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Convenience isn’t always covered

Picture this: you open an app, place an order, and it then gets delivered to your front door in a short amount of time. It’s becoming more and more common across the world because of its convenience. Many of you, and the people we know, are becoming delivery drivers, joining millions of others in the so-called “gig” economy with apps like Uber Eats, Instacart, and Postmates. Now, picture this: a loved one who delivers for an app is involved in a car accident. Because they were in the middle of a delivery, their insurance may not cover the claims as a result of the accident ...

An historic response to an historic storm

What do you do when you’re confronted with an historic snow storm? You respond in historic fashion. In some ways, the recent storms that dumped roughly 48 inches of snow on Minot felt like some of the great heavyweight battles in history. Ali vs. Frazier. Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant. Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed/Clubber Lang/Ivan Drago. But unlike some of those clashes, we all knew who was going to win the battle of Mother Nature vs. the City of Minot. We knew it would be a knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish. We took some haymakers from an apparently angry Mother Nature, ...

Lt. Governor: The tonsil of state government

The Democratic-NPL party will be honoring the legacies of Governors William Guy, Art Link and George Sinner at a fifth annual raucous party in Bismarck on May 7th. On behalf of former lieutenant governors – at least Wayne Sanstead and me – I am boycotting the event, tired of being treated as the expendable appendix or tonsil of body politic. The government wouldn’t fall but just hobble along without our traditional back-up for the governor. Governors never back-up even though that’s reason the office of lieutenant governor exists. The only time the governor needed a ...

Voters unprepared to amend ND constitution

On April 28, North Dakota will note the 50th anniversary of the defeat of a major rewrite of the state constitution by a vote of 107,643 to 64,073 in 1972. Ninety-eight delegates, chosen on a nonpartisan basis, included 39 businessmen, 26 farmers and 14 lawyers, were divided politically with 56 Republicans, 31 Democrats and 11 independents. It was a diverse group. Because the voters are unfamiliar with state constitutions, they are vulnerable to the major interest groups opposing adoption. And when voters lack understanding they are inclined to vote “No.” They did just that. ...

It’s spring – and that means it’s time to clean up

It’s spring. The snow has melted. It’s windy. And that means it’s time for a spring cleanup for our personal property and our community as a whole. If you’re a homeowner like me, we have a personal responsibility to maintain our own property. After a typical North Dakota winter, we all likely have debris that has blown into our yards. Sure, it’s easy to let the plastic bag or paper that has settled onto our property sit there until the next windy day takes it away and it becomes someone else’s problem. But that’s certainly not the neighborly thing to do, and it ...

How much Democracy do we want?

Here we are 250 years after the Founding Fathers declared that “we the people” were creating a government with the consent of the governed, we are still trying to define who “we the people” are. At first, we the people consisted of white property and asset owners who had a stake in society. After a bit, new forms of wealth occurred and the definition had to be broadened to permit people with different sources of income to vote. Then in the Andrew Jackson era, the flood gates were opened and every white person over the age of 21 was included in the electorate. It was a ...