Locals joined bus ride to D.C. for 1963 March commemoration
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A small but very enthusiastic group of Minneapolis-area residents returned from last Saturday’s commemorative march in Washington, D.C. pledging to work together for change.
Syria isn’t Iraq and Obama isn’t Bush
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To be sure, President Obama will explain whatever decision he makes regarding Syria with a credibility problem, partly of his own making and partly inherited. The self-inflicted part can be summed up in a sentence: leakers of classified information to the press are in prison or hiding while war criminals are going unprosecuted. The general public might not care, but Obama’s base does, and he’s going to need our support for a potentially unpopular intervention. Continue Reading
The Farm Bill: and now for the rest of the story
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So what, exactly, did John Kline vote for when he and his regressive colleagues passed HR 2642, the House version of the Farm Bill? It is already known that he voted against the Food Stamp (“SNAP”) program. But what else did he vote for (or against)? Continue Reading
Hundreds of Minnesota activists march against free trade deal
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Hundreds of labor, fair trade, environmental and community activists marched through downtown Minneapolis Tuesday to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal that could jeopardize American jobs, wages, consumer safety, health care and environmental standards.
No food stamps, no farm program
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One of the last acts of the Republican majority of the House of Representatives before the August recess of Congress was to propose to cut funding for the food stamp program by $40 billion in the fiscal 2014 budget. These cuts were proposed even after the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the inflation adjusted value of food stamps had declined seven percent between 2009 and 2011. Continue Reading
Minnesota lawmakers lead national efforts to end sex trafficking
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It’s no secret that human trafficking is a widespread crime. All one has to do is look at last month’s FBI Operation Cross-Country, which recovered over 100 teens across the United States. Human trafficking is also one of the oldest crimes against persons, or as Vednita Carter, founder and executive director of Breaking Free, aptly calls it, the “world’s oldest oppression.” Continue Reading
Searching for the Farm Bill
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Farmfest is the largest farm show in Minnesota, bringing farmers together to talk about and see the latest in tractors, seeds, and other farm-related equipment. But Farmfest also brings out the politicians to talk about what is happening with agricultural policies and markets. With no farm bill in place, the question understandably on everyone’s minds at this year’s policy panel was “What’s next?” While the policymakers in attendance did a pretty good job of explaining how we got where we are today, the future of farm policy was left unclear. Continue Reading
OPINION | THUD Bill, a dud in Congress
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Folks in the federal government like their acronyms. But when you’re one of the nation’s least productive Congresses, you might want to rename the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill, known as THUD, no matter how well it fits the final outcome.
American democracy and the NSA
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Imagine a government that spies on its citizens, often without warrants. A government that holds secret court hearings, or a government that asserts the right to detain and jail citizens indefinitely, in some cases in distant places away from family and lawyers. Or a government that asserts the right to hunt down and execute its citizens on suspicion of being the enemy. Such a government we would describe as lawless, standing in contempt of human rights and individual liberties. It is a government some would describe as lawless. This is the government that some like Senators Ron Wyden, Rand Paul, and others think is beginning to emerge in the United States as a result of stories about NSA surveillance of telephone calls and e-mail messages. It is a government, they say, that needs to confine and define the discretion of public officials to prevent the violation of individual rights. Continue Reading
Kline’s education bill a throwback to the BAD old times
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Federal involvement in educational policy began in 1965, under President Johnson, with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). PBS, in 2005, published a good historical snapshot of the federal government’s involvement in national education policy up to that time: Continue Reading