Dear Minot Community and the Region-at-Large:

August 6, 2022

Thank you for following along with our series of letters that address the new Trinity Health healthcare campus and medical district. In this second letter, I’d like to share the original vision for our regional care system. As mentioned last time, the Trinity Health Board of Directors challenged the leadership team to build a model for transformative yet sustainable 21st century healthcare. A five-year strategic plan (2009-2014) identified the major goals of this work. For guidance, we looked at who lived in our service area and what kinds of medical services they used. We ...

Would a three-party system be better?

August 6, 2022

Frustrated by the inability of the present 2-party system to function, more folks are talking about the creation of a third party thinking that would break the deadlock in Washington. At the outset, let us admit that the present system was designed by the Founding Fathers to keep anything from happening until a massive consensus developed that would move a proposal through two houses of Congress, the president and the Supreme Court. Alexander Hamilton worried about that when the Constitution was written. In one of his Federalist Papers he noted that while the present system ...

A thing that should not be

July 30, 2022

During the Trump Presidency, the media and his critics made it clear that if he were to follow through on his campaign promise to prosecute and “lock up” his opponent in the 2016 campaign, that it would signal the death knell of democracy and convert us into some kind of “banana republic.” This last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced that possible prosecution of the former president is on the table over his handling of the events of Jan. 6, 2021. This announcement isn’t being met with condemnation. On the contrary the media and political classes are all ...

We are taking advantage of getting old

July 30, 2022

Some negative people think that getting old is something to be feared but there are advantages when you pass the 75-year mark. It’s like a period of “no fault” because no matter how much you screw up all you need to say is “I’m old!” Which is a good thing because as you get older you are inclined to do more foolish things -- like buying a 30-year term insurance policy because it is renewable, sending letters without stamps so when they come back you feel like you’re getting mail, demanding a 25-year warranty for the new blender, or buying a 10-year lease on a spot in the ...

Listen up youngsters: It’s our history

July 23, 2022

Because history repeats itself (nobody was listening the first time), our young people ought to be learning about their roots so they can avoid repeating the chronic mistakes of the past.   With widespread drug abuse, the kids have been seeing and doing exciting things so learning their roots sounds very boring. They don’t know that North Dakota has some exciting history. North Dakota was part of six states before getting its graduation certificate. And when we were finally admitted, it was with a bunch of other states so the country wouldn’t notice North Dakota was being ...

Endless present: president’s performance, ratings tank; July 1-15

July 16, 2022

In the early chaos of the pandemic in March of 2020, travel was effectively shut down in every state nationwide, and in other countries around the world. No one was driving, except for those whose jobs required it. As a result, fuel prices crashed. On March 19, 2020, then President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Energy to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its maximum capacity, by purchasing 77 million barrels of American-made crude oil due to the cratering price of oil. It goes without saying, a great deal has happened since then. The end of June and the July ...