When people write or talk about clean energy—myself included—climate, economics, and policy tend to dominate the discussion and analysis. The debate gets muddied as climate deniers argue either climate change isn't happening or is not caused by mankind. Further clouding debate is that renewables arguably still don't operate on an equal economic or policy playing field with fossil fuels and nuclear generation sources.
But there's another argument for renewables that can't be denied - or more appropriately, a reality of thermal generation that makes fossil fuel based electricity generation unsustainable and a real threat to long term prosperity: it's thirst for water.
As Minnesota faces swollen rivers and what seems like an unending stream of wet weather, water scarcity hardly seems to be a pressing issue. But as more aquifers and water sources become stressed, water needs to be taken into account when we make long term energy plans.
Think about it - most power plants you see are on rivers or other bodies of water. It's not a coincidence. An average coal plant, for example, depending on its cooling system, withdraws up to 180 billion gallons of water per year, actually consuming up to 1.1 billion gallons per year for cooling purposes.
How much is that? The roughly 400,000 Minneapolis residents (plus some of the surrounding suburbs) use about 8.4 billion gallons of water annually. The city as a whole cleans 21 billion gallons per year for all tap water uses. 1.1 billion gallons for one power plant is not an insignificant amount in comparison.
Now take a look at the following map. Nationally, but particularly in the Southwest, our water systems are becoming stressed - overused to the point that they may no longer recharge and be available in the future. They are also warming, decreasing their use for cooling. Minnesota, despite wet weather right now, also has water systems that are at risk.
Our energy systems already feel the consequences. Low water flow and warmer water from longer, hotter heat waves has forced several power plants to shut down or ramp down capacity. The EPA has also granted temporary permission to some plants to dump warmer than allowed water back into the environment, raising the temperature of aquatic ecosystems even further.
As the planet experiences higher average temperatures combined with growing stress on water supplies, policy makers and regulators will be put in a tough situation - use precious water to cool our power plants, irrigate our crops, or be used for drinking water. Uncertain water supply and and temperature will also impact the reliability of thermal generation output.
Renewables, on the other hand, have a minimal water footprint.
The relationship between water and energy in the U.S. and particularly in Minnesota is not yet a critical threat to energy security and reliability. But the link between water and energy - the "water-energy nexus" as it is commonly referred to - needs to be better integrated into long term energy planning and taken in to account when we weigh the true costs and benefits of traditional, fossil fuel-based thermal generation and renewable energy.
All work from mn2020.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
In the Bemidji Pioneer, Republican-endorsed Minnesota lieutenant governor candidate Bill Kuisle's pushed a brilliant strategy of trickle-down economics:
. . .When asked how Minnesota's tax structure could be changed to encourage business in Minnesota, Kuisle said the current income tax is unfavorable to higher-income people, which curtails investment.
"It has to do with that upper-income bracket," he said. "I'm not saying slash the upper income bracket or anything like that, but you can't consistently raise the income taxes on the upper-income and expect them to stay in Minnesota."
Kuisle mentioned declining tax revenue as a sign the state economy still has problems. However, the the best way to increase that revenue was through increasing economic activity rather than taxes, he said. He said there are no areas in Minnesota's economy where a new tax would be viable or justified. Although Kuisle said he couldn't speak for Johnson, the candidate for governor would likely agree, he said. . . .
. . . He decried the new upper income tax brackets that were established by law during the last legislative session and called for a climate that was conducive to economic development. . . .
Two years ago Kansas embarked on a remarkable fiscal experiment: It sharply slashed income taxes without any clear idea of what would replace the lost revenue. Sam Brownback, the governor, proposed the legislation — in percentage terms, the largest tax cut in one year any state has ever enacted — in close consultation with the economist Arthur Laffer. And Mr. Brownback predicted that the cuts would jump-start an economic boom — “Look out, Texas,” he proclaimed.
But Kansas isn’t booming — in fact, its economy is lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole. Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.
There’s an important lesson here — but it’s not what you think. Yes, the Kansas debacle shows that tax cuts don’t have magical powers, but we already knew that. The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people.
Why, after all, should anyone believe at this late date in supply-side economics, which claims that tax cuts boost the economy so much that they largely if not entirely pay for themselves? The doctrine crashed and burned two decades ago, when just about everyone on the right — after claiming, speciously, that the economy’s performance under Ronald Reagan validated their doctrine — went on to predict that Bill Clinton’s tax hike on the wealthy would cause a recession if not an outright depression. What actually happened was a spectacular economic expansion.
Nor is it just liberals who have long considered supply-side economics and those promoting it to have been discredited by experience. In 1998, in the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw — very much a Republican, and later chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers — famously wrote about the damage done by “charlatans and cranks.” In particular, he highlighted the role of “a small group of economists” who “advised presidential candidate Ronald Reagan that an across-the-board cut in income tax rates would raise tax revenue.” Chief among that “small group” was none other than Art Laffer. . . .
Read the rest of the Krugman article to learn why the economist believes politicians embrace this malarkey. We don't find any evidence that Kuisle and Johnson have ever been members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), but as the case of nonmember Dean Urdahl demonstrates, lcak of a membership card has never stopped Minnesota Republicans from embracing ALEC promoted bad ideas.
Bonus Kuisle fun fact: Kuisle was first elected in 1996 after switching parties and primarying 16-year Republican veteran Don Frerichs. Endorsements are important.
Photo: Bill Kuisle (left) and Jeff Johnson (right), the endorsed Republican gibernatorial team.
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As we return to the windswept prairies of Minnesota's Seventh Congressional district to visit Torrey Westrom's campaign website, we discover that his staff were trying to get a firm grip on Congressman Collin Peterson's whereabout last week when President Obama and Nancy Pelosi were both in the Cities for public events and a fundraiser.
President Barack Obama and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are hosting a fundraiser this evening in Minneapolis on behalf of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Minnesota Democratic Congressional Delegation, including Congressman Collin Peterson. While we are confident that the congressman is going to gladly accept his share of the proceeds, we wonder if he is also going to accept the baggage that comes with campaigning alongside an extremely unpopular president and minority leader? The Peterson campaign and his official office have not issued any statements or media avails concerning tonight’s Obama hosted event. So, inquiring minds want to know – is Congressman Peterson going to campaign with the president and Nancy Pelosi and accept the funds raised from their event?
Democratic Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar will ride out with President Barack Obama Thursday to Minneapolis and attend events with him both days, staffers confirmed Wednesday. . . .
Other confirmed Democrats from the Congressional delegation attending at least some of the events with Obama: Rep. Rick Nolan, Rep. Tim Walz, Rep. Betty McCollum and Rep. Keith Ellison. Rep. Collin Peterson will not go to any of them.
Obama will overnight in Bloomington and also attend a fundraiser Thursday at the home of Sylvia and Samuel Kaplan in Minneapolis benefiting the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Samuel Kaplan, a lawyer, was the Moroccan ambassador for Obama from 2009 to 2013.
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken will fly out with the president on Air Force One. Staffers with both senators said they wanted to talk to the president about the recent flooding in Minnesota. Franken and Klobuchar will also attend official events Thursday and Friday with the president. The Friday speech is open to the public but all the tickets were given away Wednesday.
Other confirmed Democrats from the congressional delegation attending at least some of the events with Obama: Rep. Rick Nolan, Rep. Tim Walz, Rep. Betty McCollum and Rep. Keith Ellison. Rep. Collin Peterson will not go to any of them.
But the Republican strategy came before Pelosi's chance to nosh on a chop with the Farm Bureau. Linking Peterson to Pelosi goes back more than a decade. MPR's Dan Gunderson reported in 2004's Republicans face uphill battle in the 7th:
. . .Sturrock points to Petersons support for U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a liberal Democrat from California.
"The most important single vote he cast is for Speaker of the House and he has chosen to support Nancy Pelosi and by extension a very liberal approach to cultural issues which is very much at odds with what we believe here in western Minnesota," says Sturrock.
Republican candidates have tried unsuccessfully to portray Congressman Peterson as a liberal in the past several election cycles.
It's a failed strategy, according to Barbara Headrick, Minnesota State University Moorhead political science professor.
"The voters have a sense that they know this person (Peterson). They call him by his first name, and you're always in trouble if you've got an incumbent they call by his first name. They have a very good sense who this person is and they know he's not Nancy Pelosi from very left wing California," says Headrick. . . .
In 2008, AgWeek reported that Glen Menze tried it:
Menze and other Republicans like to portray Peterson as a supporter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal.
Peterson said he has Pelosi's ear, although often not her vote. He said the speaker allows him to bring up agriculture-oriented bills and other measures, even when she does not like them.
"She is liberal, no question about it," he said. "And she and I don't agree on much. But she and I found a way to work together."
As for Franken and Klobuchar's plane ride on Air Force One, the Strib reported that a vote caused Minnesota's Senators to miss their ride. As the tweet above indicates, Klobuchar got a chance to see Peterson and Sixth District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann on the flight back, snapping this selfie.
We who live in the Seventh might find the photo frightening, but we're not sure how Westrom's staff can use it to their advantage.
Note: It's Congressman Peterson's birthday. Happy birthday to him. He's interviewed on Agri-Pulse today. It's a wide-ranging interview, ranging from the new "waters of the United States" rules proposed by the EPA and raising the federal gas tax to the inability of the Congress to move forward on ag policy.
Photo: Senator Klobuchar's tweeted selfie with Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (left) and Congressman Collin Peterson (right).
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As Bluestem has noted, endorsed Republican lieutenant governor candidate Bill Kuisle--Jeff Johnson's running mate--is filling the gap left in our blogging universe since Emo Senator Mike Parry retired from politics.
A report of a recent visit to Bemidji does not disappoint, as Kuisle situates his running mate as being on the same page as Governor Dayton on medical cannabis.
Kuisle said social issues likely wouldn't play a large role in this year's election.
"I think we've got enough to run on without getting into the social issues," he said. "Will we be bashed for certain positions that we take? Of course. But then again, we're taking positions, people want to know our positions, we're not going to shy away from them."
He did point out Johnson's support of the recent legalization of medical marijuana in Minnesota, a unique stance in the Republican field of candidates.
"He would have signed the bill that passed this year," Kuisle said of Johnson. "I'm probably more cautious on that issue, but Jeff's the governor candidate."
On the right, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson has emerged as both the MN GOP endorsee and the only supporter of medical marijuana (now that state Sen. Dave Thompson has bowed out). Although Johnson considers himself a "pretty strong social conservative," he's expressed repeated support for Illinois's four-year pilot program, which allows smoking and covers a relatively wide range of illnesses. It more closely resembles the Minnesota Senate proposal that got eclipsed in the final bill here.
As a state representative, Johnson once sat on the Public Safety Policy and Finance Committee, but he claims he never seriously considered the issue until he announced his candidacy for governor.
He explained his position this way: "When I hear doctors say, 'I've had patients who at the end of their lives are suffering terribly, and if I had this option it would be a better option than anything else I could give to them to die peacefully,' that's powerful."
Update:On Friday's Almanac debate, Johnson stated plainly that he would have supported the Senate version. Hat-tip: Al Juhnke, via Facebook. [end update]
Although they unanimously condemned Dayton for his comments to the parents, most of them agree with his position on medical marijuana. Dayton is opposed to signing a bill that doesn't have the support of law enforcement and the medical community. He has offered a bill that would call for a study of the issue before any decisions are made.
At their news conference Thursday, four of the five Republican candidates said they'd be unlikely to sign a medical marijuana bill as governor. Only Jeff Johnson left open the door to signing such legislation.
"I have been on the record as being willing to sign a medical marijuana bill," Johnson said. "Not necessarily the one that's out there right now, but if it very strictly controlled access that's something I'd be willing to do as governor."
That's not far from what Kuisle's saying, but Johnson's position on medical cannabis has evolved since that March press conference.
MP: Would you support the legislative proposal to legalize medical marijuana?
JJ: You stumped me. I don’t know.
And that Illinois bill? In March, Johnson was under the impression that it was more restrictive than that Dibble bill in the senate. The Associated Press's Brian Bakst reported in Would-be Dayton challengers split on medical marijuana:
Among the Republicans, only Thompson and Johnson said they would be open to the possibility of signing a bill, but not the plan currently before lawmakers. Johnson referenced an Illinois medical marijuana model that had strict access and prescribing techniques as something he'd be comfortable endorsing.
"If we can control production and distribution like we do other prescription drugs I am open to it," Thompson said. "But I do not support the current bill that is out there."
What were the proposed Illinois rules at that time? Check out news report here. We suspect that the Illinois final rules are even more palatable for Johnson (though Kuisle would still pass) after the restriction that would have made patients chose between their weapons or their weed was dropped in April.
Maybe Team Johnson can help his running mate out with some talking points that explain how the endorsed Republican candidate's position on medical cannabis isn't the same as those held by the DFL incumbent.
Photo: Kuisle (left) is dazed and confused about where running mate Jeff Johnson (right) stands on medical cannabis. Hint: it's more "liberal" than Governor Dayton. We're not sure what's bumming out Kuisle's son, the child in the MPR photo.
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Reading around in Greater Minnesota newspapers this monring, we pause a letter to the editor of the Alexandria Echo Press in favor of endorsed Republican candidate Jeff Backer, who is in a primary battle for Minnesota House District 12A against business woman Nancy Taffe, who operates Taffe Clips beauty salon in Morris.
You don’t hire a dentist to cater your wedding. That’s not his forte.
You don’t hire a manicurist to change your brake pads. She never studied that.
You don’t elect a greenhorn who’s had no experience in education, government or public service. He’s not qualified to serve as a state legislator.
Jeff Backer has been mayor, school board member and EMT attendant. All those previous activities will serve him well when we elect him to serve as our state representative in District 12A. He’s not a chef or a dentist or a manicurist, but he’s well qualified to serve as our state representative. . . .
Take that, Nancy Newbee!
However, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and we have to wonder whether Grenell will be voting for Jim Abeler for United States Senator in the August 12 primary, since investment banker Mike McFadden has never run for office before. As McFadden notes in a news article posted to his website:
His two Republican rivals have a total of 25 years of legislative experience, but U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden, who has none, said he doesn’t feel outshined.
“I think it’s very much a positive to be an outsider,” said McFadden, 48, of Sunfish Lake.
Details, details.
Note: The "paid political letter" at the Echo isn't unusual, but rather follows the newspaper's policy for LTEs supporting candidates near elections.
Photo: Jeff Backer, one experienced politician.
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One of the candidates hoping to unseat Rochester Mayor Ardell Brede kicked off her campaign Thursday afternoon.
Cindy Maves says she is running as a "citizen mayor" candidate who can communicate with with the people of Rochester while working with city officials.
Her supporters gathered Thursday afternoon at Central Park in Rochester to officially to start her campaign.
Minnesota State Representative Mike Benson spoke in support of Maves at the campaign event.
Maves will first face off in a primary election on August 12, and she says her campaign strategy for the primary is to simply get out the vote.
"I think it's time that we need a leader, not just a cheerleader in our town, and I've been that for the last five years," Maves said. "I've been standing up for the tax payers in Rochester. I've been speaking out. I've asked the tough questions. I am a real leader"
Maves faces incumbent Mayor Ardell Brede as well as challenger Stephanie Kilen.
Here's the video:
Most recently, Maves was alledgedly involved in anti-Seifert hostility at the Republican convention in Rochester last month. A now inactive twitter account posted a photo of someone who had alledgedly spit at Seifert staffers, although the woman in the photo isn't spitting at anyone.
While the account is unavailable, the photo is still available, along with an identification by Michael Brodkorb at #politicsdotmn
Certainly Maves appears to have been among those who tweeted and retweeted disapproval of Seifert's unsuccessful convention tactic to blockan endorsement:
@MNGOPSD56 should call on @MyhraMN to leave @seifertmn campaign, I will be asking my BPOU to issue a disapproval statement,
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Maybe the Twin Cities, where corporate taxes are a perennial business lament, isn’t so bad after all.
The announcement earlier this month by Cardiovascular Systems Inc. of a new $30 million headquarters and research facilities in New Brighton didn’t get much attention, amid a lot of expansion in a booming Minnesota economy.
Still, it strongly underscores a report this week by KPMG International, the accounting-and-analysis firm: the Twin Cities has a very competitive “overall tax structure for business,” and it is ranked second for companies that do a lot of research and development, such as medical and technology concerns.
Minneapolis-St. Paul may not be low-tax Ireland, where Medtronic is moving its legal headquarters. But KPMG says the Twin Cities, thanks partly to friendly government tax policies, is a plum place for corporations.
The Twin Cities ranks 17th for “most competitive tax structure” among the 51 highest-ranked international cities, and eighth among the 31 highest-ranked metro areas in the United States. The most favorable corporate-tax structures exist in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Atlanta, Baltimore and Pittsburgh, according to KPMG. (The ranking of 51 metropolitan areas of more than 2 million people includes 20 other cities in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan.)
Moreover, for firms that invest heavily in research and development, such as medical-products companies, the Twin Cities is considered No. 2 in the United States and eighth in the world.
Minnesota employers added 10,300 jobs in May, according to figures released today by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
The state lags slightly behind the nation in job growth the past year, but the jobless rate is considerably less than in the country.
The agency said the state has added 45,617 jobs in that time, a growth rate of 1.6 percent, compared with a U.S. growth rate of 1.8 percent during that period. Since January 2011, the state has gained 154,300 jobs. . . .
The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 percent. The U.S. unemployment rate in May was 6.3 percent.
“Minnesota’s unemployment rate is at the lowest level in seven years, which is yet another indicator of our improving economy,” said DEED Commissioner Katie Clark Sieben. “It is also encouraging to see growth occurring in Minnesota’s construction and manufacturing sectors, which have each added more than 9,000 jobs in the past year.”
In his conversations with different voters throughout the state, concerns about health care and balance between the two political parties come up frequently. But nothing comes up more than jobs.
“That will be the number one issue in the election without question,” Johnson said.
Johnson believes there needs to be serious tax reform and deregulation in order to make Minnesota more competitive with neighboring states. He did not support the minimum wage increase passed earlier this year, saying it may actually hurt those lower-wage workers that it is trying to help.
But rolling back the increase would not be an option for Johnson if he were elected.
Heckova message.
Photo: Minnesota's business climate, in Jeff Johnson's world.
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In his bid to grab the DFL party's nomination from incumbent state auditor Rebecca Otto, challenger Matt Entenza has harkened back to the terms of Arne Carlson and Mark Dayton, both of whom later became governor of Minnesota, as his models for what an auditor should be.
This recurrent theme prompted Bluestem Prairie to begin looking back at their tenure as state auditors, and in one case (we haven't gotten to Dayton yet), we suspect that Entenza might consider retooling his messaging, rather than relying on misty water-colored memories of the way we were.
The state auditor's office is perhaps best known for conducting financial audits on Minnesota cities and counties. But, Entenza said, the office could also be more proactive in sharing information. Entenza said he would follow in the tradition of past state auditors like Mark Dayton and Arne Carlson, in making financial information available to the public and using it to help support investment in rural Minnesota communities and schools.
"The auditor's office used to do that, and it needs to do it again," Entenza said. In one example, he said, data from the auditor's office a could shed light on the financial divide between wealthy suburban school districts and districts in greater Minnesota.
Entenza said as state auditor, he would also have a seat on the state pension board, and he would work to help protect Minnesotans' pension plans. Pensions have a sizable impact on the economy of communities like Marshall, he said, and strong public pension plans are possible with good management.
We don't quarrel with the notion that public pension plans need to be guarded and that the state auditor plays a role in watchdogging the plans, but our research suggests that the challenger might want to drop Carlson from his list of auditor role models.
An old story: Arne Carlson, John Chenoweth, MERF
Poking around in Nexis All-News, we were surprised to find much about Carlson's service as auditor, since the electronic news database gets a bit thin the farther back one goes. In "Governor under fire over retirement funds," the Chicago Tribune reported on August 31, 1993:
Pensioners relying on the Minneapolis Employees Retirement Fund lost more than $100 million, partly because Gov. Arne Carlson failed to expose financial mismanagement while serving as state auditor, according to a copyrighted newspaper report. During more than a decade as auditor, Carlson also maintained ties to the retirement fund's executive director, John Chenoweth, while winning recognition for helping the fund in a key legislative battle and accepting campaign contributions from the fund's political arm, the Star Tribune reported Sunday. Chenoweth, a former Democratic Farm Labor Party legislator from St. Paul who was murdered in 1991[a brutal hate crime unrelated to the pension fund woes], and the fund were allowed to virtually rewrite two critical audit reports to their liking, according to the Minneapolis newspaper. In one case, the Star Tribune reported, information that could have exposed financial calamity was deleted. In the other, the paper said, criticism of Chenoweth's management and the fund board's oversight were eliminated, while praise for Chenoweth's management was retained. (Nexis All-News, accessed June 26, 2014)
In the September 8, 1993 USA TODAY's "Across the USA: News From Every State," we read: ". . .Carlson said the article was an outright falsehood." (Nexis All New, accessed June 26, 2014)
Sadly, the Star Tribune articles themselves are not in the Nexis database. But online, some glimpses of the fallout of the paper's investigative reporting remain. In the September 22, 1993 Farmer Independent column, "Costly pension audit suspicions must be investigated," then Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe wrote:
. . .an investigative story published August 29 by the Twin Cities Star Tribune raises serious concerns about Carlson's alleged willingness to look the other way when auditing MERF's finances. . . .
The governor has lashed out against the implications of the newspaper story, claiming that his office complied with generally with generally accepted accounting procedures. He accused the Star Tribune of not understanding the narrow responsibilities of the state auditor. . . .
On August 29, 1993, the Star Tribune published an article entitled "Overlooking the Books." The Legislative Audit Commission responded to public concerns generated by the article and on November 17, 1993, directed the Legislative Auditor to answer six questions regarding the oversight of the Minneapolis Employees Retirement Fund (MERF). One question addressed the MERF board of directors, the other five questions pertained to the State Auditor's Office (OSA). The questions focused on the tenure of former executive director, Mr. John Chenoweth. Also, the commission directed the Legislative Auditor to contract with an independent consultant, to broadly examine oversight of local pension funds.
The summary of the report concluded that while Auditor Carlson had no personal relationship to the late John Chenoweth, problems did occur under Carlson's watch:
We reviewed issues related to the State Auditor's independence, audit planning, procedures for auditing MERF investments, audit reporting, and response to indications of potential illegal or improper activities at MERF.
We found that the auditors followed established office policies when investigating allegations and establishing audit scope for MERF. There was no evidence that former State Auditor Carlson had a personal friendship or social relationship with Mr. Chenoweth or that he influenced the scope of MERF audits.
The OSA made numerous changes to its MERF report drafts. We often did not find adequate documentation for the changes in the working papers. The auditors did, however, provide us with explanations for the changes. We found no evidence that the changes were the result of a cover-up. The changes, particularly in the 1989 Management Study, resulted from an attempt to remove judgmental language from the reports. The MERF report style differed from a more adversarial style that OSA had used for other reports it considered to be high-profile and of broad public interest.
The auditors could have done more to test the market value of MERF investments, particularly in the 1989 financial audit. Mr. Chenoweth had added more speculative investments to the MERF portfolio in 1988 and 1989. The investments began to show signs of problems during the 1989 audit. For the 1990 audit, an extensive footnote to the financial statements cautioned about the precarious nature of several investments. Finally, on the 1991 financial statements, MERF wrote its investments down by $58 million.
What were the "lessons learned" of the OSA?
The State Auditor's Office would have been more effective if its reports had used a consistent tone, spoke to a broader public audience, and been issued on a more timely basis. The auditor's experience also emphasized the need to verify the underlying value of investments, particularly alternative investments such as limited partnership and real estate. Finally, it would have been helpful for the auditors to document reasons for report changes and to resolve any professional differences of opinion.
These conclusions don't buttress candidate Entenza's claims that Auditor Carlson (a Minnesota statesman now 20 years later) entirely established a strong tradition that an auditor ought follow.
Just saying.
Photo: A portrait of Arne Carlson as a young man. Via NNDB (above); the 1993 Moe column (below).
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CR: Your three rivals live in suburban Hennepin County and you’re from outstate. Does being “the rural candidate” help or hurt?
Seifert: I don’t characterize myself as the rural guy. [emphasis added] But I think by default I get pigeonholed that way. There are certain demographics characteristics that make me unique among the candidates and they are what they are. I’m the only Catholic. I’m the only candidate who has spent his whole life in Minnesota. I’m the only candidate from a rural area. I’m not campaigning on that. But when people observe that we are traveling everywhere, I think it does send a message that I’m there for everybody. I don’t see it as a chore to go to rural Minnesota, because I live there.
As avid readers of rural newspapers, we were obviously totally snookered by the headlines we'd read.
Minnesotans haven't elected a governor from greater Minnesota since Rudy Perpich, and Marty Seifert thinks it's high time that someone who knows a thing or two about rural Minnesota is elected once again to Minnesota's highest office.
During a stop at the Crookston Municipal Airport Wednesday that was part of several stops he made in the region, the Republican who lives in Marshall focused on his rural upbringing on a farm in a town with a population of around 100. If elected in November, Seifert said he will be a governor who focuses just as much on rural Minnesota's needs as he does the needs of Minnesota's larger metropolitan areas. . . .
Marty Seifert is going all-in on being outstate Minnesota's choice in the GOP primary for governor.
Seifert, the former state House Minority Leader from Marshall, is one of five Republicans vying in a primary to face DFL Gov. Mark Dayton in November.
With the primary campaign in full swing, Seifert hopes hopping from small town to small town, as well as his outstate pedigree, will press his advantage in those areas. . . .
Other Republicans running in the governor primary — businessman Scott Honour, Hennepin County commissioner Jeff Johnson, who's the GOP-endorsed candidate, and former state House Speaker Kurt Zellers — are from the Twin Cities area.
. . .As the only candidate for governor who lives outside the Twin Cities, Seifert emphasized his rural roots when he met with voters in Duluth and the Iron Range Tuesday. . . .
There are a lot of good reasons Marty Seifert thinks Minnesotans should vote for him for governor, but one reason should especially resonate with New Ulm voters.
"No candidate for governor drives on Highway 14 as much as Marty Seifert," the GOP hopeful said in an interview Friday. His wife has relatives in the Mankato area, and the couple makes the drive frequently.
"I"ve driven past the orange poles between Nicollet and North Mankato, and I know we need a four-lane highway." . . .
Seifert said the long campaign tours set him apart from other candidates and give him the perspective needed for the job he’s seeking. In places like Worthington and Crookston, he’s been quoted as saying those areas won’t be “flyover country” under his watch.
He repeated the phrase for Owatonna and emphasized that he’s just another southern Minnesotan.
“If people from this area are looking for someone who is the most like them, they’re probably going to vote for me,” he said.
As a resident of a small city (population 266) in Rural Minnesota, Bluestem's editor is deeply grateful that Seifert cleared this point up with the insiders who read Politics In Minnesota (the article is behind a paywall), and that he is so not running as that "rural guy."
Photo: Marty Seifert, who doesn't "characterize myself as the rural guy" and claims that "by default I get pigeonholed that way" according to a new interview in Politics in Minnesota.
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Recently a friend who happens to be a farmer asked, “When did you become so anti-farmer?”
After my initial surprise and denial, and later, after subsequently rolling through the countryside, I began to realize how my comments and rants could be taken in that manner. My growing up as a child and teenager was in a different era, when having a thick thatch of grass growing where water could create rills of erosion in a field was not only expected, but common. Also common was leaving a swath of anchoring vegetation along riverine embankments. I can also remember my father’s concern when Earl Butz, as Secretary of Agriculture, began preaching his “fence row to fence row” philosophy.
“That will ruin farming,” my father said. He meant the land, although it has also altered farming into a Catch 22 cash chase.
Realize, please, that my father and I had many rifts and disagreements, politically and otherwise. Despite that, I grew to firmly respect his attention to real conservation farming practices as well as his trepidation on the Butz preamble.
My father lived long enough to watch as neighboring farms grew quite large over the hills of northeast Missouri where grass and grazing was a better ecological fit. He watched as abandoned farmsteads were leveled, burned and the ashes buried, and he watched as hedge rows were dozed along with tree lines and windbreaks. Fences were pulled, wires rolled, and posts, mainly hedge, burned. Forty acre fields became 80’s, and 80’s 160’s, causing him to sadly shake his head. Folks back in my home country now call this “Minnesota farming.”
Yes, this is precisely the treatment of the land we see all around us. Industrial road grading equipment is used to extract glacial rocks from fields (which are then stored for sale in faraway cities to landscapers), and groves and farmsteads dozed and burned. Sod and prairie grasses, CRP land ... all being plowed. Painstaking efforts are made with a blade to cut just enough of a two-foot deep furrow through fields to aid in the rapid flush of water. In many cases these furrows are too shallow to qualify as a legal ditch, meaning a mandate for buffer strips, and once cut, are carefully skirted by tillage equipment and planters. Cattails are allowed to grow ... until hit by contact killing Roundup.
In fields already tiled, new and more efficient patterned tile systems are being installed. Although the technology is readily available that would allow farmers better water table management, the devices have been a tough sell despite years of positive presentations at many winter meetings. At least one watershed project had staffers basically begging farmers and landowners for a single demonstration installation ... to no avail. Flush is seemingly the norm for managing water tables, not the holding back or storage of melt nor rain.
Hilly lands that should never have been tilled stretch for miles with no regard for erosion. In wet springs and early summers, like we’re having again this year, runoff water carries tons upon tons of soil off the higher land. We passed a field with corn nearly two feet tall in the valleys with spindly, four-to-six inch stalks poking up on the rest of the acres. “That’s where all the good soil has washed off to,” said Rebecca. Typically, 20 percent of a field has the healthy stalks. The rest? Will it qualify for USDA emergency subsidies?
Indeed, an observer can easily see the change in soil color and tilth ... light tans compared to a rich darkness ... in field after field, mile after mile. A keen observer can also tell that many are ignoring either the advice or statutes that call for grassed buffer strips along artificial drainage ditches, and any thought of a grass “waterway” would be considered absurd! Most of us know by now that 99 percent of the wetlands are drained, with a like percentage of native prairie tilled. Where is the rage you see with the distant Brazilian rain forest?
Driving through the rural byways in the winter months can just be sickening with mile upon mile of “snirt” — that dirty combination of snow and dirt. Overwinter cover crops are rarely planted, and any thought of leaving stalks to hold soils in place is basically unheard of. Our food supply is threatened in that one day fields will be barren of healthy prairie dirt. Realtor’s will be challenged to barker farms with no soil left to sell.
One wonders where the crops will be grown, of how subsequent landowners and farmers will continue to “feed the world.” Have we become so selfish as farmers that we can only think of today, of mining the soil for the most cash possible with crops with little direct food value and staunch government policy support? If we’re blaming policy for the woes and goals of the tractor jockeys, then perhaps some teeth should be placed into the policy smile ... a net zero erosion factor as a qualification for any USDA commodity benefits — mandated buffer strips on all riparian waters, including drainage ditches; grassed waterways; winter cover crops, especially following soybeans and sugar beets; an actual crop rotation that includes nitrogen fixing legumes; banning practices that threaten pollinators; and so forth.
Am I anti-farming? Or, am I simply someone concerned about a future that appears ever more ominous for a climate challenged earth that will be incredibly feeble environmentally for our children and grandchildren — indeed, for all future generations.
Am I anti-farming, or am I someone who simply wishes for the bygone ethics of conservation farming practices that promotes soil health and keep earth’s dirt in place?
Am I anti-farming, or someone who wishes to keep our people, our land and our rivers healthy, and in place for future generations. Surely this answers your question.
Photo Gallery
Glacial rocks and trees are staged for removal on recent grazing land ... with the distant hill tops showing land that is probably unsuitable for good cropping.
Where's the grass? Planting grass waterways in fields would have prevented erosive actions on millions of tons of soil just within the past several weeks.
By cutting a shallow depression in the field that quickly removes water but is considered too shallow to qualify as a drainage ditch skirts the mandate of planting buffer strips. Such depressions are becoming popular in fields converted recently from grasslands.
Quite common after heavy rains all around the old prairie pothole biome, where 99 percent of the wetlands and prairie are no more, are sloughs that probably should have never been drained. Planting crops in the beds of old wetlands are always a gamble, an ante covered by federal farm policy. Strategic wetlands store water, recharge aquifers, and help filter impurities before the water moves on.
An example of a healthy buffer strip found on a Chippewa County drainage ditch. Buffers protect the health of the riparian banks while filtering and slowing down runoff from crop fields.
Guest Blogger's Bio: A retired newspaper man who edited the Clara City Herald for many years, John White lives in Clinton Township, Big Stone County, Minnesota. With Rebecca (Terk) White, he posts at the Listening Stones Farm blog.
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Bluestem Prairie followed two new pollinator bills throughout the session, pleased by the passage of both measures into law. They're now getting more attention.
Why it matters: Protecting bees is necessary to ensure an adequate supply of food can be produced economically. . . .
Minnesota has taken a stand for the bees with two new laws. One prohibits labeling plants as beneficial to pollinators if the plants have been treated with a detectable level of pesticide. And another law creates a scientific panel to investigate bee deaths and compensate beekeepers whose hives are destroyed by pesticide use.
The law provide adequate protection for farmers or others who apply pesticide. Pesticide applicators only have to pay financial damages to beekeepers if it is determined they improperly applied the pesticide. If it is determined pesticide killed bees but was applied properly, a fund set up by the state would compensate beekeepers up to $20,000 each.
Those applying pesticides — be it farmers or homeowners — have a responsibility to use them correctly and without affecting neighboring property. Pesticides are best applied very early in the morning, or better yet very late in the day as bees are not foraging at the time. And if gardeners choose to use pesticides, they should resist using them when flowers are in bloom.
The alarming collapse of pollinators is not simply a problem for beekeepers or those who love honey. About one third of the food we all eat is dependent on pollinators. That’s why the search for improved pesticides and other measures to protect bees is so important.
We've been enjoying the abundance of pollinators at our large garden we share at some friends' farm--and the bees' help with pollinating our plants. Having left milkweed for the monarch butterflies. we admire their caterpillars simply for their lovely striped selves.
Photo: A beekeeping demonstration in Fillmore County, June 2014. Via Representative Rick Hansen's Facebook page.
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Hagedorn compares the crisis to a "flash mob" prompted by a "text" from Obama, an executive order halting deportations of young immigrants who grew up in this country after being bought to the United States by their undocumented parents.
The statements recall earlier controversy prompted in 2009 when Hagedorn sought the 2010 endorsement--and researchers discovered his now-scrubbed blog, "Mr. Conservative."
The latest sensitivity from Mr. Hagedorn
For Hagedorn, it's another opportunity to get offensive in the pursuit of his ambition to beat endorsed Republican candidate Aaron Miller by appealing to the basest of the base. We suspect he's going for the Brat anti-immigration mojo that put the Virginia econ prof on the path to defeating former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in their district's primary.
Republican congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn (MN-1), Blue Earth, harshly criticized President Obama and congressional proponents of the DREAM Act and amnesty for illegal aliens for failure to defend the sovereignty of the United States and protect the nation from a huge flood of illegal immigration.
Hagedorn charged that Obama’s 2012 executive order nullifying deportation of illegal aliens brought into the United States before they turned age 16, and no older than 30, has led to the recent influx of tens of thousands of Central American trespassers, causing chaos for the Border Patrol, massive taxpayer liability and probable entrance of Islamic terrorists, drug smugglers and gang members into the United States.
“Obama’s 2012 executive order halting deportation of so called Dreamers, which I believe to be unconstitutional, and the reckless push for amnesty by liberal members of Congress like Tim Walz, effectively served as a text message to entice tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to gather as a “flash mob” on the North side of the Rio Grande,” said Hagedorn. [emphasis added]
This is malarkey. Perhaps the best examination of the situation are found in the Cato Institute's write-up by Alex Nowraseth, Unaccompanied Minors Crossing the Border–The Facts. The analyst walks readers through the details, poiting out that the reluctance to immediately deport the children isn't based in DREAMer politics, but another law entirely:
The real bottleneck is in detention facilities, not the numbers of border patrol agents on the ground. As the New York Timesreported:
“While the Obama administration has moved aggressively to deport adults, it has in fact expelled far fewer children than in the past. Largely because of a 2008 federal law aimed at protecting trafficked children, the administration in 2013 deported one-fifth the number of Central American children as were expelled in 2008, according to federal government statistics.”
The 2008 act, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) of 2008, forced U.S. official to inquire into the vulnerability of unaccompanied minors to trafficking and other forms of abuse. U.S. officials were then only allowed to deport the children quickly if they make a voluntary decision to return. Longer processing times created by the 2008 act mean longer wait times for the minors in immigration detention facilities.
She [Elizabeth Kennedy, a doctoral candidate at San Diego State University] has studied the crisis from both sides of the U.S. border, including a stint now as a Fulbright fellow in El Salvador. All the Salvadoran children must cross Mexico at some point to get to the U.S. — and many are intercepted and turned back by Mexican authorities. Kennedy has collected over 400 interviews by going to the migrant return center and talking with waiting family members and their children once they arrive.
“Most of the children I meet at the bus return center will try again, and some will reach the United States,” she said. “I’m in contact with 20 who have done so since I got here in October. I’m sure others have arrived and have elected not to stay in contact with me.”
“Over 90 percent of child migrants here have a family member in the U.S,” Kennedy said. “Despite these numbers, less than a third mention family reunification as a reason for emigrating. More often than not, their neighborhood has become so dangerous or they have been so seriously threatened, that to stay is to wait for their own death or great harm to their family. Their neighborhoods are full of gangs. Their schools are full of gangs. They do not want to join for moral and political reasons and thus see no future.”
“In only one of 400-plus interviews did a child migrant ask about the DREAM Act and immigration reform. … Fifteen had heard that the U.S. system treated children differently than adults and wanted to know how. In all 15 cases, the child had received a threat to join the gang or be killed, and some had then been beat or raped when they refused to join.”
So it's not the DREAM Act (children coming in now aren't covered by it or the President's order or even perceptions about the DREAM Act that's motivating them. The Arizona Republic reports in Republicans blaming Obama for border crisis:
Given the humanitarian aspect to the crisis, Republicans run a risk if they overly politicize the situation, said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science and Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California-Irvine.
"This really has nothing to do with some long-term plan to create some new form of legal status, but instead it suggests the desperation of parents in Central America," DeSipio said. "The Obama administration also is responding to a bureaucratic problem, which they legitimately have. We don't have the detention space for this many young people, and we didn't really expect them to all appear at the same time."
So why is this happening? Immigration experts tend to point to possible "push factors" — reasons for migrants to leave their home countries — and "pull factors," or reasons for migrants to come to (in this case) the United States:
1) Children are being "pushed" by violence in Central America. Megan McKenna of Kids in Need of Defense, a group that works with unaccompanied migrant children, says that the children her group works with point to violence in their home countries as the primary reason they left. "They're telling us stories of gangs and criminal elements coming into their communities and forcing them to join a gang or some kind of criminal activity, and when they say no, they and their family members are subject to threats and violence," she says. "It's a refugee-like situation."
Indeed, the children coming to the United States appear to be increasingly more vulnerable — implying it's just getting less and less possible to stay in their home countries. Over the past few years, the average age of these unaccompanied children has dropped. And a larger proportion are girls — even though, McKenna says, "it's widely known they'll be a victim of sexual abuse" during the journey through Mexico. "It points to the sheer desperation of these kids in trying to leave their home country."
2) Children are being "pulled" by a desire or need to be reunited with family. Another reason so many children are coming to the United States — they have family here. According to a recent Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees survey,over a third of Central American children who had crossed the border alone had one or both parents in the United States. It's typical for migrant families to send children once other relatives have gotten settled in the US, but when their relatives here are unauthorized immigrants, the kids have to come illegally — and dangerously — too.
3) Children are being "pulled" by lenient US policy — particularly a 2008 law by Congress. There are also more controversial theories. This week, for instance, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee released a statement arguing that the Obama administration's overly lenient policies on immigration "have led to a surge of minors arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border."
The evidence doesn't bear this out. For instance, Republicans have pointed to a policy by the Obama administration to defer deportation for certain youths in the United States. Yet that policy wasn't enacted until 2012 — eight months before the current surge of child migrants began in October 2011. (That policy also doesn't apply to new immigrants.)
It is true that the US government treats child migrants who arrive at the border more leniently than adults — but that's the result of a law passed by Congress in 2008, called the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. When children who come unaccompanied aren't getting deported, it might end up inspiring more children to come. But even here, the evidence is ambiguous. One researcher from San Diego State University found that only 15 of the 400 migrants she interviewed even knew that US immigration law treated unaccompanied children differently.
It's not simply cruel of Hagedorn to characterize the crisis as a "flash mob." It's cruelty at the service of bad policy.
The 2009-2010 flap: Mr. Conservative
But Hagedorn has never been one for thoughtful commentary.
Democrats are taking aim at a Republican congressional candidate for blog comments they say are offensive toward women and minorities.
Jim Hagedorn, of Blue Earth, Minn., recently removed several posts from his blog, called “Mr. Conservative," before announcing this week that he was running for the 1st District House seat held by two-term Democrat Tim Walz.
Examples of posts include one about the “nomination of White House legal hack Harriet Miers to fill the bra of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor." Another refers to alleged voter fraud in the 2002 South Dakota election involving American Indians. He writes that “many of the votes registered for absentee ballots were found to be chiefs and squaws who returned to the spirit world many moons ago." He goes on to write “Leave it to liberals to ruin John Wayne’s wisdom of the only good Indian being a dead Indian."
Minnesota DFL party chairman Brian Melendez called Hagedorn’s posts “racist" and said they prove he is a right-wing extremist courting Tea Party members.
“If I had racist posts out there, and I was running for office, I would want to hide them, too," Melendez said.
But Hagedorn said he removed the posts prior to 2004 only because they were outdated. He said he was writing the blog as a political satirist and it is not meant to be offensive.
Hagedorn is government relations director for Electromed Inc., based in New Prague, Minn. His father Tom Hagedorn is a former Republican congressman who represented southern Minnesota.
‘I poke fun at everybody’
“I understand that some of the folks on the left aren’t going to like what I write," he said. “I poke fun at everybody, including Republicans."
Another post receiving attention is one about the late Sen. Paul Wellstone’s funeral. He wrote: “About the memorial service. Was it just me or did it not seem as if someone bailed out the union thugs; tree huggers; abortion rights feminists; peaceniks; citizens for gay animal rights; NAMBLA members and the other Marxist sympathizers who protested at last month’s IMF meetings, and transported them to Wellstone’s memorial in a slew of green buses? Talk about lefties all in one convenient location. Hopefully after the ceremony they fumigated the arena." . . .
Lovely.
Judging from the latest article about Hagedorn in the online-only Mankato Times, it looks like Hagedorn has revived the spirit of "Mr. Conservative" to pin the humanitarian crisis occurring on American's southern border on Congressman Walz.
Walz's immigration white paper in 2008
Update: Hagedorn did not contact us with the requested documentation, but posted it to his Facebook page
Here's the video--and Hagedorn is right about the attack on Gutknecht's vote.
The attack on the vote appears to have been a standard barb by Democratic candidates in the 2006 campaign. Some Republicans fought back, as in the case of Representative Charles Taylor of North Carolina, although he incorrectly claimed that the omnibus bill didn't contain the refugee amnesty provision.
Taylor voted for a bill on Oct. 20, 1998 that included the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act - HR 4328, Whalen said. The U.S. Immigration Support lists the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act as one of several laws that have granted amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Numbers USA, a conservative immigration reform group, states on its Web site that "the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act is an amnesty program for Haitians."
It will be interesting to see if Hagedorn campaigns for or against Gutknecht's vote, given its low scoring by NUMBERS USA--or if he thinks attacking Walz on the basis of the ad alone is enough to triumph over endorsed candidate Aaron Miller in the primary. While Hagedorn touts his own campaigning, the MIller Facebook page suggests that Byron Republican's public appearances aren't a lonely enterprise.
Original material:
Hagedorn also makes claims about Walz's positions on immigration in the 2006 upset victory against Gil Gutknecht. In the Manakto Times article, Hagedorn claims:
“In his first campaign for Congress in 2006, Tim Walz pledged border security and chastised then-Congressman Gil Gutknecht for supporting legislation granting 50,000 Haitians amnesty;
Looking online and in Nexis, Bluestem has been unable to find this particular rebuke of Gutknecht by Walz. Perhaps Hagedorn can provide documentation for it.
As the criticism of Gutknecht (who brought Iowa xenophobe, Rep. Steve King, into the district to discuss immigration in the term before the Minnesota Republican's defeat), here's what's in Walz's 2006 white paper:
Southern Minnesota’s Representative Gil Gutknecht supports immigration legislation that is not only simplistic and purposely divisive, it also fails to solve our immigration problems. Gutknecht supports HR 698, which would repeal the principle of birthright citizenship that benefited many of our ancestors. Gutknecht is also co-sponsoring the Border Protection Corps Act (HR 3622,) which would authorize governors to draft citizens to patrol national borders. These extremist proposals complement the House legislation that criminalizes acts of kindness (HR 4437,) which Gutknecht also cosponsored.
These extreme proposals have been rejected by border-state Republicans such as John McCain, George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger. . . .
The proposals of several right-wing lawmakers expand the definition of “smuggling” immigrants, putting churches, non-profits and hospitals in a position where acting as a good Samaritan would mean breaking the law. Some Republican Senators have proposed amendments to immigration bills that would require anyone planning to provide meals, clothing or other charitable assistance to undocumented immigrants to register with the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone else attempting to offer services to illegal aliens could be arrested. These proposals are a slap in the face to religious communities who live by the principle of social justice
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The First Amendment and what speech falls under its protection is at the forefront of a decision by the Bagley School District to allow the appearance of a controversial speaker this weekend.
Usama K. Dakdok, a Christian speaker, self-described expert on Islam and the founder of the Straight Way of Grace Ministry, will speak this weekend at the Bagley High School Auditorium about Islam.
Dakdok, who was born and raised as a Christian in Egypt before coming to the United States in 1992, claims Islam is a "cult" and a danger to Christians.
"With the wisdom God gave me I know how bad the disease of Islam is," Dakdok said.
This weekend will be the second time in less than a year Dakdok has visited Bagley. In October 2013, he was invited to speak by community member Tammy Godwin after she attended an event by an imam, a Muslim religious leader. Godwin said she felt the imam was untruthful at the event and wanted to invite Dakdok so he could provide a different perspective.
"I felt that people in the area needed to hear the truth about Islam," Godwin said.
While Dakdok was originally scheduled to speak at the Bagley School auditorium in October, the location of the speech had to be changed to the Calvary Evangelical Free Church after the school district reversed its decision to let the pastor rent the auditorium.
"We asked to change the venue to the church because the speaker did not appear to coincide with school district policy," Steve Cairns, superintendent of Bagley Public Schools, told the Bemidji Pioneer shortly after the decision was made.
The district's decision at that time came after receiving a letter from the Minnesota Council on American-Islamic Relations, which claimed allowing Dakdok to speak at the auditorium would be in violation of the district's harassment and violence policy and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in programs that receive federal assistance.
According to the act, "Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races (colors, and national origins) contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes, or results in racial (color or national origin) discrimination."
Now, less than a year after the decision, the school district has changed its position to allow Dakdok to speak at the auditorium. . . .
The school's decision to allow Dakdok to speak at the auditorium may be due to a threat of legal action against the school district. . . .
Read the whole article at the Pioneer Press.
Unfortunately, the second night's forum got a bit twisted about that freedom thing. From a press release from the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations:
The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN) today called on the Bagley Independent School District #162 to rescind approval of tonight's speech by Islamophobe Usama Dakdok following harassment of a Muslim woman by a "mob" at his earlier speaking event at the same school on Saturday.
CAIR-MN also called on local and state law enforcement authorities to consider bias charges against the harassers based on that state's "assaults motivated by bias" statute.
Dakdok, who claims that American Muslims "will kill your children" and that "we are in war with Islam," was invited to speak at Bagley High School by local Islamophobe Tammy Godwin. On June 22, during the second part of his 3-day hate series, audience members said Dakdok incited the audience and endangered a Muslim woman attendee's safety and security.
The audience members said the Muslim woman, who wears a religious headscarf, was part of a peaceful protest outside the hate event. She, along with others, entered the auditorium after the silent protest finished to listen to the speech. Their "Love Thy Neighbor" signs were lowered and not facing anyone inside. As the Muslim woman was quietly walking down the aisle looking for a seat, Dakdok stopped his presentation and singled her out. He asked her to leave, allegedly yelling, "Sister, I will give you one last chance to leave or I will throw you out myself!"
One attendee described an angry mob of Dakdok supporters who then began harassing the Muslim woman: "People were yelling at the Muslim woman, 'Get out' and 'You weren't invited.' Men were getting to their feet and moving towards her to lay hands on her."
The audience member announced he was calling the police out of concern for the Muslim woman's safety. Godwin allegedly tried to interfere with the police call by attempting to intimidate the Good Samaritan by telling him, "Don't you dare [call the police]. This will be on your soul."
Three officers responded to the call, including the Bagley police chief, a Bagley police officer and a Sheriff's Deputy. The Muslim woman was allowed to stay and an officer stayed at the event until it ended. One member of the angry mob, seemingly upset with Muslim presence, later approached the officer and asked: "Can I borrow your gun?"
"We support free of speech, and that freedom includes the right to peacefully listen to even hate speech without fear of being set upon by an angry and threatening mob," CAIR-MN Executive Director Lori Saroya. "Bagley Independent School District should cancel tonight's event due to the clear safety concerns for those Minnesota Muslims and other people of conscience who may choose to exercise their First Amendment rights by attending this hate fest."
Saroya added that law enforcement authorities should consider charges against the harassers of the Muslim attendee under Minn. Stat. § 609.2231 (2009), which provides penalties for "anyone who assaults another because of the victim's or another's actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability as defined in section 363A.03, age, or national origin."
CAIR-MN has placed over 7,000 educational flyer inserts on Islam and Muslims in Bagley area newspapers and is working with an interfaith coalition to counter Dakdok's hate and bigotry. A community dialogue, "From Fear to Understanding," will be held on Saturday, August 23 at Farm by the Lake in Bagley. . . .
Several attendees expressed concerns about the safety and security of Muslims at tonight's event, when more Muslims are expected to attend. One attendee said, "The audience doesn't know where the line is, or that a line even exists. When Mr. Dakdok works a crowd, he does so skillfully, provoking responses and goading reactions. After listening to fear mongering messages the previous night, such as 'Muslims are destroying the world,' 'Muslims are coming to kill your children and grandchildren,' and 'We will not be safe until all the Muslims are deported and all the mosques are closed,' we fear for the safety of Muslims in the audience."
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Bluestem is beginning to wonder about the Republican Party's commitment to be more inclusive interms of demographics, in that some of the candidates in the governor's race--and their running mates--aren't exactly star graduates of human relations seminars.
Take Bill Kuisle, perhaps our favorite Southeast Minnesota Republican since Mike Parry and The Draz. Defeated in Minnesota House District 30B in 2004, 2006, and 2008 after serving four terms, Kuisle is the running mate of endorsed MNGOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson, who is Minnesota Nice (unless you're a "clueless, obnoxious and frankly, very messy" Occupy protestor).
The state Democratic Party chairman said Friday that GOP leaders should denounce a state lawmaker who urged Republicans to disrupt a campaign event by supporters of presidential candidate John Kerry.
In a news release, the DFL Party included an e-mail that Rep. Bill Kuisle had sent to Olmsted County Republicans, urging them to attend an event in Rochester on Friday featuring singer Carole King and the group Minnesota Women for John Kerry.
Kuisle provided the details of the event and said, "If anyone can go and harass it would be appreciated. Bill."
"I call on the Republican Party and the campaign of George W. Bush to reject this negative and hateful kind of politics,"DFL Party chairman Mike Erlandson said in the release.
Kuisle, R-Rochester, confirmed that he sent the e-mail but said the word 'harass' was not directed at women. He said he was simply referring to the standard counter-demonstrations in which people wave signs and make noise. "I don't know if it was the proper word to use," he said. "But let's face it: the DFL does it and the Republicans do it. If that's not harassment, I don't know what is. But is it about harassing women? No." . . .
Perhaps he should have left this sort of planning to the operatives, who might have been more judicious with their word choice.
Via Nexis, we found more coverage in a September 11, 2004 Pioneer Press report by Rachel Stassen-Berger, "Parties bicker over campaign tactics; each accused of using Sept. 11":
. . . Also Friday, Erlandson admonished GOPers over an e-mail sent by Minnesota Rep. Bill Kuisle, R-Rochester.
According to the DFL, Kuisle sent an e-mail to Olmsted County area Republicans on Thursday asking them to "go and harass" at a DFL event featuring singer Carole King and Women for Kerry.
In response, Kuisle said he should not have used the word "harass" in the e-mail he sent late Thursday night. He meant debate or protest, he said.
"I'm big enough to say I apologize. It was the wrong word," said Kuisle. "Was it too strong a word? Yeah." (via Nexis All-News, accessed June 22, 2014)
Okay, then.
The strange case of English-only driver's license tests
Dan Severson, the RPM's endorsed candidate for Minnesota Secretary of State, teamed up with Senator Dan Hall to launch the Minority Liberty Alliance as outreach to conservative New Americans. While it's admirable, we suspect that like many citizens, they'll be looking at track records.
And so we wonder if perhaps the candidates the party selects for the governor's team--and those who challenge them--aren't necessarily the strongest allies for this work, given some of the votes they took in the legislature. And while Severson speaks about learning of new Minnesotans' concerns in his 2010 race, some of his votes suggest that he's not always been so welcoming.
Take the notion of English-only, which was a hot issue for Republicans in the first decade of this century, coming to something of a head in 2010. But even earlier, when Kuisle was in the legislature, he and primary ticket rival Marty Seifert tag-teamed in a failed proposal to restrict the language in which Minnesotans could take the written part of the driver's license exam. The Associated Press's Brian Bakst reported in 2004:
Minnesota House members decided Wednesday they won't do away with multilingual driver's exams, wouldn't intervene in the Twin Cities bus strike and should commission a study that could lead to a second beltway freeway around the metropolitan area. . . .
Debate stretched over two days and was most passionate over a proposal that called for English-only driver's exams. It failed on a lopsided vote.
Rep. Marty Seifert, a high-ranking Republican from Marshall, sought the testing limitations, casting it as a road-safety measure. His amendment would have prohibited the use of foreign language interpreters.
Minnesota currently offers the written driving test in English, Spanish, Hmong, Russian, Vietnamese and Somali.
Seifert and his allies said knowing shapes and colors of road signs is no longer enough. They said scrolling road signs make the ability to read vital for drivers.
"If you can't read them, how are you going to react?" said Rep. Bill Kuisle, R-Rochester.
But opponents, led by urban Democrats, said the proposal discriminated against immigrants and others who don't speak fluent English. They challenged supporters to prove that those drivers present a safety hazard, but no anecdotes or statistics were offered.
"Representative Seifert is confusing an English proficiency test with a public safety test," said Rep. Carlos Mariani, DFL-St. Paul. The measure, opponents predicted, would result in more people driving illegally and job losses among people who couldn't drive to work. (Brian Bakst, "House rejects driver's test changes, bus-strike proposal," Associated Press State and Local Wire, April 7, 2004, Nexis All News, accessed June 21, 2014)
The "lopsided vote" against the measure (the Republicans controlled the chamber at the time, mind you) was 49 yeas and 83 nays. Curiously, a number of "yea" votes are showing up on the statewide Republican tickets this year: Seifert, Zeller, and Kuisle in the gubernatorial primary; Scott Newman as the endorsed Attorney General candidate, and yes, Dan Severson. In CD7, Torrey Westrom, who supported the Seifert amendment in 2004, is challenging Collin Peterson.
Lest readers think that the Seifert Amendment was a Greater Minnesota Republican thing, some of the names in the "nay" column are familiar figures in Greater Minnesota leadership: Tony Cornish, Bob Gunther, Bud Nornes, Dan Dorman, Jim Knoblach (now challenged St. Cloud DFL incumbent Zachary Dorholt).
Bluestem has to wonder how this sort of malarkey will play not only in the Cities, but regional centers in Greater Minnesota like Rochester, Mankato, St. Cloud, Worthington and yes, Seifert's own Marshall, where New Americans find work in food processing companies like Schwans. It's not as if people need driver's licenses to get to work in Greater Minnesota nor that employers want them to be able to get to work--much less shop and all those other things people do with vehicles in areas with few public transit options.
In Kuisle's case, we're seeing a pattern of diminishing or dismissing the concerns of people not exactly like him: environmentalists and conservationists, Native Americans, women, immigrants whose first language isn't English.
He's met The Others and they are the rest of us.
Photo: The post-convention MNGOP fly-around. Men in suits. via Facebook.
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In mid-August 2007, Congressman Tim Walz was preparing to head on a congressional visit to Iraq. The Post Bulletin reported:
U.S. Rep. Tim Walz got up early on Sunday, Aug. 19. He was heading to Iraq and wanted to finish packing for the trip.
Given that the day before, Walz had just attended the funeral and burial in the rain of a Mankato area soldier killed in Iraq, the trip must have seemed a somber duty. It was not to be . . .
But those plans would soon be disrupted by news of the massive flooding in southeast Minnesota. . . .
The disaster marks a critical moment for Walz, a first-term Democratic congressman from Mankato who has held office for only eight months. The seven counties now under a federal disaster declaration all fall within his congressional district. How government and its leaders respond to natural or made-made disasters can make or break a politician.
Since the flooding, Walz has made virtually daily visits to the flood zone -- at least six visits in the first week alone. Along with the state's two senators, Walz lobbied for an expedited disaster declaration, so that federal dollars could start flowing to flood victims.
Within hours, Walz was heading east toward flood-stricken areas, his trip to Iraq canceled.
Seven years and a slightly different district later--with calamitous flooding in 2010 in between--Walz is contemplating a need to develop new descriptions of summer floods. In Faribault flooding update: Water is receding, sun is shining, Faribault Daily News' Jaci Smith reports:
Sporting T-shirts, jeans and workboots, U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Rep. Tim Walz, D-Mankato, visited Faribault’s water reclamation facility to peer at dirt.
It was likely a relief to the two politicians, who probably spent most of their day staring at water in the heavily flooded southwestern part of the state.
In Faribault, the two examined the earthen berm built quickly on Wednesday by city staff in response to the rising Straight River. In 2010, the river overcame the facility, forcing it to shut down and resulting in untreated wastewater entering the water way.
“Well, now that we know that these are not 500-year events we’re going to have to come up with a new name for them,” said Congressman Walz. He complimented the city on having the foresight to build the berm and make it permanent, likely saving taxpayers a costly cleanup bill.
Though rainfall totals have been close to what the city experienced during the 2010 flood, Johnson said the damage is much less severe thanks to flood mitigation efforts that have gone on throughout town in the last four years.
“This flood is a little bit different for us,” Johnson said. “One of the good success stories is that we’re not doing a lot of protective measures and a lot of sandbagging because we’ve put some mitigation efforts with funding that we received from the state of Minnesota, the Department of Natural Resources and Homeland Security Emergency Management.”
Several retention ponds have been put in place, which help slow the water down and keep it out of neighborhoods. The city has also purchased a number of homes in the flood plain, turning them into green space that isn’t as heavily impacted when the area floods.
“What’s different between now and 2010 is we didn’t have to put resources into sandbagging for going through and protecting those areas,” Johnson said.
Let's hope that resources can be found for future flood mitigation efforts across Minnesota. As Walz notes, foresight saves money in the long run.
This year's rainfall events and floods are more widespread than those in 2007 and 2010; the counties declared disaster areas in 2007 were entirely inside the First Congressional District, while this year's emergencies cover 35 counties.
Photo: A still image of the Highway 99 bridge at St. Peter from video taken today by St. Peter's Jon Smithers using an unmanned aerial vehicle. Via St. Peter Herald.
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Yesterday, in Bill Kuisle not sure wetlands & stuff totally worth it, Bluestem looked at the former House member and current endorsed Republican lieutenant governor candidate's reluctance to fund storm water ponds and other environmental considerations for highway construction, expressed in a visit to Worthington.
There's more on his stand in an article in the New Ulm Journal today, Lieutenant governor hopeful stops in New Ulm, and Kuisle adds another item to his list of unnecessary expenses in road construction: archaeological studies.
But while Kuisle may be promoting the sort of thinking that helped fuel the Camp Coldwater protests over Highway 55 construction and the potential destruction of indigenous people's historical and sacred sites, being a good party man, he's not going to attack another Republican.
Republicans are trying to differentiate themselves from each other during the primary campaign, knowing that Gov. Mark Dayton is the primary target.
"You don't want to draw blood," Kuisle said, "you don't want to give Dayton and his group fodder for the election."
That's a rather quaint notion, suggesting that there's nothing in his or other Republicans' voting record or past public statements that might damage them in an election.
Kuisle appears have fewer scruples about damaging American Indian heritage than he does about harming another Republican's reputation.
Requiring extensive environmental impact studies, archaeological studies and extensive wetlands replacement eats up money that could be spent on cement and asphalt, Kuisle said.
Note that unlike the "extensive" environmental impact studies or the "extensive" wetlands replacement, Kuisle is singling out archaeological studies without a qualifying adjective. The mere requirement appears to be a cost without merit.
And those wetlands? He wants to gut that law too, since "environmentalists" prevailed, Sweeney reports:
He pointed out that when he was in the Legislature, studies indicated that wetlands replacement (replacing acres of wetlands that were affected by road construction) could be done on a 1.2-to-1 ratio, instead of the 2-to-1 ratio required by law. But environmentalists insisted on the 2-to-1 ratio.
But it's not just spending money on preserving the heritage of Dakota, Objiwe or early white settlements that Kuisle objects to. Back when he was in office, he was a strong supporter of running the DM & E upgrade through the City of Rochester and appears to have been the first contact for bypass opponent Kathy King, although he was voted out of office before the Rochester rail war reached a fever pitch.
It's just amazing how the list of people getting in the way grows as one examines Kuisle's recor environmentalists
Photo: Circa 1999, part of the protest occupation of Camp Coldwater, via Circle of Vision. Here's a nifty view of the liner put in to preserve the water flow of the spring. Somehow, we suspect that reducing surveys will only spur people to more activism if Jeff Johnson and Kuisle are elected; one of the objections to the project was original minimal archaeological study of the project.
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“Right now the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) is pushing what they call a dish rule, in order to gain more control of water and where it runs off from,” he [Bill Kuisle, endorsed Republican lieutenant governor candidate] said, also indicating that rising property tax rates for ag land is the most important issue for farmers. “I’ve been working with a couple of different farm groups to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
We googled and checked Nexis for "dish rule" and didn't come up with much, but think that Kuisle is spouting anti-water rule talking points from the Farm Bureau and similar groups. The Hill takes a look at the criticism here of the “Waters of the United States” rule to clarify regulations governing which bodies of water fall under federal jurisdiction and permitting requirements.
You’d never know from this overheated rhetoric that the proposal would leave fewer waters protected than was the case under President Reagan or that many tributary streams had been protected against pollution by federal law since William McKinley was president in 1899.
Much of this over-the-top criticism has come from oft-cited polluters, like the mining industry. Yet, some of the most strident charges have come from agribusiness interests. One writer declared, “The 370-page rule may as well be written in farmers’ blood.” The irony is that, thanks to numerous exemptions in the law and the regulations, agriculture is actually the least regulated of any sector. But no doubt some polluters are happy to see the powerful farm lobby, well, carrying water for them.
The comment period for the new proposal will close in October, but some in Congress aren’t waiting. They’re already offering legislation to block the initiative, riding this flood of misinformation. So let’s part the waters of myth and get down to the truth.
• Claim: The American Farm Bureau Federation tweets that the proposal “gives the fed gov control over all farming and land use.”
• Truth: The clean water safeguards explicitly exempt irrigated areas, farm ponds and dozens of other agricultural practices. They also reduce coverage of “ditches,” a favorite Farm Bureau talking point.
• Claim: The Farm Bureau says certain permitting exemptions for agriculture apply only to land that has been continually farmed since 1977.
• Truth: This is simply wrong. There is no 1977 trigger date for the exemptions, and they are available to anyone engaged in “normal farming,” which allows for crop rotations, fallow fields and other practices that may vary over time.
There's more--check it out at The Hill.
Maybe Kuisle meant "ditch rule" or "Ditch the Rule," the slogan used by some ag groups to instill fear of the clarification.
But there's more in the Globe:
Added Kuisle later: “What you’ve seen over the last 30 or 40 years — and probably accelerated in the last 10 or 15 years — is more regulation coming in that (road construction) industry, with the need for storm retention ponds and wetlands placements. … We couldn’t have built I-90 with today’s rules and regulations.
“We need to back up and see what’s really needed, and not over-regulate and not build roads because of the prices we’re seeing."
In the study, "Addressing the Quiet Crisis", Richard F. Weingroff of the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Infrastructure examines the origins and implications of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 on the interstate system, concluding:
. . .The program and the reputation of road builders "were tarnished." After initial resistance, the road builders realized that NEPA was not innocuous. With "grudging reluctance," the highway community came to see that "NEPA, the whole elevation of environmental consciousness, has been a positive influence on the FHWA and on our program." Dr. Larson continued:
Yes, it was inconvenient. Yes, it slows things up. And yes, it costs more. But I firmly believe the results are worth it. In the years since NEPA, we have built hundreds of highway projects that are "good neighbors." Some people still consider highways the "route" of all evil, but to a large extent NEPA, and the FHWA's implementation of it, have helped to restore a more favorable public impression and acceptance of our work.
The change in how the highway community went about its business, "while initially unsettling has proved to be profound and positive." [Larson, Thomas D., "Earth Day-More Than a Second Thought," Administrator's Note, Vol. I, Note 32, April 20, 1990, unpublished].
And yes, I-90 was completed.
As for Kuisle's scorn of storm retention ponds and "wetlands placements," we are left simply shaking our head. After this week's record-busitng rainfall and flooding, we have to wonder about a guy who opposes the cost of these deluge mitigation measures. The last thing lakes, rivers and creeks needed was an additional rush of water from a road or drained wetland upstream, much less the nutrients and chemicals their absence would add to the lakes, rivers and Gulf of Mexico.
Moreover, we're curious why wet detentions ponds, which have been used widely across the United States for many years, are suddenly an emblem of Big Government, rather than a sensible best management practice that helps keep an upstream road's run-off out of the downstream neighbor's basement, while detering flooding ditches and creeks from widening and hauling off farmers' fields.
When stormwater drains off a construction site, it carries sediment and other pollutants that harm lakes, streams and wetlands. According to the 1996 National Water Quality Inventory, stormwater runoff is a leading source of water pollution. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 20 to 150 tons of soil per acre is lost every year to stormwater runoff from construction sites.
Many studies indicate that controlling erosion can significantly reduce the amount of sedimentation and other pollutants transported by runoff from construction sites. To keep Minnesota’s valuable water resources clean the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) issues permits to construction site owners and their operators to prevent stormwater pollution during and after construction.
The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972.
Curiously, while in the House, Kuisle favored borrowing for road construction, while cutting costs on routine maintenance. MPR reported in 2003:
. . .Minnesota would also get an advance of federal transportation money, for a total infusion of up to $900 million. Rep. Al Juhnke, DFL-Willmar, says the state will pay more than $200 million in interest on the bonds, which will reduce money available for transportation in the future.
"This is borrowed money, borrowed time, borrowed for our roads, and it's a big giant step to nowhere," says Juhnke.
The bonds will be paid for with savings from cuts to MnDOT for road maintenance and other unspecified areas.
One wonders if this character is the guy who took "conserve" out of conservative.
Photo: An example of a vegetated buffer adjacent to a construction site. Via MPCA.
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Bluestem wonders if the Republican Primary Battle for HD48B will hinge in part on pandering to the base's resistance to proposals to address gender-based inequality.
The women vying for the Republican endorsement in Eden Prairie each has something to say about women's economic security, and the range seems to range from ignorance to not-quite-so-extreme market-based policy
Sheila loathed Lilly Ledbetter Act early
In June 2007, challenger Sheila Kihne wrote to the Eden Prairie News to say in Puzzled by attacks on Hann:
The old issue of "equal pay" is being resurrected by the Democrats at the state level with the Phyllis Kahn authored "Pay Equity for Contractors Bill" and at the federal level with the Barack Obama sponsored “Fair Pay Act of 2007.” Sen. [David] Hann calls such laws “illogical and absurd.” I agree. The recent letters to the editor attacking Sen. Hann's statements about this type of legislation leave me puzzled. Equal opportunity does not mean equal outcomes. The government simply cannot and should not dictate pay to private companies whether it's through the awarding of bids based on a company's deemed "fairness" in pay or whether it's through legislation setting wage controls for "equivalent" jobs. That is a function of the market, not the government and when the federal government wants to define and set salaries for private sector employees, people should be very afraid. If a woman can prove that she is paid less for the exact same job with the exact same qualifications and that she is being discriminated against – she can already sue under current laws [emphasis added]. Why then should there be additional legislation to address this issue? Government bureaucracies can barely determine who's in our country illegally, yet they're able to process the data on $7 trillion worth of annual wages and issue an edict of "fairness" by job description? When it comes to wages and salary; job choice determines pay, hard work prevails and the market is always correct. Why must the government continually be involved in trying to produce equal outcomes?
Clearly, Kihne's puzzled by these matters and seems to have been mighty confused in 2007 about "the Barack Obama sponsored 'Fair Pay Act of 2007.' "
KIhne sincerely appears to have believed in 2007 that if a woman discovered that her employer was paying a male co-worker more than she was being paid, that under then-current law, she could sue for discrimination.
. . . The legislation clarifies that employment discrimination law should be interpreted the way courts have traditionally understood it – until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a more restrictive interpretation in the 2007 Ledbetter V. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. decision. In this case, the Court ruled that plaintiff Lilly Ledbetter was not eligible for compensation despite years of being paid far less than her male peers and even some male subordinates. According the Court, unlawful discrimination had occurred only when her employer first set the discriminatory pay rate, even though Ledbetter had no way of knowing about it until years later. Under this ruling, since Ledbetter’s employer was able to conceal the discrimination for years and she did not find out about the discrimination until it was too late to file a complaint (within 180 days of the first discriminatory paycheck, according to the Court), she had no legal recourse. By reaffirming that a fresh discrimination offense occurs each time an individual is impacted by a discriminatory practice, including each paycheck that includes unfair compensation, this legislation effectively reverses the Supreme Court’s decision and ensures that people subjected to discrimination in the future will continue to have effective recourse to the law.
Read the entire statement on the group's site. The Supreme Court's decision and Ginsburg's dissent, along with a syllabus, is found here.
Kihne earned Phi Beta Kappa at the U, so we're going to assume that she understands the description of the legal circumstances delineated by the human resource professionals.
Bluestem readers who prefer a more dramatic story will prefer the account from the Washington Post coverage of the 2009 passage of the bill, Democrats Overturn Barrier to Unequal-Pay Suits:
. . .Several months before she retired in 1998 as a Goodyear area manager, Ledbetter found an anonymous note in her mailbox at work, tipping her off that she was being paid less than the men who held the same job. That year, she filed an EEOC complaint and received a letter from the commission saying that she had grounds to sue.
She won a jury verdict in U.S. district court in 2003, but Goodyear appealed. Two years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in a ruling that departed from those of nine other federal appellate courts, sided with Goodyear, saying Ledbetter was years too late to sue.
She took the case to the Supreme Court, which upheld the appellate court's view in a 5 to 4 opinion written by its newest member, Justice Samuel A. Alito, a Bush appointee. At the time, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave a rare oral dissent, saying she hoped Congress would reverse what the court had done. . . .
Ledbetter said in an interview that she was "thrilled, thrilled." She said the Supreme Court's ruling means that she never will be able to claim the $360,000 she was awarded by a lower court. But she said: "The people who are working deserve to have this right. . . . I am so excited, I doubt I will be able to sleep tonight."
On Planet Kihne, "fairnes" means that a woman could sue, but only within 180 days of commencement of the act of discrimination. Don't know about it within that time? Tough beans, even if the discrimination goes on for years, robbing a woman of wages that her male peers received.
Jenifer: No state contract equity compliance for you!
As for the Kahn bill? It didn't pass, but similiar legislation introduced by Rena Moran as part of the WESA package has made it into law seven years--and arguments close to Kihne's complaints accompanied the debate, as Lori Sturdevant noted in Progress, past and present, for women.
Reduces the gender pay gap through increased enforcement of equal pay laws for state contractors by requiring businesses with 40 or more employees seeking state contracts over $500,000 to certify they are paying equal wages to workers regardless of gender.
The bill also requires state contractors to certify that they provide men and woman in the same job categories similar pay.
The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce is raising concerns over that portion of the legislation. The business group says the reporting requirements are confusing and could increase litigation costs for businesses.
Rep. Jenifer Loon, R-Eden Prairie, opposed the bill. She said it puts too many expenses on employers and could discourage businesses from bidding on state contracts.
“It just may not be worth the hassle,” Loon said. “It also sets up a situation where we’re not just going after bad actors. This is auditing folks and incurring expense where they may very well be the ones where we hold up examples of doing the right thing.”
And that cloudy part? A handful of women DFL Senators acting in tandem with the state Chamber, who were reluctant to support a conference report that such staunch Republican feminists like Mary Franson and Tony Cornish had already green-buttoned in the House vote.
But at least their and Loon's objections to the bill weren't simply bassackward, like KIhne's imaginative understanding of the 2007 version of the Lilly Ledbetter Act.
The race to inequity?
But to judge from a blog post by one of Kihne's strongest supporters, Loon has parked herself squared in the Land of Kahn. John Gilmore writes:
Loon introduced legislation that would reduce property taxes for businesses owned by women. At a time when we, as republicans and a nation, are trying to move further and further away from identity politics, here comes a left-wing democrat idea. Who was it that said to me on Twitter last week we don't promote women simply because they are women? Perhaps that woman can talk to Jenifer and set her straight (or is that word hetero-normative?) about republicans not being a party that gives financial breaks for some taxpayers simply because of their gender.
We're curious where this dance-off will end by August 12. Whatever the case, we anticipate it generating some choice copy.
Photo: Lilly Ledbetter. Silly woman: Sheila Kihne said in 2007 that you could just sue if you learned you'd been discriminated against by your employer and no new law was needed. Oh, right. (Photo via Bozeman Daily Chronicle).
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In today's McLeod County Chronicle, Minnesota House Speaker Paul Thissen (DFL-Minneapolis) responds to a claim made by Representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) made at a town hall and repeated in an editorial published earlier in the paper.
I read your recent article, “Legislators Warn of Big Spending” (June 4) and the accompanying editorial “Remember What Legislators Did in 2013 ...” with disbelief.
Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen claimed at his town meeting, and the editorial repeated without any basic fact-checking, that there is a $2.5 billion budget deficit facing the state of Minnesota.
On the other hand, perhaps I should not be surprised that a legislator like Rep. Gruenhagen, who in 2011 (after shutting down state government) voted to borrow over $2 billion from our schools and issue $700 million in bonds to cover one-time expenses in order to “balance” the budget should not be trusted to do budget math correctly.
The facts are these: The 2013-14 Legislature for the first time in over a decade balanced the budget in a structurally sound way without budget gimmicks. Where Rep.Gruenhagen gets his wild $2.5 billion number is beyond me.
Rather, there is a $600 million budget surplus next year. In addition, the Legislature added $150 million to the budget reserve. . . . .
The paper's explanation focuses on the "unsession" as not doing much, but we suspect that Speaker Thissen's party holding the reins of power might have something to do with the Glencoe Silver Lake schools, and other schools across Greater Minnesota, receiving more aid.
Photo: Speaker Paul Thissen. Via Star Tribune.
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Here's the email we received this morning at 12:27 a.m.:
That article was one of the stupidest articles I have read. If you would like to hear the truth about why the lack of a Tip Credit is regressive to the lowest paid workers, I would love the opportunity to buy you lunch, coffee, or a glass of wine.
Lest you think of me as some overly conservative lobbyist who wants to repress restaurant employees I testified numerous times before both Senate and House Committees that I thought the minimum wage should go to $10 an hour over 36 to 42 months. I was also quoted in trade publications, on radio, and in some small newspapers. I was criticized by other business lobbyists for my testimony.
Are you familiar with the TRDA (Tip Reporting Determination Act) and why it was instituted? So again if you would like to know why Governor Dayton's position might be evolving, join me and learn how regressive your thinking really is. I will be waiting to hear from you.
We'd prefer press releases and fact sheets over lunch, coffee, or a drink, since even though we're a poor country blogger, there's that ethics thing our journalist friends sometimes quibble about.
But the items he mentions are online. When he mentions the "TRDA (Tip Reporting Determination Act)," we assume that he's talking about the Tip Reporting Determination Agreement established in 1993 for which the IRS provides information here and here.
As for Mr. Rockler's testimony, we did find that he indeed appeared before committee hearings in the Minnesota Legislature. See search results for his name here. He has spoken about the omnibus liquor law,
According to that search, his most recent testimony on the minimum wages dates from the 2013 session.
On February 27, 2013, Rockler testified in the second batch of citiizens and lobbyists, both for and against raising the minimum wage before the Joint Committee of the Labor, Workplace, and Regulated Industries and the Select Committee on Living Wage Jobs.
While video is available only for the first batch of people testifying for and against raising the state minimum wage (see right-hand column with Related Video and Audio), Rockler's testimony begins at 2:37:46 in the audio of the full testimony.
Here's what Rockler said:
. . .Kenn Rockler, representing the Tavern Owners League of Minnesota and the Bowling Proprietors Association of Minnesota. I'll probably go little bit against some of my friends who have been testifying here in that my major issue is not the minimum wage. I don't think it would behoove us to go up too fast, too dramatically, but I'm here on behalf of the tip credit.
There's no question about it. You were passed out a chart--I'm not sure if everyone brought it tonight--but on the front page, it talks about the exact comparison between Minnesota and--I just happened to choose the entire Big Ten and the Dakotas, but as has been mentioned before, either 42 or 43 states have a tip credit.
I think the salient figure here is that Illinois, which is the highest salaried state with the exception of Minnesota, we are 46.5 percent higher on our tipped employees. What is "tip credit" by the way? I've gone around to the capitol probably spoken to just about a hundred legislators over the past six weeks, and you know you have a lot of different issues that you have to learn.
I will say this: I think less than one out of every ten people really understand where the tip credit comes from and what it's all about. Tip credit is the realization that while only the servers get a direct tip from the customers, that's it's actual a team effort, the old "Ther'es no 'I' in team." With that realization, the federal government and 43 states allow an employer to make up the difference between the minimum wage with the amount of tips that are earned at that point by the server.
Somebody said that tips aren't a wage. I just heard that before. Actually tips are a wage. Minnesota considers them a wage in every way possible. They charge Social Security, FICA, payroll [taxes]. It's only not considered a wage when it comes to the minimum --the wage act at this point.
The next page I'd like you to look at, if you've got the packet, is there's three pages in there that have the IRS Tax Reporting Determination Act in there. The debate is over as to whether or not who the highest paid employees are in a restaurant. Who won that debate? The IRS.Twenty-five years ago, they put in standards that are in there in those three pages asnd what they said was, "we know that there's a lot of money being made in tips; therefore, every restaurant is going to have to do the following.
They have to report their gross sales, their charge sales, the gross tips declared and the charge tips declared, and if for some reason the restaurant has less than eight percent of their gross sales declared as tips, then it's up to the owners to allocate those tips and the minutae is in that three page system right there.
What does that mean? How does that relate to wages? Well, if in fact a server says, well, I don't make eight percent of my gross sales [in tips], he or she is allowed to say, well, I'd like to have an IRS audit. To the best of my knowledge, 25 years, 50 states and the District of Columbia, no server has ever asked for an audit.
Somebody might be aware of it--and by the way, we want our servers not to make $10 an hour or $20 an hour. We want them to make $50 dollars an hour. If you're coming there as customers, I think it'd be happier and serve you better if they're making $50 an hour than idf they're making $10 dollars an hour.
But the net result on this that by having the tip credit that we are doing right now, that I heard that Mr. [Dan] McElroy testify earlier, we are driving people from full service places where they make the most amount of money into fast casual and casual. I just went for the first time to a Panera Bread that was mentioned by Mr. Svensson here; I didn't realize that-- I tried to leave a tip--you are not allowed to leave a tip there.
Now it costs you a lot less to go there, they're very successful, they're the darlings of Wall Street right now, but when you raise the wages without giving a tip credit, you are driving people away from the highest paid jobs to jobs that are one-third or one-half of that amount.
Representative O'Neill asked, "What type of solution would we in the restaurant industry have?"
Well, mine's going to be a little more dramatic than anybody else here has talked about here, but I really truly believe that if my son or daughter were right now in the restaurant business working as a server, a bartender or a waitress, I believe that they would make more money with this proposition. And that's, let's do this. Let's have the tipped wage or the cash wage as it's known, in minnesota ;et's go to $4.50.
Some people will say, "You want to decrease the wages?" [Bluestem's note: current minimum wages and coming increases are listed here by the MN Dept of Labor and Industry] Well, I don't think it does decrease the earnings in most of the cases, because most of the time, tipped employees where they make their money is by the most amount of business that comes through.
Let's have the Minnesota exception in there. Let's have an idea that was actually proposed by two legislators from Woodbury a number of years ago and was supported by a bipartisan group, both Democrats and Republicans. Let's not allow that tipped wage in Minnesota unless the tipped server every single pay period makes at least $11 an hour.
I'm not sure if anybody has an objection to that system but I haven't been able to figure out a logic reason why and I know that the people in the back of the house would benefit from that and they are truly the ones that we need to boost up....
[Representative Sheldon Johnson breaks in the tell Rockler he has one minute more].
Tricky subject. Hard to do . . . [He closes testimony]
On March 12, 2013, Rockler appeared before the Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection Finance and Policy. His testimony (audio only) begins at the 30:15 minute mark. This is the testimony where he talks about the compression of non-tipped staff's wages. At the 31:20 mark or so, he says:
But where are they going? Many of you go to Chiptotle, you go to Panera Bread, you go to Caribou Coffee..
He then mentions the tip credit again, while asking for the $4.50 tip-credit wage.
On April 29, the second engrossment of the Winkler bill came before the House Ways and Means Committee. Rockler testified (video available, testimony begins at the 17:55 minute point). Rockler introduces himself, then discusses the need for a two-tier wage, commending Bob Gunther's HF1225. He repeated the no-tipping-at-Panera-Bread story, and estimates that the restaurant industry will lose "somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 jobs" in the first year following the implementation of the minimum wage bill. He notes that in recognition ofthe coming changes, restaurants like Famous Dave's were going to fast casual. Watch the video, including his responses to questions.
Thus, in his testimony, there's only one sentence about wage compression for the lowest-paid workers. Perhap an more elaborate explanation shows up in the trade magazines he mentions, or the handouts the committee members received.
We note, too, that the Dayton boys were proposing a tip-credit wage of $7.25 for any tipped employee making $12 or more when tips are calculated. This is a more generous minimum wage for servers than what Rockler recommended in his 2013 testimony.
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