Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/dane-smith/page/6/)
I am a white person of Scots-English and Southern U.S. heritage who is grateful to have ended up in this progressive Northern state, the best and coolest state in the nation, I earnestly believe.
I like to needle my Texas kinfolk by bragging that Minnesota was the first state to offer troops to President Abraham Lincoln for the Civil War in the 1860s. Continue Reading
Teacher quality matters.
Research shows an effective teacher has a bigger impact on student performance than any other in-school variable, as the Bush Foundation reports.
Although we didn’t call out Rep. Keith Downey by name when we praised his Minnesota Sunset Commission proposal last week, he was one of the bill’s sponsors.
About this time every year, small government advocates engage in their own Ground Hog Day ritual as they gaze at some shadowy data and declare that Minnesota faces an eternity of economic winter — unless we cut taxes.
Minnesota’s Governor Tim Pawlenty repeated his message that low taxes and limited government are the key to the economic success when he delivered his recent State of the State address, but recent state unemployment rates clearly demonstrate that economic development is more complicated than that.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the depths of the Great Depression tirelessly pushed for innovation, saying: ‘It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
Trying something that actually has worked before makes even more sense. And U.S. Sen. Continue Reading
For God’s sake (or at least for Pete’s sake), could just a few good legislators in those anti-tax straitjackets please listen to and heed former Gov. Al Quie, a Christian conservative of uncommon common sense and compassion?
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week that it would pull back from its cost-effectiveness index when picking major transit projects.
So how smart is that?
Well, pretty smart, as it turns out. The move makes sense, even for those of us at Growth & Justice, where we emphasize cost-effectiveness and smart investments.
Oregon voters passed this week two revenue-raising measures to help the state fill a hole in its budget and avoid deeper cuts to education, health care and other public services. The vote signifies approval of actions by the state legislature to raise $730 million in revenue.
Watch for lots of retrospective media commentary in the next couple of weeks, as we mark the end of not only one of the worst years in the economic history of Minnesota and the United States, but also one of the worst decades in modern times. The pundits will offer us a zillion theoretical causes for these hard times, from the 9/11 trauma at the start of this blighted decade, to dislocations from a more global economy, to the federal deregulation trends that presumed wealthy private interests would police themselves and act in the common interest. Continue Reading