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Save lives by connecting with veterans

The numbers surrounding military and veteran related suicides are troublesome no matter whether in North Dakota or other states. The Department of Veterans Affairs reports that across the country 6,261 veterans took their own lives in 2019 – the most recent data available. The rate of suicide among veterans is almost double the rest of the U.S.  Given the presence of the military in Minot, this issue is surely top of mind and more understood than in most locales.  I and others who work to reverse this tragic trend, believe that the numbers, as tragic as they are, do not ...

Inflation creeps despite drop in gas prices

At the beginning of the summer, experts predicted $6 prices nationally for a gallon of gas as the economy visibly found itself in the grips of inflation. While current prices have thankfully avoided making those predictions true, according to the latest Consumer Price index report, inflation doesn’t appear to be going anywhere but up. The CPI report released Sept. 13 showed that inflation continued to rise in August, hitting 8.3% compared to a year ago. Despite interest rate increases from policymakers at the Federal Reserve to dampen inflation, economists are saying the data ...

Why did elite Dems scuttle their own candidate?

Early in my career at The Minot Daily News, I wrote a column bemoaning the state of North Dakota politics. Between the rancor growing in the ranks of the GOP and the Dem-NPL’s descent into irrelevance due to the toxicity of the national party, the situation seemed bleak. I prescribed a tonic for the moribund North Dakota Democrats, to listen to their constituents and differentiate from party dogma in favor of focusing on the actual concerns and issues of North Dakota voters. Like that was ever going to happen. For being called Democrats, there’s not much that was ...

MSU grateful for support for amphitheater renovation

I n July 2020, I wrote a column in The Minot Daily News about the early stages of our fundraising campaign to renovate Minot State University’s Summer Theatre Amphitheater. At that time we were focused on a renovation costing approximately $1.5 million. Fast forward 26 months with a radically different world that has been disrupted by a global pandemic, major supply chain issues, and historic inflation, and the result is a dramatic escalation in the overall cost of the project. As the renovations are now nearly complete, it is time to extend a sincere word of THANKS to those who ...

Our growing civic deficit

Baltimore newspaperman H.L. Mencken once said that the trouble with fighting for human freedom, was that you often had to fight on the behalf of scoundrels and those less savory or civil. It is hard to stick up for scoundrels, especially today as they are the chief targets of culture warriors. Back in the heyday of the Moral Majority it mostly involved the wives of politicians simply siccing their husbands against the likes of Frank Zappa and Dee Snyder. Looking back on it, it all seems almost in good fun, or at the very least good civics. For the culture warriors of the current ...

Clinton precedents raise questions about FBI

There are very few American political figures more intertwined in Presidential history than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and in the shadow of the January 6th Committee hearings, the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago has brought the whole sorry saga full circle in an infuriatingly ironic way. The longer the affair drags on, the more inexplicable it becomes in its timing, legitimizing the grievances and perceptions that many Americans have against the permanent bureaucracy. It is difficult for myself personally to hear so many full-throated declarations that “no one is above the ...