This epidemic of usury is not caused by the free market but by bad national policy. For generations, one of the key things for which bank examiners have looked was the presence of risky loans. Today, examiners are more likely to look for a failure to lend to racial minorities. The standard for banking that once existed was the soundness of its loan portfolio. Now  the banks, and especially the national banks, are encouraging people with negative net worth due to constant spending of money that the people do not have. Usury is the only way this can avoid being a losing proposition.

SPIRIT LAKE TRIBE, LAUREN DONOVAN, AGRARIA, WALK BEFORE YOU RUN, WATER GOING AND COMING, THE BANK OF NORTH DAKOTA, HOW SOON HE FORGETS, THE DOMINANT ANCESTRY IS GERMAN, IS THAT ALL SHE DID?, DAKTOIDS

The monstrous mountain of toxic pustules sprouting from greasy boils metastasizing from malign carbuncles that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve is not the last word in “health” “care” but the first. It ensures that this is all we’ll be talking about, now and forever. Government can’t just annex “one-sixth of the US economy” (ie, the equivalent of annexing the entire British or French economy, or annexing the entire Indian economy twice over) and then just say: “Okay, what’s next? On to cap-and-trade…” Nations that governmentalize health care soon find themselves talking about little else.

Pondering as to why the world and our nation are in such a mess, Gulliver comes to mind.  Here was a giant of a man, bound by numerous cords, few at first, then many as he slept on, eventually immobilized and powerless.

What other body is basically powerless, bound and having little impact on our society, culture and the world?  If your answer to this question is the 'CHURCH', we are on the same thought track.

The holding of votes; the selling of votes; and the buying of votes with taxpayer money;  and tax carve-outs of favors to come up with the needed 60 votes to pass bad law--this has outraged  the American people.   If good legislation cannot be arrived at without the blatant buying of votes then a new set of legislators must be found and elected.  This whole display was nauseating! 

Adjunct faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College—Dr. Hendrickson—considers the role of government in combating recessions by recapping the policies of the past, presenting strategies for the present, and advocating an approach for the future. “Unfortunately,” he concludes, “there is no pain-free alternative. Decades of government intervention have prevented needed adjustments, resulting in a gargantuan, rotten financial house of cards looming over us. Whenever the inevitable collapse happens, GDP will plunge. It will be like the economy has been hit by a financial neutron bomb. The problem is, the longer we wait for this to happen, the larger and more painful the collapse.

It is evident for all to see that it is the intent of the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress to eventually have taxpayer funding of pre-birth infanticide. President Obama cannot make this happen by himself, he must have complicit legislators. A cloture vote is a vote for government support of infanticide. Regardless of what he SAYS, voting for cloture, even though voting against H.R. 3590, will ensure the creation of the governmental super-structure that will eventually mean that the blood of unborn children will be on the hands of Senators Dorgan.

SPEND LESS, SPEND WISELY, KEEP THE FAMILY FROM STARVING, BOBCAT, ALERUS FINANCIAL, WHAT HAPPENED TO AGRARIA, FOUNDING FARMERS, ND FARM BUREAU, COLD WEATHER STORIES, KEY TO FREEDOM, DO ND TAXPAYERS BUY DIVERSITY?,

I respectfully disagree with Ken Rogers assertion "we are all to blame" for the encroachment of cap and trade upon North Dakota. His assessment is accurate, if "we" means our congressional delegation and those who support our delegation without condition.  However, I agree we should look outward to see the sacrifices others and how they have combated the concept of global warming.

The principle at hand is not conservative or liberal political philosophy. The issue is not the science/religion of the global warming concept.  The issue is leadership. North Dakota needs proactive leadership in Washington which has our best interests in mind.  I believe it would be a waste of our Washington delegations advertised influence and seniority not to sway the political concept of global warming.

Dr. Coburn Calls New Abortion Language a Fraud that Will Allow Taxpayer-Funded Abortion:

December 19, 2009

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), a practicing physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies, today released the following statement on the abortion compromise language in Majority Leader Reid’s manager’s amendment to the health care bill.

“This reprehensible and deceptive agreement is a historic and radical shift in policy that will require taxpayers to pay for abortion. The American people will be outraged when they realize this so-called compromise is a farce. I can’t imagine there is a single pro-life taxpayer in Nebraska, or any other state, who would agree to pay to end the lives of the unborn for a never-ending Medicaid earmark or tax breaks for insurance companies. Unfortunately, Senators Reid and Nelson disagree,” Dr. Coburn said.

Nico Little, a Canadian leftie at the Rabble website, distilled the logic into a single headline:

“Hookers Are Killing Polar Bears And Now You Can’t Water Your Lawn.”

Write that down. And next time the Prince of Wales, Al Gore, Dr Pachauri or the delegation from Tuvalu give an “impassioned” speech keep it handy as a useful précis.

If now we hear our president pilloried as the Messiah who failed, as the Teleprompter-Reader-in-Chief or as the Idiot-in-Chief -- well, the unconscious racists in our midst should go down to the river, get baptized, and shout Hallelujah that a color-blind America is on the rise. Our first African-American president is now a fully fledged member of a very exclusive club.

“If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency,” Thomas Jefferson once warned, “first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied … I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”

In “Jefferson’s Warnings About Money and Banks”, adjunct faculty member, economist, and contributing scholar with The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College—Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson—recalls the austere admonitions of our third president: “Regarding money, Jefferson commented, ‘Paper is poverty … it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.’ We should remember this when we contemplate the loss of 95 percent of the purchasing power of the paper currency called ‘Federal Reserve notes’ in less than a century. As Ben Bernanke and the Fed create trillions of new paper ‘dollars,’ we, the richest country in history, face the possibility of a hyperinflationary collapse and accompanying impoverishment.”

During the trial of Sandy Blunt, Burleigh County Assistant State's Attorney Feland presented as evidence of Blunt's guilt of Missapplication of Entrusted Property, records of purchases that were absolutely legal purchases. These legal purchases, per North Dakota Office of Management and Budget Director Pam Sharp, were fully outlined in the “Prevarication Prosecutor II” published in the February 2009 Dakota Beacon.

There are NO records that I have seen that show Burleigh County Assistant State's Attorney in any manner attempted to investigate the legal basis of every individual item charged against Blunt and presented at the trial. Why had Special Investigator Quinn never been instructed by Feland to question the actually legality of each individual purchase? Feland lied to the judge, jury, and citizens of North Dakota in asserting that every purchase offered as evidence was illegal.

World governments and special interest groups are using this fear to justify imposing massive new universal taxes; direct what we can and cannot drive, do or eat; calling for universal regulatory authority and the power to control human reproduction – i.e. population growth. 

What Global Warming is really all about is now clear.  It’s about centralizing government control over people on a world scale - creating a top down Brave New World.

In sum, what we have with the Unity Tree is a tree that honors not Christ but secularism, commercialism, and the sham that is “diversity.” If you think about it, this unholy trinity is truly what Christmas has become.

Yes, Pittsburgh has a symbol alright—an image that stands apart from Christ, separated from Christ. Maybe the do-gooders never intended that. But, hey, once you remove Christ from His place, it’s a slippery slope.

President Obama’s speech was overtly political. General McCaffrey’s AAR provided a realistic military assessment.

 In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess my bias. Years ago, as young officers, McCaffrey and I were classmates at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College sharing tactics classes together. I was as impressed then, as I am now, with his keen intellect.

This man clearly understands what is at stake in America today and his message of action is inspirational.

If he can govern as well as he thinks and talks, he will be a political superstar.

BE SURE TO WATCH THIS VIDEO!

The point of Barack Obama is to dazzle. That's why he got all the magazine covers of him emerging topless from the Hawaiian surf, as if his beautifully sculpted pectorals were long-vanished Pacific atolls restored to sunlight after he'd fulfilled his pledge to lower the oceans before the end of his first term. The squealing Obammyboppers of the media seem to have gotten more muted since those inaugural specials hit the newsstands back in late January. His numbers have fallen further faster than those of any other president – because of where he fell from: As Evan Thomas of Newsweek drooled a mere six months ago, Obama was "standing above the country ... above the world. He's sort of God." That's a long drop.

With The Wealth of Nations largely considered his magnum opus, Adam Smith is "primarily known today for his hugely influential 1776 work on political economy." Yet, as 2009 draws to a close, the author of this op-ed observes the 250th anniversary of the publication of "Smith's masterful treatise on ethics." "Whereas The Wealth of Nations featured the 'invisible hand,' the metaphor that dominates Moral Sentiments is 'the impartial spectator.' The 'spectator' represents one's conscience—one's ability to perceive the divinely ordained objective standard of right and wrong."

THEY’RE SIOUX, BALANCE WATER ON BOTH SHOULDERS, A TROUBLING POINT, JACK GELLER, STRUCTURAL IMBALANCE, PER CAPITA INCOME IN ND IS ON A TEAR, JAMESTOWN CITY COUNCIL, ALMOST NOBODY CAME, THERE ARE THINGS THAT ARE WRONG, A TRUE WARRIOR, MARRIAGE IN THE MARKET, OIL KICKED OUT COAL, THIS AND THAT

The push is on, as out of state corporations come in with federal and state tax incentives in their back pockets to get landowners to sign on the dotted line and lock up their wind for decades.  Those of us who are not landowners, but are still citizens need to ask, how green is the wind for the rest of us?  How much of the prairie vista do we want to trade to the giant spinning blades?  Is all still calm and bright on a winter’s night when a flashing red light and noisy rotating turbine pierces the starlit sky?

N.D. GOP Congressional Candidate Paul Schaffner:

Liberalism is blessed with intellectuals driving small cars and large egos. These politicians dominate the federal government by controlling two chambers of congress and the executive office. Spending other peoples money is a compulsion both in ideology and political expedience. More pressing is the liberal assault  on our way of life. This way of life is our free market system.

GLEN COVE, NY -- President Obama recently visited all of the economically powerful countries of East Asia except one: the Republic of China. He skipped that friendly country out of fear of offending the brutal and Communist regime on the mainland, the People's Republic of China.

Washington, D.C. – North Dakota Family Alliance and Family Research Council released a new study today that comprehensively details the effects of pornography on marriages, children, communities and individual happiness.

The study, “The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community,” synthesizes all available research on the effects of pornography on families and communities.

“This is a personal issue for me. My wife had a strange out-of-body experience during a car accident many years ago. My father died in the year 2000. And last year my best friend got cancer. I remember him telling me how dramatically the prospect of death changed his priorities. He made the comment that the normalcy of our everyday life is a sham, that we live in the pretense that we are not going to die tomorrow and then one day we wake up and realize that we are. So this is a huge issue. I don't think that there is a thoughtful person who hasn't wondered: is death the end, or is there something more?”

In any case, Democrats don’t need bipartisanship. They need unity and, to date, don‘t have it.

Americans have advanced to the point where no one is responsible for the consequences of their own actions but everyone is responsible for the consequences of everyone else’s actions. Accountability becomes an American shibboleth. Is this a great country, or what?

As part of its Freedom Readers lecture series, Center for Vision & Values’ Executive Director and Ronald Reagan biographer, Dr. Paul Kengor, interviewed Thomas F. O’Boyle on the evening of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A newspaper executive, O’Boyle worked as a foreign correspondent in Bonn, Germany, for The Wall Street Journal covering the historic events leading up to that emotional day on November 9, 1989. He was there for President Reagan’s historic Brandenburg Gate speech, which he covered for the Journal. It became clear to us that Tom had further valuable thoughts to share with students following the interview, and we asked him to share those thoughts in the way he knows best—with a pen. He has provided them in the following two articles. We think you’ll agree that Tom O’Boyle’s experiences covering East Germany more than 20 years ago continue to hold great meaning.

State's Attorney Richard Riha	Assistant State's Attorney Cynthia Feland	Assistant State's Attorney Lloyd Suhr

Once Berry Dunn McNeil & Parker’s (BDMP) 2008 Performance Evaluation of Workforce Safety and Insurance (WSI) was released publicly on October 8, 2008, it contained NO finding of illegality regarding the Firefighter’s Association grant. Instead, it clearly stated “BDMP’s evaluation did not include a legal review … This issue may warrant a legal evaluation to determine if any law, rules or regulations were violated.” Yet, even with the lack of any investigation, Feland --with the help of her partners at NDSAO-- made the grant a crime.