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Flood control: Where we are, where we’re going

We have reached many completed milestones in the ongoing effort to build the Mouse River Enhanced Flood Control project, as Minot and its partners continue the monumental task of protecting the residents of the Souris River Basin. Last week’s ribbon-cutting marking the substantial completion of Phase 1 of the overall project was certainly worth celebrating. Phase 1 is a crucial component of the overall project, and includes levees, floodwalls, and the Broadway pump station, which is one of the most visible aspects of the project to date. We were honored to have many of our ...

Twitter, the Bidens, and ‘Disinformation’

At the end of April, the Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress that his agency was in the process of starting a “Disinformation Governance Board” to take on disinformation and misinformation in the lead up to the midterm elections. The timing of this announcement on the heels of the brouhaha over Elon Musk’s purchase and privatization of social media giant Twitter may be coincidental, but is nonetheless revealing. While Musk is being painted as some kind of white supremacist troll with bad intentions, his actual statements reflect a ...

Time to go beyond partisanship

Well, we’re at it again. It seems that in the case of Sen. Ray Homberg many are rushing to judgment without knowing the circumstances of his sin. According to former students, Ray Holmberg was an excellent Grand Forks teacher. In addition to teaching, he served the State of North Dakota in the Senate for 44 years. He was no ordinary senator. He took the challenge seriously and made every effort to put together a biennial budget that was fair to all parts of the state. No one powerful He had considerable influence on legislation, but it would be an error to call his ...

Tush warmer to start a robin becca

"This here emergency meeting is called because Little Jimmy thinks he can make our town a spring Mecca for the flocks of robins that come in freezing weather,” Chairperson Ork Dorken announced as he looked over the 11 electors that made up the Community Homeland Committee. The other two people in town refused to participate, but took up shelter in the topless old church basement in case the Ukraine thing got out of hand. It was now well into the spring and the electors were huddled around the wood stove that had been started by Chief Security Officer Garvey Erfald. Old Sievert ...

Grim outlook after conventions

The 2022 election season has kicked off, and the situation for both parties in North Dakota is more fraught than some would like to admit. The Democratic-NPL sputtered out of the gate at the end of March, putting up candidates in only 19 of the 35 districts on the ballot this cycle. The NDGOP convention, which by all accounts was well attended, devolved into a toxic clash between party gatekeepers and a populist uprising from within. The N.D. Republicans have been in power for basically my entire lifetime, and statewide elections have also skewed their way in recent years. With the ...

American producer, not ‘free’ money, can fix inflation

"For the past 15 months of Joe Biden’s tenure as president of the United States, we’ve seen an increase in inflation every month. The rise began before Putin invaded Ukraine and before every other excuse the president has posited. When Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was 1.4 percent. Liberal economists and Obama administration officials including Larry Summers and Jason Furman rang alarm bells over a year ago when the inflation rate was 1.7 percent. Fast-forward to today, the inflation rate has surged to 8.5 percent – the highest level since 1981. “In the latest ...