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This was a busy day for North Dakota's congressional delegation. When Nancy Pelosi released her 1,900 page behemoth of a health care takeover bill, Earl Pomeroy jumped on board.
This is the same Earl Pomeroy who was not interested in meeting with his constituents during the August recess, choosing instead a call-screened "telephone town hall" which featured questions from liberal activist groups and labor unions. Gee, I wonder why?
Then there's Kent "Countrywide" Conrad, who is trying to pull a sneaky one. He's voting yes on cloture to send the Senate healthcare takeover bill to the floor, yet may get an opportunity to vote against it on the floor of the Senate if they use a trick to make it a 50-vote pass. If that happens, he'll come back to North Dakota and tell the angry peasants that he voted against the health care bill, then jet back to his million dollar house on the east coast. KFYR, KXMB, and the Forum group will act as dutiful stenographers, and the whole matter will be buried.
Speaking of town halls, Kent Conrad was pre-loading the few events he did, walked out after a couple of questions, and was astroturfing the events with liberal supporters via the BarackObama.com website!
You and I will get stuck with the bill, no matter what the result. It's interesting; after this House bill was announced today, I was able to download the PDF of the bill and find out that anyone who doesn't want to participate will be taxed for their choice (Section 501, page 297) in less than five minutes. I'm a pretty quick reader, but that was just with a simple perusal. Imagine what else is hidden therein!
There wasn't any breaking news about Senator Byron "Skybox" Dorgan relating to the government health care takeover, but there was one interesting story. According to the Fargo Forum, Senator Dorgan is "frustrated" that the Obama administration hasn't named appointees for a pair of federal positions here in North Dakota. Well, wait a minute. Whenever one of these three guys jet back to North Dakota, throw on a flannel shirt and rub elbows with the peasants, they talk about how much seniority, clout, and influence they wield in Washington. When have they ever displayed it? Have they written and sponsored legislation that has become law? Are they totally unable to sway the White House now that it's "their guy" who's running it? You can't have it both ways, Senator.
Let's put a stop to this circus. For starters, it's time to call our congressional delegation and tell our Representative and Senators that this takeover of our health choices is NOT in North Dakota's best interest. Here are the phone numbers:
Rep. Earl Pomeroy
Bismarck: 701-224-0355
Washington, DC: 202-225-2611
Sen. Kent Conrad
Bismarck: 701-258-4648
Washington, DC: 202-224-2034
Sen. Byron Dorgan
Bismarck: 701-250-4618
Washington: 701-202-224-2551
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( 3 / 125 )
Fantastic new bridge we've got. One question, though: why haven't the lights on the supports been turned on? If you don't know the lights of which I speak, look to either side of the "V" of each of the concrete bridge supports. There are lights located there, and they'd be a remarkable addition to the new local landmark.
I was so sure I saw at least some of them on way back when the bridge was brand new. It's been about a year; isn't it time we turn 'em on?
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( 3 / 172 )
That's the title of this article I found in my BusinessWeek magazine this afternoon, so I dug up the link to the online version for you. To summarize, Doosan (the company which bought Bobcat) is in some dire straits and needs to cut costs. That's an obvious fact to many Bismarck-Mandan families, but this article explains a little bit about why those cuts are occurring.
I thought it was interesting because of a few key bits of information I was able to pick out of the article. One is that Doosan was one of multiple bidders for Bobcat...sure, they closed the Bismarck plant, but a different bidder could have decided to abandon North Dakota entirely. Another is that the financing deal on this purchase requires Doosan to accelerate their loan payments in the event that Bobcat's cashflow declines, which it clearly has.
This also reminds me of this article, which describes the moving of some Bobcat operations to the old iMation plant in Wahpeton. It looks like it'll be some of the hydraulic and cylinder shop jobs. They'll be paying $416,000 a year in rent. I wonder how that compares with the cost of owning facilities in Bismarck, and paying the property taxes thereon? A "nonprofit development corporation" owns the Wahpeton facility, which probably means that the taxpayers are eating it on the place in the name of "economic development." Don't get me started on that boondoggle; That vast empty Northern Plains Commerce Center southeast of town cost $4.7 million taxpayer dollars, with Bobcat its only prominent tenant. I haven't heard of them packing up their operations there, but it raises the question: might they abandon the NPCC now, too?
One thing I didn't hear mentioned in any of this articles: labor unions. Someone told me that the Litchfield, MN plant is non-union. I've also been told that the Wahpeton facility will be non-union. I don't think it's a stretch to connect those dots, in light of another anecdote I heard from a union meeting in Bismarck a while back. As the story goes, someone stood up and mentioned that he makes more at Bobcat than his wife at a professional job with a college degree, and dissatisfied Bobcat employees might want to consider that. While plenty of good things have come from workers getting together, I think the modern labor union is sorely off track, disregarding the best interest of their members, and probably played a significant role in hundreds of Bismarck jobs moved only two to three hours to the east.
There are probably more interesting observations and deductions you can make about the economy, the Doosan/Bobcat deal, the economic development canard, and labor unions...I'll leave that up to you. I just wanted to share the observations I got when I flipped open the October 26th issue of BusinessWeek this afternoon.
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( 2.9 / 131 )
Not really. The best is yet to come. Cá fhad é ó an tús go deireadh?
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( 3.3 / 138 )Ethics investigation of Sen. Kent Conrad takes an interesting twist when Democrats change the lock on the hearing room door. Seriously
Senator Kent Conrad has scored a few victories in dodging investigation into his Countrywide mortgage on the property he owns in Bismarck. He and Senator Chris Dodd have been under investigation for getting "sweetheart mortgages" for quite some time until the Democrats won the majority in the Senate and dismissed the matter. Republicans are still trying to get to the bottom of this, and want to issue subpoenas to get some answers. The Democrats have been working to stall that process.
This article describes the crazy lengths to which they'll go: changing the locks on the door to the committee meeting room where the decision to issue subpoenas would be made. They then informed Republicans that only the Democrats would have the keys.
The article goes on to explain that it's a retaliatory trick that the Democrats are using after being busted for canceling a meeting on the matter, lying that they had conflicts in their schedules.
The larger crime here, in my opinion, dwarfs the sweetheart mortgage deal on the property. It is my firm belief that Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan claim this apartment complex as their "residence" so they can remain eligible as North Dakotans on paper for reelection and get sent back east, where Senator Conrad has little real estate gems like this $1.4 million beach house.
If you want more information on this little bit of "inverse carpetbagging" on behalf of North Dakota's members of the United States Senate, just click here.
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( 3.2 / 82 )
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