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May 2008 |
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Letters To The Editor
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008 |
Letter from Paul Stenshoel
Valley City, N.D.
In response to Mr. Morrissey's views on CCI:
Having lived here for some time now and paid attention, it is quite clear to me that the mayor and the city commissioners have made numerous questionable decisions. If Mr. Morrissey says that we should elect people to these offices and then allow them to go their merry way unattended, I beg to differ.
CCI is doing a fine job as a watchdog group, and all government bears watching. CCI deserves positive recognition for this.
Government, even mere town government, is intimidating just by its very existence, and few people in a small town feel comfortable pointing out the shortcomings of those in charge of fines and taxes and of the rules and regulations and their enforcement.
Is Mr. Morrissey suggesting that city officials are without flaw, and that when their actions are detrimental to civic welfare, that they should not be brought to account for those actions in a timely fashion? That their responsibilities as elected officials can be delegated to hand-picked outside hirelings?
I am not seeing a city government here that relates to people at a grassroots level, and that provides a civic environment with a vision and purpose that does its best to include everyone. Attentive newcomers soon see exactly what I am talking about.
As long as we are creating bogus city administrator positions, I suggest Mr. Morrissey would be a great spinmeister for city hall---and he won't have to come out from under his rock to do it.
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
LaDeen Knutson
Valley City, N.D.
Hunger and poverty are rampant in our world, and something can and must be done about them. Our local CROP Hunger Walk is a great place to start. For a few hours and a few miles, friends and neighbors will be coming together to, in the words of I John 3:18: "...love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."
On Sunday afternoon, May 4, the Valley City CROP Hunger Walk will be held to show our love and active concern for neighbors in need near and far. The participants, ranging from newborns to nonagenarians, will be raising funds to change the world in real and measurable ways -- digging wells that will bring clean water to villages; providing seeds and tools so that people can grow their own food; helping communities and families rebuild after disaster. Whether it's responding to devastating floods across the central U.S., or the Gulf Coast, or a village well in Burkina Faso, CROP Hunger Walks are making a difference.
The letters CROP mean Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty.
CROP Hunger Walk funds will benefit the overall work and ministry of Church World Service -- working in some 80 countries to help those in need help themselves through refugee assistance, self-help development programs, advocacy, and disaster relief. And, it’s important to note that 20 percent of what we raise will help the Barnes County Food Pantry in their important work here in Valley City.
So please mark your calendars and come CROP Walk with us! Together -- with your family, group, or congregation -- we can walk to change the world, one step at a time. We will gather together Sunday, May 4, at 1 p.m. in the parking lot next to Our Savior’s Lutheran Church.
And if you can't walk on that day, or just want to broaden your horizon of sponsors, you can walk on the Web with us. Visit cropwalkonline.org to find out how.
For more information, or to get a pledge envelope, please contact Faith Lutheran Church at 845-4390. |
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
Letter from Corey A. M. Bergsrud
Grand Forks, N.D.
On Sunday, April 13, there was an article in the papers titled "North Dakota's Black Gold." This article said, "Federal officials estimate there is as much as 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken formation in western North Dakota and eastern Montana." The article stated that the Williston Basin's Bakken formation, on the U.S. side, has the most recoverable oil they have assessed in the lower 48 states and the biggest "continuous" formation of recoverable oil in the United States.
In view of these facts, it would be a lot smarter and safer for the United States to harvest the oil in our own country and transport it to Illinois and Oklahoma instead of allowing the Keystone routing. There would be less loss of energy during transportation because North Dakota's oil is closer than the oil from northern Canada, and North Dakota's oil is much cleaner than the crude oil from Canada.
The oil from the Bakken Formation is light, low-sulfur crude oil that gushes from deep beneath the rocks. It is far different from the toxic oil wrung from the tar sands, where only 1/10 of the destroyed soil is tar and the oil must be extracted from the tar. The mines in Canada put so much arsenic, mercury, benzene, and other poisons into the air and water that they cause deformities and cancers in fish up to 1,000 kilometers downstream and cancers in humans. The oil from the Bakken formation is clean, it won't give us cancer, and unlike that from Canada, it is not foreign oil.
It would be nice if Keystone saw this logic and said, "Hey, this makes more sense in the long run." The corporate leaders of the crude oil world would not like it, but it should not be about money, it should be about the safety and future of the people.
Keystone already has its pipes sitting on our railroad tracks. Maybe they could use them for this other route instead. They would have to plan it over from square one, but it would save hundreds of thousands of people's water sources, and it would save the most fertile soil in the world.
This is the most logical option. It is far safer and more efficient than the TransCanada route, the dangers of which you can read about at www.saveoursoil.net. I suggest it be taken seriously.
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Monday, 21 April 2008 |
Letter from Deb Kluck
Valley City, N.D.
April 27 through May 3 is National Volunteer Week. This week is our humble way of recognizing all the wonderful things volunteers do for us through out the year.
We simply could not provide the services to the extent that we do without the help of our communities. The home office for Hospice of the Red River Valley is in Fargo. We also have five regional offices located in Grand Forks, Mayville, Valley City and Lisbon in North Dakota and Detroit Lakes in Minnesota.
Volunteers from our entire service area assist us every day in some way.
Here are some examples of how our volunteers support the patients/families that we serve:
* Deliver supplies to patients home when there is an immediate need
* Sit at the bedside of actively dying patients
* Give patient haircuts in their home
* Provide companionship to patients and/or family members
* Make a weekly phone call to patients/families to check on things
* Mow the patient’s lawn
* Assemble packets and mailings
* Catalog new and donated books related to end of life issues for our resource libraries
* Assist with funraisers and Heirlooms resale shop
Last year, approximately 400 volunteers recorded nearly18,000 hours which is equal to 8.6 FTEs. These folks are among the most compassionate people I have ever met. I salute them this day for the caring spirit and love they bring to our community.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Deb Kluck is Volunteer Services Manager of Hospice of the Red River Valley.
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Hoeven hasn’t produced jobs we need |
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Friday, 11 April 2008 |
Letter from Betty McCommon
Bismarck, N.D.
So, John Hoeven is running for governor again saying he's created so
many jobs for North Dakota and boasting about higher wages.
Then why do many North Dakotans still need more than one job to make
ends meet?
Everyone seems to be under the assumption North Dakota has such a
low cost of living. Do some checking online. Just Google cost of living comparisons and pick a site. It will open your eyes as to why our young people want to move. According to www.bestplaces.net/col/
Besides making a lot more money, young folks in other areas have more disposable income.
For example, they can make 9.2 percent less in Memphis, Tenn., 10.6
percent less in Springfield, Ill., 12.9 percent less in Abeline, Texas, less in Houston, Kansas City and Omaha and have the same standard of living as here in Bismarck, N.D. And you know people make more in those places than here. Dallas, Texas, even has the exact same cost of living index as Bismarck. You only have to earn 8.2 percent more to have the same standard of living in Spokane. Get the picture?
When they figure the cost of living they include things like taxes, energy, health care and food. Guess what, we are higher than other places in all of those categories. About the only place we are lower is housing.
I think we need some jobs that actually pay decent wages and not just more a little over minimum wage. North Dakotans shouldn't be expected to work harder and longer than people in other states to make ends meet. We've given Hoeven eight years. He hasn't done anything to write home about or bring our kids home - certainly not enough to run a campaign on. |
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Friday, 11 April 2008 |
Letter from Paul G. Jaehnert
Vadnais Hts., Minn.
So our legislators are looking at tax incentives for corporations that retain and create jobs in the United States. They're using the wrong approach. How about using the stick instead of the carrot? In lieu of rewarding good corporate behavior, they should be taxing the bad behavior of those corporations which outsource jobs for the purpose of avoiding taxation.
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Taking care of business on the farm |
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Friday, 11 April 2008 |
Letter from Kelly Shockman
North Dakota rep - Farmers National Board of Directors
The world is full of countless forms and types of businesses, big and small. But the business of “production agriculture” that produces the food we all need every day of our lives is the biggest and most important business of all. If we don’t have food to eat, nothing else matters. The business of production agriculture is producing food to feed people and starts with land, water, sunshine and human resources and is called “farming.”
Farming is often called a vocation or a way of life and the basic component of all civilized society — all very true. But production agriculture is also a business, and like every other business in our modern economic society we must recover our production costs to survive.
As a life-long farmer it has always amazed and concerned me that farmers and their families will spend an entire year, spend huge amounts of time, money and effort, take humongous weather and market risks to produce food — then we take the fruits of our labor into a market place that was built and is owned and controlled by the buyers and ask, “What will you give me?” or “What do you think my commodities are worth today?” with no plan or system to recover even our basic input costs from the marketplace, let alone a profit.
Then consider this: we farmers have virtually no control or voice in the cost of our production inputs like fertilizer, labor, seed, machinery, freight, fuel or any other costs. Someone tells us what we will pay for production inputs. We pay what they ask or we don’t get it.
No other major business in the world has to deal on a day-to-day basis with the one element or risk that affects us all — weather. Unpredictable, uncontrollable weather can be cruel and unforgiving. A farmer might have a good crop one day and two weeks later, because of rain/wind/hail/drought have nothing. Farmers can buy insurance to cover high risks in farming but if we do that, the high cost of high risk insurance will practically guarantee no profit that year and is primarily for the protection of lenders or banks and not the farmer.
The only reason some independent farmers are still able to hang on and survive in this ridiculous business environment is to work themselves and their families for a whole production crop cycle (year) with no return for their labor, risk or capitol investment.
Farming produces large amounts of bulk commodities and uses huge amounts of fuel to produce and transport our food to the cities where most consumers live. Crude oil prices have topped $100 a barrel. The petroleum industry is talking about the possibility of $200 a barrel in the near future. Since farmers “buy retail and sell wholesale and pay the freight both ways,” the rising cost of energy is a dangerous problem and should be of great concern to food producers who have no system to recover input costs or to pass higher energy and other production costs upward to the next level in the food chain. “No business can survive that allows the buyer of their production to determine the price, grade and other conditions of sale of their commodities.”
Farmers today DO NOT have a marketing system — only a disposal system “to get rid of our production”— that is thousands of years old and was built, is owned and controlled by the buyers. Our commodities are sold on a “take if or leave it” basis. THAT IS NO WAY TO RUN A BUSINESS. We farmers produce our commodities — we own them first — and we absolutely must build a new marketing system we own and control and that will return to us a price that covers our cost of production plus a profit from the market place — not from the buyers, the federal government or anyone else. If farmers will work together and accomplish this we will be “TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS — THE RIGHT WAY.” |
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