Bluestem Prairie

Outposts from the Small of America: The Junior Senator

by Tom Driscoll

Is it the weather, the tedious summer wither? Or is it simply time: a reminder that our days are numbered? The sun, like candlewax drooling from a rutted old cottonwood, puddles of its seeds clotted in prairie wilds, is melting away.

Regardless limbs of yawning trees threaten to assimilate the flagpole I strategically planted among lilies-of-the-valley next to Big Rock, a garrulous long-tooth of bitter spar missing from the outcrop smiling down the bluff behind my house. Unless the wind really blusters like a blathering politician, Old Glory – the Stars and Stripes, the Red-White-and-Blue – why, you can’t even see the Star Sprinkled Banter from the street any more.

Last week, the last day of June, the last chance to make a tax-refundable political contribution before Governor Tim Pawlenty eliminated Minnesota’s campaign-funding incentive, the State Supreme Court declared Al Franken winner of last November’s U.S. Senate election. On the sidewalk outside his Minneapolis home, Franken told reporters, “I know there’s been a lot of talk about the fact that when I’m sworn in, I’ll be the 60th member of the Democratic caucus. That’s not how I view it. I’m going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota.”

I interviewed Franken 15-months ago during primary season, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer his main challenger then. Franken, who had early-on supported the Bush-decision to invade Iraq, told me he advocated “beginning the process of bringing our troops home [from Iraq].”

In a separate interview, Nelson-Pallmeyer shot back, “Al says he thinks he would have voted for the war. But he’s against it now.”

“One Senator can do stuff,” Franken would say, “but a lot of Senators can do a lot of stuff.”

That is true. So good luck, Al Franken, because in October-2002, 49 Senate Republicans and 29 Senate Democrats voted to give George Bush the authority to invade Iraq. You could have been among them, feeling as you did then, had you been one of two Senators from Minnesota. By the way, Mark Dayton and Paul Wellstone, Minnesota’s two Senators in 2002, joined 19 other Democrats, one Republican and one Independent to oppose the invasion plan that has cost more than $1.5-trillion, more than 4,300 U.S. troops, more than 31,100 wounded, uncountable tens-of-thousands of civilian deaths, and has tortured America’s reputation until our flag dangled windless, limp in the July wither.

Minnesota writer Tom Driscoll reports on politics, economic development and life in rural America at The Small of America.

Richard Levins: Unions are good for rural economies

One of my favorite economists who writes about rural issues is Richard Levins, a professor emeritus of applied economics at the University of Minnesota.  I first heard Levins speak to a group of farmers in Litchfield, Minnesota, a guest the producers had secured via the IATP.

One of Levins' columns, first published in the Bemidji Pioneer, is making the rounds--several labor friends have sent it my way. It's worth reproducing here:

Congress is considering legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act. If passed, the act would make it easier for people to join labor unions and bargain for higher wages and better benefits. This, in turn, would provide some much-needed stimulus for rural economies.

It’s no secret that rural economies are in tough shape. During the 1990s, a University of Minnesota study found shocking similarities between the state’s rural economy and that of a developing country. The current economic tailspin has only made things worse.

For as long as I can remember, rural residents have tried to entice businesses into their communities by offering them a cheaper workforce: “Bring your factory to our town. People will work for less here, and we’ll throw in tax cuts for good measure.” But these efforts have done nothing to halt the economic decline of most of our rural communities.

A prairie home companion: Tarryl Clark

Bluestem Prairie received notice from St. Cloud area DFL activist Scott Wells about a cameo appearance by Assistant Senate Majority Leader Tarryl Clark on Prairie Home Companion:

The “News from Lake Wobegon” will be broadcast from Avon on Saturday, July 4. Senator Tarryl Clark will read a poem as part of the program. Garrison Keillor is offering a free show to the public from 5-7 p.m. on July 4 at the park along Lake Wobegon Trail in Avon for the 35th anniversary of the show. The live national broadcast will be outdoors rain or shine and is open to the public. Everyone is encouraged to bring lawn chairs and picnic blankets.

Poetry on the Prairie? I can think of few better ways to enjoy a pleasant July evening before watching some fireworks once it gets dark.

The show's site notes that the good people of Avon will have a varied dinner menu for sale at the event. Who could resist the entertainment and the dessert: Beebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie & Powdermilk Biscuit-Strawberry Shortcake.

What he does on his summer vacation: lucky stiff plays in horse barn

by Jacob Grippen

"What did you do this summer?"

This question is often asked at the beginning of September, a question that generally gets answered with “I worked at so and sos',” “I went to such and such a place,” “I sat at the beach.”

One answer whose frequency you will find only in a location in southeastern Minnesota is, “I spent hours working and acting in a horse barn.” It may not be unusual to “work” in a horse barn, or even act, because--let's face it--sometimes taking care of horses can get lonely.

However, the summer activity I refer to is the annual summer musical at the Ye Olde Gray Barn just east of Spring Grove, MN on Highway 44.

Why not start a community theater in the first Norwegian settlement in Minnesota? Why not take Dr. Jim and Karen Gray's horse barn and turn it into a theater every July?

Ye Olde Opera House Community Theater has been operating itself on volunteer blood, sweat, and tears since the decision was made to collectively come together back in 1979. People from all around the Coulee Region of southeastern Minnesota, west central Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa come to audition and perform in Ye Olde Opera House's stage productions.

If you had bumped into me on Sunday, June 28th, you might have asked why my shirt was covered in paint that would suggest a roulette may have exploded on it? You may have asked why there was sawdust in my hair, and on my legs. Why the lights at the barn were on until midnight the night before?

I would have answered that it's probably because I'm a little bit crazy, but all theater types are, aren't they?

Why exactly did my shirt look like the innards of a roulette wheel? Our 31st Season kicks off on July 15-19, 2009 with the musical “Lucky Stiff.”

Congratulations, Senator Franken

Minnesota's long senatorial slumber is over, with the State Supreme Court ruling unanimously that:

. . .we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota. Affirmed

Governor Pawlenty, sign that certificate. It's time that Senator Franken, his marvelous state director Alana Petersen (one half of rural Minnesota's nicest power couple), and others to be named get to work.  I'm on hold with the Governor's office waiting to share my opinion: sign the certificate. Contact him yourself.

Senator Klobuchar and her staff, and the staff in congressional offices have for too long been burdened with the added workload brought on by the senate vacancy. For the sake of fairness and the citizens of Minnesota, do the right thing.

Update: Loyal readers know that Bluestem Prairie originally focused just on the First Congressional District, where the editor was born and where the site takes its avatar (the editor's ancestor's cabin in Mankato's Sibley Park). And though BSP has expanded to cover all of the agricultural part of Greater Minnesota, Congressman Walz is still our favorite House member.  His statement on the affirmation of Al Franken's election is below the fold.

Greater Minnesota health care activists and labor members take on Washington

by Laura Askelin

Over the years, I’ve watched as union members sacrifice wage increases in order to maintain health care coverage. The major issue emerges in every union contract negotiation.

And now that I’m a new employer I’ve experienced the health care crisis from the other side of the negotiating table. As President, one of my duties was to secure health care for the Labor Council staff. I know there are many responsible employers like me that want to provide quality health care benefits. But as health care costs keep increasing, employers will be forced to provide less and less.

Working families are in danger of losing health coverage because of these out-of-control costs. Right now, we are at the mercy of the private insurance companies. That’s why it is so important to provide a public option.

So, on June 24th and 25th, I joined more than 10,000 citizens from across the country for "Health Care 09 - We Can’t Wait," in Washington D.C. Sponsored by Health Care for America Now, the two day event included an interfaith service, candle light vigil, town hall meetings, Congressional meetings and the largest health care rally in the country.

The interfaith service was held in Freedom Plaza, just a few blocks from the White House and within eyeshot of the capitol. I listened to religious leaders from a variety of faiths offer prayers for health care. Speaker after speaker shared their health care stories, including a representative from the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota.

The night ended with a candle light vigil and a sense of urgency. We need to fix our health care system now. It cannot wait.

The next morning a delegation of over 70 Minnesotans met with members of the Minnesota congressional delegation, including U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, to stress the need for a comprehensive, affordable plan that covers everyone. I was joined by union brothers and sisters from SEIU, MNA, BCTGM & CWA to offer our views of the healthcare system as union members.

Small business owners, nurses, doctors, Mayo Clinic employees, Native Americans, and faith leaders joined us as we called on our leaders to support legislation that gives the option of a public health insurance plan

Congressman Tim Walz and Congressman Keith Ellison restated their commitment to a public plan. Both Walz and Ellison told us that they would settle for nothing less. Although neither Senator Klobuchar nor Congressman Peterson were willing to commit to a public option without seeing the details of a bill, both are keeping an open mind.

Update: Was the GOP minority caucus feeling a bit touchy about rural MN late last week?

On Friday afternoon, Bluestem posted about the GOP House minority caucus's election of Kurt Zellers as Minnesota House Minority Leader over Hayfield Republican Randy Demmer.

Since both Zellers and his deputy minority leader, Steve Smith, live in suburban Hennepin County, I asked whether Minnesota's Republicans were about to lose their bitching point about the DFL's Speaker and Senate Majority Leader hailing from Minneapolis.

Saturday afternoon, Polinaut's Tom Scheck posted about Zeller's creation of a fifth assistant minority leader position in the diminutive caucus. The new Minority Leader had sent an email--passed along to Scheck--announcing that Rod Hamilton had been picked for the new slot.

According to Scheck's answer to a question I raised in the comments, Zellers had sent the email announcement of the additional post and its occupant that very day:

Zellers sent out the e-mail on Saturday.. . .  I was told by a few folks that this was an attempt to ease concern about a suburban heavy presence in leadership.

A couple of things surprise us. First, we're not sure why the Incredible Shrinking Caucus needs another Assistant Minority Leader. Like land in rural Minnesota, it's not as if anyone is making any more Republicans in the Minnesota House's next session.

Outposts from the Small of America: June clouds

by Tom Driscoll

Growing season. The year of yellow flowers. Yellow flowers everywhere. Crazy like Van Gogh spattered all over variegated greens along the river running muddy’s chocolate milk with soil. It’s all this rain. Makes yellow flowers flame. Greens up the beans.

Must be a thousand cobalt butterflies anchored in a cranberry sea of eagle scat. Dog noses by. Butterflies fritter away like stars at dawn. Sky screams blue. No-wait. There’s a cloud in the corner. The corn grows some. Another yellow flower opens. Here comes another cloud, round-bellied like an invading spacecraft. Greens moan as more-and-more clouds chisel precipitous shadows across hardwood and cedared bluffsides. Soon, there’s a cloud for every yellow flower. There’s a cool pizzle. Growing season, like a hungry cat, mews for more rain.

* * *
According to the LA Times, some 40 swing district Democrats in the House of Representatives risk angering conservative constituents if they dare to support “a pathway to citizenship” for roughly 12-million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S..

This despite the 21st Century rain-dance being performed by farmers, food-processors, meat-packers, manufacturers, contractors. Indeed, entire rural communities all around the Midwest have bought-into a compulsory economic growth model, the rain-dance that shifts the risk of drought onto temporary, low-wage, uninsured immigrant workers.

Don’t let terms like "Undocumented Alien" vex you, for it is neither Christian nor humane to even consider the possibility that immigrants you’ve invited to live 15-or-30 to a 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house across the tracks may be technically – “finger quotes” – illegals. The poor after all take all the risk. And it’s growing season. And need the rain.

When the North Star turkey plant burned in St. Charles, MN last April, something like 200-temporary workers were left jobless. The exact number is fuzzy because the actual employers, Masterson Personnel and Global Employment of Rochester, have been fuzzy about providing the exact numbers. But a month after the fire, Workforce Development in Winona confirmed that none of the temporary workers had filed for unemployment benefits.

Since when does the rain take the risk?

Minnesota writer Tom Driscoll reports on politics, economic development and life in rural America at The Small of America.

Did state House Republicans lose sight of Greater Minnesota?

Update June 28: Looks like Zellers suddenly got a little sensitive about the sensibilities of rural Minnesotans, according to Tom Scheck at Polinaut.

We will be commenting in a new post  in a bit. [end update].

Earlier this week, Maple Grove's Kurt Zellers defeated Hayfield's Randy Demmer in the contest to replace Marty Seifert as the MInnesota House Minority Leader. I was hoping that Representative Demmer would get the job--though we disagree, I do respect his knowledge of agriculture and contemporary rural life.

Smart Politics noted that the suburban Zellers is the most politically vulnerable GOP caucus leader slected by its members in years. At the newly invigorated I Don't Hate America, D.J. Danielson examined the enormous costs of Zellers' 2008 win to the GOP and its allies.

Both posts are great reads, the sort of analysis Bluestem would like to read more frequently on Minnesota blogs.

Residents of Greater Minnesota--like me--might ask two questions of the changing of the guard in a Republicn caucus that hangs on to relevance by the slightest of margins.

First, How much money will Zellers have to raise as House Minority leader to defend his own seat? Just as former Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson's  seat in a central Minnesota swing district made an attractive target for the Republicans, so Zellers' equally risky west suburban district might draw the attention of Minnesota's House DFLers, eager for a high profile "kill" on the path to a veto-proof majority. 

Danielson points out that the GOP was forced to spend a lot to hold a seat the DFL passed on when doling out campaign cash:

Campaign finance reports show the House Republican Campaign Committee (a group which Zellers now leads) spending a whopping $41,305.50 on independent expenditures in favor of Rep. Zellers in 2008.  It doesn’t end there:  the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Leadership Fund spent $18,296.88 and the Republican Party of Minnesota dropped $11,772.01.  The Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life PAC threw in $716.47 for good measure.. . . .

In the 2008 campaign, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Leadership Fund spent $11,558.16 against Zellers’s DFL opponent Lee Carlson.

This adds up to a very significant figure of $83,648.52 spent by outside groups either in support of Zellers’s campaign or against his opponent’s.  For context, the House DFL Caucus, Conservation Minnesota, and Education Minnesota combined to spend $6,856.61 for Carlson and against Zellers.

Zellers would go on to win the 2008 race by 6.29 percent. . . .

Second,the Republican Party has made much of the fact that both the state house speaker and senate majority leader come from Minneapolis--we who live in rural Minnesota hear about this a great deal from Republicans.

However, the House Majority Leader is from the Range, while Tarryl Clark, the assistant majority leader in the Senate, hails from St. Cloud in Greater Minnesota.

The House Republicans, however, now draw both their top two leaders (Zellers and Steve Smith, Mound) from Minnesota's Third Congressional District and suburban Hennepin County.

Draw your own conclusion just how often the old rhetoric of urban DFL versus rural Republicans will be thrown at those of us who live in Greater Minnesota in the next session. Will the Twin Cities media even notice, or just dumbly repeat a political rhetoric made obsolete several cycles ago?

Coming up this weekend on the Bluestem Prairie: SE MN Labor Council President Laura Askelin on the DC Health Care rally, and a close look at Representative Laura Brod's campaign style from a the DFLer who knows it best.

Photo: Randy Demmer, not the Minnesota House Minority Leader.

Southeast Minnesota rank and file union members talk health care reform

It's easy to find talking points for and against reforming America's health care system. Bluestem Prairie wanted to know what personal stories motivate working people in Southern Minnesota to demand health care reform, so I asked organizer Liz McLoone to gather stories for BSP at last night's member meeting.

We'll have a follow-up post later (probably tomorrow) about the rally this week in Washington DC, written by SE MN Labor Council President Laura Askelin, who experienced the joys of modern American travel on her way home.

Her story will focus on the political action in Washington. The union members' words themselves illustrate the tens of thousands of similar stories that drive Americans to ask for something better. And while I might spend a couple of hours pieces together more conventional reportage about last night's meeting, the passages speak for themselves.

“Last year, June 8th, I suffered a heart attack. I was fortunate because it was a relatively small one. But before it was all said and some I had racked up a bill in excess of $50,000. My insurance company covered most for the bill, but now I am extremely concerned about obtaining any insurance coverage, should I leave my current position, due to my pre-existing heart condition.”

Lloyd-AFSCME union member
Rochester

“My brother-in-law was uninsured and in a car accident. He rolled his truck during the winter and was taken to the closest hospital. They checked him out but didn't take x-rays or do other more expensive tests because he was not covered. They sent him home that night. He was in extreme pain and ended up at the public hospital in town. Upon further look he had in fact broken his neck! Had he moved the wrong way after he was sent home from the first hospital he would have died. We need coverage for all!”

Katie-Steelworkers union member
Rochester

“My brother-in-law worked for a school. For 20 years he had great health care insurance. Then they raised my sisters health insurance portion so high, they kept his but my sister had to drop hers. She is now 62 years old with no insurance. People should not be priced out of healthcare.”

Shell-SEIU Health Care MN union member
Byron