Category: Law, Government, Politics

When I was a little kid growing up in Hettinger, North Dakota, my seven favorite words from my Dad were “Anybody want to go for a ride?” That question came usually on a soft summer evening, and it meant we were all going to pile into the station wagon and Dad was just going to … Continue reading Ice Cream And South American Sauce (And An Apology)

Fifty years ago today, on September 3, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law The Wilderness Act. I think it may be the best law ever signed by a President. The Wilderness Act created the National Wilderness Preservation System, which today includes more than 750 wilderness areas in the United States, encompassing more than 109 … Continue reading Celebrate Today!

Somebody doesn’t like me. Okay, for regular readers, you know that I’ve pissed some people off on this blog over the last five years. And I am not unique. Pretty much everybody, except maybe Mother Theresa and Robin Williams, has someone who doesn’t like them. And they’re dead. But somebody really, really doesn’t like me, … Continue reading Hacked. Again.

I know, I know, it's been a while, but summer is vacation time, even for old retired folks, and so I took one, along with my lovely wife, to the Grand Targhee National Forest in Idaho--the backside of the Grand Tetons, those peaks you generally see only from the front, in Jackson Hole in Wyoming. … Continue reading Protecting ALL Public Lands–A Modest Proposal

I’m working on an article for a magazine I write for about the North Dakota Industrial Commission’s new policy for siting oil wells, and I thought I might share some of what I have learned here, because it’s pretty interesting and I can often say things here that my editor at the magazine (although he … Continue reading A Loophole Big Enough To Drive A Fracking Truck Through

There are not many people about whom you can say, honestly, not wishfully or wistfully, “He was one of a kind.” Such a man was Larry Erickson. Larry died late Thursday afternoon with his loving wife Claryce beside him, and his kids surrounding him.  He had beaten cancer a couple of times, but in the … Continue reading Remembering Larry Erickson

The North Dakota Industrial Commission, the agency which oversees oil and gas development in North Dakota, adopted Policy NDIC-PP 2.01 last Spring, a half-hearted attempt to offer some protection to “Special Places” in western North Dakota from the zealots who drill for oil and those who are supposed to be regulating them. The land and … Continue reading Meet The New “Drilling Permit Review Policy Commentary Analyst”

Here’s a quote from a well-known North Dakota politician: “Starting next year, we could suspend the individual and corporate income tax for a one-year income tax holiday and still have enough money to meet our obligations. North Dakota has a surplus so large it isn’t just a cushion, it is a mountain of pillows.” Here’s … Continue reading Time To Cut Taxes?

Mitigation. There’s a word that draws mixed reaction. Most dictionaries generally define mitigation as “the act of making a condition or consequence less severe, the process of becoming milder or gentler.” It’s a word we didn’t much find in common usage in North Dakota until the 1970s, when the Garrison Diversion project surfaced. That project … Continue reading You Can’t Mitigate Greed

Caught a rerun of the Beverly Hillbillies the other day. Then I turned on the news and learned that we've reached a milestone in North Dakota--we're producing a million barrels of oil a day--way more than old Jed Clampett could have imagined. And there's the North Dakota Petroleum Council feeding crawdads and Cajun shrimp to … Continue reading A Million Barrels A Day