What started as a small protest of truckers upset about the Canadian government's vaccine mandates has turned into a full-on international movement. Now demonstrators have blocked multiple crossings between the United States and Canada, and it's having a deleterious impact on commerce between our nations at a time when we hardly need it.

Not one of us needs prices to go any higher, do we?

On this episode of Plain Talk, Senator Kevin Cramer talks about the protests, why they're happening, and how they could be stopped.

"What they're asking for is so simple," Cramer said, noting that all the Canadian government would have to do to end the demonstrations is lift the mandate.

He's got a point. Over 251 million Americans, or about 87.4 percent of adults, have at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. In Canada, 88.3 percent of citizens over the age of 5 have been vaccinated. Among the truckers, about 90 percent of those who regularly cross the border are vaccinated according to the Canadian Trucking Alliance.

Is this really still about public health? Or is it about different factions with entrenched positions being unwilling to give an inch?

Sen. Cramer also talks about trucking regulations taking effect in the United States which have the potential to cause more problems for our national supply lines, and the on-going Olympic Games in China.

State Rep. Rick Becker, the founder of the Bastiat Caucus in the North Dakota legislature which claims that they, and not the much larger majority of their Republican colleagues, represent actual Republicanism, has announced a primary challenge to incumbent U.S. Senator John Hoeven.

What does Hoeven think about it? He answered questions about that on today's Plain Talk, co-hosted Chad Oban who joins the show on Wednesdays.

He said that he'll campaign against Becker the same way he campaigns every time he's on the ballot, which is by focusing on the things he's done in office. "It's a lot more than just voting no all the time," he said, touting his work across the aisle with people like Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

I'm not usually one for meme-based political arguments, but a friend shared this one after Becker announced his candidacy, and it seems apt:

Hoeven also talked about the food fight which has erupted within the GOP about the Republican National Committee's decision to censure to sitting House members, Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, over their participation in congressional inquiries into the January 6 riot.

"I'm not a fan of censures," Hoeven said of the move.

Hoeven also said the January 6 riot was not legitimate political discourse as the RNC resolution claimed. "For people that broke the law, they need to be held accountable," he said.

He agreed that the RNC resolution is a distraction. "Clearly we need to focus on winning in 2022," he said.

What is 30 by 30?

It's an agreement, pushed by the global environmental movement, that would see participating countries place 30 percent of their land mass and controlled waters into conservation by the year 2030.

For some, this is setting off alarm bells. On this episode of Plain Talk, radio host, farming/ranching activist, and 6th generation Nebraska farmer Trent Loos talks about the proposal and what he sees as a risk to food security.

To be clear, the government already controls a lot of American land. The feds control over 28 percent, and that increases to well over 30 percent when you include state lands.

Loos says further push to take land out of agricultural production would exacerbate a problem that already exists. Every year millions of acres of arable farm land are lost to urbanization as our communities grow.

Senator Kevin Cramer, one of former President Donald Trump's earliest and most consistent supporters, does not support the RNC's censure of Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

Trump supporters in the RNC are pushing the censure because Cheney and Kinzinger have been critical of Trump and have participated in the congressional inquiry into the January 6th riot.

"We don't have the luxury of kicking people out of our party," Cramer said of the resolution.

That doesn't mean he's supportive of the position Cheney and Kinzinger have taken on Trump and the January 6 inquiry. On this episode of Plain Talk, he said he likely agrees with much of what the resolution says, but he doesn't believe the RNC ought to be focusing on this issue.

"I think it's unnecessary and unproductive," he said.

Cramer also discussed how we're facing our entanglements with China, from the Winter Olympics to the debate over the Fufeng corn milling facility to be built near Grand Forks, as well as the situation in Ukraine, and our evolving debate about energy.

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In any sufficiently large group of people, you're going to have some undesirables. Whether it's a church congregation or a political party or a sports team fan base, if you look hard enough you'll find some people who just aren't very good people.

But what happens when a certain type of behavior becomes the defining characteristic of a group of people?

Robert Wheeler as a representative of the very Trumpy Bastiat Caucus faction of North Dakota Republicans, ran for chairman of the NDGOP last year. This week he was involved in what law enforcement alleges was a felony DUI accident, severely injuring his wife. He is also facing charges for disorderly conduct and preventing arrest because officers say he physically resisted them when they tried to arrest him.

If these charges are upheld - Mr. Wheeler certainly has a right to his day in court - they're just the latest examples of problematic behavior from people in the Bastiat Caucus movement.

Sen. Jason Heitkamp showed up to the special session of the state legislature in a truck with the words "f*** Joe Biden* on them. Prior to that, he was fond of calling for former President Barack Obama to be lynched.

Former Rep. Luke Simons was expelled from last year's regular session over accusations of sexual harassment. His local party district chairman, who has since been ousted from that position, decried the expulsion as an "atrocity."

Rep. Jeff Hoverson insulted his own majority leader during the special session, and prior to that was barred from a flight after getting into an altercation with a security agent.

Rep. Jeff Magrum, who after redistricting will be seeking the District 8 Senate seat in the current election cycle, got so angry with a fellow lawmaker at a public meeting that law enforcement had to intervene and tell him to settle down.

I could go on with more examples, but I think you get the point.

It's a common political tactic to try and discredit a group of people by focusing on the behavior of a few fringe elements of that group. But how about when a certain type of unacceptable behavior becomes de rigueur for the group?

On this episode of Plain Talk, Chad Oban and I talk about how the North Dakota Republican Party is dealing with that very problem, where a not-small faction of its membership regularly participates in behavior that's simply unaccetable.

Also on this episode, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, a professor of economics at North Dakota State University, talks about school choice policies.

When the Capstone Classical Academy project was announced for Fargo, some people immediately looked at it through a political lens.

It was called "Trumpy," by some. But is it?

On this episode of Plain Talk, headmaster Paul Q. Fisher describes the philosophy behind the school's mission. They're hoping to provide the people of the region with an education rooted in classical education.

That means the Greeks. The Romans. And, yes, the kids will be learning Latin.

But Fisher stresses that it's not about promoting a certain ideology, but rather helping kids learn how to process information and think with reason and logic.

Capstone is accepting enrollments now for the fall 2022 school year for pre-kindergarten through 6th-grade students. Fisher says they're at about 30 enrolled students so far, in the roughly three weeks since they've started, and they'll be holding classes regardless of how may students they get.

The long-term goal is to build a campus on property that's already been secured, and begin adding grades to the school in future years.

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This week Governor Doug Burgum helped announce a nearly $2 billion investment in developing a datacenter in western North Dakota that would primarily be used to mine cryptocurrency. But that announcement was overshadowed, somewhat, by the extensive criminal record of the man who heads up the construction company that would build it.

Jamie Selzler, the former executive director of the North Dakota Democrat Party, who has spent years working in online commerce, joins this episode of Plain Talk to discuss whether Burgum deserves criticism for being involved in the announcement, and if cryptocurrency mining is really a viable industry for North Dakota.

Also on this episode, Jamie and I talk about the looming fight over a new appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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A new survey from North Dakota United, the state's combined public worker and teacher union, finds strong evidence that teachers are feeling burned out.

Why? A lot of the same reasons many of us are feeling burned out. It's politics and the pandemic and shifting attitudes about compensation levels.

On this episode of Plain Talk, co-host Chad Oban and I interview Nick Archuleta, the president of North Dakota United, about the survey's findings.

And, as Fargo looks to become home to a new private school affiliated with ideologically conservative Hillsdale College, we talk about the push for school choice policy.

Should North Dakota taxpayers get to use taxpayer dollars to send their kids to a non-public school? Or even homeschool them? Archuleta joins Chad and I in that discussion as well.

(Full disclosure: Oban's day job is at North Dakota United.)

I'll admit, I wanted to use this interview to push Congressman Kelly Armstrong, a fellow baseball nut, to pass legislation to end Major League Baseball's ongoing lockout.

But I controlled myself. After all, what kind of conservative would I be if I was pushing for that sort of federal intervention? Principle must trump emotion.

What Armstrong and I did talk about was President Joe Biden's first year in office. As you might expect, this Republican congressman isn't impressed. He's also not impressed with Biden's leadership with Russia. Armstrong told me he hopes Biden is successful in handling the crisis in Ukraine, but he's afraid we're in for another debacle like the one Biden presided over in Afghanistan.

We also talked about why it's important for America to counter the influence of countries like China and Russia, even when it's not always economically important to do so.

Why are so many judicial races in North Dakota uncompetitive? And not uncompetitive because the winning candidates dominate, but because they're usually running unopposed?

Part of the problem is the pay Justice Daniel Crothers said on this episode of Plain Talk. He's served on the North Dakota Supreme Court since he was appointed in 2005. He ran for election to the unexpired four-year term he was appointed to fill, and for re-election to a new term in 2012, and now he's running for another decade-long term on the 2022 ballot.

With history as our guide, he probably won't have an opponent. Since 1990 there have been just five competitive Supreme Court races on the statewide ballot.

Crothers says that lawyers make a lot of money but judges, comparatively, do not. North Dakota already has a relatively small legal community, and finding people in that community who want to abandon their private practice, and it's pay, to become a judge.

Crothers also talked about the on-going efforts to get court records online, what it's like to campaign for an office like judge, and the process behind how the state Supreme Court works.

Also on this episode, co-host Chad Oban and I talk about the calls to pull the medical license of state Rep. Rick Becker. Becker works as a plastic surgeon outside of his political career, and some of his fellow doctors find his comments about COVID-19 and treatments for it to be unethical. They're calling for him to either stop these statements or face discipline.

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