News Day – January 30: Billions for the rich, baseball’s big stink, save money by eliminating elections

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.