KFYR's Watchdog Wednesday (March 1st, 2023)

Other topics discussed include:

Watchdog's 2023 Cross-Over Round-Up

North Dakota Shark Tank Program Embraces ESG and DEI

HCR 3019 Attempts To Violate Constitution To Repeal and Replace Term Limits

Bonus Material:

Jason Spiess over at ESG University has done a follow-up report on the first investment being made by the North Dakota Wonder Fund.

North Dakota’s Shark Tales: O'Leary Landed His First Big Fish, Now Can the Taxpayers Trust It?

I encourage you to read Jason’s work on this topic, he has done some extensive research into this company and its pre-existing connections to a North Dakota non-profit group.

One important question that Jason asks is whether this company may have taken economic development money from Montana, based on its website branding.

Will the company remain HQ’d in MT or will they move to ND? Did they accept any money from the state of Montana to economically develop their state too?

Keynesian Carpetbaggers are becoming more and more common with economic development dollars becoming more and more prevalent.

A Keynesian Carpetbagger is a modern-day Carpetbagger who uses the invisible hand of the government to trick the people out of their money. This saves the out-of-state interest a lot of time and money, whereas historically the carpetbaggers had to trick the individual rather than the elected and appointed officials.

Ironically, centralizing tax dollars to special interests is one of the few ways the state of North Dakota is efficient under Governor Burgum and Senator Hoeven.

Historically, a carpetbagger was a term used by Southerners to describe opportunistic Northerners who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War, who were perceived to be exploiting the local populace for their own financial, political, and/or social gain.

This $1.25M ensures nothing of a return for the ND taxpayers, just Kevin O’Leary, the landlord, as well as the employees’ time and energy. This is a considerably advantage in the free market when you consider the speed of technology, use of employees’ time, access to decision makers, double dipping of resources and the impact of the Thought Worker supply chain.

There are a lot of questions to be asked in this situation.

The North Dakota Commerce Department has very little information about The North Dakota Wonder Fund:

The Commerce Department page here actually links out to the O’Leary Ventures website, and has no detail information about the program, contract terms, etc.

This is a developing story and there will more to come!