Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/category/government/page/14/)
Child protection services politics in Minnesota have long been contentious, with cries for reform going up when a child dies, as is the circumstance with the death of Eric Dean,Continue Reading
What’s the best way to change the number of people living in poverty? Use a different definition of poverty. Continue Reading
The editors of Time magazine needed almost 6 years to pay attention to my article published in Twin Cities Daily Planet on September 8, 2008, in which I stated that Cold War Two had started (see Time of July 23, 2014). And the US government officials still do not really get it.This is a Community Voices submission and is moderated but not edited. The opinions expressed by Community Voices contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the TC Daily Planet.Then, Vladimir Putin had just confronted the US by invading Georgia. Now, he has spread the new proxy war to Syria and Ukraine with more places to come. And the US foreign policy apparatus is as much to blame as Putin. Continue Reading
Many of us learned about government and how it works by watching “I’m Just a Bill on Capitol Hill.” Part of the ABC School House Rock series, it depicted the process of how a bill becomes a law in Washington, D.C. It describes the role of citizens, members of Congress, and the president in legislating. Yet it left out an important actor–lobbyists. In so many ways, legislating would be impossible–good or bad–without lobbyists, and that is equally true in Minnesota. Continue Reading
The Black Bear Crossings $800,000 settlement should create needed discussion with the public, policymakers, and government officials. In this case as with many other similar type of settlements it’s done and negotiated behind closed doors with no public insight as to what happened, how it happened, and what lessons are learned. Continue Reading
Twin Cities residents continue to feel the reverberations from the early-August shooting of an unarmed Black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. with local activists calling for more tools, training, transparency and accountability within local law enforcement in order to curb racial injustices within the criminal justice system.
UPDATED:
The man in a recently released cellphone video who was tasered and arrested by St. Paul police officers after refusing to give up his name has stepped forward on Wednesday, Aug. 27 after posting the video online. St. Paul police dropped charges on July 31. Continue Reading
If the conversation on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis is politically charged this week, there’s good reason. Gathered at the Minneapolis Convention Center are several hundred elected representatives from around the nation and the world. All week I have had the opportunity to marinade in the lively presence of attendees at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL)—elected representatives and staff of the fifty states’ very diverse governmental entities as well as an impressive contingent of international visitors. Continue Reading
As a newly minted think tank fellow seven years ago, I heard Bob Poole, the libertarian Reason Foundation’s thoughtful and nonpartisan transportation expert, argue in a local luncheon speech that private investment offered the only feasible way out of America’s chronic shortfall in funding roads, bridges, transit and other ways of getting around. Continue Reading
Fairgoers are invited to meet and greet legislators and weigh in on hot political topics during their visit to the House of Representatives booth at the Minnesota State Fair, Thursday, Aug. 21 through Monday, Sept. 1.