Look at Roosevelt’s N.D. footprint

Theodore Roosevelt didn’t just spend time in North Dakota. He spent quality time here.

TR was shaped by North Dakota and, in turn, he helped shape the character of the state. It’s a give-and-take relationship worthy of our time and interest.

It was in Fargo in 1910 that Roosevelt cemented his link to North Dakota. At the dedication of the public library there, the former president said, “I would never have become president if it had not been for my experience in North Dakota.” It’s a quote the state’s residents have committed to memory.

But Roosevelt’s relationship with North Dakota goes well beyond kind words, even if they are true. Two initiatives by the Dickinson-based Theodore Roosevelt Center address this relationship between North Dakota and the nation’s 26th president. The first will be to define Roosevelt’s footprint in North Dakota. The second will be to ask North Dakotans who have TR memorabilia to share those items by allowing the center to scan them, making these digital images a part of the comprehensive collection of all things Roosevelt.

That Roosevelt footprint will be seen as an interactive digital map, available on the Internet, and it will feature conservation initiatives by his administration, including Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Stump Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Sully Hills National Game Preserve (once a national park), the Dakota National Forest (discontinued), the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The map also will be keyed to statues of Roosevelt in Minot, Mandan, Fargo and Dickinson, and places where Roosevelt gave speeches, including the dedication of that Fargo library.

Clay Jenkinson, a consultant for the Roosevelt Center, assures people that Roosevelt did more than chase boat thieves on the Little Missouri River. North Dakota, many believe, gave Roosevelt his conservation ethic.

Roosevelt’s time in history was not so long ago. People living here today have documents, photographs and other items linked to Roosevelt. They have been handed down within families. The hope is that people will contact the center and make arrangements to have their memorabilia scanned into the system, building a uniquely North Dakota component within the digital Roosevelt library.

The Roosevelt Center has already digitized more than 100,000 documents, more than 500,000 pages, all related to Roosevelt. It’s an effort financed in part by the North Dakota Legislature, the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The center has partnered with Harvard, the Library of Congress and the National Park Service to capture these documents in digital form and make them available to anyone wishing to do research via the Roosevelt Center’s website.

As for Roosevelt shaping North Dakotans’ ideas about themselves, one need only consider to how the words “Rough Rider” have been incorporated in the way we think about ourselves — hard working, tough, self-sufficient, independent. Add to that Roosevelt’s affair with the cowboy way, a romance that continues for North Dakotans.

The Theodore Roosevelt Center has real promise for North Dakota. It makes the state, online and offline, a focal point for Roosevelt interest and research. It could become the equivalent of a presidential library in western North Dakota.

Bully!

rrr

Rep. Rick Berg, R-N.D., gets his mother to say that the Affordable Care Act cuts benefits to regular Medicare beneficiaries in the amount of $500 billion. This is untrue. Berg’s mother says she depends upon the Medicare program and that stopping those cuts in order to help her is why Berg is running for the Senate. She says that Heidi Heitkamp supports these cuts and therefore Heitkamp must be stopped and the Affordable Care Act must be repealed.

This falsehood appears in another of Berg’s advertisements that shows a group of Medicare-age looking women actors complaining in a similar fashion.

But unlike Rick Berg, Sandy Praeger, the elected Republican Kansas state insurance commissioner, speaks “truth” about the Affordable Care Act and its positive effect on Medicare in her just published Commissioner’s Corner’ for August 2012:

“Question: Will Medicare change?

“Answer: The law does not cut benefits to regular Medicare beneficiaries. It is supposed to save $500 billion over the next 10 years. The savings is to come from (1) reducing federal payments to insurance companies that offer Medicare Advantage plans (which are private Medicare plans that offer regular Medicare benefits plus other company benefits); (2) reduced increases in provider payments; and (3) actions to reduce waste, fraud and abuse. Also, more preventive services are now covered, and the “doughnut hole” for prescription drug coverage gets smaller each year until it closes completely by 2020.”

For all of Praeger’s honest answers to questions about the Affordable Care Act, see: http://www.ksinsurance.org/gpa/ccorner/2012-08.pdf

For any truth coming from Berg, look elsewhere.

Greg Stites

Bismarck

Tags: opinion, editorials, politics, roosevelt