News Day

No tricky camera angles – this is a real pile of snow, still in St. Paul on May 19. Is that depressing, or amazing, or both?

The same adjectives apply to the legislative performance going on just a few blocks from the slowly melting, glacial pile of crud in the Sears parking lot. The last few days before the end of the session give evidence of a frozen intransigence, with the Republican majorities voting for cut after painful cut—cut money for the courts, cut money for Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth schools, cut money for crime victim protection programs, cut money for higher ed, cut medical care for the poorest of the poor, cut general assistance for poor and disabled adults, cut, cut, cut.

<img title="” src=”http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/sites/all/modules/wysiwyg/plugins/break/images/spacer.gif&#8221; alt=”” />The list seems never-ending. DFL press releases describe some of the consequences:

On cuts to public employment:

State Rep. Phyllis Kahn: “On top of the 5,000 middle-class, public sector jobs this bill would cut, the Republicans are also targeting nearly 1,500 private sector employees for job losses. Every job loss, public or private sector, hurts our economy. It’s money that won’t be spent in local small businesses, restaurants or shopping malls. This bill, along with the rest of the Republican budget, will destroy our fragile economic recovery.”

On cuts to education:

State Rep. Tom Rukavina: “What we are doing to our students and the future workforce of our state is indefensible. This historic cut would hike tuition, cancel courses, lay off teachers and eliminate programs. All of this, to protect the wealthiest Minnesotans from paying another cent to balance our budget.”

On cuts to environmental programs:

State Rep. Jean Wagenius: “This bill says no to our state’s long tradition of protecting our natural resources that all Minnesotans use and enjoy. This bill makes the wrong choices and walks back decades of protections for clean water. Just three years ago 56 percent of Minnesotans voted to increase the sales tax because they wanted greater protection for their drinking water, for our lakes, rivers and streams, for our wetlands, forests and other habitat. This budget makes huge cuts in each area.”

On cuts to jobs programs:

State Rep. Tim Mahoney: “Republicans have turned their back on unemployed Minnesotans. The so-called Jobs bill does nothing but cut job creation in Minnesota.  It cuts every tool the state has to help businesses throughout Minnesota expand their operations, become more competitive and increase their workforce.”

On transportation cuts:

State Rep. Frank Hornstein: “This cut takes away the ride to the doctor for seniors across our state. Harmful cuts like this are the wrong priorities, especially since the very wealthiest Minnesotans are not asked to contribute one penny to a budget solution.”

State Rep. Paul Thissen: “In order to meet the Republican bottom line, grandma just got left at the bus stop. She’s going to be waiting a long time, especially in greater Minnesota, because the bus is never coming.”

On cuts to the court and justice systems:

State Rep. Sheldon Johnson: “The bill funding the state’s judiciary is a disservice to all Minnesotans. Continued underfunding of state courts is reaching a crisis level. This bill only perpetuates the problem of reduced access, overworked public defenders and lack of a speedy trial. Minnesotans deserve better than to continue this path of slowly asphyxiating an entire branch of government.”

State Rep. Joe Mullery: “The GOP also cuts funding for state prisons, reducing rehabilitation services for prisoners and making them more dangerous when they are released into our neighborhoods. The bill cuts the Department of Public Safety which helps convict criminals. It makes drastic cuts in aids to raped women, severely beaten children, spouses and other victims of violent crime. The bill raids funds dedicated to public safety and transfers that money to non-safety portions of the state budget.”

As the Republican budget bills hit his desk in the next few days, Governor Dayton’s veto pen is sure to get a workout. On May 19, he vetoed the Republican legislative and Congressional redistricting bills, saying in his veto message that districts were “too partisan, drawn for the purpose of defeating a disproportionate number of Democrats.”

What are the chances of reaching a budget compromise before adjournment on May 23? Probably as good as the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell, and considerably less than a glacier’s chance in mid-May in Minnesota.

Republican leadership accuses Dayton of being unwilling to compromise, though he has offered to meet them halfway, cutting the tax proposals he originally made. Frozen in a no-new-taxes position, Republicans seem to think that “compromise” means arguing over whether to cut more money from, for example, K-12 education or higher education. Maybe they need to go back to school to learn the difference between the give-and-take involved in compromise and the my-way-or-the-highway attitude more correctly identified as a demand for capitulation.

Although five months of hot air wafting over from the Capitol hasn’t thawed the St. Paul glacier, I’m betting that it will be melted well before there’s any agreement on a state budget.

After weeks of controversy over its “Hmong parody” song, denounced as racist and demeaning by protesters, KDWB scheduled a meeting with what it called Hmong community leaders on May 4. The meeting was by invitation only, and the unidentified leaders were selected by KDWB. Organizers of Hmong protests against the radio station said they did not attend the meeting and did not know who was present.

Boa Lee, a member of Community Action Against Racism (CAAR), said that it seemed that KDWB was trying to exclude the community. CAAR organized protests against “30 Hmongs in a House,” which it calls “a blatantly offensive, inaccurate and racist song about Hmong families, women and teenagers.”

CAAR had invited KDWB to send representatives to a community meeting on April 30 (PDF below), but received no response and was not invited to KDWB’s May 4 closed-door meeting. One CAAR member, Amee Xiong, was invited, as a representative of Take Action Minnesota/CAAR, but was told she would be the only person allowed to attend and that no cameras or recording devices would be allowed. After discussion in the April 30 community meeting, Xiong declined the invitation.

A CAAR press release on her decision said in part:

“The decision to not attend today’s meeting came after consulting our supporters and other organizations that had also been invited to the May 4 meeting,” said CAAR Communications Chair Boa Lee. “We operate with full inclusion of the community and the community has said that KDWB needs to come to us.”

The community meeting, said Lee, was attended by 75-80 people, most of whom were Hmong. That meeting decided to call on KDWB to attend a May 13 community meeting, open to all. (See CAAR website or Facebook page for details.)

After numerous phone calls from TC Daily Planet to KDWB Program Manager Rob Morris and station attorneys, Stacy Bettison of Rotenberg Associates responded as spokesperson for KDWB. She said:

We have met with various segments of the Hmong and broader community. We’re not disclosing their names at this time because we want to continue the progress we’ve made. A certain activist group that doesn’t represent the Hmong community attempted to interfere with our reconciliation process, which is why we are not disclosing their names.

We are grateful for all the time that these individuals have devoted to working with KDWB in a respectful and collaborative manner and we are very pleased with the progress we are making.

Bettison said that she could not identify the leaders involved in the meeting. She also could not say what “progress” they were making or what the reconciliation process was.

Asked to comment on Bettison’s statement, Lee said, “It sounds to me like they are picking and choosing who they talk to, and that goes against what they tried to tell us about being inclusive and reaching out to all members of the community. For them to exclude a multiracial coalition is detrimental to the process of resolution.” She said she did not know who attended the May 4 meeting, but knew that CAAR, Take Action Minnesota, State Representative Rena Moran, and Hmong 18 Council did not attend.

The law firm website for KDWB’s spokespersons, Rotenberg Associates,  says that it “provides strategic communications counsel to corporations, non-profits, and individuals facing legal issues, media scrutiny, or other reputational crises.”

The CAAR website says that it was founded in 1998 to protest anti-Hmong racism on KQRS, and was revived after KDWB aired “30 Hmongs in a House” in March. CAAR’s website says that it wants KDWB to meet with the community and that it wants Clear Channel policy implementation, including:

Moving forward, some requests that CAAR will consider are the following: KDWB/Clear Channel must implement rules to punish – reprimand with suspension or termination – anyone who airs something that violates the aforementioned company policy. We want to increase the diversity of people who work at the radio station. We want current and future staff at the radio station to undergo annual diversity and/or white privilege trainings. We want the station to work with us to craft a public statement of these changes and one that also acknowledges they recognize the harm inflicted with the March 22, 2011 song. We want the station to devote airtime to accurately and fairly educate listeners about the diverse communities in Minnesota, especially the Hmong.

Late on Sunday, May 8, Hmong National Development, Inc. issued a press release saying that they had met with KDWB on May 5 because, “As a result of low attendance at the May 4th meeting, KDWB and Clear Channel reached out to HND to meet again on Thursday, May 5, 2011.” According to the press release:

Given the low attendance at the May 4 meeting, HND accepted the invitation and agreed to meet with KDWB for the purpose of listening to what representatives from KDWB and Clear Channel had to share. HND did not engage in any negotiations on behalf of the local Hmong community, nor did it make any demands or recommendations to KDWB. HND clearly stated at the meeting that they were not in attendance to represent the local Hmong community and highly encourage KDWB to meet with various groups in the community. …

On April 27, over ten local Hmong organizations held a meeting at Hmong American Partnership and formed a Hmong Coalition to work on this issue.  Hmong 18 Clan Council was appointed as the lead agency and we look forward to their leadership.

HND characterized the May 5 meeting as “very productive.”

Congratulations to John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, who received the 2011 Access to Justice award from the Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association. ILCM’s press release noted that last year they served more than 3,300 cases, reaching nearly 10,000 Minnesota individuals and families, who come from 95 different countries. Continue reading →

As traffic snakes through construction barriers on University Avenue, I look at the chain link fences lining the sidewalks and wonder just how much damage some of my favorite small businesses have already felt. Corner businesses on major cross streets are luckier—the #16 bus still stops at Prior and University and traffic still crosses the street in all directions. Mid-block businesses on the south side of University Avenue (now) and on the north side (later) are cut off by trenches and earth-moving equipment, imprisoned behind chain-link fences. Continue reading →

The official story from the Met Council on April , as repeated in MinnPost and MPRwas that there’s great news and new government money to help businesses along the Central Corridor. “Assistance to businesses along the Central Corridor LRT route will increase to $11.1 million, which now includes more than $6 million in forgivable loans and grants,” said the Met Council press release.

The University Avenue Business Association said that they were “happy to see the Met Council responding, but their announcement is confusing.”

They got that right. Continue reading →

Do the wealthiest 400 people in the United States actually earn more than the rest of us all put together? Yes, said a speaker at a recent forum in Minneapolis. Just one problem: like a fisherman describing the big one that got away, he didn’t get the facts quite right. The big fish—the large and growing income disparity between the extremely wealthy and the rest of us—is out there, but the numbers used to measure its weight and length are a little slippery.

In fact, the 400 wealthiest people in the United States own more of the nation’s wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population. That’s different from what the speaker claimed in two ways:

1.     The difference between income and wealth: Income is what is earned in a year. Wealth or net worth is how much someone owns.

2.     The difference between “greater than all the rest of us” and “greater than the bottom 50 percent of the population.”

Michael Moore talked about the 400 wealthiest people at a Wisconsin protest. PolitiFact checked the original statement by Michael Moore, crunched numbers from half a dozen places, and found that the statement was true:

How could it be that 400 people have more wealth than half of the more than 100 million U.S. households?

Think of it this way. Many Americans make a good income, have some savings and investments, and own a nice home; they also have debt, for a mortgage, credit cards and other bills. Some people would still have a pretty healthy bottom line. But many — including those who lost a job and their home in the recession — have a negative net worth. So that drags down the total net worth for the poorer half of U.S. households that Moore cited.

I agree with the speaker that the widening disparity in distribution of wealth and income, and the increasing concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the top five percent or one percent or 400 people is an outrage and a disgrace to our nation.

Facts, like fish, are slippery things. If the length of a fish grows each time the story is told, no one really minds. When someone gets the economic or political facts wrong, they lose credibility and that hurts the rest of their message.

The question-and-answer portion of the forum provided more examples of problems with facts. An elderly African-American woman stood up to make a point about people sticking together and making sure that government works for all of us, but veered off-track.

“A lot of people are coming here free,” she said. “They can get health care free. A lot of people are coming over here. They are coming from other countries, getting this health care. The elderly, people like us, we are paying these big bucks for health insurance.

There are other people coming over, groups, whole nations, coming to this state and they’re getting health care free. You may not believe it, but I know it’s true.”

Well—it’s not true. And in the room full of activists and community members and public officials, not a single person challenged or corrected this firmly-held prejudice about immigrants.

The repetition of long-discredited myths about immigrants (or about African American people, welfare recipients, gay people, etc.) hurts more than the groups who are stereotyped. Not-quite-accurate or outright-false “facts” multiply and grow with each re-telling. Their proliferation in civic discussion pollutes the waters and that’s not good for any of us.

I wasn’t sure how to respond to the misstatements made this morning, and I’m still not sure. Part of the problem is that the statements are made in real time, and checking the facts to document the errors takes a little time.

Then there’s the question of whose “job” it is to correct the facts. Who should have answered these statements? How could they answer without seeming to be uppity authority figures or experts squashing the voice of a regular citizen?

I’m still fishing for answers to these questions.

Central Corridor residents have lower incomes, higher unemployment, and pay a higher proportion of their income for housing costs, according to a set of studies released by the Healthy Corridors for All coalition on March 5. The studies explored the effect of city plans for rezoning and redevelopment along the Central Corridor route on residents. Continue reading →

Did you know that St. Paul is in the running to become a Fan Favorite among a Dozen Distinctive Destinations chosen by the National Trust for Historic Preservation? Well, now  you know—and you can help St. Paul win! “Vote for your favorite destination between February 15 and March 15,” the NTHP tells us, “and not only could your town become the 2011 Fan Favorite, but you will also be entered to win a two night stay at any Historic Hotel of America.” If that’s not enough incentive, consider this: right now, St. Paul is ranked number nine. That’s right, folks, we are NINTH out of twelve, trailing such notables as Paducah, Kentucky and Sheridan, Wyoming.  I don’t know about you, but that hurts my St. Paul pride. Vote early! Vote often! (Yes, you can vote once a day.) And you folks over in Minneapolis—lend us a hand, or at least a mouse-click-vote! Continue reading →