America's industry, from power production to agriculture to manufacturing, needs "to be governed by policymakers not lawsuits." That's what Jason Boherer, president of the North Dakota Lignite Energy Council, said on this episode of Plain Talk. He sees the recent Supreme Court decision in North Dakota v. EPA as a boon not just for his industry, but for American democracy in that it will require Congress and other legislative bodies to actually make a decision on what it wants emissions policy to...
Jul 01, 2022•30 min
Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a pro-life Democrat. There are pro-choice Republicans too, of course, but on this episode of Plain Talk, it was Mark Haugen, the Democratic-NPL candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, who is staunchly pro-life, who we were speaking to. Haugen's party leaders have described the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as "evil," but Haugen isn't too worried about that. "Pat's a good friend of mine," he said, referring to party chairm...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Minot, N.D. — You couldn't possibly have missed the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent which held that it was unconstitutional for state governments to ban abortion. The ruling was unambiguous. "The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion," the court ruled . "Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representativ...
Jun 27, 2022•20 min
Sen. Kevin Cramer and I will never agree about former President Donald Trump. I think the man was a disgrace to his office. Cramer would be fine if we elected him president again. But one thing we agree on, as we discussed the on-going hearings of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot, is that Vice President Mike Pence was the hero of that story. He held his oath to the constitution higher than his loyalty to Trump, and that was a heroic act. Though I still can't fathom wh...
Jun 17, 2022•46 min
The North Dakota Republican Party, the dominant force in our state's politics, is deeply divided. If anyone was hoping that primary night, which saw that divide driving the debate in legislative competitions across the state, was going to resolve things they're in for a disappointment. Republicans across the state voted, and the NDGOP remains about as divided as ever. We talked about it on this episode of Plain Talk. First Jim Poolman, former insurance commissioner and former vice chairman of th...
Jun 15, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Minot, N.D. — Shannon Roers Jones is a state lawmaker who is currently halfway through her second term representing Fargo-area District 46. She's also a candidate for mayor of Fargo, and she has been, arguably, the most visible candidate thanks in no small part to a political mugging her father got from the Fargo's city commissioners, including two of her opponents in the mayoral race. On this episode of Plain Talk, Roers Jones talks about what it would be like serving as a mayor and lawmaker (s...
Jun 13, 2022•34 min
Inflation is a real problem. It's making us poorer. Your wages aren't being cut, but the cost of living your life is growing faster than what you earn. Fuel prices are up. Utility bills are going higher. Groceries cost more. Hell, everything costs more. But the subject of inflation is a lot more complicated than what's presented by the politicians and the pundits. On this episode of Plain Talk, Dr. David Flynn, a professor of economics at the University of North Dakota, discussed what's causing ...
Jun 10, 2022•33 min
In 2019, state Rep. Karla Rose Hanson, a Democrat from Fargo, introduced a red flag bill. It would have created a judicial process through which guns could be taken away from people exhibiting troubling behavior. I was among the many critics of the bill, and it failed decisively, early in the session, in the House. But is there merit to the idea, if not Hanson's specific bill? She joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss it with me along with Wednesday co-host Chad Oban. We talked about how ...
Jun 08, 2022•1 hr 8 min
We live in a political environment where it seems everyone is trying to undermine the public's trust in our election laws. From the right are baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen. From the left are claims, such as the one made by Democratic Sec. of State candidate Jeffre Powell, that when politicians talk about election integrity it's a "code word for voter suppression." State Rep. Michael Howe is seeking the NDGOP's nomination for Secretary of State, and he argues that he way throu...
Jun 06, 2022•30 min
"We can't get enough school counselors." That's what Congressman Kelly Armstrong had to say on this episode of Plain Talk. We've all be talking about how we can make our school after in the wake of another horrific tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, and much of that has been focused on proposals that would make our schools seem like prisons, with more law enforcement on campus and more restrictions on building access. Armstrong mentioned that he recently had the opportunity to spend some time in Israel. ...
Jun 03, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Governor Doug Burgum is spending big to influence the North Dakota Republican Party's legislative primaries. The people on the pointy end of that stick, namely the Bastiat Caucus wing of Trumpy populist candidates, don't like that so much, and they've even come up with some dubious legal arguments claiming it may be illegal. Are they right? Almost certainly not. But even beyond the legalities, is what Burgum doing kosher from just an ethical point of view? I discussed it on this episode of Plain...
Jun 01, 2022•53 min
Minot, N.D. — In 2021 the Atlanta Braves won the World Series. Among those receiving a ring? Scott Davis from right here in North Dakota. Davis spent years serving our state as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He's in the private sector now, helping private organizations with their outreach to Native American communities, and some of that work has been for the Atlanta Braves. That team has a Native American-themed nickname, and those have been controversial. Davis has been working with the te...
May 27, 2022•27 min
MINOT, N.D. — Terrible news from Texas. Another mass shooting, this one taking the lives of 21 people, 19 of them school children. My Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I discuss the shooting, the reaction, and the exhausting debate we have after every one of these incidents on this episode of Plain Talk. Also, Roscoe Streyle, a Republican primary candidate for the state House in District 3, discusses an idea he has to cut the state's property taxes in half. Would it be permanent relief? How do we ...
May 25, 2022•59 min
Minot, N.D. — Marvin Lepp would like to be North Dakota's next secretary of state. He's running as a Republican, though he said on this episode of Plain Talk that the office "really ought to be nonpartisan, and he's running on election integrity. He said he got more involved in politics in recent years during the debates over pandemic-era policies like business closings and mask mandates, and when he was thinking about running for office, decided secretary of state seemed like a good fit. He did...
May 23, 2022•39 min
Jeffrey Powell is an administrator at Mayville State University and the Democratic-NPL candidate for Secretary of State. He was endorsed by the party's executive committee (he made a late decision to run so didn't attend the party's state convention in Minot) and in November will be facing off against one of two potential Republican candidates. State Rep. Michael Howe is squaring off with Bismarck mechanic Marvin Lepp in the NDGOP primary. Powell has been watching that race, and on this episode ...
May 20, 2022•58 min
This year's primaries, from local legislative races to the national midterms, are in many ways a referendum on the influence of disgraced former President Donald Trump and his movement's on-going influence on the GOP. What did we learn after this week's primary elections? And the fundraising numbers we're seeing in North Dakota's Republican legislative primaries so far? We talked about it on this episode of Plain Talk. Matt Lewis, senior columnist for the Daily Beast and host of the Matt Lewis a...
May 18, 2022•58 min
When it comes to regulating air quality - both in terms of health and cosmetic measures like visibility - North Dakota does an excellent job. We have some of the cleanest air in the nation. Ours is one of only four states to have never violated a federal air quality standard protecting health or the environment. We've been building on that excellent record too. "Since 2002, total emissions from coal-powered electricity generation plants in North Dakota were reduced by 102,000 tons of sulfur diox...
May 16, 2022•58 min
Minot, N.D. — Will the U.S. Supreme Court strike down the Roe v. Wade precedent and make bans on abortions constitutional again? Will the federal government create new law regarding abortion, either codifying it as legal or creating national restrictions? And what are the political ramifications for all this? Sen. Kevin Cramer discussed these issues on this episode of Plain Talk. He also reacted to my recent interview with New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin whose new book contains an anecdo...
May 06, 2022•43 min
On January 6, as rioters were infiltrating the U.S. Capitol building, New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin was in the building with many of our national leaders like Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Kevin Cramer. He and co-author Alexander Burns tell that story in a new book, just released this week, called "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future." Martin spoke with co-host Chad Oban and I about what it was like to watch some of our nation's most recognizable political fi...
May 04, 2022•1 hr 5 min
When President Joe Biden, as one of his first moves in office, canceled the Keystone XL pipeline it was "a symbol" for the oil and gas industry that the political situation would be hostile to them in the coming years. That lead them to curtail their investments in new production capacity, something that, per Smith, speaking on this episode of Plain Talk, is now contributing to higher fuel prices and a higher cost of living for Americans. Cheap energy is of enormous interest, not just to America...
May 02, 2022•32 min
Carbon capture and storage is a big deal for North Dakota. Not just because our state's economy is dominated by commodity-based industries - energy and agriculture - that emit a lot of carbon, but because the geology under our feet lends itself to storing captured carbon. There are billions in investments lined across several projects to not only capture and store carbon emitted in our state, but to bring carbon from other parts of the world here for storage as well. One of the first major proje...
Apr 29, 2022•35 min
Minot, N.D. — Sen. Jessica Bell, a Republican from District 33, has a lengthy track record of reliably conservative policy making in the North Dakota Senate, which includes her consequential work to save a coal-fired power plant that employs, directly and indirectly, thousands of her constituents. Yet the delegates at the NDGOP's local district convention didn't endorse her for re-election. Instead they endorsed a man named Keith Boehm, who campaigned against Bell based on her votes against a bi...
Apr 27, 2022•57 min
North Dakota's initiated measure process has become a venue for deep-pocketed special interests to hire local fronts, pay mercenaries to collect signatures, and then pound their issues into the heads of voters with big-money marketing campaigns. What was intended to empower grassroots activists to keep state government honest has turned into a shortcut for political professionals to pretty much bypass the rigors and scrutiny of the legislative process. It is in this context that a new ballot mea...
Apr 25, 2022•30 min
Minot, N.D. — Ves Marinov serves the state of North Dakota as a member of the Highway Patrol. He's also a citizen of Fargo who is running for a city on the city's commission. He's campaigning on a platform of addressing crime, eliminating special assessments, moving the city to a ward system for its elected leaders, and making the city more efficient. But it's that first issue, given his day job, that Marinov, a new American from Bulgaria who immigrated in 2003, is most passionate about. "Crime ...
Apr 22, 2022•46 min
Medical marijuana is legal in North Dakota, having been approved by voters by way of a ballot measure. Recreational marijuana, however, has taken a rockier road. Multiple ballot measure campaigns have failed in the past. House Bill 1420, considered during the last legislative session, and which would have also implemented legalization of non-medical use of marijuana, also failed. But the proponents of legalization are giving it another shot, and this time they're perhaps more organized than they...
Apr 20, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Ben Hanson made an interesting point on this episode of Plain Talk. He's a former state lawmaker and candidate for the Cass County Commission, facing off against Tony Grindberg, who is another former state lawmaker. His race won't be settled by approval voting, but he lives in Fargo where approval voting is used for local races. Fargo has a lot of candidates running for mayor and the city commission, and Hanson wonders if approval voting, where voters cast a ballot for multiple preferred candida...
Apr 13, 2022•1 hr 3 min
"We all take it for granted," says Sheri Haugen-Hoffart, talking about energy that's reliably available and cost effective. She's running for the Public Service Commission, and she's the incumbent, only not really. She was appointed to the PSC by Gov. Doug Burgum a couple of months ago to replace Brian Kroshus who is now the Tax Commissioner. She's new to the job, in other words, though not to the area of public policy the PSC deals with. She was the first female board chair in history for both ...
Apr 11, 2022•27 min
I'm a baseball nerd. And a political nerd. And as a person with a foot in both of those worlds, I can say that there's a lot of overlap between the two. There's just something about baseball that appeals to people who are also deeply interested in politics. Anyway, today is opening day for baseball, so on this episode of Plain Talk, three political nerds - Congressman Kelly Armstrong, my frequent co-host Chad Oban, and me, of course - take off their political hats and put on their baseball hats....
Apr 08, 2022•56 min
Minot, N.D. — "I would not vote for Nancy Pelosi" to be Speaker of the House. So says Mark Haugen, who received the North Dakota Democratic-NPL's endorsement at their state convention in Minot last month , and is currently running unopposed in the primary. He's far from a cookie-cutter progressive candidate for the Dems. He's pro-life, for one, at a time when it's hard to find any Democrats anywhere who aren't categorically in favor of abortion. He's also like to see more moderate and pragmatic ...
Apr 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min
After all the Sturm und Drang, all the attack ads and recriminations, incumbent Senator John Hoeven bested Rick Becker in the North Dakota Republican Party's Senate primary. On this Plain Talk, Chad Oban and I wrap up what happened, and talked about what it might mean for the NDGOP and North Dakota politics going forward.
Apr 02, 2022•28 min
