Dakota Beacon

In a recent editorial, The Wall Street Journal calls 2011 the ‘year of school choice.’ Parents and the legislators who represent them, particularly in inner-city schools, are tired of waiting for the promised effects of ‘educational reform’ on the public schools their children attend…. Despite progress in many places, New York City children, many of them African-American, may not be able to return to charters or start in them anew in the fall due to a lawsuit instituted against the NYC’s Department of Education by what would seem to be a tragically ironic twosome: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

Here is a case where political/ideological dedication to the public-school monopoly is stronger than loyalty to the very people which the NAACP is pledged to help.

To a hard-core relativistic leftist, there is no Truth, only “truths.”  And a person’s “truth” is just his own perspective.  It thus possesses no special status.  This failure to recognize transcendent Truth – that great author of morality – causes the leftist to become his own source of right and wrong.  His desires then take on the character of Truth in his own mind, and, consequently, whatever contradicts them takes on the character of a lie.  This is what enables a leftist to condemn those who speak the Truth as liars.  They have contradicted the only god the leftist knows – himself.

The idea that the activity caused by damage can help the economy grow is a foolish misunderstanding of basic economics.

This level of economic illiteracy is no surprise as it is pervasive within all levels of government.  North Dakota's policies of economic development over the last decade have also defied the economics explained by the Broken Window Fallacy. 

Here is Bernanke’s problem: As of June 30, the Fed’s ‘Quantitative Easing Two’ program ended … If nothing else changes, the removal of $80 billion of demand for government debt means lower prices for bonds and consequently higher interest rates…. There are only two ways to avert a painful rise in interest rates in the post-QE2 environment. One would be ... to agree on spending $80 billion less per month. Think: ‘snowball in hell.’ The other option would be if other buyers lined up to replace the Fed. But who could take up so much slack? The Chinese, Russians, and others are already reducing their purchases of U.S. debt, and the Europeans are engulfed in their own sovereign debt crises.

MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky recently denounced Hugo Chavez, accusing the Venezuelan strongman of making an “assault” on his nation’s democracy and of cruelty with respect to a female judge he imprisoned for issuing an unwelcome ruling.  The criticism made headlines, as the “renowned scholar” had long given aid and comfort to Ego-and-Mouth Chavez.  In fact, when the leader denounced President Bush in an infamous 2006 U.N. address, it was Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance that he waved and used as a prop.  And Chomsky often praises Venezuela’s socialist revolution, most recently saying, “It's hard to judge how successful they [the Venezuelan socialists] are, but if they are successful they would be seeds of a better world.”

The final maneuver, which was designed to provide cover for waffling senators by providing anonymity and preventing a vote on the bill itself, was the culmination of three and a half weeks of maneuvers, deceptions, delays, and a final rush orchestrated by Olafson, apparently in collusion with the Senate Republican leadership.

It takes vigilance to maintain freedom as it was handed to us by the Founding Fathers after the Constitutional Convention.

And vigilance requires a vigilante-a Lone Ranger- until others begin to be emboldened to follow.  He lost friends from the ranks of the Senate and has lived with criticism and isolation.  But he knows the cause is worth it.

Nobody should be forced to pay for anything that benefits other people but not himself. This is axiomatic. Being compelled to support other people is surely "involuntary servitude." If taxation can be justified at all, it must be for the common good, not for the advantage of some at the expense of others.

Otherwise, government becomes an instrument of depredation and extortion - as indeed it now is. People like me can use it to rob people like you, and vice versa. Modern democracy serves organized greed.

"We don't necessarily need to change what we say-we talk about being conservative in terms of limiting government, promoting growth for the economy, and following the Constitutional guidelines set by the Founders.  We just need to get a lot better at doing what we say." 

As a one-term senator, Barack Obama voted against raising the debt limit. In his March 20, 2006, floor speech he said, “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies....Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’...America deserves better.” That’s when Bush was president.

At The News Of The World, every single employee is clearing out his desk. But, at the Atlantic Public Schools, at the DEATFBI, life goes on. A curious contrast. The striking feature of Big Government, from Athens to Sacramento, is its imperviousness to any kind of accountability – legal, fiscal, electoral, popular. A media mogul, a bank chairman, an oil executive, a corporate-jet depreciation-claimant are easily demonizable: As President Obama cautioned CEOs a couple of years back, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

More fool us. Our pitchforks are misdirected.       

The position of the NCAA is ridiculous, It’s stupid, Let’s play turnabout with Al Carlson, GF became a poster child for successful disaster recovery, Grahams Island State Park, Omdahl is nearly apocalyptic, a certain absurdity, first woman superintendent, 2,000 semi-truck trips, The flood could not drown this fund, something hadn’t gone well, What is the irony?, MORE MINOT:, DAKTOIDS

The national news media found Nodaks hard to fathom, ND’s six largest cities experienced major flooding or worse, uncontrolled overflow could be catastrophic, manage the level of Devils Lake now, The beasts are calmly waiting out the flood, The People of ND vs. the Usual Suspects, Kingsbury argued that property taxes should be abolished, underground cables act as lightning rods, book learning in the ND Legislature?, Be careful about retiring in Minnesota, “Stupid is as stupid does”, an Upper-Midwestern German-Russian guide to emotions, I know I’m a talk show host, spectacular crashes in the middle of the night

The tendency by Obama began literally at the very start of his presidency. In quoting what seemed to be an amalgam of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, our new president excluded 'life' among the inalienables, as well as the 'Creator' that endows that right to life. It was quite a statement for his first presidential statement. What to make of all of this? It’s hard to say, but it’s surely no accident.”

Another recent statement by the president, in which he addressed the inalienable rights put forward in the Declaration of Independence without acknowledging that all men are endowed by their “Creator” with these rights. With Obama’s statements, are we witnessing larger symptoms of a progressive push to reshape and redefine the Declaration’s inalienable rights and, more fundamentally, their very source? Are we observing an attempt to remake these rights in the progressives’ own image, with the Creator out of the process?

Big Government on America’s unprecedented money-no-object scale will always be profoundly wasteful (as on that Williamsburg flight), stupid (as at the TSA) and arbitrary (as in those waivers). But it’s not republican in any sense the Founders would recognize. If (like Obama) you’re a lifetime member of the government class, you can survive it. For the rest, it ought to be a source of shame to today’s Americans that this will be the first generation in US history to bequeath its children the certainty of poorer, meaner lives – if not a broader decay into a fetid swamp divided between a well-connected Latin-American-style elite enjoying their waivers and a vast downwardly mobile morass. On Independence Day 2011, debt-ridden America is now dependent, not on far-off kings but on global bond and currency markets, which fulfill the same role the cliff edge does in a Wile E Coyote cartoon. At some point, Wile looks down and realizes he’s outrun solid ground. You know what happens next.

Lamenting that ‘the English have often forgotten the cross on their flag,’ Chesterton hoped that ‘the crossless flag’ of the United States ‘may yet become a symbol of something; by whose stars we are illumined, and by whose stripes we are healed.’

Americans, ever earnest about what "history" says, can't bear to believe that some of their "great" presidents have been evil men. So it was probably inevitable that the aging historian-courtier Arthur Schlesinger Jr. should observe the end of the twentieth century by naming Franklin D. Roosevelt "Person of the Century."

 Like all those whose lips are still attached to FDR's backside, Professor Schlesinger neglects to mention that FDR's own lips were attached to Joe Stalin's backside. In a near-miracle of distortion, he even manages to give the totally false impression that Roosevelt had something against Stalin.

From the start, Americans have been divided between the visions and values of Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. That intellectual and political debate continues undiminished today. In fact, during a recent radio interview, the host asked me out of the blue, ‘Whose side are you on, Hamilton’s or Jefferson’s?’” There is no definitive, indisputable interpretation of Hamilton and Jefferson here are a few generalities.

We can’t let our spend-till-we-drop Congress and Executive get away with this.  We can’t let them tell us we need to facilitate more spending “for our military and Social Security and Medicare recipients”.  It doesn’t fly.  We’re not children. This cynical shell game is over. Americans are ready to take our country back from the wastrels and bureaucrats we were told we couldn’t live without.  It’s time to just say no – no to more spending and no to raising the debt ceiling to accommodate it. And we must get away from fiat currency.  We need to return to money that is based on reality.

I speak from experience. My first bout with skin cancer culminated with surgery in 1977. I wish I knew then what I know now. I wish my physicians knew then what they know now.

Spring foreshadows summer days in the sun. Now is a good time to recount my own experiences with skin cancer as words of encouragement.

Experience is a great teacher and understanding skin cancer makes prevention a whole lot easier.

It’s critical to comprehend the Obama administration’s position. It needs to be understood. It represents not merely a policy or partisan divide but an ideological chasm over the very function of government and balance of powers.

The third state to vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood, following measures by legislatures in Indiana and Kansas, where the governors are Republicans and supportive, considered with the Obama administration’s reaction, reflect “the bitter fruits of a much longer march, pre-dating Planned Parenthood, to centralize power and control in a single government based in Washington, along with a corresponding removal of authority from states and localities. This is a debate as old as the republic itself.”

Some believe that the recent Brown Shirt tactics of the public employee unions in Wisconsin and the unfair labor practice charges against Boeing for daring to open a plant in a Right-to-Work state are the last desperate gasp of a dying union movement. Others believe that these tactics are manifestations of union boldness encouraged by a White House under the thumb of labor bosses. Although both propositions hold some truth, both miss a more important point: Violence and coercion are at the heart of the union movement.

That’s not how the President put it, of course. But then the delightful appeal of an Obama speech is the ever wider gulf between Speechworld and Reality. So in this instance he framed our retreat from the Hindu Kush as an excellent opportunity to stop wasting money overseas and start wasting even more in Washington.

In Realworld, political speeches would be about closing down unnecessary federal bureaucracies, dramatically downsizing or merging others, and ending makework projects and mission creep. The culture of excess that distinguishes the hyperpower at twilight would be reviled at every turn. But instead the “highly persuasive” orator declares that there’s nothing to worry about that even more government can’t cure. In Speechworld, “no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach”. In Realworld, that’s mainly because we’re going downhill. And the horizon is a cliff edge.

Minot’s June flooding was the worst in its history, “We’re no longer able to save the city.”stoic, trusting behavior, For many this was suspicion, This is an unnecessary outcome confirmed,“Hidden due to low comment rating", It’s time to reframe the argument, “The point is, when is enough enough?”, dysfunctional nature of the state university system, UND’s and NDSU’s new spirit of cooperation, Hoeven’s message: less regulation, less tax, more freedom, in ND it’s uniquely upbeat, important problem of lowering the lake, “We’re in a cruel false lull”, what higher honor can a clown get?

Liberals live in theory, ignoring endless disasters and pretending that the world actually operates as they imagine. Unable to stomach human nature’s dark side, ideology shields liberals’ senses and plays to their insatiable need to feel good—about themselves. Wishful-thinking ideology spawns a belief that behavior can be legislated, hatching countless “helping” programs which only intensify human failings.