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Monday, November 22, 2010

SCHMID - LOOKING BACK FROM THE LEFT COAST: NOVEMBER 21, 2010

The chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee will be vacant  -- incumbent Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas lost her re-election.  The Hill political blog reports ND Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, may aim for the vacancy.  This seems counterintuitive, since the Budget Committee position is the nationally more powerful and visible of the two.  Conrad said his constituents thought he would be more valuable on Ag.  They could be right -- but there may be another thought at work, that is, Conrad believes the Ag Committee better positions him for re-election in 2012.

 

The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group advocating fiscal responsibility in government, gave Sen. Conrad their “deficit hawk” award, formally named the Paul E. Tsongas Economic Patriot Award.  The award may surprise some in ND, where Conrad is known for toting home the bacon.

 

Et tu, Brute? (Even you, Brutus?)  ND Senator-elect John Hoeven says he doesn’t support a ban on federal spending earmarks (spending requests that lawmakers put into bills).

 

Why are tribal elections in ND so hotly contested and candidates so numerous?  Part of the answer is a spoils system which allows elected officials to reward relatives and cronies, and punish opponents.  Somewhat over 4,000 people live on the Ft. Berthold Reservation (Three Affiliated Tribes).  The reservation has 750 employees of which over 40 are political appointees.  Tex Hall is the new chairman -- one of his first acts was to fire 42 employees who were political appointees of predecessor Marcus Levings.  Levings says the number of employees who were let go is much greater.

 

McIntosh County is perched on the central South Dakota border -- by some measures, the ND county has the oldest residents in the country.  The county is 98% white and about 82% are Germans from Russia.  Mary Schneider is one.  She stacked hay, milked cows by hand, made lye soap and used a washboard to wash clothes.  That should have worn her out, but it didn’t.  She credits her longevity to “lots of hard work” and will be 106 on November 20.

 

Prosperity continues in both the ag and energy industries in ND, yet small town main streets don’t feel the love.  Towns as large as Jamestown are affected.  The Internet is responsible for some leakage, but larger regional cities also take the business (and the sales tax).  A letter to the Jamestown Sun from Linda Brown gleefully spelled out the benefits of shopping in Fargo.  She concluded, “So let the buffalo roam because why buy stuff we don’t need or want here (Jamestown), when what we need is available in Fargo or Bismarck.”

 

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) lost a handful of churches after it decided to allow individuals in same-gender relationships to serve in the clergy.  Now a church near Fargo has withdrawn because “the ELCA is making too many social statements that don’t have anything to do with the church.”  The ELCA is raising questions about genetically modified seeds referring to them as “the sinful exercise of radically extended human power.”  The Sheldon, ND, congregation sees the ELCA discussion as unwarranted interference with farm management practices.

 

AgWeek reports the average age of farmers in Nelson County (between Grand Forks and Devils Lake) was 61 in 2007 and creeping upwards.  Young "would be" farmers can’t afford to buy them out.  It is likely existing farmers will pick up the land and enlarge their operations.  In the five years preceding 2007, the number of ND farms with more than 5,000 acres rose 20 percent.

 

“In order for one farmer to get bigger, another farmer must get out.” -- Dean Hulse, Fargo environmentalist and land use activist.  Hulse views large farms in a moral context -- he believes large farms and technology achieve “economies of scale” at a social cost, the depopulation of the ND countryside.  He applauds the ELCA for introducing moral considerations into farm policy.

 

The Dakota Marker weighs 78 pounds and goes to the winner of annual football games between NDSU in Fargo and SDSU in Brookings.  NDSU reclaimed the Marker in November -- as the inevitable High Fives take place, few may know the history behind the marker.  After the Dakota Territory was split into two states in 1889, a monument was placed every half mile (720 in total) to mark the boundary.  The quartzite monuments were taller than a man and almost a foot square at the top.  Today few of the monuments are in place, most are buried, stolen or residing on nearby farms.  The Dakota Marker is a smaller replica of the original monuments.

 

The GF Herald said Jerome Beasley (30) did not return phone messages left for him at the jail.  The former UND basketball standout was arrested for failing to pay child support after police  spotted him . . . playing basketball.

 

Williston is a challenger.  At the time of the 2000 census, the city had a population of about 12,500 and was ND’s ninth largest city.  Now, Williston is estimated to have over 15,000; others say that is an undercount, it’s really about 17,000.  In any event, Williston will be in contention with Mandan, W. Fargo and Dickinson to be the fifth largest city in the state.

 

DAKTOIDS: The homeless count is up in Minot, soup kitchens and food pantries are seeing big increases.  The oil boom has reduced available rentals and taken rents to new highs . . .  Another oil boom side effect -- emergency room cases in Dickinson are up 50 percent . . . See that big farm semi-truck hurtlinging toward you with its grinning teenage driver?  Drivers of farm trucks are not required to have commercial driver licenses -- an exemption in federal law for farm products hauled within 150 miles of the home farm.

 

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Comments

Senator Conrad chose to remain on the budget committee because the ag committee is very likely to SLASH THE FARM SUBSIDY PROGRAM to a tenth of its current size, given the inflated prices of commodities. Were he “in on the slashing”, his subsidy-addicted rural base, his “big advantage”, the ability to reward his friends on the dole, would crumble.

Lynn Bergman on November 22, 2010 at 04:45 pm
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