Leigh Pomeroy's blog

It is a rare occurrence when I recommend a Frank Rich op/ed in the New York Times on Minnesota Monitor. Yet I am doing so today because it is Mother’s Day.

“Oh, so Frank Rich is writing about Mother’s Day,” you say.

Not at all. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t list the name of one mother in his article.

What Rich does detail, however, is a rundown of all the “corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals” that have occurred in the brief six years of the George W. Bush administration. He mentions a number of names — Bush (of course), Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Joe Allbaugh, Michael “Brownie” Brown, Alberto Gonzales — and numerous federal agencies.

In another example of choosing industry insiders to head federal agencies that are supposed to oversee those industries, the Bush administration has put forward Michael Baroody to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Baroody is currently chief lobbyist and vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has put a “hold” on the nominee to block a confirmation vote in the Senate.

Look on the web for a story about Veterans Affairs administrators getting bonuses of up to $33,000 while the Veterans Affairs Administration faces budget shortfalls and lengthy service backlogs, and you may not easily find it in Minnesota’s mainstream media. But you will find it in some of Minnesota’s blogs, like A Bluestem Prairie, I Don’t Hate America! and Blue Man in a Red District.

While these and other blogs don’t have the resources to do hard-line investigative journalism, they are at least keeping the public informed of possible breaking stories and, in this case, the questionable use of taxpayer dollars. A Bluestem Prairie, from the 1st congressional district, notes two mainstream media articles on the VA bonuses — in the St. Petersburg Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. The story also been covered nationally by CBS, CNN, USA Today and elsewhere.

“Southwestern Minnesota politics is based on populism,” said the dinner guest at the 11th annual Dan and Ronnie Burton dinner held in the ballroom of the student union at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Saturday night. The folks in St. Paul think of the area as solidly conservative, he continued, but that’s not true. Some of those farmers may be rock-ribbed Republicans, others life-long progressives, but they all had one thing in common: They voted for Wellstone.