The January 31st deadline for filing fundraising reports with the FEC has come and gone, and still Democrat Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp’s report isn’t on the FEC website. I was talking to a reporter in the state last week who said that Heitkamp had likely filed her report in hard copy format, rather than electronically, as filing on paper delays the FEC’s ability to get information online. The delay increases the odds that Heitkam’s fundraising report will get less scrutiny from the press.

But in checking for her report today I did notice the page below from her Statement of Candidacy report filed with the FEC.

The form lists Heitkamp’s principal campaign committee, Heidi for Senate, but it also lists a group called Justice 2012 as being designated to both raise funds for Heitkamp’s campaign and to spend funds on behalf of her campaign.

This isn’t something I’ve seen before from a federal candidate in North Dakota. Who is Justice 2012?

The sort answer is that it appears to be a front group, chaired by a liberal activist named Judith Zamore who is linked to Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown, existing to funnel trial lawyer money into four Democrat campaigns including Heitkamp’s. The other three Democrats are Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii.

Here’s Justice 2012′s Statement of Organization. According to the group’s 2011 year-end report, they’ve raised $729,535 almost exclusively, it seems, from trial lawyers.

I’ve embedded a spreadsheet of Justice 2012′s donations below. Some notable contributors are Gary Paul, president of the American Association for Justice (formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America), Greg Allen of Beasley Allen (a trial lawyer super-firm), Lisa Blue Baron, Secretary of the American Association for Justice and Linda Lipsen, CEO of the AAJ.

This is a pretty sneaky move by Heitkamp and the trial lawyers. There is always an intense amount of scrutiny on how North Dakota candidates are funded (as there should be), and Heitkamp in particular already suffers from a well-deserved perception as being in the pocket of trial lawyer interests. Back when Heitkamp served as North Dakota’s Attorney General she appointed trial lawyer Jack McConnell as the state’s legal counsel in the class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry. McConnell, who has since been appointed to the federal bench by Barack Obama, continues to earn millions of dollars per year for his time serving as legal counsel to North Dakota and other states in that case, and contemporaneously to that appointment by Heitkamp donated tens of thousands of dollars to both her 2000 campaign for governor and the North Dakota Democrat party.

By setting up the separate fund, and co-mingling fundraising and spending among multiple candidates, it becomes harder to calculate just how much Heitkamp is benefiting from the support of liberal, out-of-state trial lawyer interests.

A deft political move, perhaps, but not exactly something that’s going to endear Heitkamp to voters who have a certain expectation for transparency and honest-dealing from their elected officials. This is especially an inconvenient maneuver as Heitkamp attempts to manufacture a campaign persona which has her portraying a down-to-earth, small-town, North Dakota Republican on the campaign trail.

“I think that our Congress has lost touch with the people of this country, and that we need reasonable voices who will represent constituents, and not special interests,” Heitkamp told Roll Call last year. That’s a hard pitch to make when you have a special campaign fund set up expressly for a special interest.

Last week America got what, superficially, looked like a positive jobs report. Unfortunately, the small decline in the unemployment rate from that jobs report had more to do with the labor participation rate hitting a 30-year low than any real economic growth.

But the Obama administration would like you to know that all those citizens leaving the labor pool is a good thing. Because they could be going into college or something.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explained that the number of people dropping out of the work force, which artificially depresses the unemployment rate, can be regarded as an “economic positive.”

“A lot of that is due to younger people getting more of an education, which is an economic positive,” Carney said. He had been asked what would happen when people “inevitably” raise the unemployment rating with their return to the work force.

He also noted that “an aging population” going into retirement has contributed to the number of people dropping out of the work force.

Carney suggested that the focus on the number of people dropping out of the work force is politically motivated.

Well of course the President’s political opposition is going to point out problems in these labor reports. That’s how politics work.

As to the White House spin, does anyone really think that adding more students to the nation’s already bloated colleges is going to be advantageous to the economy in the long run? We don’t have a shortage of college-educated workers. We have a shortage of jobs, created by expensive government we can’t afford putting obstacles between we citizens and the sort of commerce that creates prosperity and jobs.

Unfortunately, the President is going to see some political advantage from what the public perceives (thanks to superficial media coverage of a superficially positive jobs report) as an improving economy:

President Obama will benefit because the media will fail to note that the Obama administration promised that the unemployment rate today would be approximately 5.8 percent – not 8.3 percent — if the $800 billion stimulus package were passed.

He will benefit because interviewers like Lauer will fail to ask the president whether the unemployment rate will be below 5.5 percent — as promised – by Election Day.

He will benefit because commentators will ignore the fact that even if 250,000 jobs were created every month from now to the election, the unemployment rate will still hover near 8 percent.

He will benefit because no reporter will ask the president to explain why the labor participation rate has fallen to an abysmal 63.7 percent, the lowest level in three decades.

It’s an election year, so of course perception matters more than reality.

The Archer Daniels Midland ethanol plant in Walhalla, ND was always a marginal enterprise existing as it did far north of the nation’s traditional “corn belt.” So it’s not surprising that the plant would be shuttered as demand for ethanol plummets after Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit was allowed to expire by Congress.

Feb 6 (Reuters) – Archer Daniels Midland on Monday said it will close its ethanol plant in Walhalla, North Dakota, marking the first such closure for the agribusiness giant that last month announced the elimination of 1,000 jobs.

The plant will permanently close in April, resulting in the loss of 61 jobs. ADM will supply its customers with ethanol and animal feed products from its six other ethanol plants in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Minnesota, company spokeswoman Jessie McKinney said.

ADM claims that the closing had nothing to do with the expiration of the VEETC, but that’s a little hard to believe given the impact that has had on the ethanol industry as a whole:

The Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, or VEETC, was a tax incentive providing 45 cents per gallon to blenders who mixed ethanol with gasoline. The credit expired at the end of 2011.

Ethanol futures slumped to the lowest levels in a year at the Chicago Board of Trade in the wake of the credit expiration, while ethanol inventories last week increased to 20.95 million barrels, a record high, the Energy Information Administration said.

About 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop is expected to be used this year in ethanol production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The ethanol industry was subsidized in every way an industry can be subsidized. Production of ethanol is subsidized. Consumption of ethanol is subsidized. And the whole domestic ethanol market is protected from competition from foreign ethanol producers by prohibitive trade tariffs.

Now two of those subsidies, the subsidy for consumption (the VEETC) and the trade barriers between the US markets and foreign ethanol, have expired. All that remains are subsidies for ethanol production, and as we can see from the article above those subsidies are flooding the market with a glut of ethanol in the absence of consumption subsidies and the new access to imported ethanol.

Of course, federal (and in some areas state) mandates for ethanol production remain in place, but the real solution for the ethanol markets is to end all subsidy and mandates and let consumers decide whether or not there is really a market for ethanol.

My guess is that there is no market for ethanol. Because the only market demand ethanol producers have ever serviced is one created by the government to satisfy green/agriculture lobbyists.

Big Media hates Big Oil. This is no secret. So, of course, when North Dakota becomes the envy of the nation of because of an energy boom (oil and natural gas) that is driving unprecedented levels of economic growth in the state, the media of course dwells on the negative impact of the boom dwelling on story after story about rising crime rates.

As if it is surprising that rapid population growth (many communities are on track to double in population in just a few years, if they haven’t already) would lead to rising crime rates. The more people you have in an area the, more crime you’re going to get. There are a few bad apples in every bunch. That’s just math.

This story from the Associated Press, headlined “Self-defense products popular in ND oil patch,” is typical of the genre. It starts out with anecdotes which make western North Dakota sound like a reincarnation of the Wild West, complete with shoot outs:

DICKINSON, N.D.—Self-defense products are becoming a hot item among women in western North Dakota’s booming oil patch, as a burgeoning population and the apparent abduction of a northeastern Montana woman have heightened fears about violence.

“My pepper spray, my stun guns, my handguns — I can’t keep them on the shelves,” Dickinson pawn shop manager Raymond Gentry told The Dickinson Press. “A year ago, where a handgun might stay in my case for two months, now I’m lucky to keep that gun in the case 48 hours.”

Gentry and operators of similar businesses say sales of personal protection products started rising along with the region’s population and have spiked with the arrest of two men on aggravated kidnapping charges in the recent disappearance of Sidney, Mont., high school teacher Sherry Arnold, who is presumed dead.

Ray resident R.H. Jungemann bought a key alarm at a recent home party that offered self-defense products.

“What happened in Sidney is a little too close to home,” she told The Bismarck Tribune.

Jungemann, a jogger, also has a concealed weapon permit but said the key alarm is more practical.

“I’m not going to run with a pistol,” she said. “This gives me a little feeling of safety, but not enough to let my guard down. I’m always conscious of the trucks in town.”

Of course, once we read past all the scary-sounding anecdotes, we get to comments from law enforcement officials who say that while there are elevated levels of crime (again understandable for the sort of population increases these areas have seen) they’re not nearly as sensational as some have made them out to be:

Watford City Police Chief Slade Herfindahl said he has seen an increase in the number of women applying for concealed weapon permits since Arnold’s disappearance. However, he and others in the law enforcement community say there has not been a documented spike in strangers committing crimes against women.

“I won’t pooh-pooh things. There are a lot of scary-looking men around here, but they’re looking for jobs, not women,” Williams County Sheriff Scott Busching said. “I tell women to `Live your life. Your brain is your No. 1 weapon.’ They should have situational awareness.”

Busching said the area is potentially more dangerous than it used to be. “But are there rapes out on the sidewalks? No, there’s not,” he said.

Any time a community – especially those in an area like western North Dakota used to a slower, more isolated way of life – becomes gets inundated with “outsiders” there is going to be some friction and resentment. And when you add in the media, driven by an anti-oil agenda to sensationalize rising crime rates and other challenges these communities are facing, you set the stage for hysteria.

Which doesn’t do anyone any good. There are very real issues in the oil patch that need to be addressed through prudent application of public policy. But hysterics, and the policies born of said hysterics, aren’t conducive to real solutions.

Generally, when we talk about the issue of church and state, what we’re talking about is religion in the public square. Religious monuments on public land, for instance, or prayer on school grounds.

But the Obama administration’s decision, under the auspices of Obamacare, to force religious organizations to pay for health care treatments/procedures they object to exposes a different facet of that argument. While our government should not be in the habit of endorsing any particular religion over another, neither should our government be able to trample the religious beliefs of our nation’s citizens. Which means that Catholics, running schools and hospitals and universities as an expression of their faith, shouldn’t have to do so while embracing (even tacitly) things they have a moral objection to like abortion or contraception.

That, my friends, is separation of church and state. It cuts both ways. But don’t tell Al Sharpton that. “If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we’re going to have a separation of church and state,” he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “Whether I would personally agree with the decision or not, the question is do I have a right to make that law?”

Clearly, the government does not have the authority to make laws limiting religious expression. That’s in the 1st amendment. The government can’t force Jehova’s Witnesses to take blood transfusions. They can’t force Christian Scientists to get standard medical treatment instead of relying on faith healing. Jews and Muslims can’t be forced to eat bacon, and Catholics can’t be forced to pay for abortion or contraception services.

This is how freedom works. The notion of religious freedom, and separation of church and state, prohibits the government from shoving any one particular flavor of religion down our throats. It prohibits the government from regulating a certain religious belief out of existence.

With the deadline of the first Fighting Sioux petition approaching on Tuesday, Feb 7th, 2012, #SaveTheSioux petition organizers have set up two last minute events to ensure enough signatures on the “Repeal the Repeal” petition, add an insurance cushion, and allow as many eligible North Dakota voters as possible an opportunity to participate in this democratic process as possible.

Circulators can also bring their petition packets to most the below locations as well. Notarized ones are appreciated, but notary public’s will be on site at most locations in case they don’t have time to do this before turn in. Both petition types can be turned in, but the priority should go to getting the referendum submitted.

Events are:

Monday, Feb 6th

Fargo

VISIONBanks in Fargo

North Location
1321 21st Ave N.
Fargo, ND 58102

South Location
3000 25th St S.
Fargo, ND 58103

You can also bring circulated packets to the Drive Up Window at both locations, or feel free to come in the branch (notaries inside)
Drop off by 6:00pm Monday Feb 6th

Tuesday, Feb 7th

Bismarck

North Dakota State Capitol, Top of the South Loop

600 East Boulevard Ave
Stop by between 4:00pm and 7:00pm
KQ94.5 will be doing a remote from this location as well, and the #SaveTheSioux Cruiser will be on site

You can also bring circulated packets to this location. Notary Public will be available inside the #SaveTheSioux Cruiser
Drop off during event hours

Monday, Feb 6th

Devils Lake

Mr and Mrs J’s Restaurant
318 Highway 2 E
Stop in during normal restaurant hours

Circulated packets can also be brought to this location, but ensure they are notarized first.
Drop off by 5:00pm Monday Feb 6th

Monday, Feb 6th

Minot

Pringle & Herigstad, PC Law Firm
2525 Elk Dr
Stop in by 5:00pm on Monday, Feb 6th
You can also bring circulated packets to this location. Notary Public will be available inside

Notarized packets can also be turned in to the below individuals/ locations:

Grand Forks area

Don Barcome Residence
2424 Olson Dr
Grand Forks, ND
Place packets in a mail slot on the east side of the garage
Drop off by 5:00pm Monday Feb 6th

Bismarck area

Text or Call 701-484-1376 to arrange drop off
Notarized packets accepted through 11:59pm Tuesday Feb 7th

If your location is not listed or you can’t get to once, text or call 701-484-1376 by Monday afternoon for more information on how to get your petitions to Bismarck on time.

Information on petition and lawsuit activities can be monitored at Facebook, Twitter, and at www.savethefightingsioux.com.

It didn’t get a lot of media attention, but you readers have been emailing me links to this vote since it happened last week, so it’s worth mentioning.

A total of 23 Republicans, and one lonely Democrat, voted for a resolution in favor of a constitutional amendment implementing term limits. Every other member of the Senate voted against it. You can see the vote positions at the link.

I know a lot of my fellow conservatives are adamant about term limits, but I’ve never been that enamored with them. I understand the consternation with politicians who go to Washington DC and lose their connection with the people, but I’m not sure term limits would solve that problem. A situation where at one time as much as a third of the Senate could be lame duck Senators, up against term limits and free to vote any which way they wanted without concern of re-election, would be just as bad if not worse than the status quo.

And besides, I think voters should be able to vote for who they want. If they want to re-elect a Senator for five consecutive terms, so be it. That’s the will of the people.

I don’t think the problem with Washington DC is the length of service there. I think the problem with Washington DC is the sort of people we elect to serve there, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame for that.

From the tone of this Grand Forks Herald editorial, one would get the idea that North Dakota is facing a choice. We can either conserve state lands, holding them out of lease sales for oil development (and thus denying millions upon millions of dollars of royalty revenues for our schools), or open the lands to oil development and see them destroyed forever.

This is a faulty premise in that it presumes that oil development would destroy any value these lands have for wildlife, tourism, history and just plain scenery. That’s just not true, and I suspect the folks at the Herald know it.

What’s being debated is the lease of thousands of acres of state land managed by the North Dakota Land Board, comprised of the Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State Treasurer and Superintendant of Public Instruction. These public officials are tasked with managing that land in such a way as to produce revenues for the state’s schools and colleges. Obviously, leasing these lands for oil production is one way to generate a lot of revenues from the land.

That was just about to happen until, at the 11th hour a group of environmentalists (the Wildlife Foundation chief among them) and leftist politicians (like Democrat state Senator Connie Triplett), most of whom have probably never laid eyes on the land in question, raised objections saying that the land shouldn’t be opened for oil development because that would destroy its beauty, etc., etc.

Unfortunately, the tone of the debate has been controlled by these environmentalists and their apologists in the state media. They’d have us believe that it’s a choice between keeping these lands closed to development or opening them and destroying them for all future conservation purposes.

Again, this is a false premise. This is a huge amount of land. The infrastructure needed to facilitate oil development (acres for roads, drilling sites, etc.) would take up only a tiny fraction of it. Thanks to techniques like horizontal drilling, one relatively small drilling site can tap into resources under vast tracts of this land, thus allowing responsible development with a relatively small footprint.

The State Land Board is more than capable of reaching an agreement with oil developers that will both allow the oil resources under these lands to be accessed (and thus drive revenues to our schools and colleges) and preserve these lands for conservation purposes.

Neither North Dakota citizens, nor the State Land Board, should be lured into thinking that this issue is as black and white as the environmentalists would have us believe. We have a proud tradition in North Dakota of both exploiting our natural resources while simultaneously caring for and preserving our land. It started with agriculture and, more recently, has continued with oil, gas and coal development.

We know how to strike this balance in North Dakota perhaps better than any place else in the world. Let’s not let the hysterical environmentalists shut down prudent, responsible progress.

A student asked Vice President Joe Biden a question about tuition at Florida State University today. Specifically, the student asked Biden if he thought government subsidies for higher education weren’t, in fact, making higher education more expensive.

Biden’s answer? Subsidies are making higher education more expensive, but without the subsidies we wouldn’t have so many kids in college. Which just proves something critics of higher education like myself have been saying for some time. It’s not about quality of education, it’s about volume of students.

Click the image to see the video:

“So you are right, in a pure free-market the college tuition would have to be lower because there would be fewer people going to school, they wouldn’t have as much coming in,” says Biden. “But the end result is we would probably have — we go for the better part, half a generation, of going 16th in the world maybe down to 20th in the world.”

He’s referring to our ranking in the number of students who go to college, but again that’s the wrong measure to use. What good is sending a high number of kids to college if a lot of those kids wind up in a situation (a generic degree with a lot of student loan debt) that’s not really advantageous to them in the labor markets?

Higher education is supposed to be a vehicle for prosperity, one path to the American dream, not an end unto itself.

By the way, according to economist Ernie Goss, “Since 1981, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that college tuition and fees have soared by 714.3 percent while all other items consumed by the average household increased by a more moderate 141.0 percent.”

That’s downright scary.

The EPA is preparing another massive hike in the federal government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standard. This rule mandates that vehicles sold in America get a certain number of miles per gallon.

The Obama administration has issued a directive that the CAFE standard, currently at 35mpg, be increased dramatically over the next decade and the EPA is complying, to the chagrin of the American consumer.

At the Washington Examiner they’re calling this the individual mandate for Chevy Volts:

The new rule — issued in response to a 2010 Obama directive, not to specific legislation passed by Congress — would require automakers to achieve a 40.9 mpg CAFE average by 2021 and 54.5 mpg by 2025. In case you’re wondering whatever happened to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it has been supplanted in the CAFE process by the EPA. The proposed regulation was designed, according to the EPA, “to preserve consumer choice — that is, the proposed standards should not affect consumers’ opportunity to purchase the size of vehicle with the performance, utility and safety features that meets their needs.” But the reality is that consumer choice will be the first victim.

Getting from the current 35 mpg CAFE standard to 54.5 can be achieved by such expedients as making air conditioning systems work more efficiently. We have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to anybody who thinks that’s even remotely realistic. There is one primary method of increasing fuel economy — weight reduction. That in turn means automakers will have to use much more exotic materials, including especially the petroleum-processing byproduct known as “plastic.” But using more plastic will make it much more difficult to satisfy current federal safety standards. The bottom-line will be much more expensive vehicles and dramatically fewer kinds of vehicles.

The average price of a new vehicle will go up at least $3,200, according to NHTSA, but experts outside government such as the National Automobile Dealers Association say the cost will be substantially higher. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that there will be no vehicles costing $15,000 or less, the segment of the market that college students and low-income consumers depend upon. Altogether, an estimated seven million buyers will be forced out of the market for new cars.

It seems that, in our modern economy, the most important factor in manufacturing is not pleasing the consumers by giving them what they want but complying with government regulations born of the ideas politicians have for what consumers should want.

Which kind of makes you wonder if we’re still a free country when we can’t buy the kind or car we want. Or the kind of light bulb we want. Etc., etc.