Who did they blame?

“I got a lot of problems with you people, and now you’re gonna hear about it!” — Frank Costanza, Festivus 1997 In 1884, my great-grandfather crossed an ocean. At Ellis Island, he got off the boat in a foreign land where he didn’t speak the language. After that, he crossed half a continent by train

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Minot, this is the perfect time to be concerned about a City parking project

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” — Aristotle Authors note: the post was published

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To judge or not to judge, that is your question

It is too early to speculate on the outcome of the Presidential race in 2020. If Trump does not get re-elected, however, there will be a chapter in American history and law for which there is no precedent. Michael Cohen, who was Trump’s personal lawyer, has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison for a

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This is value-added agriculture, job creation, and so much more!

The progress of Prairie Sky Breads has been a topic of commentary on The Minot Voice in the past. Their example is one we — in government particularly — should take note of. Often, we politicians and bureaucrats get so wrapped up in our notions of ‘job creation’ and the accompanying economic development jargon like

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This is the government we deserve

In prior writings, I have described our country as “The Divided States of America”. No matter who is elected President in 2020, I am skeptical of that person’s capacity to unite the American public. It seems that the left and the right are tugging their respective political parties into positions which label compromise and basic

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If City Hall doesn’t succeed, neither do we

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this was incorrectly attributed to Josh Wolsky. This has been updated to reflect the correct author, Jim Maxson. If there are more thankless jobs than being on the Minot City Council or being Minot’s Mayor, I have no idea what they may be. The present administration inherited some pre-existing

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So, you’d like a neighborhood grocery store…

Would you like to be less reliant on your car? Should I assume you even have a car? After all, they are expensive. Those are odd questions to ask in an article titled about local grocery stores, but they’re at the heart of the question that asks why our neighborhood grocery stores disappeared. Minot used

Read & Share   sourced from: Strong Towns

The internet is broken; this is how we fix it

Whether for predatory profit or political persuasion and power, the high ideals that gave rise to the Internet are being increasingly eroded. What do we do about it? Is there a way to turn this extraordinary tool toward outcomes that push us forward? Read more on where we need to direct the Internet from this

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What would it look like if we really committed to #MakeMinotAccessible?

It’s one of those things that most of us take for granted — being able to go where we want, when we want, without logistics planning or concerns about how we’re going to get there. I’m talking about not having to worry about barriers like sets of stairs, steps, curbs, irregular thresholds, or the countless

Read & Share   sourced from: Strong Towns

2020 Census likely to change North Dakota’s political landscape

North Dakota’s population has both grown and shifted over the past 10 years, and when the dust settles following the 2020 count, the political landscape will look different. Rob Port with Say Anything Blog has speculation on where it seems likely more political power is moving to.

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When it comes to parking, we’ve already embraced socialism

Equal and available parking for all the cars in all the places all the time! I don’t remember the street protest and social activism that secured this ‘right’ for us, but there’s no doubt that the wheels of government drove us straight to our current state of parking utopia.  Through on-street parking in front of

Read & Share   sourced from: City Observatory

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Survey says American churches are in trouble

If you were running a business and your customer base went from 70% of the population to 50% of the population, what would you do? That’s the environment churches find themselves in over the past 20 years. Lloyd Omdahl writing an opinion piece for Forum Communications has more on the topic.

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum

This is what happens when you cap property taxes; it’s not good

Property taxes — we all hate them. Naturally, as a result of our disdain, we seek to remove that which we don’t like. This attitude is prevalent in North Dakota. In the past, we’ve voted down initiated measures that sought to eliminate property tax; in the recently closed legislative session, the House killed a bill

Read & Share   sourced from: Los Angeles Times

Social Security for me but not for thee

In sixteen years, benefits paid out by the Social Security Administration will exceed generated surpluses. The options of the federal government at that time will be to reduce payments to the retired and/or disabled, increase payroll taxes on employers, employees or both, raise the cap on taxable wages, increase the age of retirement, or all

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Minot, begin preparing for the loss of our trees and imagining their future

Loss. It’s a big part of Minot’s story — our story — in recent years. The flood took homes and retirements and schools and lives. Yes, lives. Though the official statistics don’t count them, we all know of someone who was lost due to the exhaustion and stress of the clean-up and rebuild. The rapid

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Don’t abolish property taxes

We all hate them, but what happens if we get rid of property tax? Jeremy Jackson, an Associate Professor of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at NDSU shares his thoughts in the letter linked below. A quick review of his position: property tax carries fewer negative impacts into the larger economy than another popular tax —

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum