SCHMID: LOOKING BACK FROM THE LEFT COAST - JANUARY 10, 2014
Minot police were called to rescue a cat frozen to a rock. Yes, it was cold, really cold. But a Forum editorial said c’mon folks, this is nothing new. The Forum said, sure, it’s cold, but “no low-temperature records have been broken. People know how to deal with what is, in fact, rather routine weather up here.”
“Just know this: Bubba and the boys are coming for you, soon.” -- This was about Bubba and Bohl -- one arriving, one leaving. Herald columnist Virg Foss acknowledges there is a big gap between the current football programs at UND and NDSU. With coach Craig Bohl going to Wyoming and with 24 seniors on its national championship football team, Foss says there could be some uncertainty at NDSU. Conversely, he expects Bubba Schweigert to improve a relatively weak UND program. Bubba is a Zeeland, ND, boy -- his new assistants, offensive coordinator Paul Rudolph (Stanley) and defensive coordinator Eric Schmidt (Mandan), are also natives. Schweigert has announced he will make ND and Minnesota his prime recruiting states.
When departing coach Craig Bohl cleaned out his closets at NDSU, he also cleaned out the coaching staff. He is taking six members of the staff to Wyoming.
The Jamestown Sun had a nice article about the promotion of four executives at Coborn’s Inc. Unfortunately, the article didn’t give any hint as to what Coborn’s does and where it does it. It turns out Coborn’s is a 40-store grocery chain headquartered in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Almost all the stores are in Minnesota, but there is a new Coborn’s store in Jamestown and the company has a number of recently opened Cash Wise discount grocery stores in the Oil Patch. Amy Dalrymple, Forum correspondent in the Oil Patch, profiled a young couple who moved to Watford City from St. Cloud to work in oil country Cash Wise stores.
The Jamestown area is having an unprecedented construction boom. Over $500 million of projects will proceed in 2014, and, if CHS goes forward with its fertilizer plant, total construction activity will reach more than $2 billion.
Jamestown and Devils Lake are communities where airline passenger service is subsidized under the federal Essential Air Service (EAS) program. The government pays more for service to those locations than passengers do. The subsidies are political pork and, like so many federal programs, make little economic sense. The EAS contracts are up for renewal. Jamestown and Devils Lake are both considering SkyWest service to Denver in place of Great Lakes Airlines service to Minneapolis.
Herald opinion page editor Tom Dennis says the Red River Valley is not red. It’s purple reflecting a blending of Red ND and Blue Minnesota. Generalizing, Dennis sees ND as “grounded in principles of lean and limited government,” while Minnesota believes in the “tenets of cultural liberalism.”
The Greenway in Grand Forks is a park along the Red River and an outgrowth of the 1997 flood recovery. The Greenway is used for a wide variety of winter sports. Herald columnist Brad Dokken says the Greenway is about 2,200 acres -- about 2-1/2 times the size of NY’s Central Park.
Columnist Lloyd Omdahl usually proceeds in a logical manner organizing facts to develop an issue. He did so in listing public costs created by the growth of the ND Oil Patch: highways, health care, law enforcement, schools, and many other services. He then concludes that ND’s 11.5 percent oil taxes are reasonable. Then he lurched to an extreme recommendation: “If the oil industry is going to carry its share of the tax load, it should be assessed for all of the extra public costs it is requiring.” These are the costs normally covered by state and local taxes. It is true that during periods of rapid growth tax revenues lag and bridge measures are needed, but to assert that the oil industry should, on top of oil taxes, pay for expansion of the region's entire infrastructure, borders on the absurd.
Norway’s central bank announced that the country has a rainy day fund from their oil industry amounting to $1 million kroner for each resident. Translated into dollars, the fund represents about $167,000 for each of Norway’s five million residents. ND has a long way to catch up -- it’s estimated that by the end of fiscal year 2015, ND’s rainy day fund will represent about $10,000 for each resident.
The federal attorney for ND sees a big increase in heroin use in the state. In western ND, Timothy Purdon attributes heroin use to organized crime -- drug trafficking organizations with connections to Mexican cartels and motorcycle gangs. The FBI has targeted the Fort Berthold Reservation, where 40 people have been charged with dealing heroin and meth. He believes the increased heroin use in Grand Forks and Fargo is “tied to the increase in prescription drug addiction in Minnesota cities.”
Mary Tyler Moore lives here no more. She played the TV Mary Richards, remember the lyrics, “Who can turn the world on with her smile.” The fictional Richards lived in the Minneapolis Riverside Plaza highrise featured in the show. Today the highrise towers in the background of shots of the tragic New Year’s Day fire at an apartment building housing a Somali grocery store and adjoining a mosque. The Riverside Plaza highrises are now the center of a neighborhood known as “Little Mogadishu.”
Darrell Dorgan is the younger brother of former U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan. Darrell was the director of the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame, once a recipient of federal “earmarks.” He left under confusing circumstances and is now a self-styled journalist and founder of the ND Energy Industry Waste Coalition. In a letter to daily newspapers in the state, he recited a litany of ecological horrors and decimations, which he blames on the oil industry. Here’s a sample of his opinions: “But without adequate protections, the only people who won’t be wearing lead shorts and drinking radioactive coffee in a few years will be those who live out-of-state and get 50 percent of the royalties being generated by the current boom.”
DAKTOIDS: Southeastern ND had 209 highway crashes in December -- not bad for a 15-county area. However, 129 (62%) of the crashes took place on I-94 within the Fargo city limits . . . The ND School of Science (a 2-year school) places 98% of its graduates at an average annual salary of $35,000.
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