By not paying close attention to Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner Dave Frederickson's testimony, Ricardo Lopez conflates February's Pollinator Summit and separate special registration review of neonicotinoid insecticides in his Hot Dish Politics post, House GOP criticize Dayton's executive order on pollinator rules.
Lopez writes:
Agriculture Commissioner Dave Frederickson and some DFL legislators pushed back at Republican criticism that farmers and other agriculture operators were not included in the process. They said the administration invited GOP legislators to a February summit and that more than 400 public comments were received, including some from industry representatives.
Um, that's not quite what the ag commissioner said.
The first step was not August of 26 of this year, or the August 26 announcement of the Governor's Executive Order. The first step was actually taken back in 2013 when the legislature directed the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to develop best management practices to protect pollinators and to issue a report on the status of pollinators in Minnesota.
2013.
That was followed by the legislature again requesting that the Minnesota Department of Agriculture conduct the special registration review of neonicotinoid pesticides. The results of the special registry review and subsequent recommendations were then included in the directives outlined in the Governor's Executive Order.
These directives were based on discussions with stakeholders at the pollinator summit held in February and the special registration review process, including public comments included as part of the scoping document.
These public comments include a total of 444 responses, including five responses from ag industry representatives.
The executive order acknowledges the value of and the importance of agriculture in the state of Minnesota.
Watch the comments here:
Frederickson outlines two processes, one of which began long before the MDA Pollinator Summit. The summit was much more broad in its focus than just looking at neonics use.
As Lopez points out, the Republican legislators on the Ag Policy Committee were invited to the summit--and so were other stakeholders such as the Minnesota Corn Growers, the Soybean Growers, Farmers Union, co-ops such as CHS, and ag industry representatives, all of whom sent staff to the Summit. DFL legislators were also on the guest list.
But the comments Frederickson mentions don't come out of the Summit, as Lopez's copy implies. Indeed, the public comment period for the registry review scoping document closed in May 2014, many months before the February 2016 Pollinator Summit.
We had contacted Sam Fettig, Dayton's Press Secretary about the special registration review in an email 's statement unrelated to the Lopez article. Fettig's statement distinguished between the registry review and the pollinator summit:
“At the direction of the Minnesota Legislature, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture undertook an extensive, public process of research and review on the impact of neonicotinoids on pollinators, including a full and open public comment period. Further, the Department hosted a Pollinator Summit attended by Minnesota farmers, agriculture groups, and members of the public, to gather public input on pollinator policy. The Governor’s Executive Order followed that legislatively-mandated public process, and the Pollinator Summit, to ensure that the State of Minnesota leads by example on protecting Minnesota pollinators and the agriculture they support.”
At the direction of the Minnesota legislature and the Commissioner of Agriculture (PDF: 213.8 KB / 1 page), the MDA, together with partners at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the University of Minnesota, and the Board of Water and Soil Resources, determined the scope-of-work (the underlying criteria) necessary to conduct a special registration review of neonicotinoid insecticides for the State of Minnesota. The draft scoping document was prepared to guide the special registration review of neonicotinoid insecticides and to describe the process and criteria that will be used when conducting the review.
The MDA accepted public comments on the draft scoping document until May 2, 2014. At the close of the comment period, the MDA received 444 public comments. The MDA has created two documents to facilitate stakeholder review: Comments that were unique due to their content and comments that employed a common text. The two PDFs are:
The unique comments include material from Bayer CropScience (page 4); Minnesota Crop Production Retailers (page 35); Minnesota Agri-Growth Council (page 36); the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation (page 38) and Syngenta (page 69). Three commercial beekeepers--two from Greater Minnesota (Barrett and Eagle Bend) and an Iowa-based operation in bordering Howard County) also comment; they should be considered as part of agriculture.
Several DFL legislators sent a letter, but there's no comment from their Republican counterparts. Were Anderson and his colleagues simply asleep at the wheel--or too busy helping then-candidate Jeff Backer formulate talking points and name-calling about "metro" rural DFLers to actually weigh in on policy considerations?
But since the Strib can't be bothered to report accurately, we gather that it's more important for the paper to be able to tell readers, as J. Patrick Coolican does in today's Morning Hot Dish, that the hearing provides ". . .GOP with a nice wedge issue among ag and related outstate voters."
Only if we don't know about the basic timeline and facts of the legislatively-mandated review, and the media seems happy not to report them.
An area lawmaker is ripping Governor Mark Dayton over his ban of a pesticide that kills honey bees. Yesterday Representative Tim Miller of Prinsburg and members of the Minnesota House Agriculture Policy committee took part in an informational hearing to learn more about why Dayton issued an executive order to restrict the use of neonicotinoid pesticides on August 26th. He issued the order in hopes of reversing the decline of bee and other pollinator populations, but Miller says he did so without consulting or collaborating with farmers or agriculture stakeholders. ...
There's no "ban" on neonics (farmers and licensed applicators have to follow the instructions on the chemicals' label, including the bee box, Frederickson testified).
If the Ag Mafia was "blindsided" during a process that includes several opportunities for public comment and participation, we can only conclude that the DMV isn't doing a good job when testing vision at the time drivers' licenses are renewed.
Photo: Milker gives pet cat some milk direct from cow, Brandtjen Dairy Farm, Dakota County, Minnesota, 1939. Apparently, the ag industry lobbyists and operatives believe they have a special place in the barn, even these days, before the milk of policy is served at the table Dayton set for this discussion. Photo by Arthur Rothstein, FSA, via Library of Congress.
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Falk's letter to the editor was published in last week's Clara City Herald; in the Wednesday, September 7 edition of the small-town paper, Mike Thein, a supporter of freshman state representative Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg responds.
It's a mighty peculiar document, not just in terms of Thein's omission of the most vexing part of The Kipster's behavior (bumping into and pushing volunteers), but in Thein's invention of a false equivalence between physical aggression in a parade by a MN Jobs Coalition tracker and "negative ads and hate mailings" from the left-leaning Alliance For A Better Minnesota.
Thein writes in part (the paper isn't online):
Now here is the irony of Andrew's letter: Tim Miller has experienced the very same tactics and more from groups like Alliance for a Better Minnesota for years. By the way this is a DFL Super PAC! These types of groups have followed Tim Miller around for over two years and attacked him relentlessly in negative ads and hate mailings while supporting Andrew with praise.
While the progressive group did run cable, radio and online ads against MIller close to the 2014 election, we didn't recall the Alliance for a Better Minnesota Action Fund sending any "hate mailings" about Miller in 2014--or since. Until a week ago, Bluestem's world headquarters was located in Minnesota House District 17A.
We checked our recollections about ABM's independent expenditures in 2014 with the political fund's year end report for that year, and sure enough, the group's action fund didn't spend a dime on any kind of mailings in 2014. Nor has the PAC spent a dime on any kind of independent expenditures against Tim Miller so far in this cycle (2015 and 2016).
On the possibility that Mr. Thein might have gotten "issue" junk mail from ABM itself that berated Miller, we contacted ABM Executive Director Joe Davis to see if the group had sent this type of mail into the district. Davis replied:
Nope we haven't mailed anything negative on Tim Miller this cycle either, issue or otherwise. Thanks for checking!. . .
One has to wonder what group Thein imagines is relentlessly sending "hate mailings" to his mailbox for the last two years and more. Perhaps he can be specific in his next letter to the editor, including PAC reports filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.
In the meantime, the imaginary ABM hate mailings just aren't the same as a tracker who bumps into and pushes volunteers walking in a small town parade, and that leads us to the final point about independent political funds that Thein brings up on behalf of Miller:
. . . The difference is Tim Miller knows it's part of politics and our rights to free speech and expression. Even when mailers, tactics, or comments are hurtful to Representative Tim Miller he will defend their rights to say it.
The fact of the matter is Representative Tim Miller is a good, honorable man and someone I call a personal friend. . . .
That's certainly a different attitude about negative mail than what Miller's wife expressed in 2014. Moreover, Mrs. Miller linked the independent expenditure to Falk. Perish the thought that Miller and other Republican candidates might want to have it both ways about attack pieces from PACs.
And Thein's final defense raises the question: does Miller himself think that physical aggression in parades is acceptable behavior? Or is it simply the phantom ABM Action Fund "hate mailings" that he's willing to defend?
Photo: Mike Thein, who sees nothing wrong with a tracker getting physical with an opponent's supporters in a parade. Does his personal friend Tim Miller agree? Photo via Facebook.
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Because of the effects on bees and other pollinators, which of the following should the legislature enact to restrict the use of pesticides containing neonicotinoids?
A) Totally ban the use of neonicotinoids for home and agriculture use 50.30% (2572)
B) Ban the use of neonicotinoids at the consumer level (home use and pretreating plants purchased for the home), while still allowing neonicotinoids to be used for agriculture purposes by those who are trained in their use 22.65% (1,158)
C) Maintain the current law requiring the proper labeling of neonicotinoid use on plants, but do not regulate the use of specific insecticides or products 14.73% (753)
D) Undecided/No opinion 12.32% (630)
We're talking the State Fair here, not a dirty hippie convention, so it's astonishing that so many poll takers at the Great Minnesota Get Together are willing to entertain complete or partial bans on neonic use in the North Star State.
Indeed, that slightly over half of those answering the question favor a complete ban of neonics puts the Ag Mafia's whining about Governor Mark's executive order in an entirely different light. Using the findings of a pollinators summit and a subsequent scientific study, the administration came to a more moderate conclusion and policy.
We learned today that the House Ag Policy committee plans an "Informational Hearing" on Tuesday, September 13 on Dayton's executive order. While the committee has posted the order and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's summary of the study, it hasn't posted the list of those who attended the pollinators summit last February. The list of participants is included at the end of the MDA Pollinators Summit Outcomes report. Representatives from the Minnesota Corn Growers, Farm Bureau and other farm groups were there.
Perhaps this absence will make it easier for the Ag Mafia to whine about not being consulted about the policy making. If some members of the ag community couldn't bother to attend the summit, why are they to be afforded a special place at the table outside of the process? If they did attend, what's the basis of the claim that ag wasn't in the loop?
Or are they simply more equal than the rest of the stakeholders in pollinator policy?
For more information, check out our earlier posts:
Image: A poster about native bees. Bee City posts: "This poster from the Pollinator Partnership is one our best teaching tools. It illustrates some of the 4000 species of native bees in the United States."
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Joseph Wang, CEO of the North American High Speed Group, tells Heather Carlson at the Rochester Post Bulletin that he was "shocked" that America had no high speed rail system when he moved to the United State in 1991.
Bluestem thinks the bigger shocker here is Wang's claim that the Chinese high-speed rail system was built and operational when he lived in China until 1991.
In an interview, Wang said he understands that many Americans are skeptical of high-speed rail. But he said he has seen firsthand the benefit of such projects. Wang was born in Taizhou, China. He worked for China National Technical Import and Export Corp., overseeing construction of massive infrastructure projects financed with foreign dollars. He also did a lot of traveling in China, Japan and Taiwan and saw the impact high-speed rail projects had a region.
"I saw how high-speed rail changed the human beings' lives. How high-speed rail improved the economy and created jobs," he said.
Wang moved to the U.S. in 1991 and became a U.S. citizen. He said he was shocked when he moved to America that there was no high-speed rail. [emphasis added]
That's a charming tale. But Bluestem struggles to understand how Wang could have been shocked at the absence of high-speed rail in the United States when at the time, high-speed rail in the People's Republic of China was only a glimmer in party officials' eyes.
Policy planners debated the necessity and economic viability of high-speed rail service. Supporters argued that high-speed rail would boost future economic growth. Opponents noted that high-speed rail in other countries were expensive and mostly unprofitable[citation needed]. Overcrowding on existing rail lines, they said, could be solved by expanding capacity through higher speed and frequency of service. In 1995, Premier Li Peng announced that preparatory work on the Beijing Shanghai HSR would begin in the 9th Five Year Plan (1996–2000), but construction was not scheduled until the first decade of the 21st century.
According to the entry, high-speed rail was launched in China in 2007. What Wang saw there in 1991 is anyone's guess, but whatever he and Carlson were smoking during that interview, they should learn to share.
The 2007 date is mentioned in Tom Zoellner's une 14, 2016 article in Foreign Affairs, China's High-Speed Rail Diplomacy. It's an interesting read, and includes news of the American regulation ( "a federal mandate that high-speed rail train sets must be manufactured domestically") that shut down the Xpress West proect from Vegas to Southern California. (North American High Speed Rail once claimed to be negotiating to operate that line).
Taiwan's high speed rail line dates from the same year. Time reported in A Brief History of High-Speed Rail that Japan built its first bullet train for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; by 2009, 1,500 miles of high speed rail lines had been built on the island nation. The article noted:
The sobering expense of high-speed train travel has tempered the expectations of even the strongest rail advocates. "It sounds like a lot of money to Americans, but it's really just a start," James P. RePass of the National Corridors Initiative told the Washington Post. Some critics also predict a massive price tag to operate new rail lines, pointing to Amtrak's perennial shortfalls, and a proposed link between Anaheim and Las Vegas (in the home state of Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid) sparked outrage and derision among many Republicans.
In the seven years since, little headway has been made.
There also exists the strong possibility of a political backlash to the idea of Chinese-financed high-speed rail projects. In 2005, fears of growing Chinese influence—stoked by U.S. politicians and pundits—helped doom a bid by CNOOC, a Chinese firm, to acquire the U.S. oil producer Unocal. Today, anti-Chinese sentiment is running even higher than it was then, thanks in no small part the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who regularly berates Washington elites for not taking a tougher line on Beijing. And critics of Chinese involvement in U.S. rail will no doubt exploit public concerns over safety. In 2011, a malfunctioning signal box caused the collision of two Chinese-built high-speed rail trains near the city of Wenzhou, killing 40 and injuring almost 200 more. The Chinese government moved to squelch criticism, even though investigations found that the rail line had been built hastily with substandard materials amid an atmosphere of official corruption.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an arm of the Treasury Department designed to protect the nation from financial threats to its national security, would presumably review any large-scale involvement by Beijing in a critical piece of U.S. infrastructure. But the CFIUS approval process is somewhat opaque, and the committee’s decisions can apparently be swayed by high-priced lobbyists. When asked about their review process, a U.S. Treasury spokesman responded in email that the committee “does not comment on information relating to specific CFIUS cases, including whether or not certain parties have filed notices for review.”
Details, details.
Whatever the case, Bluestem thinks it's safe to bet that Wang, North American High Speed Rail Group's strategic communicator Wend Meadley and the rest of the gang are full capable of building the high speed rail that flourished in China and Taiwan over 25 years ago.
Perhaps they'll offer Mayor Brede a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge next or market vaporware to the DMC.
Photo: Maybe Wang was thinking of "theAsia Express steam locomotive, which operated commercially from 1934 to 1943 in Manchuria could reach 130 km/h (81 mph) and was one of the fastest trains in Asia" (Amtrak'sAcela Express on the east coast can reach 150 mph). Photo credits: This photographic image was published before December 31st 1956, or photographed before 1946, under the jurisdiction of the Government of Japan. Thus this photographic image is considered to be public domain according to article 23 of old copyright law of Japan (English translation) and article 2 of supplemental provision of copyright law of Japan.
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An invitation will be on its way to Gov. Mark Dayton to tour the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton.
Rep. Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, is asking the governor to tour the shuttered prison after hearing recent news reports that the governor is opposed to purchasing the facility.
Miller said he is particularly concerned about a statement attributed to the governor in news reports in March. Dayton expressed concerns at the time that the privately owned prison needed rehabilitation.
Bluestem thinks it's encouraging that Representative Miller has noticed that Dayton isn't interested in purchasing the prison and hasn't been since his chief of staff met with CCA lobbyist(s) at their request sometime before the March 23 press conference.
Miller had nearly the whole session to bring up his objections to the governor's office, but waits until now to run to the West Central Tribune with his concerns. You'd think he'd get this work done during the session, but we suppose that's too old school for Miller and the rest of his caucus.
But Miller still told the public that some deal was in the works throughout the summer. After all, back at the beginning of July, the first-term Prinsburg Republican lawmaker was telling Appleton residents that a $99 million offer to sell was on the table.
Miller said the opposition continued to ignore the fact that the corporation had offered the state an option to purchase or lease to own, and that the state would have operated the prison with union employees.
Corrections Corporation of America had offered to lease the facility for $6 million to $8 million a year, and to sell it for $99 million. The lease payments could be used toward the purchase price, according to Miller.
Appleton attorney Brian Wojtalewicz questioned the $99 million purchase price when Corrections Corporation of America is paying property taxes based on a $15 million value. Miller said that's the offer the corporation put on the table. Negotiations between the state and the company are not in the Legislature's hands.
Miller said he is hoping Gov. Dayton will take advantage of either of two upcoming visits to the area to tour the facility. The governor be in the Watson and Montevideo area for the Governor's Pheasant Opener on Oct. 15. The governor is also visiting all 87 counties in coming months.
What other needs that the legislature didn't get around to resolving during the session does the King of Minnesota want to introduce into the governor's calendar?
Dayton's press secretary, Sam Fettig, said Friday that the governor's focus, along with Department of Corrections Commissioner Tom Roy, has been "to resolve our prison overcrowding with existing facilities, but it is a strategy which can be reviewed by the next Legislature."
Dawdling over approving untested blaze pink for deer hunters, fretting about where transgender people pee and other such time-suckers during session has its consequences.
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Wait for coming news. There never was a plan for light rail. It was all an excuse.
Screenshot above.
Bluestem thinks Tim might need to get out of Prinsburg once in a while, as entirely friendly and pleasant the conservative small city on Highway 7 is (we're not being sarcastic--it's a genuinely friendly place).
We thought of this post today when a press release from Senator Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, arrived in our inbox:
GOP killed road and bridge funding across the state because they wouldn’t let metro counties pay for its own transit.
The South West Light Rail Transit (SWLRT) project has been subjected to willful disinformation by those who oppose transit categorically. The false arguments about the legislative process allow Republicans to obscure the truth and their shaky opposition. We need to secure a percentage of SWLRT funding to allow for a nearly $1 billion federal contribution, funding that has already been paid by Minnesotans in the form of federal taxes. The deadline to access that money is rapidly approaching and if our elected leaders delay we will miss the deadline, and the funds are sent to another project. Here are the facts:
FACT: I have authored legislation in multiple bienniums for full funding for SWLRT. (SF 312 introduced on 1/26/15, SF 2491 introduced on 3/10/14, SF 338 introduced on 2/7/13, SF 1391 introduced on 5/15/11, & SF 2348 introduced on 2/4/10)
FACT: Legislation for full funding has been presented to the Senate Transportation Committee on at least three separate occasions during this current four-year term alone: (SF 312 was heard on 4/10/15, SF 2491 was heard on 3/24/14, and SF 338 was heard on 2/27/13).
FACT: Individual transportation, transit, and bonding projects are voted on as an omnibus package, not individually in committee. This practice occurs routinely with GOP proposals, many of which this year were not even ready for implementation. SWLRT language was contained in the 2016 Dibble/Kelly omnibus transportation bill that fell apart when House leadership refused to move it forward.
FACT: Speaker Daudt agreed to include metro transit funding language in the bonding bill. The bill he sent from the House did NOT have the agreed language in it. He reneged on his word.
FACT: The Senate restored the language to the bonding bill, which passed off the Senate floor, supported by 19 Senate Republicans, thus containing the provision to allow metro units of governments to fund their own transportation projects. This is an ability the rest of the state already has. That bonding bill was then delivered to the Minnesota House of Representatives where Speaker Daudt received it but decided to adjourn rather than let metro counties pay for its own transit, thereby killing road and bridge funding across the state. See House Chief Clerk log, May 22, 2016, bill received 11:54 pm, House adjourned 11:56 pm. See also, attached screen shots of House final moments.
FACT: As recently as early summer, Speaker Daudt was supportive of allowing local counties to fill the gap of funding for the transit project. Source: “Special session sought for bonding bill” By Carolyn Lange of the West Central Tribune on May 26, 2016.
The SWLRT project is too important for major business, numerous communities, and our growing economy to continue playing these tired political games. I am glad that the Governor has convened a meeting with stakeholders to explore options on getting this important regional project back on schedule. I remain optimistic that, despite Republican obstructionism, this project can succeed and Minnesota will be one step closer to a truly 21st century transportation system.
Some Republicans might be claiming that bills for the Southwest LRT might not have been heard, but only Tim Miller believes that there was never a plan for the commuter line at all.
All this stuff? Ask Rep. Miller why he thinks the local leaders and his colleagues were talking about a plan that didn't exist. Perhaps he was recalling a Seinfeld episode.
On the other hand, he's a bit more grounded than his friend who comments about the discussion:
Hale MeserowMinnesota is a swamp of liberal foolishness polluted by rising Somali Muslim jihadism. That's why I escaped to America.
Okay then.
Screengrab: Rep. Miller shares a link from Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, and the notion that the plan to extend the Green Line into the southwestern suburbs never existed.
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Jim NashMy great grandparents did this in 1905 when they arrived at Ellis Island from Norway. Norwegian citizens one day American citizens the next. Invested into the community, jobs, voters, the whole shebang.
"This" referenced The Draz's headnote:
And...most importantly, they pledged their loyalty to the United States of America and its citizens.
In fact, that flash citizenship process isn't quite how it happened.
Naturalization is the process by which an alien becomes an American citizen. It is a voluntary act; naturalization is not required. Of the foreign-born persons listed on the 1890 through 1930 censuses, 25 percent had not become naturalized or filed their "first papers. . . .
General Rule: The Two-Step Process
Congress passed the first law regulating naturalization in 1790 (1 Stat. 103). As a general rule, naturalization was a two-step process that took a minimum of 5 years.After residing in the United States for 2 years, an alien could file a "declaration of intent" (so-called "first papers") to become a citizen. After 3 additional years, the alien could "petition for naturalization." After the petition was granted, a certificate of citizenship was issued to the alien. These two steps did not have to take place in the same court. As a general rule, the "declaration of intent" generally contains more genealogically useful information than the "petition." The "declaration" may include the alien's month and year (or possibly the exact date) of immigration into the United States.
There were some exceptions: "derivative" citizenship granted to wives and minor children of naturalized men; an alien woman who married a U.S. citizen between 1790 to 1922 automatically became a citizen; 1824 to 1906, minor aliens who had lived in the United States 5 years before their 23rd birthday could file both their declarations and petitions at the same time; and exceptions granted to veterans that allow a person to shorten the residency period by as much as four years.
Throughout our nation's history, foreign-born men and women have come to the United States, taken the Oath of Allegiance to become naturalized citizens, and contributed greatly to their new communities and country. The Oath of Allegiance has led to American citizenship for more than 220 years.
Since the first naturalization law in 1790, applicants for naturalization have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. Five years later the Naturalization Act of 1795 required an applicant to declare an intention (commitment) to become a U.S. citizen before filing a Petition for Naturalization. In the declaration of intention the applicant would indicate his understanding that upon naturalization he would take an oath of allegiance to the United States and renounce (give up) any allegiance to a foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty. Applicants born with a hereditary title also had to renounce their title or order of nobility.
It's not something that happened just as one got off the boat, as Representative Nash jokes--with an instant transformation from being Norwegian to being an American.
One curious side note about the Minnesota state constitution: both Representative Nash's Norwegian citizen ancestors (arriving in 1905) and our editor's own grandhttp://www.mnhs.org/library/constitution/father Sorensen (1912) missed the chance for completely legal non-citizen voting.
From 1857 until 1896, the Minnesota state constitution allowed "White persons [male] of foreign birth, who shall have declared their intentions to become citizens, conformably to the laws of the United States upon the subject of naturalization" to exercise the right to vote before becoming citizens. This was in both the original Democratic and Republican versions of the document.
Photo: The Oscar II, upon which our editor's Danish grandfather reached America on May 1, 1912. It took him a few years to become a citizen.
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Answering a question about MNSure, Minnesota's health insurance exchange for those who don't receive affordable health care insurance from their employers or don't qualify for Medical Assistance/MinnesotaCare, Andrew Lang, the endorsed Republican candidate for state senate district 17 told listeners he couldn't afford MNSure.
Lang said:
. . .I've talked to a lot of people door-to-door, and what they're always saying, that's one of their big main concerns is health care has become so expensive, I can't afford it.
I know for myself personally, I can't afford the MNSure program. It would . . . (laughs) It's as much as my mortgage payment. The deductibles are outrageous. I can't afford it. There's no way I can go with it.
Here's the clip:
The cry to the heavens about expensive health care insurance came during a Kandiyohi County Fair forum earlier this month. One can listen to the whole debate here (along with those for the Minnesota House candidates for 17A and 17B).
We grew worried that Andrew Lang and his family might become homeless from having to pay for both "MNSure" and that mortgage, but further investigation revealed that Lang, who works as Supervisor of Parks for Renville County, receives health insurance benefits from his employer (Lang's wife also works for the county). A friend who works in a non-union supervisory position in the county said that the employer-provided insurance for "management" is very good.
One has to wonder if Renville County supervisors' insurance is close to AFSCME union members working for the county receive under their contracts, negotiated by Council 65. We dipped into a few of those for Renville County workers and found this language for health insurance benefits across the county:
Bluestem is all for members of all branches of the military--including the National Guard--receiving quality health care insurance. Our friends who serve are ready to make to ultimate sacrifice--and short of that, spend months away from their families and friends. Health care is the least we owe them.
While county employees aren't asked to make the same sacrifice as those serving in the armed forces, those we know work hard and take pride in helping their communities, so we don't begrudge them the benefits they receive. Indeed, we don't like the race to the bottom that's happened to private sector workers' benefits that in part triggered the need for health care reform.
What we don't have sympathy for is a wannabe lawmaker copping fake empathy about the cost of insurance. Lang should be honest about his own circumstances.
The West Central Tribune reported that the forum "drew a sparse crowd at the fair but was broadcast on KWLM." Let's hope those listening or downloading the audio online apply critical thinking tools to Lang's "feels" about the cost of policies obtainable from private insurance companies in the MNSure exchange.
Photos: Andrew Lang, via the Republican Party of Minnesota (top); screengrab from one of the AFSCME Council 65 contracts with Renville County (bottom)
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Are negotiations underway between the owner, Corrections Corporation of America and the State of Minnesota? How much is the closed Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton worth?
The answer to the first question appears to be no, while finding the answer to the second is more complex--and CCA's current price tag may butt against a little-known state law passed in 2014.
UPDATE August 19: About 20 minutes after this post was published, the West Central Tribune published Forum Communications political reporter Don Davis' article, Dayton not interested in Appleton prison purchase. [end update]
Rumors of negotiations
Earlier this summer, Representative Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, told a town hall meeting in Appleton that CCA lobbyists met with the governor's office and made an offer to lease the Prairie Correctional Facility "for $6 million to $8 million a year, and to sell it for $99 million. The lease payments could be used toward the purchase price, according to Miller," Tom Cherveny reported in the West Central Tribune.
Miller said the opposition continued to ignore the fact that the corporation had offered the state an option to purchase or lease to own, and that the state would have operated the prison with union employees.
Corrections Corporation of America had offered to lease the facility for $6 million to $8 million a year, and to sell it for $99 million. The lease payments could be used toward the purchase price, according to Miller.
Appleton attorney Brian Wojtalewicz questioned the $99 million purchase price when Corrections Corporation of America is paying property taxes based on a $15 million value. Miller said that's the offer the corporation put on the table. Negotiations between the state and the company are not in the Legislature's hands.
While there was opposition to the prison legislation, Miller said there was also some progress. There was sentiment in the Senate in favor of purchasing the facility. And, the governor's office had met with lobbyists for Corrections Corporation of America to discuss the offer, he said.
The article--verified as accurate by two acquaintances who attended the town hall--raised a series of basic questions about the offer. With yesterday's announcement by the federal government that it will be phasing out private prisons, the notion of purchasing the prison was back in the West Central Tribune. Veteran reporter Carolyn Lange writes in Lawmakers speculate price of Appleton prison could drop with federal phase-out of private facilities:
News Thursday that the federal government intends to phase out use of privately owned prisons has renewed questions about the future of the privately owned prison in Appleton.
During the last year Corrections Corporation of America and officials from Appleton and Swift County launched a campaign to persuade the state to lease—or buy—the prison to ease overcrowded state prisons.
That proposal was opposed by Gov. Mark Dayton and a variety of political, religious and community groups who oppose for-profit prisons.
But there's speculation now that the Appleton prison may be available at a bargain price after CCA's stock prices plunged about 35 percent a few hours after the announcement by the Department of Justice.
The action by the federal government will likely put "downward pressure" on the price of the Appleton prison, said Sen. Lyle Koenen, DFL-Clara City.
"That puts us in a good negotiating position," said Rep. Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg.
Oh? In the earlier article, Miller asserted that the legislature had no role in negotiations, so it looks like Miller is indulging his proclivity for wanting to have things any number of ways depending on the audience and situation (more on that with regard to the prison in a bit).
Some basic questions (and answers) about "the offer"
Earlier, Bluestem had attempted to contact the governor's office, two state agencies, the Chief Fiscal Analyst of the Minnesota House Fiscal Analysis Department, a CCA staff lobbyist and contract lobbyists while consulting other sources in an attempt to learn more about the offer mentioned in the first article (and reported again in Thursday's article).
Our questions were basic in reporting terms, looking for the when of the meeting with the governor's office, the who of those attending the meeting, the how this offer was calculated and how it was conveyed (written or oral) and the like.
While the CCA lobbyists did not answer emails or voice messages, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Administration (which manages government property) both were unaware that an offer was on the table.
The office of senator Ron Latz, who convened the prison population task force, was not aware of the offer.
According to administration Press Secretary and Senior Communications Advisor Matt Swenson, Dayton's chief of staff Jamie Tincher met with a CCA lobbyist (or lobbyists) at their request. While Swenson offered few details about the meeting, it concurs with Minnesota Public Radio's Brian Bakst reporting in Dayton sounds off on prison, PolyMet, MNsure and more:
Reopening a western Minnesota prison. In no uncertain terms, the governor said he would veto a bill with traction in the House to reopen a private prison in western Minnesota under some level of state control.
“I’m told they want $100 million to buy it. Then we have to rehab it and operate it. Hugely expensive. And I certainly don’t support this private corporation being authorized or leasing the facility to them or paying to have them to come back and do it with all the problems they brought before,” Dayton said.
According to Swenson, Dayton's knowledge of the $100 million price tag comes from this single meeting with Tincher.
While advocates for reopening the prison took this press conference statement as a hopeful sign, a review of the press conference footage (unavailable online, as it was removed with other press conference footage that was found to be non-compliant with the state's Americans with Disabilities Act [ADA] policy) reveals that Bakst's account is accurate--and Dayton doesn't seem particularly happy with the added expenses that would follow a hypothetical purchase.
We also contacted nonpartisan House staffer Bill Marx,the Chief Fiscal Analyst of the Minnesota House Fiscal Analysis Department , who responded in two emails. Bluestem received the first on July 15:
The bill that had a hearing in the House and was moved to the Ways and Means Committee (HF 3223) directed the state to rent the Appleton facility. So the fiscal note on that bill did not address the value of the facility. The fiscal note is attached - there may be items of interest.
Here's the fiscal note for HF 3223, which only addressed the cost of leasing and operating the Prairie Correctional Facility:
Then the House Public Safety portion of the Supplemental Appropriations bill that went to the Supplemental Budget bill conference committee. contained language (copied below) that directed the commissioner of corrections to negotiate a contract to purchase or lease to own the facility. That language did not become law. I am not aware of any estimate that we had for the cost of purchasing the facility. Our fiscal analyst who works with Public Safety issues is not in the office today. . . .
The second email from was received on July 21:
I have talked with several more legislative staff about the value of the Appleton prison.
The taxable market value is $14 million, as you stated.
Our fiscal analyst who works with Public Safety issues says he heard a $90 million number at one time but has seen no documentation of that and only heard the number once. He says he is aware of no discussion of what the state might pay if the state purchased the facility.
If the prison were operating the taxable value might be considerable higher than $14 million. Do you have any way of getting county tax information from a time when the prison was operating?
When reviewed in tandem with the Department of Corrections and the Administrative Services being unaware of any offer, it appears that no active negotiations are underway, however pro-prison folks might spin it.
How much is that prison in the window?
A review of available sources about the value of the prison while it was operating suggests that $99 million or $100 million may be a steep price for the facility. According to bipartisan legislation passed in 2014 and signed by the governor, no state agency (with the exceptions of the DNR, MNDOT and BWSR), the University of Minnesota and MnSCU may pay not over ten percent of the appraised value of real property. Assessed, appraised and "carrying value" are not equivalent terms.
The highest assessed value that we were able to find in news reports is based on Swift County tax information that was challenged by CCA. In 2009, the Morris Sun Tribune reported in Appeal likely on valuation of Appleton prison:
A $20 million difference of opinion in the market value of a privately owned prison in Appleton could end up in court.
The Swift County assessor set the 2009 value of the property at $42.9 million.
A representative of the Corrections Corporation of America told the Swift County Board of Appeal and Equalization on Tuesday the property should be valued at $23.7 million.
The board, which is comprised of the members of the regular Board of Commissioners, denied a request to lower the property values. . . .
Unlike residential property values that are set each year, Swift County and the prison have agreed to go through the complicated process every three years to establish a three-year schedule for the valuations.
During the last round in 2006, the prison filed an appeal in court and then the two sides negotiated an agreement, said Giese. The county spent about $5,000 in legal fees.
The commissioners are hoping a similar smooth scenario takes place this time.
In 2003, a different approach was used. At that time, each entity hired appraisers and attorneys and negotiated an agreement without court intervention.
Ironically, that method cost the county about $125,000 in legal fees.
Giese said it's actually easier to negotiate an agreement once an appeal has been filed in court, than doing it outside the boundaries of the court. Also, he said, when an agreement is negotiated during a court appeal, the settlement is binding.
In 2006 the property value of the prison was set at $24 million. In 2007 it was $28 million and in 2008 it was set at $32 million.
Although prison populations are decreasing and the prison is currently at 55 percent capacity, during the last three years it's been at about 98 percent capacity, said Giese. That historical data was used to determine the 2009 rate.
In short, when the prison was operating at near-capacity, it was assessed at $42.9 million, though CCA thought it was worth quite a bit less. An anti-privatization website created by the Private Corrections Working Group, includes subsequent news coverage in its Minnesota Hall of Shame page (we have broken the copy into block paragraphs to make it more readable, but have not changed the content)
June 21, 2012 West Central Tribune
The market value of the privately owned Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton — its prison beds empty for nearly 2½ years — has been reduced by $7.5 million to a new value of $14 million.The reduction was approved Tuesday night by the Swift County Board of Equalization.
But even that large reduction may not be enough to prevent the prison’s owner, Corrections Corporation of America, from seeking even greater tax relief by means of an appeal to the state. “They left, we hope, content enough not to appeal to the state board of equalization,” said Swift County Auditor Byron Giese. Assistant County Assessor Wayne Knutson had said the prison property should be valued at $22.5 million.
The Corrections Corporation of America said it should be valued at $10 million.[bold added] The Swift County Board of Equalization members agreed that the value of the empty prison should be reduced and members compromised with a market value of $14 million. It’s not known if Corrections Corporation of America will accept that $14 million valuation or if it will stage another appeal.
The $14 million valuation is a far cry from the $42.9 million the county assessor valued the property at in 2010. That rate was also later reduced during a court appeal and binding negotiation — a process in which the county and Corrections Corporation of America has engaged ever since the 1,600-bed prison opened in 2001. “They have appealed every single time,” said Giese.
March 17, 2010 West Central Tribune
A tentative three-year tax agreement reached with the Corrections Corporation of America will mean lost revenues for Swift County, especially in 2011. Property taxes will likely increase to make up for a decrease in revenue that the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton had generated in the past, said Swift County Auditor Byron Giese.
The prison, which closed in February, had appealed its $42.9 million valuation last fall, triggering a series of negotiation sessions. Following a closed meeting Tuesday, the Swift County Board of Commissioners approved a three-year deal that assumes the prison will remain empty in 2011 and hopeful that it will reopen in 2012, said Giese.
The first part of the agreement includes a reduction in the 2009 valuation from $42.9 million to $32 million for the 2010 payable taxes. That translates into a loss of $50,000 in tax revenue to the county this year, which Giese said will have to come out of the county budget. “It’s something we have to deal with. It’s not insurmountable,” he said.
Harder hit is the city of Appleton that will see $250,000 less in revenue. The Lac qui Parle Valley School District will have a decrease of $40,000 because of the lowered valuation of the prison, and the state will get $60,000 less Giese, said. The 2010 valuation, for taxes payable in 2011, will be lowered to $17.5 million.
The financial impact on tax revenues for the local entities hadn’t been calculated with that low valuation. “Everyone will have to live with it and move forward,” Giese said. He said property taxes may have to increase 3 to 4 percent on each parcel to make up for the lost prison revenue: “Local taxpayers will pay more.”
In the final phase of the three-year plan, the 2011 valuation for taxes payable in 2012 would increase to $21.5 million. “We’re anticipating that, hopefully, it’ll be open again,” said Giese, explaining why the valuation is scheduled to increase at that time. Corrections Corporation of America, which has other empty prisons in the system, has assured the county that reopening the Appleton prison is their number one priority.
“It’s not good for any of us to have this thing closed,” Giese said. The board did express concern, however, that if the prison opens its doors again in a few months with the lower valuation that the county “could look like we have egg on our face,” said Giese. “But it would be a good thing to have it back open.”
The tax plan was approved on a 4-1 vote, with Chairman Richard Hanson casting the lone no vote. Commissioners Gary Hendrickx, Joe Fox, Doug Anderson and Pete Peterson voted for the plan, which still must get final approval from Corrections Corporation of America and the courts.
Another concern with the closed prison is the effect it will have on the 2010 Census. Ten years ago the facility had 1,400 prisoners that counted toward the county’s population. The population of a community is a factor in obtaining such things as federal aid. Giese said if the prison opens and the population increases in the future, the county could appeal the census count.
The one bright spot financially for the county is that a $200,000 annual tax abatement that was part of the prison’s economic development incentive has expired after 10 years, said Giese.
The carrying cost of the prison in CCA's most recent annual report (2015) is $17,961,000 (F-20). Carrying value reflects the purchase price of property.
Why buy or lease?
Those who oppose re-opening the prison by and large look to sentencing and probation reform, as well as expansion of alternative programs like the Challenge Incarceration Program (CIP) to reduce Minnesota's prison population.
Those who seek to re-open the prison see incarceration as an economic development tool (jobs, jobs, jobs) as well as serving a need. Sometimes the narrative of Swift County as the bottom of the pack for unemployment got a bit counterfactual, as in Tom Cherveny's article, Economic tipping point triggers campaign for Appleton state prison:
With assistance from the Upper Minnesota Valley Regional Development Commission, the city of Appleton assembled these numbers a few years ago looking at the economic impact of the prison and its closing:
365 the number of jobs the prison once provided the regional economy
86 the number of lost jobs experienced directly in Appleton.
$13,760,000 The dollar value multiplier of what the loss of jobs meant annually in economic activity for the community.
$500,000 The amount of property taxes the facility pays to the city of Appleton. The taxes would be lost were the state to purchase the facility.
$800,000 The approximate total property taxes paid by the facility including the city, county and school district.
$50,000 The monthly utility bill the facility paid the city of Appleton when it was operating at full capacity.
$300,000 The amount of local government aid the city of Appleton lost annually when the prison closed. Inmates had been counted as part of the city's population in calculating LGA.
90 The number of students the local schools lost when the prison closed.
$586,620 The estimated loss in pupil aid that resulted with the loss of students.
"The Governor's Office is not leading on this issue, especially considering a commissioner has said that we have an overcrowded prison crisis. Months ago he proposed spending $140 million for new prison beds and that proposal was taken off the table after the Appleton prison was found to be a viable option. It's time for Governor Dayton to finally address this crisis by supporting the re-opening of the Prairie Correctional Facility and providing hundreds of good-paying union jobs to unemployed Swift County residents."
However, faced with other audiences, Miller changed his tune, championing criminal justice reform over jobs in his district, while seeming quite sincere about it. At a forum about sentencing reforms and the Appleton prison that was held by Miller's colleague Rep. Raymond Dehn, DFL-Minneapolis, the Prinsburg Republican said:
I totally hear what you’re saying about prison population reform, basically people who don’t belong in prison, and I agree. If someone doesn’t belong in prison, and not by my definition, but if people don’t belong in prison, I don’t want that to happen. If that means reducing the number and that means Appleton doesn’t open, then I’m 100% for it.
Here's the video clip of the moment, courtesy of The Uptake:
Funny how we don't hear that sort of talk out here in the district from Miller, but perhaps truth is a Foursquare app for the freshman legislator.
He does seem to stretched it a bit about those negotiations when talking to his constituents, so maybe his work with the Barn theater came in handy in North Minneapolis.
Photo: Tim Miller (left) tells participants in a North Minneapolis town hall that if the prison population can be reduced, he's 100 percent against reopening the private prison in Appleton, while Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley, looks on. Screenshot via The Uptake (above); the private prison in Appleton (below).
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Minnesota State Representative Peggy Bennett, R-Albert Lea, campaigns online under the slogan of "People Before Politics" and a public persona who will:
Listen carefully to your concerns and represent you reliably in the legislature
Engage in healthy debate and endeavor to find common goals and common ground
Be fair-minded in addressing constituent concerns, firm in standing for conservative principles
The piece equates the freedom to marry the person one loves with the ability to marry a German Shepherd, the notion that immigration reform would take Social Security away from those who paid into it, and other non sequiturs that would be comic, save for the fact that they're presented as "accurate."
Among Republican friends, Bennett shares what she thinks of her Democratic constituents (transcript of audio below as Bennett reads the list, while providing her own side commentary; Bluestem has placed the latter in bold). Her remarks begin with the reading of the list, so we're not sure how she introduced this loving (but definitely not-Letterman) portrait of the loyal opposition:
I vote Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I can even marry my German Shepherd.
Number 9 I vote Democrat because I believe oil companies profits are 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon 15% is not.
Number 8, I vote Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending money I earned than I would. Let me tell you, I heard that over and over again when I was sitting on the floor last year. You're not spending enough, we have a surplus, they would spend it all over time
Number 7, I vote Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
Number 6, I vote Democrat because I'm way to irresponsible to own a gun and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves, I'm also thankful that I have a 9-1-1 service that gets the police to your home in order to identify your body after a home invasion.
Number 5, I vote Democrat because I'm not concerned about billions of babies being aborted, so long as we can keep Death Row inmates alive and comfy.
Number 4, I vote Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free healthcare, education, and social security benefits and we should take away social security benefits from those who paid into it.
Number 3, I vote Democrat because businesses should not be allowed make profits for themselves, they need to break even and give the rest to away to the government for redistribution as the Democratic Party sees fit.
Number 2, I vote Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to re-write the constitution every few days to see the fringe groups who would never get their agenda's past the voters. And last but not least,
Number 1, I vote Democrat because I think it's better to take pay billions of dollars in oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own oil because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher, or fish here in America. We don't care about beetles, gophers, or fish in the oil countries, just as long as they're in America. So there ya go, the top ten reasons to Vote Democrat.
Here's the audio:
Perhaps Kurt Daudt can let Bennett know that Minnesota doesn't have a Death Row--or perhaps one shouldn't sweat the details when choosing to let hyper-partisanship all hang out.
Is it wise to mock Democrats in Minnesota House District 27A?
Revealing her sarcastically nasty partisan side might not be the wisest move for the retired elementary teacher and freshman state lawmaker, since the swing district includes a lot of Democratic voters. In 2014, US Senator Al Franken received 54.06 percent of the vote; Congressman Tim Walz earned 59.47 percent; Governor Dayton and Lt. Gov. Smith received a plurality of 49.84 percent, and so on.
On the other hand voters selected three Republican-endorsed candidates, including state Supreme Court Justice candidate Michelle MacDonald, Secretary of State wannabe Dan Severson and Bennett. Her first term incumbent opponent, Shannon Savick, stumbled badly in the race.
The district swung more heavily Democratic in the 2012 presidential year, election results reveal. President Barack Obama captured 55.37 percent of the vote, while United States Senator Amy Klobuchar and Walz crushed with 68.32 percent and 63.80 percent respectively. State senator Dan Sparks--on the ballot again this year--nabbed 67.00 percent of the vote, while Savick received 47.70 percent of the vote in the three-way race to defeat one-term incumbent Rich Murray.
The district has historically been a swing district, and in 2014 more than $377,000 in independent expenditures were reported for [and against] Bennett and DFLer Shannon Savick of Wells in the 10 months leading up to the election.
Photo: Peggy Bennett and her Shiloh Shepherd Coulter, who can read so don't write mean things online (Via Bennett campaign website, top); 2016 DFL opponent and community college dean Gary Schindler (via Austin Herald, bottom).
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I don't believe the governor had any intentions of calling a special session. I think he wanted [inaudible] without one, to portray us as we couldn't get our work done.
But he made some pretty irresponsible comments after the shooting in St. Paul or Minneapolis in which he pretty much labeled all law enforcement as racist. Did he come under a lot of heat? You can think what you want, but he made those statements and after our president did, we lost five police officers, and he's coming under a lot of pressure in my opinion it time to call a special session to take the eyes off that ball and move it somewhere else.
Here's the audio:
We're not sure whether the Clearwater County Republicans were serving tutti frutti at the ice cream social, but that's quite the theory. We're not sure we want what Green's having.
“Would this had happened if those passengers were white? I don’t think it would’ve,” Dayton said. “So I’m forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, [that] this kind of racism exists.”
After meeting two hours in private, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton; Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, D-Cook; and House Speaker Kurt Daudt, R-Crown, said they are near a deal to finish work that lawmakers failed to accomplish before their mandatory late-May adjournment date. . . .
The meeting came after Dayton and Daudt dined alone at the governor’s residence on July 5 to discuss what needed to be done.
So there you have it, gentle readers. If we are to accept Green's narrative, somehow the governor was planning his special session distraction with Daudt the day before Philando Castile was shot by a police officer.
That's a dish that melts like ice cream in July.
Daudt and Dayton met the day before Castile was murdered to talk about the special session. That meeting set the stage for the July 15 announcement, not the shooting.
Photos: Rep. Steve Green, an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation (top); the sign for the free ice cream social (below).
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Miller's actual history on education funding is a much less rosy story (more on this later in the post), and two of the photos on the postcard might be telling us more about Miller's priorities than the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses knows.
What were Tim Miller's photos really about?
Looking at the photos on the right of the card (image embedded below), Bluestem thought we'd seen them before and were puzzled why any graphic designer would place them on mail piece touting a lawmaker's education record.
Thanks to Kim Gorans (Gorans Farms) and George Rehm (Discovery Farms) for discussing with Torrey Westrom and me the challenges of animal ag here in WC MN. They did amazing research on water runoff.
The Discovery Farms Minnesota program is funded by grants provided by the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council, Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, and Minnesota Turkey Research and Promotion Council to the Minnesota Agricultural Water Resources Center (MAWRC). The Minnesota Department of Agriculture "provides Clean Water Funding for monitoring equipment and technical staff," according to the program's website, while the also has received a grant from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
Whatever the nature of the water runoff related to animal ag that the gentlemen discussed in this campaign photo, the photo doesn't illustrate Miller's alleged devotion to pre-K-12 and post-secondary education or providing more money for public education.
Here's the screengrab:
The second photo is likewise devoted to an ag topic, rather than education. On May 5, 2015, a photo of Representative Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, Miller, Governor Mark Dayton, and Representative Dave Baker was posted on the Miller campaign Facebook page with the following caption:
This photo was snapped at another non-education funding event, the GOP Rural Caucus's free turkey burger cookout at the height of Minnesota's 2015 avian flu pandemic. The free food was intended to make consumers confident that the nasty, turkey-destroying disease wasn't a threat to people who ate turkey.
The screengrab:
These photos aren't about education. They're about ag.
. . .this year we can win the Minnesota senate back and the house and senate can make the next two years the most miserable years in Governor Dayton’s life.
Lovely and generous vision of governing there, indeed.
Here's a photo of the front of the same postcard, with the name and photos changed, sent to voters in House District 11B, represented by freshman Jason Rarick, R-Pine City, who defeated incumbent DFLer Tim Faust in 2014:
In the 2015 legislative session, Tim Miller and his House Republican colleagues did not fight for $500 million in increased education funding. The Republican majority’s education finance bill that Tim Miller voted for did not even keep pace with inflation. Had Tim Miller had his way, it would have led to teacher layoffs and would have short-changed our schools and particularly our pre-schools.
At the end of the legislative session, Governor Dayton vetoed the education finance bill. He sent it back to the legislature stating that his approval required a real investment in our schools. Due to Tim Miller’s actions, we were forced to pay for a costly special legislative session; which brought us about a week away from a government shutdown. Governor Dayton fought for and won this increased funding in the special session education finance bill despite Tim Miller; not because of Tim Miller . . .
Just before the vote on the soon-to-be-vetoed bill, the Mankato Times reported:
Rep. Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, added an amendment (HF 1546) Student Physical Privacy Act, which passed by voice vote, to require students to use the bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms appropriate to their birth gender, following a recent Minnesota State High School League policy change.
Authored by Rep. Jennifer Loon (R- Eden Prairie) House File 844 would increase state funding for Early Learning and K-12 programs by $157 million – less than 1% over current levels – in order to accommodate House Republicans’ goal of lowering taxes by $2 billion. This is the lowest figure among two other proposals by the DFL led Senate and Governor Mark Dayton.
The Senate has proposed $350 million in new spending; Dayton has proposed an additional $695 million, most of which would be for his top priority of offering universal preschool for all 4-year-olds in the state. . . .
The DFL says that [the bill's] overall 1.2 percent increase to the state’s per-pupil funding formula is too small and doesn’t keep up with inflation. As a result, they say it will force schools to cut programs, increase class sizes and force the layoffs of teachers.
They also say that projections show that changes to Early Learning Scholarships contained in H.F. 844 would lead to a 41% decrease in the number of students being served by the program. The bill raises the state’s school funding formula by .6% and caps future funds aimed at students most at risk of falling behind in school.
With the date and content of an upcoming special session still unsettled, the Legislature and Gov. Mark Dayton did reveal significant agreement on the next Minnesota budget on Friday. . . .
The final bill is closer to the nearly $700 million in new money Dayton wanted than the $150 million House Republicans initially proposed.
“It’s worth it, $125 million for the extra few weeks,” said Sen. Charles Wiger, DFL-Maplewood, Senate Education Committee chair. “When you look at where the House started, I’m pleased. I admire the governor’s tenacity.”
More than half the new money, $350 million, will go toward increasing by 2 percent a year the per pupil funding formula schools use for general operations. The base per-student funding schools receive will grow from $5,831 this year to $6,067 in 2017. School officials said increasing that funding was among their top priorities this year. . . .
The final bill also includes several policy changes, including streamlining the process for licensing teachers. It does not include controversial changes to teacher seniority rules for layoffs or a requirement that transgender students use bathrooms based on their sex at birth. Republicans had pushed for those provisions.
The bathroom language was Miller's contribution, not the "historic" increase in funding. That came from Dayton and the DFL.
An omnibus education bill with $56 million in additional funding for E-12 education and no funding for higher education passed the House Monday, 84-46. Rep. Jim Knoblach (R-St. Cloud) sponsors HF2749, which he said will also serve as the overarching supplemental budget bill for the House.
With zero budget targets for E-12 and higher education, most of the bill’s funding comes from a provision allowing school districts to repay and refinance high-interest state “maximum effort” loans. The funding targets “critical needs” of school districts, including $16.8 million to address teacher shortages, said Rep. Jenifer Loon (R-Eden Prairie), who chairs the House Education Finance Committee.
Despite the bill’s funding for teacher workforce development, rural broadband and a variety of other programs, House leadership’s zero targets for education drew strong criticism by DFLers — as did several of the bill’s policy provisions.
Minnesota will spend more money on broadband access, preschool education and combating racial disparities under a supplemental budget signed Wednesday by Gov. Mark Dayton.
The budget adds $300 million in spending to Minnesota’s $42 billion two-year budget, which lawmakers passed in 2015.
Dayton and legislative Democrats had pushed hard for up to $700 million in new spending in the bill, while Republicans proposed no new spending. . . .
Are Republicans putting students first? Pushing for more funding for schools? For more pre-kindergarten programs? That would make a cat laugh.
Perhaps that's why the Coalition for Minnesota Business couldn't find a photo on Tim Miller's campaign Facebook page that illustrated that he was actually working for those priorities.
Voters will probably never know who paid CMB for this postcard
Aside from the legislator's name and three photos related to the freshman legislator, we're told it's the same junk mail the Coalition of Minnesota Businesses mailed praising Republican incumbents in competitive races around the state, according to our source. The "non-partisan" group didn't send any mailers praising DFLers who took the same votes on education funding bills signed by the governor in 2015 and 2016.
While the CMB does have a political action committee (PAC) and this piece includes the disclaimer that the piece is "Not authorized by any candidate or any candidate committee," the postcard will count as a "issue" communication since it doesn't tell us to vote for Representative Miller in the fall and it was sent by the non-profit "grassroots" organization, not the PAC.
This practice is completely legal under current state law, though Bluestem is betting few of our neighbors see this postcard as anything other than support for Miller's re-election. We just won't know where CMB gets its money for these postcards.
If 2014 is to be the model for this year's CMB PAC spending, the "grassroots" group's PAC will get a wallet erection beginning mid-month and continuing through the general election in November. The 2014 pre-primary report listed $171.97 cash on hand, with on the September 2014 pre-general report revealing $143,000.00 coming in from other business PACs and the House Republican Campaign Committee (HRCC). The HRCC contribution was $76,000.00 in in-kind polling data, which was very generous of the GOP caucus committee to give that sort of thing to a non-partisan group.
The October 2014 pre-general and the year-end filing reported showed that cash and in-kind giving to the committee jumped to $440,775.00 for the year--much to independent expenditures ($342,139.42).
As of the 2016 pre-primary report, the PAC has $280.65 cash on hand, unchanged from the May report.
Photos: Tim Miller, from his Facebook page (top); Miller and Torrey Westrom meeting with farmers in 2014 (middle); Same postcard template, customized for Jason Rarick.
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We've frequently written about one of the conspiracy theories that's a staple in the diet of fear on the right in parts of Minnesota: Agenda 21, and we're not the only one in Minnesota to call whatever on this malarky. Over four years ago, John Gilmore wrote in the Minnesota Conservatives post, Agenda 21: Because There's More Room For Crazy:
Thought hemp, raw milk and ending the Fed was the sum of craziness currently infiltrating the Republican Party of Minnesota? Think again. Agenda 21 is the next big thing in making a political party entirely irrelevant in Minnesota. . . .
Members of the Morrison County Board of Commissioners said they’re satisfied with the comprehensive plan for the county. Still, some members of the public are less than thrilled. . . .
One issue present at both the planning meeting and the Planning Commission’s public hearing July 25, was local versuss regional control and more specifically, Agenda 21.
Agenda 21 is a UN created plan for sustainable living local governments can choose to follow. Critics say the plan can be used to take away property rights.
“The reason we are concerned about this wording is how it has been used in other parts of the country,” Greg Smith said.
Smith and others were looking for the county to add protective language into the plan saying it would not follow outside mandates on issues like open/green spaces. These are areas that can’t be developed and are used for things like parks or community gardens..
Commissioner Kevin Maurer proposed an added piece to the plan addressing local control.
“The county comprehensive plan is not intended to or meant to be a means by which local control is given to any other entity. It is a plan meant to encourage and support local control,” Maurer said at the July 25 public hearing.
His statement was added to the draft the commissioners looked at Tuesday. The commissioners said they were OK with the plan, but residents Richard and Shirley Japp were not.
“There is still not anything in the plan about Agenda 21,” Richard said.
Maurer asked whether or not it would hurt the county to add language specifically saying the county doesn’t accept the directives of Agenda 21 and other regional plans. . . .
Alrighty then. How prescient was the Minnesota legislature to authorize comprehensive planning years before the conference in Rio? Bwwaahhhaaaa....
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Elections are not merely a way to choose winners. They are also a way to make losers believe they have lost. When losers accept their defeat, they strengthen the democratic process by thinking ahead to the next election, deciding what they will do differently. When they fail to accept their defeat, they weaken the democratic process by challenging the legitimacy of the past election. In the worst case, civil unrest ensues. Elected officials may be assassinated, government buildings blown up, coups plotted.
Because accepting defeat requires soul searching within a party about what went wrong, there’s always a temptation to unify around “we were robbed.” In the past, candidates have found it easier to resist that temptation than rank and file party members have. That’s because political pros are more familiar with the precautionary checks and balances built into the mechanics of election administration. The average citizen understands casting a vote about as well as turning on a light switch. That is, they understand their own role at the surface of the process, but not what the election administrators (or electric utilities) do behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, 2016 is different. Three months before there are any general election results, one of the major-party presidential candidates is already stoking distrust of those results rather than tamping it down. As a result, ordinary citizens will have to assume responsibility for sober assessment of the electoral process. Here are four suggestions for what the ordinary person can do to calm the fear of election fraud.
Use Precise Language and Demand It From Others
Unsubstantiated claims of election fraud will come across as plausible if they connect with a broader, bipartisan narrative of “rigged elections.” To prevent that narrative from becoming the accepted conventional wisdom, use precise language to describe elements of the political process that you see as in need of reform.
For example, you might appropriately suggest that a particular party eliminate super-delegates from its nominating process, or that it use primaries rather than caucuses. Or you could advocate for the adoption of ranked choice (instant runoff) voting in general elections so that voters can more safely express a preference for a third-party candidate.
Each of those topics, and many others, is fair game for debate. Stay specific, though. Make sure what you are advocating is clear. Don’t obscure it with vague terms for the actors (“they” or “the establishment”), activities (“the system”), and defects (“rigged” or “broken”).
To shape the tenor of conventional wisdom, it isn’t enough to be precise in your own language. Whenever someone at the water cooler or bar gripes about “the system” being “rigged,” politely press them to be more specific.
Watch Election Administrators at Work
Learn how election officials ensure that eligible voters can vote, ineligible individuals can’t, and the votes are accurately counted and reported. Not that these processes are perfect — those who work in this area are constantly looking for refinements and opportunities to import best practices from one jurisdiction to another. But they are taking a lot of care that you probably don’t know about.
Although you can read about election procedures, you’ll gain a better appreciation if you watch some of them in action. You’ll be able to more credibly push back against fear of fraud if you speak as a first-person witness. The opportunities for observation vary from state to state; what follows are two examples from Minnesota, one on election day, the other afterward. These two processes provide important protection against fraud and also protect against non-malicious errors and equipment failures. Yet few Minnesotans even know these protective processes exist, let alone have exercised their right to observe them.
When the election judges close a precinct polling place at the end of election day, they don’t simply print out a results tape from the ballot scanner. Among other things, they count the number of voters who signed in and verify that this count matches the number of ballots cast. They also ensure that the number of blank ballots the precinct received matches the total of ballots cast, ballots set aside as spoiled or duplicated, and ballots remaining unused.
These steps detect any situation where someone inserted extra ballots into the ballot box or, conversely, removed some of the ballots. So long as the ballot box remained locked, neither of those things ought to have been possible, but the whole point of audit processes is to provide an extra, publicly observable cross-check.
You can show up at poll closing time and watch this painstaking process play out. Minnesota election law specifically grants the general public the right to observe poll closing activities. Be respectful, though, of the election judges, who are engaged in a stressful process that requires exacting attention to detail. If they lose count, they have to start over, extending an already long day. Therefore, please observe from a reasonable distance and don’t interrupt with questions about the process.
What about the risk that the ballot counters might not have counted the ballots correctly? Could malicious software have deliberately altered the counts? Various precautions guard against this, some as simple as restricting physical access to the ballot counters, so that it is difficult to install modified software. However, you don’t need to trust the programmers, technicians, or guards — there’s a simple, direct cross-check that you can observe.
After the election is over, each county randomly selects a subset of its precincts for hand counting. This “post-election review” is not the same as a recount: it is done regardless how close the election is and regardless of whether a candidate requests it. You can find out the location, day, and time your county has chosen for its post-election review; it will be somewhere between the 11th and 18th day after the election.
On that day, the general public is again legally permitted to observe from a respectful distance. You will watch bipartisan teams of election judges manually examining each ballot, sorting them into piles, and counting the number in each pile. They will ensure that they have accurately counted the ballots and they will compare their counts against those that were printed on election night by the machines. That way, you don’t have to trust all the technical details of the machines’ operation: you can see with your own eyes that the machine counts are confirmed by humans .
Observing these hand counts is not riveting. Beyond the tedium of the process, the outcome is underwhelming. Perhaps one or two ballots will be identified where the voter did not properly fill in the ovals. Any adjustments to the vote counts will be very minor. But that’s precisely the point: you can see that election administrators are willing to perform a great deal of labor just to show that there isn’t any big discrepancy. If you observe that care, you can respond to cynics who seem to think election administrators are easy marks, just blindly waiting to be defrauded.
Expect to be Surprised
When the actual weather differs from the forecast, nobody thinks the thermometers or rain gauges are rigged. And the survey professionals who forecast elections (or explain them afterward, using exit polling) uniformly take the election results as the gold standard against which they judge their work, not vice versa. They understand that their surveys can be misleading for any number of reasons. In particular, they may not understand how the survey respondents compare with the voters, or they may not understand how those individuals’ survey responses compare with their actual votes.
Election results that differ from exit polls are not a smoking gun. Nor are election results that differ from expectations in other ways. For example, some people have an idea about the statistical patterns they expect to see when comparing large precincts with small ones. Upon looking at election data from many precincts, they find that these patterns don’t actually arise. Repeatedly, and across wide areas, the actual data fails to fit the expectation. The logical conclusion is that the expectation is based on an incomplete understanding of how voters in different sized precincts behave, not that fraud is rampant, yet slipping undetected past audits such as the post-election review.
The one time when surprising results may actually be a sign of trouble is in the unofficial results released on election night and in its immediate aftermath. Seasoned election professionals and campaign operatives know to keep an eye out for precincts that are way out of their normal range. For example, a usually lopsided precinct may come in with exactly equal numbers of votes cast for two candidates. That’s a red flag that in the rush to report preliminary results, a number got transcribed from the wrong column.
Errors in the election night reporting can be unnerving. For days after the election, the totals will keep changing as more and more of the errors are found and fixed. The key thing to keep in mind, though, is that the unofficial election night reporting does not feed into the official results, even after corrections. The official results are tabulated much more carefully by well-rested clerks working under less time pressure. Until that process is complete, the updated election night reporting gives you a better approximation to what is coming than exit polls do. However, you should still expect some surprises.
Keep Voter Identification in Perspective
Every state conducts its elections differently. One of the highest profile areas of difference is how voters are identified. In Minnesota, the voters identify themselves by stating their name and address. In some other states, they need to show an official document. This makes it harder to vote, whether one is a fraudulent impersonator or simply a voter without the requisite documentation at hand. However, this distinction does not mean that states such as Minnesota can expect significant fraud through the appearance of impersonators at their polling places.
The 2016 election is not the first with strongly motivated participants. People have poured billions of dollars into trying to win previous elections. Nor is it the first election in which many states allow undocumented voters — the recent court cases have generally preserved the status quo. Yet there have been close to zero incidents detected in which someone signed into a polling place under a false identity.
Ah, but just because impersonation isn’t detected, does that mean it isn’t occurring? The fearful seize upon this question. They would have you believe that without careful checking of identity documents, there would be no way to detect an impersonation. If that were true, then a lack of detections would be meaningless. But it isn’t true.
An impersonation might be detected in any number of ways. Some of those ways might result in the perpetrator being caught. For example, the staff at the sign-in table might personally know the target of the impersonation. Or the impersonator might brag about their crime to someone who rats on them. Other forms of detection might let the perpetrator get away. For example, the target of the impersonation might show up to vote and find their line in the poll book already signed. Or election officials removing a deceased individual from the election rolls might find a record of that individual having voted between the date of death and the date of removal.
None of these things are happening. Not only aren’t impersonators getting caught, they also aren’t leaving tell-tale traces behind. Election administrators are looking for all those things, and they aren’t finding them. Some advocacy groups claim that they have found such signs themselves. They have turned in lists of hundreds of suspected cases. But these have invariably turned out to result from the advocacy groups not checking as carefully as the election administrators do. For example, a suspiciously signed line in the poll book turns out to be a simple off-by-one error. Or a case of John Doe voting after death turns out to be John Doe, Jr., voting after John Doe, Sr., had died.
Could an impersonator get lucky and avoid detection? Sure, in any individual instance. However, throwing even a close election would require hundreds or thousands of impersonations. The math is daunting. Suppose you are such a clever fraudster that you can impersonate someone with a 99% chance of going undetected. If you attempt two impersonations, the chance of getting away with both of them — not being detected in either — is .99 squared. Three impersonations would be .99 cubed. And 300 impersonations would be .99 raised to the 300th power, which happens to be less than 5%. That is, even if each time you are nearly sure to go undetected (99% sure), once you’ve committed the crime 300 times, you are nearly sure (95% sure) of being detected somewhere along the way.
Putting that math together with the lack of detected impersonations gives strong evidence that nobody is trying to rig an election by committing hundreds of impersonations. Also, keep in mind that nobody knows in advance just how close an election is going to be. Senator Franken was elected in 2008 by a 312-vote margin, but if anyone had tried to rig that election, they wouldn’t have known in advance that 313 impersonations was enough. Even though it would have been a recklessly large crime spree, it wouldn’t have been enough to provide any confidence of victory. Perhaps that’s why even strongly motivated campaigns concentrate on turning out legitimate voters instead.
Photo: Austin, MN election administrators print on 2014 election results after voting closed at the Mower County Senior Center. As our guest contributor explains above, respectful members of the public can observe this process. Via Austin MN Herald.
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While that sign at least hangs on some historical fact about Bill Clinton's philandering, the administrator of the Clearwater County Republican Party's Facebook page has posted something that's completely unhinged: the Photoshopped image of Democratic presidential candidate shaking hands with Osama bin Laden.
Contest Directions: Senator Hillary Clinton officially declared her bid for presidency 2008. Making her announcement Hillary said "I'm in". This is the phrase she rarely heard from Bill in their bedroom. In this contest you are asked to photoshop anything connected to Senator Hillary Clinton running for president of United States. Examples may be photoshopping magazine covers, campaign photos, or future presidency achievements.
The musician first lived in the United States as a student in 1988 and now lives in the Washington DC area, according to the bio on his website.
Additional hilarity? The fact that while Alexander Davis's photo has enjoyed 35,389 shares as we post this, despite the far fewer comments by a handful of members of the Friends Who Like Donald J. Trump group who spar with Davis about how the photo is a fake. He tries to defend posting it by saying it's "a statement" but not without insulting Angie Ortiz, the woman who challenged him:
Alexander DavisYou're an idiot this is a statement okay I suggest you don't look at none of my stuff that I put up so go away go vote for Hillary you Moslem ugly face woman.
Bonus bogus hilarity! Tim Miller bamboozled by Babylon Bee!
But the Clearwater County Republicans aren't only ones having trouble discerning truth from satire. As the screenshot above illustrates, our own state representative, Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, was outraged by a post from Adam Ford's Christian News satire site, the Babylon Bee.
Several of Representative Miller's Facebook friends helped him out with that one, and the post is no longer visible to the general public. As we are not Facebook friends with the freshman Republican, we cannot say through personal experience whether he has deleted or edited his post.
Screengrabs: Clearwater County Republicans post of photoshopped image (top); the original photo of Clinton and Indian musician Shubhashish Mukherjee (middle); Tim Miller publicly bamboozled by the Babylon Bee (bottom).
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In audio posted on Youtube, Heintzeman tells his supporters that he wasn't certain why his heart was against the bill, traditionally carried by a Crow Wing County representative. When he later learned about an Explore Minnesota tourism ad aimed at attracting same-sex couples to Minnesota he knew God had protected him and given . Heintzeman prefaced his remarks about tourism and same sex marriage with
. . . there was a tweet that went out earlier this afternoon encouraging folks maybe to come to our event from the other side of the aisle, and there might be some conversation around that cause we'd the event to stay private even though it's an open area, so we're not recording anything tonight. So I can just talk in a heart-to-heart with people that have supported me.
Heintzeman: . . . And there have been times throughout the course of the last two years where issues come up, and constituents have contacted us, talked to Keri and I, and really blessed us by helping us kind of see perspective on an issue, and a good example is the Explore Minnesota tourism bill [2015]. I was asked to carry an $11 Million increase to their budget. And I couldn't explain to my leadership, I didn't have any good reason why not. The representative from the lakes area, Crow Wing County, always carries that bill.
And the more we [Heintzeman and his wife Keri] talked about it, the more we sought the Lord on it, I just had a no-go. My heart was not allowing me to move forward and support that bill. And much to the chagrin of my leadership, I had to continue to stand and not work on that, so they gave it to another representative, Rep. [Dan] Fabian [R-Roseau] took it.
Apparently, being a co-sponsor doesn't count. The freshman legislator continues:
About three, four weeks after session ended -- I want to preface this comment by pointing out that obviously a lot of you guys know that marriage was an important issue in Crow Wing County and was a big part of the discussion two years ago--well three, four weeks after session ended, Explore Minnesota Tourism released an ad-buy, in the details of the ad, promoting Minnesota as a destination for couples that were of the same sex wanting to get married.
Woman: Wow.
Heintzeman:That ad didn't run in Minnesota. It ran in states all around Minnesota with different law in regard to same-sex marriage.
Heintzeman's description of the ad isn't particularly accurate, since it doesn't promote Minnesota "as a destination for couples that were of the same sex wanting to get married," but rather features husbands Ben Meents and Chet Ritchie as they enjoy the splendors of the North Star state, as The Column's Andy Birkey wrote in Minnesota’s tourism council ad features gay couple.
Travel editor Kerri Westerberg reported in the Star Tribune that the ad ran in "Minneapolis-St. Paul; Milwaukee; Madison; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Omaha; Kansas City; Des Moines; Chicago; Denver and Winnipeg."
Given that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality in late June 2015, we're pleased that the ad buyers had it in their hearts to buy time in markets where same-sex marriage was legal, in addition to places where it was not (as Heintzeman believes), since that would have been a waste of money. God--and media markets--work in mysterious ways.
Heintzeman continues:
Heintzeman: So, I just want to leave you with that, I guess pointing out that when I first talked to everybody here two years ago, I referenced 1 Kings 3:9. There's two accounts, Solomon on his bed asking one account, he asked for wisdom. And I like the accounting kings, because he talks specifically for asking for an understanding heart that would know the difference between good and evil, that he would judge God's people rightly. And so many times on the surface over the last few years, there's things that seemed right to Man, that seemed right to me, but thankfully the Lord protected us from those things, and we're very blessed to be able to keep out of those kind of situations like that Explore Minnesota tourism bill.
Perhaps Heintzeman can explain to his anti-marriage equality base why co-authoring a bill means that he wasn't involved in it. He also voted for HF843, which included funding for Explore Minnesota, but which was authored by Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington. (Garofalo voted for marriage equality, so there's no pious hypocrisy in this on his part).
Other than all these details about the bill and the ad campaign, Heintzeman totally has an understanding heart and no way misleds his supporters.
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Update: Responding to an email from Bluestem Prairie, reporter Josie Gerezek called Bill Schulz about his statement, and the story now reads:
At the rally, Schulz said he lived in California during his time in the Navy, through the ’60s and early ’70s. In a later phone call, Schulz said he had actually served in the ’50s and ’60s. “I saw what happened when the movement for equality among blacks turned into something violent, with the Black Panthers in the San Francisco and Oakland area, and I saw those people out on the street and the crimes they were committing, the murders they were committing,” Schulz said. “Now, I see that coming again.”
Schulz said after his 13 years in the service, he visited Mississippi and Alabama.
“Martin Luther King and a number of other black leaders were holding the freedom parades, and I marched with them a few times,” Schulz said, adding he’d served with men who were black, white and Hispanic. “I have no problem with race.”
Schulz could not have seen "those people out on the street and the crimes they were committing, the murders they were committing" while serving in the Navy in California if he marched with King in Alabama and Mississippi after his service with the Navy ended. While the Panthers legally carried guns from their founding, no fatal shots were fired until late October 1967.
Either way, Schulz is trying to have it both ways--that he was both a participant in the great civil rights marches in 1965 and 1966 after leaving the Navy and a witness to '"those people out on the street and the crimes they were committing, the murders they were committing" while serving in the Navy in California.
If he meant to say that he marched with King, then didn't like the Panthers, he simply should have said that, without using his naval service to place himself as an eyewitness to a history he probably just watched on television.
Moreover: Bluestem has yet to meet a veteran who doesn't know when she or he served our country. Schulz is a regular guest columnist at the newspaper, so apparently their regular guest columnist's shifting life history matters. Black History? Not so much. [End update]
It is a fact universally acknowledged that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968.
Rally organizer Bill Schulz, who Fergus Falls Police Chief Kile Bergren describes as a long-time supporter of law enforcement, said what motivated him were the targeted shootings of police officers like those in Dallas and Baton Rouge. The I-94 Black Lives Matter protests in the Twin Cities, too, were a call to action, he said.
“That is anarchy,” Schulz said of the protests, which took over major interstates resulting in nearly two dozen officers being injured. “It may be free speech, but it’s promoting anarchy.”
Schulz said it was time local police knew “the sentiments of the people” were with them.
Schulz said he lived in California during his time in the Navy, through the ’60s and the early ’70s. “I saw what happened when the movement for equality among blacks turned into something violent, with the Black Panthers in the San Francisco and Oakland area, and I saw those people out on the street and the crimes they were committing, the murders they were committing,” Schulz said. “Now, I see that coming again.”
Schulz said after his 13 years in the service, he visited Mississippi and Alabama.
“Martin Luther King and a number of other black leaders were holding the freedom parades, and I marched with them a few times,” Schulz said, adding he’d served with men who were black, white and Hispanic. “I have no problem with race.”
While Schulz may or may nor have a problem with race, he does appear to have a problem with timelines, given that King was no longer living when Schulz visited Mississippi and Alabama in the 1970s, after his 13 years in the service.
Shame on the Fergus Falls Journal for running this copy.
Here's the screenshot of the original copy online:
Photo:Civil rights leader Andrew Young (L) and others standing on balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, pointing in direction of the shots after the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is lying at their feet. Photo by Joseph Louw.
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After losing the Republican endorsement in Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District to sitting Representative Tom Emmer, rabid anti-refugee ranter AJ Kern continues to fight toward the primary.
Sixth District residents should probably be happy that she's running for Congress, rather than running a travel agency.
Minneapolis to Somalia flights. Book cheap flights to Somalia from Minneapolis. Search multiple flight deals from various travel sources with one click.
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This is followed by sharing a 2013 post, Mogadishu's Best Popular Beach: Lido Beach, from Visit Mogadishu:
Kern would like to serve in Congress, but substitutes cheap shots for due diligence on her campaign page.
We'll help her out, since she doesn't seem able to help herself.
US State Department Travel Warning
Vacation in Somalia? Not recommended by the United States State Department, which issued this Somalia Travel Warning back in late May:
The U.S. Department of State warns U.S. citizens to avoid travel to Somalia because of continuous threats by the al-Qaida affiliated terrorist group, al-Shabaab. U.S. citizens should also be aware of the risks of kidnappings in all parts of Somalia, including Somaliland and Puntland. There is no U.S. embassy presence in Somalia. This replaces the Travel Warning dated October 1, 2015.
The security situation in Somalia remains unstable and dangerous. Terrorist operatives and armed groups in Somalia continue to attack Somali authorities, the troops from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), and other non-military targets. Kidnapping, bombings, murder, illegal roadblocks, banditry, and other violent incidents are common throughout Somalia, including Somaliland and Puntland. Al-Shabaab remains intent on conducting attacks against popular restaurants, hotels, locations known to be popular with Westerners, and convoys carrying Somali and other government officials. Last year, there were at least eight prominent hotel attacks located in the heart of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. One U.S. citizen was killed during one of these attacks. Munitions caches and unexploded ordnance exist in various parts of the country and remain a danger to civilians.
In addition, al-Shabaab has demonstrated the capability to carry out attacks in government-controlled territories, with particular emphasis on targeting government facilities, foreign delegations' facilities and movements, and commercial establishments frequented by government officials, foreign nationals, and the Somali diaspora. There is a particular threat to foreigners in places where large crowds gather and Westerners frequent, including airports, government buildings, and shopping areas. Inter-clan and inter-factional fighting can flare up with little or no warning.
There are continuing threats of attacks against airports and civil aviation, especially in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab continues to conduct attacks against the Mogadishu Aden Adde International Airport (MGQ) using mortars and other standoff weapons. The group also has conducted attacks from within the airport’s secure perimeter and successfully detonated an explosive device concealed in a laptop on an airplane shortly after take-off.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) containing information on the U.S. prohibition against U.S. civil aviation operations in airspace over Somalia due to security risks toward civil aviation. For further background information regarding FAA flight prohibitions and advisories for U.S. civil aviation, U.S. citizens should consult the Federal Aviation Administration’s Prohibitions, Restrictions and Notices.
U.S. citizens are urged to avoid sailing near the coast of Somalia. Merchant vessels, fishing boats, and recreational craft all risk seizure and detention by pirates in the waters off the Horn of Africa, especially in the international waters near Somalia. Pirates and other criminals have specifically targeted and kidnapped foreigners working in Somalia, including two U.S. citizens in the past several years. Consult the Maritime Administration's Horn of Africa Piracy page for information on maritime advisories, self-protection measures, and naval forces in the region.
. . . Looking at the Facebook photos of Omar and Abdirahman together, I thought about the wave of violence eliminating my country’s young brains. I remembered my friend, engineer Abdullahi Barre, who was shot in front of his house in Mogadishu in April 2015. I thought about another school friend, Omar Afrah, who narrowly survived a car bomb. I counted the number of journalists, businessmen, aid workers, teachers and lawmakers who I knew and who had been targeted in attacks over the last few years.
The violence that dominates Somalia is as physical and emotional as it is gruesome and ghastly. Those who have the will and the way are either hiding behind barriers or leaving the country. However, through an unyielding veneer of persistence, people in Mogadishu wake up and go to work every morning. They defy the violence and try to have normal lives – until they don’t. . . .
Bluestem can't discern whether Kern is ignorant, cruel, or sadistically stupid. One thing the post clearly demonstrates--with its indifference to the brutal facts of the Somali Diaspora and current situation--is that she's not congressional.
Photo: People carry away a body away from the Lido beach (top, AFP via the Independent); Kern's Facebook post (middle); Lido Beach (via the Guardian, top).
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From the looks of the letters to the editor flowing into the local papers in House District 12A, Backer backers just can't help themselves when it comes to place-baiting.
Backer backers are the supporters of Minnesota state representative Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley, who won the seat in the 2014 Republican wave, defeating Elbow Lake's Jay McNamar by a mere 660 votes.
Consider the latest missive, Wolverton excavator William Nichol's Watch what Jay does, not what he says. While Nichol hits the usual 'phobe notes about marriage equality and the dignity of transgender people ("forcing girls and boys to shower together"), he accuses McNamar of favoring metro areas in the distribution of Local Government Aid (LGA):
. . . Secondly, in 2013, Local Government Aid was increased by $80 million. However, half of the new money went to the metro areas. Jay voted for this unfair distribution of funding. . . .
How is it that Jay didn’t actually vote for what he claimed he stood for on the campaign trail? Simple answer – he really is metro at heart. How can he claim to care about rural values but not defend them in office? Weakness. Or he takes us for chumps! Or both. . . .
Let's turn to the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities to understand why LGA isn't simply a thing for "us" in Greater Minnesota but not for "the metro areas." In fact, the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities put out a fact sheet about the "Top LGA Myths."
Note that the working group that crafter the 2013 formula reform includes Greater Minnesota Republicans, not just some secret cabal of metro power brokers. We bold the names of rural Republicans on the list, while placing the names of Greater Minnesota Democrats in italics:
The 2013 LGA formula reform was developed by a working group including legislators and all city groups. The bill containing the LGA formula (HF 1608/ SF 1491) had broad bipartisan support. Authors included Reps. Lien; Davnie, Lenczewski, Simonson, Faust, Mahoney, Davids, Carlson, C. Johnson, Hamilton, Torkelson, Kiel, Nelson, McNamar, Hansen, Marquart,Fabian, Loeffler, Bly, and Bernardy.
We didn't include Simonson as a Greater Minnesota representative, since Duluth is a "first class city." Note that the majority of the working group, regardless of party, represent Greater Minnesota.
It's clear from the support for the LGA reform from the greater Minnesota cities themselves--and the statewide, bipartisan working group that crafted it--that the aim was to do best for all Minnesota. Even Backer praised the compromise while campaigning in October 2014, according to the Wahpeton and Breckenridge Daily News, though he said the increased spending was "not enough."
But for Backer backers, LGA is just another opportunity to placebait, pitting Minnesotans against Minnesotans. Enough.
Photo: Jeff Backer, R-Browns Valley.
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