If hotdish, why not growlers?
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First, we had the hotdish bill. Continue Reading
Cautionary stadium tales
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As Minnesota ponderously negotiates a new professional football stadium deal, replacing the aging and increasingly obsolete Metro Dome, it’s simultaneously navigating the challenging waters of public opinion. Continue Reading
OPINION | The fewer rights act
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In the war of words, progressives are not doing well. Conservative activists hold the rhetorical upper hand, obfuscating their policies’ true intent and making community- stabilizing and family- strengthening achievements an up-hill slog. Why? Because we’re trying to refute their ideas with their language. In the struggle for definition, we’re not just behind, we’re somewhere between 30 and 50 years behind.Witness HF65, the proposed Minnesota “right to work” constitutional amendment bill. Continue Reading
OPINION | Seizing an opportunity: What to do with Minnesota’s winter savings?
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We’re experiencing a mild winter. While a nice change of pace from last year’s deluge, mild winter weather’s consequences are a decidedly mixed bag. Winter is normal in Minnesota. We need normal more than we need unusual.The winter recreation industry is not having a great year. Without much snow cover, ski, sled dog and snowmobile races, are being delayed, relocated or canceled. Continue Reading
OPINION | Conservative cronyism
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Take note, Minnesota. The reward for expanding failed conservative public policy is more failure.Yesterday, Minnesota’s conservative state legislative policy leaders rolled out yet another version of “Reform 2.0”. This conservative policy initiative is dysfunction disguised as small government ideology. It’s a public policy distraction designed to suggest a legitimate activity when the reverse is true. It will accelerate the concentration of public investment’s benefits into fewer, richer hands.Reform 2.0 isn’t reform but is simply more of the same. Continue Reading
OPINION | Standing still means falling behind
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Minnesota doesn’t stand still. It grows or contracts. It expands or shrinks. We move forward or we fall behind.As a public policy matter, we must ask how and why Minnesota prospers or stumbles. The answer guides policy planning and, critically, how Minnesota invests billions in our human, economic, healthcare, education and transportation infrastructure.It seems simple enough. Continue Reading
The fight before us: Union protections for non-union workers
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Minnesota’s conservative state legislative policymakers want to placed a “right to work” constitutional amendment on Minnesota’s 2012 ballot. Continue Reading
OPINION | New leader in the Minnesota Senate, same failed policy
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The Minnesota State Senate majority caucus faces a leadership crisis. The conservatives’ state party structure appears to be in organizational free-fall with sudden resignations, succession chaos, mounting debt and reporting and disclosure issues with state and federal campaign oversight agencies. However much cosmic justice some of us might find in this situation, don’t be distracted, Minnesota. Nothing has changed.Minnesota conservative policymakers remain deeply committed to radically reinventing Minnesota. By cutting school funding, abandoning affordable healthcare reform, ignoring our state’s crumbling roads and bridges, and preserving a state policy that takes from the poor and gives to the rich, conservative policymakers seek to transform Minnesota into South Dakota or a cold Mississippi.That vision hasn’t changed one iota.Within the next week or so, a new State Senate Majority Leader will be elected. Continue Reading
OPINION | Little geothermal schoolhouse on the prairie
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My hometown, Walnut Grove, is plotting a path forward for Minnesota’s public policymakers even when that’s the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. All they want to do is save themselves a few bucks and free funds for learning.Like every Minnesota school, Westbrook-Walnut Grove is trying to do as much, if not more, with less. While costs grow, Minnesota state policymakers choose to invest fewer fiscal resources in public schools. Between the state’s funding policy pattern and determined conservative attacks on public schools as a whole, it’s hard not to conclude that Minnesota’s public schools have been cast adrift.But, a funny thing happened on the way to the scrap heap. Schools didn’t roll over and die. Continue Reading
OPINION | Investing in the 99%
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I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe the Apollo moon landing happened on the moon. I believe Big Foot is a guy in a gorilla suit. Yet, when I learn that America’s banks received genuinely sweetheart bailout deals, it ignites a slow burn.The Occupy protestors have it right. Continue Reading