Tag Archives: education

February 19, 2009 · 8:27 am

News Day 2/19/09: Housing plan in MN / “Nation of cowards” on race / Carstarphen leaving SPPS? / more …

What part of “no” don’t you understand, Norm? The three-judge panel yesterday “just said no” to the Coleman campaigns latest request to reverse a previous ruling. Writing in MinnPost, Eric Black reminds us that, like every ruling in the case, this one was unanimous.

Mortgage relief on horizon Dan Olson on MPR talked to local homeowners and U of M law school housing expert Prentiss Cox about the Obama mortgage relief plan. The plan provides some refinancing by some lenders, and extends relief to some homeowners who are “under water” — so long as the gap between their home value and amount owed is not too great. Cox faults the plan for failing to provide a “cram-down,” a provision that would make banks agree to take a loss on a mortgage when the home is worth less, and write a new mortgage for a lower amount.

Many big banks, including Wells Fargo, suspended mortgages while waiting to hear about the president’s plan. According to the NYT, one in ten home mortgages is either delinquent or in foreclosure. The plan will provide incentives to lenders to rewrite mortgages, changing the interest rate to make them more affordable. It will increase available credit through $200 billion in backing for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it will offer some homeowners who are current on their mortgages but cannot refinance because they lack enough equity an opportunity to refinance at the current low interest rates. The plan also calls for bankruptcy rule changes to let judges reduce mortgages on primary residences to fair market value.

Take a look at the White House summary of the plan here. And for a critique that says the plan is “comprehensive, but not aggressive” enough, see Simon Johnson in The New Republic.

Over at the legislature According to AP, GOP lawmakers are proposing–and DFLers are “open to looking at” –a five percent pay cut for legislators, which would cut base pay to $29,600, saving the state a whopping $338,000 a year. Let’s see – that’s less than one percent of one percent of the $4.8 billion deficit. Hope they don’t spend a lot of time debating that one. Another bill would require MN students to stay in school through 18 or through high school graduation, rather than the current compulsory school attendance through 16, writes Jake Grovum in the Strib. Critics say it would cost a lot and that schools aren’t very good. Wisconsin, South Dakota and 16 other states already have 18-year-old attendance laws. And in what we can devoutly hope is a lost cause, the Vikes are still trying to get public money for a nearly one billion dollar stadium this year, reports Mike Kaszuba in the Strib.

“Nation of cowards” on race Attorney General Eric Holder spoke yesterday at the DOJ African American History Month program. Among his remarks:

One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul.

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.

Read the whole speech here. It’s well worth reading, thinking about, and responding to his call.

Sez who? A day after a study showing a 97% thumbs down on NCLB from MN principals, the Strib reports that a DC-based think tank said MN is too easy on enforcement of NCLB rules, and that WI has the loosest interpretation of all 50 states. What the press reports don’t say is that the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is a conservative think tank, led by Chester Finn, “one of the education policy gurus of the conservative movement” with ties to the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, Center of the American Experiment, and National Association of Scholars.

Carstarphen looks south St. Paul School Superintendent Meria Carstarphen is a finalist for the Austin, Texas superintendent’s job, reports Emily Johns in the Strib. She’s in her third year with SPPS, has not yet signed a new contract, and has her Summit Avenue house up for sale.

RNC 8 on Democracy Now You can hear from RNC 8 defendant Luce Guillens-Givens and attorney Jordan Kushner on Democracy Now. Not much that’s new, as the judicial process continues, except for criminal charges against one of the FBI informants.

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February 18, 2009 · 8:35 am

News Day 2/18/09: Criminal charges for FBI snitch / 46 St. Paul teachers reassigned / Principals dis NCLB / more …

FBI RNC snitch charged in attack Andrew Darst, who spied on the RNC Welcoming Committee for the FBI, faces felony charges of first- and second-degree burglary and a misdemeanor assault charge, reports Randy Furst in the Strib. Court documents say that Minnetrista police responding to a call to a home at 2:18 a.m. on January 11 found the door ripped off its hinges, and that Darst “appeared to be full of rage and anger” and said he “wasn’t comfortable with the people his wife was with” in the home.

The FBI, of course, won’t confirm that Darst is an informant, but he was listed as a potential prosecution witness in a previous RNC trial, and RNC 8 lawyer Bruce Nestor confirms that he is listed as such in FBI documents. Although mug shots are usually public, a Hennepin County clerk said that Darst’s mug shot would not be released, on instructions from the FBI.

NCLB forces reassignment of 46 St. Paul teachers As part of forced restructuring at Humboldt Junior High and Arlington High School, 46 teachers were ordered to different assignments last week, with letters from the district saying that “this assignment change is not related to any issue of misconduct, nor should it be construed as a failure on your part.” Emily Johns writes in the Strib that dozens of teachers rallied outside district HQ on Tuesday, protesting lack of input into the restructuring process as a whole. District plans include the already-in-place transformation of Arlington into a sciene, technology and math magnet school, funded by a $6 million federal grant, and future plans to combine Humboldt junior and senior high schools into a single small 7-12 school and to extend the school day at both schools.

The restructuring is mandated by NCLB, but most MN principals think that NCLB itself is destructive, according to a report released yesterday by Minnesota 2020.

There are about 1,800 principals in Minnesota. Each oversees a school that has been affected by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. While NCLB was created in Washington D.C., it has permeated education down into each classroom. NCLB has forced principals to make draconian choices to meet NCLB requirements, choices made more difficult in Minnesota’s atmosphere of declining funding and diminished results.

Some 97% of the 740 principals responding to the survey said that “NCLB’s main goal – 100 percent proficiency in tests by 2014 – is unattainable.” In addition, principals said that NCLB has forced them to spend more time and resources on “teaching to the test” and to divert resources away from arts and other subjects. They feel that NCLB has affected community perception of schools, and that its requirements for special education students and ELL students are particularly unrealistic.

The NCLB test, MCA-II, is an ineffective measure of student development. Only 15.5 percent of principals say the MCA-II is an effective assessment of student achievement. More than 96 percent said that an assessment that measures student growth over many years is more useful than the MCA-II.

“The job of an educator is difficult enough without having to work with a program that has dubious results,” concludes MN 2020.

T-Paw backtracks on carbon Are MN legislators actually surprised by the Pawlenty administration’s abandonment of green principles? Ron Way in MinnPost reports that they are, as T-Paw administration officials waffle on carbon emissions, green jobs, and clean car legislation.

David Thornton, assistant commissioner for air quality at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) told legislators no further action is needed to reduce carbon emissions and that millions of tons of carbon emissions from coal-fired Big Stone II and Excelsior Energy could actually reduce greenhouse gases. His assertions fly in the face of not only common sense but also other reports by previously Pawlenty-approved expert Bill Grant of the Walton League and the MN Climate Change Advisory Group. Thornton said the new plants would replace older, more polluting ones — but Thornton said the utilities told MCCAG that the opposite was true.

Fur, feathers and fins report What is it with all of the animal news? From the horrific chimp attack in Connecticut to discovery of 26,000-year-old saber-toothed cat bones in southeastern MN, animals are in the news this week. In the Twin Cities, the Animal Humane Society euthanized more than 120 cats found in a St. Anthony mobile home, deciding they were too sick to survive, though Animal Ark takes issue with that assertion. In Alaska, a BBC team used underwater cameras to film grizzly bears catching salmon, and reports that “Most bears will do anything to avoid getting their ears wet.” In Scotland, reports BBC, a lamb head-butted a golden eagle.

In MN, the MPCA found mercury levels in fish increasing since the mid-1990s, reversing a previous, and healthier, downward trend, reports Dennis Lien in the PiPress. The pollution probably comes from outside MN, as mercury travels thousands of miles after being produced by coal-fired power plants.

MN Job Watch As Minnesotans get laid off at a rate of about a thousand a day, many are being pushed to sign documents waiving their right to sue their employers, reports Martin Moylan at MPR. The waivers are required in exchange for some kind of severance benefits, and prevent future lawsuits about anything from work-related disability to discrimination. Attorney Stephen Cooper warns:

“An employee often thinks, ‘Oh this is something that serves both our interests. This is just a mutual way to both agree we’re both protected. That is very seldom the case. Usually the only person being protected in those documents is the employer.”

Saving drowning homeowners President Barack Obama will announce a housing bailout plan today in Phoenix. Two groups of homeowners are in trouble, reports the New York Times: about three million who are already behind in monthly payments and also about ten million whose houses are “underwater” — worth less than they owe on their mortgages. The Obama plan will target the first group, with $50 billion from the already-allotted financial bailout money going to reduce their monthly payments. The NYT analysis is that the Obama plan bets on underwater homeowners staying with their homes and mortgages rather than walking away, at the risk of wrecking their credit ratings.

Recovery.gov – your turn! The new White House website, recovery.gov, ” features cool graphs, interactive maps, projected timelines of when the money will start pumping into the economy, and a place to share your stories and offer comments,” according to the Daily Kos. And if you feel the need for a little more information before telling the government what to do, check out Baseline Scenario’s Financial Crisis for Beginners.

Afghanistan: Civilian deaths up, more troops On the heels of a U.N. report of a 39% increase in civilian deaths in Afghanistan last year, President Obama cited “a deteriorating situation” and authorized deployment of up to 17,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan, reports the BBC. The troops will add to 19,000 U.S. troops under U.S. command and another 14,000 serving under NATO command. U.S. commanders in Afghanistan asked for 30,000 additional troops.

The U.N found militants to blame for 55% of 2,118 civilian deaths in 2008, and documented Taliban assassination and intimidation campaigns against anyone associating with the government and against schools. The New York Times reported that, while most of the 39% of civilian deaths attributable to U.S., NATO and Afghan forces come from air strikes, there are other significant problems:

The newly released United Nations report singled out Special Forces and other military units operating outside the normal chains of command, which, the survey said, frequently could not be held accountable for their actions.

Special Forces groups like Navy Seals and paramilitary units operated by the C.I.A. often conduct raids in Afghanistan, and often at night. Such groups typically operate outside the normal chains of command, which means that their presence and movements are not always known by regular field commanders.

Give us national healthcare! A New York Times-CBS poll shows that 59% of the country wants the government–not insurance companies–to provide health insurance, and 49% say the insurance should cover all medical problems.

The poll sampled attitudes on a wide variety of topics, and the report compares responses now to attitudes 30 years ago. Among the other findings:

Today, most Americans (60%) say they get most of their news from television, with newspapers a distant second (14%), followed closely by the internet (13%), and radio (7%). Thirty years ago, a Los Angeles Times Poll found Americans were equally as likely to get most of their news from newspapers (42%) as television (41%). The internet was not available as a choice in the 1979 poll.

Wal-Mart up, Wal-Mart down “Stronger Dollar Knocks Wal-Mart” said the BBC, but “Wal-Mart Profit Tops Expectations” headlined the New York Times. The different spins reported the same numbers: Wal-Mart reported an 8% drop in quarterly profits as the higher value of the U.S. dollar affected overseas earnings, but sales were still up and there still was a profit, as Wal-Mart continues to do better in the recession than almost anyone else.

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February 11, 2009 · 8:26 am

News Day 2/11/09: MN to Somali / Salting the lakes / Schools slash spending / more …

Minneapolis to Somalia Leaders in the Somali and Muslim community denied that a Minneapolis mosque had anything to do with recent disappearances of young Somali men from the Twin Cities, blaming unnamed people within the local Somali community for stirring up rumors, reports Nelima Kerré in the Twin Cities Daily Planet. While the press statement, and leaders at the press conference, did not name individuals, a commenter on MPR’s website pointed the finger at Omar Jamal. Differences within the MN Somali community reflect political and clan differences in Somalia. Jamal is related to the recently-resigned Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, while the young men have allegedly gone to fight with Al-Shabab, the youth and military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, which opposed the Ethiopian-backed government of Abdullahi Yusuf. A former leader of the UIC, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, was elected president in January.

Around the world in 60 seconds Taking a quick look at BBC this morning:
Drug war battles in the farming town of Villa Ahumada and in a prison in Torreon (all in northern Mexico) killed 21 people on Monday, including at least six police officers executed in Villa Ahumada before the army arrived on the scene. Yesterday Mexican army troops arrested the police chief and 36 officers in Cancun, on suspicion that they were connected to the torture and execution last week of an ex-army general who had just taken charge of a crime-fighting squad targeting drug traffickers in Cancun.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has agreed to serve as Zimbabwe’s prime minister, eleven months after the presidential elections were stolen by discredited, corrupt, but still-President Robert Mugabe. Millions of Zimbabweans remain in desperate need of food and health care, and the country has been swept by a cholera epidemic.
The commander of Azerbaijan’s air force was assassinated yesterday, shot to death outside his home. Lt-Gen Rail Rzayev had headed the country’s air force since about the time of independence in the 1990s, and was deeply involved in large-scale military acquisitions in recent years. BBC: “In October 2008, the International Crisis Group described Azerbaijan’s armed forces as “fragmented, divided, accountable-to-no-one-but-the-president, un-transparent, corrupt and internally feuding”.
Tamils in diaspora are uniting in protest over government indifference to the suffering of civilians, as Sri Lanka troops continue a major offensive aimed at wiping out the rebel Tamil Tigers.

Face of People’s Bailout Joli Stokes could lose their Richfield home this year, victims of predatorylending practices. The People’s Bailout legislation proposed by MN DFL legislators is targeted at helping Minnesotans who, like Joli, face foreclosure, as well as others facing unemployment and welfare cuts, reports Madeleine Baran in the TC Daily Planet.

The legislation proposes a two-year suspension of the current five-year limit on welfare benefits for low-income families. Currently, families are cut off welfare benefits after five years. This plan would allow families an additional two years of financial support. Low-income housing advocates say that although the welfare grants are already low, an extension would prevent homelessness for many Minnesotan families. An unemployed adult with two children receives $532 in cash assistance and $413 in food support each month.

The legislation also includes a thirteen-week extension of unemployment benefits, a moratorium on foreclosures, initiatives to secure federal funds for job-creation programs, and recommendations against state worker layoffs.

Housing starts down January building permits hit a new low, reports Jim Buchta in the Strib:

The decline in construction spending has been accelerating over the past several months, evidence of just how much money is evaporating from the local economy. It affects everyone from the crews who dig foundations to the corner-store retailer that sells grass seed.

MN Job Watch MTS Systems Corp (Eden Prairie) will cut 150 jobs, writes Liz Fedor in the Strib. The cuts represent about six percent of the MTS work force. In New Hope, 70 workers at HD Bath and Remodeling will be out of work on April 1, writes Jackie Crosby in the Strib in a ripple effect from Home Depot’s decision to shut down smaller home improvement brands.

On the national front, General Motors announced Monday that it will cut 10,000 salaried workers. The NYT reports that the cuts come a month after buyout offers to the hourly workforce and three months after 5,100 jobs were cut. GM sales fell 11 percent in 2008. And, while Wal-Mart has generally profited during the recession, the Strib publishes an AP report that the retail giant is cutting 700-800 jobs at its Arkansas HQ.

Just what we need A huge high-voltage power line is marching toward MN, reports the Strib, at least if ITC Holdings Corp gets its way. The company wants to build a 3,000-mile, 765,000-volt, $12 billion “Green Power Express” line to take wind-generated electricity from the west to population centers like Chicago.

The bailout plan Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced a bailout that most commentators found confusing, and that investors found depressing, judging by the dive in the Dow Jones and Nasdaq, reported in the Washington Post and similar downturns in European markets, attributed to the bailout announcement by BBC. In a nutshell, the $1.5 trillion plan would “would more closely scrutinize the risks banks are facing and offer public and private capital to those that need it; create a fund, with a starting value of $500 billion, to buy up toxic real estate loans; and commit up to $1 trillion to reopen lending markets for consumer, student, small business, auto and commercial loans,” according to WaPo.

Paul Krugman quips that he was going to call the plan TANF 2 —” temporary assistance to needy financial institutions, without, you know, any of the means-testing or work requirements involved when poor people get help.” He says it’s hard to tell what the plan means at this point.

Salting 10,000 lakes A U of M study finds that hundreds of thousands of tons of road salt goes into area wetlands, ground water and lakes, reports the Strib. Well, where did you think it was going?

Schools slash spending St. Paul schools will cut 265 positions for 2009-2010, but board member John Brodrick warned that “this is not the end,” reports Doug Belden in the PiPress. The budget will be finalized in June, and school board members will meet the public at a “listening session” at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Hubbs Center at 1030 W. University Ave.

The Anoka-Hennepin school board decided to “lay off scores of teachers, reduce its textbook purchases, cut one day off the school calendar and scale back bus services to climb out of a $15.8 million budget hole,” reports Norman Draper in the Strib.

Recount – maybe some movement? The court told the Coleman and Franken lawyers to “streamline proceedings,” reports Chris Steller in MnIndy.

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February 9, 2009 · 8:35 am

News Day – February 9: Stimulus and sabotage; Fletcher’s cops go to jail; St. Paul pays protester; Milking the consumer, screwing the farmer; Holocaust-denying bishop in MN; and more

Stimulus and sabotage If you want to understand the depths of the country’s economic trouble, and what to begin doing about it, Nobel Prize-winning economist Pau Krugman is must reading. He has a regular column and a blog at the New York Times. You can subscribe to either or both through a variety of RSS feeds. A sample from last Friday’s really scary column:

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world. …

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

As you think about Republicans’ attempts to sabotage the economic stimulus package, remember how well they did with with the bank bailout, per the AP report published in the Strib

The Bush administration overpaid tens of billions of dollars for stocks and other assets in its massive bailout last year of Wall Street banks and financial institutions, a new study by a government watchdog says.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released Friday, said last year’s overpayments amounted to a taxpayer-financed $78 billion subsidy of the firms.

There’s much more, if you can bear to read it. (Or you can read the official report.)

More wrong answers in MN T-Paw’s broadband committee decided that MN should not use stimulus money for ready-to-go broadband projects in MN. Steve Alexander writes in the Strib that the Pawlenty’s Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force’s rejection of the funds came after Comcast and other private providers objected.

The list of ready-to-go broadband projects in Minnesota included a $27.5 million municipal broadband system in Monticello, a $5.4 million Minnesota Department of Health plan to expand rural health care, and a $2,500 project to extend high-speed Internet service to a library in Worthington. Other projects included a $19.6 million plan to provide high-speed Internet to 11 Minnesota communities, including Cannon Falls, Zumbrota and Lake City, and an $18.5 million Internet-TV-telephone system in North St. Paul.

And in another area, Met Council chief Peter Bell says he wants to use stimulus money to pay off the operating deficit, rather than to expand metro transit. MPR reports:

Bell’s suggestion for how the money could be used for something it isn’t intended for, illustrates a dilemma facing stimulus supporters — that money will be moved from account to account to keep everything legal, but in the end nothing gets done that wasn’t going to get done anyway.

Milking the consumer, screwing the farmer MPR forwards a brief report from the West Central Tribune about plunging milk prices, which fell from about $20 a hundredweight last fall to half that now. Farmers are losing money — nothing new there — and consumers haven’t even noticed. I’ve been working on an article on the food industry recently, so I can offer a little more detail.

The farmer sees very little of the consumer food dollar — about 17 cents for the wheat in a loaf of bread or ten cents for the corn in a box of corn flakes. All the rest goes to processing, marketing, advertising, and everyone else’s profits.

Milk provides the most dramatic example. There are approximately 12 gallons in a hundredweight of milk. (Farmers get paid by the hundredweight, consumers pay by the gallon.) At the tip top of the farm price cycle, the farmer got $1.71 per gallon of milk. That same gallon of milk cost $3.80 in the supermarket. The farmer’s price for milk at the beginning of 2009 had dropped to about 92 cents per gallon. The price in the supermarket? Still over $3.80.

Quote of the day Remember that Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop, who also thinks that “Judeo-Masonry brought about the first two world wars”? Turns out he headed up a seminary in Winona, and lived there from 1988-2003, according to a long and interesting article in the Winona Daily News. But the quote of the day, from a September 2001 letter written by Bishop Richard Williamson, came to me last week, courtesy of my web-surfing partner:

…[A]lmost no girl should go to any university! The deep-down reason is the same as for the wrongness of women’s trousers: the unwomaning of woman… [S]ince she is not respected and loved for being a woman, she tries to make herself a man. Since modem man does not want her to do what God meant her to do, namely to have children, she takes her revenge by invading all kinds of things that man is meant to do..…[O]nly in modern times have women dreamt of going to university, but the idea has now become so normal that even Catholics… may have difficulty in seeing the problem. […A]ny Catholic…recognizes that women should not be priests – can he deny that if few women went to university, almost none would wish to be priests? Alas, women going to university is part of the whole massive onslaught on God’s Nature [of] our times. That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and…girls.

(You read it here, and you might have trouble finding it elsewhere – the bishop or his Society of St. Pius X have removed his papers from the web.)

MN Job Watch As PiPress union employees reluctantly voted to accept management’s proposal for a one-week unpaid furlough between now and April 30, Strib employees got minimal good news, reports David Brauer in MinnPost. A bankruptcy judge reversed the Strib’s earlier position, and said that the newspaper must pay 43 workers who accepted buyouts between April and September 2008 the full amount of their buyout contracts. The Strib had asked the court for permission to make the payouts. On the other hand, Strib publisher Chris Harte warned that revenue continues to slide, and axed many benefits for non-union employees while asking union employees to accept a double-digit pay cut.

In Owatonna, SPX is laying off 100 workers, about 14% of its workforce. The cuts are part of 400 layoffs nationwide for the NC-based company, which makes tools, shop equipment and automotive components.

The Recount grinds on On MinnPost, Jay Weiner captures the mind-numbing tedium of the recount trial, without losing sight of the weight of the decisions being made. Is an end in sight? No.

We, the People “The idea of self-government is in the first three words of the Constitution. What are these words?” That’s just one of the questions on the new on-line citizenship study guide being piloted by the Minnesota Literacy Council. Katherine Glover writes in MinnPost that the new citizenship self-study materials are part of a larger project called Learner Web, which is developing programs includeing GED prep, computer skills and family literacy for eventual release to the public in the form of open source software. The MLC decided to go with citizenship prep software because of “Teacher Ron,” Ron Mazurowski, who has been teaching citizenship for more than 10 years and helped to put together the material. Check out the materials on-line.

St. Paul pays protester The city will pay $5,000 to anti-war activist Mick Kelly, who sued the city after he was arrested while passing out leaflets outside a Barack Obama rally at the Xcel Energy Center in June. The leaflets promoted RNC protests, and Kelly was later shot by police with a non-lethal weapon during the RNC. Kelly plans a second lawsuit over that incident. City Attorney John Choi emphasized that the settlement did not include any admission of wrongdoing by the city, reported Laura Yuen on MPR.

Ramsey County Sheriff’s employees sent to jail Two employees caught taking money in an FBI corruption sting were sentenced to nearly three years in prison on Friday, reports David Hanners in the PiPress. The two were close friends and confidants of Sheriff Bob Fletcher. Their attorney continued to insist that the two had only taken the $6,000 as a joke, writes James Walsh in the Strib, but U.S. District Judge Patrtick Schiltz “told the men that their actions were no laughing matter, but a violation of the public trust.” Fletcher declined to comment.

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February 3, 2009 · 10:56 am

News Day – February 3: Let them eat arts, RNC mistrial, undercounting the homeless, and more

Let them eat arts T-Paw’s plan to turn the Perpich Center for Arts Education into a charter school may have bipartisan support, writes Norman Draper in the Strib. Make that bipartisan support for killing the Perpich Center, which has been a proud national model of a statewide arts school and a center for arts education that sends staff to assist in arts education across the state and provides training sessions and resources for arts teachers from across the state. This is not a slam on charter schools – the fact is that the Guv’s move means cutting all the funding that enables Perpich to provide arts education for students and teachers, leaving it with state funding that pays only a per-pupil allotment equal to the funding formula for every other public school student. “Converting to a charter” in this case means taking away state resources, with no way to replace them. The Strib quotes Rudy Perpich, Jr.: “As my parents said, ‘Arts are always the first thing to be cut.”

Free–at last, sort of, at least for a while The jury deadlocked in the federal trial of RNC protester David McKay, accused of Molotov cocktail making and possession. While a March 16 retrial date has been set, the judge let McKay go free on bail. Writing in the PiPress, David Hanners reported that jurors apparently deadlocked over McKay’s claim that he would never have had anything to do with Molotov cocktails, but for the goaoding of federal informant Brandon Darby. McKay’s attorney said he was “a kid who came here to throw trash in the street,” not a bomber.

First-hand history recovered Almost a century after Lakota Chief Martin White Horse dictated stories about his community to Florence May Thwing, the typewritten document detailing 100 years of Lakota (Sioux) history has been re-discovered in a trunk by Thwing’s great-granddaughter. The winter count includes an entry for each year from 1790 to 1910, reports MPR:
(1835) In the year of stars moving in the sky.

(1845) In this year the Sioux Indians were starving and dying for lack of food because there had been no buffalos in their country for a long time. So they took the head of an old buffalo and painted it red, and placed it in a tepee and worshipped it with much singing and other things, and asked this buffalo head to send them buffalos to where they are located inside the boundary line. Their prayers were successful and many buffalos came to the place where they were camped, so the Sioux had again plenty of food.

MN Job Watch Macy’s announced Monday that it will cut 7,000 jobs, about four percent of its workforce, AP reports in the Strib. According to the Strib/AP report, Macy’s is centralizing, and its central buying, merchandise planning, stores senior management and marketing functions will be located primarily in New York. No word yet on any job cuts in MN, but Macy’s already closed its regional HQ in Minneapolis last year, cutting about 950 jobs, and announced the closing of its Brookdale store last month.

In Eden Prairie, ADC Telecommunications announced a general hiring freeze and plans for unspecified layoffs, reports Leslie Suzukamo in the PiPress. ADC announced layoffs of 160-190 MN workers in October as part of a global reduction in force. The Eden Prairie-based company has about 10,500 workers worldwide, and announced a quarterly loss of 17-23 cents per share.

TPM says RNC Chair Michael Steele is coming “straight outta Hooverville,” with his bogus claim that: “Not in the history of mankind has the goverment ever created a job,” saying “This is such transparent nonsense it’s hard to know where to start … Has Steele every heard of government road building? Defense spending? … ” Ann Markusen writes in MinnPost that “Few elements of the forthcoming stimulus program would pump money into the economy faster and more efficiently than the funds to states to refresh depleted unemployment insurance, social safety nets, and college aid programs.”

(Under)counting the homeless January is the wrong time to count homeless people, reports Madeleine Baran in the TC Daily Planet, but that’s the time mandated by the federal government. In a related article, Session Weekly reports that one in eight Minnesota households spends more than half its income on housing, and that the average cost for rentals is now higher than $900/month. All that, as Twin Cities home values fell 10 percent last year, according to Jim Buchta in the Strib.

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January 22, 2009 · 8:14 am

ACLU vs. TIZA

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy and the MN Department of Education, alleging that TIZA violate separation of church and state, reports Tom Weber at MPR. ACLU state director Charles Samuelson was quoted in the Strib as saying the ACLU investigation of TIZA was sparked by former Strib columnist Katherine Kersten’s columns. Kersten repeatedly attacked TIZA last year in columns dated March 9, April 9, September 8, and October 26, while also publishing an email Q and A with TIZA’s principal on April 9.

TIZA serves mostly immigrant, mostly Muslim students, offering Arabic classes and setting aside optional prayer times. The ACLU claims that classroom time is lost and not made up, that a prayer is posted at the school’s entrance, and objects to its dress code. The dress code, says the complaint, prohibits girls, but not boys, from wearing short sleeves, requires older girls to wear ankle-length skirts or skirts with trousers underneath, and female teachers to be “covered from neck to wrist and ankle.” The complaint also alleges that TIZA makes excessive lease payments (which ultimately go to the Muslim American Society of MN) and that TIZA pays large salaries to the CEO and Board Chair ($100,000) of TIZA and to its Executive Director ($90,000), despite bylaws saying they shall serve without salary.

The MN Department of Education investigated TIZA last year and found it was not breaking the law, though it needed better separation of religious observances from the school day. As a charter school, TIZA is a tax-supported public school.

In the PiPress, Megan Boldt reports:

TiZA students, many of them recent immigrants, have had better than average success on state-required exams.

At the Inver Grove Heights campus, 86 percent of students are low income and about 70 percent are English language learners, according to state data for the 2006-07 school year.

In 2008, 80 percent of the students were proficient in math, compared with the statewide average of 66 percent.

In the Minneapolis E-democracy forum, Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at the Humphrey Institute of the University of Minnesota, writes:

As a American Jew who strongly believes in the separation of church and state, I’d strongly oppose any public school promoting a religion. I’d
oppose public funds going to promote Judaism, Muslim, Christianity or
any other religion.

Having spent hours at Tarek, I’d say it is anything BUT a school devoted
to promotion of a single religion.

Moreover, the director of the MCLU acknowledged in a conversation today
that neither he nor anyone else had ever visited the schools. Fairness
would seem to dictate that before making allegations about a school (and
filing an expensive law suit, a complaining organization should visit
the school.

The MCLU director also acknowledged that there were not Muslim,
Hispanic-American or Asian American members on his board of directors.
“What difference does that make,” he asked.

Last year’s attacks in the press also resulted in death threats and other threatening emails and phone calls to TIZA. In a TC Daily Planet article, a Muslim ex-marine described sending his daughter to TIZA after she encountered anti-Muslim prejudice in her St. Paul public school.

Christian connections for charter schools meet with considerably less public attention and criticism. Several Twin Cities charter schools sponsored by Friends of Ascension use a “classical curriculum,” that Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey describes as “tinged with Christianity.” Nova Academy, in particular, made the news in 2005, with charges of elitism and of moving toward “a more Christian-centered philosophy” after it fired school director Dick Nunneley. (The January 21, 2005 Star Tribune article is no longer on-line, but is quoted in exchanges on Minneapolis E-Democracy.

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January 7, 2009 · 10:13 am

News Day January 7

(Not) teaching English already? Education Week magazine finds that Minnesota lacks enough ESL teachers, the Strib reports, with a ratio of 49 students to each ESL teacher, compared to a national 19 to 1 average. That’s critical, since Minnesota’s ESL student population doubled, growing from 30,000 in 1995 to 61,000 in 2005, according to Education Commissioner Alice Seagren. In suburban Anoka-Hennepin, the state’s largest district, ESL enrollment has gone from 118 students 15 years ago to 3,200 today. In contrast to today’s push for all immigrants to learn English yesterday, the Hispanic Fanatic notes a recent University of Wisconsin study showing that a century ago “many immigrants felt no need to learn English at all, much less quickly, and that some of them, in the words of the researchers, ‘appeared to live and thrive for decades while speaking exclusively German.'”

Kudos to MinnPost for adding a DC correspondent, Cynthia Dizikes. That makes two for MN, with the other spot occupied by the Strib’s Kevin Diaz. Minnesota may have only one senator at the moment, but we have eight congressional reps, and now two whole reporters to cover the crowd.

Maybe we should move to NoDak. MPR reports that North Dakota has a $1.2 billion budget surplus and Governor John Hoeven is planning both tax cuts and increased state spending. (He also wants to keep a budget reserve of at least $600 million, noting that the state is not immune to the national economic recession.)

Okay to discriminate. The Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed that a lesbian couple raising two daughters can be denied family membership in a Rochester health club, reports the Strib. No gay marriage, no equal rights: 2009 repeats 2008 repeats 2007 …

“It’s a nightmare, dude.” Both the Strib and the PiPress devote major column inches to the Minnesota Fatal Attraction story of a former “female friend” who trashed her ex’s apartment, pouring paint over walls and into computer and toilet and even impaling his daughter’s teddy bear on a steak knife. The case should be easy to make — she posted photos on her MySpace account.

Their ex-prime minister trumps our president-elect. TPM has the Blair House answer we have been waiting for: King George Bush II said president-elect Obama and his family can’t stay in the official guest house while awaiting the inauguration (and getting daughters in school and naming cabinet members and handling the rest of the transition business) because, in the waning moments of the reign of George II, he is “hosting former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, and will be giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Fun fact about Howard: He is a staunch Iraq War supporter who said in early 2007 that if he were in al-Qaeda he would be praying as much as possible for an Obama victory and for the Democrats in general.”

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January 3, 2009 · 9:51 pm

Senator Claiborne Pell’s legacy

Former Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell believed in extrasensory perception and attended a seminar on UFO abductions. He also defended the rights of gay and lesbian people to hold government jobs and led the battle for federal Employment Opportunity Grants for needy college students. That program, now called Pell Grants in his honor, may be his greatest legacy. Since its inception in 1972, the program has helped more than 50 million students to attend college. The Washington Poste quoted Senator Harry Reid, who said::

Any student who has ever received federal aid has Senator Pell to thank for his or her education. The Pell Grants he created revolutionized our education system for generations of Americans who might not otherwise be able to pursue higher education.

Claiborne Pell died January 1 at the age of 90. He had represented Rhode Island in the Senate from 1960-1996.

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