Central Minnesota Political

A recent mailing from Bernie Sanders gave some contest to what a fake President Donald Trump is. Part of Sander's message is below: O ur job this week is to expose Donald Trump for the fraud and pathological liar that we all know him to be. This is a president, Donald Trump, who said he was going to provide health care to everyone, yet tried to throw 32 million people off of health care and continues, to this day, to try and accomplish that goal. Today, millions fewer Americans have health insurance than when Trump came into office. This is a president, who in his last campaign said that he was a different type of Republican who would make no cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but introduced budgets that slash all three. This is a president who said he was going to stand up for working families and who promised to pass tax reform legislation designed to help the middle class, yet 83 percent of his tax benefits go to the top 1 percent. This is a president who promised t...

  As a Blue Dog Corporate Democrat, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson’s votes in Congress go against the beliefs and convictions of progressive voters in our district. I’m one of those progressive 7th District voters. Like most average voters I rarely actually encounter my Member of Congress. However, I recall three encounters with Rep. Peterson over the many years I’ve been stuck with him. I met him at Mikey’s Restaurant, on Main Street in Long Prairie, when he was first campaigning for a seat in Congress. We were both young then and he was full of energy and inspired in me a sense of hope for positive change. Besides, I’d met the Republican incumbent. He was an older man who, it seemed, was operating on dead batteries. I was happy to vote for the energetic Peterson. Some years later I was a delegate to the DFL District convention in Bemidji. Peterson opposed a woman’s right to choose abortion. He was being challenged by a woman who supported the right to that choice. I gave...

Donald Trump and the leadership of the Republican Party have wanted to turn the Post Office over to private business for a long time. Early in his Presidency Trump came out for privatizing the Post Office and turning the most profitable parts over to UPS, FedEx, Amazon, and other private carriers. Imagine if Amazon owned all the small town post offices and UPS bought up the post office branches in urban neighborhoods.  Right now the U.S. Post Office is the most popular government agency in the country. If Amazon or UPS owned it that wouldn’t continue. I’ll bet they wouldn’t even deliver first class mail! Over the last few years the Trump administration has managed to get the Post Office to cut services and slow down the delivery of mail. But recently he’s come up with a visionary plan to trash the Post Office along with the 2020 election. At the beginning of the year Trump, and his Republican supporters, began to hammer away at the use of mail-in ballots. There would be massive vot...

Friday was Eid al-Adha and we celebrated a little ourselves. We had three Muslim families from St. Cloud, Colombia Heights, and Bloomington come to the farm and select live sheep for slaughter from our flock. They slaughtered them in the halal way and hung them from ancient oaks to butcher them. It was a very festive event with children running around yelling and adults, some of whom only spoke Arabic, enjoying being outside and sacrificing a lamb like Ibrahim did. One woman was a Metro Transit bus driver and she told us how important it was to get good food for her family. Price did not matter. She and her mother were from Morocco. We harvested some onions, cucumbers, and zucchini for her. As the people of Islam say, Eid Mubarak. Blessed Feast! Earlier this week our chickens went to slaughter. A Mexican friend bought all the feet. She said good chicken soup needs chicken feet. Blessed feast to all. There is an interesting article about Eid al-Adha and ritual slaughter ...