SCHMID: LOOKING BACK FROM THE LEFT COAST - AUGUST 26-2013
In recent years ND educators and media smugly reported that the state’s students performed well above the national average. Over the same period I have argued the view is delusional and the state’s students are actually average and dropping. That argument is getting easier. ND students who took the ACT test this year had an average composite score of 20.5 compared to a national average of 20.9. Worse yet, that is an inappropriate comparison, because it compares ND’s largely white students to a national average that includes black students in Mississippi (16.5) and Hispanic students in Arizona (17.4). It is more appropriate to compare ND’s white students (20.9) to the national average for white students (22.2).
ND’s unadjusted composite score of 20.5 places the state 36th in the nation, the same neighborhood as W. Virginia and Alabama. All the states bordering ND rank higher. At some point, ND is going to wake up and say, hey, we got a problem. Former University System Chancellor Hamid Shirvani attempted to say so, that is, before he was run out of town.
Otto Bremer, a German immigrant to Minnesota, founded what today is known as Bremer Financial, an $8 billion St. Paul bank doing business in Minnesota, ND and western Wisconsin. Bremer is 92% owned by the Otto Bremer Foundation. In an interesting cycle, profits from the tri-state bank go to the foundation in the form of dividends, which, in turn, are distributed in the form of charitable grants over the same market area. In 2012, the foundation distributed $36 million of which over 20% went to communities in ND and the Red River Valley. An example is a $100,000 grant to the Great Plains Food Bank in Fargo (associated with Lutheran Social Services) which provides emergency food assistance across ND.
You’ve probably seen articles about members of Service Employees International Union demonstrating outside McDonald’s and other fast-food franchises and demanding that wages be doubled. The Wall Street Journal had this to say: “There’s at least one place you’re unlikely to find the SEIU besieging fast-food restaurants with protesters: North Dakota. The state has thousands of unfilled jobs thanks to the oil boom, and fast-food workers really do earn as much as $15 an hour . . . There’s nothing better for workers at every level of employment than a flourishing economy.”
For years, Clay Jenkinson had a spot on the home page of the online Bismarck Tribune -- his space is now occupied by outdoor columnist Brian Gehring. If you dig, you can still find Clay’s weekly column. He was canoeing this week with a group on the Missouri River in Montana. Speaking of himself during the trip, Clay said, “I was more serious . . . I know why, though I'm not willing to explain it. People from all over the country insisted on my talking about the Bakken oil boom, even though I came out here in part to escape the oppressive never-endingness of that subject in my life.”
Lloyd Omdahl’s weekly columns are usually about politics or government in ND. This week he commented on a national paradox: Most Americans (77 percent) claim to be Christians, but they believe the country’s moral values are declining. Oddly, since they are the majority, they are making that conclusion about themselves. Omdahl said that pollsters found tolerance for a long list of un-biblical behaviors and he noted, “It seems that some other forms of un-Christian behavior such as greed, arrogance, love of money, gluttony and crass materialism, have become so morally acceptable that pollsters don’t even ask about them.”
Earlier, I mentioned how Minnesota tax increases may be pushing business to ND. This week the Wall Street Journal commented on Minnesota’s new gift taxes and its steep estate taxes. The WSJ pointed to a study indicating Minnesota may experience a net revenue loss because wealthy Minnesotans are changing their permanent residences to Florida and Arizona. The WSJ editorial said Gov. Mark Dayton “knows a lot about inheriting wealth but not much about creating it.”
Dylan Dethier is the author of “18 in America: A Young Golfer’s Journey to Find the Essence of the Game.” After graduating from high school in Massachusetts, Dethier toured the nation and played a golf course in each of the lower 48 states. NPR’s Scott Simon asked Dethier about the most dramatic and beautiful hole he played. No, it wasn’t Pebble Beach, it was the 15th hole at Bully Pulpit golf course in Medora, ND. The tee is on the crest of a Badlands hill and Dethier felt he was “on top of the state.”
They both seemed like great guys. Curtis “Gentle Giant” Kjonass (68) was a Glenburn farmer who retired in the Fargo area and joined a club of European sports car owners. Carl Bjugstad (64) lived in the same area and was a skilled long-haul truck driver who drove 2 million accident free miles. The Fargo Forum brought the two men together in a bizarre way -- it used the same picture for both obituaries. The photo was puzzling, was it Curtis or Carl? Later the same day, the Forum resolved the mystery -- it had been Carl’s picture -- they found an equally nice picture for Curtis.
“I was a child of the Depression and the habit pattern of good hard work so familiar to people in this part of the country has always been with me.” -- The late Gen. David C. Jones (92), former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who grew up in Minot. In 1982, he received the state’s Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award.
Broadus (pop 450) is in the southeast corner of Montana, near where the state meets South Dakota and Wyoming, not far from the corner of ND. Broadus briefly made the news this week because it was the site of the crash of a B-1B bomber from Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota. The crew escaped, but kiss goodbye to a plane costing over a quarter of a billion dollars. Broadus is in the Air Force’s Powder River Training Complex.
DAKTOIDS: It’s the 10th birthday of the Hotel Donaldson in Fargo, the state’s first and only luxury boutique hotel. The old hotel was renovated by Karen Stoker (formerly Burgum) . . . Less than a block west of the HoDo you find the new Wurst Bier Hall -- 36 types of beer and plenty of sausage . . . The Bismarck Tribune says the Legislative Council’s request for emails of ND college presidents is a massive fishing expedition, “But sometimes when you go fishing, you catch something” . . . Enbridge’s pipeline system in ND can transport 475,000 barrels of crude oil per day, over half the state’s daily 820,000 barrel production . . . Woo Hoo! Jamestown College is no more -- it has officially become the University of Jamestown.
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