Last Word

​What does the health insurance marketplace look like in North Dakota?

May 17th, 2017

With the recent passage of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) by the U.S. House of Representatives, it is important to have an honest and truthful discussion regarding what the AHCA is and what it is not.

But before we get into that, what does the health insurance marketplace look like in North Dakota?

There are a few different areas in which North Dakotans currently receive their health coverage – an employer, the government (Medicare, Medicaid or the VA) or the individual…

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​The Trump/Sessions “Department of Injustice”

May 17th, 2017

“Whatever the learning or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief respect for him depends on our belief that, set in a judge’s seat, he will strive to judge justly, come of it what may. Could we suppose that he would take bribes, and use his acuteness and legal knowledge to give plausibility to iniquitous decisions, no degree of intellect would win for him our respect. Nothing will win it, short of our tacit conviction, that in all important acts of his life justice is first with…

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​Fracking and the Little Missouri River

April 19th, 2017

The North Dakota State Water Commission has violated state law more than 600 times in recent years by issuing permits for industrial use of water (read: fracking oil wells) from the Little Missouri State Scenic River. Employees there claim they didn’t know they weren’t supposed to do that. I believe them. But that’s no excuse. More on that in a minute. First, a little history lesson.

Let’s travel back in time 42 years. The 1975 North Dakota Legislature passed a bill that…

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​White male privilege vs. American democracy

April 19th, 2017

“Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens" -Justice John Marshall Harlan, 1896

“When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.”

-George Orwell, 1935

“Misogyny – a hatred of women” - -Webster’s Dictionary

“There were three ways for a well-brought up young Southern white woman to go (1903-1976): 1. She could be the actress…offering a sweet, winning smile to the world. In short, going with the wind. 2.…

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​The shame of fearing fear itself

April 12th, 2017

“The American people [must] tear out by the roots the hatred that [has] eaten into their attitudes toward their fellow men, lest ‘we…awaken in the not far distant future to the terrible fact we too have become conquered by the spirit of hatred, cruelty, and racial intolerance which made Hitler what he was.’”

- Senator William Langer (R-ND), March 29,1946

“…this in no degree reduces the number and awfulness of Nazi evils; it reduces the number and awfulness of Nazi evil…

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Should Fargo have another bike co-op?

April 5th, 2017

The answer is yes, of course it should. However, that is the simple answer. There is much more to it than that; and to understand the answer, one must understand why the last one closed.

When the FMCBW -- Fargo Moorhead Community Bicycle Workshop -- first opened it was extraordinarily political -- WAY too political. For a long time it felt like it was a Social Service agency that just happened to also fix bicycles.

Not that there is anything wrong with helping others, but as a bike…

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​Thank you, Richard Nixon and the EPA

April 5th, 2017

A thousand trucks a day. That’s what Billings County Commission Chairman Jim Arthaud bragged to the Dickinson Press one day, a number of years ago, when he was asked how many vehicles would use a new bridge over the Little Missouri River north of Medora.

A lot of water has flowed beneath that proposed bridge since 2012, the last time the public was invited to consider a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. He might lower that estimate by a few hundred today.

As I…

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​James Comey: Trump tracker

March 29th, 2017

“The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary…From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned.” - George Orwell

“I can only live in two different forms: as a mind in the…

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​The Pro-Life Challenge

March 22nd, 2017

“There is one thing, and only one thing, in which it is granted to you to be free in life, all else being beyond your power; that is to recognize and profess the truth.” – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You

This is an open letter to Roxane Salonen and the people protesting outside the women’s clinic, who want to shut down Planned Parenthood, and otherwise identify as “pro-life”: I know you feel very emotional about this. Some people think that most abortion foes…

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New Little Missouri bridge site selected–and no one’s going to be happy

March 22nd, 2017

The engineering firm drafting the Environmental Impact Statement for Billings County’s request to put a new bridge across the Little Missouri River north of Medora has determined the best place to put the bridge is just 17 miles north of Medora, about a third of the way—as the crow flies—between the two current bridges near Medora and Watford City.

Billings County wants to build the bridge “to provide the public with a centrally accessible, safe, efficient, and reliable link between…

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