Feb 03, 2006 - 08:05:02 CST
A day after publishing negative comments about Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., for voting to confirm Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the District 34 Democrat's Web site is nearly blank.On Thursday, the Web site, www.gotaspine.com, contained a quote from Francois Voltaire saying, "It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong,"and the statement "Osteoporosis has set in. Our apologies."
There was scant information about the district on the Web site's main page.
Pages containing contact information, opinions, and news were all blank. On Wednesday, those same pages contained information ranging from opinions about state and local government to the "Heroes" list, which Conrad, a Democrat, was taken off of by a vote of the district on Tuesday night.
On Wednesday, the Web site contained statements about Conrad that said he voted with the side of "fascism" when he voted for Alito.
The Associated Press reported Wednesday that a later posting on the Web site apologized for using the word "fascism" in the same sentence as Conrad's name. "We do not believe the Senator to be a fascist," it said. The AP also reported that the Web site had the posting, "to those who insisted we remove this entire reference from our Web site and issue a retraction, you can contact the mapmaker Rand McNally and order a custom-made map with a blank space for District 34."
Those postings could not be found on the Web site on Thursday.
Paula Grosinger, the treasurer and Web administrator for the District 34 Democrats, could not be reached for comment on Thursday. A message left for Charlie Barber, chairman of the district, was not immediately returned.
Montana political ad war hits North Dakota
You may have recently seen television ads attacking Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., in Bismarck and other cities.
Jessica Rhoades, media director for the Montana Democratic Party, said the ads, paid for the Montana Democrat Party, are running in North Dakota because of the way media markets work.
Rhoades said when the party bought ads to reach people in eastern Montana, the markets overlap with some stations in North Dakota.
The Democratic ad shows a video clip of Burns saying, "I don't know who Abramoff influenced, but he never influenced me |"
After the short clip of Burns, the ad alleges that he took $5,000 from an associate of lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for a vote to oppose legislation that would increase federal control of immigration on the Northern Mariana Islands.
Rhoades said the ads are in response to ones that Burns has been running in which he is trying to distance himself from the Abramoff scandal.
Burns has denied being influenced by Abramoff.
"Those partisan Democratic ads are just that: politics, the worst kind of politics,"Burns said in one of his ads.
Census and budgets
A recent report compiled by the Census Bureau shows that, on a per capita basis, North Dakota ranks third among states in revenue and 49th for expenditures in 2004.
The Census reported total revenues of $5.2 billion or $8,220 per capita for North Dakota in 2004 and expenditures of $3.2 billion, which equates to $5,028 per capita.
The large difference between the revenue and expenditures occurs because the statistics do not include certain expenses, such as debt retirement, purchase of securities for investment and loans.
The report showed the top three expenditures in North Dakota in 2004 were $1,662 per capita on education, $1,073 for public welfare and $605 for highways.
Alaska was ranked No. 1 for both revenue per capita and expenditures per capita in 2004. According to the statistics, Alaska had a per capita revenue of $13,446 and per capita expenditures of $12,293.
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