Dakota Beacon

Diversity, multiculturalism, and social justice zealots, as well as other self-appointed fairness police think it their job to force very different people to interact with one another. In other words, voluntary, profit-motivated interaction is bad, even if the profit motive really does bring very different people together. High-minded forced interaction is good, even if the high-mindedness really does set people at each others’ throats as a result of focusing on differences which would otherwise have remained utterly irrelevant.

So goes the “reasoning” inside the head of the typical progressive social engineer.

What Would Jesus Cut?’ That is the question asked by the left-leaning Christian organization, Sojourners, in its campaign of the same name. It is a most appropriate question given the battle over the budget and given this time of year, not long after the most holy holiday of the year for Christians. A fundamental problem with Sojourners’ program is the assumption that what ‘we’ do must be done by the state. It is a large and not logically necessary leap from ‘We are called to be charitable to the poor,’ to ‘A righteous society will have an extensive welfare state.’

A growing number of people think the UN is nothing more than a group of pointy headed numbskulls and a statement overnight does nothing to refute that claim.

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You simply cannot make this stuff up.

The only funding crisis at NDSU is a crisis of priorities.  The mission of the universities should be to find ways to live within the 10-20% budget increases they have been getting from the legislature.  The continued effort to build little empires on college campuses on the backs of both students and taxpayers should have been examined more fully this legislative session.

So then, a fundamental question is whether or not conservatives generally, and Republicans specifically, will prove themselves free market advocates or reveal themselves as unabashed market manipulators? Will Republicans play to the emotional reactions of voters just like Democrats do? In order to behave in a purely principled manner, conservatives would have to admit that reducing favored companies’ costs with taxpayer money is a bad thing. To behave in a brutally honest manner, conservatives must acknowledge that allowing government to pick marketplace winners and losers in any market segment is a losing economic game plan in the end.

Here’s hoping that conservatives follow free-market principles. Having a strong, rational, conservative Republican party to counterbalance the strong, irrational, liberal Democrat party is a must for America’s wellbeing.

True ND values, the governor thought they made “good choices, They have Democratic legislators, sees the Nonpartisan League portion of the party, One sows for the benefit of another age, a 18-year-old Somali was murdered, There’s Moe to come, Green for green cards, Amtrak is planning an alternate route, Blizzard stops Bakken, twisted the blades of two windmills, Hairball, Let’s face it the “curse” is horrible, DAKTOIDS

Back on the home front, every small-town airport has at least a dozen crack TSA operatives sniffing round the panties of grade-schoolers. Meanwhile, at the UN, the EU, at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in the “Facebook revolutions” of “the Arab spring”, the Islamization of the world proceeds: Millions of Muslims support bin Laden’s goal – the submission of the western world to Islam – but, unlike him, understand that flying planes into buildings is entirely unnecessary to achieving it. Will being high-flying Jetsons with state-of-the-art gizmos prove sufficient in a Flintstonizing world? The Pakistanis are pretty sure they know the answer to that.

The free market is powerful. Because profit is the motivator, private-sector-funded research also occurs with far less waste than government-funded research. There is no objective evidence to support the argument that government must keep money flowing into scientific research in order to maintain the pace of worthwhile discovery.

Where did Gingrich make his ”investment” pitch? Why, at an event hosted by the Brookings Institution, a progressive think tank?

Far from being a new-fangled idea in 1861, the right of secession was implicit in the very language of American politics - in the words state, sovereign, and federal - from the beginning. It was also positively asserted many times, even in the North, before 1861. And an act of secession was neither "rebellion" nor "insurrection," but the act of the same sovereign states that had ratified the Constitution in the first place.

It was not secession that was unconstitutional, but the suppression of secession. The North fought the Civil War by allowing its chief executive to exercise dictatorial powers, raising armies and money and suspending civil liberties without consulting Congress, and even arresting the Maryland legislature and installing a puppet government. This was "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? What happened to "the consent of the governed"?

For President Obama, it was a refreshing and surprising expression of American exceptionalism. More than that, President Obama’s words read like a punctuation, an exclamation point, on what President George W. Bush had said on September 14, 2001, during an unforgettable 9/11 memorial service at the majestic National Cathedral. Bush himself had organized the service. He picked the music, selected speakers, and carefully chose the words he delivered that afternoon.

Richard Mack notes that the county sheriff is the ONLY elected law enforcement officer we have.  His boss is the people, he should seek to serve the people, not federal agencies.  Sheriff Mack is more than a successful plaintiff.  He is a Constitutional hero.  He travels throughout the United States educating law enforcement personnel and the citizenry about the rights and responsibilities of government in a constitutional republic.  Should the opportunity come your way to hear him speak DO NOT FAIL to listen!  If you are not fortunate enough to meet him in person, read one of his several books and visit his website: http://www.sheriffmack.com.

Recently, CNN’s Money.com posted an article bearing the title, ‘U.S. Millionaires Population Expanded by 8 Percent in 2010.’ According to the article, there are now approximately 8.4 million millionaires in the United States, and last year’s increase was due primarily to rising stock prices, following a 27-percent decline in the number of millionaires in 2008 due to the stock market’s plunge that year. What is one to make of this information? There were only a few thousand millionaires in the United States in 1900. Adjusting for the increase in the Consumer Price Index, it would take a net worth of about $25 million today to be the economic equivalent of a millionaire in 1900. Clearly, being a millionaire today does not support the lifestyle that it did a century ago.

What must it be like to sit atop Mount Olympus, actually in a Time magazine office cubicle, and nod approvingly at costly federal edicts slapped on taxpayers by taxpayer-paid government employees who sit in taxpayer-funded cubicles of their own? Verily, what gratification must planet-saving, icemaker-loathing brethren know? And all based on the dubious belief that humans cause “global warming.”

When my kids were little they used to discover all kinds of things in the back yard. One day, our 5 year old daughter found a dead bird, and she got very upset and started to cry. We did everything we could to comfort her and make her forget about the dead bird. My wife said that she should think about pretty flowers and swimming at the swimming pool. I said she should think about the little calves down at the farm and of riding motorcycle out in the badlands. She wouldn’t eat her supper, and we kept it up with happy thoughts about caterpillars, and butterflies, and thoughts of our upcoming trip to Denver. Finally, she started to eat and was much happier. Then her little 3 year old brother came up with something she could think about –

After this new knowledge of such a great man living quietly right here in Bismarck, in light of all the pompous self-idolizing rhetoric of so many people in the “serve the needy” or the “volunteering in the community,” believing they can “help’ any one else, yet have not acquired any of the compassion, ethics, goodness to even “give anything of worth to any person or entity.  One cannot give to others what one has not first acquired himself: To pretend to share something you don’t have, is fraud.

What the protestors are calling for is the strong arm of government to confiscate even more of America’s real wealth to continue funding the excesses and irresponsible management by government over the last 70 years.  They’re calling for massive tax increases on private earnings and wealth.  This will destroy America’s ability to create any wealth or prosperity, sinking America into bankruptcy and third world status.  Unless Americans become savvy and do so quickly, it is likely elected officials will impose massive tax increases, guaranteeing America’s demise.
The private sector is ruled by the laws of human nature and fiscal rationality. It will respond to more taxes in the only way it can.  The private economy will stop producing.  This isn’t a possibility – it’s a certainty.

If you call the U.S. Postal Service to make such a crazy suggestion, I will guarantee you that you will have an opportunity first hand to experience the governmental bureaucracy monopoly hand-off, “we will look into it”, Kabuki dance. When you are done call Senator Conrad and thank him for voting ObamaCare into law.

Nothing new at this point, UND Fighting Sioux controversy, Olson thinks the NCAA scapegoated UND, prophets of doom --, “Why won’t Grand Forks grow?”, Energy and Spirit of North Dakota, Kuwait on the Prairie, Agriculture is going to have to be cut, Sen. Kent Conrad in Devils Lake , FLOODARAMA!

Why such appalling duplicity from a senator who claims to be pro-life?

North Dakotans expect and deserve integrity in their legislators. The “initiated measure process” that Olafson recommends is not meant to be the only way voters can be fairly and accurately represented in the state government.

We expect and deserve honesty in the committee process and a transparent vote on each bill. Olafson’s refusal to grant either is a betrayal of his obligation not only to his district but also to the state.

At this stage, nothing does more damage to our “full faith and credit” than business as usual. If you’re going to bandy glib, witless al Qaeda analogies, the conventional wisdom Paul O’Neill represents is the real suicide bomb here. Men like O’Neill and Geithner think they’re quantitatively easing American decline. They’re not. They’re quantitatively accelerating American collapse.

Onward and upward!

As long as we continue our suicidal immigration policies—where 85 percent of newcomers hail from the Third World and Asia (thanks, Ted Kennedy)—the only thing that will be in question about our descent into socialism, and perhaps beyond, is the rate.

Many voters, too emotionally spent to keep staring down the nightmare bounded by January 20, 2009 and November 5, 2012, will take comfort in seductive lies before heading to the polls on November 6.  By then the lies will have grown to immense proportions.  Democrats and mainstream media will have repeated the lies ad nauseam.  Big lies might keep enough big liars in the White House and Congress to perpetuate the biggest lie of all: that a big-spending and yet flat-broke syndicate run by ruling-class mobsters can engineer societal nirvana.

By the time you read this, there’s a good chance that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will have held the Fed’s first press conference ... Leading up to this historic moment, the popular press has repeated a well-rehearsed rhetorical dance as it reports on the monthly release of the Consumer Price Index. Those who should know better repeat the mantra that, while food and energy prices may have increased, so-called core inflation … remain[s] flat as a pancake…. Unfortunately, things are not as rosy as we are being told. Food and beverage prices increased at an annual rate of 8.4 percent. Prices of household fuel and utilities, the housing expenses that everyone does have, rose at an annual rate of 7.2 percent. Transportation prices, which include prices of automobiles, gasoline, and public transportation, rose at an annual rate of 26.4 percent. Normal people who live their lives outside the Beltway know that the prices of the goods they buy are generally rising. They do not have to wait to be told by the experts.

Those of you (and that would be most of you) who know this man can appreciate it when I say-of all the voices I have ever heard, of all the lessons I have learned, of all the opinions I have ever had which have been forged into convictions on the anvil of life, I can honestly say that none has had the power to change and keep me on the right track as that of this one man.

Thank you Senator Freborg.  Layton, you've been like a father to me.

Catron hits the nail on the head. AARP management betrayed current members to gain hoards of future members. Catron further points out,

If America’s seniors ever figure out that AARP’s endorsement of ObamaCare was a cynical strategy to bilk the elderly, the seniors’ group will begin hemorrhaging members as quickly as its fellow Quisling, the AMA, has lost physicians.

So then, let me ask again. If you are still a member of AARP, why?