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Mitzi Moe Publisher 701-572-2165
Williston Herald news@willistonherald.com
Thursday July 24, 2014
Today in History Today is Thursday, July 24, the 205th day of 2014. There are 160 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon had to turn over subpoenaed White House tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor. On this date: In 1783, Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas, Venezuela. In 1862, Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, and the first to have been born a U.S. citizen, died at age 79 in Kinderhook, New York, the town where he was born in 1782. In 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the Civil War. In 1911, Yale University history professor Hiram Bingham III found the “Lost City of the Incas,” Machu Picchu, in Peru. In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Turkey, was concluded in Switzerland. In 1937, the state of Alabama dropped charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the “Scottsboro Case.” In 1952, President Harry S. Truman announced a settlement in a 53-day steel strike. In 1959, during a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engaged in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Williston Herald An Independent Newspaper
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WICK COMMUNICATIONS
Opinion Column
I support move to offer marriage equality in N.D. I support the seven same-sex couple who challenged the state’s law banning marriage equality and asked a federal court to declare the laws unconstitutional Tuesday. I support the couples argument that the state’s ban cannot stand in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2013 that the federal government’s discrimination against married same-sex couples violates the federal constitutional requirements of equal protection and due process. My support is being validated as every federal court to consider the issue since the Supreme Court decision has ruled in favor of the freedom to marry for same-sex couples, including federal courts in Utah, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. The federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has also ruled that the Utah and Oklahoma marriage bans are unconstitutional. A hearing has not yet been scheduled As I for the federal court to consider the See it couples’ request. But I think it’s important for the court to consider who Eric these people are: Ron Ramsay and Peter Killelea Vandervort, Celeste and Amber Carlson Allebach, Brock Dahl and Austin Lang, Michele Harmon and Joy Haarstick, Bernie Erickson and David Hamilton, Matthew Lee Elmore and Beau Thomas Downey and Stephanie and Siana Bock. They are represented by Minneapolis attorney Joshua Newville of Madia Law LLC, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Fargo attorney Thomas D. Fiebiger. I believe these couples have just as much right to marry as anyone else in North Dakota. I provide submitted information about them to show how they seem no different in community standing then you and me. Ramsay and Vandervort have been together for 29 years and got married last year in Minnesota. They have lived in Fargo, when Ramsay has taught at North Dakota State University for more than 40 years and Vandervort works in local and national theater. Harmon and Haarstick have been together for 13 years and were married in Iowa in 2011. Although they live together in Erhard, Minn., Harmon was born and raised in Minot. Haarstick is a captain at the Cass County Sherriff’s Office in Fargo, where she has served for 26 years. She wants the state she has served and protected for decades to respect her marriage, allow her wife to join her health insurance plan and to ensure that her wife is eligible for retirement and survivorship benefits available to spouses of other North Dakota public servants. Erickson and Hamilton have been together for 12 years and were married in Canada nearly eight years ago. They live in Fargo and have four adult children and grandchildren together. Erickson is an opera singer who is a professor of vocal music at Concordia College and the general director of the Fargo Moorhead Opera, and Bernie sells homes to Fargo area families as a realtor. Celeste and Amber Carlson Allebach live in Fargo with their two children and are excited to be expecting a new baby this fall. They have been together for seven years and were married last year in Minnesota. Celeste has lived in North Dakota most of her life, and is a social worker serving the homeless. Amber owns and operates a daycare. Stephanie and Siana Bock live together in Oakes. They met three years ago and got married last year in Iowa. They are excited to be adopting their first child when he is born this fall. Elmore and Downey met two years ago. Elmore is a missiler in the United States Air Force and was born on the Air Force base in Minot. The couple married in California and relocated to North Dakota when Elmore was stationed at his hometown base. Dahl and Lang moved here for work. The couple is engaged and do not want to leave their home to get married, but were turned away by the Cass County Treasurer’s Office in June because they are a same-sex couple. The way I see — some of these couples have been together longer than heterosexual couples, hold steady jobs and contribute to their communities and the state. They deserve the right to get married.
Letter to the Editor
Opportunity in the Bakken I was a Southern California native, beach dwelling girl until 2-1/2 years ago. North Dakota is now my home and being here, running a business during the “oil boom” has allowed me to have a home and roof over my head. Three years ago, some of my extended family came to N.D. to work in the oilfield. It meant little to me until I realized that North Dakota might be the only way for me to get ahead in life. Literally that same day, I was offered the opportunity to become a restaurant owner. A month later, I moved to North Dakota. Operating a business, especially a small restaurant is difficult in the oil field. It is a seven day a week, 12plus hours a day job. It wears you down. But it also is a wonderful experience. I have become a business woman. I have met some wonderful people, from locals to oilfield workers from all parts of our country. I like to think that Tioga is the perfect town to live in and run my restaurant. The Bakken economic growth and its opportunities for people are as varied as its weather. I have moved great distances away from family and friends to find new friends and family in a place that I never knew about or ever dreamed I would be living and working. My business skills and my life experiences have undergone their own growth that has only made me a stronger person. Whether I stay here as a local business owner or move on someday, I would never have had quite the opportunity to run my own business and excel as I have had here in North Dakota. Susan Gordon Tioga
Column
What you need to know before reading financial news Reading financial news is a skill. Honing that skill reminds me of a great psychology story. At the start of each one-year term, the new president of the American Psychological Association shares his or her vision for how to change the field. In 1998, incoming president and University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman’s vision was simple: For decades, psychology focused on negative disorders like depression and anxiety. Psychologists brought patients from below average to normal, or from “a minus five to a zero,” as Seligman put it. That was noble, but it meant psychology ignored the majority of society that wasn’t suffering from mental disorders. “I realized my profession was half-baked,” Seligman said. “It wasn’t enough to nullify disabling conditions and get to zero. We needed to ask, ‘What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?’” This sparked a boom in the field of positive psychology, or studying what makes normal life more fulfilling. The financial media may be in the opposite position today. Most investing commentary is focused on how to bring investors from average to above average -- from zero to plus five, in Seligman’s terms. And that’s great. Many can benefit from it. There are a lot of brilliant financial minds you can learn from. If you’re an avid investor, today’s financial media is probably the best it’s ever been. But as Seligman realized with psychology, a singular focus can leave a profession half-baked. It can actually alienate most people, who need the opposite kind of help.
And most investors do need the opposite kind of help. According to research firm DALBAR, the S&P 500 returned 9.22 percent per year from 1993 to 2013, but the average stock The investor Motley earned just 5.02 percent Fool per year. Investor This gap represents Morgan the average Housel investor constantly buying and selling stocks at the worst possible times. They’re a minus five, and need help getting back to zero. Most investors don’t need help trying to beat the market. They first need protection from beating themselves. If you don’t understand the difference between the two, you may not see the reality of the financial media industry: That 90 percent of investing commentary is targeted above the average return of a benchmark index, while 90 percent of investors’ problems are below it. Understanding this truth is your own responsibility. Not the media’s. Yours. There was nothing unethical about psychologists focusing on depression and anxiety before Seligman pushed them toward the happy masses. Doctors were utilizing their talents, even if it left out most of the population. If a layperson read an article about depression and wrongly diagnosed and treated himself, that was his own fault. Josh Brown, one of the smartest investors and best financial writers I know, told me recently that the same is true for financial
media: “Let me tell you something interesting about financial media. Of all the verticals across different types of news, financial media is the only one where there’s supposed to be some sort of responsibility that comes along with it. When you think about fashion, art, sports, Hollywood gossip -huge categories of news that dwarf financial news -- there is no responsibility. People don’t watch ESPN and then think they’re supposed to go out and play tackle football with 300-pound guys. But when they watch financial or business news, they take the next step and say, “Well I’m supposed to act on this now. I’m supposed to do something about this.” Part of that is the fault of the media. The word “actionable” gets thrown around a lot. Actionable for who? Oh, I don’t know, it’s just actionable. But a lot of the responsibility is on the public. And I think what most people do incorrectly is they focus on the news of the day, the stocks that are moving on a given day, whatever is driving the markets now, but they’ve got no background whatsoever regarding how to invest. People who read financial news have an obligation to know about themselves what the pundit can’t: Their own risk tolerance, age, job security, time horizon and level of expertise, to name a few. You have to know these yourself so you can understand what kind of financial media is relevant to your needs, and what isn’t. Otherwise, you might be a perfectly happy person reading an article about depression, wondering when you should see a doctor. (Try any of The Motley Fool newsletter services free for 30 days: www.fool.com and click on “Fool Store.”)