A little something to brighten every North Dakota Democrats' day:  

Democrats in Congress are poised to play a leading role this month in thwarting their party's effort to raise income tax rates on the wealthy.

Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have been eager to extend the breaks for individuals who earn less than $200,000 annually and joint filers who make less than $250,000. Those who earn more would pay higher, pre-2001 rates starting next year.

However, a small but growing number of moderate Democrats are balking at boosting taxes on the rich. Many face electorates that recoil at the mention of any tax increase. Some represent areas that are loaded with wealthier taxpayers. Further, some incumbent senators who don't face voters this fall are reluctant to increase taxes on anyone while the economy remains sluggish.

Without their support, the push to raise rates on the rich probably will fail.

[   ]

The bigger problem for Democrats looms in the Senate, where Majority Leader Reid's immediate problem is getting the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the measure. Democrats control 59 seats, and at least three of them — Bayh, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota — have signaled that they won't back a permanent repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

McClatchyDC.com (read the comments)

Discuss.

From right-wing crack-pot Scott Hennen's agenda (posted on his website), today:

8:30: The House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) joins us for a live, in-studio chat as he visits Fargo to campaign for Rick Berg...

(from Scott Hennen's website)

"Vote for me," Rick Berg says, "and I'll make all of North Dakota look like the unfinished basement in this slummy apartment building in Fargo."

Berg needs a new advertising consultant. 

(Hat tip to Walter Shapiro.)

So says Rollcall:

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) confirmed Monday that the Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its inquiry into fundraisers held around the 2009 financial reform vote, and it recommended the House ethics committee not pursue the matter.

RollCall.com

All the blathering by North Dakota Republicans was exactly what most people expect from Republicans:  more crap.  Here's the prattle from the NDGOP's Adam Jones:

State Republicans [  ] will soon launch a countdown clock on their website metering the days gone by since the investigation began.

“We’ll be counting since May 24, since I believe that is the day that his office was notified of the investigation,” said Republican Party director Adam Jones. “Pomeroy needs to be completely forthright with North Dakotans and explain to them why their congressman is under an ethics investigation.”

Bismarck Tribune

The new, right-wing fringe group called "RecallND" has filed its petition with the North Dakota Supreme Court, asking the court to exercise its discretionary authority to take jurisdiction over the group's claim Al Jaeger wrongfully rejected some guy's petition to recall North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad (D).

Here's a snippet from the RecallND's summary of its argument:

The power of the people to recall “[a]ny elected official” has been well-established for nearly a century, and is not to be taken away by misconstruing this express provision in the North Dakota Constitution. N.D. Const., art. III, § 10 (emphasis added). [N]o narrower interpretation of this provision is grammatical or plausible.

RecallND's brief to the North Dakota Supreme Court (click here to read the whole brief)

Okay, I'm not Andrew Schlafly -- the big-shot attorney RecallND is apparently bringing in to fight this case out for them -- but I'm gonna take a shot at coming up with a "grammatical or plausible" interpretation that contradicts what these folks think is so obvious.

To demonstrate that interpretation, I would ask RecallND's smart lawyers whether North Dakota's constitution -- the provision that says the people can recall "any elected official" -- gives the citizens of North Dakota the right to recall the Secretary General of the United Nations.  Do the people of North Dakota have the state constitutional right to recall the president of the Farmer's Union?  Do the people of North Dakota have the right to recall the Prime Minister of Great Britain?  Can they recall the governor of Virginia?  

They're all "elected officials," aren't they?

Seriously.  Can the citizens of North Dakota recall those "elected officials"?

Short answer:  No.  

Why not?  Because a state constitution generally governs state government issues and not issues relating to the governance of the United Nations, or the Farmers Union or Great Britain.  Nor does it govern the administration of the government of the United States of America, a sovereign federal government.  Nor does it govern the operation of the government of Virginia, or Germany or Microsoft Corporation or the National Rifle Association.  Those entities all have "elected officials," but their elected officials cannot be recalled by the people of the state of North Dakota.  

Sorry.  They just can't.

Like it or not, members of our congressional delegation have been elected to United States government -- federal -- positions.  They are not state government elected officials.  They just aren't.

And, seriously, how much of our Secretary of State's time do we want to have tied up by crackpots who want to call elected officials of entities other than North Dakota?  If I want to circulate a petition to get an initiative recalling the chairman of the Republican Party on the North Dakota ballot, do we really want Al Jaeger getting even more confused by such a request?  He's  had enough trouble trying to do his statutorily mandated job functions, let alone giving him a bunch of other work to do.

This doesn't even address the jurisdictional / standing problem RecallND has created by HAVING NOT BEEN IN EXISTANCE when Jaeger rejected the recall petition supporters' request. (See earlier blog post on this issue by Adam by clicking here).

Once again, as Adam pointed out when he wrote the earlier blog post about this, I suspect the  North Dakota Supreme Court is a quakin' in its boots.

I suspect the Supreme Court will not "give in," but what do I know, right?  I'm just a blogger.

Last Friday the North Dakota State Investment Board released the results of a shocking new performance audit.  Here's what the smarties at the local mainstream media have written:

An audit found no signs of fraud, illegal acts, violations or abuse by the former director of the North Dakota Retirement and Investment Office.

The North Dakota State Investment Board heard the results of the audit Friday, about four months after former director and chief investment officer Steve Cochrane killed himself.

Fargo For'em

Shocking, I say.  All intelligent people assumed the results of the audit would show multiple violations of policy and law by Cochrane.  Who could have possibly predicted that audit would find that Cochrane hadn't violated the Board's policies or law?!?   

Right?!?

Well, there was this crackpot:

Notice how every one of those scoping items starts with "Determine whether the former Executive Director/Chief Investment Officer..."?!?  Notice how the auditors will have blinders on regarding, say, malfeasance or corruption by the Board, any investment managers, any consultants, the audit committee or anybody else on the SIB staff?!?  We'll call this "The Blame Steve Cochrane Show." 

These people are shameless.

What about the people responsible for running the State Investment Board and RIO office?  "Who's responsible?" you ask? 

54-52.5-02. Governing authority. The state investment board shall govern the state retirement and investment office.  The state investment board is responsible for overseeing and operating the agency...

NDCC Sec. 54-52.5-02

Remember when the word "responsible" meant something?!?  These Republicans don't.  What about the responsible people?  Is it really appropriate to focus, exclusively, on the guy who isn't around to defend himself?  What about the people who are actually responsible?  Let's say, for example, that Cochrane was following SIB's policies to a "T" but those policies are bad; for example, let's say the SIB's policies do not live up to the Prudent Investor Rule; shouldn't the audit look into that?  What if the problem is/was with the governance?  

You know what Steve Cochrane's statutory duty was?  To follow the orders of the Board.  So we're going to have an audit that determines whether he was following the Board's orders???  I can save you the time on that one; I'd bet he was.  That's not the question.  The question is this:  Do the policies of the State Investment Board live up to the standards required by the Prudent Investor Rule? 

Yes or no?

Simple question.

NorthDecoder.com (empahsis added)

 Hey, wait a minute!  That was me! 

I'm not a crackpot!  I'm not a crackpot!  I'm not a crackpot!

I was right.  

Of course I was right.

Anybody who was even marginally following the State Investment Board story knew or should have known that the State was wasting money on that whitewash audit.

But I will admit there are two worthwhile news stories that should come out of the release of the final audit report:  (1) the cost of the audit.  I'd like to know how much this whitewash cost.  How much was wasted on a ridiculous review, limited in scope to about 8 months of time.  I want to know the cost the citizens of North Dakota (don't give me any "the fund's money comes from its member organizations" B.S.; when they figure out how horribly underfunded it is, the money to replenish it will come from our tax dollars); and (2)  Surprisingly, even though the John Hoeven's proxy on the board did a fairly effective job of limiting the scope of the audit to things that would keep the SIB out of trouble, there are hints of nuggets of wisdom in the audit report.  For example, the audit report confirms what we've been writing about here at NorthDecoder.com; that the management fees paid by the SIB are excessive.  (ND's SIB is paying 170 basis points when the average of the other 5 "similar" funds compared is 123.6)  It also confirms that the SIB was playing fast and loose with due diligence efforts.  The report also confirms that there are problems with the designation by the Board of assets in certain classes of assets.  The report hints at potential problems with conflicts of interests (noting there have been some new rules adopted by the Securities Exchange Commission that should be incorporated into the SIB's policies). 

What's really important about this audit, though, is that it's scope is limited to eight tiny months.  Not even a full year.  It's also interesting that the auditors compared North Dakota's asset allocation and return on investment to five funds that don't look like they can be compared to North Dakota's.  It seems questionable to compare North Dakota's fund -- which allows for "alternative investments" (for example) to three other funds that don't.  Or to suggest North Dakota's .01% gain on "Domestic Fixed Income" (DFI) can be reasonably equated with the District of Columbia Retirement Board's DFI investments where the return on ivestment was 4.4%.  None of the other compared funds had a DFI return on investment lower than 3.42%, while North Dakota's DFI only gained .01%.   The other funds all had gains at least 342 times greater than North Dakota's DFI returns.  Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that, alone, shows North Dakota's investment strategies were bad.  For example, in some of the other categories, North Dakota did a little better than the other three compared funds.  What I'm saying is that I don't understand how you can compare North Dakota's investments -- generally -- to three other funds that had such diverse results, and that don't even include the same classes of investments.  The auditors don't even try to explain how such a comparison can be made legitimately.

Here's another question:  When you start your analysis of the "prudent investor rule" by assuming you can tell whether the ND SIB is complying with the rule by comparing North Dakota's investments to three other specific funds, what you forget is this:  What if all those specific similarly-sized public pension funds are being managed and invested poorly?  What if these public fund executives all get together at conferences three times a year and get wined and dined by the same unscrupulous out-of-state investment salespeople?  What if they all invest in high-risk, low return, high-fee investments?  What if they all get the same national newsletter and all invest in the same "trendy" investments?  Shouldn't there be some consideration given to the possibility they're all doing a crappy job? 

I'm not saying they all are.  I'm saying this: isn't it unreasonable to just assume these other funds -- some of which don't even invest in the same classes of investments as North Dakota, and which show a vast spectrum of returns on some of the classes of investment -- can be used as a legitimate benchmark against which North Dakota's State Investment Board's investment policies can be compared for purposes of determining whether they comply with the Prudent Investor Rule?  

I don't know.  I'm just asking the questions.

(If you want to read the limit-scope, white-wash audit report, click here.)

I read with great interest the brief recently filed by former North Dakota Workforce Safety and Insurance Executive Director and convicted felon Sandy Blunt.  It's short and fairly simple.  You might want to read it to.  So I'll post it.  Here.

Blunts Post Conviction Brief

I've been busy having a life, recovering from a good, long vacation and getting ready for and then celebrating my son's first birthday, so I haven't analyzed this before now.  And -- to be honest -- I'm gonna hold out on you guys quite a bit.  I have more thoughts than what I'm gonna let on here, but I'm gonna tell you some of what I think about Blunt's brief, here, now. 

Reason for me holding out?  I don't much care for Sandy Blunt, a convicted felon, or his friends.  I don't know if they are all evil or if they are all crazy or if they are all just simply bad people.  Or maybe they are just bad now, and weren't bad before or won't be bad later.  I don't know.  I just know I wouldn't trust any of them to watch my wallet while I used the men's room.  But I have thoughts about Mr. Blunt's case that -- frankly -- might help Mr. Blunt.  But I'm the last person that's going to voluntarily tell him what those things are.  He and his friends will just have to read this and suffer through knowing that I have thoughts on some things that could possibly help him, and I'm not willing to share what those things are.  If they want to hire me and pay for my advice, they should give me a call.  (Ha!)

With that said, let's talk about Blunt's brief (which you've possibly read, above).  First, it's only really a little over 2.5 pages long.  (The other 30-some pages are attachments and signature pages, etc.)  Blunt's lawyer is a good lawyer, but I suspect he'd be the first to tell you this brief isn't what anybody would describe as "heavy artillery."   I don't know why that is.  It may be that Blunt's lawyer thinks it's such a slam dunk legal pleading, that he didn't have to write more than 2.5 pages of analysis.  That's possible.  Or, it may be that he knows he doesn't have a chance with this motion, and he didn't want to make the judge mad by making him read a long, frivolous motion.  Or... there are some other possibilities.  One I wonder about is... sometimes lawyers don't write long briefs because they don't want to cause the judge to think about certain problems with their argument.  If I were a betting man...  I'd bet this is where Blunt's brief falls.  But I don't know.  But it's only a 2.5 page brief.

Let's talk about the substance of the brief.  Let's talk about two things that are patently absent from the brief:  (1) any previous complaint/allegation that prosecutors withheld the "Wahl memo" that is the sole apparent issue in the ethics grievances against the various lawyers in the state's attorney's office.  That's missing.  Glaringly missing; and (2)... I just decided I'm not going to write about the other thing missing.  But, trust me, there's something else missing.  And it's kind of important.  You -- and Blunt and his friends -- will just have to suffer through knowing there's something else important that's missing.  It must suck to be them and read this.  I really feel sorry for them.  To have been so close to actually getting something helpful from me, and then... poof!  Gone.  

Bummer for them.

But let's talk about the abandonment of the basis for the ethics grievance.  What's the significance of this?  Well... for one, whether Sandy Blunt's lawyer doesn't think his client was prejudiced by the prosecutors' failure to disclose the Wahl memo, or if he's remembered that they actually DID disclose it, or if the prosecutors' brief convinced him it's a loser of an argument... the issue should be dead.  And buried.  If Blunt's lawyer doesn't think it's an issue, then it's not an issue.  Steve Cates and Blunt's other useful idiots have gone on for months (and pages and pages) about how THAT document was the end-all and be-all, proving Blunt was wrongly convicted.  

Now that whole argument seems to have been abandoned by Blunt and his lawyer, having never been formally asserted by Blunt or the lawyer.  

That kind of says a lot.  

No.

That says A LOT.  It speaks volumes.

One thing it says is that you really shouldn't trust the things Steve Cates and Blunt's other useful idiots are saying.  But you knew that.  

So it's kind of a big deal.

I must acknowledge that I'm intrigued by Blunt's lawyer's claim that these BCI reports and an audio recording were allegedly "withheld" from Blunt's lawyer.  It's clear Blunt thinks (or hopes) this can be the "something significant" I mentioned in my earlier blog post about this.  Might it be?  Sure.  But is there an "other side of the story?"

Once again, as before, I'm on the edge of my seat. 

UPDATE:  Somebody pointed out that correspondence between Blunt's lawyer and the prosecutor's office that is "incorporated by reference" in the 2.5 page brief preserves the argument  that the Wahl memo was withheld.  That seems like a weak argument and/or a weak way to make an argument.  I've seen (and written) what I call "client satisfaction letters" many times in my lifetime.  Those are letters written by lawyers NOT because the contents are what the lawyer thinks, or because the letter will be helpful in any way in the csae, but because the client demanded the bunk letter be written.  (Imagine a letter from a criminal defense lawyer to a prosecutor in which the lawyer argues that the federal income tax is unconstitutional.  [note: there's a federal rule that requires such letter be written in ALL CAPS.])  Lawyers don't write those letters because they think they're going anywhere.  They write them to keep a crazy, beligerant, obsessed, know-it-all and/or annoying client happy.  If a lawyer intends for an argument made in a months-old letter to be seriously considered by a judge, they'll usually include the argument -- even update it -- in their brief.  There are exceptions, of course.  But I'd be surprised if this was one of those exceptions.

Newsweek has done an analysis of the difference between America's jobs and deficit under Obama versus America's jobs and deficit under Republicans.  And it doesn't look great for Republicans.  It's not a perfect analysis, but it's definitly worth consideration.  Here's the "bottom line":

The bottom line, then, is that recent GOP proposals would produce fewer jobs and far larger deficits than the plans Obama has already passed or currently wants to pass.

Newsweek

Imagine how much better off we'd be right now if Republicans weren't obstructing Obama's more aggressive economic recovery proposals and throwing up road blocks to other Democratic ideas for creating jobs and stimulating the economy.

Better yet, imagine how much better off we'd be if Republicans hadn't destroyed the U.S. economy by driving it into the ditch to begin with.

Leave Al Jaeger Aloooooooooooooooooooooooone!

The object of the SoSP rests on Joseph Stalin’s famous quote that “It’s not who gets the votes, it’s who counts the votes.” The truth of this was demonstrated in last year’s senatorial election in Minnesota and how important that 60th Democratic senator proved to be to the Obama agenda.

Mock’s assaults, and there have been several, on Jaeger are just an extension of the SoSP so that he (Mock) will become the arbiter in close North Dakota elections. Jaeger’s performance over the years has been exemplary. He has performed in a quiet, efficient and, most importantly, nonpartisan manner to the benefit of all North Dakotans.

For 'em Letter to the Editor

The SoSP(Short for Secretary of State Project) does exist, its website is here, but Corey Mock is not an endorsed candidate of the project, and I don't know that he has sought their endorsement either.  The amazing thing about this letter is that it is complete and total projection.  The two most questionable elections in recent memory were Florida in 2000, run by Katherine Harris(R), whom Bill Nelson clocked in 2006 for Senate.  Most observers of that race seriously question her actions in the recount.  The other case is Ohio in 2004, which was run by Ken Blackwell(R).  On the other hand, the author brings up the Minnesota Senate recount, the longest, most open and transparent, and most nonpartisan recount in the nation's history.  

Lets remember who certified Al Franken's victory:

Minnesota State Canvassing Board

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie(D)

Chief Justice Eric Magnuson(Appointed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty(R))

Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson(Appointed by Gov. Jesse Ventura(I))

Chief Circuit Judge Kathleen Gearin(Elected-Non-Partisan)

Assistant Chief Judge Edward Cleary(Appointed by Tim Pawlenty, Subsequently Elected)

Certified Election Results unanimously

Franken V Coleman District Court Panel(Appointed by Senior Justice Alan Page)

Judge Elizabeth Hayden-Presiding(Appointed by Rudy Perpich(DFL))

Assistant Chief Judge Kurt Marben(Appointed by Jesse Ventura(I))

Assistant Chief Judge Denise D. Reilly(Appointed by Arne Carlson(R))

Unanimous ruling in favor of Franken.  Coleman Claims Dismissed with Prejudice and Coleman is assessed all legal fees in the matter, along with fines for the handling of Pamela Howell

Supreme Court of Minnesota

Senior Associate Justice Alan Page-Presiding(Elected)

Associate Justice Paul H. Anderson(Appointed by Arne Carlson(R))

Associate Justice Helen H. Meyer(Appointed by Jesse Ventura(I))

Associate (now Chief) Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea(Appointed by Tim Pawlenty(R))

Associate Justice Christopher Dietzen(Appointed by Tim Pawlenty(R))

Unanimous, per curiam(no specific author named) ruling in favor of Franken.  

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."

John Stuart Mill

Turns out.... if we weren't already, we really are turning into a "nation of know-nothings"...

Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.

Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 47 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

New York Times

And -- as usual -- the Bismarck Tribune, it's favored Letter-to-the-Editor authors and it's right wing editors join the stupid, knuckle-dragging side show.

What's frustrating is that Republican leaders -- like Newt Gingrich and John Hoeven -- know all of this, and they love it.  Hoeven Gingrich talks about Christian family values out of one side of his mouth, and then gets married and divorced more often than most people change underwear.  Hoeven won't tell you anything about his positions on anything, because it's to his advantage to keep you uninformed of his opinions.  He's the enigma candidate.  Seriously... what do you know about his position on privatizing Social Security?  Does he agree with Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republicans that benefits need to be cut and the system needs to be abandoned?  Does he agree with other Republicans that we need to eliminate all farm programs?  Does he agree with other Republicans that we need to increase the burden on poor and middle class people, and enact new tax cuts for the richest 2%?  Does he support the Republican position on relaxing regulation of Wall Street?  

You don't know, do you?  Know why?  Because when voters are stupid, John Hoeven and New Gingrich are happy.

Like it or lump it.

May God save us from ourselves.

(Crossposted, with permission, from the Prairie Blog.)

"One night in October, 1919, and I think it was the 19th of the month, five farmers dined at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. It was a good enough place, rather noted for moderate prices and a varied menu, which was why the farmers chose it. They ordered, with design, a dinner of staple viands, and, as it came to the table, measured or weighed or closely estimated each dish; so much of bread, so much of potatoes, so much of butter, so much of meat, so much of sugar, and thus to the end.

"With paper and pencil they recorded each amount and, at current prices at the farm, the net sum the producer received for each dish they consumed. When all was done, they called for their bill. It was $11.95, exclusive of gratuities.

"They made a total of all the items they had entered as they went along, showing what the producer had netted from this. It was 84 cents."

That’s how Charles E. Russell begins his book “The Story Of The Nonpartisan League,” published in 1920 when the League was still in control of North Dakota Government. I’m not going to give you a history of the Nonpartisan League here. There are a number of books on the NPL, the most important of which, I think, is Robert Morlan’s Political Prairie Fire, published in 1955, and reissued in 1985 with an excellent introduction by my old friend, the late Larry Remele. Another old friend, Ardell Tharaldson, thinks it should be required reading for graduation from a North Dakota high school. I think he’s right.

But I’m quoting today from Russell’s book because it has just been reprinted, along with a couple others of his, by a company called Nabu Press, and so you can buy it from Amazon for 25 bucks. Or you can buy the original 1920 hardcover on ABE.com for about the same price. I have a good copy of the 1920 first edition and that’s what I’m quoting from. 

Russell, incidentally, is a cool guy. He was a socialist, muckraking journalist in the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th. He joined the Socialist Party of America in 1908, he was one of 5 co-founders of the NAACP in 1909, he ran unsuccessfully for governor and senator from New York and mayor of New York City, he wrote at various times for daily newspapers in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago and Detroit, and he wrote 15 books, one of which, “The American Orchestra and Theodore Thomas” won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1927.

Much maligned by politicians for his style of journalism, he once wrote, in response, “The best way to abolish the muckraker is to abolish the muck.”

But I digress. Russell spent part of a year here, during the heyday of the League, and his book lays out the case of the farmers of North Dakota and what he called the Middle Northwest that led to the formation and success of the League. I want to share two more passages from the book for you, and then recommend you get it and read it. Because it is one of the best things ever written about North Dakota. The first is part of a speech given in 1917 by League President A.C. Townley in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“Let me try to make plainer still to you the reason for the injustice in our industrial life. This war (World War I) will cost America maybe thirty, forty billions of dollars. It is very difficult to raise so many billions of dollars. It entails tremendous sacrifices on us all, a sacrifice that we shall not shirk. Those billions will be spent by this government to win the war for Liberty and Democracy. Part of it will be spent for guns, part for ships, part of it for coal, clothing, shoes, leather. A part of it will be paid to those that are making millions of profit out of the war to-day. 

“But a soldier boy cannot carry a gun unless there is bread in his stomach. A soldier boy cannot dig a trench unless he has a strong body made by bread.

“And some of those billions of dollars have to be spent to pay the farmers for the wheat to make the bread. Now we have been calling for government control of prices. And we got them all right. But in our clamor for government control we overlooked the better tool.

“We forgot, or neglected to see, that the representatives of the profiteers were too large a part of our government, and so we got the government control too largely on behalf of the profiteers. They are to-day influencing this government in too large a measure. Else they would not fix a price on coal twice what it was before the war; else they would not be so long reducing the price of bread after they have reduced the price of wheat.”

Townley and other Leaguers were relentless with that message in 1917 and 1918, and in the 1918 election, the League won complete control of North Dakota government, including the newly-created Industrial Commission to oversee the beginning of the about-to-be created state industries (Governor, Attorney General and Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor), and both houses of the North Dakota Legislature. And in the 1919 Legislature, they passed their program into law. And later that year, opponents of the League secured a referendum election, at which seven of the measures passed by that Legislature were put to the test of a popular vote. Here is Russell’s analysis of why the issues to be voted on were being referred.

"1. The Bank of North Dakota threatened the huge profits of money-lenders, in which the entire banking system of the Northwest, including the overshadowing financial institutions of Minneapolis and St. Paul, had shared for a generation. These financial institutions were directly connected with the powerful banks, insurance and trust companies of Wall Street, whose influence on national affairs has been solemnly attested by a committee of Congress.

"2. The railroad rate bill directly menaced the most powerful railroad companies of the United States; companies accustomed for many years to unquestioned political domination in the Northwest, companies also directly linked with the great packing-house combinations, the greatest banks in Chicago and New York, and the Interests that were once called the arbiters of national destiny.

"3. The proposal that the state should own its elevators struck directly at the great and profitable business of handling grain, erected through so many years around the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. This naturally involved an assault upon the profits and prosperity of the Minneapolis banks, linked as before said to the greatest banks in the country; linked also to the great and not always apparent speculative Interests in the grain business that centered in the Chicago Board of Trade, involved the Armours and other packing Interests, and was linked once more to railroads, banks and insurance companies.

"4. The proposal that the state should build and operate flour mills was an ominous blow at the great flour-milling Interests of Minneapolis, the greatest of their kind, whose mills rolled forth a daily total of eighty thousand barrels of flour, and fed an appreciable part of the world.

"5. The Hail Insurance Act menaced the business and profits of the insurance companies linked with the banks that were linked with the railroads and linked with the controlling groups of Wall Street.

"6. The suggestion that the state might print and furnish its own school text-books was a menace to the business and profits of the school-book trust, linked as the other Interests and in the same way to the controlling groups.

"7. The laws instituting the State Income Tax, State Inheritance Tax, Work-men’s Compensation for Injuries, the strict inspection of mines, although not without precedent, undoubtedly aroused each its own element of opposition that was drawn now to the general assault. For it was felt in all these menaced quarters that if the League’s innovations should be sustained in North Dakota they would be adopted within a short time in other states, and no man might foresee how far the reform might go no what profound changes it might achieve."

Well. A state-owned bank. A state-owned mill and elevator. Worker's compensation. State hail insurance. You think we have big ideas today? We haven’t done anything to match this lineup since the day they were passed in 1919. Suppose they all went away with the demise of the League? Hah! Look around. State hail insurance disappeared in the 1930's when the federal government thought it was such a good idea they created federal hail insurance. You know the rest of the story.

As for Russell’s analysis? Remember, this was written in 1920, and he—and the League—believed these conspiracies and threats were real. And they probably were.

In the special election on June 26, 1919, the League prevailed on all seven measures. 

Russell’s book closes with a recount of the great Scandinavian American Bank scandal, which ended in another League victory—this time in court. It was published before Lynn Frazier, William Lemke and John Hagan were re-elected in 1920 as governor, attorney general and commissioner of agriculture and labor, and before they were successfully recalled from office the following year.

There were four books written about the League in 1920, one by Herbert Gaston, who was editor of the League’s newspaper, the Leader; one by Oliver Thomason, about whom I know nothing; and one by William Langer himself. Gaston’s and Langer’s books have also been reprinted in paperback by Nabu Press. I can’t find a copy of Thomason’s anywhere. Ardell Tharaldson is the only person I now who has a Langer original. I haven’t read it. Gaston’s and Russell’s are fun to read because they were written in real time, during the League heyday. Morlan’s is still, however, the definitive history of the League from 1915-1921. 

Surely the Nonpartisan League was one of the best ideas ever hatched in North Dakota. Oh, and by the way, someone has started a Facebook page for the League. Imagine that.

(Crossposted, with permission, from the Prairie Blog.)