Today's Winona Daily News editorial says Winona should get some from Amtrak in Get on board the idea for more rail service. In part:
. . .It’s also nice to see leaders such as U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., and Mayor Mark Johnsrud of La Crosse, Wis., come together with Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, U.S. Rep. Tim Walz and Miller to form a coalition that stretches beyond state lines. When it comes to both transportation, commerce and tourism, state lines seem to dissolve and become less important.
When it comes to lobbying for money or more service, it’s even more impressive when we speak not just as one city or one state, but as an entire region, which realizes the growing importance of alternative transportation (which now means anything but a gasoline powered automobile). The Highway 43 Bridge shutdown reminds us of both the connection we have to each other and the importance of good transportation.
We also applaud Walz’s recent legislation that, if passed, would provide more than $14 billion to passenger rail improvement, including Amtrak. .. .
The Worthington Globe reports Walz touts energy plan in Worthington visit with area truckers:
Rep. Tim Walz visited Smith Trucking on Saturday, where he met with truck fleet owners and operators from southwestern Minnesota who are members of the Minnesota Trucking Association.
While at Smith Trucking — a family-owned, second generation trucking company — Walz and local truckers discussed how high fuel costs have affected the trucking industry, as well as the comprehensive energy bill Walz and the Bipartisan House Energy Working Group introduced in July.
Read the rest at the Globe.
Congressman Walz and Senator Klobuchar are visiting Rochester, Albert Lea, Waseca, Mankato and St. Peter today to talk about equalizing Medicare payments between states and to visit with veterans at service clubs. Details and full schedule here.
The Worthington Globe also makes note of the coming Republican primary by printing the AP story Davis, Day head for showdown; it's picked up in the WDN as Republicans prepare for primary. This is the same story that WCCO ran. We commented yesterday:
From the sounds of things, Brian Davis should spend some of that money on the primary, since Day is a master at getting the press's attention.
In the netroots, Walz makes a brief cameo appearance in the Rook's Is The MN Republican Party Eating Itself?, which contrasts the Republicans' inner-party feud over the endorsement of Mark Olson for State Senate with DFL reaction to Al Franken's Playboy article. More interesting chronicles of this over at Lloydletta's place.
The Washington Post looks at Alternative Energy's Front Lines in Colorado. Included in the story is the tale of the state's renewable energy standard for electricity. Fascinating who that works.
In its newsline Friday, the state Republican party sent its faithful readers back to an April 15th profile of their candidate in the Strib. We're guessing they're trying to refocus on his upbringing by parents of "modest means," rather than a doctor making $411,000 a year at Mayo.
This is the article where Davis inflated the value of his medical school rotations at public and veterans hospitals. Rather than being a standard piece in a medical education where students observe doctors working, on Planet Davis, their location makes him an expert on public service. From the article:
"I've always been interested in politics, but have always understood that in our system of government, it's the life experiences that people bring to the table that's valuable to government," Davis said, adding that he has worked in public and veterans hospitals while in school . . .
After all, watching doctors work during a student rotation is such a hard-wrought life experience. Likewise, if we are to believe his Facebook resume rather than his hype, Davis spent all of eight months--twenty-five years ago--working as a nuclear engineer after completing his undergraduate degree. His earlier experience for the firm where he worked was in summer jobs and work study.
The article also noted his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, on the "North Shore" of Chicago. Given the spin that the Davis campaign's followers have put on Davis's "small town values," readers might consider the birthplaces of each man still in the race. In the 1960 census, the first one taken after Davis's birth, Waukegan's population was 61,784. The town (and Lake County) is now included in the Chicago metropolitan area, though we don't know if this was the case when Davis was young. Davis's undergraduate years were spent at the University of Ilinois in Urbana-Champaign, metropolitan area population 210,275 (2000 census), attended grad school in the Boston area, medical school/interning in the Chicago area and did his residency in New York City. He has lived in Rochester since completing his work in New York City.
Senator Dick Day was born in Rochester, Minnesota. In the first census following his birth, Rochester's population was 26,312. He is a lifelong resident of the district and longtime resident of Owatonna, population 24,533. A Winona State University grad, Day says that the only time he's left Minnesota for long was to serve in the Navy.
Congressman Walz was born in 1964 in West Point, Nebraska. We haven't been able to find figures from the 1970 census online, but the population of the entire county was 12,034 in 1970, the first census after Walz's birth. West Point is now home to 3,660 people. Walz graduated from Butte High School in a class of 25; fewer than 400 people now live in Butte. The 1980 census placed 3,331 in all of Boyd County, Nebraska, with only 2,835 remaining in 1990. He met his future wife, Gwen, while teaching in Alliance, Nebraska (pop. 8,959). Gwen Whipple Walz was born in Glencoe, Minnesota and raised in Ivanhoe. Moving to Mankato, population 32,493, must have been a big step up in the mid-1990s.
What are "small town values"? Some conservatives like Davis (and his supporters) would probably want to co-opt the phrase to mean a hardcore extreme right agenda. Mostly though, we think people take it to mean places where people know and care for each other, center their lives around family, schools, faith, and the local Legion, VFW or Lions club. That vision includes people from across the political spectrum. Sadly, small towns don't always live up to their values, but when they do, these are great places to live and raise families.
Maybe the most famous recent song about small midwestern towns is Indiana rocker and rural activist John Mellencamp's "Small Town." Interesting thing about Mellencamp, whom Rolling Stone called an ardent Democrat: his songs tend to get grabbed by conservative politicians to illustrate their "values."
Mellencamp has typically grabbed them back when he finds out--most recently asking John McCain to cease playing the progressive, pro-labor song "Our Country" at rallies. Originally an Edwards supporter, Mellencamp now backs Barack Obama. That background certainly makes one wonder about the use of "Small Town" in this pro-Davis YouTube slideshow put up by a Davis campaign consultant.
Universal Music Group has disabled the embed on his YouTube of "Small Town," so you'll have to follow this link to watch his own take on the song. Here's another great song about small town life, with Emmy Lou Harris joining the under-appreciated Iris Dement in "Our Town."
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