About Mary Turck
News Day, written by Mary Turck, analyzes, summarizes, links to, and comments on reports from news media around the world, with particular attention to immigration, education, and journalism. Fragments, also written by Mary Turck, has fiction, poetry and some creative non-fiction.
Mary Turck edited TC Daily Planet, www.tcdailyplanet.net, from 2007-2014, and edited the award-winning Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG, in its pre-2008 version. She is also a recovering attorney and the author of many books for young people (and a few for adults), mostly focusing on historical and social issues.
October 27, 2016 · 2:14 pm
Some rights reserved by Free Press Pics
My dad liked to say that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. A Buzzfeed investigative report shows something a little different: lies, damn lies and Facebook’s phony news sites. Buzzfeed analyzed the Facebook pages of three left-wing, three right-wing and three mainstream news sites. They found lies in almost 20 percent of the left-wing pages’ posts and 38 percent of the right-wing pages’ posts. Even worse, they found that “the least accurate pages generated some of the highest numbers of shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook — far more than the three large mainstream political news pages analyzed for comparison.” Continue reading →
October 25, 2016 · 8:05 pm
Demonstration outside Minneapolis City Hall
More than 400 of us gathered outside Minneapolis City Hall October 25 to demand that Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek bring back county officers and equipment sent to North Dakota. Stanek sent the county forces to support North Dakota’s repressive police action against Standing Rock water protectors, aimed at stopping protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Continue reading →
October 18, 2016 · 1:09 pm
Minnesota Congressional districts from Wikipedia
Down-ballot races make a huge difference in post-election life, which is to say, in all of our lives, every day of every year. These are the people who make the laws (U.S. and state legislators), who preside over the justice system (district, appellate and supreme court judges), and who run the schools. Down-ballot voting this year also includes referendums on a Minnesota constitutional amendment and on a Minneapolis school tax levy. Continue reading →
October 18, 2016 · 1:09 pm
A couple of people have asked me who I recommend voting for in down-ballot races. Down-ballot races make a huge difference in post-election life, which is to say, in all of our lives, every day of every year. So I’ve looked at my own sample ballot in St. Paul, and also at some Minneapolis races. For more on down-ballot races in general, see Voting down-ballot in Minnesota. For more on voting in general, see Vote – to answer the attack on democracy. Without further ado, here are my recommendations for St. Paul and Minneapolis voting:
Continue reading →
October 18, 2016 · 6:24 am
Every day, a new tweet, a new speech, a new lie Trump-ets failure, rigged elections, voter fraud.
These are lies. We know they are lies. Every study, every bit of evidence, says voter fraud is vanishingly small. Small like 31 likely voter fraud cases out of more than 1 billion votes cast from 2000 to 2014. Politifact puts it in perspective: more people are struck by lightning than accused of voter fraud. Continue reading →
October 14, 2016 · 6:52 pm
Photo from funeral bombing, posted on Facebook.
As the campaign circus goes on across the United States, U.S. bombs are killing civilians in Yemen, potentially making the United States complicit in war crimes. Last weekend’s bombing of a funeral is only the latest and most dramatic case. The funeral in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, had been announced in advance. Saudi warplanes hit hard, twice. Then, after first responders arrived on the scene to help victims, the bombers returned to hit them two more times. The bombers killed at least 140 people and wounded 525 more. One rescuer described the scene as “a lake of blood.” Continue reading →
October 10, 2016 · 9:38 am
When Lisa and Ryan Grassley brought baby Samuel home from the hospital, they laughed at one part of the bill: $39.35 for “skin to skin after C-Sec,” the charge for the privilege of holding their baby after delivery. The charge exemplifies the convoluted system of charges and record-keeping made necessary by the insurance industry system of payment for U.S. health care. In contrast, the BBC reports, “The average cost for a normal delivery or planned Caesarean section in the NHS in England in 2016 is £1755 [$2168], rising to £2582 [$3199] if there are complications.” Both charges are far below the cost of hospital delivery in the United States. And both represent the total cost — without need for a complicated breakdown of charges for everything from aspirin to diapers to holding the baby. Continue reading →
October 8, 2016 · 10:47 am
Senator John Marty has a single-payer plan for Minnesota health care. (Photo by Senate Media Services)
John Marty wants to make Minnesota a leader in real single payer health care. In a new book, Healing Health Care (free, available on-line), he outlines many of the problems with our current, insurance-controlled health care system and proposes an alternative, the Minnesota Health Plan. Continue reading →
October 4, 2016 · 8:26 am
Mississippi River in Minneapolis (Photo by Mary Turck)
The Mississippi River, source of drinking water for 15 million people including millions in the Twin Cities, is being steadily polluted from its source in northern Minnesota and all along its course through the state. In a powerful series in the Star Tribune, Josephine Marcotty pulls together the evidence of danger to the upper Mississippi in northern Minnesota, along with stories of the Red River and Chippewa River. Continue reading →
September 27, 2016 · 4:06 pm
In the Lowry Grove mobile home park, families own their homes, but not the ground on which those homes sit. Many of the mobile homes jin the St. Anthony, MN park are too old to move. Aside from physical stress, the older homes wouldn’t be allowed in more modern mobile home parks. So if the residents lose their leases, they lose everything. Continue reading →
Mary Turck