longer durations.

In Mike Allmendinger’s recent letter published in The Forum, and…

Real disasters vs. fake assurances

December 13th, 2017

“…no clean power is without its drawbacks, and every kind of energy source has its pluses and minuses.”
– Henry Petroski, author of "To Engineer is Human"

“For highways (Robert) Moses, America’s greatest builder, dispossessed 250,000 persons—more people than lived in Albany, Chattanooga, Spokane, Tacoma, Duluth, Akron, Baton Rouge, Mobile, Nashville or Sacramento. For his other projects, he dispossessed tens of thousands more; More significant: a disproportionate share of them…

Privatizing air traffic control would cut off our communities

December 6th, 2017

By Matthew S. Lynch
matthew@aviationacrossamerica.com

Agriculture is critical to the economy of North Dakota. Today, about 90% of the state’s land is used for agriculture, with 40 million acres devoted to farming and ranching. Nearly a quarter of the state’s population is employed in the agricultural sector.

To help produce the food that fuels the nation, many farmers depend on aircraft to provide aerial application services, survey land, transport tools, and get to multiple plants and…

Family lawyers misleading public about shared parenting

December 6th, 2017

By Robert Franklin, Esq.
hpr@hpr1.com

The latest information on North Dakota family courts comes from the organization Leading Women for Shared Parenting (LW4SP).

It teaches two important lessons. First, whether children maintain meaningful relationships with both parents, post-divorce is mostly a question of which judge decides the case.

Second, North Dakotans need to take with a huge grain of salt what family lawyers and the State Bar Association of North Dakota (SBAND) say about…