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6/16/2010 – Editorials


By Richard Peterson

 

Did you see that ND Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm announced that the State Fire and Tornado Fund will give a 50 percent premium credit to all of its policyholders for the new policy year effective July 1. This is the third premium credit issued to policyholders in four years.

This premium credit provides approximately $3.2 million in direct savings to state and local governments.

The State Fire and Tornado Fund is a state-run commercial property insurance program administered by the ND Insurance Department. The fund provides building and contents coverage for the state and its political subdivisions (including cities, counties, townships and park and school districts) for fire, theft, weather damage and vandalism.

Did you get that?

This is socialism, plain and simple! It’s as socialistic as the Bank of North Dakota, which returns millions to the state’s general fund every year.

Horrors! Horrors! Horrors! Unbridled socialism in our midst! Right along with Social Security and Medicare, two well-known socialistic programs.

The Tea Partiers must be having conniptions.

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The right-wingers are still whining about the health care reform Congress passed earlier this year. I admit it has many flaws, but it’s much better than the situation that prevailed before.

The right-wingers have been fighting the proposed reform of the financial system. They’re not going to have much luck because the people realize that if something isn’t done the greedy will run us off the cliff again.

The bailout of the banking system was unpopular, but President Obama went ahead anyway, realizing that allowing the system to fail would be catastrophic for the economy. The cost of the bailout is going to be much less than anticipated because the banking system has pretty much recovered and is paying back the government.

Obama saved the nation from a depression with his stimulus money. He’s getting a bad rap on the federal money invested in the stimulus. He’s being blamed for big spending. The alternative to that big spending was a depression, which is much worse than a deficit. There weren’t as many jobs created as had been hoped. You know why? Because the stimulus wasn’t big enough. To try to get more stimulus money through Congress would be pretty difficult, with the G"NO!"P saying "NO" to everything Obama proposes.

I think saving us from a depression, saving us from financial collapse and getting a good start on reform of our health care system are three pretty impressive accomplishments in just the first two years of his administration. You can bet that the G"NO!"P will not be able to stop major reform of the financial system, either.

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I’m pleased to see that Bob Rindt is being inducted into the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame.

He was a remarkable fellow who had mastered all kinds of things: rope twirling, knife throwing, bullwhip cracking, roller skating, shooting, riding and rodeoing.

In about 1950 or 1951 he was on the lyceum circuit and put on a show at the Fessenden School, where I was in the third or fourth grade. I can still see him cutting a cigarette out of the mouth of his wife with a bullwhip and outlining her figure with knives he threw. It was pretty amazing and even after almost 60 years, I can still see the performance in my mind’s eye.

I saw Bob Rindt one time after that, when I took the late, great Wayne Lubenow to the Fort Totten School to interview Bob for one of Lubenow’s feature stories. That interview appeared in the Dec. 2, 1976 issue of the Farmers Press. We also carried two other stories on Bob Rindt. One by Wayne Lubenow on Dec. 5, 1984 and one in the July 18, 1990 issue which had previously appeared in the Minot Daily News.

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Some things to consider from the e-mails:

1. The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow.

2. Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail.

3. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you probably don’t have any sense at all.

4. Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.

5. A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep water.

6. How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?

7. Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

8. Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?

9. Scratch a dog and you’ll find a permanent job.

10. No one has more driving ambition than the boy who wants to buy a car.

11. There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

12. There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 a.m. It could be a right number.

13. No one ever says, "It’s only a game" when his team is winning.

14. I’ve reached the age when the happy hour is a nap.

15. Be careful reading the fine print. There’s no way you’re going to like it.

16. The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.

17. Do you realize that in about 40 years we’ll have thousands of old ladies running around with tattoos?

18. Money can’t buy happiness, but somehow it’s more comfortable to cry in a Mercedes than in a Ford Focus.

19. After a certain age, if you don’t wake up aching in every joint, you are probably dead.


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