Plain Talk

As the controversy over a corn milling plant near Grand Forks, and the Grand Forks Air Force Base, to be built by a Chinese company whose leader is a member of the Chinese Communist Party, continues to unfold, Sen. Kevin Cramer sees the need for legislation to address the matter.

Federal officials are in the process of reviewing the land purchase and potential development for national security threats, but on this episode of Plain Talk, Cramer said more needs to be done. "Agricultural investments are largely exempt. That needs to change," he said.

Cramer also addressed the controversy over the PACT Act, which would provide medical benefits for soldiers exposed to toxic burn pits while deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Supporters of the bill, including comedian Jon Stewart, ripped Republican Senators who changed their vote from "yes" to "no" after the bill came back from the House. Cramer says the reason he changed his vote is because House Democrats added a "technical glitch" that turns almost a half-trillion dollars of spending into non-discretionary spending. "Democrats have played politics with the lives of veterans, Cramer says.

"At the end of the day, the bill will pass," he said, calling his "no" vote "procedural."

Cramer also addressed the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify same-sex marriage in federal law. He says he doesn't begrudge his colleague, Republican Congressman Kelly Armstrong, for voting for the bill in the House, but he doesn't believe it goes far enough to protect religious liberty. And even if it's tweaked, Cramer said it would be unlikely he'd vote for it.

As for the Inflation Reduction Act, which just came out of negotiations between Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, Cramer called it "a disaster." He said the permitting reforms that Manchin won as a concession from Schumer are unlikely to accomplish much.

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Minot, N.D. — Last week the North Dakota Democratic-NPL saw some internecine conflict over their U.S. House candidate, Mark Haugen, who is pro-life and supports the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Patrick Hart, the chairman of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL, joined this episode of Plain Talk to discuss the challenges of managing the disparate points of view in his party. We also spoke about what his party is do to find its way in a state where Republicans are seeing historic levels of dominance, and where he sees some opportunities for Democratic-NPL candidates in the 2022 election and beyond.

Also on this episode, Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I discuss the strategy of Democrats promoting extreme Republican candidates in primaries with the hope of defeating that candidate in the general. Given the fraught times we're living in, should anyone be supporting extremism, even if the calculation is to defeat it?

We also discussed Congressman Kelly Armstrong's vote to codify same-sex marriage in federal law, and Attorney General Drew Wrigley's decision not to seek an external investigation of a scandal over deleted email accounts in his office.

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I suspect that many in the general public, when they hear about carbon capture, think of it as some pie-in-the-sky thing. Something that's being developed. That's in the work. Not really something that is, as yet, a practical part of modern industry.

Except, the State of North Dakota just permitted its first carbon capture project under state primacy. Which is to say, that state officials reviewed and permitted the project, not the feds.

It's the first time that's ever happened in the United States.

That state control made all the difference.

That's what Gerald Bachmeier, the chief executive officer of Red Trail Energy, said on this episode of Plain Talk. His company just added carbon capture to their ethanol facility near Richardton, North Dakota. It officially began capturing carbon on June 16, 2022, and they expect to store underground 100 percent of the 180,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually from its fermentation process.

That's a big deal, but the regulatory process leading up to it may be the bigger deal. According to Bachmeier, it took North Dakota officials less than a year to permit their project. He compared that to the experience of another ethanol plant in Iowa which waited more than six years to get their permit from the feds at the EPA.

He expects North Dakota will be able to permit future projects even faster. "Ours took a little longer because we were the first one," he said.

Going forward, his company expects to add to their capture operations. He says the next phase is to capture the carbon coming off their heating systems, at which point their facility will be nearly carbon zero. He also said a part of their business in the future may be selling access to their storage well to other carbon-emitting businesses.

And that's a key factor in all of this. For Red Trail, capturing this carbon wasn't just a good environmental decision, but a good business decision as well. While the cost of developing this project was around $38 million, he expects his company will bring in upwards of $9 million per year in revenues from 45Q tax credits from the federal government, as well as commanding $0.15 cents per gallon more for their ethanol thanks to a better carbon rating.

Bachmeier sees a bright future for carbon capture. "For North Dakota's industries, I think we have a huge opportunity."

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Last week, in response to an open record request filed by myself and others for emails, Attorney General Drew Wrigley announced that his office wouldn't be able to satisfy those requests in full.

An employee, who was not a supervisor or attorney in his office and who had no authority to do so, ordered the deletion of former Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem's email account. Stenehjem passed away earlier this year. Wrigley, who had already announced a campaign for the office, was appointed his replacement by Governor Doug Burgum.

Subsequent to the deletion of Stenehjem's account, the employee also ordered the deletion of Deputy Attorney General Troy Seibel's account. Seibel left the office earlier this year after Wrigley informed him that he would be bringing in his own personnel for that position.

The original records requests were part of investigations into controversy over a cost overrun for newly-constructed office space for employees of the AG's office, but these deletions have become a controversy in their own right.

Wrigley addressed the matter on this episode of Plain Talk. He declined to name the employee during our interview, but indicated that afterward his office would be releasing the communication in which the account deletions were ordered, and that this would identify the employee.

He also declined to discuss what disciplinary actions his office would take with regard to this employee, saying they're an "internal personnel" matter. He added that he'd received at least one "plea" not to identify this person publicly, but said he had no legal authority to keep that information from the public.

There is "no way to ascertain" the number of emails that were deleted.

Wrigley also said that while he wasn't aware of any situation where records that needed to be retained for on-going matters of litigation, "the timeline was very rapid" for the removal of the accounts.

Wrigley said that he assumes a "vast" number of the emails in those accounts were also sent to other state employees, and so are maintained as records in those accounts, but with the accounts now gone, and with the state's IT personnel assuring him there's no way to get them back, there's also no way to measure how much information is now lost.

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Governor Doug Burgum's administration is on the path to proposing some very significant policy to address North Dakota's child care process in the upcoming legislative session. It will be "something different from what you usually see from our administration," Lt. Governor Brent Sanford said on this issue of Plain Talk.

Child care has been talked about as an urgent public policy need for, well, about a generation now, most recently at a Chamber of Commerce event in Fargo, yet there hasn't been much in the way of substantial progress on the issue.

Part of the problem is politics. "Our legislator's eyes glass over" when this issue gets brought up in the context of early childhood education. "They'll say 'we don't want to back the school bus up to the maternity ward'," Sanford says.

He thinks a more persuasive approach will be to talk about the need for childcare policy in the context of the economy. Ensuring access to affordable child care "is what we have to do to retain and recruit," Sanford says, especially because the private sector can't seem to provide that.

"The daycare model is uneconomic," Sanford argues. "It doesn't work." In fact, he says, it only works to the extent it is now because of low-wage workers. He pointed out that ratio policies, which dictate the number of children per daycare worker a facility can have, were "built when we still had minimum wage workers. Who still has minimum wage workers?"

Sanford says the administration is still working on a policy proposal, but that it may include revenue from the state's Legacy fund to make things work.

President Joe Biden is putting the blame for high gas prices on gas station owners. "My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril," he wrote in a tweet posted before Independence Day. "Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you're paying for the product. And do it now."

How does an actual gas station owner feel about that?

"He seem to think we can drop the price twenty cents to be patriotic," Kent Satrang said on this episode of Plain Talk.

Satrang is the owner of Petroserve USA, which has several locations in North Dakota and Minnesota. He said doesn't really get to choose his prices. They're set by a very competitive market. A station that is selling fuel at a price that's significantly higher than competing stations simply won't see business.

And besides, Satrang argues, companies like his don't make much on the fuel anyway. Satrang says his margin amounts to a "few cents a gallon."

"The actual credit card company makes more off our fuel for their fees than we do," he said, adding that most of his profits come from the food, drinks, and other items sold in his convenience stores.

Also on this episode, Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I discuss the unhappy state of America as another Independence Day comes and goes.

America's industry, from power production to agriculture to manufacturing, needs "to be governed by policymakers not lawsuits."

That's what Jason Boherer, president of the North Dakota Lignite Energy Council, said on this episode of Plain Talk. He sees the recent Supreme Court decision in North Dakota v. EPA as a boon not just for his industry, but for American democracy in that it will require Congress and other legislative bodies to actually make a decision on what it wants emissions policy to be, instead of punting the question to regulators and judges.

That's a more transparent process, he argues. A more predictable one. That, in the end, will serve America better.

And while some are arguing that the Supreme Court's finding that the EPA didn't have authority from Congress to regulate emissions in the way it was will endanger the environment, Bohrer sees it as helping. He argues that projects such as carbon capture, of which there are many here in North Dakota, will be more viable now that they don't have to match pace with a timeline from the EPA that seemed calculated, on a political basis, to be "impossible to meet," according to Bohrer.

This ruling "increases the odds that you're going to see carbon capture on some of our projects," he claims, and that seems likely.

Which is good news for North Dakota.

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Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a pro-life Democrat.

There are pro-choice Republicans too, of course, but on this episode of Plain Talk, it was Mark Haugen, the Democratic-NPL candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, who is staunchly pro-life, who we were speaking to.

Haugen's party leaders have described the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade as "evil," but Haugen isn't too worried about that. "Pat's a good friend of mine," he said, referring to party chairman Patrick Hart, and adding that they'd discussed the matter.

Still, Haugen feels it's important to remember that pro-life Democrats are a part of the party. "Are we the minority? Absolutely. But that's democracy," he said. "I have to work hard at explaining my position.

Haugen describes that position as being "whole life," arguing that Democrats should focus on social assistance policies to help mothers and children.

Wednesday co-host Chad Oban and I also discussed the political ramifications of overturning Roe v. Wade, both locally and nationally, as well as the latest revelations of the January 6 committee.

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Minot, N.D. — You couldn't possibly have missed the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the Roe v. Wade precedent which held that it was unconstitutional for state governments to ban abortion.

The ruling was unambiguous.

"The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion," the court ruled. "Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives."

North Dakota, like many other states, has legislation regulating abortion which was written so that it would take effect should the Roe precedent be overturned. On this episode of Plain Talk, the state official responsible for making that determination, Attorney General Drew Wrigley, says we can expect his decision imminently.

"I expect to be announcing that decision in a matter...of hours not days," he said, adding that he doesn't expect to make the announcement today, but it's coming soon.

That's not surprising given how clear the Supreme Court was in their opinion.

Wrigley noted that while researching the issue, he was surprised to see that the 2007 "trigger bill" banning abortion was bipartisan. It was "even sponsored by a Democrat," he noticed.

The bill in question was House Bill 1466, and its primary sponsor was former Rep. James Kerzman, a Democrat. The other House co-sponsor was Rep. Ralph Metcalf, who was also a Democrat.

Rep. Merle Boucher (a gubernatorial candidate in 2004), Rep. Bill Amerman, Sen. Joan Heckaman (the current Minority Leader), Sen. Richard Marcellais, and Sen. Tim Mathern were other notable Democrats who voted to pass the bill.

In addition to the 2007 law, there is also a 2019 trigger bill that banned the most common type of surgical abortion, though Wrigley said that bill was largely moot given the 2007 law.

Once these certifications are completed, Wrigley's office will focus on other bills regulating abortion that haven't been enforced because they've been enjoined by the courts based on the Roe decision. Among these are a ban on abortions after a heartbeat is detected, regulation of the disposal of aborted babies, and a bill regulating hospital admissions for abortions.

Wrigley also addressed the status of his inquiry into a land purchase made by a trust associated with billionaire Bill Gates. His office has sought information on the transaction, and the trust. If it's found to be in violation of a state prohibition on corporate farming, Wrigley says the trust will be required to divest itself of the property.

Sen. Kevin Cramer and I will never agree about former President Donald Trump.

I think the man was a disgrace to his office. Cramer would be fine if we elected him president again. But one thing we agree on, as we discussed the on-going hearings of the congressional committee investigating the January 6 riot, is that Vice President Mike Pence was the hero of that story. He held his oath to the constitution higher than his loyalty to Trump, and that was a heroic act.

Though I still can't fathom why Cramer, who sees Pence as the hero, can't recognize that Trump is the villain. But you'll have to listen to this episode of Plain Talk to hear him explain that.

As to gas prices, the roots of our problems lay in the unwillingness of the American left to recognize that we still need oil, Our world runs on it. It's unavoidable. The efforts to put the oil industry out of business have only hamstrung its ability to deliver us a product that is vital to our economy and our quality of life. Gas prices are higher than they need to be because they're fighting a Sisyphean struggle against anti-oil politics.

Cramer also discussed the gun control issue, which is much on the minds of Americans after shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. Cramer's not a fan of red flag laws - he responded to some recent criticism of his argument that Republicans are more interested in winning "red wave" elections than in passing red flag laws - but he is open to steps that can be taken to address the potential for violent shooters.

One idea he supports is allowing juvenile records to be used as disqualifiers in background checks for gun purchases.

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