Central Minnesota Political

One way I pay the bills around here is to translate documents from Spanish to English. This week I completed a translation project for some old friends. The last time I'd been in their home was before the eldest daughters quinceanera fiesta. We were at the party but I was nevertheless awed by the magnificent portrait of the daughter in her quinceanera finery. She's a beautiful young woman. She's also an excellent high school athlete and a wonderful sister to her three younger sisters. "Did you know they turned down Maria's (not her real name) DACA application," her Mom told me. "They didn't believe she was here in preschool in 2007 even though we had records." I knew Maria in 2007 and I know she was in preschool in 2007. Maria had applied for DACA after the Trump election. We decided the Trumpists were simply making it hard for kids to get DACA. Maria's Mom and Dad are undocumented but her three sisters are citizens. Her Mom has ha...

 Last week I asked you to contact your legislators regarding a bill co-sponsored by Rep. John Poston that would lower Minnesota standards for sulfate pollution in water.  Marcia Rapatz had this exchange with Rep. Poston. -- Tim It was recently brought to my attention that you are a co-sponsor of a  bill that would lower the standards for sulfate pollution in our water  ways. Why would you do that? You have come to forestry tours and  forestry meetings (MFRC). I thought you cared about our environment, MN  natural resources!? Our waterways are our life blood. Once polluted it’s  hard or in some cases impossible to correct.   Sulfate pollution increases mercury contamination of fish posing a  serious threat to our MN children and infant’s health. Again, how could  you support such legislation? These are our children lives!   Please do the right thing! Make MN children and our environment your  priority.   Sincerely...

Please take action on this from MMN350.org - Tim The 2018 session is coming to a close, and many of the bills we have notified you about will soon be voted on. And what a tangled web they’re weaving! Some of these bills will be voted on individually, some in the form of an Omnibus, and some, crazily enough, will be voted on both individually and in an Omnibus. This week, we are giving you an update on the bills we have notified you about and asking you to urge your representative to vote no on the Omnibus bills and bad bills we have been tracking . What is an Omnibus bill? This is a bill which bundles together a variety of bills to be voted on as one large bill. This means that some legislators believe they need to vote yes to bills that include bad things so that some good things will get passed too.  We are hearing the party in power may even combine all Omnibus bills into one gigantic Omnibus bill and present that to the Governor. Either way, we want our represe...

There weren't enough chairs to seat the enthusiastic crowd  at the April 17th Todd County DFL meeting at Reichert Apartments in Long Prairie, according to Secretary Sue Stine. Stine reports in the meetings minutes that seventeen directors and five officers were seated at the meeting. The officers and directors ad been elected at the County Convention in Hewitt in March. The board of directors voted to donate $1,000 to Alex Hering's effort to unseat John Poston in District 9A. They also voted to contribute $400 to Stephen Browning's campaign to claim the District 9B seat from Ronald Kresha. Both Hering and Browning will be campaigning at Long Prairie's Cinco de mayo fiesta on May 4th. The board considered a number of other matters including the summer parade and fair schedule and the possibility of a rousing speaker in early October to energize voters.

Enbridge's Line 3 expansion is all risk, no reward By  Laura Cameron and Nick Smith Construction on the Manitoba segment of the  biggest project in Enbridge's history  is slated to begin in a couple of months, but you've likely never heard of it. Line 3, as it is known, is a new crude-oil pipeline — with a predicted price tag of $8.2 billion — set to be built along the route of a smaller, existing pipeline operated by the Calgary-based oil and gas giant. Construction has already begun west of Manitoba on the line, which will cut a path through the Prairies, from the Alberta oilsands en route to the shores of Lake Superior in northwestern Wisconsin. Work begins in Sask. on $5.3B Enbridge pipeline replacement Enbridge to start construction this summer on Line 3 replacement pipeline The new pipeline has been billed as a replacement for the existing, aging infrastructure, but in reality is a massive expansion that will ...

By John King I am really mad and I am going to tell you why.  The story is both political and personal, but mostly personal.  It involves some bad actors in the Minnesota Senate and the way their recent behavior undermined my faith in the essential integrity of the political process. Last week on Thursday the 12 th I joined a group of friends in St. Paul to share a breakfast with state legislators.  The event, hosted by the Land Stewardship Project at Christ Lutheran Church just across the street from the Capital, is the 13 th annual Family Farm Breakfast featuring locally sourced foods.  We invite every legislator and this year twenty-four attended along with commissioners from the Department of Agriculture and PCA.  Gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto attended as well as members of Governor Dayton’s staff. In total, we served breakfast for nearly 500 people.  It was a resounding success and a great start to the day.  The plan was to spend t...

State Representative John Poston is a cosponsor for this nasty piece of legislation. This is after an Administrative Law Judge refused to lower the standard at the request of  the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Shame on John Poston. Please email and/or call him and tell him to remove is support. (This information is from Water Legacy in Duluth  http://waterlegacy.org ---------------------------- Sulfate pollution increases mercury contamination of fish, posing a serious threat to the health of Minnesota infants and children. New peer-reviewed research shows that sulfate pollution can multiply by almost 6 times the amount of toxic methylmercury available to accumulate in the food chain and contaminate fish eaten by Minnesotans. Removing controls on sulfate pollution in Minnesota, thus, poses a serious risk of brain damage and lower IQ for Minnesota fetuses, infants and children. Yet, powerful mining special interests and the politicians who do their bidding are n...

By Tim King On Thursday April 12th Senator Osmek's bill (S.F. 3510) to bypass the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission and build a new Line 3 Enbridge oil pipeline stalled in the  Committee on Energy and Utilities Finance and Policy  when Senator Michael Goggins, a Republican and electrical engineer from Red Wing, decided the cross over the usually wide and deep line separating the Minnesota GOP from the Minnesota DFL.  Alaska pipeline - Wikipedia Senator Goggins was no doubt swayed by the fact that the Minnesota Department of Commerce has said Line 3 is not necessary. He may have also been swayed by the fact that the Public Utilities Commission is in a far better position to rule on the line then a Senate Committee. But defying Osmek, who has a history of backing projects favorable to energy companies, took courage. It took courage in part because Osmek is also Chairman of the  Committee on Energy and Utilities Finance and Policy.  But when  Sen...

They’re at it again! A bunch of Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature want to give Xcel Energy a bag of free cash. There’s nothing that some Minnesota Legislators like more than to transfer wealth from ordinary working and retired people to Minnesota’s wealthiest and largest corporations. Back in the days of Ronald “The Gipper” Reagan they created a smoke screen by calling it trickle down economics. The idea was that we’d give a lot of tax money to rich people and they’d use most of it to get richer and some of it to us in the form of jobs. Now we don’t believe that anymore. We don’t believe that anymore because, since the Gipper was President, CEO pay in big corporations has gone up by more than 800%. That means if a CEO was earning $200,000 in 1981 he’s now earning $1,600,000. While taxpayers’ dollars were gushing up to CEOs and corporate big wigs, some did dribble back down. While CEO pay went up 800% plus some, the average working Jane and Joe had an 11.2% increase in w...

This from http://www.mn350.org Hello Climate Champions! The legislature is currently considering a particularly nasty bill that would criminalize organizing and activism in a way that we find deeply troubling, so we're asking you to contact your legislators about it. What is it? HF3693 / SF 3463 is being called the “guilty by association” bill. It creates harsher criminal charges on people who trespass on critical infrastructure. It also imposes liability on those who are seen as having helped the person who has trespassed by educating, recruiting, hiring, etc. that individual. This bill ups the trespassing charge from a misdemeanor to a felony. This bill has recently passed through committees in the House and Senate , and is ready to go for a floor vote when the Representatives and Senators return from spring recess this week. What does that mean? Critical infrastructure is infrastructure that is seen as vitally important to the functioning of daily life s...

By Tim King Protecting people from sexual harassment in the work place is a non-partisan issue. We all agree that  women should not be victimized, demeaned, and terrorized by harassers and predators. But somehow our Minnesota State Legislators have managed to turn the matter into a Republicans versus Democrats issue. Rather then figuring out how to protect people from becoming victims they've turned to debating the merits of two opposing policies. The Republicans support using the regular legislative committee process to develop a self policing policy for addressing sexual harassment. Beginning in February The House Subcommittee on Workplace Safety and Respect begin reviewing the  current policies of the Minnesota House of Representatives regarding sexual harassment. They also began to listen to testimony from knowledgeable people from inside the Legislature and from outside experts. Since the House is controlled by Republicans the Subcommittee is chaired by Re...