Dakota Beacon

Jennifer Burns’ new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, is a welcome contribution to this growing body of literature. Burns has produced a thoroughly researched and critical (but fair) study of one of the conservative movement’s most influential and colorful thinkers. The book is in part a sobering cautionary tale for conservatives. The narrative offers at least three timely lessons worth noting. Among them are words of caution about “radical individualism,” “troubling contradictions in a representative democracy,” and “myopic dogmatism.”  Ideologues on both the right and the left have often fallen into this sort of blinkered sectarianism, speaking only to true believers and dividing the world neatly into enlightened individualists and crude collectivists.

Briefly, the FairTax Act of 2009 (with only 79 pages) is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including:

    * A progressive national retail sales tax.

    * A prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the

       the poverty level.

• Dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality.   
• * Repeal of the 16th Amendment through companion legislation.

This proposed communist invasion of our personal freedoms must be fought back and defeated... and we the people cannot rest until the victory is attained and our liberties once again are secured. But I want to encourage you to take heart... and do not despair... for the battle is already won and the outcome is certain because right has always triumphed over wrong in the end, and I remind you again my friends... God is in control.

have fun with it and go kick some butt, This has been a Carrington year, the safety of teenage drivers, The town of 300 may have to leave, financial problems at NDSU, there are few suprises, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, It was in retirement that Nick bloomed, a compelling case for a N.D. unicameral legislature, ND grew by about 5,400 residents, The Health Care Bil,  Polls show Pomeroy lagging his opponent, THIS AND THAT

There was, of course, nothing unpredictable about Sunday’s health-care vote.  It was fairly obvious that the Chicago mobsters would, using the Escobarian silver-or-lead tactic, scare up the votes needed to pass Obama’s baby.  It was plain that “pro-life” Democrats such as Bart Stupak would, after the requisite posturing, find the rationalization they needed to cast aside a position that was never really a principle.  That it came in the form of an executive order with the credibility of the Hitler-Stalin Pact is of little consequence.  It was also predictable that the Monday after would bring talk about the extinguishment of liberty and the republic, and heads hanging so low that good Americans could look up and see their shoelaces. 

There's a sucker born every minute, P.T. Barnum observed, and the sales of these atheist tracts, of which god Is Not Great is only one, argue that he was guilty of gross understatement. On the one hand, Hitchens ascribes religion to "wish-thinking"; on the other, he blames it for creating a horrible and wholly false vision of Hell. Well, which is it? I can say only that it seems to me obvious which side is guilty of wishful thinking, starting with the pleasant idea that we will never have to answer for our sins.

From the guy who is in North Dakota working on the "Read The Bill" initiated measure, Jerrol asks the simple question as to if it is right that as soon as a legislator takes someone’s word for the contents of a bill, and doesn’t personally read and study it, that legislator is representing the person who gave the advice, not you or me?

 Our congress and president cannot and will not curtail the spending even as they see the revenue coming in is inadequate, the frightening deficits grow, and the national debt balloons to predicted levels of 13 or 14 trillion dollars by year’s end. In spite of all that the Democrat majority, driven by their progressive members, have not given up on the agenda they came into Washington to do; that is they intend to pass into law one of the biggest entitlement (spending) programs ever in U.S. history called Health Care Reform. Never mind that the country is in recession, people are unemployed at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and the nation is trillions of dollars in debt. They are planning to do it. President Obama has said that we are on the verge of making history. Over the coming years we will find is the cost of “History”.

Is American foreign policy in a meltdown prompted by the Obama administration’s focus on radicalizing the American healthcare industry while negating any remnants of American ‘exceptionalism’ in U.S. foreign policy? If so, a nuclear capable Iran may embolden Israel’s enemies into renewed attacks by Hamas guerrillas in Gaza and from southern Lebanon, where fanatically determined Hezbollah units, well armed and trained by Iran and Syria, stand ready to attack. Washington will condemn the aggressors as well as the inevitable strong responses by Israel, but will do nothing to support Israel. In that case, American foreign policy, whether from ineptitude or chicanery, will have engendered a Middle Eastern catastrophe.

Bismarck - Today the North Dakota Policy Council launched Sunshine on Cities, an interactive website containing vital budget data for most cities and towns in North Dakota. The website is very similar to Sunshine on Schools, which was launched in April 2008.

The Religious Left, from ‘social justice’ Catholic nuns and Protestant ministers to the Democratic Speaker of the House and president of the United States, have been incessantly claiming God’s advocacy of their healthcare reform. That’s no surprise, just as it’s no surprise that the press is not only not outraged but silently supportive. There’s nary a whimper, let alone howls, of ‘separation of church and state!

Every Bush mention of God was a signal, somehow, that this Bible-quoting ‘simpleton’ was trying to transform America into a ‘theocracy.’” Yet, Dr. Kengor knew that certain politicians would “say the same as Bush, or much worse—with no backlash from the secular media. Quite the contrary, liberals would roll out the red carpet, enthusiastically welcoming faith into the public square.” “Consider a few examples, most telling in light of passage of the healthcare bill.

There are a lot of bright folks among us. The professional politicians we elect and re-elect which dispense laws from on high are not among them. They are certainly not the best and the brightest. They are, however, the true alchemists of the twenty-first century. The more dishonest ones sometimes succeed. For their personal gain they’re able to turn manure into gold.

Government-Run Healthcare has passed.

Congressman Pomeroy broke his promise.

What can you do to help?

Americans have become calloused to that perversion of republican democracy which comes in the form of political payola to blocks of voters in return for their reflexive support.  This is bad for good governance, but it is not terminal illness.   The concept of the general welfare – helping all Americans through commonly used programs like highways and harbors – has been redefined to mean its opposite, the welfare of defined groups.  As malodorous as the Cornhusker Kickback and the Second Louisiana Purchase may be, this sort massive graft does not murder liberty. 

"The people of North Dakota opposed this bill and the philosophy behind it.  Congressman Pomeroy ignored the will of the people, as well as his own previous declarations.  It will not be forgotten."

For a government regulatory hearing, the testimony was livelier than usual. The porn star Madelyne Hernandez recalled an especially grueling scene in which she had been obliged to have sex with 75 men. The bureaucrats nodded thoughtfully, no doubt contemplating another languorous 18-month committee assignment looking into capping the number of group-sex participants at 60 per scene. In future, if a porn actress finds 75 men waiting for her on the set, they’ll be bureaucrats from Sacramento’s Condom Enforcement Squad.

Obama and Pelosi are strongarming swing-state Congressmen into taking one for the deem. It’s appropriate that it should take banana republic maneuvers to ram this through, because it’s about government so powerful it can make up the rules as it goes along. Maybe regulators should roll a giant condom over the Capitol before it fatally infects the rest of us.

NDSU got ahead of its resources, ND may be taking its economic boom for granted, A strange legal and political battle, He used Rep. Earl Pomeroy as an example, the Red River Valley has grown wetter, everyone is wary and prepared, Flooding is becoming intolerable, people down river will take political action, WCHA disqualified Frattin, Minnesota fans were angry with everybody, Hoeven settled into the driver's seat

America, which is a nation of citizens who chose to migrate here from all over the world, views the whole of mankind as its friends.  Americans overflow with generosity to the poor and the persecuted throughout the world and many Americans travel at their own expense to dangerous places to bring hope and help to wretched peoples.  Does this sound like the actions of a people poisoned by racial and religious bigotry?  Only in that odd and isolated colony called Hollywood.

I don’t doubt that “Woodstock” actually happened; I’ve seen the pictures; but as for shaping an entire generation; I don’t think so!  I am told that with all the alcohol and drugs, only about half of the 400,000 who were there actually remember being there; and that includes most of the 32 bands and 100+ musicians!

Gutzman contends that the American judiciary, legal establishment, law schools, and media have completely misled the public about the meaning and history of the U.S. Constitution, substituting case law - the accumulated opinions of the courts - for the simple truth. Flimsy "precedent" has usurped the place of history, fact, reason, and even logic. So precedents take precedence, as it were, over the actual words of the Constitution.

     The U.S. Supreme Court winds up treating its own rulings - in Roe v. Wade, for example - as more authoritative than the Constitution itself. No wonder the public is confused: The whole system is incoherent and - well, "corrupt" is a mild term for it. The Constitution becomes whatever the courts say it is. This is a recipe for unbridled, arbitrary power, such as we are already experiencing.

Stupid is as Hollywood does . . . and does and does and does.  And the latest example is Forrest Hanks, who has just managed to graduate — in the Tinseltown U. way of thinking — from moron to imbecile. 

If an entrepreneur forecasts the future correctly, he serves his fellow man by producing goods people want. It seems only right that such producers are rewarded with profit. In a free market, the only way entrepreneurs earn profits is to serve customers better than anyone else.

Here is an intriguing look at the biblical basis for the free-market economy, dispelling the popular notion among many “social justice” Christians that Scripture supports a socialistic, collectivist, redistributive economic system.

It has gotten very sad now that nationally recognized healthcare/insurance expert has begun to joke about the people running North Dakota, and logically, he has good reason in his latest article "North Dakota - they do things different up there....." --------

This would actually be pretty funny, even hilarious, if it wasn't about a prosecutor who allegedly committed crimes in the course of prosecuting one of the most decent, honest, and competent executives I've had the honor of meeting in my 25 plus years in the business world.

Could anyone embrace Communism?  What was there about the Gulag that sane and moral people missed?  When one sixth of the earth was a giant prison, what led good people to still believe in communism?  The answer to these questions is ugly.  Communism, like Nazism, is pure evil.  Has Obama ever said that, even once?  No.   The conclusions we must draw from that are clear and troubling.  Obama is not a misguided socialist, as so many on the left.  He is a militant Marxist who believes that anything is justified in the cause of the Revolution. 

Supporters of Government Healthcare (AFL-CIO, ND-People.org, SEIU, and others) also showed up and decided to highjack the rally - even brining their own signs saying "Honk FOR Healthcare."

They thought this would be effective, half their "protesters" we either paid political staffers or union big-wigs.......

The video speaks for itself, but it just proves once again that supporters of government-run healthcare are simply more interested in drowning out their opposition than in passing actual reforms. 

There will be "Honk Against the Health Care Takeover" rally tomorrow, Tuesday at 12 noon at Cong. Pomeroy's BISMARCK office, at the Federal Building, 220 East Rosser Avenue. Blogger Rob Port will be there as well to urge Cong. Pomeroy to vote against the health care reform legislation.

STOP CREEPY SOICALISM - BE THERE!

Three economists, led by John Deskin (Creighton University), have published a study questioning the value of increasing higher education spending to the economy. Their conclusion is that higher education spending has a negative effect. This is coming after we have learned that our higher ed system is geared toward the state, not the student.