Oil-rich North Dakota votes on ending property tax

The granddaddy of property tax revolts is now underway in North Dakota. The North Dakota group, Empower the Taxpayer writes "On June 12, 2012, the voters of North Dakota will have the opportunity to make North Dakota truly 'Legendary', as the first to pass a state constitutional amendment that will abolish the property tax, prioritize spending by the legislature, and finally give local governments something they never had: true local control over spending."

America's premier state has led the country in "shovel-ready" job growth without any stimulus money:

From the Associated Press:

North Dakota currently has the lowest state jobless rate in the country at 3.3% and California is second-highest in the nation at 11.1%, and the Golden State hasn't seen a single-digit jobless rate now for three full years.  With that contrast in mind, here's an excerpt from "What North Dakota Knows that California Doesn’t," by Brian Calle in CityJournal:

By The Wall Street Flaneur:North Dakota is thriving -- unemployment is the lowest in the nation, municipal populations are doubling overnight, and exports are rapidly on the rise. The petroleum-rich Bakken formation, covering much of western North Dakota and neighboring Montana and Saskatchewan, has pushed the state into the public eye like never before. North Dakota is a modern-day gold rush.

I've featured the booming, oil-rich North Dakota economy many times, some recent examples appear here, here, and here.  And now there's another success story for the state: there's a higher education boom going on there, and

There’s no shortage of

Stories dot the media describing shale development as booms that have transformed the economies of North Dakota and Pennsylvania. That broad portrait gets badly wrong the impacts of shale development on the economies of the two states. Simply put, Pennsylvania is not North Dakota. North Dakota has a population of 699,628, while Pennsylvania's is 12,763,536 or about 18 times larger. quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/38000.html and quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42000.html.