Liar, liar First Bob Bushman, from the Statewide Gang and Drug Task Force, called proponents of legal medical marijuana liars. Then, reports MnIndy Rep. Tom Rukavina, sponsor of the bill got up and challenged him:
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Tag Archives: media
News Day: Liar, liar / Stupid on science / Jobless numbers still climbing / more
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News Day: Un-real tax values / MN Stimulus /Closed U /Jail bust, not break /CIA torture /Pakistan protests /more
Un-real estate tax values So you paid $155,000 for your house just two months ago — and now the tax man says it is worth $189,000? That’s the story for one south Minneapolis homeowner, reports the Strib, and homeowners throughout the metro area are girding to do battle over assessed valuations this spring. Though home values have fallen swiftly, the taxable values set by metro-area tax authorities have not. All seven metro counties predict declines in assessed valuation of two to ten percent, although the average home sales price has fallen by one-third since September 2007. Tax assessors say the problem is the lag time in estimating values. They expect an avalanche of appeals from assessed valuations this year.
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News Day: Coleman campaign circus / “Don’t do anything embarrassing” / Water bill / Recount and more
Where do you get your news? The mainstream media is now jumping on board with two stories that the independent media reported first and best — the Coleman campaign caught with its donors’ credit card info hanging out on the internet and the MN House of Reps’ outrageous attempts to decide what press gets freedom of the press. If you’re reading this, you’re already reading independent media. Tell a friend!
Coleman campaign lawbreaking or “hacking”? As the mainstream media belatedly begins to cover the Coleman donor database story, ably reported by the Minnesota Independent in January and now, some are ignoring plain facts: the Coleman site was not hacked; the Coleman campaign carelessly put donors’ credit card numbers and security codes out on the internet for anyone to scoop up; the Coleman campaign violated its own promise to donors not to store their credit card numbers; the Coleman campaign probably violated MN law by not notifying donors of the security lapse back in January.
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News Day: Coleman cyber-follies / Middle class pays more /Snowing the recount / Somali youth / Cops hate Sara Jane / more
Middle class pays more Even in Minnesota, says a Department of Revenue study, rich people pay less in taxes than the middle class. See Who pays Minnesota’s taxes>
Coleman cyber-follies While Norm Coleman is calling it “chilling” and “scary,” a closer look shows that the disclosure of names and credit card information of Coleman campaign donors on the internet is the fault of no one but … the Coleman campaign, which violated basic on-line security procedures. Continue reading
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News Day: 89 ballots / Unfree press in MN House / Around the world in 90 seconds / Out with the old regime / more
Is Coleman toast yet? The Daily Kos jumps the gun, declaring “Coleman is toast,” but it’s true that the latest court ruling holds no good news for the Norm. After the inner ballot envelopes were opened in a search for registration cards, only 89 of the roughly 1500 rejected absentee ballots in pile 3a proved possibly countable. In MinnPost, Jay Weiner reports that “Coleman’s universe of legally cast ballots that his side wants opened may now be as low as 1,000, if not lower.”
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News Day: Unemployment / Bad news for bus riders / Nick speaks! / Pigs flying? / Viking stadium / Outrage of the day / Wonk alert / more
Unemployment up even more than expected national unemployment figures jumped to 8.1%, even more than expected, rising half a percent in the last month, with the economy shedding 651,000 jobs. Rates for blacks (13.4 percent) and Hispanics (10.9 percent) continue higher than the average, while the jobless rate for teen-agers continues at a whopping 21.6 percent.
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News Day 2/25/09: Carstarphen still coy / Govt funds for MSM / Mueller and the mosque / MN Job Watch, recount, more
Carstarphen still coy St. Paul schools superintendent Meria Carstarphen still isn’t talking about whether she is a candidate for the Austin, TX superintendent’s position, reports Doug Belden in the PiPress, and she’s also not answering questions about whether she has applications in anywhere else.
Meanwhile, a consultant report on SPPS physical plant got mixed characterization, with Doug Belden in the PiPress quoting the report as finding that the district’s 79 buildings are in “average” shape, while Emily Johns in the Strib gave SPPS “an ‘A’ for upkeep.” Find the Powerpoint presentation from the consultants to the board of education on the SPPS website.
Obama nails it In a rousing 52-minute speech, President Barack Obama hit the campaign trail again, declaring energy, health care and education the top priorities for America. Full text here. Minneapolis got a mention: “There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.”
MN funds for private biobusiness park The MN Department of Employment and Economic Development granted another $1.2 million to complete infrastructure projects for the Elk Run Biobusiness park north of Rochester, bringing total state money for the project to $1.8 million. Sea Stachura reports on MPR that investors have been meeting with state officials and an announcement on the project is expected soon.
Them that has MN has seen a big crop of lively on-line media growing up in the past few years, including the Twin Cities Daily Planet, which I edit, so I won’t brag about it here; The Uptake, with dramatic RNC footage and gavel-to-gavel coverage of the recount; the Minnesota Independent, offering intensive political coverage and much more; and MinnPost, which looks a lot like an online version of the Strib that Joel Kramer once edited, which is to say among the best of the mainstream media back in the day. All of these on-line and non-profit media organizations (and others) are scrambling for funding.
So now comes the Minnesota Job Skills Partnership program, with a $238,000 grant of government funds to the U of M School of Journalism and Mass Communications and the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Duluth News Tribune to retrain newspaper staffs for “a mix of learning new computer programs to help sell advertising and tell news stories, and fundamentally rethinking how to deliver news and advertising.”
Rob Karwath, executive editor of the News Tribune, said he envisions money going toward rethinking how to sell new products that deliver news and advertising to readers, and setting up methods to increasingly receive feedback from customers.
Guess the Duluth News Tribune needs more reporting, as David Braure reports all of the Strib’s coverage of MN will now take place from its Minneapolis office. The Strib is pulling Larry Oakes out of Duluth and back to Minneapolis.
MN Jobs Watch AP reports that Cliffs Natural Resources plans cutbacks and temporary shutdowns at its taconite plants, possibly laying off 83 HibTac workers for more than six months. MPR says that Northshore Mining’s 557 workers will be laid off during April as that plant closes for a month.
MN-based Medtronic is cutting its global workforce, reports the Strib. About 8,000 of Medtronics 38,000 employees work in MN. Last year Medtronic cut 1100 jobs worldwide, with about 350 of those in MN. Execs took a five percent pay cut.
41 percent drop in profits – could be worse I had to read on when the Strib said targets 41 percent drop in earnings during the 4th quarter was really not so bad. Part of my confusion is that the headline said profits dropped and the first paragraph said earnings dropped — two distinctly different measures. Halfway through the article, some hard numbers appeared. Target revenue (earnings) was down $19.56 billion, 1.6 percent below 2008’s fourth quarter. Its net income (profits) “fell about 22 percent to $2.85 billion, or $2.86 a share,” while annual sales (earnings) grew 2.3 percent.
The reason that Target’s bad news is not so bad is that all retailers — except low-end leaders WalMart, Costco and Dollar Store — are seeing gigantic drops in earnings, reflected in fourth-quarter reports released yesterday. In other business news, Home Depot reported a 4th-quarter loss of $54 million, which is bad but better than previously expected,
And now … Pawlenty gets to decide on the Senate race? If the three-judge panel awards victory to Al Franken, will he get to go to Washington at last? Maybe not, warns Tom Scheck on MPR. The governor and the secretary of state sign an election certificate when there is a “final determination” of the contest, but Norm Coleman will almost certainly appeal any adverse decision, and T-Paw could say that nothing is final until all appeals are exhausted. Exhausted is the way that most Minnesotans feel about the whole process, but Pawlenty has previously said that he thinks Coleman has a good chance of winning an appeal, so he’s not likely to sign until the MN Supreme Court rules on an appeal. And then, there’s the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court …
Mueller and the mosque FBI director John Mueller said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that a Minnesota Somali man carried out a suicide bombing in Somalia after Shirwa Ahmed “was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota.” Mueller gave no details on how the alleged suicide bomber was “radicalized,” but his remarks ramped up hostility to Somalis and Muslims in Minnesota once again, reports Laura Yuen on MPR.
Jessica Zikri, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota chapter of the Council on Islamic-American Relations. Zikri said many Somalis are living in fear as federal authorities continue their investigation into the missing.
“They’ve already been receiving phone calls and were stopped by the FBI,” Zikri said. “And then hearing these allegations vaguely connected to Minnesota just add fuel to the fire.”
That fire continues in Minnesota streets, with hostility expressed toward both Somalis and Muslims. To combat misunderstanding and prejudice, As-Saddique Islamic Center will welcome neighborhood residents and organizations for a community dinner intended to increase understanding about the local Somali Muslim community and mosque tonight. Organizers have invited FBI director Robert Mueller to attend.
Mardi Gras marchers protest police Mardi Gras marchers went from the State Capitol to St. Paul City Hall to file notice-of-claim forms based on events during the RNC, reports John Brewer in the PiPress. Meanwhile, over in the Ramsey County court, prosecution and defense attorneys accused each other of trying the case in the press, and prosecutors complained that too much secret police information was becoming public.
Writing with less The Loft Literary Center cut two full time employees, and everyone else is taking pay cuts,
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News Day 2/23/09: Oscar-free zone / Stormin’ Norm / Bonding basics and blunders / World news and more
T-Paw playing fast and loose with bonding rules In theory, MN can’t borrow to pay for current spending. The tobacco bond borrowing is an end run around that prohibition, based on a fiction that the state is just borrowing against future tobacco settlement revenues. In fact, explains Steve Perry in MinnPost, other states have already found that tobacco bonds don’t sell well, and MN is marketing the bonds as general obligation bonds. The Department of Revenue says that $987 million in bonds now will cost $1.6 billion in payback.
Your chance this week! The St. Cloud Times reported on the first town hall forum on the state’s budget woes, with more than 250 people mostly agreeing on one part of a solution: “Raise taxes. Cutting the budget and services is not the best way to solve the problem.” Hearings started Thursday in Mankato, Rochester and St. Cloud, and continue across the state this week, including metro-area meetings.
Last-minute RNC lawsuits As the deadline for filing civil claims related to the RNC expires this week, expect more lawsuits. In an RNC-related suit last week, Betsy Raasch-Gilman charged that Sheriff Bob Fletcher failed to provide “all private and public data” on her. The State Department of Administration had already issued an advisory opinion that Big Bob failed to comply with state law, reports Randy Furst in the Strib.
And on Friday, St. Paul city attorney John Choi announced that no charges will be filed against 323 people arrested on the final day of the convention, but that 20 arrests are still being investigated.
Sinking Strib ship A bankruptcy filing says that Strib gross earnings plummeted by almost one-third in two years, down to $203 million in 2009 from the $303 million earned in 2007. The Strib survival plan, reports Braublog includes a demand that pressmen take a 23-50% pay cut, chopping $6-12 an hour from wage rates.
Secret meetings on health care reform According to the NYT:
Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation’s long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate’s leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.
Unfortunately for single-payer advocates, the NYT predicts this will mean “a requirement that every American carry insurance.” And Republicans, predictably, are not participating in the talks, though business is on board.
Around the world in 90 seconds In Mexico, the Juarez police chief quit, reports BBC. The border city, torn by drug war violence, saw a police officer and a prison guard killed just before Roberto Orduna quit. Gangs had issued a notice that they would kill a cop every day unless Orduna quit, and he said this was the only way he could safeguard police lives. Orduna took over in May after his predecessor fled to Texas following death threats.
In Afghanistan, , a tribal militia of “men and boys, armed with old riffle and true grit” in southeastern Paktia province is protecting people against Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. The government and the U.S. plan a “Public Protection Force” to provide “community defence initiatives,” but insist it is different from the militias. In Pakistan, reveals the NYT, U.S. Green Berets are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops in a now-no-longer-secret task force.
Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebel planes bombed the capital, reports the NYT. Though this is the first air attack on the capital, the last six weeks “have seen a surge in civilian casualties, with up to 2,000 killed and 5,000 wounded as the government attempts to rout the rebels.”
In Somali, Islamist insurgent suicide bombers killed 11 African Union peacekeepers at an AU military base in Mogadishu, reports the BBC. The al-Shabab group said its members carried out the attack, as part of its continuing armed struggle against peacekeepers.
Corn vs. clean cars You might think that corn growers and ethanol producers would like legislation requiring lower emissions. Not so, reports Ron Way in MinnPost. The Corn Growers Association opposes clean car legislation, claiming that 18 flex-fuel and biodiesel cars and trucks are banned in California because of the clean car law. But wait — Rep. Andy Welti, DFL-Plainview, called CA car dealers and discovered that “the vehicles that the Corn Growers said are not available were in fact available and being sold.” When confronted by this information in the committee meeting, the Corn Growers lobbyist … had nothing to say.
Stormin’ Norm Since he continues to lose every battle in court, Norm Coleman now wants to recount ALL absentee ballots — that’s right, all 290,000 votes cast, not just those that were rejected, reports Jason Hoppin in the PiPress But wait — the PiPress editorial page goes even further, calling for the election to be thrown out entirely, and a new election held. That’s just what we need to do — hold a clean election, and throw out the results. Politico reports that the Republican National Committee has sent Norm a quarter of a million to pay legal fees in the recount battles.
Save northern MN land, string powerlines across south? As the DNR proposes using the dedicated sales tax funds to protect 187,000 acres of forest and wetlands in north-central MN through the Upper Mississippi Forest Project, private developers propose stringing hundreds of miles of intrusive high-power transmission lines across the rest of the state. More on this tomorrow.
Let’s make people miserable and lose money, too! A successful Anoka county program for meth-addicted moms is targeted by state budget-cutters, reports Brady Gervais in the PiPress. Not only would this particularly short-sighted and mean-spirited budget cut eliminate a successful program that helps addicted mothers kick the habit, find jobs and learn parenting skills — it would also lose money in the long run. Gervais writes that, “By reducing the need for social assistance and child protection services, the program is estimated to save between $8,400 and $16,800 per participant, according to a recent study by Wilder Research.”
Million Dollar Mile Oops, make that $9.2 million — for a one mile bike path in downtown Minneapolis. The Strib’s Pam Louwagie blows the whistle.
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News Day 2/13/09: Slashing St. Paul / Home or nursing home / MN Job Watch and more …
Police, fire, libraries, rec centers going down in St. Paul Needing to make up $30-40 million due to state LGA cuts, St. Paul city department heads presented memos outlining possible cuts: laying off 56 firefighters, 67 police officers, and 23 civilian police department employees, closing the Hamline library and cutting other library hours, closing eight rec center buildings (down to 25 from 42 in 2006), turning off half the city’s streetlights, and reducing street sweeping and snow plowing. 54 city employees have applied for early retirement, and 10 have offered to reduce hours or take leaves of absence. The city has about 3,300 employees. Both the Strib and the PiPress have articles detailing the budget cut scenarios. St. Paul officials have scheduled two community conversations to solicit citizen input.
MN Job Watch In a no-win, no-loss scenario that may be a harbinger for public employee contracts during the year, MNSCU’s Inter Faculty Organization agreed to a new contract that freezes all salaries, but keeps benefits intact, reports Brady Gervais on MPR. The contract covers more than 3,000 faculty at the seven state universities.
Twin Cities law firms began cutting staff and attorneys this week, reports David Phelps in the Strib, with Faegre & Benson cutting 27 attorneys and an undisclosed number of other staff. Other firms cutting attorney and non-attorney staff include Merchant & Gould (33), Maslon Edelman Borman & Brand (5), Halleland Lewis Nilan & Johnson (6).
One more reason not to read the Strib And no, I haven’t cancelled my subscription yet. But yesterday’s announcement that Paul Douglas is out, , as David Brauer notes on MinnPost, means the Strib will get weather news for free from WCCO. And it signals a shift from Douglas’s “strong and oft-stated belief in global warming” to Mike Fairbourne’s global warming skepticism and what ‘CCO calls “lifestyle weather.” Those who still want to find Douglas can find him online at his own WeatherNation.
Home or nursing home? “About 25,000 Minnesotans with disabilities get help with dressing, bathing and other tasks,” writes Warren Wolfe in the Strib, with services mostly paid by Medicaid under a program originally conceived as a way to improve care and save money by allowing them to stay in their homes. More than 600 agencies bill the state for personal care attendant (PCA) services delivered by more than 40,000 PCAs. The MN Legislative Auditor reported that state spending on personal care assistance for elderly and disabled Minnesotans grew from $153 milion in 2002 to just over $400 million in 2007, according to an AP story published in the Strib. The auditor called the amount of spending unsustainable, but also said that the Department of Human Services has left the program too open to fraud and abuse. Most services are paid through Medicaid. The report found that some caregivers billed for more than 24 hours per day, and claimed consecutive 24-hour work days. Now DHS proposes to fix the program by eliminating 2,100 people from eligibility and increasing oversight. DHS would also require that people whose care is directed by a “responsible party,” such as people with mental disabilities, must live in the same household as the “responsible party.”
Loren Colman, human services assistant commissioner, characterized the changes as ensuring that resources “are being directed to people who require services, not just to those who like them.” Advocates and disabled persons testifying at a legislative hearing disagreed with her characterization. Anne Henry, a lawyer and advocate with the Minnesota Disability Law Center in Minneapolis, said “If we get too restrictive, we’ll end up paying far more when [former clients] end up in nursing homes, emergency rooms and even jails.”
Day care blues Jean Hopfensperger writes in the Strib that TC day care providers are losing out as parents lose jobs or see pay and hours cut. Some parents are looking for cheaper babysitters on Craigslist, or shifting to non-traditional work shifts, or putting together a patchwork of family members and babysitters. The average cost of full-time daycare for a four-year-old is $9,300 at a child care center and $7,000 in family child care. The waiting list for state child care subsidies has grown from 5,400 in July to 7,500 in December, and Pawlenty’s budget would cut subsidies by $10 million. Day care providers “are hoping they don’t end up in the same unemployment line as their departing clients.”
Luz Maria Frias for St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman announced that his head lobbyist, Luz Maria Frias, will move to head the city’s new Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity Department, succinctly called HREEO, reports MinnPost.
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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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Mary Turck