Central Minnesota Political

U.S. airlines received a $15 billion subsidy in December’s COVID relief package. The subsidy was for the companies to re-employ thousands of their furloughed employees and keep them on the payroll until at least the end of the first quarter of this year. Congress, and the President, attached no other strings to the huge subsidy, even though airlines social costs, in terms of climate disruption, are huge. In 2018 airlines produced a billion tons of CO2 and benefited from a $100 billion subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, a report published in the November 2020 journal Global Environmental Change, pointed out. The report, summarized in The Guardian on November 17th, drew together data to provide a global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. The conclusion reached by the study’s authors, led by Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, is that a tiny fraction of the global population benefits from the highly subsidized airline industry while the rest...

Dream s United/Sueños Unidos as LP-GE high school student Itzel Salazar to interview some Long Prairie residents about how they felt aout wearing a mask. Three of the seven interviews, in Spanish and English, follow. Others can be found in the January La Voz Libre.Itzel took the photos. -- Tim Tony Burciaga - MN Fresh Supervisor Why do you wear a mask? I wear a mask to be safe and not to catch anything. How do you feel about wearing your mask? Seriously! Honestly? How do I feel? It's safe but I get anxious. I'm not used to it. Well, nobody is used to it. There is a time at work where we have to wear it 24/7. It's really super hard for me. Ten hours having my mouth covered; it gives me really bad anxiety. Would you wear a mask if your friends didn't? Yes! Every time I leave my house. I follow the regulations at the store or anywhere I go I wear a mask. Do you feel safer with your mask? Yes, I do definitely. Have you or any one you know have been affected b...

A claim that the terrorists that stormed our Capitol last week were actually led by antifa activists has gained a lot of momentum among right wing reactionaries and their media sources over the last days. The false claim originated from a group of well paid science deniers with a long history of climate science denial and propaganda, according to DeSmog, a blog that follows the PR in climate science denial. DeSmog also reports that it was the same groups that immediately began trying to shift the focus from the attack on the Capitol to the demonstrations against police killings of African Americans last summer. DeSmog points to The Heartland Institute, partly funded by Exxon Mobil, and its Executive Director Marc Morano and William M. Briggs, a policy advisor for The Institute, as among the leaders of the liars pack. Some other prominent climate science deniers that were promoting the antifa lie last Wednesday were Breitbart columnist James Delingpole and Steve Milloy. Milloy pub...

Minnesota’s premier business association, the 2,300 member Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, spends nearly two and a half million dollars annually, to lobby Minnesota Legislators and decision makers, according to The Power Behind Climate Denial in Minnesota, a report issued recently by MN350 and other Minnesota environmental organizations. Much of that money, which comes from its large and small members aross Minnesota, is directed toward fostering climate science denial and opposing even modest, and previously bipartisan, proposals to protect the climate and the environment. For example, in 2020 more than twenty-five groups representing utilities, energy companies, unions, major corporations, scientists, and environmental activists testified in the Minnesota House of Representatives in favor of the ECO Act. Only lobbyists for the Chamber of Commere and the Minnesota Propane Association opposed it. The irony of the testimony from the Chamber of Commerce lobbyists was that it was in o...

  By Tim King The Land Correspondent Ames, Iowa, The North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station at Iowa State University is one of twenty USDA facilities across the country responsible for conserving seeds and plant genetic resources for posterity. Curators at the Station, often referred to as a seed bank or genebank, care for nearly 52,000 varieties of agricultural, ornamental, and medicinal varieties of plants including mints, amaranths, spinach, parsnips, sunflowers, flax, and legumes. But the heart of the collection is corn which is referred to at the Station by its more widely known name of maize. “Maize and maize relatives make up about forty per cent of the collection,” Candice Gardener, a Research Leader and self described corn person, said. Gardner refers to the Ames Station, which was founded in 1948, as an “active genebank site” among the twenty genebanks in the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System.  Active sites are responsible for developing the collec...

  Last year, on a vote of 119 to one, the New Zealand legislature   passed legislation committing to carbon neutrality by 2050. The bill, known as The Zero Carbon bill, creates a framework for getting to zero. "We have to start moving beyond targets. We have to start moving beyond aspiration. We have to start moving beyond statements of hope and deliver signs of action. That is what this government is doing and proudly so,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. Part of that frame work involves reducing agricultural emissions.  A study, released in October of 2020, reports that a significant portion of New Zealand agriculture is either nearly carbon neutral or, possibly, carbon neutral. The study, led by Dr Bradley Case at Auckland University of Technology, estimates the woody vegetation on New Zealand sheep and beef farms is offsetting between 63 percent and 118 percent of their on-farm agricultural emissions. These findings also demonstrate that the Green House G...

  While the Leader of the Free World goes golfing, Americans are dying in ever greater numbers. While the embarrassed Leader of the Minnesota Republicans, Senator Gazelka, whines about being outed for trying to cover up his COVID diagnosis, Minnesotans are dying in even greater numbers. And, at a business in Browerville, inspired by these two foolish and dangerous men, a dog-eared sign on the door says that masks are required. But inside, neither customers nor staff are wearing masks. It’s not much different in Long Prairie where burly young male customers enter and linger, maskless, while the staff wears masks. Senator Gazelka was embarrassed in part because he appeared to be hiding not only his COVID diagnosis but that of several other Republican senators who he is supposed to be the boss of. Further more, he was trying to cover up the fact that the Republican senators, along with 100 or so largely maskless friends and family, had a victory bash following the election. They...