News Day – January 16

Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, God and Tim Pawlenty Pulling out the rhetorical stops, T-Paw invoked the big guys and Minnesota icons from lutefisk to loons and from pond hockey to Purple Rain. He jovially called on us to recognize all that we have in common as we gather around our kitchen tables, “trading real-life stories of how almost every one of us has hit a deer with our car.” (Not so much those of us in metro MN, Guv.)

And then he got down to business. Bottom line: No new taxes (surprise!), cut business taxes by half, cut state spending on health and human services. Oh – and for you bleeding heart liberals out there, has he got a deal: increase spending on schools, but only where students are demonstrating achievement.

But wait — that’s not all. T-Paw proposes a wage freeze for all public employees and tuition caps for colleges. The Twin Cities Daily Planet has full text, video and a place for you to put in your two cents worth.

Burn, baby, burn The MN Public Utility Commission approved Big Stone II’s transmission lines, clearing the road for more coal burning and sparking an angry response from MN Senator Ellen Anderson that, “This new polluting coal plant will send us back to the 20th century with 50 years of additional global warming emissions (4.6 millions more tons per year).” At MPR, Stephanie Hemphill reports that the PUC “brushed aside” the consultant review that it had ordered, contenting itself with protecting consumers pocketbooks by conditioning Otter Tail Power rate increases. Construction won’t begin for at least a year, and environmentalists are considering appeals.

Vitamins go better with Coke? The Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest sued Coca-Cola Company to stop its “deceptive claims” that the sugar water it markets as VitaminWater is actually good for you. The Strib publishes an AP story that details Coke’s acquisition of VitaminWater in 2007 and the ensuing boost to corporate sales, even as cola sales slid lower. Maybe they should just go back to the slightly-cocaine-based, feel-good formula that gave the company its name back in 1885.

MN Job Watch Nationally, reports AP:

The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time requests for unemployment insurance jumped to a seasonally adjusted 524,000 last week, above analysts’ expectations of 500,000 new claims. The increase is partly due to a flood of requests from newly laid-off people who delayed filing claims over the holidays, a Labor Department analyst said.

Minnesota is slower in reporting jobless figures. December’s numbers are scheduled for release next week, on Thursday.

Wal-Mart will pay the MN Department of Labor and Industry about $14 million, according to the Strib, as part of the $54.3 million settlement it reached after “Dakota County District Judge Robert King Jr. ruled July 1, following a nonjury trial, that Wal-Mart broke labor laws more than 2 million times and ordered the retailer to give employees $6.5 million in back pay.”

“National treasure” ailing BBC reports that some call Steve Jobs a “national treasure” and “a visionary of the first order,” as the Apple co-founder announced that he’s stepping down as CEO for six months because of continuing health problems, due to unknown health problems . He stepped down for six months in 2004 to battle pancreatic cancer, but came back strong. NYT blogs say that, in the worst case, “Steve Jobs can be replaced, even if he can’t be duplicated. There are lots of ways to run successful and innovative companies. And Apple couldn’t be in better shape, financially or in its public image, to withstand a change.”

Reminding us of why and how much we love our Macs, BBC reports today that “a virulent Windows worm” has hit three million computers, and counting.

Hell freezing over In St. Paul, reports the PiPress, two men died because of subzero temperatures. You may already have heard that a man sleepwalking in his underwear froze to death in Wisconsin, but the Strib has more on the story: he was evidently taking the popular sleep aid, Ambien, which “has also has been linked to hundreds of cases of sleepwalking, sleep-driving and even sleep-shoplifting.”

Cold and ice (including black ice on city streets and freeways, caused by refreeze of exhaust fumes on the pavement) contributed to hundreds of crashes statewide Thursday, reports the PiPress. And hundreds of others throughout the week. I’ve been lucky (so far, knock on wood) — only a bumper damaged and not even an air bag deployed on Wednesday.

Strib bankruptcy As the Strib slides into bankruptcy, I’m thinking more gloomy thoughts about the future of journalism. Like democracy, journalism does not happen in a vacuum. It is nurtured by the participation of all of us. Its future rests in all of our hands. For another take from The Uptake, see Mike McIntee’s interview with MinnPost’s David Brauer.