Dakota Beacon

We don’t need to hear one more word about taxes because given our debt and its service and the enormous cost of this overwhelming government bureaucracy that totters on the withering shoulders of our dwindling productive class, if we took the last dime from every millionaire, the last penny from every kid’s piggy bank, shook the lint out of every pocket of every homeless person and went through the upholstery of your sofa, we could not handle this debt.

So, taxes be damned.  Let’s talk about cuts.  Instead of hearing how Rick Santorum would build up our military, let’s find out what he will cut so as to keep the doors of West Point and Annapolis open, because at this rate they must close soon.

Veterans I’ve met, especially from the draft era (1973 and before), almost without exception remember with nostalgia their days of military service. This I find amusing since many were drafted reluctantly, although a few joined voluntarily and some even stayed in for a career. That speaks volumes in affirming their generally positive experience.

Veterans, especially those serving as youngsters, found the military to be a sort of finishing school as they transitioned from adolescence into adulthood. Many who wished to elude the draft were motivated to enlist in other services to avoid the rigors of Army field duty. Some people were never aware that the draft also populated the other services though not to the extent as with the Army. Either way, the vast majority served honorably much to their credit.

The clinical term is pathological….. Cynthia Feland is no longer the Prevaricating Prosecutor. She has become the Duplicitous Jurist – “The Lying Judge.”

To publically and repeatedly call an attorney, former prosecutor, and now judge a liar seems a very dangerous thing. And according to North Dakota law could be ruinous.

Claims like this are made by either the insane, the stupid, or one who has sufficient command of fact to verify such a contention.

Truth is the only protection against legal liability when one makes such an assertion.

So, who is lying? You decide.

North Dakota Standards for Imposing Lawyer Discipline 6.22, which provides suspension is generally appropriate when a lawyer knows that he or she is violating a court order or rule, and causes injury or potential injury to a client or a party, or causes interference or potential interference with a legal proceeding.

The "progressive" community - news media, politicians, and various moralists at large - is in a lather about "hate crimes," demanding federal legislation to combat them. The trouble is that nobody seems to know exactly what they are.

The concept of hate crimes is too nebulous, too subject to arbitrary application, to be a useful legal category. It's sufficient that murder is already a crime; especially heinous murders can be punished appropriately under existing laws. There is no need to give the state more discretionary power than it already has.

When you query atheists, you realize their insistence on God's non-existence is not based on reason, logic, evidence or science. Most skeptics deny the existence of God because they do not wish God to exist.

Atheism's shaky foundations can be in most cases easily exposed with a few pointed questions. After the pretension to objectivity falls away, what remains is mere personal opinion.

Wishing that God did not exist is everyone's prerogative. But one would hope for more intellectual consistency from those who claim a worldview informed by reason.

To implement or not implement ObamaCare - that is the question facing every state in the nation.  

Frank’s life as a soldier took a dramatic turn on November 2, 1944 in a bomb-run over Germany. He crammed into the tail of a B-17, wedged inside a flak jacket. The target was Merseberg, a major industrial area. He flew amid an air armada of 500 heavy bombers—each carrying eighteen 250-pound ‘general purpose’ bombs—escorted by 900 fighter planes. While the Americans were ready for business, so was the Luftwaffe.

For too long, guys like Frank didn’t tell their story. Frank is now willing to share. There are others like him, and they won’t be around much longer. A decade or two from now, they’ll be nearly extinct…. Men like Frank Kravetz have no regrets, but we’ll regret not pausing to record their history.

I don’t “stand with the 99%”, and certainly not downwind of them. But I’m all for their “occupation” continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life – just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth.

Why do I do it? I sign onto the Bismarck Tribune on-line site to read and to comment on news articles, opinion letters, and Op Ed pieces. This has the sound of serious business, but it is not.

The Sioux, and all other Native North Dakotans, actually deserved a better “fight” from those taking huge pay checks to pretend to be concerned about the education of students who have paid 10% increases in tuition their entire academic careers. To surrender to an inept conglomeration like NCAA is stunningly gutless.

World’s Largest Buffalo, the silver carp, They just don’t have the money, 42 ND counties have won the disaster sweepstake, “I know nothing -- NOTHING!”, Michelle Turnberg was a TV anchor in Fargo, Hettinger, get ready, you’re next, we’re almost overwhelmed, crashes involving trucks, 500-foot statue of Sakakawea, The ash has useful applications, retarded and temporarily insane

Maybe we could all be issued with free diapers. As a casual glance at the headlines suggests, there’s almost nothing you can’t get government to pay for, but that’s no reason not to demand more. At its core, the “Occupy Wall Street” movement (in the political rather than the diaper-filling sense) is a plea for ever more extended adolescence funded at public expense. Don’t knock it. Dozing around listening to drum circles all day is more dangerous than it looks. Last week, several dozen members of “Occupy Las Vegas” occupying land located under the final approach to Runway 19 at McCarran International Airport narrowly missed being hit by a 50lb slab of what’s euphemistically known as “blue ice” that fell from the bathroom of the President’s plane. Perhaps, as a symbol of the new post-self-reliant America of adult babies, Air Force One should be fitted with a giant diaper.     

In light of today's "multicultural" environment, Halloween demands a fair hearing. In perspective, Halloween extends back more than one and a half millennium but few people associate Halloween with observances of the ancient Christian church.

In his book "The Screwtape Letters" C. S. Lewis cites Martin Luther pointing out that the quickest way to deal with the Devil is to mock and ridicule him. He is a defeated foe. We should act like it.

The celebration of All Saints Eve has progressed from the pagan to the Christian to the secular. Even so, this is no reason for Christians to abandon the holiday. "Therefore do not let anyone condemn you in matters of...observing festivals...." (Col. 2:16).

Why not reclaim Halloween in the context in which it was originally celebrated?

In response to the genuine grass roots pro-freedom protests of the Tea Party, Democrat leaders are organizing violent pro-Communism protests on Wall Street and across America. They are preaching the same class warfare rhetoric preached by people like Marx, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Hitler and President Obama.

Planes leave the US every minute to countries that already have the economic system that Democrat are demanding. The problem is that those on the extreme far left (the mainstream of today’s Democratic Party) are unhappy people who believe that they will be happy once everyone else is made to be miserable. They are driven by the jealousy of seeing others happy.

When a nation of 300 million people presumes to determine grade-school hiring and almost everything else through an ever more centralized bureaucracy, you’re setting yourself up for waste on a scale unknown to history. For example, under the Obama “stimulus”, US taxpayers gave a $529 million loan guarantee to the company Fisker to build their Karma electric car. At a factory in Finland.

If you’re wondering how giving half-a-billion dollars to a Finnish factory stimulates the US economy, well, what’s a lousy half-bil in a multi-trillion-dollar sinkhole? Besides, in the 2009 global rankings, Finnish schoolkids placed 6^th in math, 3^rd in reading and 2^nd in science, while suffering under the burden of a per student budget half that of York City. By comparison, America placed 17^th in reading, 23^rd in science, and 31^st in math. So the good news is that, by using US government money to fund a factory in Finland, Fisker may be able to hire workers smart enough to figure out how to build an unwanted electric car that doesn’t lose its entire US taxpayer investment.

In a sane world, Joe Biden’s remarks would be greeted by derisive laughter, even by Fourth Graders. Certainly by Finnish Fourth Graders.

Making ND the No. 2 state, Good news, bad news, oil patch refugees, It is common practice to flare (burn) the gas, siren song of prosperity, Over 10 percent of the students are ELL, calling a black student Buckwheat, no “anonymous voices on our website, “good cop, bad cop”, information for women who are smart and savvy, “a strong streak of moralism”, it should be their choice, technologies to reduce regional haze, a testimonial to Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs

The Republicans now want to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Holder and his fast-and-furious dance of deception.  And I say, dig long and dig deep.  Because with the amount of dirt in Holder’s closet, you’ll find that Obama has created at least one shovel-ready job.

And I’ll conclude by making a request of our post-racial president’s attorney general.  Mr. Holder, you once said that Americans were “cowards” in the area of race.  Well, then, brave man, do you have the sand to come out of the closet?  Produce that card from your wallet; proudly proclaim the beliefs you’ve long held so dear.  Or is it that, deep down, the color other than red that epitomizes you most is yellow?

While the understanding and preparation for Missouri River changes is very complicated, it is what hydrologists, engineers and other specialists GET PAID TO DO. Such professionals must be called upon to do their jobs. And politicians should restrict their activities to insuring that the best minds are employed to do what is right for the victims of flooding and to prevent flooding in the future. Politicians’ only legitimate role is to demand the best minds be employed to manage the situation. Perhaps most importantly, beware of politicians who suggest self-determined or knee-jerk solutions.

There is at present a tension within the ascendant conservative movement. There are the laissez-faire capitalists who largely shy away from the contemporary moral questions to keep the debate on low taxes, limited government, and want to mostly be just left alone, perhaps best termed the Materialist Libertarians. On the other side of the discussion are those who believe that the moral questions as fairly narrowly constrained by the Judeo-Christian traditions of Western Civilization predominate in the arena of public debate. Many commentators fret about the possibility of an election lost as the result of excessive focus on the “divisive” questions of contemporary personal behavior. We must not ever forget the Natural Law foundation of America’s design.

Instead of enforcing the current law, the State of North Dakota (via legislative support of the Streamline Sales Tax Project and the Multi-State Tax Commission) has opted to give its power to control its tax laws to a multi-state quasi federal entity.  This is not acceptable because North Dakota simply does not need the revenue, and certainly should not be giving lawmaking authority to an un-elected body. 

The term “greedy” is usually reserved for anyone who acquires a buck more than one’s neighbor. Sadly, greed is seldom alleged when referring to those seeking the power of the purse intent on squeezing successful entrepreneurs. Obama’s BILLION dollar campaign comes to mind.

To paraphrase P. J. O’Rourke, “When buying and selling are controlled by politicians, the first things to be bought and sold are politicians.”

Middle-class America is dying before our eyes: The job market is flatlined, the college fees soar ever upward, the property market is underwater, and ObamaCare is already making medical provision both more expensive and more restrictive. That doesn’t leave much else – although no doubt, as soon as they find something else, the statists will fix that, too. As more and more middle Americans are beginning to notice, they lead more precarious and vulnerable lives than did their bluecollar parents and grandparents without the benefit of college “education” and health “benefits”. For poorer Americans, the prospects are even glummer, augmented by ever grimmer statistics on obesity, childhood diabetes and much else. Potentially, this is not decline, but a swift devastating downward slide, far beyond what post-war Britain and Europe saw and closer to Peronist Argentina on a Roman scale.

There are countless ways that the tax code is unfair to one type of taxpayer or another.  While it is proper to try to eliminate those differences, expanding the tax burden to include activities previously exempted by federal laws and court cases is not a proper way to handle it.  And we should certainly not be looking at taking money out of consumer pockets in the middle of a national recession.

North Dakota is sitting in a good position financially.  When legislative leadership supports federal laws that would allow for automatic tax revenue increases, at least in North Dakota, they need to follow it up by telling the public where other taxes will be cut.  Otherwise it is really is a tax increase, and North Dakota simply doesn't need any more tax revenue.

Let's focus on making North Dakota's tax policy more competitive by reducing taxes on North Dakotans and less on making others pay more..