President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.

Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.

Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up.

“A stunning development for the president of the United States in his fourth year in office,” Mr. Sessions said of the unanimous opposition.

Meanwhile White House spokesman Jay Carney called the vote on the President’s budget “another gimmick.”

So I guess bringing Democrat budgets to the floor of the Senate and voting on them is a gimmick?

Meanwhile, the last time the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a budget was 2009. Which tells us what the real problem is. It isn’t partisanship or gridlock or dirty Republican tricks. It’s that Democrats simply don’t want to budget.

Silver gives Berg a 70% chance of winning.

The hardest Senate race to call may be in North Dakota, where Democrats have another tough defensive assignment after the retirement of Kent Conrad. Like in Nebraska, the partisan climate in the state leans toward Republicans. However, Democrats are somewhat more unified behind their candidate, Heidi Heitkamp, the former state attorney general. The only recent poll of the race showed Mrs. Heitkamp slightly ahead, but it was commissioned by the North Dakota Democratic Party and such partisan polls often exaggerate their candidate’s standing. For now, we classify the race as Lean Republican, rather than Likely Republican as before, but the race could revert to Likely Republican or move into the tossup category pending the release of nonpartisan polling. One measurable factor working in Republicans’ favor is that their candidates have combined to raise more money than Mrs. Heitkamp has.

A lot is going to ride on the independent polling in this race. And there will be some polling available later tonight. Forum Communications is set to release polling on the Berg/Heitkamp race, but it’s worth noting two things about the way the Forum is polling.

A) It’s not a unified Republican field yet. Duane Sand is challenging Rick Berg for the NDGOP’s nomination, and while Sand is a bit of a joke candidate, as long as he’s in the race he’s capable of shaving a few points off of Berg’s total.

Also…

B) The Berg/Heitkamp results will no doubt be pulled from the same sample the Forum used for Measures 2 and 4 earlier this week. That’s a simple that isn’t including undecideds, which really skews the outcome.

But no matter how you slice it, some bad independent poll numbers for Berg could really break this race wide open for Heitkamp.

Last summer my hometown of Minot was devastated by flooding. Something like 30% of the city was completely inundated with roof-high water. Needless to say a year later we’re still in recovery mode.

But this news note from the local CBS affiliate’s Facebook page demonstrates just how helpful the federal government isn’t in that recovery process. Some traffic lights in the city, along some of the most heavily trafficked roads, still aren’t working a year after the flood. The problem? All the federal red tape the city had to go through to get funding to fix the traffic lights.

The wait for traffic signals in the valley to get fix is about over.

Repairs for valley intersections have taken longer from the start because the city needed help from federal funds and to be eligible the city had to follow guidelines in a particular order.

With all the paperwork complete and the necessary steps taken, a contract has been been signed and crews are doing preliminary work as the necessary equipment for the repairs is on the way.

We’ll have the full story the valley traffic lights tonight on KX News.

Anyone else thinking that the traffic lights probably would have been fixed a long time ago if the federal government hadn’t been involved?

Of course, big government types would probably argue that the city needs the federal funding. That we can’t just recover on our own. This would be easier to believe if the City of Minot hadn’t been busy trying to blow millions on a new scoreboard and sports facility upgrades earlier this year.

Maybe if the federal government wasn’t involved in these sort of things local communities would prioritize their spending better and these issues would be addressed more quickly and efficiently.

There is simply no reason why the federal government, in Washington DC, needs to be concerned with traffic lights in Minot, ND.

SBHE member Mike Haugen announced his resignation at the end of his first term earlier this year. Claus Lembke announced the resignation of his term early just weeks ago, and now Ritchie Smith whose second term wasn’t set to be up until June of next year is leaving as well.

Historically, SBHE members are appointed and serve out two full terms. That so many members of the board are leaving after one term and/or leaving early is a sign of just how rotten things have gotten in the university system.

No word yet on why Mr. Smith is resigning early, but it is past time we started wondering why we haven’t seen more leadership on higher education from the state’s elected officials, most notably Governor Jack Dalrymple.

Spending in the university system is out of control. The enrollment and diploma fraud uncovered at Dickinson State University is one of the worst scandals this state has ever seen. Higher education officials have demonstrated a pattern of deceiving and misleading the state legislature. I’m not sure you could describe the relationship between the legislature and the university system as “working” right now.

Put simply the North Dakota university system is imploding. They can’t be trusted to govern themselves any more, and all we’re getting from the state’s elected leaders (outside of a handful of legislators who are trying their best) is the sound of crickets chirping.

Update: More from the Forum. Mr. Smith is apparently blaming “stress” and the “charged political atmosphere.”

But what is causing that stress and political blowback if not the Board of Higher Education’s inability to manage the university system competently?

Update: How much does Smith’s resignation have to do with revelations at a recent legislative oversight meeting that the State Board of Higher Education knew about the enrollment problems at Dickinson State University as early as February of 2011, just one month into the legislative session, yet not only stayed silent about it but actually gave former DSU President Richard McCallum a raise and a positive review?

Well the fundraiser in question, sponsored by the Lignite Energy Council, happened. You can read a summary of it on the Basin Electric website.

Here’s a video clip of her address to attendees at the fundraiser:

Heitkamp mouths a lot of words about ending gridlock and “sitting down in a room” and “creating a policy” on energy, but if you’re looking for specifics you aren’t going to get it. Which is interesting. Heitkamp is in a tenuous position on energy policy.

She can pander all she wants, but the truth is that her political party is for greater federal control of energy policy. Her political party is for hamstringing traditional fossil fuels and promoting with mandates and subsidies expensive, unproven and unreliable “green” energies. Heitkamp has said that she’ll vote for President Obama’s re-election, just as she voted for his election in 2008, despite his having promoted the bankruptcy of the coal industry.

Heitkamp, a former EPA attorney herself, makes no mention of the fact that North Dakota has had to fend off attempts by the Obama administration’s EPA to take over regulation of regional haze in North Dakota despite the state having some of the cleanest air in the country.

Even Heitkamp’s calls for a national energy policy, which she has stated more directly at other times and places than in the video above, speaks to a preference for more federal control of energy policy and less local control.

Such a move would not bode well for coal and oil, which are central to North Dakota’s economic well being.

So why would the coal industry support Heitkamp? In the posting linked above, Basin Electric CEO Andrew Seri is quoted as saying that Heitkamp “successfully ‘carved out’ an exemption for North Dakota power plants from the costly externality laws of Minnesota imposed by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.” He added, “While serving on the North Dakota Industrial Commission as Attorney General, Heidi Heitkamp also was the architect of the Partners for Affordable Energy image advertising and grassroots campaign on behalf of coal-based electricity.”

It seems that Heitkamp is favored not because she would promote open, fair and competitive energy markets in general but because she’s been a good crony for specific industry interests in the past.

That hardly seems like a compelling case.

We can all agree or disagree with the message of these ads. That’s what democracy and free speech is all about. The the problem is that BreatheND isn’t just some advocacy group. They’re a branch of the North Dakota government.

From their website, which according to their header is part of the “official portal for North Dakota state government”:

The Center for Tobacco Prevention and Control Policy, also known as BreatheND, is a division of the Tobacco Prevention and Control Executive Committee. The Executive Committee administers the funding provided by Statewide Initiated Measure 3 that voters passed in 2008.

If BreatheND is part of the state government, what are they doing running attack ads against tobacco companies and bars/restaurants that allow smoking?

I recognize that we all have differing opinions about tobacco and the laws governing it. But we also have different opinions about issues like gun policies and abortion. Would you be ok with a government agency dedicated to running ads attacking gun control policies? How about ads promoting gun control policies? Or how about ads taking a position for or against abortion?

I think we could all agree that those sort of ads would be unacceptable, because the government shouldn’t be using our tax dollars to take positions on those sort of issues. The government is supposed to be neutral in those debates.

So why then is it ok for BreatheND, a branch of the North Dakota state government, to attack tobacco use?

Providing information to the public about health issues is one thing, but when that turns into an active campaign to try and manipulate the choices people make it goes too far and sets a dangerous precedent in government.

One need look no further than the petitions being circulated for a constitutional measure to enshrine a state board promoting environmentalism (funded with a huge slush fund of oil taxes) in our state government for proof of that.

FreedomWorks VP for Policy and Government Affairs Max Pappas just tweeted the news:

@FreedomWorks PAC has endorsed @kevincramer for Congress in North Dakota’s At Large District!#tcot #tlot

— Max Pappas (@Max_Pappas) May 16, 2012

Maybe not the most surprising of endorsements as Cramer has always been pretty close with Armey, but a boost to his campaign none-the-less. But it is interesting in that this endorsement comes on the news of Republican Senate candidate Duane Sand (who like Cramer skipped the NDGOP’s endorsing convention) getting snubbed in terms of endorsements by national conservative/tea party groups.

Just a reminder, I’ll be moderating a debate tonight (it will be on the blog tomorrow) between Cramer and Kalk. Submit your questions here.

So here’s a case-in-point that may bring some clarity. A new development that is just breaking ground in Williston is expected to bring 1,344 new apartments to the community. Assuming an average of two residents for every apartment, that would mean 2,688 new residents for the city.

In July of 2009, before the exponential growth out west really began, the US Census Bureau estimated the population of Williston at 13,014. Meaning that if this new development had been built in Williston in 2009 it, by itself, would have represented a roughly 20% increase in the city’s population.

To put that into context, from July of 2000 through July of 2009 the population of Williston grew just by 550 citizens, or roughly 1/4th of the number of people who would live in these new apartments.

Today this is just one development being built to supply the city’s chronic housing shortage. The current population of Williston? Who knows. With so many people living in temporary housing and campers, with so many people moving into the community so quickly, official counts are a guess at best.

Amazing.

How can anyone claim economic recovery when labor force participation looks like that?

President Obama can, and no doubt will, continue to blame the recession on President Bush and Republicans. But he’s had three years to turn things around. Where’s the recovery?

Conservative women, especially, are chaffing at the idea as evidenced by this ad put out by the Susan B. Anthony List:

The “war on women” stuff is just a spin off of typical liberal identity politics. They believe that if you’re a certain color or a certain gender then you’re supposed to think a different way. If you’re a square peg who doesn’t fit into one of their round holes, then you’re not being authentic. You’re a traitor to your race or gender.

It’s Orwellian, which is why the ad above (which is straight out of 1984) works so well.

Our friends on the left think society, the collective, ought to make choices for the individual. Or, at least, limit the choices available for the individual. Conservatives feel (or should feel) that individuals ought to be free to make their own choices.