Plain Talk

Rob and Jay talk about outrage exhaustion, marijuana legalization, and underage drinking.

Rob and Jay talk about transgender issues and vaccinations.

Rob and Jay talk about the headlines, including immigration.

Supporters of Rep. Luke Simons, an embattled Bastiat Caucus lawmaker from Dickinson who has been accused of harassing behavior by numerous women who work in and around the Legislature, have begun raising money for his legal defense.

Simons currently faces no criminal or civil charges, though House Majority Leader Chet Pollert and other Republican leaders have called on Simons to resign and have said they'll consider expelling him from the chamber if he doesn't.

How does one of the women who says she was harassed by Simons feel about the fundraising?

"It's a slap in the face of the people who went through this," Rep. Brandy Pyle (R-Casselton) said on this episode of Plain Talk.

Pyle detailed many "very uncomfortable comments" Simons has made to her, including asking her who was taking care of her children while she serves in the Legislature. Simons also told Pyle he had seen older pictures of her where she looked "like a schoolgirl." He told her she shouldn't wear her hair too long or she'd like "Indian" or "Chinese."

"It's hard," Pyle told me. "You work very hard to get there and get the job. To be constantly undermined as a woman...it's frustrating."

"I sat down with him two Fridays ago to talk about some of his behavior in our caucus meetings," Pyle told me, saying that Simons has been, "shouting and screaming and calling everyone hypocrites."

The subject of Simons' ire in the caucus meetings was the Legislature's mask mandate - Pyle said Simons would "threaten to be forcibly removed from the floor for refusing to wear a mask" - but the issue wasn't his objection to masks. Pyle said it was how he was conducting himself.

Both Simons and many of his supporters have suggested that the accusations are born of a political vendetta. Simons himself has blamed "liberals" for the scandals around him and has argued for "cleaning house" at Legislative Council where a number of the accusations against him have originated.

Pyle says that's just not true. "I used to go to Bastiat Caucus meetings," Pyle told me, noting she quit going when the organization began charging $300 in yearly dues.

Rob and Jay talk about the scandal surrounding Rep. Luke Simons, as well as the problems with wind energy.

The fighting over close national elections can be vicious. We saw that last year in the heated battle between Joe Biden and Donald Trump where many of the latter's supporters made claims of vote fraud.

But it's not a recent phenomenon. Turn back the clock and you find Democrats in the George W. Bush-era hatching conspiracy theories about Diebold voting machines.

Given the reality of that sort of turbulence, does it make any sense to make the election process less transparent? Less open to public scrutiny?

A bill before the Legislature in Bismarck would do just that. Senate Bill 2271, introduced by Sen. Robert Erbele, a Republican from Lehr, would hide the vote counts for North Dakota's presidential elections from the public.

State officials would still be allowed to release percentage figures representing the share of the vote each candidate got, but the actual vote numbers would be a secret until after the Electoral College votes from each state are cast.

Surprised you haven't heard of this bill? Don't be. It hasn't gotten much attention, despite having sailed through the Senate already on a lopsided 43-3 vote.

It's "almost a politburo situation from Soviet Russia," Saul Anuzis said on this episode of Plain Talk.

Anuzis is a long-time Republican leader - he led the Michigan GOP for years and was twice a candidate for chairman of the Republican National Committee - and of late is a proponent of an interstate compact promoting the national popular vote. He says Erbele's bill is being pushed by a lobbyist opposed to the national popular vote, the idea being that North Dakota can't participate in any national popular vote proposals if we don't report our popular vote totals.

Anuzis called it "horrible public policy" and a "secret ballot situation" that conflicts with the basic principles of fair and open elections. He also said it conflicts with federal law.

This debate isn't really about how you feel about the national popular vote. I'm deeply suspicious of proposals to change the status quo, including Anuzis' proposal.

This is about government transparency.

Our society has a hard enough time fighting against conspiracy mongers to get the public to focus on facts. That fight will only get harder if we take some of the available facts off the table.

Delaying public reports of vote counts for any race on the ballot, up to and including the presidential races, shortens the time window in which potential fraud might be detected. Perhaps even worse, it could create an information vacuum in which conspiracies about vote counts can thrive.

Other states, including South Dakota and New Hampshire, have voted down similar proposals.

Anuzis' arguments in favor of a compact among the states to promote the national popular vote might not be your cup of tea, but that's not the point.

However you feel about this issue, making our elections in North Dakota less transparent is not the answer.

"The policies surrounding renewable energies was a huge part of this problem," Congressman Kelly Armstrong said on this episode of Plain Talk.

The "problem" in question are the power outages that have recently plagued Texas and a vast swath of the middle of America. For Armstrong, it illustrates not just the absurdity of the government promoting intermittent forms of energy like wind and solar to the degree it has, but also the need for a renewed commitment to energy infrastructure.

It's not just the oil and gas pipelines targeted by frequently violent protests and activist litigators paid to obstruct and delay. "You think building a pipeline is hard, try building a high-voltage power line," Armstrong said.

"The United States used to be the best country in the world when it came to infrastructure," he continued. "I don't think anyone believes that anymore."

How has it been working in Congress during the Biden era? Armstrong said he was hopeful about some of the things President Joe Biden has said about bipartisanship, but he's not it turn up in the policymaking process so far.

"The take is that Biden's willing to cut a deal, but his staff isn't."

How much of that intransigence is a product of political bases that demand, with the fury of protests and social media campaigns, absolute loyalty to policy platforms?

A great deal, Armstrong says. "If MSNBC came after me for 48-hours, do you think that would help me or hurt me with my voters?" Armstrong asks.

It would help him, clearly, given North Dakota's political inclinations. "If you want to do a three-minute Fox News hit, [North Dakota] is a great place to be," he added.

Rob and Jay talk about summer school and insulin prices.

Power outages touched millions of Americans this week, including North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer.

"I actually had a 45-minute blackout," he said on this the 200th episode of Plain Talk.

What can be done to prevent these sort of blackouts in the future? A lot of energy policy gets made at the state level, for a lot of excellent reasons, but from the federal perspective Cramer sees a two-pronged approach.

One, the lavish production tax credit for wind energy, which provides some perverse and truly distortive incentives for energy companies to produce wind energy, needs to end.

Two, both the marketplace and government regulators need to draw a distinction between baseload electrons, of the sort produced by coal or nuclear plants, and intermittent electrons which come from sources like wind.

Also on this episode, Cramer responds to the controversy surrounding Senator Ted Cruz's trip to Mexico amid the Texas blackouts and the passing of conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

"We have a bit of a crisis in K-12 education right now," North Dakota Superintendent Kirsten Baesler said on this episode of Plain Talk.

At issue is the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it's had on the state's schools. While some of the testing and other measurements of academic progress vary from district to district, Baesler said her office estimates that as many as 25 to 28 percent of students currently aren't performing at grade level.

The "chaos" of the pandemic "has had an impact on the learning of our students," Baesler said.

What can be done about it?

State lawmakers had charged Baesler with coming up with a list of proposals, and she's begun presenting the list she produced, with the input of teachers and other education stakeholders, at the on-going legislative session in Bismarck.

Some of the top proposals? High-impact tutoring, social and behavioral interventions, and adjustments to the school calendar.

That last may be the most provocative in terms of public response, but Baesler said how these proposals are implemented, if they're implemented, would probably look different in each school district. She said it's unlikely that districts would add days to their calendars, but parents and students will likely see some "tweaks" such as academic summer camps or weekend tutoring sessions.

Other proposals Baesler's report brings up include creating a credentialed position called "health technician" at schools (think something akin to a school nurse) and hiring school counselors at elementary-level schools as well.