Tag Archives: Dickinson Mafia

The Dickinson Mafia And Bank Owners In North Dakota

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It has been a while since I have mentioned the Dickinson Mafia in one of my blog posts, probably more than a year.  There may come a time, when circumstance arise that may cause me to identify the members of the Dickinson Mafia by name, there are about eight of them.  But at this time, it would be more trouble than it is worth.

For the newcomers to Dickinson, the Dickinson Mafia are a group of business owners, land owners, and political office holders who try to control what goes on in Dickinson.  They tell themselves, and each other, that what they try to accomplish is good for Dickinson, but these things coincide with what benefits them.

A reader may think, so what, what is wrong with this, what is the problem?  I will give you a couple of examples.  One of the ways in which Dickinson is controlled, is by controlling who is hired.  Often times, hiring in Dickinson is not a matter of selecting the most experienced and qualified applicant.  Hiring involves selecting the applicant that has been selected ahead of time due arrangements being made on the basis of family connections, seeking to win favor with someone, promise of being compensated, threat of being punished, or outright being told to do so.

Another way in which Dickinson is controlled, which people learn when they live here, is by:  who gets stopped by the Police and who gets let go;  who moves forward with being criminally prosecuted and who has charges dropped;  who gets a long sentence and who gets a short sentence, or no sentence;  who gets a building permit and who does not;  who receives building code violations and who does not;  who receives a bank loan and who does not;  who keeps their job and who gets laid off;  who gets awarded contracts and who does not;  who gets good publicity in the newspaper and who does not.

Myself, and other people who live in Dickinson, would like to be treated fairly, but sometimes that doesn’t happen.  It is upsetting, when steps are taken to interfere with your being hired, your work, being stopped by the Police, attempted entrapment by the Police, or not being able to get a bank loan.

For the readers who still don’t know what I am talking about, you can read my previous blog posts titled “They Hide Jobs In Dickinson, North Dakota”, “The Disputed Termination Of David Armendariz”, “Not Being Paid By Employers In Dickinson”, “Being Stopped By The Police In Dickinson, North Dakota”,  “Almost Getting Caught By The Drug Task Force In Dickinson, North Dakota”, “Legal Entrapment Of Manish In Dickinson, North Dakota”.

In understanding Dickinson, it is like pealing back layers of an onion.  After studying things for a while, you may think that you understand Dickinson, but then you realize that there is another layer below what you have already found.

Here is one way to look at these layers of Dickinson:

The first thing that a newcomer to Dickinson will likely experience, is contact with their employer and the Police in Dickinson.  This is what is on the surface of Dickinson.  If you have any sense, you will quickly realize that you are better off saying very little to your employer, your co-workers, and the Police in Dickinson, because they are all trying to find fault with you, and something to charge you with.

The next layer down, the socialization in Dickinson, will be the people that you meet and interact with at grocery stores, retail stores, businesses, restaurants, bars, school, the West River Community Center, etc.  You may come to understand that the socialization in Dickinson is heavily influenced by the German, Ukranian, and Catholic ancestry of the local people.

The next layer down, the economy in Dickinson, you may find out about the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd oil booms in Dickinson, the history of the settlers and agriculture, the history of the poverty and wealth, the historical prices of land, success and failures of businesses and industries, coal mining, Uranium mining, etc.

The next layer you may come to in understanding Dickinson, is the Dickinson Mafia layer.  You may begin to learn about the influence and control of the Dickinson Mafia, what businesses they own, what they are involved in, who they are related to, what they are trying to accomplish.

Unfortunately for me, the next layer that I came to understand about Dickinson, is the crime and illegal drug activity.  Someone a little older than me, who moved to Dickinson twenty years ago said to me, “If everyone in Dickinson knew the truth about the crime and the illegal drug activity in Dickinson, 80% of the people would leave Dickinson.”  You would probably leave Dickinson, if you knew the truth about what is going on.

The furthest layer down, that I have seen, is the Bank owners in North Dakota.  They are invisible, they were invisible to me, until a couple of things made me realize that they were there.  This is funny, and embarrassing, because ultimately, they own everything, far surpassing anyone else or any entity in control and importance.

I read this factual statistic recently, and I have heard and seen this statistic about five times previously, that was uncovered by economists and financial experts, and reported by journalists:

1% of people…………..own or control 80% of the wealth in the U.S.

19% of people…………own or control 12% of the wealth in the U.S.

80% of people…………own or control 8% of the wealth in the U.S.

The two most important things to see, are that the top 1% wealthiest people own 80% of the wealth in the U.S., and that the vast majority of people, the bottom 80% own only 8% of the wealth in the U.S.

I had thought that the Dickinson Mafia control things in Dickinson.  It is true, that they try to control things in Dickinson.  But the Bank owners in North Dakota, have much more control.  However you don’t see, hear, or read very much about the Bank owners in North Dakota, and that is the way that they want it to be.

In Dickinson, there may be griping, complaining, debate, lobbying, protesting, and politicking over such things as:  the permitting of man-camps, people sleeping in their cars, shortage of housing, arrival of street gangs, drug trafficking, prostitution, new housing developments, new business developments, damaged roads, end of the oil boom, people leaving, low occupancy rates, fewer jobs, lower wages, Sears closing, JC Penny closing, Herbergers Closing, new refineries, etc.

Out-of-state workers have their opinions about what they want, which may not be the same as the opinions and what the local people want.  The Dickinson Mafia, have their opinion about what they want, which usually they are able to persuade the local people that this is what they want too, which inevitably is what gets done in Dickinson.

It appears to me, that the Bank owners in North Dakota, do not waste their time and energy paying attention to the daily, weekly, or monthly squabbles and goings on in Dickinson, as if they are of no consequence to them, though they are the biggest land and resource owners in western North Dakota.

I don’t know if the Bank owners figure that whatever gets decided, whichever way things go, either way they will make money.  Or, if when something matters to the Bank owners in North Dakota, when something affects them, that they decide to intervene.  If they do intervene, I have never seen, heard, or read about it.

Re-Evaluating What The Police And The Dickinson Mafia Are Doing

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I am now re-considering and re-evaluating what the City of Dickinson Police and the Dickinson Mafia are doing.  Rather than continuing to complain, I may have to acknowledge that some of their practices, are necessary in Dickinson, North Dakota.

I have written several blog posts in the past complaining about the City of Dickinson Police always being so eager to follow everyone and pull them over.  I know that they were stopping people in order to check driver’s licenses and vehicles, to see if anyone had warrants, were driving under the influence, had illegal weapons or drugs, stolen property, or anything else illegal.  But I was sick and tired of being surveilled and stalked by the Police, when I wasn’t doing anything illegal.

On Thursday night of this past week, when a vehicle ran up over the curb, across the grass strip, and through a chain link fence where I usually park my vehicle, for the third time in the past six months, I wished that the Police in Dickinson could round up all the White Trash in Dickinson.

It’s not just that a vehicle crashed over the curb and through a chain link fence in this 25 mph zone for the third time in six months, or that another vehicle crashed into my equipment trailer in this spot, or that one of my vehicles got stolen during this time, or that my neighbors’ vehicles have had property stolen from them, it’s that this is happening all throughout Dickinson.

I don’t know if things were ever this bad in Dickinson before, or if this happened following the second oil boom in 1983, but Dickinson now is just full of White Trash and hoodlums.  I think that 50% of this is poor White Trash from out-of-state, and 50% of this is locally born White Trash.  I do think that poor drug addict people from out-of-state have had a negative effect on poor locally born people, making them much worse.

What I hated was the Dickinson Police following, surveilling, and stalking everyone in Dickinson, but I guess they have to.  Apparently, if the Dickinson Police let up for one minute, the White Trash take this opportunity to crash a vehicle, steal a vehicle, or steal property out of a vehicle, garage, or business.

I had written blog posts in the past complaining about the Dickinson Mafia.  For those of you who don’t know, the Dickinson Mafia are a group of business owners, property owners, and leadership in the City, that have tried to control what goes in Dickinson in the past:  Development, ordinances, hiring, firing, wage rates, promotions, marriage, who succeeds, and who fails.

I felt that it was wrong for a group of prominent and successful men to try to determine and control so much, what happens to other people.  Now, at this time in Dickinson, when I see so many people running amock, the White Trash problem, the misbehavior, theft, and drug problems, I wish that the Dickinson Mafia would get Dickinson back under control.

Here is how the Dickinson Mafia used to work:  If someone got arrested in Dickinson for DUI, illegal drugs, assault, domestic violence, burglary, or theft, within a day or two, they would no longer have a job in Dickinson, nor would they be able to get another job.  Their spouse may also lose their job within a day or two.  Not being able to pay rent within a month or two, they would be evicted, and would be unable to find replacement housing.  They would have no place to work or live in Dickinson.  They would have to leave Dickinson.

I wish that the Dickinson Press newspaper would begin again to publish the names of people in Dickinson who are arrested for DUI, illegal drugs, assault, domestic violence, burglary, and theft, and publish this in the Dickinson Press Police Blotter every week.

The owners and the managers of every business in Dickinson would read the Police Blotter every week, to see if anyone working for them had been arrested.  And if they didn’t read it for themselves, one of their friends, relatives, or customers would telephone them and let them know.  Once these people’s names were made public, the Dickinson Mafia, the public, customers, friends, and relatives would be saying to them, “Why do let criminals work for you?  Why are you helping criminals?”

Back when the Dickinson Mafia was more active and involved, they did not tolerate or allow White Trash in Dickinson.  I would like to see the Dickinson Mafia, the City of Dickinson Police, and everyone else begin to force the White Trash, hoodlums, drug dealers, and drug addicts out of Dickinson.

Exposing Some Bad Things In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have lived in Dickinson, North Dakota for five years now.  Ever since I came to Dickinson, I could tell that there were things going on that were wrong.  There were things that were adversely affecting me, my friends, and other people that I met.  I wanted to know what was going on, what were the reasons, what was behind all of this.  Eventually I created this blog website, and here are some of the things that I wrote about:

  1. The gouging and taking advantage of out of state workers on housing.
  2. The deliberate creating of a shortage and not alleviating the shortage of housing in order to keep prices high to benefit local property owners.
  3. OSHA refusing to investigate the work site death of Eric Haider.
  4. No one being charged with manslaughter over the work site death of Eric Haider.
  5. Public and private businesses violating EEO laws in order to hire friends and relatives.
  6. Failure of the Department of Labor to hold employers accountable for non-payment of wages.
  7. Long history of companies and employers in Dickinson attempting to keep wages low in order to prevent employees from ever getting ahead or being able to leave.
  8. Not allowing prostitution though the ratio of men to women varied from 3:1 to 30:1.
  9. Newspaper reports of multiple occurrences of local men resorting to sex with cows and horses in this area.

One of the causes of the injustices that I have listed above, appears to be the Catholic Church in Dickinson.  The Catholic Church in Dickinson has encouraged the Catholics to believe that they are better than everyone else, has encouraged anything that brings money to the Church, and has not discouraged or spoken out against the mistreatment or taking advantage of others.

A second cause of some of the injustices in Dickinson, appears to be the Dickinson Mafia.  The Dickinson Mafia are a group of men who own businesses, who hold public office, who are on boards of directors, and who manage some of the large companies in Dickinson.  They sought to keep wages low so that workers could never get ahead, would have to work their whole life for low wages, and could never leave.  The Dickinson Mafia also sought to control Dickinson by giving jobs as favors or rewards to people who did what they wanted, and not giving jobs to people that were independent, regardless of education, skill, and qualifications.  The Dickinson Mafia was greatly responsible for the Nepotism and Chronyism that goes on in Dickinson.

A third cause of some of the injustices in Dickinson, appears to be the failure of the police, the judicial system, and the press to hold people accountable for wrong doing.  I have come across situations in Dickinson, where individuals should have been arrested but were not, should have been prosecuted but were not, should have received long prison sentences but did not, and should have been fully covered in the Dickinson Press newspaper but were not.

Some of the really bad bad things that have been done by prominent people and businesses in Dickinson have been covered by newspapers outside of Dickinson, such as the Jamestown Sun, the Grand Forks Herald, and the Bismarck Tribune.  This is one way to handle it, and leave the Dickinson Press newspaper out of it.

The Bismarck Tribune newspaper did publish an article approximately one year ago, that described the failure of the North Dakota Department of Labor to hold employers accountable for non-payment of wages to workers.  There had been a two year wait after a worker complaint had been filed, before a case worker was even assigned to the complaint.  75% of the Department of Labor complaints were against oil field companies in western North Dakota.

I myself was shorted wages by an oil field company in the Dickinson area, so were some of my coworkers, so were some former employees of this company.  I called the North Dakota Department of Labor, and there were four other complaints against this company by former employees for non-payment of wages.

The Dickinson Press newspaper writes glowing newspaper articles about this company and the owner.  How can that be?  I began asking many local people about this company and the company owner.  I wanted to know why was he doing this, how did he think that he could get away with this, and what kind of person is he?  I found out more and more.

In high school, in the seventh grade, this company owner raped a boy in the gym locker room.  It was a very severe sexual assault.  He should have been arrested, convicted, sent to a juvenile detention center, and been registered for life as a convicted sex offender.  None of those things happened.  I asked why this didn’t happen.  I was told because of his family name, who his family was, and because his family had money.

In a previous blog post that I wrote titled, “Summary Of Wickedness And Perversion In Dickinson, North Dakota”, I wrote about a very similar incident to the one that I just described above, where a member of a wealthy and prominent local family was convicted of molesting an 8 year old girl.  His prison sentence and restitution was extremely lenient, unbelievably lenient.

In that blog post, I wrote that one of the problems in Dickinson, is that some people in Dickinson think that they are so much better than other people, that they can take advantage of other people with impunity.

As long as the Catholic Church continues to teach that Catholics are better than other people, there will continue to be people trying to take advantage of others, and mistreatment of others in Dickinson.  As long as the Dickinson Mafia continues to practice Nepotism and Chronyism, there will be corruption, collusion, injustice, unfairness, and mistreatment of people in Dickinson.

As long as the police, judicial system, and press do not hold all people equally accountable, there will be corruption, injustice, unfairness, underhandedness, crime, and mistreatment of people in Dickinson.

Trying To Change Things In Dickinson And Watford City, North Dakota

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In my blog posts I have written about: The Dickinson Mafia, Dickinson State University, Dickinson Police Department, Dickinson Chamber of Commerce, Watford City Chamber of Commerce, Watford City Police Department, Belfield, Gladstone, Catholics, Bohemians, Black People, Mexicans, Real Estate Agents, Property Developers, Property Investors, White Trash, Jessie Veeder, Dan Porter, Kristi Schwartz, Bill and Kamal Patel, Outlaw Sippin Band, Codi Miller, Marinna Marsh, Eric Smallwood, Bigfoot, UFOs, women, bartenders, prostitution, restaurants, and that arrogant Mexican who owns that Mexican restaurant.

Many people are mad at me.  I will suffer some negative consequences as time goes by and people figure out that it is me who wrote these things about them.  There are at least three things that I accomplish when I write about Dickinson and Watford City:  I give the readers from out-of-state a better understanding of what is going on in western North Dakota; I point out things to the local readers that they might want to think about, consider, and change; and I cause the local people who are directly involved to think about what they are doing and maybe change what they are doing.  It is worthwhile to me to give truthful information to people from out-of-state to save them from having problems, and to try to cause some things to change in Dickinson and Watford City that will benefit everyone.

There are some things that I write about, that no one else addresses in public, and the Dickinson Press newspaper will not write about.  There are some things that I write about, that no one thought needed to be written about.  The following are some subjects that I have written about that I still think are important:

  • The Dickinson Mafia.  The Dickinson Mafia exerted beneficial control over development in Dickinson.  The town of Dickinson is very organized and clean, even though it just went through an Oil Boom.  However one of the things that the Dickinson Mafia should have done was grab hold of all the Real Estate Agents and Property Investors by their necks and said, “You are not going to fuck up this beneficial growth of Dickinson by ripping off all these people so bad, that they can’t wait to leave here when this boom is over!  Do you understand that you are going to ruin the whole economic future of Dickinson for years to come with your short-sighted gouging that is only going to last a couple of years?”
  • Dickinson State University.  I quit going to the West River Community Center in 2013 because of all the hoodlum street thugs, which were here in Dickinson because they were brought here by DSU.  Everybody in Dickinson noticed this, where did all these inner city street street thugs come from?, my God, it’s DSU that is recruiting them here!  In about 2015, I think that Dickinson State University quit doing this, because I don’t see as many hoodlum street thugs in Dickinson as I used to.
  • Dickinson Chamber of Commerce and Watford City Chamber of Commerce.  At first, the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce and the Watford City Chamber of Commerce did not want to allow my blog on the first page of Google search results, but now they don’t fight with my blog as much.  Probably, the Chamber of Commerce wants people from out-of-state to know that housing prices are very high, that most people who come to North Dakota to work will not make $100,000 per year, that it is very cold for about seven months each year, and that there is no homeless shelter.
  • Jessie Veeder.  Jessie Veeder is a singer, writer, and photographer from Watford City.  I wish that she would write about Watford City and North Dakota exactly how it is, not how she wants it to be.  She should know from her grandparents, parents, and old people in Watford City how hard life in North Dakota had been, how poor people were, and how much of a struggle it was to survive.  It is very important that people in North Dakota know and never forget how hard and difficult it was for people up until this most recent Oil Boom.  People here need to know this so that they conserve everything they have, don’t waste anything, and don’t live foolishly.  There has been about a twenty-five year gap between Oil Booms in North Dakota.
  • Women, bartenders, restaurants, and prostitution.  It took me a while to catch on, but I am now 100% certain, that the single women who came to North Dakota to work had something wrong with them.  There are jobs in human resources, nursing, administrative assistant, banking, retail, hotel, bartending, and waitressing, everywhere in the United States.  A woman could make more money in these occupations in Florida, Texas, New York, Arizona, or California and live in a more comfortable and better social environment.  With the cost of housing in western North Dakota, there was no financial advantage to women in these occupations to move to North Dakota.  The thing was, they were so fucking crazy, that they could not get a job in Florida, Texas, New York, Arizona, or California, a background check or even just talking to them for five minutes would reveal that there was something wrong with them.  In North Dakota, there was a shortage of workers, so employers didn’t do much of a background check or much of an interview to exclude crazy people.  In addition to the extremely cold weather, very high housing prices, lack of things to do, and shortage of women, when you did go to a restaurant or a bar, the women servers were crazy and had something wrong with them.  I argued and argued in this blog that prostitution should have been allowed in western North Dakota due to the shortage of women.  I argued that housewives didn’t want truck drivers, construction workers, and oil field workers trying to solicit them everywhere they went.  But I was wrong about prostitution, if all the waitresses and bartender women had something wrong with them, I can’t even imagine how horrible the prostitutes would have been.

 

How Businesses Treat People In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I want to write a brief, to-the-point post about how businesses in Dickinson treat people.  In addition to giving out-of-state people some information, I would like for the Dickinson Mafia to think about this.

The following businesses in Dickinson that I have dealt with have been fair:

Dan Porter Toyota, Charboneau Dodge, Parkway Ford, R&R Repair, have all been fair, their prices were only 10% to 15% higher than ordinary towns not in the oil field.  The personnel were reasonable.

Ace Hardware, Macs Hardware, and Runnings have a good selection of quality merchandise.  The prices are not high.  Mostly, the personnel were O.K.

Most of the stores in the Prairie Hills Mall have normal priced merchandise, the personnel are O.K.  The Prairie Hills Mall Cinema is O.K.  Herberger’s has nice clothes.

The West River Community Center is one of the nicest indoor recreation centers in the United States.  It is moderately priced.  In the summer, Patterson Lake is a nice large outdoor recreation area that is moderately priced.

There is a large selection of fast food restaurants that are not high priced, McDonalds, Burger King, Wendys, Arbys, Taco Bell, Subway, Dominos, and the King Buffet.  There are a few inexpensive restaurants with good food, like Don Pedros.

There are more than enough grocery stores now, three Family Fares, Cash Wise, Wal-Mart, and the Family Dollar.  These stores have normal prices.

Having just written the list above, it would seem like everything is O.K. in Dickinson.  Most of the things that people want or need, are readily available in Dickinson, at reasonable and fair prices.  Except for housing.

What I want to point out to the Dickinson Mafia, is that everyone, everyone who moved to Dickinson felt like they were being taken advantage of, and they were very angry and resentful about it.  I explained in several previous posts, that the property owners, property managers, and property investors, had cost increases of approximately 50% after 2007, but they increased the housing prices by 400%.

Even though most of the businesses in Dickinson had fair prices and were reasonable, everyone who moved to Dickinson felt like they were being taken advantage of.  If it would not have been for the property owners, property managers, and property investors, many of the people who moved to Dickinson for work would have thought that Dickinson was as good a place as any to stay, buy a home, and raise a family.  Instead, most of the out-of-state workers planned on staying here only so long as the oil field work lasted, because they felt like they were being taken advantage of.

Dickinson would have been better off if people thought of it as a place to settle down.  Many people made up their mind that they weren’t going to remain in Dickinson because the price of housing was just too high.  All of the oil field workers who left Dickinson will remember for the rest of their lives, how cold it was, and how they got ripped off.

Facebook in Dickinson, North Dakota

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I hesitated to write this blog post, I didn’t want to give this secret away.  On Facebook, I have found so much information about people in Dickinson in a short time, that would have otherwise taken me about fifteen years of living in Dickinson to find out.  I have written in about 40% of my blog posts, that there had been a shortage of women in Dickinson.  During the first year that I lived in Dickinson, I thought that there was some genetic reason why nobody here had attractive daughters.  Later I found out that the attractive women were just hiding.  I found out that if you went to the grocery store before 5:00 p.m., before the oil field workers got off work, you would see some attractive women shopping.

In Dickinson, I wasted probably two years of my life trying to look for women to date on internet dating sites.  I found out, that if a nice looking woman has to advertise on an internet dating site to get asked out, she is probably driving men away in person.  This is an understatement.

One day in Dickinson, I met an attractive young waitress, and I later looked her up on Facebook.  On Facebook, she had all of her “friends” listed.  I could not help looking at some of her attractive “friends” profiles on Facebook.   I was just viewing Facebook profiles, when I started to realize, this is telling me a lot.  It was like someone was taking the time to tell me who everybody was in Dickinson.  I could see who everyone’s friends, family members, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives were, where they worked, where they went to school.  A tremendous amount of information.

I still to this day don’t know where all of these good looking women in Dickinson hide most of the time, but I know a lot more about their behavior.  They like to list other good looking women as “friends”, they do not like to show ugly “friends”.  Good looking women like to go places.  It seems like for them, the point in going to some of the places they go, is to take pictures of them being there.  It appears that the young women in Dickinson most often date people that they went to high school with, or people that they work with.

I suppose if a guy wanted to, he could look on Facebook, pick any young woman he wanted to date, look at her pictures, read where she works, read what her interests are, and then go see her at her job at Ace Hardware.  “Yes, I’m here to buy some sealant for my turtle’s aquarium.”.   “Oh wow!  You have a turtle too?”.  “Yes, I got him after my bar mitzvah.”. “Oh wow!  You’re Jewish too, so am I.”

Anyway, as I mentioned in a recent post, I have more than enough young women around me now that 80% of the oil field workers have left the state, and I don’t want any more.  I look at some young women’s profiles on Facebook in order to see how bad an idea it would be for me to date them.

I don’t want to talk about looking at women on Facebook any more right now, in order to talk about some other important things.  I have written about the Dickinson Mafia in about eight of my blog posts.  They are a group of men who have had a great deal of control over what goes on in Dickinson, for many years.  They are not all bad, they have accomplished some good things, but they had a hand in keeping wages low in Dickinson up until this most recent oil boom.  Just as the pretty women on Facebook like to show other pretty women as “friends”, the Dickinson Mafia like to show other connected people, and their minions as “friends”.

Just as I met one pretty girl, and then found her “friends” on Facebook, I looked at the Dickinson Mafia “friends”.  It’s funny, none of the Dickinson Mafia friends have hard labor jobs, or even difficult jobs.  Most of the Dickinson Mafia friends have gone to college, which is not typical for Dickinson.  Though their male offspring sometimes look weak and not sharp, they still have good looking wives.  I’m not too interested in criticizing the Dickinson Mafia right now, I am trying to point out that they look after their own.

If I hadn’t known before, I know now, that I will never get very far in Dickinson.  I am not from here, I didn’t go to school here, I didn’t marry the right person’s daughter, and I didn’t curry favor with the Dickinson Mafia.  Like I started out saying at the beginning of this post, Facebook showed me what it might have taken fifteen years of living in Dickinson to find out: who is who, who knows who, who is related to who, and that’s how that works.

Before some readers go and get depressed, and other readers gloat that everything is as it should be in Dickinson, I want to point out that Dickinson is changing.  There is a likelihood that those who mistreated and took advantage of other people during the past several years will reap what they have sewn, especially the landlords, property managers, and property investors.  Keep me posted on Facebook when you go bankrupt.

That other thing about not being successful if the Dickinson Mafia don’t want you to be, if Dickinson is prohibitive to people making money, there won’t be many people staying in Dickinson. The Dickinson Mafia could end up owning a bunch of failed businesses and property that is worth nothing if too many people move away.

 

 

 

 

Eric Smallwood, Dickinson, North Dakota

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Today, in this post, I write about Eric Smallwood, the Alive @ 5 event organizer, music promoter, business promoter, and community advocate living in Dickinson, North Dakota.

Eric Malone Smallwood was born September 11, 1979.  He was raised in the small town of Buhl, Idaho, population 4,000.  After high school, Eric studied agriculture and biosystems engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

In approximately 2007, at the age of 28, Eric moved to Dickinson, North Dakota, after hearing from a friend, Nick, about the build-up in Dickinson, indicating what could be an oil boom.  Not long after moving to Dickinson, Eric and a Nick bought the old Dickinson Press building.

At the time Eric Smallwood moved to Dickinson, a very good way to make a lot of money was to work in the rapidly expanding oil field, to work a lot of overtime, at one of the highest rates of pay, directly on an oil rig.  At that time, oil companies were looking for quick well completions.  Drilling companies were pushing their workers to go, go, go for more than twelve hours each day.  Work conditions were very dangerous, and in 2009, Eric lost half of his right index finger while working on an oil rig.  After that, Eric worked in the oil field as a crane operator.

The location of the old Dickinson Press building which Eric and Nick had bought, was on 1st Street, directly across from the historic old Elks Lodge building.  Within 1-1/2 blocks, were several historic buildings, the American Bank Center building, the Park Square building, the Odd Fellows Lodge, the Jessen building, the Masonic Lodge, and the Brickhouse Grille.

The historic Elks Lodge building renovation had been going on since approximately 2004.  Jacob Siewart, the owner of the old Masonic Lodge building, had been working on his building renovation for more than ten years.  In 2012, Adam Metzker moved to Dickinson and purchased the Park Square building and the Jessen building, and began their renovation.  Eric worked on the remodeling of his building, helped with work on the Odd Fellows Lodge building, and visited Jacob Siewart and Adam Metzker during the work on their buildings.  One of Eric’s favorite things was the stamped tin metal ceilings in several of these buildings, popular in the 1800s, and early 1900s.  Eric took an interest in the downtown Dickinson historic district building preservation, and he became a supporter, activist, and organizer.

The first report that I could find about the Thursday evening street parties in Dickinson, was a June 2012 article in the Dickinson Press written by Kevin Holten.  The Alive @ 5 event was at 1st Avenue & 1st Street, from 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm, and organized by the Odd Fellows Lodge.  I believe that the event was also supported by the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Dickinson Business Owners Association.

In 2014, Eric Smallwood became the lead organizer for Alive @ 5 in Dickinson.  As the summer went on, the street parties got bigger and bigger, and went to 8:30 pm or 9:00 pm.  Some of the crowds in 2014 were probably 2,000 to 3,000 people.  Hundreds of people remained downtown after Alive @ 5, and continued to drink at the Rock Bar, Bernie’s Esquire Club, and the Brickhouse Grille.

Eric Smallwood was able to bring increasingly bigger and better performers to Dickinson.  The highlights in 2014 were Gwen Sebastian and Kat Perkins.  The work had begun months in advance by Eric, selling advertising, selling VIP tickets, getting donations of money, material, equipment, and labor from local companies.  For every Thursday event, stage set up took all day.  Stage tear down and clean up took all night through to dawn.

Eric Smallwood got a lot of donations and cooperation from the Dickinson Mafia.  I don’t think that there was anyone else accept for Eric that could have gotten so much cooperation from the Dickinson Mafia.  Eric was persistent, high energy, enthusiastic, and he got results in the form of successful events, bringing performers that people wanted to see, creating good publicity for Dickinson every week.  With the Dickinson Mafia’s favorable opinion of the event, the Dickinson Police absolutely left everyone alone at Alive @ 5, the Dickinson Police were 100% helpful during the event.  The Dickinson Fire Marshal was cooperative with the event.  Probably one hundred businesses in Dickinson contributed to the events.

In 2015, the Alive @ 5 events were even bigger.  Eric Smallwood not only got Gwen Sebastian and Kat Perkins to come back, he got them to come back together!  Because of the growing enthusiasm in Dickinson for the event, and because of rumors “to expect something big”, the attendance at this concert was close to 6,000 people, on a Thursday night!  This was probably the highest attendance ever at a concert in Western North Dakota.

Other big performers in 2015 were Firehouse and Aaron Tippen.  Eric also booked performers that were not well known in Dickinson, such as Corb Lund.  Many people had not heard of Corb Lund before, but when they heard him at Alive @ 5, everybody recognized that this was something different, and very good.  Other performers that were well liked at Alive @ 5, were the two sister band, Tigir Lilly, who had as many autograph seekers afterward as the more famous Nashville bands.

Most people in Dickinson were positive about Alive @5.  Many people looked forward to going, downtown business owners were happy about thousands of people seeing their businesses every Thursday, the Chamber of Commerce and the City of Dickinson were happy about the publicity.

In addition to the summer street parties in Dickinson, in 2014 Eric Smallwood began bringing performers to Dickinson during the winter.  Eric would have liked to have used the large ballroom in the old Masonic Lodge building to hold events, but it wasn’t ready yet, so Eric used the Odd Fellows Lodge theater to have performances with people like Mitch Malloy.  There were so few seats in the theater, guests were limited to the major donors of the summer Alive @ 5 events.

In the winter of 2015, Eric continued to bring entertainment to Dickinson, organizing a formal Christmas dinner party with two hundred guests at the Astoria Hotel ballroom, where Kat Perkins was the performer.

At the end of the summer in 2015, Eric Smallwood was working on a business plan, to create a very large, indoor, year-round, event center in Dickinson.  In order to bring big, famous performers to Dickinson, the idea was to be able to seat at least 10,000 people.  From what I heard, this business plan was presented by Eric to the biggest donors and supporters of the Alive @ 5 event, and his plan was well received.  As I have mentioned in several previous posts, there are a group of men in Dickinson who own businesses, own properties, are on board of directors, are involved in city government, who control what goes on in Dickinson.  These men had the money, and the power to have a large event center built in Dickinson, and they wanted one.  This was probably the last and only thing that was missing, to put Dickinson on the same level as Bismarck and Fargo.  Too bad the price of oil went down so low when it did, or Dickinson would have become the Fargo of western North Dakota.

 

 

 

The Oil Boom is Over, How Did the Dickinson Mafia Fare?

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In Dickinson, North Dakota, there is a group of men who own businesses, own properties, are on board of directors, are members of development associations, and are involved in city government, who control much of what goes on in Dickinson.  Though they tell themselves, and each other, that what they decide is for the good of Dickinson, it happens to coincide with what benefits them personally.

In this blog, I have not yet listed the names of the members of the Dickinson Mafia, because I want to be able to write the truth about Dickinson without interference, but it is fairly well known in Dickinson who the members are.  The members of the Dickinson Mafia have each lived in Dickinson for more than twenty years, their individual deeds are well known, and their influence has been seen again and again.

In a recent previous post to this blog, I wrote that prior to 2008, the wages in Dickinson had been very low, this was intentional, this was the work of the Dickinson Mafia.  The purpose of the low wages in Dickinson, was to control the people.  The wages were so low, that the workers could not save any money, they could not get ahead, they were paycheck-to-paycheck people.  The workers could not save enough money to move away from Dickinson.  The workers could not afford to be without a job even for a short time, so if the wages were low at their job, if they were not paid for all of their time, if they were treated badly, they had to stay in that job even if they wanted to quit.  Also, if a worker did quit, he would be “black balled” by the Dickinson Mafia, so he could not get another job.  The workers knew that if they quit a job, the Dickinson Mafia would prevent them from getting another job, so they were scared.  This is what the Dickinson Mafia wanted, keeping most of the people in Dickinson like slaves, unable to get away, unable to get ahead, unable to speak out.

If you are a new resident of Dickinson, and you become acquainted with an older, long time resident of Dickinson, if you ask them in private about the things that I have written in this post, there are several possible reactions that you could get.  They might get very angry about you asking anything about the Dickinson Mafia because they are still afraid.  They might be both angry and embarrassed, they might still feel humiliated about what was done to them.  They might laugh, “Ha ha ha ha, oohh, ha ha ha….” and walk away, thinking it is better to not talk about it.  The only type of long time resident in Dickinson that would talk to you about it, is someone whose anger and stubbornness outweighs their fear.

I did not intend to write such a lengthy introduction to the Dickinson Mafia in this post, this information is given in two previous posts.  Also, I wrote in a previous post that the way the Dickinson Mafia guided the property development in Dickinson, they actually did a good job.  In this previous post, I described that Williston, Watford City, and Bismarck each were made a mess by the wrong type of development in the wrong area, it is hard to drive around town in those three cities.  In contrast, it is still very easy to drive around Dickinson even though there is a great deal of new development.

So how did the Dickinson Mafia fare, now that the Oil Boom is over?  Four of them did very well.  These four that did very well, their families were from Dickinson, and these four sons continued to run their family businesses in a conservative manner, and these businesses did very, very well.  They did begin paying higher wages to their workers, once they saw that they were losing essential workers to the oil field.  These four sons of Dickinson families did financially back at least four new businesses in Dickinson that were very much needed.  So I will admit, that in addition to exercising some beneficial control of development in Dickinson, the Dickinson Mafia did bring at least four greatly needed businesses to Dickinson.

One of the Dickinson Mafia, did not really do so well, in my opinion.  In both his personal, and business life, he saw something that looked attractive, got involved, and controversy followed.  He has had some problems, and it looks to me like he will continue to have problems.  But, he was not from Dickinson.

I would like to point out, that now that the Oil Boom is over, I can not think of any out-of-town person, or out-of-town business that has clearly emerged as a winner.  To date, I have never, never, met an oil field worker that was, or is financially well off.  I can not think of one out-of-town business that is here in Dickinson now, that is doing well.

The out-of-town oil companies, they may have made enough money to be able to afford to shut down operations now, and still have made money overall.  The out-of-town oil field service companies, it will really be close if they made any money now that they have shut down.  The out-of-town real estate developers and property investors, they are probably going to go bankrupt in the next couple of years.

The Dickinson Mafia could have been real estate developers and property investors between 2008 to 2014, probably more easily than anyone else, but they didn’t.  Why didn’t they?  Because they are from here and their families are from here, their families have been successful here for the past fifty years.  The Dickinson Mafia don’t lose money, they make money, again and again over a long period of time, they are not nouveau riche.  The Dickinson Mafia were happy to see out-of-state developers and property investors come here and buy land.  The real estate prices went up and up.  For that matter, the Dickinson Mafia helped the real estate prices go up and up, the Dickinson Mafia made sure that man-camps and temporary housing were not permitted in Stark County, which created a housing shortage.

Out-of-state real estate developers, property investors, and oil field service companies have built commercial buildings, warehouses, houses, and apartment buildings all over Dickinson.  In about one to two years, all of these newly constructed buildings will be selling for about sixty percent of what they cost to build.  At that time, that is when the Dickinson Mafia will buy property.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to help with the truth about Dickinson, North Dakota

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The purpose of this blog, is to try to give people truthful information about Dickinson, North Dakota, so that people can use the information to decide whether to come to Dickinson or not, to help people understand what Dickinson is like, and to help people figure Dickinson out.  I want to cover everything, I try to cover everything, that you would need to know.  Maybe also, I would like to change some things about Dickinson that are not right, and exposing them will help to change them.

I have written about the Dickinson Mafia, the Dickinson Police Department, the City of Dickinson, Dickinson State University, property owners in Dickinson, real estate agents in Dickinson, oil field workers in Dickinson, white trash in Dickinson, women in Dickinson, hostility in Dickinson, prostitution in Dickinson, entertainment, recreation, culture, employment, and other things.

It may surprise you to hear this from me, but Dickinson has the potential to be the best city in North Dakota in several different ways.  Thanks to the Dickinson Mafia, the layout and growth of Dickinson has been controlled according to their strategic plan, which no one has been allowed to fuck up, so that at this time every thing about Dickinson allows it to physically expand outward without obstruction or awkwardness.  In comparison, Williston, Bismarck, and Watford City are a mess.  Williston, Bismarck, and Watford City have allowed the wrong development in the wrong places, and now they are difficult to travel around in, even though their populations are not that large.  Williston, Bismarck, and Watford City have allowed the wrong development in the wrong places, and now they have a bunch of shit in the way of new development.

Dickinson has a good airport that is just outside of town, it is easy to find, easy to get to, and has room for every kind of expansion that is needed.  Dickinson has the recently completed Dakota Prairie Refinery, which also has plenty of room to expand, and it will expand.  Dickinson has many new homes and apartments that have recently been completed, enough to allow more people to move into new housing.  Dickinson now has many restaurants, grocery stores, hardware stores, car dealers, heavy equipment dealers, Wal-Mart, and Menards.  Dickinson has a newly completed $50 million hospital which receives emergency patients every day from up to 100 miles away by ground and air ambulance.  Dickinson has other large medical clinics.  Dickinson has the West River Community Center which is possibly the nicest gym facility in the United States, even though Dickinson only has a population of about 30,000 people.    Dickinson has a large recreational lake right in the center of town.  Dickinson has a rail road running through it.  There is still so much vacant farm land on every side of Dickinson, for Dickinson to expand into, there are no physical barriers.  It is very easy to drive through and around Dickinson, Interstate 94 and Highway 22 run through it.

When I stop and think about it,  Dickinson really is on the precipice of being the best city in North Dakota, because everything is in place right now to allow it to grow, to feed its growth, to support its growth, with there being nothing in the way of its growth, which is not the case in Williston, Bismarck, and Watford City.  Additionally, on each side of Dickinson, within 25 miles, are the long-established and still growing towns of Killdeer, New Hradec, Richardton, Gladstone, New England, South Heart, and Belfield.

Why wouldn’t I be thrilled to be here?  I have waited my whole life to be in the right place at the right time.  I missed out on being in Tampa in the 1980s, or in Phoenix in the 1970s, both of these cities grew, and grew, and grew, because there was no physical barrier to expansion and there were so many of the ingredients necessary for growth.

I will tell you why I am not thrilled to be here.  Dickinson is cold from the end of September until the middle of May, about eight months out of the year.  And when it is cold, it is also grey, not sunny.  There is still a shortage of women, and as I found out recently, the women here see no point in dating you if you are not going to marry them.  You had better not go to a bar and drink in Dickinson, the Dickinson Police will take you to jail for DUI even before you have a breathalyzer test, and will arrest you and process you into jail even after the breathalyzer shows that you were below the legal BAC.  The people in Dickinson are not friendly, they do not like people from out-of-state, they will find anything about you to not like because they like to hate people, as a matter of fact they hate each other, though they hate you more.  There is not a lot in Dickinson to do for entertainment, unless you like hating people for entertainment.

I suppose whether Dickinson grows or not will depend on whether the amount of oil field jobs remains steady, drops off, or increases.

Please tell your friends about my blog, I want people to hear what I think is the truth, rather than be lied to by the Chamber of Commerce and real estate agents.

Corruption In Dickinson, North Dakota

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I have previously written two posts about the Dickinson Mafia, which is a group of men who are business owners and city officials in Dickinson who determine amongst themselves what they want to happen in Dickinson, they tell themselves and each other that what they are doing is in the best interest of Dickinson, but they are advancing their own interests and enriching themselves primarily.  I stated previously that the Dickinson Mafia is similar to the Good-Old-Boy Network in the South, though the Dickinson Mafia members are Catholic, and the Good-Old-Boy Network are Protestant.

I believe that I have already stated that the Good-Old-Boy Network in the South, sometimes decides who will succeed in business in a small town, and who will fail.  Unfortunately, it has been my experience that the Mormons do exactly the same thing in Idaho, and the Dickinson Mafia do the exact same thing in Dickinson.  In this post, I want to describe some corrupt practices of the City of Dickinson Police Department, and Dickinson State University.

The City of Dickinson Police Department posts advertisements for a job opening not on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed, the “Dickinson Press” newspaper, or North Dakota Job Services, but instead on some obscure website that no one would think to look for.  Secondly, the City of Dickinson Police Department will not only hide the job opening where no one will find it, they will post the advertisement for only one week.  Why do they do this?  They do this so that the only people who will know to apply are the people that they personally tell ahead of time: friends, family members, neighbors, people they owe a favor to, people they want to owe them a favor.  Maybe, they don’t want to hire black people, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, or people from out-of-state, who knows, this practice allows them to discriminate any way they wish because the only applicants will be the people they personally tell ahead of time.  If you should accidentally find out about the job advertisement, apply, and meet all of the criteria, they have other ways of eliminating you, like giving you one business day notice to provide your high school transcripts from a school you graduated from twenty-five years ago in a different state.  If you overcome that by asking a county archivist to do you a big favor and fax you your transcripts the same day without receiving the required payment, they have additional ways to obscure the fact that you are not being hired because you are from out-of-state.

What else do the City of Dickinson Police do that is corrupt?  They like to arrest people, take them to jail, have them post bail, and pay $3,000 up front to local attorneys to represent them in court, even though the person arrested has not committed a crime.  For instance, if you are stopped for a DUI in Dickinson, you will likely be arrested and taken to jail prior to having your Blood Alcohol Level tested, and you will still be processed into jail and charged with DUI even if your BAC is below the legal limit, you can post bail, and go pay a local attorney their “$3,000 minimum, up-front fee.”  This will happen to you because you are a piece-of-shit, out-of-state worker, this will not happen to local business owners.  This arrest process occurs for other offenses, where the arrested person has not committed a crime.  This happened once to a friend of mine for “providing a false address to the DMV”, he was found not guilty a couple of months later  because he had provided his actual, real address.  This happened once to a friend of mine who was arrested for “possession of stolen property”, but he was found not guilty several months later  because no item of his property was in fact stolen.

Dickinson State University will advertise a job opening not on Monster.com, CareerBuilder, Indeed, the “Dickinson Press” newspaper, or North Dakota Job Services, but instead on some unknown website, where the only people that know to look there are the people who have been personally told ahead of time.  The job will be advertised for a short period, like one week.  The only people who will know to apply for the job opening will be the people who have been told ahead of time.  This technique of hiding the job advertisement, and listing it for a very short time, limits the applicants to those who have been personally told about the details of the advertisement ahead of time.  This practice should be illegal, and I believe that it might be.  Why wouldn’t you want to broadly advertise a job opening, for at least two weeks, so that you would have the opportunity to have many highly qualified applicants?  Is it because if your family member, relative, friend, or neighbor had to compete against out-of-state workers, who have much more education and experience, for a job at Dickinson State University, your family member, relative, friend, or neighbor would never get the job, so you have to hide the job advertisement?  This practice of hiding the job advertisement makes it possible to discriminate against blacks, hispanics, homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, and out-of-state workers, by making the job advertisement known to only people that you personally inform, based on your personal preference of who you think should be hired.  I believe that this procedure is illegal.

What else does Dickinson State University do that is corrupt?  In approximately 2012, Dickinson State University received nation wide news coverage for awarding bachelor degrees to at least a couple of hundred foreign students who never completed the course work required for that degree.  Dickinson State University nearly lost its accreditation as a University because of this.  Dickinson State University has also been found guilty of falsely inflating its enrollment numbers.  The Dickinson State University Foundation has been found to have been involved in the mismanagement of funds, possibly criminally, and this organization has been ordered by the state to go into receivership.

More About The Dickinson Mafia

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The first time that I wrote about the Dickinson Mafia was in my previous post, “The Dickinson Mafia”.  I stated that the Dickinson Mafia was a group of local business owners and city leaders that had decided among themselves what they envisioned for Dickinson, that they tell themselves and each other that what they want is for the betterment of Dickinson, and in the best interest of its citizens, but what they want happens to coincide with making themselves richer, controlling citizens for their benefit, and helping them maintain power.

In my previous post I gave two examples of the endeavors of the Dickinson Mafia.  Business owners can join the Chamber of Commerce to express their views about what they see for the future, and try to get other business owners to share their view.  Business owners can express their views at City Commission/Council/Zoning meetings.  They can write Letters To The Editor of the “Dickinson Press” expressing their opinions on issues.  They can join the Golf Club, the Eagles Lodge, or the Elks Lodge in order to talk to other business owners and community leaders about their ideas.  In my opinion, when business men want to get things done in a more unseen way, they join the Masonic Lodge.  The Masonic Lodge holds their meetings in private, and they do not publicize who their members are, the rank of their members, and what things they discuss.  The Masonic Lodge is very similar to the “Good-Old-Boy Network”.

Like the “Good-Old-Boy Network” in the South, a newcomer to a city who starts a construction business might be clueless as to why he seems to be having so much trouble, with everything.  The newcomer who started a construction company might know why he is having so much trouble if he knew that his main competitor is the Grand Master of the local Masonic Lodge, and that the lumber company owner, the concrete company owner, the building inspector, the city engineer, the mayor, and the chief of police are also members of the local Masonic Lodge.  Though the Masons publicly claim that this is not the case, their primary purpose and reason for existence is to have an organization of men that secretly gain power and control, and then exert their power and control.  Men that are mayors, chiefs of police, bank presidents, attorneys, real estate agents, and insurance agents do obtain information that is private and confidential, to share some information would be a violation of ethics and illegal, however this information is shared among Masons to allow financial gain, business opportunity, and to undermine, control, and manipulate others.  In the case of the Dickinson Mafia, I do not know yet whether they ever worked within the local Masonic Lodge.  It appears to me that the Dickinson Mafia is able to achieve the same things on its own: having people gain positions of power, using that power to further enrich themselves, using their money to further increase their power, using their money, power, and influence to control what is done in Dickinson, and to control people in Dickinson.  The people in Dickinson are somewhat aware that this is being done.  They think it and they feel it, but they are not always able or willing to verbalize how they are controlled by some of the wealthy business owners in Dickinson.

The way that the Dickinson Mafia want Dickinson to be, is that they want to have mechanisms of control in place so that they can control what is going on in Dickinson during the oil booms that come and go, so that they can also have control when the oil booms go away.  It does not matter where you are from, have you ever seen more vacant barren land anywhere than what there is outside of Dickinson?  There is vacant undeveloped land as far as you can see, and beyond as far as you can see.  There is no scarcity of vacant land.  The cost of housing in Dickinson, and the shortage of housing in Dickinson is something that the Dickinson Mafia want.  Though quick, affordable housing was something that was needed starting back in 2010, the Dickinson Mafia didn’t want that.  They didn’t want out-of-state workers to come here, make a lot of money, send money back home, pay off their houses back home, get ahead financially, the Dickinson Mafia wanted the out-of-state workers to be taken advantage of, just like they have been taking advantage of the workers in their own businesses for the last thirty years.

One more thing, if you try to look up the “Dickinson Mafia” on the internet, the first six results of your search are an exact match for “Dickinson Mafia”.  You can go and look at each of these six matching websites, web addresses, or links, and they really don’t contain any content that is relevant to an entity or activity that would or could be called “Dickinson Mafia”.  It is like someone had the expectation that people would be trying to find out information about the “Dickinson Mafia” and they wanted to make sure that your internet search would be sure to turn up their six websites, that contain no information on the Dickinson Mafia.  That is one way to try to keep people from knowing about the Dickinson Mafia.

The Dickinson Mafia

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I have not wanted to write about the Dickinson Mafia until now.  No, I am not joking about the Dickinson Mafia, though they are a joke.  They  are a group of business owners and a few of the city leaders that try to decide and control what happens in Dickinson.  Though I could name them, I won’t, yet.

The Dickinson Mafia have agreed more or less amongst themselves what they envision for Dickinson.  They tell themselves and each other that they are looking out for the best interest of Dickinson and its citizens, but it is amazing how this coincides with making themselves richer and trying to control other people for their benefit and to maintain their power.

Two of the members of the Dickinson Mafia own large local companies.  Even now, their wages are low in comparison to what out-of-state companies and corporations operating in Dickinson pay.  These two large local companies attempt to pay skilled tradesmen and educated professionals the same wages as entry-level workers at Burger King, Wendys, and Wal-Mart here in Dickinson.  For the last thirty years they have treated their workers like slaves, paying them meager wages so that they live pay check to pay check with no chance of saving enough money to start their own business, or to leave Dickinson and not live pay check to pay check.  Paying low wages ensures that these workers have no choice but to be obedient, they have no money saved up to afford to be without a job, and should they not be obedient and lose their job, the Dickinson Mafia will try to make sure that they don’t get hired elsewhere.

Though these large local companies try to make their employees believe that the low wages they receive are just a matter of economics, what the company can afford to pay and remain in business, these large local companies have their names on the walls of the St. Joseph’s Hospital, the West River Community Center, and the Dickinson State University for their donations of millions of dollars.  It disgusts me that wealthy people deliberately pay their workers low wages so that they have no option but to work their whole lives to provide the bare necessities for themselves, so that the wealthy can make large profits, so that they can give away their extra millions like they are such lovers of mankind, yet really they are slave drivers.

In 2010, when work began to pick up in Dickinson, local workers in Dickinson began to see that they could earn higher wages from out-of-state companies that came to operate in Dickinson.  Many workers quit working for the locally owned companies.  The Dickinson Mafia did not like this, they did not like this at all!  In the past in Dickinson, a local worker could only afford a tiny apartment, or if his wife worked, they could afford a small plain house or a single-wide trailer.  This was how the Dickinson Mafia wanted things.  If you could just barely afford a place to live, you had to go along with what the Dickinson Mafia wanted: you had better do whatever it is that they told you at work, you had better not cause any problems around town after work, you had better not try to start any business without their permission, you had better not try to compete with them in business, and you had better not try to do or say anything against  them politically.

In the South, there used to be what was called the Good-Old-Boy Network.  If you came to a small town in the South and tried to start a business, let’s say a construction business for instance, your success or failure would depend on what the Good-Old-Boy Network wanted.  You might not have known, that the concrete company owner, the lumber company owner, the building inspector, the fire marshal, the city engineer, the bank manager, and the mayor had already gotten together, discussed it,  and decided that you were not somebody that they wanted to succeed.  Consequently, you would have problem after problem, and the Good-Old-Boy Network would make sure that you went out of business.

In the South, if you were conservative, Christian-Protestant, not a criminal, not pushy, and assured some of the members of the Good-Old-Boy Network that you were not going to do anything crazy, they would probably let you do business.  There is an expression, “People like people, who are like themselves.”  When I lived in Idaho, I came to find out that the region I lived in was about sixty percent Mormon, and I also came to find out that you were not going to get a good job, succeed in business, or go on a date with a good-looking Mormon girl, unless you were Mormon.  In Dickinson, the Dickinson Mafia is associated with the Catholic Church.  The members of the Dickinson Mafia grew up Catholic.  They associated with each other growing up at Catholic functions.  I suppose this is why they are called the “Dickinson Mafia”, I didn’t make the name up.  The Dickinson Mafia give preference to people who graduated from Trinity High School in Dickinson.  Trinity High School is a private Catholic school in Dickinson, some of the members of the Dickinson Mafia went to school there, most of the members of the Dickinson Mafia send their children there.

The Dickinson Mafia use their association with the Catholic Church to further their agenda in Dickinson.  I already stated that the Dickinson Mafia share a vision of what they want Dickinson to be, and though they tell themselves and each other that it is for the good of Dickinson and the well-being of its citizens, it coincides with making themselves richer and controlling others to benefit them and maintain their power.  I will try to give a few examples of the Dickinson Mafia at work, where they use their association with the Catholic Church as a tool to achieve their goals.

If you are an out-of-state worker, you already have a home in another state, if you would have wanted to move to North Dakota, you would have done so years ago.  You are here because the economy is bad in the state where your home is.  You would rather be home where it is warmer, and there are trees.  You are only here because there is work here.  You would just like an affordable place to stay while you are here.  You don’t want to stay in a $150 per night hotel, or a $1,500 per month one-bedroom apartment.  Back home, $1,500 per month would rent a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house.  There were developers that proposed temporary housing for workers in Dickinson, so-called “man-camps”.  The city/county council members and zoning boards voted against “man-camps” in Dickinson and Stark County.  There were concerned citizens in Dickinson that were worried about “all those men in those man-camps”, surely they would be raping women in Dickinson.  I remember the discussions of “man-camps” in Dickinson in 2011.  The citizens of Dickinson were saying that for the safety of the families in Dickinson, for the safety of the women and children, for the well-being of Dickinson, and to not destroy the God-fearing morality of Dickinson, that they be spared from the wickedness and the lawlessness of the “man-camps”.  How did everybody in Dickinson get so worked up about the wicked and lawless man-camps?  What happened is, apartment developments got approved and built instead.

I would like to point out, that the same wicked and lawless oil-field workers that would have lived in the man-camps on the north side of Dickinson are the same people that rented the newly constructed apartments on the north side of Dickinson.  The Dickinson Mafia put the word out and got it into people’s heads, particularly the church-going people that were determined to fight evil, that the man-camp dwellers were savages, but the people that would rent apartments were the kind of people Dickinson wanted.  Keep in mind the people were the same workers whether they lived in a man-camp or in an apartment.  The difference was, that the Dickinson Mafia wanted to force the purchase of acreage rather than the leasing of acreage.  The Dickinson Mafia wanted millions and millions of dollars to be spent on the construction of permanent apartments, and the permanent property tax assessment on those apartments.

Another thing that I think the Dickinson Mafia and the Catholic Church have initiated are the over-zealous DUI arrests in Dickinson.  The Dickinson Mafia and the Catholic Church want you to go to work, then go home to your family, and stay home until you are ready to go to work again the next day.  They do not want you to go out in town and get into any trouble after work.  Your life is work, and your family.  As far as the law in the United States goes, it is not illegal to go to a bar, have a couple of drinks, and then drive home.  But in Dickinson, the police will get behind you with the intention of finding something, anything, any reason to pull you over, so that they can ask you if you have been drinking, give you a field sobriety test, then arrest you for DUI, even if your blood alcohol level is below the legal limit.  Why do the police do this in Dickinson?  It is because they have been directed to do this.  The police would not do this unless they had been directed to do this and they were backed up and supported by those in power in both the business community and the dominant church community.  They have a vision for what Dickinson is going to be, and they have decided to control other people to benefit them.