Dakota Beacon

There is a new greeting for Minnesotans approaching ND on I-94. A billboard says “NORTH DAKOTA” and “OPEN FOR BUSINESS.” The Minnesota Legislature has just passed a new round of tax increases; the ND Legislature has passed a round of tax decreases. The billboard and others to follow are placed by the Greater North Dakota Chamber. A Moorhead City Council member says he considers the message unproductive and confrontational and wants the sign taken down immediately.

A Forum editorial did not avoid partisanship: "Indignant rants about the billboard constitute a shallow, puerile response to Moorhead’s inability to keep up with its neighbor to the west. The culprit is not a billboard. It’s the Legislature (Minnesota), where year after year, session after session, lawmakers and governors adopt laws and policies that are guaranteed to stifle job growth and business investment. They did it again this year.

Two reporters reviewed documents turned over to the Forum by the ND University System at the insistence of the ND Attorney General. The result is an ugly picture of quarrels involving NDUS directors and staff, legislators, university presidents, and a host of Shirvani critics. It’s hard to know where this goes, but it is likely to increase pressure for the resignation of Chancellor Hamid Shirvani and restructuring of the Board of Higher Education.

A business professor at Minot State was named the new associate chancellor for academic affairs for the ND University System. The announcement indicates he has a Ph.D. and MBA from Touro University International in California. Touro is an online college.

An article by Jennifer Johnson in the GF Herald describes scandalous conditions in the office of the dean of the UND College of Nursing. Cronyism and corruption, to be specific. Almost anywhere else, these conditions would lead to quick termination of the individuals involved, but this is the new, politically correct UND, so it has led to foot-dragging. Where is former president Tom Clifford when we need him?

Is western ND becoming an armed camp? From 2005 to 2012 the number of concealed weapon permits in ND increased six times. Permits in the Oil Patch increased at a much greater rate. In Stark County (Dickinson) the number of permits increased nearly 20 times (50 to 930) during the 7-year period.

Minot is still a small city in a rural area -- traffic should be light, right? Tell that to the Montana woman killed this week when her car was crushed between two semi-trucks on Hwy 2 in Minot. Eight vehicles were involved in the accident, three other people were injured including two drivers from Idaho. A few miles away on Hwy 52 near Carpio, a man from Florida impatiently gunned his pickup past a sem-truck and hit the pickup of a man from Idaho head-on. Both men died.

In 2003, UND student Dru Sjodin died after being raped, beaten and stabbed. Alfonso Rodriguez Jr was found guilty and sentenced to death. Ten years after her death and millions of dollars of legal costs later, his appeals continue. His latest team of attorneys allege in a 300-page document that he was mentally disabled and his trial team was ineffective. Prosecutors allege the defense is further stalling the appeal by declining to release information on mental health examinations for Rodriguez.

The Farmers Union is planning a $1 billion plus nitrogen fertilizer plant near Jamestown; the ND Corn Growers are doing the same in Grand Forks. The availability of Bakken natural gas makes both plants feasible. Variations of the idea have occurred to others: smaller $20 million fertilizer plants are being considered as “bolt-ons” to two ND ethanol plants; a company named Boewulf is considering “distributed ammonia technology” in remote areas of the Oil Patch; and two large fertilizer facilities are being considered in Saskatchewan. Most nitrogen fertilizer used in ND is currently imported from overseas.

Would you like to buy a well-built, new 1,300 square foot house for only $50 a square foot? The house has two bedrooms, two baths, living room, kitchen and computer room. The house was built by high school carpentry students in Bismarck. The house is offered at its material cost of $63,500. The winning bidder must move the house to a new home. Many of the carpentry students will work in the oil fields this summer.

“The more chins the merrier!!” -- Forum columnist Meredith Holt said this was just one of a number of nasty comments about her posted by “Facebook trolls.” She said the hurtful comments caught her at a particularly vulnerable time. Meredith’s SheSays columns are devoted to issues faced by overweight people.

Mike Jacobs is the publisher of the GF Herald. So how was he described by the rival Devils Lake Journal? As an “expert in the field of birding.” In addition to his publishing duties, Jacobs has a special interest in birds and writes a column on that subject for the Herald. Jacobs was in Devils Lake to present the 2013 Chautauqua “Bird Talk.”

The obituary of Willard Lloyd Hoglund Jr. of Fargo is ironic. The man known as Fargo’s “original hippie” devoted his life to natural, organic, healthy foods. He died at age 66.

Tollie Schaumberg (106) lived a grand life. She was active in Bismarck art and bridge groups past the age of 100. The downside of such a long life -- Tollie outlived all her relatives: her husband, two sons (one a graduate of West Point; the other the Air Force Academy) and her eight siblings.

For what it’s worth, the ND town of Cavalier is not in Cavalier County. The Pembina County town of Cavalier (1,500) was evacuated because of the risk of a dam failure on the Tongue River. When nobody checked in, the manager of a shelter in Drayton said, “That’s not unusual for North Dakota.” The shelter was prepared for 200 evacuees. She said the evacuees “must have gone to family and friends.” The evacuees returned home today.

DAKTOIDS: Medical centers in northwest ND have been swamped by an itinerant workforce without health insurance. At the Tioga Medical Center, bad debts have grown by a factor of seven in the last five years . . . A Grand Forks business reports that 60 percent of its business used to come from Minnesota, now 80 percent comes from the Bakken . . . Dickinson is inaugurating jet service to Denver and Minneapolis.