North Dakota dreaming

West Virginia legislators often get lots of flack for going on junkets to interesting places on the public nickel. However, when the destination is North Dakota, the flack factor seems to disappear.

That state in fact is going to be the destination of state lawmakers, where, among other things, they will study North Dakota's Legacy Fund, a permanent trust fund created from the revenue collected from industries extracting natural resources.

This will probably ring a bell with regular readers. For some time, I've been working with allies to drum up support for something similar here, where we tend to call it a Future Fund. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a political shakeup in the WV House may have helped move that issue along.

In the meantime, here's a view from North Dakota.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, here's President Obama's statement on the George Zimmerman verdict.

GREEN SHOOTS. Here's an encouraging story on the local food  movement in WV.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED