Monthly Archives: January 2009

Let them eat bonuses! Eighteen billion dollars in bonuses buys a lot of cake, and that’s what Wall Street’s fat cats pulled down last year, the NYT reported yesterday. Yeah, we know — it’s important to reward the hard work of the best and the brightest. BBC reports that President Obama denounced the bonuses as “shameful” and “the height of irresponsibility.”

Baseball and the big stink The Minneapolis garbage burner is supposed to be clean and odor-free, or at least that’s the official line when nearby residents or environmentalists raise questions about it. I almost believed it, when the Twins stadium was sited near the burner, since the temple of baseball would never be located anywhere even slightly smelly. But now, Mary Jane Smetanka writes in the Strib, county officials are thinking about spending “an estimated $2.3 million to remodel the building and grounds, about $500,000 of that to deal with odor control.” The 20-year-old burner, far from state of the art at this point, doesn’t smell, insists Commissioner Mike Opat — the smells just come from garbage trucks entering and exiting the burner. And that can be fixed by fancy double exit and entry doors and a “plan is to spray the equivalent of truck “perfume” on departing vehicles to kill the stench that often lingers in garbage haulers.”

Feeding on foreclosures Private “foreclosure consultants” promise to help struggling homeowners, but MN AG Lori Swanson says two of the firms are breaking the law by charging big upfront fees and failing to deliver. MPR reports that Swanson is suing two Florida firms: IMC Financial and American Financial Corp., which does business as National Foreclosure Counseling Services. This brings the number of foreclosure consulting companies sued by MN to twelve.
<b<MN Job Watch Even workers who still have jobs are seeing pay and benefit cuts in the current crisis, reports Nikki Tundel on MPR. While many companies have frozen salaries and hiring, others–including FedEx, Caterpillar, IBM and Gymboree–have cut pay and benefits. Overall, about five percent of U.S. companies have cut pay over the past year and another 11 percent are considering wage cuts this year.

The Strib reports that the governor has signed a bill extending jobless benefits for 3,000 people — about 10 percent of the Minnesotans who have used up state unemployment comp and don’t qualfy for a federal extension. What happens to the other 90 percent? The news comes as national unemployment compensation rolls reach 26 year high, according to AP. U.S. Labor Department figures show the highest number of claimants since record-keeping started in 1967, with 4.78 million claimants in the week ending January 17, up 159,000 from the previous week. That number doesn’t include 1.7 million receiving benefits under the extended unemployment comp — which brings the total number near 6.5 million. And, of course, it doesn’t include the people whose unemployment comp has run out, or who never qualified for it to begin with.

In better news, U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar said MN could get 12,000 highway construction jobs by the end of June under the economic stimulus package, writes Bill Salisbury in the PiPress.

The jury is out Literally. The only federal RNC felony case that went to trial wound up on Thursday, and David McKay’s fate is now with the jury. They will decide whether to find him guilty of charges that he made and possessed Molotov cocktails, and that the devices violated federal firearms laws because they lacked serial numbers. The dry-sounding legal charges are almost lost in the rhetorical battle over the relative responsibility of McKay and the government informant, Brandon Darby. David Hanners in the PiPress reports on the closing statement by McKay’s attorney:

He said that while the FBI had asked Darby to be the bureau’s “eyes and ears” to monitor the small, loose-knit activist group in Austin that McKay belonged to, the informant went over the line and incited the group to break the law.

“He wasn’t the eyes and ears. He was the mouth — a violent, firebomb-obsessed mouth,” declared DeGree.

Want a really bad job? The Army Times reports that four suicides in the Houston Recruiting Battalion have led to an order for a one-day stand-down of all Army and Army Reserve recruiters nationwide on February 13, to provide “training on leadership, a review of the expectations of Recruiting Command’s leaders, suicide prevention and resiliency training, coping skills and recruiter wellness.” Among the stressors for recruiters:

[The] Houston battalion’s policy called for a maximum work day of 13 hours, and recruiters had to seek approval from their chain of command if they worked beyond that, Turner said. However, the 13-hour maximum was interpreted as the expected norm, and the policy could have been written more clearly, Turner said.

BBC reports that overall army suicides have set a record for the second year in a row.

Somalia in the news Somalian MPs are set to choose a new president from a field of at least 14 candidates, reports BBC. If you haven’t been keeping current on news from Somalia, this vote follows the resignation of President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in December, the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops that had occupied parts of Somalia, and a continuing insurgency. Somalia has not had a functioning central government since 1991, and more than a million people have fled their homes because of continuing fighting. More than 40% of the population needs food aid.

Save money – eliminate elections In Minneapolis, city council member Paul Ostrow wants to eliminate two elected boards and centralize city government under a city manager in order to save money, reports Brandt Williams on MPR. (He’s joined in this proposal by Don Samuels and Ralph Remington.) Their three proposals:

1) replace the elected Park Board, which has actual decision-making authority, with an advisory board.
2) Eliminate the elected Board of Estimate and Taxation
3) Create a city administrator and change the supervision and reporting structure of city government so that departments all report to the new city manager rather than to city council committees.

MinnPost comes out pretty clearly in favor of the proposal, headlining it as an initiative to streamline Minneapolis operations and asking in the lead paragraph, “Can Minneapolis afford the antiquated bureaucracy that seems often to hang as an anvil around its neck?” (Steve Berg, who wrote the article, notes that he has long been an advocate of these changes.)

Ostrow argues that the mayor and council should set policy and then leave oversight and implementation to professionals. Samuels cited last year’s city/county library merger as a success story showing the need to centralize responsibility.

In the Minneapolis E-Democracy Forum, debate is already heated.

Tim the Ripper As expected, Governor Tim Pawlenty’s budget announcement slashed spending for health, education and welfare while offering tax breaks to businesses and leaning heavily on income he hopes will come from the federal economic stimulus. MPR’s Bob Collins offers the best shorthand list of who will suffer under the budget cuts. People who need health care, for a start: reduced eligibility for Medical Assistance would knock off many current recipients, hospitals and long-term care reimbursement will drop; many mentally-ill adults will lose MinnesotaCare. Local control also suffers as T-Paw abandons traditional conservative commitments to local control, eliminating 87 county human services programs and replacing them with 15 regional bodies. The list goes on and so does the excellent MPR coverage, with a general analysis here and a description of cuts in local government aid to cities and counties here. An analysis of health and human services budgeting says that while the proposed budget increases expenditures by 10 percent, expenses are projected to increase by 22 percent, meaning that “cuts to services are inevitable.”

Under the governor’s plan 84,000 adults will lose their state-subsidized health coverage. These people are primarily enrolled in MinnesotaCare. The governor also cuts millions of dollars in payments to hospitals and long-term care providers and eliminates dental coverage for all but pregnant women and children.

Long-term care providers, hospitals, and nursing homes also take substantial hits under the proposed budget. (And a little shameless self-promotion: TC Daily Planet has a roundup of Minnesotans weighing on the budget.)

MN Job Watch Target is cutting 1500 jobs, and Best Buy is also planning cuts, reports the PiPress. Both are national chains headquartered in the Twin Cities. That means cutting deep here at home, as 1000 of Target’s cuts (600 layoffs and 400 vacant positions eliminated) fall in the Twin Cities, with 500 more jobs eliminated in closing an Arkansas distribution center. Best Buy has already gotten 500 workers at its Richfield HQ to agree to buyouts, but says that’s not enough, and an as-yet-unannounced number of layoffs will come on February 19.

“The steady stream of layoff notices leaves everyone else beginning to wonder if their firm isn’t the next to lay off more people and that causes consumers to pull back on their spending even more and save a little more in case that comes,” said Minnesota state economist Tom Stinson.

“This is all part of the vicious self-reinforcement cycle that causes recessions to spiral downward for a while.”

According to one laid-off employee quoted by MPR, most of Target’s cuts are coming in finance, property development and information technology departments, and they include workers who had been with Target for more than 20 years.

Price-point puzzle for homeowners Twin Cities home prices dropped 16 percent in November 2008, compared to 2007, according to a national study cited in the PiPress. But wait a minute — a number of Minneapolis homeowners report that their assessed valuations are showing no decline in home prices, with a few saying their assessed valuation has even risen, unrealistically in their opinions. What’s up? What’s down? Why? Only the assessor can say for sure.

Getting back to hard numbers, the best way to spin the TC home price drop, says the PiPress, is that home prices dropped only 2.1 percent from October, which is less than the 3.3 percent September to October decline. Overall, however, prices remain low. The Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors says that there were fewer “lender mediated” (read foreclosed or near foreclosure) homes on the market in the final quarter of 2008. The drop is small — there were still more than 8,000 homes on the list on January 1, and seems to be focused on the hardest-hit central city areas while more prosperous city neighborhoods and suburban areas show growth in foreclosed properties.

Adding injury to insult Despite recent subzero temps, which many of us associate not only with frostbite but also with crisp, clean air, the MPCA advises that the southern two-thirds of the state is under an air pollution health advisory through Thursday.

About that economic stimulus Congressional Republicans continue to push for tax cuts rather than spending. The president’s plan allocates a lot of money to tax cuts, but, notes the NYT, the plan would “shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget,” and “amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II.” The federal aid comes as state and local government funding for education is decreasing, and includes $20 billion for school renovation and modernization as well as increasing spending on Pell Grants to $27 billion from about $19 billion this year.

Licenses for Velociraptors! In order to stop attacks by marauding velociraptors, or at least to assign responsibility to their owners when velociraptors consume cats, chickens and small children, MN GOP legislators want to require licenses and photo IDs for all velociraptors kept within or in transit through Minnesota. Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Delano, said, “You show an ID to cash a check… (and) to get through security at the airport. If you have to do that for the most basic activities in our daily life, why wouldn’t you… want to do that for one of the most important activities that we exercise …”

Oh. Never mind. He doesn’t want photo IDs for velociraptors, but for voters. To prevent voter cheating. A problem that’s almost as common in MN as … velociraptors.

As Bill Salisbury writes in the PiPress, “Democrats have argued for years that thousands of Minnesotans lack government-issued photo IDs, and such a law would disenfranchise the people least likely to have drivers’ licenses: the poor, the disabled and the elderly. Those people also are more likely to vote for Democrats.”

Emmer said he didn’t know if anyone had been accused of voting illegally in the last election. One guy was, as I recall. A former felon up in Warroad who had not yet served all of his supervised release time cast a ballot, and later was jailed for his offense. He says he voted for McCain and Coleman. (P.S. The photo ID law wouldn’t have stopped him from voting.)

Rabbit-ear Reprieve? The senate approved a four-month delay in DTV transition, as recommended by President Obama, and House approval seems imminent, reports the Washington Post. The DTV transition scheduled for February 17 would leave 6.5 million households with blank screens, according to Nielsen. The federal agency giving out $40 coupons to help pay for the converter boxes (which cost more than $40), has run out of money, with more than 3 million people on the waiting list.

The biggest minority? While Latinos now outnumber all other minority groups nationwide, African Americans are still the largest minority in Minnesota. That will change by 2015 years, according to the state demographer’s office. Projections by the office estimate the black, non-Latino population at 314,100 in 2015 and the Latino population at 324,400.

In a January 22 report, the office projected growth in MN’s total “nonwhite or Latino” population from 14 percent in 2005 to 25 percent in 2035, with all parts of the state becoming more ethnically diverse than they are now.

Bills for schools MN schools could find a way to fund their billion-dollar-plus retirement benefit obligations (mostly for health care) under a new legislative proposal, report Megan Boldt and Maricella Miranda in the PiPress. The new law would allow a local property tax, with money going into interest-bearing trust accounts, instead of the current pay-as-you-go from operating budgets. Some 34 of MN’s 360 districts already have MN DOE authorization for levies or bonding to pay for retirement trusts. In recent years, school districts have reduced retirement benefits, but they still have obligations under prior contracts.

This is one of dozens of proposals on education introduced so far this session, reports Tom Weber on MPR. Among other proposals: starting school before Labor Day, early childhood education for at-risk four-year-olds, a new Minnesota Miracle, opting out of No Child Left Behind.

RNC trial starts David McKay, accused of assembling Molotov cocktails with another Texan, is on trial in federal court, reports Laura Yuen on MPR. His attorney says that FBI informant Brandon Darby provoked the acts. The second defendant, Bradley Crowder, pled guilty earlier this month.

Remington out, Bicking in Ralph Remington announced he would leave the Minneapolis City Council, joining Paul Ostrow and Scott Benson in departing at the end of this term, reported the Strib. In a press release, Dave Bicking became the latest candidate to declare, as the field for city council races continues to fill up.

MN Job Watch Not clear how many of the jobs lost are in Minnesota, but large companies around the world announced 62,000 job cuts Monday–22,000 at Caterpillar, 8,000 at Sprint Nextel, 7,000 at Home Depot, 2,000 at General Motors plants in Michigan and Ohio, 3,400 at Texas Instruments, 8,000 at the soon-to-be-merged Pfizer and Wyeth drug companies, 6,000 at Philips electronics company, 3,500 at steel maker Corus, and 7,000 at ING banking and insurance group. The New York Times quotes Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight, as saying, “We’re now in the danger zone.” You think? The NYT goes on to recall that “first-time unemployment claims had risen to 589,000 for the week ending Jan. 17, tying a record high set in December.” This week’s announcements follow last week’s cuts b Microsoft (5,000 over the next 18 months), Sony in Japan (5,000), Ericcson in Sweden (5,000), and Harley-Davidson (1,000).

Closer to home, the Hennepin County Medical Center announced layoffs of 20 people in response to the governor’s cuts in health and human services funding in December, reports Toni Randolph at MPR. HCMC will also eliminate 80 positions that are not currently filled, and HCMC CEO Lynn Abrahamson says she is “very nervous” about what might come next. The PiPress report notes that Allina, North Memorial and Park Nicollet have also announced job cuts in recent weeks, as more uninsured Minnesotans are unable to afford health care.

All recount, all the time After coverage of every challenged ballot and video of every minute of the State Canvassing Board, you might think that the public appetite for more recount coverage is sated. Not so. Now the three-judge panel hearing the Coleman challenge to the recount will allow one TV camera, one still photog, and one audio recorder. After The Uptake’s faithful recount coverage, I wonder who will provide the single TV camera for the court proceeding?

Getting a running start According to the New York Times, President Obama is expected to sign executive orders thursday, ordering Guantanamo and any remaining CIA secret prisons closed, and also ordering an end to “coercive interrogation methods.”

News Flash: House Republicans find root of all problems! House Republican Minority Leader Marty Seifert discussed MN’s status as a “welfare magnet” in a press conference yesterday, reports MPR’s Tim Pugmire. Siefert cites an analysis release by — well, actually, Marty Seifert — last August. The analysis showed that food stamp or welfare recipients used their EBT cards to make $10 million in out-of-state charges in 2007, and he thinks this must stop. He also wants to reduce welfare benefits for people who have lived in MN less than five years. State Senator Linda Berglin said that all welfare benefits paid by the state total only one percent of the state’s general funds, so she doesn’t think Seifert’s proposal will go very far in addressing the state’s $4.8 billion deficit.

The New York Times cites a different burden on state budgets, saying that state bills for Medicaid coverage for unemployed, uninsured residents are surging. The NYT notes increase of 5-10 percent in state Medicaid populations in 2008, with greater increases expected in the near future. According to the NYT:

Eligibility for the income-based program can vary widely by state. But at any one time last year, Medicaid was providing coverage to an average of 50 million people, or about one of every six in the United States. The cost of the program — $333 billion in 2007 — is shared by state and federal governments, with Washington roughly matching the spending approved by the states. The federal government currently picks up about 57 percent of the tab, eating up 7 percent of the federal budget, and the program is one of the largest drains on every state’s budget.

Where’s a daisy when you need one? She’s out, she’s in, she’s out, she’s in–reports on Caroline Kennedy and whether she has withdrawn from consideration for the NY Senate seat flew thick and fast Wednesday. Early reports confidently asserted they had reliable sources. As the day wore on, claims of reliability faded. From TPM:

And now check out this hilarious AP news alert, time stamped at 10:38 p.m. ET:

“Source: Caroline Kennedy remains in contest to fill Hillary Clinton’s NY Senate seat. (Corrects APNewsAlert with source saying Kennedy had withdrawn.)”

But as of Thursday morning–it appears that she’s out of the running.

Free computers, no studying required! An online tutoring program that promised free computer and internet access was a fraud, according to criminal charges against the Minneapolis mother and son who ran CyberStudy 101, reports Lora Pabst in the Strib. The two filed tax returns for more than 1900 people in 2001 and 2002, receiving more than $2 million in education tax credit payments. They bought computers f rom Kmart for $529, but never paid Kmart. The company had no instructors, and was not eligible for the reimbursement. Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of the fraud is asked to call the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at 651-293-3759.

Doc disclosure Park Nicollet Health Services now requires doctors, physician assistants, nurse midwives and physical therapists to publicly disclose all of their financial relationships with drug companies and medical device companies, reports Janet Moore in the Strib. Park Nicollet has more than 1,400 doctors and clinicians in 25 clinics and Methodist Hospital. Other health systems have much more limited disclosure requirements. Mayo makes disclosures only to individual patients, in contrast to Park Nicollet’s public website, and Allina says many of the docs who practice at its hospitals are not employees, so it can’t tell them to make disclosures. Really?

“I think that transparency is a terrific disinfectant for any conflicts, things that would interfere in the trusting relationship that patients depend on from our physicians and care teams,” said Dr. Samuel Carlson, Park Nicollet’s chief medical officer.

RNC beat goes on Cheri Honkala and the poor people’s encampment are off the hook for camping on Harriet Island on August 28, writes Emily Gurnon in the PiPress. St. Paul city attorney John Choi has dropped the charges. Honkala’s attorney, Ted Dooley, explained:

The whole case, Dooley said, was “bull—-.”
“You got people sleeping in that park every night even when it’s 20 below,” he said. “But when you do it as a group and say, ‘What’s going on here?’ you get arrested. As long as you go quietly and die, you’re fine.”

Tonight (January 21), reports the TC Daily Planetthe on-going art show to benefit the defense fund of the RNC 8 will have a reception and musical entertainment at the Black Dog Coffee and Wine Bar in St. Paul.

Girl Scout cookies safe! Despite the nationwide salmonella outbreak linked to peanut butter, Girl Scout cookies are safe! So says the PiPress and so say the Girl Scouts, who will be happy to direct you to the nearest cookie-seller. (Girl Scout cookie sellers hit the streets this weekend, so it’s time to get your order in!) Other cookies are not so lucky. Cub Foods has recalled their own peanut butter cookies, reports MPR, and all products containing peanut butter, as well as industrial-pack peanut butter and peanut paste remain under suspicion. The bright spot? Peanut butter in retail-size jars seems to be cleared of suspicion. So, if you’re dying for peanut butter cookies, you can always bake your own.

Caroline and Andrew and Al and Norm What the heck is slowing down NY’s senatorial nomination? Especially in MN, where we have only one senator at present and no way to speed up the process, NY Guv David Paterson seems to be unaccountably slow in naming a successor to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now, according to the NYT, he promises to make up his mind by the weekend.

Meanwhile, back in St. Paul, the special three-judge panel is hearing arguments on Franken’s motion to dismiss Coleman’s suit today, according to MPR. The trial of Coleman’s lawsuit is scheduled to begin Monday.

Progress at Mpls Vets Home More than a year after the state took over management of the troubled Minneapolis Veterans Home (and four others), the Department of Veterans Affairs told a MN Senate committee that care and quality have improved, reports the Strib. A team of investigators from the federal DOJ will descend in two weeks to look at care in the home.

Though care has improved, the home is still shelling out millions in overtime costs, due to inability to hire enough regular staff, and a recent legislative auditor report found problems in fiscal management. State Sen. Linda Berglin wants the Veterans Affairs Department to shift funding to Medicaid, which would save some of the $35 million annual budget but would require administrative changes and might affect veterans’ eligibility for services.

But more nursing homes likely to close MN nursing homes are still under the gun, with a long history of funding trouble. As Lorna Benson details on MPR, Medicaid funds for patient care come from the feds and are matched by the state. These funds pay for patients who have run out of money. But Minnesota law says nursing homes cannot charge private patients any more than they charge Medicaid patients. That means when the Medicaid price is too low to pay all the costs, every patient pays less than cost, and homes have to cut staffing, or close. Nursing home employees, already paid less than similar workers in hospitals, go begging for raises year after year and turnover soars (see Veterans Home article.)

Patti Cullen, president and CEO of Care Providers of Minnesota, says many nursing homes are on the brink of closing. Some 52 have closed since 2001.

MN Job Watch Ameriprise Financial will lay off 300 workers at its Mpls HQ this week, reports the Strib, as well as more in branch offices. Ameriprise has 8,750 workers worldwide, with 5,700 in MN. Its recent acquisiton of H&R Block Financial Advisors is credited (?) with providing “an opportunity to remake our entire employee adviser force,” said Ameriprise spokesperson Benjamin Pratt.

Robbinsdale revisited Tuesday night, reports the Strib, the Robbinsdale school board voted to close Sandburg Middle School (Golden Valley), Pilgrim Lane Elementary (Plymouth), and Sunny Hollow Elementary (New Hope), in a bid to save $2 million a year. The board will hold separate hearings on each school in the coming weeks, but it’s basically a done deal. One teacher described the bottom line well:

“There is no good choice here,” said Beth Sharpe, president of the PTO at the Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion School and one of many speakers in the public comment portion of the meeting at district headquarters in New Hope. “All of them are difficult, and all are going to cause difficulty in the lives of our students.”

The district’s 12,500 students come from 12,500 Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Crystal, Golden Valley, New Hope, Plymouth and Robbinsdale.

Let us not forget that there is a whole world out there beyond Minnesota and even beyond Washington:

Massacre in the name of the Lord In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has killed more than 600 civilians and kidnapped hundreds of children since Christmas Eve. The LRA rampage included torching a church during a prayer vigil, gazing whole villages, rape, torture, mutilation and murder, according to gut-wrenching reports from BBC and Human Rights Watch. Uganda, DR Congo and South Sudan launched an offensive against the LRA in December, and the Central African Republic is trying to defend its border against LRA incursions.

BBC: Over 100,000 people have fled suspected LRA rebels marauding across hundreds of kilometres stretching from the Central African Republic through Sudan and into DR Congo. The LRA has been fighting in northern Uganda for two decades but is now based in DR Congo, most recently in the Garamba National Park. 


Radio Netherlands explains that the joint operation against the LRA, which is led by Joseph Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, “has only provoked retaliatory raids by Kony’s messianic sect,” adding:

In the past twenty years, the Ugandan conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and caused some two million to flee their homes. Both the Ugandan army and the LRA have been accused of systematic human rights abuses. Human rights organisations have accused government forces of torture, executions, rape and forced displacement. But these abuses pale in comparison to those carried out by the LRA.

Human Rights Watch agrees that the joint force had provided little protection to civilians, noting that “To date, Ugandan troops have rescued 25 people.”