Plain Talk

Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic malaise, America's employers have been in a crunch. Not only are their costs rising due to supply line snaggles, but many of them are having trouble finding and keeping workers. Jonathan Holth is one a North Dakota employer. He is a co-founder of the Toasted Frog restaurant in downtown Grand Forks, and has since opened additional locations in Bismarck and Fargo. He's also the co-owner of the Urban Stampede Coffee Bar in Grand Forks. On this episode of Plain Talk, he discusses what his business has been doing to keep workers on the job, which includes getting creative with leave time and other benefits. Among the creativity is an accepting approach to employees struggling with addiction. Holth himself is nearly 14 years sober, and was appointed by Governor Doug Burgum to serve on the advisory council for North Dakota's Office of Recovery Reinvented. Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I talk about the upcoming anniversary of the January 6 riot in Washington D.C. and the growing mainstream acceptance of political extremism in America.

One thing I think about, as our kids return to school from a long holiday break, is how hard it can be to get them back into the education groove. That challenge is perhaps on the minds of parents more so now than before, given the way COVID-19 has turned our lives upside down. In October Kirsten Baesler, the Superintendent of North Dakota's public school system, released data from testing showing significant pandemic-era declines among the state's students in proficiency levels for English and mathematics. How worried should that make you? Perhaps not as worried as you think you should be says Dr. Dann Conn. Conn is a professor of teacher education and kinesiology at Minot State University. He's also the co-author of a book, Unraveling the Assessment Industrial Complex, which calls into question the purpose and efficacies of the very testing regime being used to measure educational declines. "Kids are resilient," Conn said on this episode of Plain Talk. "They'll bounce back." He argues that parents, educators, and policymakers ought to be more focused on what we might call real-world outcomes than testing scores. Subscribe to Plain Talk on your favorite podcasting platform by clicking here.

Wayne Stenehjem, North Dakota's long-time Attorney General, announced recently that he'll end a more than four-decades-long career in elected office once his term is up next year. Who will replace him? The name you'll hear most often in those conversations is Drew Wrigley, who served two stints as North Dakota's U.S. Attorney, one under former President George W. Bush, and another under former President Donald Trump, and between them served six years as Lt. Governor under former Governor Jack Dalrymple. Wrigley joined this episode of Plain Talk to say nothing definitive about if he's running, though it sure seems like he is. In addition to speaking about what his approach to the office would be, what priorities he'd focus on, and his philosophy about the job of Attorney General, Wrigley hinted that those interested in whether he's running or not might want to check the candidate filings at the Secretary of State's office in the first week of 2022. This seems to me like a pretty good confirmation that he's running.

It's been a wild year in North Dakota politics, from a lawmaker getting expelled from the Legislature for the first time in state history to a small group of NDGOP leaders walking out of their own party's meeting just last week. On this episode of Plain Talk I was joined by Chad Oban and Jamie Selzler, both former executive directors of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL, to talk about the year that was in North Dakota. We also talk about what next year, an election year, has in store.

Wayne Stenehjem has served the State of North Dakota in elected office for more than 40 years, from his stint in the Legislature starting in the mid-1970s to two decades serving as Attorney General. Now, he's calling it a career, announcing that he'll step down once his current four-year term is up. Stenehjem joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss it. To say that his career was consequential for our state would be an understatement. In the Legislature, where he served with two of his brothers, Alan and Bob, something he believes to be unprecedented in America's legislative bodies, he had a hand in creating the open records and meetings law state government operates under today. He pushed for a uniform court system, moving it beyond an antiquated system that saw different areas of North Dakota served by different sorts of courts. When he became Attorney General in 2000, the State of North Dakota didn't even have a crime lab to handle evidence like fingerprints and DNA. But it wasn't all serious business. Stenehjem also recounts how he reacted with his brother Bob, then the Senate Majority Leader, would steal his parking space at the capitol during a legislative session. Also on this episode, North Dakota has had an ongoing debate about ethics for years now, well before voters approved an ethics amendment for the state constitution. Some of the people behind that push have notions about what constitutes ethics, as far as campaign finance go, that are hard to square with how Americans have traditionally viewed free speech and participatory democracy. Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak, whose office has become ground zero for this argument, joined Plain Talk to discuss.

North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer joined this episode of Plain Talk and discussed all sorts of stuff. The January 6 committee, and what it's revealed about the way former President Donald Trump handled the riot at the U.S. capitol. The Build Back Better plan. The state of inflation. The retrenchment going on in the Republican party. Carbon capture. Also, the divides in the national Republican party are impacted the NDGOP as well. Cramer, a former chairman of the NDGOP, weighs in on some of the rule changes being discussed by his state party relating to how the party does its business around state conventions and endorsing candidates.

Politics in North Dakota are about as divisive these days as they are anywhere else. In our state, the divide in the Republican party is between traditional Republicans and a faction of conservatives, in-step with former President Donald Trump, who feel the state's Republicans haven't been conservative enough. I've been writing and talking about this divide a lot, and recently state Rep. Jeff Hoverson, a Republican from Minot and a member of the Bastiat Caucus of lawmakers who align with this faction, asked to come on the podcast to talk it out. So Hoverson joined my Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I and we talked about Hoverson calling people who disagree with him "enemy" and the other things that are dividing us. I'm not sure we changed anybody's mind, but it was  good conversation. Also, Oban and I discuss some of the changes the NDGOP is making to their state convention and candidate endorsement process. I wrote about the proposed rule change for the timing of the convention in recent column, and we talked about that, but we also discussed another potential rule change that would make it harder for candidates to seek the NDGOP's endorsement. It would even require the candidates to pay the party for the privilege of being considered. Good idea or bad? We talked it out.

Religion has always been at the center of American life, but in recent years many Americans are turning away from faith. The polling firm Gallup has been tracking trends in religion since the 1930s when church membership among Americans hovered in the 70 percent region. It stayed that high through the late 1990s, but in the last couple of decades, it has plunged. In 2020, the percentage of Americans who said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque plunged to 47 percent. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? And why is it happening? Roxanne Salonen and Devyln Brooks are both Christians. The former is a Catholic; the latter a Lutheran pastor. They both write columns on spirituality, and they joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss the decline of religion in America with the host, yours truly, who is an atheist.

North Dakota has industries that produce a lot of carbon. Oil. Natural gas. Coal. Agriculture. But North Dakota's newest industry could be taking that carbon and putting it someplace where it can't harm the environment. Wade Boeschans, a vice president with a company called Summit Carbon Solutions, joined this episode of Plain Talk to answer questions about one of the first, and biggest, projects of this burgeoning industry. The Midwest Carbon Express is a pipeline that will gather carbon emitted by ethanol plants across Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota, and bring them to a spot in North Dakota where it will be stored underground. What are the challenges attendant to building such a project? Is it safe? Who will be responsible for all this stored carbon long-term? Wade answers those questions and more.

Misinformation. Fake news. These are terms we hear a lot in America in 2021, but what do they mean? How do they happen? Dr. Dan Pemstein is an associate professor of political science at North Dakota State University. He joined this episode of Plain Talk to talk about his research into online misinformation both here in America and across the globe. Also, state Rep. Rick Becker, a Republican from Bismarck, flew off the handle recently when asked about a quarter-million dollars in Paycheck Protection Program loans he took for his businesses, the bulk of which have reportedly been forgiven. Becker has refused to answer questions about those loans, choosing instead to engage in what is almost a borderline homophobic attack on me, the one asking the questions. For the record, I don't consider being called gay to be an insult. Co-host Chad Oban and I discuss.