A Really Bad Case Of Mistaken Identity

This is a message to all my Republican friends (if I have any left—I’ve been kind of hard on some of your candidates lately), so all you Democrats can quit reading now and go do something else—there’s nothing in this for you.

Okay, Republicans. One of you needs to ‘fess up. One of you gave my name to Sharron Angle and told her I was a Republican. You know Sharron Angle. She’s the Tea-Partier who won the Nevada Republican Primary to run against Harry Reid for the U.S. Senate, making her the de facto head of the Committee to Guarantee Harry Reid’s Re-Election.

I got a letter from Sharon yesterday. The letterhead said

Sharron Angle

Official Republican Nominee

For U.S. Senate Against Harry Reid

Kind of like “I still can’t believe it, but it is “official.” Here’s how the letter started:

Dear James Fuglie,

If you’re the Republican I’ve been told you are, then I need you to find your checkbook right now.

See? I told you, one of you gave her my name and told her I was a Republican. Well, for the record, I am not. Oh, I've voted for a few Republicans--the good ones--like Bob Martinson. I've lived in Bob's district much of my political life, and he's been in the Legislature all of my political life. I jut tell my Democrat friends he's the son of Henry Martinson, the old Socialist organizer, but he has to run as a Republican to get elected in his district, and none of them ever check to see if that's true or not.

But now I've been labeled a Republican, and now I’m going to get all kinds of mail from Sharron Angle and other Republicans and Tea Partiers, because I know these people share their lists. And I don’t want to get those letters, because if they’re all as mean as this one, they’ll just ruin my day. I gotta tell you, this Angle woman is one mean, angry lady.

About four paragraphs in, she launches an attack on President Obama, and it goes on throughout the letter:

Not only is this the #1 race in America this year, it is nothing less than a referendum on the far left policies of Barack Obama and Harry Reid . . .

Obama and Reid are joined at the hip in forcing this radical expansion of government . . .

Nothing, and I mean nothing, would be a bigger blow to Obama’s agenda than for me to defeat Harry Reid . . .

Defeating Reid will spell doom for Obama’s agenda!

The whole letter is like that. Obama’s bad. Reid’s worse. Send me money. Not once in the letter does Sharron (what’s up with that extra “r” anyway?) say anything about what she stands for, or why she wants to be a U.S. Senator, or what she will do when she gets there. No, “stopping Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is Republicans’ #1 priority right now,” Sharron says in her letter a few times.

So I’m writing to you, my Republican friends, to ask you if you agree? Is that your #1 priority? Fixing the economy doesn’t matter? Stopping the war in Afghanistan? Balancing the budget? Putting people back to work? Those are down the list, behind killing the President’s agenda?

Y’know what? I don’t think so. Not the Republicans I know, here in North Dakota, like my friend Bob. But I think it just might be the #1 priority for Sharron Angle and even Mitch McConnell and the national Republican leadership. And that is sad.

But, back to matters at hand. One of you gave Sharron my name. She sent me a letter. She called me a Republican. A cruel hoax. So I’m going to use her return envelope. I’m writing her a note:

Dear Sharron,

I will send $25 to your campaign if you will tell me who gave you my name.

Sincerely,

James Fuglie

I don’t doubt for a minute she’s going to rat you out, whoever you are. So you might just as well come forward now and confess.

Still Drilling, Just A Bit Farther Away

The Weather.com forecast for the Bad Lands on Monday showed a couple of days of mostly sunny skies with possible showers, so we loaded up the tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, food and hiking boots and headed west. We settled in about supper time on a Little Missouri River gravel bar a mile or so from the Elkhorn Ranch site, on some Forest Service land near the ranch owned by a friend of ours.

Tuesday was a grand hiking day. Mid-afternoon found us at the Elkhorn Ranch site, and as we walked down the mowed trail, we heard, behind us, a steady cadence: thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . thump . . . We paused to listen, and then Lillian said “It’s that oil well, up on the ridge.”

There are, in fact, three oil pumpers about a mile and a half, maybe two miles, from the Elkhorn site, high on a ridge overlooking the Buckhorn ranch, just upriver from the Elkhorn. You can see one of them from the ranch site (oil companies love busting the skyline instead of tucking their well pumpers down in a draw where you can’t see—or hear—them).

And what had happened as we hiked was that the wind was behind us, blowing maybe 15 or 20 miles per hour (a gentle zephyr by North Dakota standards), and carrying the sound of that well over that distance. Once we realized what it was, of course, it sounded even louder. THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP . . . THUMP.

Now this was not one of those old 20th century one-lung pumps you could hear for miles and miles. No, this was a modern, 21^st century, state-of-the-art pump, and we could hear it – and see it – distinctly, from almost two miles away.

That’s what’s so troubling about Rick Berg’s statements that he thinks we should allow horizontal drilling under Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I don’t want to see or hear any more oil development from Buck Hill or the Oxbow Overlook. I don’t think most North Dakotans, or most Americans, for that matter, do either.

But mostly there are two things about Rick Berg, and this whole issue he brought up a week or so ago, that really trouble me. The first is that I’m not sure Rick really knows much about western North Dakota. The second is he is running for an office that could affect policy about how we deal with western North Dakota, and if he should win, he could prove to be a big embarrassment to us as a state.

Let’s deal with these one at a time. We have oil under most of western North Dakota. Probably 15 million acres of land in western North Dakota have some oil under them. The Bakken alone, currently our most productive field, is under, from what I can tell, at least 3 million acres of North Dakota, probably more. The federal government owns more than a million acres in the western North Dakota. New wells are being drilled as fast as we can get drilling rigs to North Dakota. As I stated in an earlier column, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is just 70,000 acres out of the 15 million acres with oil under them. The National Park is less than one tenth of one per cent of the land in North Dakota with oil under it. It is less than 4 per cent of the land owned by the federal government with oil under it. So why in the world would we even be talking about drilling there? When we’ve drilled every other federal acre, the other 96 per cent, perhaps, 20, 40 or 100 years from now, we can discuss it. Maybe.

The second point is that people with screwed up priorities who get elected to office can do real damage, and so we need to try to be a little careful about who we elect. Case in point:

In its final days, the Bush administration issued new management plans for the spectacular red rocks area of southern Utah, and announced they would begin leasing on the fringes of places like Arches National Monument for drilling for oil and natural gas. Sure enough, in December 2008, the Bureau of Land Management went ahead and held a lease sale for mineral acres just outside a number of national parks and proposed wilderness areas in Utah. Just days after the sale, wilderness organizations filed a lawsuit, and in January a judge granted a temporary restraining order against the BLM, halting the issuance of the leases. In early February, just two weeks after President Obama took office, his new Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, ordered the BLM (often called the Bureau of Leasing and Mining by people like us) to cancel the sales. Secretary Salazar explained that his actions were necessary because “[i]n its last weeks in office, the Bush Administration rushed ahead to sell oil and gas leases at the doorstep of some of our nation’s most treasured landscapes in Utah.” Thank you, Secretary Salazar, for proving, once again, that elections have consequences.

Now, back to matters at hand. Rick Berg screwed up. No question about that. Desperation often flows through political candidates, and they say dumb things. For Berg, this one was a doozy. But it says something about how he thinks, and how he might act as a Congressman. He’s desperate as a candidate right now to throw out big ideas. He’s also smart enough to try to back off, as he did in a Grand Forks Herald submission this week: “I would consider national park resources only if there was a way to do so without entering the park, by using technology such as horizontal drilling to go under the park from well outside the park boundaries, and then only if it would in no way affect the park or view shed.”

But the thing is, Rick, there are some things you can’t control. The government doesn’t drill for oil. Private companies do. All the government does is lease the land and the minerals to the oil companies. There’s no way to know, when the leases are issued, where the oil company will put the well and the tanks, which way the sound will drift, where the road will go for the service vehicles, how far the smell of the natural gas will drift, how bright the flare will be, and a whole bunch of other things that could affect the quality of the park experience. How far can that horizontal pipe go? A mile? Two miles? How far is far enough? There’s just a lot you don’t know about the oil industry, and about western North Dakota, Rick. We can forgive your Red River Valley naivete about this part of your state. Except that you could be the Congressman for the whole state. You need to do your homework.

One thing is pretty sure. This dumb idea is going nowhere fast. There’s no need to panic. A friend of mine has already said this is the time she will lay down in front of a drilling rig. I hope that won’t be necessary. Another friend said recently, as we were canoeing through the Bad Lands, and rounded a bend in the Little Missouri River to encounter an oil well almost on the river bank, “If there was a God, HHe would have put the oil under Iowa.” Well, I’m not so sure. We DO kind of like the taxes the state is collecting. But Richland, Cass, Traill, Grand Forks and Pembina Counties might have been a nice place for it.

Drill, Rick, Drill

One of my friends put a note on his Facebook page today with a link to a Grand Forks Herald story in which North Dakota Republican Congressional Candidate Rick Berg says we should begin drilling for oil under Theodore Roosevelt National Park. He said “and now for an incredibly stupid idea . . . “ Boy was he right. Let me reprint the first few paragraphs from the Herald’s story:

Drilling for oil underneath western North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park and other federal lands nationwide could be a way to ensure Social Security funding for the long haul, Republican U.S. House challenger Rick Berg said.

During a meeting with The Forum’s editorial board Wednesday, Berg discussed his ideas for how to make the Social Security system viable for future generations. He said one option is drilling for oil and other mineral resources on federal government land.

“There’s a huge opportunity right now to take those mineral assets that are on the federal government’s balance sheet and shift them to Social Security,” Berg told the editorial board.

He said the national economy also needs to improve so more Americans will have jobs and pay into the system.

Money gained from more drilling on federal land would amount to “billions of dollars” from North Dakota resources alone, Berg said. He did not have specific data available on Wednesday.

The federal government already allows drilling on some public land, including the national grasslands in western North Dakota.

But drilling is banned in national parks with only a few exceptions — and Theodore Roosevelt National Park isn’t among them, park Superintendent Valerie Naylor said.

“Drilling is not allowed in national parks, as a general rule,” she said. “It’s important that we preserve the land for future generations.”

But Berg said he would include national parks — and specifically, Theodore Roosevelt National Park — when discussing areas of untapped mineral resources the U.S. government could use.

I’m disappointed in Rick on this one. He shows a basic lack of understanding of a very important part of North Dakota here.

There are a million acres of federally-owned national grasslands in western North Dakota’s badlands. Virtually all of it is open to drilling for oil. The federal government already rakes in millions and millions of dollars annually from leasing it to the oil companies. It rakes in millions and millions more, and will get to the billions Rick is talking about, in royalty payments from the oil the oil companies are taking out. That has been going on for years, since oil was first discovered in 1954 in western North Dakota.

Thanks to the efforts over many years of one of our state’s most conservative and irascible Congressmen ever, William Lemke, we managed, in 1947, to set aside about 70,000 acres—just a couple of per cent of our state’s spectacular Bad Lands—as a National Park honoring Theodore Roosevelt.

As a National Park, it enjoys the protection from development that has turned, not just the million acres of federal land out west, but the several million acres of private and state land as well, into one of the country’s major oil fields. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a tiny island in a sea of scoria roads and sand colored tanks.

So Rick, listen up: Not only is the National Park sacrosanct, but it is insignificant compared to the million acres of federally-owned land already being drilled. This is not news to most North Dakotans, and you, of all people, should know better. The federal government is already reaping huge royalty and leasing checks from its federal lands in western North Dakota.

If what you meant to tell the Forum editorial board is you want to shift that revenue away from helping to finance general government and put it into Social Security, then tell us what taxes you want to increase to replace that revenue. But keep your drilling rigs away from the National Park. Good God, man, are you that desperate? That greedy? Is nothing sacred? Drill, baby, drill. National Parks be damned. That thinking makes me sad. And angry.

Adding A Barn Owl To Our Life List

Eight years ago, when I first met Lillian I asked her to teach me all the things she knows about birds and plants. She is as good a North Dakotan as there is. The perfect North Dakotan, I have always said, is one who, to borrow a phrase, can see both the landscape’s sweep and the flower’s petal. That’s Lillian. She can identify almost all of the native prairie plants on our frequent hikes, and, in fact, her love of the prairie is often the reason for our hikes. She is an excellent birder with a long Life List, and can identify most species by their song or call, not just by sight. I told her early on in our relationship that if I had not learned plants and birds well in a year, she could push me off the edge of Bullion Butte.

For the record, she is a patient woman. She has not pushed me off the butte, but I have a long learning curve yet. And I work at it. Like this week. Her birding ListServ message this week said:

“There currently is a family group of five barn owls in Petersburg. I have permission from Joe and Lorie who live at ____ (yellow house) to post this information. Birders should check in with them or their next door neighbor to the west, who was also very helpful in showing us where two of the owls were roosting yesterday afternoon in a tree in her back yard. These two owls use this tree a lot as a roost spot, but of course no guarantee can be made that they will be there on a given day. And it should be added that since the young are flying well, the whole group could leave the area at any time.

“If not found in that tree, try walking the streets and alleys to the east and south of Joe and Laurie’s residence and looking carefully through every tree. Petersburg has many large, mature trees so finding one of the five owls can be a challenge . . . “

Isn’t North Dakota a wonderful place to live and know people? And meet new people? We met Lorie yesterday.

Monday, when we read this note on Lillian’s ListServ, we thought we ought to take a drive to Petersburg. Barn owls are a rare find in North Dakota. Not many people who have lived here all their lives have seen one. This would be a rare opportunity. Petersburg’s only about 3½ hours away. And the timing was good. I have an uncle about 40 miles up the road at Edmore who was having an 83rd birthday, and I don’t see him often enough, and he’s not in great health, and his youngest daughter, my cousin, was home from California, and I have not seen her in along while, so we could make it a twofur day by driving up and having birthday cake in the afternoon and looking for barn owls in the evening. Which is what we did.

We got an hour and a half with my relatives before they had to leave for Grand Forks, where my uncle today is seeing specialists for a “problem in his belly.” I’m pretty worried about that. He is a man of few words. I will talk to him, or more likely my cousin, tonight, to see what the diagnosis is.

We arrived in Petersburg about 5:30. Met Lorie. Owls have flown the coop but are still hanging out around town, best she knew. We went for a walk. Turns out we were not the only ones there for that reason. We were spotted by two young women in a tan sedan as we were walking down the street with our noses in the air, looking at the trees. No, they hadn’t spotted the owls yet, but were optimistic. We covered the less heavily forested west side of town on foot, then got into the car and started cruising the small streets and alleys, and sure enough, Lillian, she of the keen eye, stopped the car beside a copse of ash and elm trees and said quietly “There’s one.” He/she looked exactly as Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds described him/her: “Our only owl with a white heart-shaped face. A long-legged, knock-kneed, pale, monkey-faced owl. Dark eyes, no ear tufts . . .”

We were about 50 feet from the owl. We watched it carefully for a few minutes, and I got out my camera, and tried taking a picture through the sun roof of the Jeep. But there was a branch in the way. I asked Lillian if I could get out and get a picture. She said sure, so I crept around the back of the Jeep and walked toward it slowly. It was dozing, and did not seem afraid, and let me get within 25 feet for this photo.

To say it was a spectacular bird is understating it. I’m just going to stick with “very, very cool.” Then, deciding we had bothered it enough, and knowing there were others prowling about town, we let our stomachs lead us south on North Dakota State Highways 32, 45, 65 and 20, through the Sheyenne and James River Valleys in the golden glowing light of an early North Dakota fall evening, to the Buffalo City Grill in Jamestown where we celebrated with a fine meal of bison.

An addition to Lillian’s Life List (I say Lillian’s because she started it long before she met me, but I am claiming joint custody). One step further back from the edge of the butte for me. As fine a day as you could have in North Dakota. And there are a lot of fine ones.