Plain Talk

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.

Earlier this year Governor Doug Burgum raised a lot of eyebrows in the political world by announcing a goal for North Dakota's carbon-based industries, including oil and coal, to become carbon neutral.

Can we do it?

There are no magic bullets to achieving that goal, but there are some promising endeavors. On this episode of Plain Talk I discussed one of those with Kevin Black, CEO of Creedence Energy Services, and Marty Shumway, the technical services director of Locus Bio-Energy Solutions.

Shumway's company has developed a biosurfactant, that could be made from agricultural products like canola and sugar from right here in North Dakota, that, in some instances, has improved the output of older oil wells by as much as 70 percent.

That's a big deal for the oil industry, where more oil from any given well means more profits, but it's a big deal from the perspective of lowering the environmental footprint of the oil industry as well. More from any one well means fewer wells are needed. It also means

Again, there is no one thing we can do to achieve Gov. Burgum's goal of carbon-neutral oil and gas industries, but there are many small things, and this endeavor seems to be one of them.

Sen. Erin Oban is the only member of the Democratic-NPL to be elected in western North Dakota.

To the extent that you can consider her Bismarck-area district to be "western North Dakota," anyway.

Oban announced recently that she will not be running for another term in that office. Hot on the heels of that announcement, Republican Sean Clearly made one of his own, saying he'd like to take over the Senate seat in District 35.

Cleary talks about that decision on this episode of Plain Talk. We cover North Dakota's workforce needs, our economy's needs, how to defeat some of the negative perceptions of our state held by people in other parts of the world, and the looming issue of abortion which may be very much an issue for state Legislature should the U.S. Supreme Court strike down the Roe v. Wade decision.

Also, fun fact: Oban was Cleary's middle school math teacher. For the record, Cleary says math wasn't his favorite subject, but he hopes Oban doesn't hold his behavior as a 12-year-old against him.

Vaccine mandate policies are a fluid situation right now. They're being challenged in the courts. The federal government is tweaking its policies. In North Dakota, during the recent special session of the Legislature, a bill passed that doesn't ban businesses from implementing vaccine mandates, but did implement a lot of policies dictating what those mandates should look like.

The Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce opposed that bill. Arik Spencer, president and CEO of that organization, joined this episode of Plain Talk to talk about how the state's businesses are handling all of this uncertainty.

Also, Rob and co-host Chad Oban talk about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's recent comments about electric cars.

Rob and Jay talk about the North Dakota Democratic-NPL and their relationship to a man who attacked Sen. John Hoeven's office with an ax. They also discuss political extremism in America.

Kelby Krabbenhoft, the long-time CEO of South Dakota-based health care giant Sanford abruptly left his job last year after making some controversial comments about masking during the COVID-19 pandemic.

More recently, news broke that Krabbenhoft left with a big, fat golden parachute strapped to his back. He got a $49.5 million payout, and that prompted North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread to blow the whistle.

On this episode of Plain Talk, Godfread talks about the connection between what hospitals spend and what health care, and health insurance, cost you. He says hospitals are always wanting more from insurers, and the taxpayers, even as pay to executives goes up.

If this keeps up, Godfread, a Republican, argues, we're going to end up with the sort of single-payer health care system Democrats want.

North Dakota's coal industry is promoting electric cars.

The Lignite Energy Council owns a Tesla, emblazoned it with pro-coal messaging, and has been driving it around. It's an image so incongruous to some that the Washington Post recently featured the marketing effort in a national news article.

Jason Bohrer, president of the LEC, joined this episode of Plain Talk with co-host Chad Oban to discuss why he feels it's important for the debate over coal and energy not to be seen through the lenses of partisan politics or the culture war.

Also discussed is the just-completed special session as well as the resignation of Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger as his struggles with sobriety continue.

On this episode of the Jay Thomas Show, a state lawmaker upset with Rob calls into the show and yells at him.