Dakota Beacon

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This week the North Dakota Insurance Department will start holding public hearings regarding the establishment of the "healthcare exchanges" as dictated by ObamaCare.  The first hearing is in Bismarck this Wednesday, you can register for it by clicking here.  It will be very helpful if large numbers of the public show up, it is to be held.  Here is the full schedule.

From the Bismarck Tribune:

Hamm said he's hoping the meetings help legislators tailor the exchange to North Dakota's needs, should they chose to run it. They also fulfill an important requirement that will allow the state to qualify for much larger grants should North Dakota create its own exchange.

"We're continuing to jump through all the hoops so we can qualify for all the grants," he said.

Bismarck's meeting for consumers and business owners will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Bismarck State College's National Energy Center for Excellence Building in room 304. Participants are being asked to register at www.nd.gov/ndins/consumer/reform/stakeholders/register so there will be enough chairs for everyone. 

One might wonder why so much effort is being made to "jump through all the hoops to get all the grants" when other states are already returning their grants.

Earlier this month, the State of Kansas returned its $31.5 million in federal grant money, following Oklahoma's lead:

Kansas became on Tuesday the second U.S. state to return a large federal grant meant to help it create a prototype health insurance exchange as part of the Obama administration's healthcare overhaul.

Kansas's move brings the total amount of the returned exchange-related federal grants to almost $90 million as Republican governors seek to block implementation of the healthcare law supported largely by Democratic lawmakers.

In April, Oklahoma returned its $54.6 million early innovator grant, the largest of the batch of seven issued in total. Kansas followed suit on Tuesday after months of internal wrangling between Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger and the conservative governor and legislature.

"Every state should be preparing for fewer federal resources, not more," Governor Brownback said in a statement. "To deal with that reality, Kansas needs to maintain maximum flexibility. That requires freeing Kansas from the strings attached to the Early Innovator Grant."

While the legislature voted against constitutionally protecting North Dakotans from the federal overreach that is ObamaCare, it would simply be foolish to allow yet another segment of state government to be dictated by the federal government.  

Key provisions have repeatedly been struck down by various federal courts , final say on the constitutionality of the law has yet to be determined.

Earlier this month N.D.'s Insurance Commission, Adam Hamm, told the legislative interim committee on healthcare reform that the state should let the federal government set up the healthcare exchange, then assume responsibility for it later.

Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm told an interim legislative committee that the federal government would allow states to later assume control of the exchanges, online marketplaces intended to make it easier for consumers to shop for coverage.

That new flexibility, granted under federal rule changes announced late last month, provides an option as states grapple with daunting challenges to set up the exchanges by 2014 but must be certified by the beginning of 2013, Hamm said.

The newly available option for the state to later assume control of an exchange prompted Hamm to rethink his earlier position that North Dakota should move at the onset to create and operate its own health insurance exchange.

"The feds would take all the risk," Hamm told members of the Legislature's Health Care Reform Review Committee, meeting in Fargo.

Hamm, an outspoken critic of federal health reform, called the flexibility for states to first step aside and let the federal government set up the exchanges with the option of later assuming responsibility a "bombshell."

These healthcare exchanges are unfunded mandates waiting to happen.  The money is there now, but there is no guarantee it will be there later.

Instead of "jumping through all the hoops to get federal grant money" the State of North Dakota should be looking to limit its exposure to the mess that is being created.

The legislature had that chance and declined, perhaps they can try again in the special session this November. 

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A few weeks ago in a post titled, “Education Dep’t Tells Kids: All You Need Is Global Warmism, So Give Peace a Chance” (originally ran as “Education Department indoctrinates kids in global warming myths” in American Thinker), I noted that government ideologues are pushing climate change falsehoods on schoolchildren in order to spread the doctrine of the Church of Global Warming. To at least one person, the post’s title and message were not enough to identify me as a disbeliever of Church doctrine. I received the following email from one Sven Lilienström of Germany.

Dear Mr. Rogér,

We have read your article “Education Department indoctrinates kids in global warming myths.” with interest.

The CLIMATE VOTE PROJECT (http://www.climatevoteproject.org/) wants to challenge worldwide governments at the UN Climate Conference in Durban from 28 Nov. to 9 Dec. 2011 to conclude a comprehensive, legally binding climate protection agreement for the time after 2012 and to present the participating governments with our demand personally, especially the U.S. and China and India. It is hoped that 10 million Facebook user or more will add weight and coherence to this demand. Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif from Germany named our first Official Climate Ambassador. Our global media activities will start at the middle of August 2011.

It would be great if you could write about our campaign—also before the official start.

With best regards,
Sven Lilienström

My blasting of the Education Department’s indoctrination effort was lost on Lilienström. In the previous post, I had observed that:

Kids were treated to a brain-liquefying sermon which claimed that “peace” can be achieved by “keeping the water blue for all the fish,” by “giving shoes to someone who needs them,” by “wearing different clothes,” by “keeping the streets clean,” and through “everyone having a home.”

English probably being a second Language for Sven Lilienström could play a part in his mistaking a mocking of global warming alarmism for promotion of that alarmism. And indeed, the Climate Vote Project unabashedly promotes global warming hysteria. From the organization’s website:

The purpose of the CLIMATE VOTE PROJECT is to challenge worldwide governments at the UN Climate Conference (COP 17 – CMP 7) in Durban from 28 Nov. to 9 Dec. 2011 in order to set the course for the conclusion of a comprehensive, legally binding climate protection agreement for the time after 2012. This request should be submitted personally on November 29, 2011 to the government leaders who are participating in Durban, in particular, the USA and China. It is hoped that 10 million Facebook user will add weight and coherence to this demand. The CLIMATE VOTE PROJECT demands, above all, the stringent implementation of the following points in this successor agreement:

1. To ensure that global warming stays well below 2 degrees Celsius, the industrialised nations must commit themselves to far more drastic reductions in emissions than in the first Kyoto period.

2. This time the new agreement must include the United States of America, which signed the first Kyoto Protocol but did not ratify it.

3. To encourage India and China to take part with appropriate targets for Kyoto Phase Two, the industrialised nations need to achieve demonstrable progress in the absolute reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions.

After reading this bundle of absurdity, I sent Lilienström a tame but pointed email.

Dear Mr. Lilienström,

Thank you for your email. I wonder if you could answer a few questions for me before I decide how to respond to your request for promotion of your project.

1. Do you believe that human activity is creating “global warming?”
2. If you do, what evidence do you cite? (Not opinions, evidence)
3. What do you believe humans can do to stop Earth’s atmosphere from going through temperature cycles?
4. What evidence do you have to support your answer to question number 3?
5. Do you believe that developing nations should stop industrial development unless said development can be undertaken with no increase in carbon emissions?
6. If your answer to number 5 is “No,” then are your saying that only technologically advanced nations should stop industrial development unless said development can be undertaken with no increase in carbon emissions?
7. If your answer to number 6 is “Yes,” then do you acknowledge that you are advocating global wealth redistribution to “solve” “global warming?”
8. How do you account for the fact that there has been no measurable increase in the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere for the last 15 years, a time throughout which CO2 has steadily risen?
9. How do you account for the fact that proxy records indicate naturally-caused temperature cycles over the last 600,000 years, and that the CO2 increases have lagged behind temperature increases?
10. Do you actually believe that nations can be legally bound to act against “global warming?”

I would love to “promote” your project. Please, would you take just a few minutes to provide answers to my questions before I determine my approach.

Sincerely,
Chuck Rogér

I have now granted Sven Lilienström’s request that I “write about [his organization’s] campaign.” Unfortunately, no reply to my email from anyone at the Climate Vote Project has been forthcoming. Therefore, I was only able to present my side of the picture.

I report. You decide.

Unlike many of my comrades in the punditry game, I don’t do a lot of TV. But I’m currently promoting my latest doom-mongering bestseller so I’m spending more time than usual on the telly circuit. This week I was on the BBC’s current affairs flagship “Newsnight”. My moment in the spotlight followed a report on the recent riots in English cities, in the course of which an undercover reporter interviewed various rioters from Manchester who’d had a grand old time setting their city ablaze and expressed no remorse over it.  There then followed a studio discussion, along the usual lines. The host introduced a security guard who’d fought for Queen and country in Afghanistan and Bosnia and asked whether he sympathized with his neighbors. He did. When you live in an “impoverished society”, he said, “people do what they have to do to survive.”

When we right-wing madmen make our twice-a-decade appearance on mainstream TV, we’re invariably struck by how narrow are the bounds of acceptable discourse in polite society. But in this instance I was even more impressed by how liberal pieties triumph even over the supposed advantages of the medium. Television, we’re told, favors strong images – Nixon sweaty and unshaven, Kennedy groomed and glamorous, etc. But, in this instance, the security guard’s analysis, shared by three-quarters of the panel, was entirely at odds with the visual evidence: There was no “impoverished society”. The preceding film had shown a neat subdivision of pleasant red-brick maisonettes set in relatively landscaped grounds. There was grass, and it looked maintained. Granted, it was not as bucolic as my beloved New Hampshire, but, compared to the brutalized concrete bunkers in which the French and the Swedes entomb their seething Muslim populations, it was nothing to riot over. Nonetheless, someone explained that these riotous Mancunian youth were growing up in “deprivation”, and the rioters themselves seemed disposed to agree. Like they say in West Side Story, “I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived.” We’ve so accepted the correlation that we don’t even notice that they’re no longer deprived, but they are significantly more depraved.

In fact, these feral youth live better than 90 per cent of the population of the planet. They certainly live better than their fellow youths halfway around the world who go to work each day in factories across China and India to make the cool electronic toys young westerners expect to enjoy as their birthright. In Britain, as in America and Europe, the young take it for granted that this agreeable division of responsibilities is as permanent a feature of life as the earth and sky: Rajiv and Suresh in Bangalore make the state-of-the-art gizmo, Kevin and Ron in Birmingham get to play with it. That’s just the way it is. And, because that’s the way it is, Kevin and Ron and the welfare state that attends their every need assume ’twill always be so.

To justify their looting, the looters appealed to the conventional desperation-of-deprivation narrative: They’d “do anything to get more money.”  Anything, that is, except get up in the morning, put on a clean shirt and go off to do a day’s work. That concept is all but unknown to the homes in which these guys were raised. Indeed, “Newsnight” immediately followed the riot discussion with a report on immigration to Britain from Eastern Europe. Any tourist in London quickly accepts that, unless he hails a cab or gets mugged, he will never be served by a native Londoner: Polish baristas, Balkan waitresses, but, until the mob shows up to torch his hotel, not a lot of Cockneys.  A genial Member of Parliament argued that the real issue underlying the riots is “education and jobs”, but large numbers of employers seem to have concluded that, if you’ve got a job to offer, the best person to give it to is someone with the least exposure to a British education.

The rioters, meanwhile, have a crude understanding of how the system works. The proprietor of a Bang & Olufsen franchise revealed that the looters had expressed mystification as to why he objected to them stealing his goods. After all, he was insured, wasn’t he? So the insurance would pay for his stolen TVs and DVD players, wouldn’t it? The notion that, ultimately, someone has to pay for the insurance seemed to elude them, in the same way it seems to elude our elites that ultimately someone has to pay for Britain’s system of “National Insurance” - or what Canada calls “Social Insurance” and America “Social Security”.

The problem for the western world is that it has incentivized non-productivity on an industrial scale. For large numbers at the lower end of the spectrum (still quaintly referred to by British reporters as “working class”) the ritual of work - of lifetime employment as a normal feature of life – has been all but bred out by multigenerational dependency. At the upper end of the spectrum, too many of us seem to regard an advanced western society as the geopolitical version of a lavishly endowed charitable foundation that funds somnolent programming on NPR. I was talking to a trustiefundie Vermont student the other day who informed me her ambition is to “work for a non-profit”.

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“What kind of ambition is that?” I said, a little bewildered. But she meant it, and so do most of her friends. Doesn’t care particularly what kind of “non-profit” it is: as long as no profits are involved, she’s eager to run up a six-figure college debt for a piece of the non-action. The entire State of Vermont is becoming a non-profit. And so in a certain sense is an America that’s 15 trillion dollars in the hole, and still cheerfully spending away.

In between the non-profit class and the non-working class, we have diverted too much human capital into a secure and undemanding bureaucracy-for-life: President Obama has further incentivized statism as a career through his education “reforms”, under which anyone who goes into “public service” will have their college loans forgiven after ten years.

Why?

As I point out in my book, in the last six decades the size of America’s state and local government workforce has increased over three times faster than the general population. Yet Obama says it’s still not enough: The bureaucracy needs even more of our manpower. Up north, Canada is currently undergoing a festival of mawkish sub-Princess Di grief-feasting over the death from cancer of the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Jack Layton’s career is most instructive. He came from a family of successful piano manufacturers – in 1887 H A Layton was presented with a prize for tuning by Queen Victoria’s daughter. But by the time Jack came along the family’s private-sector wealth-creation gene had been pretty much tuned out for good: He was a career politician, so is his wife, and his son. They’re giving him a state funeral because being chair of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative is apparently more admirable than being chairman of Layton Bros Pianos Ltd.

Again: Why?

The piano manufacturer pays for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, not the other way round. The private sector pays for the Vermont non-profits and the Manchester rioters and the entire malign alliance of the statism class and the dependency class currently crushing the western world. America, Britain, Canada and Europe are operating on a defective business model: Not enough of us do not enough productive work for not enough of our lives. The numbers are a symptom, but the real problem, in the excuses for Manchester, in the obsequies in Ottawa, in the ambitions of Vermont, is the waste of human capital.    

© Mark Steyn 2011      

Vice President Joe Biden made the news again this week. Three weeks ago, Biden was in the news because of reports he had denounced Tea Party members as “terrorists,” a claimBiden was in the news because he did not denounce the communist Chinese for their vicious one-child policy, a claim his spokespeople have attempted to deny. his spokespeople have attempted to deny. This week,

Joe Biden has performed an interesting inversion of reality: Tea Party members haven’t killed anyone; China’s one-child policy has generated the deaths of countless millions. Beyond those direct deaths, China grapples with the demographic-cultural nightmare of some 43-million “missing women,” as Chinese families opt to abort baby girls in preference of baby boys.

And sadly, Joe Biden is not the only American source excusing China’s one-child policy. But before considering that other source, consider first what Biden said:

On August 21, Vice President Biden spoke at Sichuan University in Chengdu. He began with his usual smile, cheerfully thanking his “gracious” hosts. He noted that he brought along his daughter-in-law and granddaughter—two women who, if Chinese, would not be permitted to birth more than one child without severe fines or even forced sterilization. But Biden wasn’t going there.

No, the vice president had come to celebrate China; its “proud history,” its “high-tech future,” its “land of abundance,” its “hospitality.” He was flatly “amazed” by China. Reading from prepared remarks, Biden raved about China’s economic growth. Then he turned to questions from the student audience.

The first questioner wanted to know about the U.S. economy—especially our colossal deficit/debt—and there, in that context, Biden managed a remark about China’s one-child policy:

“I was talking to some of your leaders. You share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand—I’m not second-guessing—of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable. So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that’s much less severe than yours.”

Biden’s remark was not exactly a condemnation of China’s one-child policy. Worse, it seemed an endorsement. He said the policy is one “I fully understand,” and which “I’m not second-guessing.” Biden then appeared to say that the policy is not financially/economically sustainable because too few young people will exist to pay the social services of elderly people. If that’s a criticism, it’s based strictly in financial/economic terms, not moral terms.

Biden’s assessment was not exactly a profile in courage. Previous statesmen went to China and spoke boldly against its infamous human-rights abuses. President Reagan spoke at Fudan University in April 1984, where he quoted the inalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence, among much more. President George W. Bush spoke at Tsinghua University in February 2002, where he eloquently defended religious freedom. And Hillary Clinton, a liberal like Joe Biden, denounced China’s one-child policy at a U.N. conference in Beijing in September 1995.

Unfortunately, as I said at the start of this article, Biden’s remark was not the only recent whitewash of China’s one-child policy by an American source. Much less noticed was an Associated Press article titled, “One-child policy a surprising boon for China girls.”

The story credits the perverse policy for supposedly helping Chinese women. The smaller pool of women, the article (amazingly) argues, has opened opportunities for women—that is, for women not aborted. It’s as if the communists created another novel way to eliminate competition.

The article glows: “Such gifted young women are increasingly common in China’s cities and make up the most educated generation of women in Chinese history. Never have so many been in college or graduate school, and never has their ratio to male students been more balanced.”

This “ratio,” the AP celebrates, redounds to all sorts of entertainment and leisure perks for China’s (living) gals. Citing a young woman named “Wang,” the article marvels: “Wang and many of her female classmates grew up with tutors and allowances, after-school classes and laptop computers. Though she is just one generation off the farm, she carries an iPad and a debit card, and shops for the latest fashions online.”

I wish I could say I’m surprised by the AP piece, but I’m not.

I’m also not surprised by Joe Biden’s comments. He has been terrible on what his Church calls “the sanctity and dignity of unborn human life.” (Click here to read my “Joe Biden’s Church Troubles.”)

In both cases, we have two prominent, influential sources serving as unwitting dupes for China’s repressive communist government. The world needs to know that China’s one-child policy is not a “boon,” not something to “fully understand,” but an abomination, especially for women.

— Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include "The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism," and his latest release, "Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century."

The Ugly

The first hints of the answer came in late winter. I was enjoying the last days of cross country skiing at Riverwood Golf Course. I noticed that four steel trail markers had just fallen over. It had been difficult to pound them into the frozen ground when they were installed in the early winter of 2010. I re-pounded them into the soft ground easily. With well over a foot of snow on the ground all winter long, the frost was out of the ground before the daytime highs exceeded 32 degrees.

I was not surprised when the Corps of Engineers announced that outfalls from Garrison dam would approach 65,000 cfs (cubic feet per second). The snow cover in the mountains of Montana begins to melt in late June and seriously in July and August when the highest temperatures occur.

When the Corps announced only days later that 150,000 cfs would be released, I bought into the explanation that around seven inches of rain on the plains of Montana was the reason. But the underlying conditions were to come to me later.

About mid-May it suddenly came to me what the difference was between 2010-11 and prior years. Heavy snow melt in the Mountains was a usual phenomenon. But an average of almost two feet of uniform snow cover on the upper great plains is just not normal. The prairie winds usually re-distribute the snow, leaving vast areas of flat land with little snow cover and the low areas downwind of ridges and other obstacles filled to the brim with wind-blown snow to depths as high as 5 feet to 15 feet. As snow on the upper great plains melted in early spring of 2010-11, however, runoff was minimal. As high daily air temperatures approached 32 degrees, the soils underneath the snow melted the snow from the heat of the earth below and the soils of the upper great plains became uniformly and deeply super-saturated without any significant runoff overland. Normally soils accept around 65% to 95% of rainfall, with the average being about 80%. When the heavy rains fell in Montana and North Dakota, the reverse was probably true; infiltration was likely as little as 20% with 80% of the rainfall running overland. This is why the dams filled quickly, causing the problems we are still dealing with.

The Bad

But it is not quite so simple as the “natural hydrologic causes” outlined above. There were underlying mistakes made by man long before the “natural” snowmelt and rainfall that occurred this spring and summer. The underlying reasons are threefold.

First, recreational interests have taken far greater priority in the Corps Master Manual than they should have. And siltation of the reservoirs behind the dams is significant, as was found during construction of the new Four Bears bridge. This lack of volume must be compensated for in setting the maximum pool levels. For these reasons, maximum pool levels for the dams are too high.

Second, environmental interests have likewise been given too much priority. The nesting of piping plovers and least terns should be a consideration but should not necessarily dictate low flow rates during the spring when they are nesting. When necessary during years of high mountain snowmelt, they will find other sources of gravel to nest on, such as the areas on mines where topsoil has been removed and gravelly soil is exposed.

Third, while shipping downstream of the Missouri dam system has decreased significantly in economic impact to the country, the concern for minimum flows for shipping has  lead to the retention of higher maximum pools so enough water is available for shipping.

The Good

The good news is that it is extremely likely that the master manual will be revised to correct all of man’s mistakes. And the normally relaxed government employees will be “on their toes” for some time to come.

Further, there is no logical reason why homes values in the areas where homes have been flooded should go down. This was a one time disaster that served as a wake up call to the managers of the dams that filled so quickly this year. The dam managers will not repeat the mistakes that exacerbated the natural conditions that were also unusual.

So please do not be too hard on the Corps of Engineers. They employ some of the best hydrologic, hydraulic, and structural engineers on the planet; and the worst political environment possible, with less then competent politicians having been looking over their shoulders for decades. That micromanagement by politicians must end and be replaced with logic and vigilance that is maintained over time.

The real problem will come decades from now when the high dams are all filled up with silt, something the original designers knew would happen eventually, but ignored because it would not happen in their lifetime and because of the pomposity of politicians in believing that nature can be tamed. So a moratorium of all new building of habitable structures within the natural overbank of the Missouri is an additional necessity.


Mr. Bergman was born and raised in Grand Forks, receiving his Civil Engineering degree from UND. He worked as a municipal engineer in four cities (Grand Forks, Bismarck, Yuma, Arizona, and Colorado Springs, Colorado) over a period of almost 20 years. He then worked for a mining company in North Dakota for another 15 years, retiring in 1998. Development and demonstration of Portland-pozzolan cement and optimally durable concrete has been one of his life’s passions. Political activism is another interest and he is a Director of “Citizens for Responsible Government”, an organization devoted to fiscal responsibility in government. He is President of DuraCement, LLC.


© 2011 Lynn A. Bergman

Originally at American Thinker

“Pay discrimination continues to plague women and people of color in the workforce,” claims  Patricia A. Shiu, a member of President Obama’s National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force. There is some difficulty with the claim: an utter absence of data proving that the stated problem is an actual problem. Ms. Shiu has committed a logical error common to ideologues–declaring something true because the ideology dictates that it must be true.

Lower pay plagues women the way in which they are plagued by a slower climb up the corporate ladder due to spending less time climbing in favor of spending more time birthing and caring for youngsters. But any intelligent discussion of genetically-programmed behavior is wasted on gender fairness zealots.

Liberals have decided that alleged pay discrimination must be fixed. And Shiu has a proposal, but not a proposal for a fix, a proposal to “[gather] better data, which will allow us to focus our enforcement resources where they are most needed.” Shiu adds, “We can’t truly solve this problem until we can see it, measure it and put dollar figures on it.”

Oh-oh, did Shiu really say what it appears that she said? Our government needs data to decide how to solve a problem which it believes must exist but which current data suggests doesn’t exist? To better comprehend this technique, imagine one of those glassy-eyed alternative medicine gurus grinning at you with that air of enlightenment, channeling “chi” through his gall bladder meridian, and saying, “I know that what I am telling you is true. Knowing is enough for me. When simply knowing becomes enough for you, then you too will have found enlightenment.”

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis supports Shiu’s plan to generate data that defines a problem which liberals have already declared a problem. Solis proclaims, “Today, almost 50 years after the Equal Pay Act became law, the wage gap has narrowed, but not nearly enough. The president and I are committed to ending pay discrimination once and for all.”

Now we feel the love.

Our Messiah-in-Chief once promised to stop the rise of the oceans. We await the stoppage. Once and for all, naturally-occurring climate phenomena will be forbidden to act naturally against Homo sapiens. With the Labor Department’s promise to eliminate women’s inborn desire to birth and raise children instead of jockeying for the board room, we will also wait with bated breath as Ms. Shiu, Ms. Solis, and Mr. Messiah deliver us from other nefarious natural laws.

Ah, the smell of liberal sanctimoniousness. Smells like victimhood.