Hindsight's blog

Minnesota is a national leader in the burgeoning field of palliative care, a holistic approach to medicine, and should seize its current momentum to strive toward further improvements.

In case you haven't lately, stop and think for a second about how the stores you shop in get so clean. The answer, of course, is that a few people work really hard late at night to make sure the rest of us never have to think about it. If you've ever worked one of those jobs, you know the hours and the work are very difficult. If it's been a few years since you worked one of those jobs, you'd be surprised to learn how much harder the work has become. Wages have been dropping and the number of workers hired to clean entire stores has gone down, forcing the remaining workers to work twice as hard.

Growing up in the St. Paul public school system, I only remember “zero tolerance” as the standard operating procedure for discipline. Obviously, this went for major offenses, such as weapons or drugs on school grounds, but it also applied in many situations that were not so immediately applicable, leading to suspension for acts like fighting or even disrespecting teachers. Police officers were a common sight in school (I even knew one by name), and officers on horseback were present for about a week following a rather large fight that ended in 16 arrests. My experience seems to echo what is happening across the nation, as zero tolerance has led to huge, and racially imbalanced, suspension rates, a “school to prison pipeline” that leaves students stranded on the fringes of society and has no measurable effect on school violence.

The federally subsidized student loan interest (Stafford) rate expires on June 30, 2013. At that time, the undergraduate loan rate doubles from 3.4% to 6.8%. Historically, rates were set at 6.8% for both undergraduate and graduate students, until, in 2008, undergraduate rates steadily declined to the present 3.4% Congress must act or undergraduate rates will automatically return to 6.8%. Congress should set the rate equal to the 10-year Treasury bill rate. Here’s why.

Things are heating up at the legislature. Permit me to weigh in.