News Cut: February 2008 Archive

Data privacy disappears at U

Posted at 7:53 AM on February 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Another computer security breach by a state-related organization; this time it's the University of Minnesota.

According to the U of M Daily newspaper, Dr. Theodore Nagel lost a flash drive with the names and information of 1,300 patients in the fertility clinic. Other information included birthdates and diagnostic and treatment information of his patients, according to a letter dated Dec. 28, sent by Nagel to his patients.

We'll add it to the list of data privacy woes encountered by state employees and agencies.

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What makes a good employer?

Posted at 7:58 AM on February 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Fortune magazine is out with its top employers survey. No Minnesota company made the top 50, but General Mills and Mayo Clinic made the second division -- the state breakdown for Minnesota.

Mayo, at #59, gets credit for a "hire for life" policy. 17% of the workforce has been with Mayo for more than 20 years. It also had a high percentage of women.

At #69, General Mills got the nod because 96% of the women who were on maternity leave last year came back to work, thanks in part to a policy that allows them to phase back in on a part-time basis.

Nice, but firms that finished higher got credit for perks from free SCUBA classes and iPods, onsite gyms, child care and 100% health care.

Dare we ask? Why do you work where you work?

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The behind-the-scenes story of trading Johan Santana

Posted at 5:27 PM on February 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The anti-Twins move in the wake of the Johan Santana deal probably won't ease if Bob Klapisch's behind-the-scenes story of how it unfolded gets much play here in Twins Territory.

Klapisch, of the Bergen Record, paints the picture of a panic-stricken Twins general manager trying to make a deal, any deal, in a series of phone calls earlier this week.

The Yankees considered the idea, but only briefly and not seriously. Their passion for Santana started waning as far back as December, when Andy Pettitte announced he was returning to the Bronx. The Yankees' internal straw vote was unanimous: The Twins had waited too long. On Tuesday Yankees' GM Brian Cashman told Smith he was passing on the deal, prompting the Twins to call the Red Sox. Equally devastating news awaited. Both Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester were unavailable.

Klapisch says the deal with the Yankees started to go south in December when Andy Pettite, the Yankees ace, hinted he'd like to return. That was right around the time the Yankees had offered a pile of talent for Santana, and Twins GM Bill Smith overplayed the hand Santana had dealt him.

But Smith could've and should've waited longer. One key injury in spring training, and any of Santana's suitors would've come begging. But the rookie GM feared Santana wouldn't waive his no-trade clause after spring training began; Smith lost his nerve, just as he didn't have the professional intuition to deal for Hughes when he could have.

Late this afternoon, the Mets and Santana completed negotiations for a new contract.

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The quiet comeback

Posted at 8:37 AM on February 2, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Gov. Pawlenty has proposed lifting a moratorium on nuclear power plants in Minnesota. The nuclear industry's comeback is just behind a calculated schedule by the Department of Energy that was set in motion long before the price of oil started its meteoric rise. It's prompting an aging generation to try to rev up its no-nuke machine one more time.

So, who would be willing to have a plant near them? Many Minnesotans already do.

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The jinx of the highest-paid pitcher

Posted at 9:26 AM on February 2, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Johan Santana has signed the richest contract for a pitcher -- ever. He was traded from the Twins to the Mets earlier this week. He'll make more for every strikeout this year than most people make in a season.

It's not a scientific calculation, but let's take a look at what happened to some of the recent pitchers to have -- at least for a little while -- the distinction of being the "highest paid pitcher in baseball" and how they did after signing for the big bucks.

Carlos Zambrano - Cubs. $18.3 million per year. Signed 2007.
How the pitcher did: He signed his extension in mid-August. Won 4 games and lost 5 the rest of the way.
How the team did: The Cubs won their division. In the playoffs against Arizona, Zambrano pitched well in the first game, the Cubs still lost, and were swept aside by Arizona.

Barry Zito - Giants $18 million per year. Signed 2007.
How the pitcher did Terribly. He went 11-13 last season with a 4.53 ERA.
How his team did: Finished dead last in its division at 71-91.

Mike Mussina - Yankees. 2005. $19 million per year
How the pitcher did: Won only 13 games in 2005 with an ERA above league average. Lost the deciding game in the divisional series to the Angels. 15-7 3.51 ERA in 2006. Injuries have made him ineffective. Won only 11 games last season and at 39, is considered on last legs.
How the team did: Yankees have made early exits in the playoffs the last three seasons with Mussina losing two games, winning one. Yankees lost 3 of 4 games in which Mussina pitched.

Roger Clemens - Astros. $18 million. 2005.
How the pitcher did: 13-8. Miniscule ERA. Asterisk for rumors of steroid use.
How the team did: Second in division. Clemens went 2-1 in league playoffs, didn't win a game in the World Series, and the Astros have became a mediocre team in a mediocre division.

Bartolo Colon - Angels $16 million. 2005
How the pitcher did: Won Cy Young Award in first season, has won seven games total in two years since, blew out his arm and is considered washed up.
How the team did: - Lost a game in the division series, which the Angels won. Injured and did not play in the league champonship series, which the Angels lost.

Sorry, Mets fans.

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The head case

Posted at 6:39 PM on February 2, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

It didn't take long for yesterday's story of mentally ill women being used as bombers in Iraq to be reported as fact. In many cases its source wasn't attributed. The truth? Maybe they were. Maybe they weren't.

Who says they were mentally ill and how do they know? It comes from Gen. Qasim Atta, a spokesman for Baghdad's security plan. The claim is based on an examination of the severed head of one woman. Since it was deformed, it was assumed the bomber had Down syndrome.

A U.S. general seized the assumption:

At a news conference, Army Maj. Gen. Jeff Hammond, who commands U.S. forces in Baghdad, showed reporters photos of the bombers' heads, which typically are blown from the body in suicide attacks. He said the broad foreheads, flattened noses and almond-shaped eyes were all suggestive of Down syndrome.

"These two women were likely used because they didn't understand what was happening and they were less likely to be searched," Hammond said.

It is a claim of questionable value since the explosion could've had something to do with the deformity. One British forensics expert called the claim "dangerous." Nonetheless, it probably should have been reported with more uncertainty, at least until there was more substantive evidence.

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The price of health care

Posted at 9:02 AM on February 3, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Updating the great health care experiment in Massachusetts, the one signed by Gov. Mitt Romney that requires everyone in the state to have health insurance:

The Boston Globe has obtained documents showing the cost of the plan is expected to double over the next three years. The state also vastly underestimated the number of people who would need to enroll in its Commonwealth Care program.

The Globe is also doing some fact checking on Gov. Romney's claims about the plan.

"The bill that I submitted to the Legislature didn't cost $1 more than what we were already spending," he said Wednesday night during a GOP debate. "However, the Legislature and now the new Democratic governor have added some bells and whistles."

In fact, Romney signed the law in 2006 as modified by the Legislature, approving most of the changes, but vetoing a few provisions that were overridden. Lawmakers then estimated that the initiative would cost the state only a small amount of new money in the first few years. It is now apparent that both Romney and lawmakers underestimated the cost of insurance subsidies as well as other parts of the initiative, largely because they based their projections on low estimates of the number of uninsured and the rising price of insurance. When the law was passed, neither Romney nor the Legislature estimated the costs beyond next year because they believed the enrollment growth would be all but complete.

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Stop action

Posted at 3:43 PM on February 3, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

This video just went up Thursday on YouTube and already almost a million people have watched it. "Freezing in place" has a different meaning outside of Minnesota.

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Lonely Lieberman

Posted at 8:37 AM on February 4, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

This has already been an election season of intrigue, but a setting this morning in Boston is the poster child for just how strange politics is in 2008. John McCain was giving a speech, and standing behind McCain at Faneuil Hall, was Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Consider this: It was just a little over 7 years ago that Lieberman stood behind VP Al Gore on a riverboat on the Mississippi River in southeast Minnesota, to kick off their campaign for the White House. Lieberman and Gore had locked up the Democratic nomination the night before in Los Angeles at the Democratic National Convention.

Lieberman has gone from VP candidate on the Democratic ticket to former-Democrat-in-chief of the McCain campaign on the Republican side in a breathtakingly short period of time. Lieberman is an independent now; a distinction driven more by political expediency than by philosophy. Connecticut Democrats turned him out in a primary election because of his support for the war in Iraq.

Some have guessed that Lieberman could end up on the Republican ticket. Over the weekend, The Rocky Mountain News reports today, McCain did nothing to diminish the speculation. "I say that after next Tuesday, if we win, there would be that consideration... I would be honored to serve by his side in any capacity," he said.

Lieberman, on the other hand, seemed dismissive of the talk, standard protocol for most would-be VP candidates.

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By the numbers

Posted at 11:58 AM on February 4, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

President Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget today. You can curl up with it here. It shows a $410 billion deficit in 2008, $407 billion deficit in 2009. In the 2007 budget, the projected deficit was $162 billion. A billion here, a billion there.

So how big is $3 trillion?

* If you counted once per second, it would take you 94, 638 years.
* You could buy 469 million FEMA trailers, give one to every person in the United States, and still have 166 million left.
* The Mets could sign 21,818 Johan Santanas.
* MnDOT could build 19 million sets of wooden stairs at the I-35W bridge site.
* Microsoft could buy 67 Yahoos.

Mr. Bush's first budget proposed spending $1.8 trillion. That's a 67 percent increase in spending.

By contrast, the budget outlay during the Clinton administration increased 21%, the same amount it increased under Mr. Bush's father.

But Bush's rate of spending isn't a record. During the Vietnam War, and the administration of Lyndon Johnson, the proposed spending rose 94 percent.

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Should journalists vote?

Posted at 2:27 PM on February 4, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

It's a question that consumes newsrooms at this time of the year.

Today, Rob Karwath, the editor of the Duluth News Tribune, declared in an editorial that journalists should not participate in caucuses:

But a caucus is different from an election. They are organizing meetings for political parties. Participants make a public show of support for a party and a candidate. No secret ballot here.

And there’s the problem. I don’t know any news organization that prohibits its journalists from participating in a traditional election. But when a public display of support is required, that’s different.

... and...

Some of you may find all of this over-wrought or even wrong-headed. But I hope it shows how seriously we take our ethics and credibility. Is it unfair? Perhaps. But when we decided to become journalists, all of us understood that we occasionally would have to refrain from exercising some of our rights as private citizens. In exchange for a “front-row seat on life,” as journalism is sometimes described, we have to stay off the playing field.

The MPR News policy is similarly clear:

The paid professional news people of any company in the APMG group of companies do not endorse, publicly support, or make financial or in-kind contributions to any candidate for political office. They do not actively participate in any partisan activity, including but not limited to, local and national political organizations and their activities (e.g., fundraisers, caucuses, straw votes), social action events, and public demonstrations that create a conflict of interest. All paid professional news people must be free of obligations to news sources and newsmakers that create a conflict of interest.

From a purely ethical point of view, the question of a public vs. a private display of allegiance to a candidate is problematic. It is dealing with the question from a matter of how you perceive it, and what you think of the journalism as a result of that perception. It operates with the assumption that the journalism itself is not affected by a reporter's political bias, just whether you are allowed any evidence that it is.

Two years ago, the CBS News blog picked up the discussion, quoting Mark Halpern, political director of ABC News, in the "don't vote" camp:

I don’t vote, because I think that just opens up the question of how can I say I’m being objective, and fighting for truth, if I’m making a decision about who to vote for in a presidential race.

And Brian Williams, NBC news anchor in the "I do vote" camp:

I've thought long and hard about this. I think it's important to vote. People fought and died for the right to vote, and I don't believe I forfeit my citizenship because I'm a journalist.

His MSNBC colleague, Keith Olbermann, had a retort in 2004:

I'm not political. I don't vote -- I don't believe journalists covering politics should (and I don't think the democracy would suffer if however many of us there are, recused ourselves). I have no more interest in the political outcome of an election than I did in the winner or loser of any ballgame I ever covered. I think transparency is vital; I think it's also, in these super-heated political times, unintentionally inescapable.

Olbermann's policy is more far-reaching than most. In Michigan, for example, some newsrooms were split on the subject when the primary election was held their last month. Some journalists in a Grand Rapids newspaper opted not to vote because doing so would then attach a public label to them, a label that isn't attached by voting in the general election.

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Last Iwo Jima flag-raising soldier dies

Posted at 4:39 PM on February 4, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The last Marine involved in the first photograph of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima has died. Raymond Jacobs died in California at 82. He outlived, by about 7 months, Charles W. Lindberg of Richfield, who died last summer at 86.

Both spent much of their lives proving their presence in the photographs, as if their participation in the hell of Iwo Jima wasn't validation enough. Mr. Lindberg worked to educate Americans that it was his patrol, not the one in the famous Joe Rosenthal photo, that raised the first flag.

And Mr. Jacobs spent a generous amount of time convincing people that he was the radio operator photographed looking up at an American flag as it was being raised by other Marines on Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945.

Lindberg is standing on the far right. Jacobs contended he's the radio operator.

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The death credit

Posted at 8:13 PM on February 4, 2008 by Bob Collins

New research says preventing obesity and smoking, while it saves lives, does not save money.

Dutch researchers today released a paper saying that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

If this sounds at all familiar to you, it may be because this is the defense the tobacco industry tried to put up in the landmark case in Minnesota, won by attorney Mike Ciresi, who now is running for Senate.

The state was trying -- and succeeded, as it turns out -- to recover the cost of treating the the illnesses of smokers. The tobacco industry intended to argue that there weren't extra costs in the long run, because the smokers died. But the judge in the case ruled the industry could not make such an argument.

It was called "the death credit argument," according to a 1998 report from MPR reporter Elizabeth Stawicki.

"That's one of the most absurd rulings in these cases I've ever seen anywhere, that you will keep evidence away from a jury because it's horrendous," said Phillip Morris attorney Peter Bleakley at the time. "There is absolutely no question whatsoever that cigarette smokers do not cost more in health care than nonsmokers. The net cost is less, but we're not allowed to present that evidence because we would be taking advantage of the fact that our product kills people.

Timewasters: What your neighbors are up to

Posted at 8:10 AM on February 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

If you're one of those people who likes to read the Saturday real estate listings to find out how much your neighbors got for their house, you'll love this application. It uses the power of Google Maps to track what neighbors -- or anyone else -- are contributing to political campaigns.

I'm not quite convinced it's as complete as it should be (my zip code listed only 25 contributions), but if nothing else it's a good Timewaster.

(h/t: Mnspeak)

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Santana's agony

Posted at 9:40 AM on February 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The Johan Santana don't-hate-me-Minnesota tour has hit the Twin Cities sports departments and at least one area newspaper was only too happy to oblige in helping his rehabilitation from a case of itsallaboutthemoneyitis.

In this morning's Star Tribune:

Santana has no hard feelings

For what? Because the Twins offered only $18.6 million a year for five years? Because his Minnesota employer wouldn't guarantee that in 6 years, no matter how poorly he performed at work, he'd still (a) have a job and (b) get a raise? How's that sit at your employer?

Said Santana, "I'll be honest. I enjoyed playing for them for this part of my career. I had great moments and being in that clubhouse with the coaches and the teammates and everyone. It's a beautiful city. Everywhere I went, people treated me nice and it was great."

It must've been very difficult for the lad.

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Pay more. Get less

Posted at 10:12 AM on February 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

A couple of news stories stand out today in the aviation field.

First: Domestic airline delays in 2007 were the second worst on record, the Transportation Department reported today. Flights in the U.S. were late more than 26 percent of the time last year, a slightly better performance than in 2000, when airlines were tardy 27.4 percent of the time. Here's the DOT release. And here's the complete report (pdf).

Our local airline -- so far -- reports a poor performance for the year. Northwest Airlines' flights arrived on time at 30 reporting airports (the big ones) 57.8 percent of the time. If you're looking for the silver lining on the expected merger with Delta, it had one of the better on-time performances at 70.9 percent. At all "reportable" airports, Northwest arrived on time 57.4 percent of the time.

Northwest flights to Denver arrived on time only 38.4 percent of the time, and Laguardia 35.6 percent, San Francisco 38.2, Salt Lake City 34.4 percent.

The worst Northwest flight? Flight 552 from the Twin Cities to Laguardia runs on time only 6.7 percent of the time.

For baggage handling, Northwest finished 6th among all U.S. airlines with 7 complaints per 1,000 passengers in December. It finished 4th for the year with about 5 complaints per 1,000 passengers.

Second: U.S. airlines appear to be moving to a system to charge you more for checked baggage. United is now charging $25 for checking a second bag, which should create more situations where some passenger in front of you tries to squeeze... this....big... cello...into...this....overhead....compartment.

United expects to earn $100 million a year with the new fee, less than three times what it pays its CEO.

Airline experts say the industry is moving to an a la carte system of pricing. What's next? An extra charge for on-time performance?

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Churches win gun fight

Posted at 12:42 PM on February 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled today that churches in the state have the right to ban handguns, despite the so-called concealed carry rule which allows residents to carry firearms.

Here's the full decision (pdf).

An Edina church got this issue started when it sued over the part of the law that required churches and other private property owners to specifically post signs banning the guns.

The court cited this part of the Minnesota Constitution:

The enumeration of rights in this constitution shall not deny or impair others retained by an inherent in the people. The right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience shall never be infringed ... nor shall any control of or interference with the rights of conscience be permitted, or any preference be given by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of the state.

The court said "churches' affadavits establish that they adhere to a philosophy of welcoming visitors to a place of sanctuary and that compelling the use of specific language is inconsistent with their religious beliefs."

One might argue, as people have, that churches have to post, for example, "exit" signs or even comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the court said there's no evidence that those "require any change in the churches' religious conduct or philosophy, is inconsistent with any religious belief, or would be immediately apparent to all entering the churches' front doors in the same manner as the signs at issue."

Far more interesting, however, is the argument that the law forces churches to violate the freedom of association under the U.S. Constitution. The district court ruled earlier that the concealed carry law forces churches to associate with people who wish to carry firearms on religious property by prohibiting churches from banning the possession of firearms in parking facilities and leased spaces. The Appeals Court said it was unnecessary for it to rule on that argument, though it might make a terrific online debate about what it means to be a "welcoming community."

Tangent time - In Glens Falls, New York, a newspaper has upset gun clubs and gun owners after submitting a Freedom of Information Act request for the names of gun permit holders in the community.

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Political spam

Posted at 2:48 PM on February 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

It's only a matter of time before junk text messages becomes a serious problem, especially for people who have to pay for every text message they receive. Today, people are paying to get Ron Paul spam.

I wonder if Ron Paul has a position on the issue?

In December, SecureWorks, an online security firm, caught onto a spambot, developed by a Ron Paul supporter apparently. In October, Wired Magazine also focused on the amount of Ron Paul spam, and quoted a Ron Paul official as denying any knowledge.

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The new flag

Posted at 5:04 PM on February 5, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Iraq has a new flag. The AP reports, the flag - without the three green stars of Saddam Hussein's ousted Baath party - was hoisted Tuesday over the Iraqi Cabinet building in Baghdad in a symbolic break with the past.

And it makes a real statement that differentiates it from other Middle East countries.

Like Syria...

Or Egypt:

Or Yemen:

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What's the message?

Posted at 9:28 AM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Quick! What were caucus participants in Minnesota telling us?

Thousands of Minnesotans went to caucuses around the state last night to tell the world what they think. Their message, however, may be lost in the wake of the attention being given to the process that delivered the message. Why weren't precinct caucuses more prepared? Is the caucus system the best way of doing this? Who benefits from the results?

Those are all good questions, unless you really want to know what it all means to an average Minnesotan who may not be a political scientist. And what message did the voters on Super Tuesday give to the candidates themselves that might shape the general election?

Analysis: McCain looks to seal deal, the Associated Press headline said this morning. Not far in usefulness, really, from "Giants blitz sacks Brady." We know Mitt Romney and Barack Obama won Minnesota. We know that a lot more people turned out than anyone imagined. And there message was..... what?

Here's a sample of possibilities on the Republican side:

"I wonder if you are seeing that Romney has the support of MN people who actually volunteer for and support the GOP financially," said the Republican blog, Truth v. the Machine, which also takes a good whack at the MPR/ U of M poll. "Maybe the people in the poll who supported McCain never got off the couch to vote tonight? As discussed here and elsewhere, there in lies the whole problem with candidate McCain. The people who actually write checks and do the footwork could likely vote for him in November, but the problem is they will hold their cash and spectate leading up to the vote."

The Chaska Herald, meanwhile, carried a quote that suggests the Republicans who caucused really hate John McCain. "I'm trying to keep McCain from being elected. Go Romney!" said Ward 3 resident Roy Henderson. And the Star Tribune's account of a caucus in Maplewood showed why -- immigration, primarily. "Let them come the way that we used to," Larry Lyon, a retired engineer from North St. Paul, "and learn English."

On MPR's Midmorning today, Matthew Continetti, associate editor at the Weekly Standard, said McCain is not going to win over conservatives. Period. "But at the end of the day, those kind of practical political critics of McCain will vote for him." Which means what, exactly, for the future of the conservative movement?

"Conservatives have been so vitriolic in their assault on John McCain because they don't have a viable candidate in the race and because they don't believe that McCain will keep the conservative flame alive within the GOP," Allan J. Lichtman, professor of History at American University and the author of White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, said today. "However, as we learned from the liberal collapse in the late 1970s, political movements usually succumb to contradictions within their own traditions. That is precisely what has happened to conservativism in the era of George W. Bush and the impending McCain nomination is but a symptom of a more serious malady."

On the Democratic side, perhaps the message was to the media: "you're wrong."

"The media is also playing a divisive and misleading role through its analysis of the election results," said Joel Wendlend at PoliticalAffairs.net. "An ongoing mantra in both print and on the cable networks has been that women sided with Clinton and African Americans sided with Obama. But in state after state, where Obama won, he also won the support of both women and whites, at least according to exit polling data. Young voters overall turned in majorities for Obama, however."

Has your message been heard? What is it? Tell me below.

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The difference between men and women

Posted at 10:29 AM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

... at least as it relates to the news.

The Pew Research Center is out with a study today that chronicles the difference in news habits between men and women.

Women consistently express more interest than men in stories about weather, health and safety, natural disasters and tabloid news. Men are more interested than women in stories about international affairs, Washington news and sports.

At the same time, men and women often express comparable levels of interest in the top news stories of the day. For example, the presidential campaign has attracted only modestly greater interest among men than among women. In five weekly news interest surveys in 2008, 37% of men and 32% of women say they have followed campaign news very closely.

So women overall seem more interested in domestic stories. Men are more interested in international stories.

Brittney Spears doesn't come up at all.

(Hat tip: Mike Reszler)

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Mailbag: Suspect beef

Posted at 11:14 AM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Many school districts and other recipients of federal food and nutritional program food have pulled beef off their menu, after some undercover video (view here) at a California slaughterhouse showed cows, that were unable to stand, being prodded to get them into a slaughterhouse. The concern is the beef from sick cows ended up on your kid's cafeteria tray.

An MPR listener/reader who is a school nurse writes, "How long has the supect beef been in circulation, how long have the school districts been receiving it, and serving it to students? Is any of the suspect beef that has been set aside being tested by the State Health Department or any other governmental agency? What is the State Health Department doing about this, anything? What should a parent of a student who may have ingested the suspect beef know, in terms of when ill effects might appear?

Q: Is it possible beef from the plant ended up in the cafeteria?
A: Yes. Westland Meat Company shipped 240,000 pounds of the beef to Minnesota. according Christine Dufour, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. An Excel spreadsheet listing the schools can be found here. Says Randy Wanke at the Department of Education, "We are in the process of working with distributors of this product to I.D. which districts have received this product. We will contact those districts that have received this product to let them know if they have received this product. Since we are dealing with 240,000 pounds of meat, we expect this process to take a few days."

Q: Are there any reports of kids becoming sick from tainted beef?
A: No. There isn't even evidence that the beef is tainted.

Q: Is the Department of Health testing the beef?
A: No. "We wouldn't be involved unless there was some human illness associated with the beef," according to spokesman Buddy Ferguson at the Minnesota Department of Health. There are no known cases of anyone getting sick from the beef.

Q: Why didn't the government recall the beef?
A: The USDA ordered a "hold" rather than a "recall" on the beef because the government is primarily investigating the inhumane treatment of animals.

Q: How come the Humane Society was able to see the sick animals, but the USDA didn't?
A: There are plenty of questions about the USDA's inspection program. Last year, a USDA undersecretary admitted to a congressional committee that for three decades, U.S. inspectors visited 250 meat processing plants as rarely as once every two weeks despite federal law requiring daily inspection. He promised the practice would end "damn soon."

Q: What should we look for in kids?
A: Again, there are no reports of any tainted beef actually being in the food supply. E. coli is the most common form of food illness. Symptoms include bad stomach cramps and belly pain, vomiting, and diarrhea, sometimes with blood in it. The illness is usually associated with undercooked meat. You can find more here.

But the main reason for keeping "downed cows" out of the food supply is they may harbor mad cow disease. mad cow disease, which is caused by a virus-like infectious particle that can cause a fatal brain disease in people. Find information on it here.

Q: How do we know what beef is involved?
A: "This is what we are telling districts to look for," says Randy Wanke, spokesman for the Department of Education. "The United States Department of Agriculture has issued a hold on the use of A608, Fine Ground Beef 40 Lb cases supplied by Westland Meat Co/ Hallmark Meat Co. This product was distributed in school year (SY) 2007-2008 (2008) on 10/26/2007 and in SY 2006-2007 (2007) on 1/12/2007, 1/22/2007 and 1/30/2007."

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Musicians for Minneapolis

Posted at 11:41 AM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The morning trip to the mail room yielded a goodie today. Burnsville-based Electro-Voice is releasing Musicians for Minneapolis, a 57-song CD set that is being sold, with 100% of the proceeds going to Minnesota Helps: Bridge Disaster Fund.

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An accidental death?

Posted at 12:35 PM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Oxycontin? Valium? Xanax? That's quite a cocktail, and one that can kill you if you take them all together, which is what actor Heath Ledger did, contributing to his death, according to the medical examiner. There was also the painkiller ibuprofen and sleeping pills, Restoril and Unisom.

Now the only mystery is why the death has been declared accidental.

Doctors who prescribe are supposed to know what other prescriptions the patient is taking. And so are the pharmacists for precisely this reason. And they're supposed to advise the patient of the dangers of combining drugs. Either they didn't do that, or he didn't pay attention.

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The missing link?

Posted at 12:53 PM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

As any parent of a child with a serious illness can tell you, one of the hardest things to deal with is the guilt that comes from the knowledge that you -- the parent -- may have had something to do with it. "What could I have done differently?" is the common question.

So, this probably won't help. Some new research out today suggests that there's a connection between the stress of a mother during pregnancy, and mental illness of the child.

According to Time magazine...

The study group consisted of 1.38 million births recorded in Denmark, from 1973 to 1995. Children were followed from age 10 until their death, their departure from Denmark, the onset of schizophrenia or the end of the study period in 2005. Researchers determined also whether the birth mothers had suffered extreme stress — due either to the death or illness (heart attack, cancer or stroke) of a first-degree relative — six months prior to and at any time during pregnancy. The data showed that women who experienced a close family member's death during the first three months of pregnancy had a 67% increased risk of having a child who would develop schizophrenia later in life. Stress before pregnancy or in late pregnancy had no such effect; neither did stress associated with a family member's illness.

Researchers stress the data is too small to reach firm conclusions. But that won't stop a lot of mothers -- and fathers, too -- from wringing their hands just a little tighter.

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Goodbye Dayton's

Posted at 1:42 PM on February 6, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

I got the feeling when Marshall Field's fell into the hands of Macy's, that it was only a matter of time before the last vestige of a Minnesota company founded in 1902 was wiped away.

Today is that day.

The giant retailer announced it is consolidating its regional divisions. Gone will be Macy's North, which employed about 950 people. When Dayton's became Marshall Field's which became Macy's, the local "headquarters" remained in the form of Macy's North. It was a small nod to the idea that Minneapolis still, somehow, mattered.

Though we can now put a final shovelful of dirt on the grave of a Minnesota retailer, many folks left the cemetery long ago.

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Captain Bibeau's lesson

Posted at 8:53 AM on February 7, 2008 by Bob Collins (58 Comments)

Jeff Bibeau is the kind of guy who can make you want to be 14 again, just so you can sit in his history class. Just ask the kids at Roseville Area Middle School who earlier this week lost one of their favorite teachers to the Minnesota National Guard and a coming deployment to Iraq.

Bibeau, a captain in the Guard, said when he first received word last month that he was being called to active duty, he couldn't talk about the possibility of leaving his classes. "I told the people who needed to know... and then I decided I didn't want to tell the students until I needed to. And so last Friday, just the weekend before I was leaving, I made the announcement and I let them ask me any questions they wanted to because by that time I had some time to collect myself, get myself together; it was very hard."

It was hard for the students, too. They went home last weekend and told their parents. On Monday -- Captain Bibeau's last day -- there were cards, letters, and brownies sent to school from grateful parents on behalf of disappointed kids.

"Mr Bibeau taught me to be skeptical, and as weird as that may sound, it's important if you ever want to learn about what's beneath the surface," eighth grader Dan Hartmann said in an e-mail. "He told us about himself. I think my favorite part of the whole class is seeing how easy it can be to get someone to pay attention to you. History is the only class in which the teacher doesn't have to shut the kids up by telling them to be quiet. When Mr. Bibeau talks, people listen."

By just about any standards, Bibeau, 39, is a natural teacher, who can credit the military -- he was in the Navy for years -- with putting him in a classroom. "When I was in the Navy, we had this professor from the University of Texas and he lived on the ship for three years teaching classes. And he said, 'absolutely, you need to be a history teacher.' And so from that point on I couldn't wait to get out of the Navy and go back to college and finish my teaching degree."

He said he always felt as if history could be taught better than when he was in school, that his students could appreciate it more.

"Just to see the transformation and how they get into it and you can show them how if you take what's going on today, you can give them numerous examples from the past. The only difference is the people involved and the place it occurs. And when they make that connection, it's just awesome!

"I can remember I got a letter one time when I was deployed to Bosnia and a student said 'I just wanted to thank you. I just got accepted to college and I'm going to become a history teacher,'" he said Wednesday.

Before he left class on Monday, he had one more lesson for the kids about the adult world.

"Time heals," he told them. "By this time next year you'll be focused on what you're doing as ninth graders. It's like at the end of the school year when you all go off your own way, you're moving on to better things and if that happens and the e-mails dry up, I expect that to happen."

And he had one more lesson for adults, about the world of 8th graders.

"They're just normal people and I think unless you get to know them, you think they're troublemakers, you think they're hooligans, you think they're all these things that they're not . People always say 'you teach 8th grade? I feel sorry for you.' Why? Have you ever done it? It's awesome. Some of them say they spend more time each day talking to me than they do with their parents, because everyone is working and doing these other things that they do. So, I think it's important for a teacher to be involved and communicate with kids and make contact with them. It's pretty neat."

Audio excerpts (all mp3)

Freedom fighters

Posted at 2:40 PM on February 7, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

One of the U.S. allies -- Afghanistan -- is considering whether to execute a young reporter because he downloaded material on women's rights from the Internet. The U.S. has been relatively silent on the situation until Condoleezza Rice spoke out yesterday:

"I do think that the Afghans understand that there are some international norms that need to be respected. Of course, one has national laws and they're national laws that are in accordance with traditions and religious practice. But there are international norms, and I'll certainly talk to President Karzai about this case."

Meanwhile, another ally of the United States -- Saudi Arabia -- threw a 37 year old American woman in jail, strip searched her, threatened her, and forced her to sign a false confession, according to the Times of London.

Her crime? She was sitting with a man at a Starbucks.

Said President Bush last month while visiting Saudi Arabia, where he dropped news of a $123 million sale of arms to the country, "I also want you to understand something about America - that we respect you, we respect your religion and we want to work together for the sake of freedom and peace."

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'Outsider' out at Schwan

Posted at 2:59 PM on February 7, 2008 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)

Lenny Pippin, the president and chief executive officer at Marshall-based Schwan Food Company, is one of the few outsiders to run the company.

Until today.

The company says Pippin is leaving the company immediately, giving no reason for his departure. Greg Flack, head of the company's Global Consumer Brands division, will serve as interim boss. Flack has been with the company for 21 years.

"While this has been a very challenging time, we have a tremendous company and our prospects are bright," says board of directors chair Alfred Schwan in a statement.

In the last month the company has been consolidating operations. It closed a plant in South Carolina, which employed 525 people. In December it announced it was grounding the Red Baron Squadron, an airshow team that performed on behalf of the company's Red Baron Pizza brand.

Pippin joined the company in 1999. Judging by the comments below, some are not sad to see him go.

Update Fri. 12:09 a.m. - The Marshall Independent has an interview with Pippin:

"One of the most important things to me is the well-being of employees," Pippin said. "In an environment like this, one of the first places to cut costs is to cut people. I'm management and for me, that's the last resort. With the rare exception over the past nine years, we've always seemed to find another way."

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Spinal success story

Posted at 3:52 PM on February 7, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Talk about change!

At a conference in New York this week, researchers released details of experiments in which they "bypassed" spinal cord injuries in rats by grafting a nerve over it.

As the BBC reports:

It takes one of the nerves that naturally leaves the spinal column, disconnects it from its destination, then plugs it back into the spinal cord using a protein "glue".

In the case of the rats, this was a nerve heading for the abdominal muscles, which was taken just above a break in the spinal cord, and reattached below.

There has been some movement reported in the injured rats, although clearly it's a long way from being a solution to human paralysis.

Curiously, the research is big news among the media in the UK, but there's virtually nothing about it being reported in the American press, which is consumed with politics at the moment.

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Slim margins at the Super Bowl

Posted at 4:50 PM on February 7, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Sometimes we all need to stop and take a deep breath.

Thank goodness Kurt William Havelock did last Sunday. It's what prevented a national tragedy. Havelock was pretty upset that the city of Tempe, Arizona denied him a liquor license, so he headed to the Super Bowl, with a rifle, 200 rounds of ammunition, and the intent to destroy his and many other peoples' lives.

According to a manifesto he mailed to the media, he was going to shoot up Phoenix's Desert Ridge Marketplace near Scottsdale, but that "scum and villainy" are in Scottsdale and that instead he would "shed the blood of the innocent."

He got as far as a parking lot near the stadium, where pre-game parties were already underway. "He waited about a minute and decided he couldn't do this," FBI agent Philip Thorlin testified at a detention hearing for Havelock on Tuesday.

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Timewasters: Political hockey

Posted at 12:02 AM on February 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

From News Cut's "there's something you don't see every day department:"

A presidential candidate vying for the electoral delegates of Texas by playing air hockey on national TV, using a puck in the shape of the Lone Star State.

But for the most biting satire of the political season -- so far -- little else comes close to Jon Stewart's treatment of Mitt Romney's own words on Thursday, when the Republican dropped out of the '08 presidential race, and kicked off the '12 campaign.

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Why journalism matters

Posted at 1:02 AM on February 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

The military has a reputation for being a bastion of conservatism. The media, it's safe to say, does not. And yet, the best friends veterans have had in the last year appears to be the media, which have been looking after their welfare, some argue, far more effectively than the people who are paid to.

The latest example is the work of National Public Radio, which uncovered a memo last month from an Army official in upstate New York instructing representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork.

"To be tossed aside like a worn-out pair of boots is pretty disheartening," a soldier who didn't want to be identified said. "I always believed the Army would take care of me if I did the best I could, and I've done that."

The Army surgeon general denied any such instruction earlier this week, until NPR showed him the memo. On Thursday, a contrite Army Surgeon General Eric Shoomaker said it was all a misunderstanding, and he says the orders are out for the VA to help the soldiers who need it.

Q:What was so surprising was that the people you spoke with gave you an account that not only was different from the account in these documents and [from] others I've spoken with, but that almost could not have been more opposite.

A: I know. Isn't that amazing? It sort of speaks to miscommunication, doesn't it?

This, of course, is not the first time journalists had to push the military to the point of embarrassment to get it to live up to its promises to the vets.

The Washington Post uncovered the unacceptable conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital. And even eight months later, the paper found that some veterans were getting what they deserved, only if they were able to get a story about themselves on the front page of the most influential newspaper in Washington.

Days after The Post's Anne Hull and Dana Priest detailed the struggles of the former Army scout disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder, there were calls and visits from Washington, D.C. Mr. Turner's disability rating is being upped to 100 percent, care closer to home will be found and help is available to guide them through the labyrinth of regulations. Sadly, the Turners are not unique in the shabby way the country treats its military casualties.

In November, CBS News had to use a Freedom of Information Act request to pry loose from the Defense Department, information that active duty soldiers were killing themselves at a high rate. Then, CBS did what no government agency or state (and that includes you, Minnesota) bothered to do: organize all available data to learn that veterans were twice as likely to kill themselves as non-veterans. The reporting contributed to the development of a comprehensive VA strategy for preventing veteran suicide.

And only yesterday, the Associated Press uncovered a report from last year that showed veterans are having a harder time finding work than those who didn't go off to war.

The report blamed the poor prospects partly on inadequate job networks and lack of mentors after extended periods in war. The study said employers often had misplaced stereotypes about veterans' fitness for employment, such as concerns they did not have adequate technological skills, or were too rigid, lacked education or were at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.

That story came two days after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Bush administration has defended itself in a lawsuit, claiming that veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care. The vets accused the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," old-time journalist Finley Peter Dunne said. Seldom has the American media distinguished itself more than in its dogged pursuit on behalf of the American veteran.

As the U.S. news industry declines, to the glee of its detractors, its oversight role of the government in these cases is a good reminder of why its survival matters.

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Smoke, fire, or neither?

Posted at 10:32 AM on February 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Police in Moorhead have released a study that shows American Indians are stopped by police more often if the officers know the ethnicity beforehand

“American Indians over 30 are more likely to be stopped than any other ethnicity over 30,” study author Mark Hansel said in today's edition of the Fargo Forum. “The reason for that is just not clear. It’s troubling in that it raises the possibility of profile stops, but it doesn’t prove it.”

The study, however, did not factor in the behavior of the driver nor the condition of the vehicle prior to the traffic stop. The study also involves a very small number of people, the study's author acknowledges.

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Gov. Pawlenty's Munich trip

Posted at 12:55 PM on February 8, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Political wags had raised eyebrows earlier this week when it was announced that Gov. Tim Pawlenty would attend the Munich Conference on Security Policy this weekend, a gathering of the world's top security officials. Because Pawlenty was to be in the company of Sen. John McCain, some suggested Pawlenty was burnishing his international credentials, and that the appearance of the two together on the international stage was indicative of McCain's interest in Pawlenty as a vice presidential candidate. Pawlenty is a co-chair of the McCain campaign. McCain has since bailed on the trip.

When Pawlenty offhandedly announced his attendance, he said he was invited because of his role as governor and chair of the National Governor's Association, noting the importance of security to the nation's governors.

Governors have rarely attended the gathering, and there's no record of an NGA chair ever attending. According to the conference's Web site, only one other governor has appeared on the list of participants in the annual conference, a list that dates back only to 1999. Last year, Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah attended the conference. Huntsman is on the NGA's executive committee.

"That not something we track here," a spokeswoman for the National Governors Association said this afternoon, when asked how often the chair of the NGA attends the conference.

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Insult to injury

Posted at 9:59 AM on February 10, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

This weekend was the annual tax preparation weekend in my house. It starts on Friday night when I pick up my favorite tax preparation software, continues on Saturday when I wonder why I have to pay a few thousand dollars in additional taxes (my youngest child advanced past my ability to claim him as a dependent last year) only to get some of it back in a rebate that's supposed to stimulate my economy, and concludes on Sunday when, for the life of me, I can't figure out why I have to pay a $17.95 fee for paying my taxes online (I won't. I'll mail it.).

In most cases, you can file for free if your adjusted income is $54,000 or less. It's a bit odd since most of those taxpayers are getting money back. The people who are out of luck are the ones who are trying to give the government more cash.

Filing electronic returns, according to the IRS, is faster and it's more accurate. So why doesn't the government provide free electronic filing to everyone? Because someone makes a buck at it, according to the e-file site.

NOTE: IRS cannot compete with private enterprise and does not offer free e-file software or direct filing. A number of companies, tested and approved by the IRS, do offer free use of their software and free filing, while others will charge nominal fees. Terms and conditions vary among companies and you are advised to review the information on each company's web site and choose the product that is right for you.

The product that's right for me is the one that lets me pay my taxes without paying a fee for the joy of doing so. Fat chance.

In the case of one of the most popular "private enterprise" products, Turbo Tax, the online version allows free e-filing. The personal version does not. But there's a bit of a scam there, too. The online "deluxe" version with the ability to do your state taxes, too, runs about $60. The same version that you buy in the store, is about $45.

If you have a simple return (like EZ), you can download a free version of Turbo Tax, but the state version costs extra. Still, Minnesota allows free filing if -- and only if -- you qualify for free filing with the feds.

On the whole, however, Minnesota, like the feds, is not interested in giving most taxpayers are break on electronic filing of taxes, which is perhaps just as well given the state's various run-ins with the concept of data privacy.

There are a few quiet deals out there. For one, customers of State Farm Insurance can use the online version of Turbo Tax for free (and file directly).

For the military, Tax Slayer allows free filing (only for the military), although you have to pay for the product.

The best bet? Shop around. Tax Act, another online preparer, has a cheapie version that allows free filing for all, but the state version is another $13.95 and the low-end version does not allow you to import data from a previous return.

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Dropped from the Dow

Posted at 8:20 AM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Quite a slap in the face was delivered to a former Minnesota company today, when Honeywell was removed from the prestigious 30 Dow Jones Industrials.

Chevron and Bank of America were added in place of Honeywell, and Altria, the tobacco company.

Honeywell is being dropped because it is the smallest of the industrials in terms of revenue and earnings. It is also reflective of the fact the U.S. economy isn't as much about industrials anymore.

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The wisdom of Tom Lantos

Posted at 10:41 AM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Last month, I posted the story of Ken Dahlberg, who grew up poor in St. Paul and Wisconsin, and ended up being a rich guy, with a stop along the way to become an ace in World War II.

There's another person today, whose life just makes you shake your head at the amazing journey, which ended today for Rep. Tom Lantos of California. He died of cancer in Washington.

Says the Associated Press:

As his obituary by the AP (no doubt prepared well in advance) notes, Lantos brought a moral authority to his work as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and a coveted spot in the Great Comments on Capitol Hill Hall of Fame.

''Morally, you are pygmies,'' he told execs of Yahoo! last year, when they defended their company's role in providing the information to China, which allowed it to jail a journalist.

Some other favorite Lantosisms:

"The Lord gave us Ten Commandments, but the bill before the House today gives us 39." -- June 2005, speaking on a Republican get-tough-with-the-U.N. bill.

“You have to help us, because if it was not for us you would now be a province of Nazi Germany.” -- October 2007 in an exchange with Dutch lawmakers who visited Guantanamo Bay. The exchange also included, "“Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay.”

"Unless you're unbelievably naive, it is self-evident that baseball's new policy is designed to silence the critics and not to solve the problem." - March 2005 at congressional inquiry into steroids in baseball.

“It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.” -- Last month, announcing he would retire from Congress, knowing he was dying.

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Campaign 'embeds'

Posted at 12:10 PM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

A couple of prominent news sources today kick around the question of whether a snapshot in time captures who candidates really are.

First, the New York Times (Putting Candidates Under the Videoscope), profiles "embeds," the "will work cheap" videographers and reporters who film everything the candidate does, blog like crazy, and occasionally get the big story, like when Mitt Romney hugged the women from Hooters, or when FoxNews' Bill O'Reilly shoved a member of Barack Obama's staff.

Says the Times...

The ubiquitous camcorders and immediate Internet access do make the campaigns more wary of potential pitfalls. If a candidate becomes irritated during a newspaper reporter’s interview, the instance may merit only a sentence in the next day’s article. But if the exchange takes place in front of video cameras, “It gets put on the Internet for the whole world to see, not just for that day’s news, but repeatedly over time,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said.

Is this a good thing? No, says Dan Gillmor today. He runs the Center for Citizen Media, a one-man advocate for putting journalism in the hands of people.

What is still not part of the understanding is the sheer unfairness of letting a single moment on video reflect a person’s reality. Yet this is what seems to happen on a regular basis.

When, as in the case of former Sen. George Allen — he of the famous “Macaca” comment — there is a history of racially charged words and deeds, then you have something worth discussing. When it’s simply one of those weird moments on the campaign trail, it’s nothing or close to it.

I could follow anyone reading this with a video camera for an hour and post something on the Web that would make you look ridiculous. You could do the same to me. Neither posting would reflect who we really are.

A culture of gotcha is a shallow culture. Is it the one we really want to promote?

Perhaps true. On the other hand, my day today -- and I'll bet yours -- is not completely scripted, occasional with the purpose to hide who we really are.

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From the 'shoe on the other foot' department

Posted at 1:57 PM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

How do you think CBS News would cover this if it weren't about CBS News?

BAGHDAD (AP) - Two CBS News journalists were missing in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Basra, the network said Monday.

CBS said all efforts were under way to find the journalists, who were not identified by the network. It requested "that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved" until more information was available.

"CBS News has been in touch with the families and asks that their privacy be respected," the network added in a brief statement from its headquarters in New York.

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The tax debate cometh

Posted at 3:52 PM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

With the Legislature set to begin on Tuesday, no doubt there'll be a few bills to raise sales taxes. The transportation folks want a gas tax increase and a metro-area sales tax. The hunting/fishing/classic music coalition wants a 3/8 of 1 percent sales tax increase to go before voters in November.

Where does Minnesota's sales tax rank with other states? It has ranked 5th for most of this decade, even though it hasn't raised its sales tax (except for the baseball stadium and some local options).

For the gas tax, Minnesota currently ranks 38th. It ranks 25th in "spirits tax." It ranks 34th in beer tax. These numbers are all courtesy of The Tax Foundation using 2006 numbers.

The state and local tax burden for Minnesota places it 11th nationally. Only 3 times since 1970 has the state ranked that low - 2004, 2005 and 1970. It also ranks 11th in terms of total tax burden -- including federal, state and local taxes.

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Fretting over the merger

Posted at 5:31 PM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

While many folks in the northern climate are worried about the effect that Delta will have if and when it takes over Northwest Airlines, in Atlanta there's some fretting about what will happen to Delta if it adopts some of the practices of Northwest.

Teamsters President James Hoffa says because Northwest outsources a lot of its maintenance work overseas, the prospect of sending even more jobs to Asia "is a key concern that should be addressed" in any regulatory review of a possible merger.

Delta, which like Northwest is not represented by the Teamsters, says the concern is unfounded because the airline profits from doing maintenance for other airlines.

"Delta senior leadership has made very clear its commitment to growing its in-house maintenance business by focusing on high-skill, high-value maintenance work," Delta spokeswoman Chris Kelly told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. "Last year, Delta TechOps brought in more than $377 million in revenue, and 2008 is looking to be even better."

Did you catch that?

Delta is commenting on the effects of a merger that hasn't even been announced yet.

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Sprewell's tough times

Posted at 6:03 PM on February 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

We all made fun of former Timberwolf Latrell Sprewell when he turned down a 3 year $21 million contract, saying "I've got a family to feed."

We thought he was kidding.

It turns out, "Spree" really didn't know how to make ends meet while making big cash.

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Hockey and health care

Posted at 9:14 AM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman carries the story today of Rep. Shelley Madore, DFL-Apple Valley, who went to the Capitol a few years ago (before she was elected to the House) to explain to lawmakers why her $900+ a month insurance premium should've required her insurance company to pay for the $60,000 operation her son needed (the Madores are said to have grossed $50,000 a year).

Madore, the story says, encountered a lawmaker :

When Madore told the guy (he's no longer in office) that many families are forced to pay hundreds per month for supplemental insurance policies, he said such policies are a discretionary expense, much like his decision to pay for the cost of his son's hockey ice time.

"I went through the roof," Madore says. "I told him, 'This is wrong, and some day I'm going to come up here and change the system.' He looked at me and said, 'Good luck with that, dear.' Well, that was all I needed. I went home and said, 'I'm running for the Legislature.'"

Politicians have been hounded out of office for uttering words that show not only a lack of empathy for a working person, but the lack of good sense to keep them to themselves. Madore confirmed for me today that the comment came from then Rep. Fran Bradley of Rochester. It wasn't the first time Bradley drew the parallel between keeping your kid alive and suiting one up for the big game.

But back in June 2003, hardly a word was heard when Bradley, who chaired the House Health Policy and Finance Committee, according to an MPR story, responded to the plight of parents of 4,700 disabled Minnesota children with this:

"For that price, you're still getting quite a bargain. If your kid was choosing to play hockey, it wouldn't be unusual to pay those kinds of expenses. My son is in a marching band and we averaged out for the year, the trips that they have taken it would be in those ranges. I know it's a sacrifice, but I hope they would be balanced in their thinking."

Bradley was re-elected by a big margin, and then retired after the 2006 session.

He now writes a monthly column for the Rochester Post Bulletin.

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Covering the duck

Posted at 10:33 AM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

A showdown is looming in the city of Ulen, Minn. Monika Spitzmiller, 41, will be at the City Council meeting tonight, to ask authorities to allow her pet duck, Houdini, to continue to live with her.

The city enacted a law that bans farm animals from living on property of less than 10 acres.

According to the Fargo Forum newspaper, Spitzmiller nursed the duck back to health, which helped her recover from her own unspecified trauma.

She says she'd rather move than give up the duck.

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The health benefits of global warming

Posted at 10:50 AM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

A study in the UK claims global warming saves lives. According to the BBC, annual cold-weather mortality fell by 3 percent between 1971-2003 as winters became more mild. And, apparently, we've become more adaptable to rising temperatures, thanks more to our willingness to wear more informal clothes, rather than a physiological change.

However, there's a 1 in 40 chance that a heat wave in southern England by 2012 will kill 3,000 people immediately, and another 3,000 over the course of a summer. The researchers, however, see this is a trade-off for the 20,000 per year who die from the effects of cold weather.

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How much is a lost laptop worth?

Posted at 10:59 AM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)

About $54 million, according to a Washington, D.C. area woman, who has filed a lawsuit against Best Buy. Raelyn Campbell, took her $1,100 laptop to Best Buy to get it fixed, and three months later the store admitted it lost the laptop. Best Buy offered her $900, then $1,100 after the district's attorney general got involved, then $2,100 after the lawsuit was filed.

"I can't help but wonder how many other people have had their computer stolen (or) lost by Best Buy and then been bullied into accepting lowball compensation offers for replacement expenses and no compensation for identity theft protection expenses," she told the Red Tape Chronicles blog.

Best Buy refused comment.

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English as the official language?

Posted at 2:10 PM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)

The legislative session brings with it the filing of some bills that are dead on arrival, that its sponsors know are dead on arrival, but are filed anyway to at least make a point, and ignite a conversation.

HF2652, filed today by Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Greenfield Township, may be one such bill, if history is any indicator. It designates English as the official language of Minnesota, whose state motto is "L’etoile du Nord."

A similar bill, HF241, was filed last year. It was sent to a committee to die; the same committee to which Drazkowski's bill has been sent.

Under Drazkowski's bill, only a person who speaks English can take advantage of "programs, benefits, or opportunities," including government employment. And nobody under 18 could get a driver's license who doesn't speak English. Drazkowski says his bill would not eliminate any constitutional guarantees afforded those who don't speak English, and grants certain exceptions.

In a column in the Winona Daily News, Drazkowski cited the court costs associated with providing translators as one reason for his bill. "It’s almost become second nature that Minnesotans will recondition state services to people in their native language," Drazkowski said. "This is fine for those who are here legally and willing to learn our language over time and become productive members of society. It’s not OK if we are spending millions for this service each year for the benefit of those who enter this country illegally or refuse to learn the English language."

Drazkowski told me today the health care industry is another area where the cost of providing translators is increasing.

Similar bills have been filed this year in other states, including Oklahoma and Rhode Island. Nearly two dozen already have passed it, including Georgia, which has had the law for 12 years. That state is now considering whether to add the driver's license provisions contained in Drazkowski's bill. It's a move that made the Atlanta Journal Constitution's editorial board cringe:

Pressed to explain the rationale for this amendment, Bearden said drivers with clumsy English pose a problem for traffic cops. But surely poor English skills aren't anywhere near the danger to police and the public that drunken driving is, and yet there's no legislative demand for tougher DUI laws.

Language fluency is not critical to safe driving. Thousands of Georgians vacation abroad each year and drive through France, Spain, Greece and Germany. They can do so without knowing the languages because most countries agreed to standardize the road signs and markings in 1968.

Among the exceptions in Drazkowski's bill, is the permission to "create or promote state or agency mottos," such as L’etoile du Nord.

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The lost children of Minneapolis

Posted at 4:40 PM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)

Now we know. Demond Keith Reed, a 4 year old, shouldn't have soiled his pants; at least not while he was being looked after by Carla Cherisse Poole, who has now admitted to beating the Minneapolis boy to death, according to the Hennepin County attorney.

Minneapolis was just getting to the point of boasting that, so far, there were no murders in the city in 2008. Then it got the most heinous one imaginable.

If you have any horror at all left over, save it for Child A. That's how the court complaint describes the 11-year-old, who apparently watched as two younger children helped hold Demond down while Carla beat him. Child A told the cops about the beating, and Demond's seizure and vomiting. You know all those stories about how 5 and 6 year olds save lives by using 911? Not Child A. In a house too filthy, police cadaver dogs couldn't find anything, even though the boy, now dead, was being hidden in a bedroom for two days, before being moved to a closet.

Consider this narrative from the complaint:

Child A stated that during the weekend of February 1, 2008, Demond had soiled his pants and had been 'spanked' by the defendant. She stated that he had a seizure and began to vomit. Child A stated that Demond's health deteriorated over the next several hours. She stated that the defendant discussed calling 911 and an ambulance, but decided not to because she was afraid. Child A stated that Demond stopped breathing and that the defendant attempted to give him CPR. Child A listened for but did not hear a heart beat. Child A stated that the next morning Demond was "frozen" and not breathing. The defendant placed a grey blanket over Demond and left him lying on a bed for approximately two days. Child A states that the defendant eventually moved him to a closet on the first floor. Child A described Demond as having his face squished in and that she didn't want to look at him.

A six-year-old child hereinafter referred to as Child B witnessed the defendant beating Demond. Child B states that he and a four-year-old child were told to hold Demond down by the arms while the defendant beat him.

Child A and Carla Poole then concocted a story to tell police. An unwitting and unskeptical TV crew helped spread a phony story about a mysterious woman named "Shawna."

The legal system will judge Carla Cherisse Poole, but what happens now to Child A, an 11 year old with no apparent sense of right or wrong, and Child B who is well on his/her way toward a similar state? The kids are all under "protective custody."

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Delta, Northwest deal moving closer

Posted at 9:26 PM on February 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The Financial Times reports Northwest Airlines and Delta have shared details of their merger proposals with labor groups. The two airlines still need to determine whether Air France-KLM, their mutual European ally, will invest in the combined company, according to the newspaper.

Reuters says Delta and Northwest are trying to work out as much as possible behind the scenes before making a decision on whether to move forward with a proposal. "We haven't seen that before," airline analyst Bill Swelbar said of the patient approach with labor. Reuters cites sources as saying the strategy comes from serious problems US Airways had with combining pilots in one contract after it merged with America West Airlines in 2005.

It's not a bad strategy, says US News and World Report, in a profile of the latter merger called "How to merge two airlines."

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A walk on the good side

Posted at 7:44 AM on February 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Tuesday was a terrible day to be in the news business. With every story we delivered, we could feel you moving closer to the ledge.

So this morning, here's a quick -- very quick -- sampling of things to bring you back.

The National Honor Society kids in Marshall had a blood drive. Rae Kupferschmidt's funeral was scheduled, then the Lake Elmo woman (and wife of an aviation acquaintance of mine) woke up from her coma. A California artist promotes Kindness Week with a stop in Bemidji (reg. required for link). The kids appear to have gotten the message. A jogger in the Twin Cities saves a child from freezing to death. And, of course, Uno. I dare you to look at this pup and not feel better.

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Pick the liar

Posted at 10:52 AM on February 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Baseball's steroids hittings hearings on Capitol Hill have gotten ugly. Roger Clemens, the once-future Hall of Famer and his primary accuser, trainer Brian McNamee are testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. You can watch the hearing here.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., had no problem getting McNamee to admit that he's been a liar in the past, appearing to be serving up a soft pitch to former Red Sox star Clemens. Then, he did what congresspeople do best: he hung Clemens on his own words, asking Clemens to explain discrepancies in his assertion that he never talked to McNamee about injecting HGH (human growth hormone), and getting Clemens to acknowledge that he had a heated conversation with McNamee after he found out the trainer injected Clemens' wife in his bedroom when he wasn't there (which brought up a whole 'nother image that's best left alone).

In a matter of seconds, Clemens looked like a liar, too.

Getting a pass from today's hearing is New York Yankee pitcher Andy Pettite (Tangent: where are those New York fans who got on the New England Patriots case a couple of weeks ago for cheating, anyway?).. Pettitte is another accuser of Clemens, but his lawyers got him off the TV hotseat, saying Pettite did not want to provide negative information about his former longtime friend in public.

Updates as necessary:

11:04 a.m. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Virginia to McNamee: Why did you dispense drugs you knew to be illegal?
McNamee: I just figured it was the norm and culture of baseball.
Davis: How prevalent was it?
McNamee: Within the players it was pretty prevalent.

11:16 a.m. - Clemens just told Rep. John Mica, R-Florida, that he was injected with B-12 (legal) and when asked what color the substance was, he said "red and pink." About 45 minutes ago, Clemens could not recall a family vacation in Florida, vaguely recalling that his wife might've been in a golf foursome with him, but he had no idea where his kids were. And that was right after he said he remembered details of a 17-inning Toronto Blue Jay game around the same time.

11:24 a.m. - "The depositions this committee will release later today," said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., "will be devastating."

11:32 a.m. Clemens tosses a dart at McNamee, who testified earlier that he "made" Roger Clemens. "In 1998, I had the triple crown in pitching. I had over 200 wins by 1998. I didn't meet him until 1999." Clemens talks about losing a sister-in-law to drugs, talks about his brother who pulled his son out of college for using marijuana. "Someone's trying to break my spirit in this room," he said. "You can tell your boys that I did it the right way," Clemens said to Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., who stopped short of asking Clemens for an autograph.

11:42 a.m. - Chair Henry Waxman suggests Clemens got in touch with a nanny of his kids, who the committee was apparently looking for, and had him over to his house after not seeing her for 7 years. Waxman suggests Clemens was getting her story straight before the committee found her.

11:43 a.m. - Some of the committee reports and statements are being put up as pdf files on the committee Web site. But no depositions yet.

11:52 a.m. - Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton to Clemens: "I'm sure you're going to heaven." Because?

12:23 p.m. - After a lunch break, Rep. Davis works the "nanny angle." Clemens says he got in touch with her because the committee couldn't. The context is whether the nanny can verify that Clemens wasn't at a party thrown by baseball drug user Jose Canseco, during which, it's alleged, players discussed their use of steroids and drugs. "I know one thing: I wasn't there working out a drug deal," said Clemens, who says he wasn't there at all.

12:27 p.m. The Chicago Tribune has just posted Rick Morrissey's column:

Many of you don't care if he used performance-enhancing drugs to be the best he could be, in the same way many of you don't care if some of the SI models turned to surgery in the hope of being more attractive.

But it has to give you pause, doesn't it, when you find yourself trying to decide what's real and what's fake in a person? I can hear thousands of voices, most of them male: No, it doesn't!

12:33 p.m. -- It turns out that lots of congressional folks asked Clemens for his autograph during his blitz of the Capitol. They may have violated ethics rules, but not because they buddied up to someone they were investigating.

1:33 p.m. - We've pretty much reached the "I've got to say something clever to make the nightly news" portion of the hearing. So the questioning from the pols isn't particularly illuminating.

1:40 p.m. - In closing his hearing, Waxman sends bouquets and kisses to McNamee, and pats the committee on the back for its work on the issue.

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What do you want your obituary to say?

Posted at 2:35 PM on February 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Do you want it to be a truthful account of who you were? Or do you want it to gloss over your warts and tuck a little here and there?

Perhaps you've sat at a funeral and heard the eulogy and thought, "wow, why can't I be as good?"

The eulogy is a memorial. The obituary is a news story.

On the Washington Post's Post Mortem blog (yep, it's written by the obituary writers), Joe Holley kicks around this question of truth vs. memorial, and provides some decoding of the language, at least so far as the London Telegraph.

"Convivial," for example, meant the deceased was habitually drunk. "A powerful negotiator" was his description for a bully. "An uncompromisingly direct ladies' man" was Massingberd's euphemism for a flasher.

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The duck stays

Posted at 2:36 PM on February 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Following up on yesterday's news item about a woman in Ulen, Minn., who wanted to keep her duck in defiance of a city ordinance: the City Council voted 3-1 last night to allow
Monika Spitzmiller to keep the duck, named Houdini. She had to get license -- a duck license? -- and provide proof from a vet that the duck is healthy.

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Pregnant and fired

Posted at 3:00 PM on February 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (24 Comments)

Occasionally, there are news stories that come along that might make one initially sit up and say, "yeah, so?"

Here's one today that fits the bill:

WABASHA, Minn. (AP) ― An unmarried fifth-grade teacher at a Catholic school in Wabasha is out of a job because she got pregnant.

Twenty-three year-old Emily Prigge of Lake City told her principal about her pregnancy last month. Prigge says the principal and a priest asked her to resign last week, and she did. Her pregnancy is about 15 weeks along.

Prigge was in her first year on the job at St. Felix school. When she took the job she signed a Catholic Christian Witness Statement, where she agreed to be a good example as a Christian in her personal and academic life. Prigge, who is Catholic, says she was told she didn't live up to the statement because she had premarital sex.

Officials at the school and the Diocese of Winona have declined
to comment.

Yeah, so...is it news that someone who violated a signed condition of employment gets fired? The comments section of the article in the Rochester Post Bulletin, which "broke" the story, suggests it's gotten under some folks' skin.

Back when I was in high school, the class president got pregnant, and had to leave school and she was not allowed to graduate with her class. And she was the mayor's daughter. But that was a public school in 1972, and we can argue that public schools have no business bringing a religion-based doctrine into its employment policy.

The argument could be made here , however, that this is different. This is a teacher in a Catholic school, who is unmarried, and pregnant, in apparent violation of church doctrine. What's more, the teacher doesn't appear to be disputing the firing.

Something similar happened in New York back in 2005 and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued the school. An anti-abortion group, Feminists for Life, backed the woman's complaint. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled the firing violated constitutional rights and urged the two sides to cut a deal outside of court.

Had it gotten to court, however, it likely would've run up against historical roadblocks. In 2006, the New York Times documented this in a story, "Where Faith Abides, Employees Have Few Rights."

Religious employers have long been shielded from all complaints of religious discrimination by an exemption that was built into the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and expanded in 1972. That historic exemption allows them to give preference in hiring to candidates who share their faith. In recent years, some judges have also refused to interfere when religious groups have dismissed lesbians, unwed mothers and adulterous couples, even if they profess the same faith, because they have violated their employers' religious codes.

In the New York case, William Donahue, the president of the Catholic League, defended the church's stance, especially given that it involved a teacher. He made his comments in a November 2005 interview on CNN.

"Let's say she's working with Catholic Charities or working for -- in the immigration office, and they fired her for this condition. I think then that could be problematic.

"But if you're a teacher and you're a role model, particularly with the little kids, how are you supposed to explain to the parents, by the way, who might say, 'well, let's see now, what's the alternative?' Let's say if the school did nothing. How do you explain as the principal to those parents who are paying their money expecting that a teacher is going to teach religion and abide by it that you're going to do nothing about it? You're going to have a laissez-faire attitude."

All of these, of course, are arguments Emily Prigge isn't making.

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Housekeeping item: The archives

Posted at 1:00 AM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Because News Cut is updating with new information so often, posts scroll off the bottom of the main page pretty quickly and some of you have commented that the search function where you have to remember what day it was (that calendar over there on the right) isn't very good.

I agree, but there is a way around it. Use the drop down "month" function of the calendar instead. It'll load all posts in a given month, with the latest at the bottom of the page.

For example, here's February. And January.

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New media ethics

Posted at 7:56 AM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

I've been late getting to this sooner. MPR and the Society of Professional Journalists are hosting a discussion on new media ethics.

According to the SPJ news release:

But how much do the traditional journalistic touchstones of vetting sources and fair and transparent reporting matter at a time when anyone with a cell phone can publish images instantly for the entire world to see?

I tend to disagree with the notion that there is a "traditional journalistic touchtone of .... transparent reporting" (while embracing the notion that fairness is certainly a goal), but we can talk about it in a couple of weeks.

Hope to see you there. Bring your questions and comments because I'll run out of them early.

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When women have authority over boys

Posted at 8:17 AM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

The very fascinating discussion taking place downstream about the rights of a religious institution in employment policy may take a fascinating turn with the item that crossed my inbox.

In Kansas, a private religious school refused to allow a female referee to work a boys' game because -- according to the refs -- "as a woman, (she) could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's beliefs."

Says the Kansas City Star:

St. Mary’s, which houses students in kindergarten through 12th grade, separates boys and girls in virtually all endeavors. Some women teach boys, and the girls can participate in intramural-type sports.

It's not clear -- yet -- what the other team's beliefs are.

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What does it mean to be 'business friendly'?

Posted at 11:06 AM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)

What does it mean to be "business friendly?" That was the theme of Gov. Tim Pawlenty's State of the State speech yesterday, where he zeroed in on taxes, and sounded many of the same themes he sounded in a speech in Burnsville a few weeks ago when he appeared to suggest it means (among other things) spending less on health care and more on roads and bridges.

Senate Majority Minority Leader Dave Senjem picked up the theme, according to a story from MPR's Tim Pugmire, when he said, "If you expect to have a growing economy in Minnesota, you've got to look and ask why we're 44th in the country in corporate tax rate. What corporation would want to stay here with that kind of a tax rate?"

What corporation, indeed?

Let's look at the record:

Target Corporation - Made $19 billion in profit last year, almost $3 billion more than the year before.

General Mills - $4.4 billion.

U.S. Bancorp - Generated $4+ billion in income.

Xcel Energy - Had a 5.7% profit margin

Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is privately held.

PepsiAmericas Inc. - Made a $1.8 billion profit in 2007, higher than the year before.

The Valspar Corporation - Made a $971 million profit last year, higher than the year before.

Ameriprise Financial - Had a gross profit of $6 billion, higher than the year before.

The Travelers Companies, Inc. - Had a 17% profit margin last year.

3M - Made an $11 billion profit last year, higher than the year before.

Ecolab Inc. - $2.4 billion in profits last year, higher than the year before.

Securian Financial Group Inc. (Minnesota Life) -- Privately held.

Patterson Dental - $969 million profit last year, more than the year before.

Land O'Lakes Inc. - Lists a 1.25% profit margin.

Andersen Corporation -- Is privately held.

The Toro Company - No information available.

Donaldson Company Inc. - 18 consecutive years of earnings growth, the company says. $604 million profit last year, higher than the year before.

Holiday Companies - No information available

Thermo King Corporation - No information available.

Northwest Airlines - A $3.2 billion profit reported in 2007

Nash Finch Company - A $401 million profit in 2007, less than a year ago.

Other corporate headquarters here include:

Alliant Techsystems Inc.
Regis Corporation
Supervalu
C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc.
Medtronic Inc.
General Mills
Pentair Inc.
CHS Inc.
St. Jude Medical Inc.
Polaris Industries Inc.
Cargill
UnitedHealth Group
Carlson Companies, Inc.
Petters Group Worldwide
Michael Foods
Imation
Best Buy
Deluxe Corporation

Those are the biggest companies, and the biggest employers, in Minnesota. The profits reported here are pre-tax. Most of the companies are reporting record profits. Many of the companies are doing so well, in fact, that they're able to pay their top executives millions in salaries and bonuses.

Senjem appeared to be citing the Tax Foundation's corporate tax index. But the Foundation's overall tax ranking for business puts the state at #42.

But let's look, not at the corporations who have stayed, but those who have left.

When Norwest Bank took over Wells Fargo, much of the operation headed west. California's ranking is 47th. When Allied Signal bought Honeywell, the headquarters moved to New Jersey, a state that is ranked 49th.

Now, it's clear Minnesota is about to lose Northwest Airlines to Georgia. But that has little to do with the corporate tax situation in Georgia (ranked 36th, just 8 spots higher than Minnesota).

In the last few years, some corporate headquarters have moved here. Xcel Energy, formed by the merger of Northern States Power and another company, for example, left a state -- Colorado -- that was ranked 13th.

Bemis Corporation moved to Neenah, Wisconsin, but that seems to have more to do with the fact the company execs live in Neenah.

As the debate unfolds, it might not be a bad idea to press the politicians for specifics when invoking the needs of business and the specific benefits to the state. How much help do Minnesota's corporations need?

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Here comes US 193!

Posted at 2:24 PM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)

The United States is going to try to shoot down a satellite that never worked.

It's unclear whether the Navy missile is intended to destroy the satellite because otherwise it might fall on your head, or to get rid of the secrets that might be contained therein.

But let's go with the first possibility.

Veterans of falling things will remember Skylab, which tumbled to earth after weeks of fretting, hand-wringing, and putting the tops up on our convertibles. It ended up splattering across the Indian Ocean and a small part of Australia.

There are approximately 600,000 pieces of space junk floating around. There is only one person who has ever been hit by falling space debris, in this case a piece of a Delta II rocket. It was a woman in Oklahoma, who was uninjured and was presumed to be looking for a good reason to move anyway.

But let's get to the numbers. The probability of you being hit by space debris, according to Physics World Magazine, is one in a trillion. UK bookmakers, however, are placing the odds at 20 billion to one. I should point out that odds and probability are not the same thing.

That said, the current odds of life being found on one of Saturn's moon are 10,000 to 1.

Gen. James Cartwright, who announced the shoot-down effort today, would not say what the odds -- or even the probability -- are of the missile hitting the satellite.

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Radio's passing fancy

Posted at 4:11 PM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

When MPR started News Cut, the boss made it clear: "it's not about you. And minimize the first person." And he was -- and is -- right. But I'm sneaking this one on here without him seeing it because in a way this one is about me, at least about something that means a lot to me: radio and the people in it.

Here's my story:

Back when I was far too young to know how good I had it, I worked in Boston, a city I still love like no other, with some of the finest people I've ever known. Jess Cain was one of them. Jess, the long-time morning man at WHDH Radio, worked at a time in radio when you had to be funny and clever without being vulgar, and if you think that's easy, turn on the radio sometime and hear how many people don't know how to do it.

The older I get, the more I marvel at life's twists and turns, and the journey that takes you where you had no idea you'd go. When I was 13 -- 1967 -- I followed the Red Sox in their Impossible Dream year. I threw a tennis ball against the garage wall with every pitch Jim Lonborg would make. The Sox won the pennant that year, spurred on by Carl Yastrzemski's Triple Crown, beating the Twins on the final weekend of the season. I never thought a team that finished dead last in a 10-team league the year before, could beat the likes of Killebrew, Kaat, and Chance.

Over the winter, we all sang the Carl Yastrzemski song, made famous by Jess. (Listen to an mp3 download here). Then I grew up, went into the radio business, and somehow I ended up working with Jess Cain. He was a big star, and I was a news editor who wasn't worth a minute of his time, but he always spent it anyway.

And talk about your connection with history. Jess Cain was the only member of Audi Audie Murphy's unit (he was the most decorated soldier of World War II) who wasn't wounded when it was trapped at the Battle of the Bulge. It was Cain who was able to get help to rescue the soldiers. For that, he got a Silver Star.

Jess died this morning, and I can't believe my unbelievable good fortune for having known him.

I know there are thousands of Minnesotans who grew up with their version of Jess Cain. Maybe it was Howard Viken, Maynard Speece, Charlie Boone and Roger Erickson, Jergen Nash, Dale and Jim Ed. But there are fewer and fewer of us who can point to a single radio person in our youth who bound us, our families, and disparate generations together. Radio was instrumental in creating the sense of community.

That point was made clear by a person who posted to Jess' Legacy memorial page today:

There was a time when each city and town in America had a local flavor. It wasn't perfect and I certainly don't want to live in the past but something has been lost when you read how these people remember waking up every morning and listening to Jess on the radio. It is interesting that all that was needed was a $20 radio and it lasted for years and provided unlimited entertainment. Now we need a $10/ month DSL on a computer that needs upgrading every 3 years. He was a familiar voice filling up the airwaves with a hope of a school cancellation! The Cain family should know Jess will always be remembered.

And we'll remember you, too, radio.

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In their own words: The flood

Posted at 4:14 PM on February 14, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

A few weeks ago, we sent out some surveys to people who were victims of last fall's floods in southeast Minnesota. They have, for the most part, played second fiddle in our state's consciousness to the I-35W bridge collapse.

This is the story, in their own words, of Crystal and Colin Schroeder of Rushford.

THE LOSSES

We were luckier than many. My three young children, husband, and I were not home for the flood. We were out of town. When my husband finally reached our house, he found that the water came 2" onto the floor joists of the basement ceiling -- 3" from our main floor.
We stored everything down there -- Christmas decorations, winter clothes, outerwear, my teaching materials, and all our family heirlooms to name a few.

Our children had a playroom downstairs filled with toys, futon, TV, VCR, DVD player, both children and grown-up books (many collectible series). My husband had thousands of dollars worth of auto body-related tools ruined in the four feet of water in the garage.

We got back into our home September 3, after two long weeks of working on the house all day and driving back and forth to Minneapolis and Winona, where we had relatives, late at night. My husband took several weeks off of work and has done most of the work on the house on his own, due to expenses. We thought we were ready to move on and put the worst behind us. Two weeks after we'd cleaned up and moved in, we realized we had to tear the chimney out because the sewage had penetrated the bricks and wasn't leaving. The entire house smelled of raw sewage.

Once again, we thought we could begin painting and finish work. We were horrified in January when we found that the header in the basement, as well as the support columns are all cracking deeply due to being submerged for so long and then drying out. The house now needs to be jacked up, header beam reinforced, support columns replaced, and new footings poured. The foundation needs to be cleaned off, tuckpointed, and resealed. The basement windows need to be replaced as well as the garage doors and siding.

We're surviving, we've gotten a lot of help from the Salvation Army, a local church program, and an amazing immediate and unconditional outpouring of support from friends, families, and co-workers. We have five houses within view from our front steps that have been torn down, another five or so that had to have brand new foundations put in.

The largest struggle is the emotional exhaustion, because you still have to work in a world that is "normal," take care of your family, work on your house, pay bills, and live in a world that seems to be falling apart. One of the hardest things we've had to deal with is people outside of town thinking we (and the town) are OK and "back to normal." No one realizes how bad it is to see everyone struggle so very much. We have a neighbor who isn't back in his house yet. Every day you turn around and something else has gone wrong; things we'd never even thought about.

THE HELP

The help from FEMA was appreciated. It was very quick and the folks we dealt with were wonderful. But the money we received was not adequate to get us back into our house. Many people don't realize that they only pay for "essentials," not the air conditioning, not the washer or dryer.

We were horrified that we had to apply for the SBA loan before we'd be considered for the state monies. The last thing any of us need is another loan! Many here are now paying two mortgages -- one for the house they lost, one for the one they had to build. Others bought a house they couldn't comfortably afford because they had nowhere else to live. Many of the rest of us are now upside down on our mortgage because of the devalued property.

We all prayed that we'd be turned down for the loan. Those that were approved had to take the loan or lose out on some of the state money. The paperwork is horrendous, those providing assistance from the agency administering the state monies (SEMCAC) have been less than understanding or helpful. They cover some damage for some people and not for others. We are currently trying to find out why they will not help us pay to re-side and re-door our garage because it is not attached to the house, though we cannot find anything in the paperwork we've received that says this. They've done it for others, and if we don't get the money, it'll be a lost cause.

The Salvation Army has been wonderful, trying to help connect people to services, provide funds to help out with expenses (remember, we still have to pay bills through all of this) -- very understanding and helpful. They have been a godsend, as have the many volunteers that have come to help. We just hope they continue to come 'til the work is done.

Lutheran Disaster Relief has been wonderful. They've had a steady stream of volunteers down here helping with the rebuilding, people coming for a day to weeks in order to help provide building assistance.

MOST VIVID MEMORIES OF THE FLOOD

The feeling of elation and relief we had when we realized everyone in town was alright; it took so very long to find them all, because we couldn't call or go to find them. The agonizing wait to go back into town, first to only clean the fridge and freezer and have a safety inspection, then to finally start the clean-up process four days later. Lifting out bucket after bucket of personal belongings. Trying to decide if we should keep anything;- would it ever truly be safe again? All the people, friends and relatives, that came to help for the weekend, despite the hot weather, the bees and mosquitoes, the dust, the mold, and the stench. The massive amount of volunteers that came to help the entire town. The outsiders in their Sunday best driving slowly down the street (once they'd been re-opened), craning their necks and pointing at the piles throughout town that had been our lives. They never got out and offered comfort or help. The overwhelming feeling of joy and community that occurred when the grocery store re-opened Halloween night. People were crying as they shopped.

THE FUTURE

Rushford continues to need help. We need skilled volunteers, we need materials, and we need understanding -- the understanding that most of us are not getting '"free money" and going on trips. The understanding that for most of us the gap between the amount of damage we received and the amount of assistance we received was far wider than any thought possible and will leave most of us with debt that will follow us for decades to come. The understanding that no matter how independent we are down here, we need the help and the support.

PS

The last thing I'd like to add was my 7 year old son's response when we told him about the flood (about a week after it happened, my aunt and uncle cared for our children for two weeks after the flood so we could clean up). He cried and screamed. But not for himself. He was crying for all the children that had lost everything they had. He wanted to set a bucket on our stairs to raise money for them. When they went back to my aunt and uncle's house, that's just what they did. They made a sign "Help Rushford, they had a big flood" and went door to door in their Plymouth neighborhood. They collected $209 to buy toys for local children. That is the some of the love and caring we have seen down here.

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A cure for economic bad news

Posted at 8:10 AM on February 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The Bush administration has come up with a cure for all the economic bad news: make it harder to find.

Citing "budgetary constraints," the government is shutting down economicindicators.gov, a site that aggregated all of the various economic reports into a handy spot that puts it all in context.

This is the site Forbes Magazine awarded with its "Best of the Web" award, saying...

The site simply links to the relevant department's Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself--say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau's site--is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary. Site may soon offer data delivery to wireless devices.

Conspiracy theorists are at the ready.

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The VanderWerts' new home

Posted at 6:10 PM on February 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

It probably wasn't much of a surprise to Blake VanderWert and her seven kids that there was a living room full of media types in her New Prague home today. The dozens of shoes on the porch would've given it away if the four TV people who ran outside to stick microphones on her hadn't -- the better to capture her surprise when she walked into her home that volunteers have been renovating over the last three months for her and her husband, Sgt. Jonathan VanderWert.

The VanderWerts bought the home a couple of years ago to house their blended family. Jonathan intended to fix up the fixer-upper, and had stripped the roof when a massive storm rolled through last June, forcing him to gut the house and start over... except that the Minnesota National Guard picked a fine time to tell him he was being called to active duty and sent to Camp Anaconda in Iraq with the 2-147 Assault Helicopter Battalion.

With a house falling down, seven kids to feed, and a husband heading overseas, Blake VanderWert sought help from an agency, which put her in touch with Rebuilding Together Twin Cities. She was afraid the county would take her kids. Instead, a funeral home that owned a house nearby, gave it to the family to stay in while dozens of volunteers and companies renovated the home at no charge. Some of the kids stayed. A few others stayed with VanderWert's ex-wife.

"It's overwhelming and I have such a sense of gratitude," Blake VanderWert said, as reporters tried to pull more out of her. But what else can you say besides "thank you" when a town contributes the money to buy all new furniture for the house that someone just rebuilt for you?

Her loss for words was shared an hour later by her husband, who was shown by satellite from Iraq (see above). "I'm very curious to see what's been going on," he said, sounding a touch concerned that it wouldn't be just the way he had planned. But the volunteers planned on that, too. They shored up the damaged third floor, but left much of the work for him to do when he returns, which is just the way he wants it.

As compelling a story as the VanderWerts are, perhaps more camera time should've been given to some of the volunteers. Take Marty Schirber, for example. He's the contractor who's been in the home renovation business for years, but his son has taken over the business and "once you've driven the bus you don't want to just be a passenger," he said. So he now works with Rebuilding Together Twin Cities.

Before Sgt. VanderWert left for Iraq, Schirber had a long talk with him. "You just have to trust us," he said.

"He was so proud of his wife for finding this resource and doing this on her own and he knew how much it meant to her. She's written us letters saying, 'you saved my family.'" he told me today.

Schirber is already planning a similar effort. "When you put a group of volunteers in a house like this and you work a day, at the end of the day, those volunteers have never felt better about themselves. They're walking around high-fiving each other. My typical day is to show up with 30 volunteers and do 280 hours worth of work in a house. We can make a huge difference in a family, taking them from behind a curve, getting them ahead of the curve, in one day, just doing things that need doing around the house. It's some of the most satisfying work I've ever done. I can't talk about it without bawling."

For the first time in months, the VanderWert family -- except for one -- will live together under the same roof tonight.

"I imagine the sliding hill down by the high school is in full force," Jonathan said prior to the start of a news conference. It wasn't. All the action was at his place.

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Report: NWA Minnesota headquarters to be 'operations center'

Posted at 9:30 PM on February 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

It's pretty obvious now that there's no stopping the merger of Delta and Northwest. MPR's Marty Moylan, by way of the Financial Times, says the smart money is on Wednesday, when the Board of Directors meets.

What's changed in the last day or so? Apparently the pilots have given the merger their blessing, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The unions did not work out every detail, as airline management had hoped, but they did reach a "conceptual plan of integration," said one person describing the talks. The airlines are now moving ahead with final details of their tie-up, the people familiar with the talks said.

Under the deal, the pilots will reportedly get a seat on the "new" Delta's board of directors. Pilots would also get an equity stake in the airline. The headquarters for the airline, which will be named Delta, will be in Atlanta, and the Minnesota headquarters of Northwest will be an "operations center."

Doug Steenland, the current CEO at Northwest, will have no management role with the combined company, but will have a seat on the board of directors.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Continental and American Airlines are now talking about a possible merger.

Says the Journal:

Houston-based Continental has said it prefers to remain independent unless the competitive landscape changes and its rivals pair up. The carrier for now is precluded from merging with another airline because Northwest can block such a move by virtue of holding a "golden share" in Continental. But if Northwest agrees to merge with Delta or another airline, Continental could buy back that blocking preferred stock for a nominal fee and be free to chart its own course, even if Northwest's own deal later fell apart.

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The lost city of Lake Mille Lacs

Posted at 9:28 AM on February 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

We probably take winter for granted in these parts, but imagine how the site of dozens -- hundreds -- of ice houses on a frozen lake must look to the rest of the world.

A flying acquaintance, Alex Peterson, flew over Lake Mille Lacs this weekend and provided a couple of photos for a Texas-based Web site.

There are probably some sociological studies to be done about why we put ice houses next to each other on a vast lake, when we're trying to --among other things -- "get away from it all."

Of course, these are like the lost cities, since they must disappear in less than two weeks.

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Find the falling satellite

Posted at 4:49 PM on February 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

I added this to the comments section on the post downstream figuring the odds of being hit by a falling satellite. But in case you didn't see it:

If you want to see the satellite that is falling from orbit, I understand it's a particularly impressive site in its low orbit.

If the clouds clear, St. Paulites can see it tonight (Sunday) at 5 seconds before 7 10 degrees above the SSW horizon to 27 degrees above the SSE horizon.

Tuesday may be the best chance as it goes directly overhead. At 6:46:57 p.m., look 10 degrees above the SW horizon. In about 3 1/2 minutes it descends 23 degrees above the NE horizon....with its highest point being pretty much directly overhead -- 82 degrees above the NW horizon.

Update Mon 7:03 p.m. - The Heaven's Above site is giving different data now for Tuesday. I don't know the exact reason for the changes but maybe the orbit is changing that much. It went a little to our East tonight (Monday) and should've split Orion's Belt at 6:54, but, alas, there was a line of thin clouds and we didn't see it at Casa Collins.

Update Tues. 3:42 p.m. - Here's a good account of how this shoot-down is supposed to work. Turns out there's no warhead on the missile. Just good old fashion energy. I've seen a blog entry somewhere today that suggests tomorrow night (Wednesday) is the night, but I don't think the orbit has decayed enough yet.

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A response to the woes of first responders

Posted at 8:11 AM on February 18, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The last time I checked -- this morning -- George Martin was on SW 74th Street, just west of Oklahoma City, moving between 3 and 4 mph and heading west.

He's walking across the country.

Martin, a former New York Giants player, is trying to raise money to help the first responders to the World Trade Center attacks, by walking from the East to the West Coast. He wants to raise $10 million for health care for the responders who were rushing into what everyone else was running from. He's more than halfway there, and he's only at $1.7 million according to his Web site.

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On Castro's exit

Posted at 7:07 AM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

The resignation of Fidel Castro as president of Cuba prompts us to recall one of the more intriguing moments in Minnesota politics -- when Jesse Ventura met Castro.

It wasn't on a big diplomatic stage, but a not-quite-by-chance meeting when Ventura led a trade delegation to Havana to try to whip up some business for Minnesota farmers

"For his age, he looks in pretty good physical shape. And if our policy is is we're going to wait until he's gone, I would say we may be waiting a long time," Ventura said at the time.

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Post your NWA-Delta merger questions

Posted at 7:28 AM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (14 Comments)

News Cut's role in the MPR coverage of the Northwest Airlines - Delta Airlines merger (which could be announced today) will be a fairly large in-one-spot series of questions and answers surrounding the merger -- what happens to your frequent flier miles, how fast will fares rise etc.

If you've got some you want answered, post them here.

Both boards have "emergency meetings" scheduled, although the Wall St. Journal says if pilots haven't given the deal their blessing by the time they're held, there'll be little action. The Detroit News, however, says the pilots have now signed on.

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Hendricks' last stand

Posted at 9:20 AM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Honk, if you remember full-serve gas stations. It wasn't that long ago that you could drive up to a pump, hear the ding-ding as your tires passed over the hose that announced your arrival to a guy working on someone's car in the garage, tell the attendant to "fill it up with high-test," and then get a set of steak knives for your trouble.

The last vestige of that era disappeared in the Minnesota city of Hendricks on Sunday night when, according to the Marshall Independent, the Hendricks Gas Stop burned to the ground.

Milton Johnson was the man at the pump for at least 50 years. He started as an employee before he left for the military in 1944. He became part-owner in 1946 and bought out his partner Peder Moen in 1956. Johnson sold the station to a local man in 1997.

When Johnson joined the station there was only one building with a front awning over the front door area. “At that time, we had a hoist sitting outside,” Johnson said.

He and employees used the outdoor hoist and an outdoor ramp to change oil and do other work.

(Photo from Marshall Independent newspaper)

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Change not likely in Cuba, Minnesota expert says

Posted at 12:50 PM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Don't expect much to change between the U.S. and Cuba once Fidel Castro is no longer the president of the country. Gary Prevost doesn't and he should know. Prevost, a political science professor at College of St. Benedict - St. John's University in Collegeville, is a member of the Minnesota Cuba Committee, which supports normalization of relations with the country. He was last in Cuba in November 2006, a few months after Castro fell ill.

"As long as the Cuban Communist system remains in place -- and there's no reason to believe that it will at any time in the immediate future change -- it's not likely that there will be fundamental change in U.S. policy toward Cuba," according to Prevost. "Part of that is because more and more, Cuba has not needed the United States. Its very close relations with Venezuela, increasing ties with China, have made the United States less important to Cuba, meaning the likelihood that they would make dramatic concessions to the U.S. to gain better relations are not likely."

That's not to say there hasn't been somechange, however. Minnesota companies, and small farmers, have benefited from a warming in some trade. The country, according to Prevost, ranks 25th in agricultural imports from the U.S. But there is no reciprocation; Cuban products are not available to U.S. consumers.

Prevost, who has written a couple of books on the subject, dismisses the importance of Florida as a political prize as a factor in Cuba-U.S. relations. "Basically, the continued hostility toward Cuba has to be seen in the whole history of Cuban-U.S. relations, going back to the 19th century when the U.S. saw Cuba as an island to be annexed... It's that the Cubans have continued to insist that they are not going to re-enter the United States' sphere of influence, to be directly under the control of Washington, from their perspective to surrender their sovereignty."

Listen to excerpts of my interview with Prevost (All in MP3 format):

* On Castro's decision not to stand for election as president. (Listen)
* Eighteen months of Raul Castro's leadership has given us a glimpse of the future. (Listen)
* Political importance of Florida is not the biggest barrier to normalized relations. (Listen)
* The chance of change. (Listen)
* About the Minnesota Cuba Committee (Listen)

Photo: A Cuban citizen reads the front page of Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party with a statement of Fidel Castro in Havana, on Tuesday (Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)

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What's in a name?

Posted at 3:01 PM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

With the coming merger of Northwest and Delta Airlines, it's worth pausing for a moment and honoring the airlines that have given their lives to the Delta brand.

It started with Delta Air Corporation, which was a cropdusting service in Louisiana in the '20s.

But the roots -- and the routes -- go to Boston.

Boston & Maine was part of the old B&M Railway Company, and it operated under contract to National Airways, founded by -- among others -- Amelia Earhart. National eventually became Northeast Airlines. The airline was famous for its yellow airplanes, called yellowbirds.

The airline merged with Delta in 1972, which is how Delta became such a big "player" in the northeast.

In the '50s, Delta picked up Chicago & Southern Airlines, which had previously been known as Pacific Seaboard Air Lines.

In 1986, Delta picked up Western Airlines, another airline that started in the '30s as a mail carrier.

Delta acquired the transatlantic routes of bankrupt PanAm, and then the lucrative Boston-New York shuttle from the same airline.

Northwest, similarly, started as a mail carrier in 1926.

In 1968, Pacific, Bonanza, West Coast were merged into Air West.

Just a few years later -- 1971 -- Howard Hughes bought the airline and renamed it Hughes Airwest.

With airline deregulation, Southern Airways and North Central Airlines merged into Republic Airlines in 1979 . A second "Herman the Duck" joined the logo and flew in the other direction.

Republic acquired Hughes Airwest in 1980. In 1986, Northwest acquired Republic.

And the rest is...

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Can you hear me now?

Posted at 10:00 PM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to President Bush's warrantless wiretap program.

The court, without comment, turned down a request by the ACLU to hear the appeal of a Cincinnati court ruling that said, basically, the ACLU couldn't sue because the people who were suing had no evidence that they were being wiretapped.

With no warrant to check, how would anyone know that they've been wiretapped?

Patriotism

Posted at 10:41 PM on February 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (45 Comments)

Wince.

If you follow politics and world events at all, even Barack Obama supporters had to have winced when Michelle Obama said, ""Let me tell you something — for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." (See the video and the full quote here.)

You had to know that we'd be off and running. The TV pundits would be occupied for days, the bloggers would be up in arms, and pretty soon the campaign would come down to a debate of who's the real American in the race. We all know where this is headed, because we've been down the road so many times.

Cindy McCain had a not-so-veiled retort to Mrs. Obama on Tuesday when she said, over and over again, at a campaign stop, "I'm proud of my country."

I see your wince, and I raise you a wink.

So let the record show that what we have here at this point in time are the spouses of two presidential candidates who are proud of their country.

Sure, but who's the "patriotic" one? That can't really be answered until we reignite the debate surrounding a much more critical question: what does it mean to be patriotic?

When last we visited this question, "Liberate Iraq" signs still dotted the lawns of America, and the American media was taking a pass on doing its job out of fear, some say, that it would be labeled unpatriotic.

USA Today's survey a few years ago revealed that 94.5% of those polled consider themselves patriotic, though agreement on what the word means was hard to come by.

In a general way, patriotism means love of country — love of one's country, one's homeland — a very simple emotional attachment to the place where you're from," says Jack Citrin, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley.

"After that, agreement tends to dissolve."

Some people religiously salute the flag; some wrap themselves in the flag — literally. Others burn it and say patriotism is about protest.

Peter Canellos of the Boston Globe, in a June 2005 op-ed piece, summoned the words of William Dean Howells, the superintendent of libraries in New York in 1912, when he said.

'While I would wish you to love America most because it's your home, I would have you love the whole world and think of all the people in it as your countrymen. You will hear people more foolish than wicked say 'Our country, right or wrong,' but that is a false patriotism and bad Americanism. When our country is wrong she is worse than other countries when they are wrong, for she has more light than other countries, and we somehow ought to make her feel that we are sorry and ashamed for her."

Canellos said no one -- left or right -- would disagree with Howells's claim that the U.S. has more light than other countries. "People disagree only on whether the greater light is immutable or must be fed, like a fire, through conflict and dissent."

What is your definition?

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The mystery of maps

Posted at 8:40 AM on February 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

MPR's Curtis Gilbert has a fascinating look at an old theory -- that people in the city are DFLers, and people in the 'burbs are Republican to varying degrees depending on where they live.

The claim appears to be supported by a map lifted from the Institute for Race and Poverty at the U of M.

The story is accompanied by a blizzard of maps showing "election results" for a number of years, ranging from "safe Democrat" to "safe Republican."

"It's as if the Republicans are a tribe and they're living in one part of Minnesota, and Democrats are another tribe living elsewhere," Humphrey Institute political scientist Larry Jacobs marvels. "It is one of the most striking manifestations of the polarization in our political world today. We are literally living apart."

The question "what's wrong with this picture?" can only be answered by first asking another question, "what election are we talking about?" The maps don't say.

Check the 2006 election results on the MPR Campaign 2006 section.

Here's the map of the governor's race, which appears to support the story's conclusion:

And here is the result of the race for U.S. Senate, which appears to turn the theory on its head:

The political party identification comes from a U of M/MPR poll (pdf) earlier this month in which those surveyed were asked to state which party they most closely identify with. But the survey appeared to find it difficult to correlate that self-identification with other factors:

The inner ring suburbs, which lean Democratic, strongly approve of Governor Pawlenty’s performance (58%). Another surprise is Senator Amy Klobuchar’s 65 percent approval rating in the Republican dominated outer ring suburbs.

At the end of the story, Jacobs acknowledges that people in the suburbs seem more likely to "split the ticket," meaning they may be as likely to support a DFLer as a Republican (a truism that should make claims that someone is a Republican or a Democrat suspect), just as the maps above show. Why would they do it? Because the issues are different. In the governor's race, for example, the issues were primarily economic. In the Senate race, the issue was foreign policy, which overshadowed economic concerns. Moreover, these concerns shift over time. The poll, for example, touts that the center city voter is more likely to consider "education" as the top priority, while people in the suburbs lean more to naming the economy.

But you have to be careful with that sort of statement because it's far too easy to read it as "city voter more likely to be concerned about education than the suburban voter" and there's really no evidence to support that. The ranking of voter concerns is fraught with peril when it comes to making sweeping judgments based on the rank.

A look at the 2006 District 56 (Woodbury-Lake Elmo) results (here, here, and here)shows the danger of such conclusions. Three DFLers, who ran very strong campaigns that focused on education, knocked off three Republican incumbents, who all ran on economic issues. If you want a lab rat for really understanding the suburban voter, that's the district to use.

There's also the danger of using election results as a mirror of what issues are involved. If there's one thing the cumulative results of Select A Candidate have shown us over the years, it's that votes for a candidate often stem from factors beyond the issues (and to the extent that it is about issues, it's interesting to note that Iraq is the #1 issue in the race for president, but health care is the #1 issue in the race for U.S. Senate).

Just as easily, the conclusion could have been: City residents are more likely to be in lockstep with a political party than residents of the suburbs. And woe to the candidate who takes the suburban vote for granted, or attempts to reach a single conclusion on the nature of that voter.

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When is 'pre-trial publicity' too much?

Posted at 10:29 AM on February 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

The Minnesota Lawyer blog asks a terrific question in a post today:

"Should newspapers be restricted in what they can report about a case before it goes to trial? It seems that substantiated, relevant data shouldn’t have to be embargoed for the benefit of one or the other side in a lawsuit."

The question stems from a Hennepin County judge who postponed a trial of a suit filed by two lawyers over the way their former firm distributed $103 million in legal fees from the AOL Time Warner case.

The Star Tribune printed a story on the case on Monday. On Tuesday, a judge delayed the trial.

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A reprieve for the dying satellite

Posted at 1:34 PM on February 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Update Thu. 7:44 a.m. - The Navy reports success in shooting down the satellite. China is lobbing the ball back over the net. It apparently was shot down on the next pass after it was spotted over the Twin Cities, making the following lame picture likely the last photograph of it.

Here's some Pentagon pictures. Still waiting for the video to be posted.

Update 6:42 p.m. - I can attest that the satellite has not yet been shot down. I just observed it over the Twin Cities. Note lame picture.

So, I'm 0 for 2 in trying to spot this killer satellite, whose orbit is decaying and threatening to rain toxic hydrazine upon, well, who knows? It was probably a bad idea for me to drive eastbound on I-94 last night, straining my neck around and behind at 6:43, and looking 20 degrees above the northwest horizon, since it made me a bigger threat to Minnesota than hydrazine.

I didn't think I'd get a third chance to see it tonight, but apparently I will since rough seas have conspired to thwart the Navy's attempt to shoot it down.

Russia and China are concerned that this whole operation is a cover to test a new space weapon. If so, a flaw in its operation has now been made apparent.

By way of Google comments, James A. Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, takes on some of the lore that is building around this situation.

1. On the threat of hydrazine and the construction of the tank that contains it:

Hydrazine is highly dangerous stuff. It’s unstable, corrosive and explodes easily. That means that the fuel tanks for hydrazine are made extra tough. Unfortunately, the strength that lets the fuel tank carry hydrazine safely into space also means that the tank is tough enough to survive catastrophic reentry. When the shuttle broke apart on reentry a few years ago, the hydrazine tank was one of the few items to survive the fall unscathed. In that case, however, the tank contained only a few pounds of hydrazine. In this case, the tank is full. The risk is that the equivalent of a 1000-pound bomb could end up crashing down into a populated area.

2. It's a space weapon test to impress the Chinese:

The U.S. doesn’t need to do this to impress the Chinese. They were already impressed by earlier successful tests, including the last one where an SM-3 missile launched from an Aegis cruiser hit a warhead 87 miles above the Pacific Ocean. This didn’t get a lot of public attention, but the Chinese military was sure to have followed it closely, if only because the U.S. has a cooperative missile defense program using Aegis with Japan, which the Chinese think could be used to defend Taiwan.

3. The whole idea is to keep a secret satellite out of the hands of "enemies."

When a nuclear powered satellite built by the Soviet Union crashed in Canada in the 1970s, the Soviets said they didn’t want the pieces back. When a Chinese rocket carrying a Western-owned communications satellite blew up shortly after launch, the Chinese carefully collected all the pieces and tried to examine them before turning them back, but the most sensitive items were charred and cracked beyond recognition. The probability of gaining useful information from the crash is low, as the best technology would have to survive reentry and the debris would have to fall in an opponent-controlled area. The probability of surviving reentry and landing in a hostile controlled area are too low to explain the decision to shoot down.

4. It all comes back to the dinosaurs. This is a test to crush a killer asteroid, right?

A 200-foot wide meteorite that struck Tunguska Siberia in 1908 had the effect of a nuclear explosion (without the radiation aftereffects). If there was warning that a similar event was about to occur over a populated area, it would be nice to have the ability to stop it. It's not worth spending much time worrying about being hit by asteroids, however, or even by satellites, but having spent all that money on missile defense, it’s nice that it finally has some practical use.

Twin Citians (or mere visitors) have the best chance of seeing USA 193 tonight at 6:36:38 (Woodbury time) when it appears 10 degrees above the west southwest horizon, reaches 52 degrees above the northwest sky at 6:38:48 p.m., and then disappears at 6:40:47, when it's 12 degrees above the northeast horizon.

Some minutes later, the lunar eclipse begins. By the way, if you have a spiffy camera set up to record it, send me some images and I'll post them here tonight.

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Heading to the future

Posted at 4:14 PM on February 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

That thing up there, called Epic Emotiv Neuroheadset, is probably going to change a few lives which, until now, have relied on keyboards and joysticks to be involved in the gaming world.

As the BBC reports, it's a headset that will measure electrical activity in your brain and transmit it directly to the game.

Emotiv is going to sell this thing for about $300.

One can easily see this as a solution to a number of problems, including more applications for those who've lost the ability to speak, but not think. It also may mark the beginning of the day when we go into meetings, put these things on, and then participate in some sort of virtual communication.

The headset can read 30 different emotions, making it harder to be passive aggressive.

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Watching you watching me

Posted at 6:02 PM on February 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Atlanta and Minneapolis are trying to get to know each other in the wake of the coming merger between the two hometown airlines. Reporters from this neck of the woods are in Atlanta. The Atlanta reporters are already here, as evidenced by the Atlanta Journal Constitution's assessment of what the people in Eagan think about all of this merger stuff.

"Everything changes," philosophized Kevin Swanlund, the bartender. "It's never good to lose any jobs. But Minnesotans are sought after. We're hard workers. We'll all find something to do. Change is a dynamic of this place."

That certainly appears true in this suburban-industrial town of new office parks, strip malls and subdivisions a few miles from the airport. Despite its stature, Northwest is only the third largest employer in Eagan with 2,300 employees scattered among three buildings.

Just as media reports are indicating that a Northwest-Delta deal may be in trouble, a vice president of Delta is actually talking about the merger.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Lee Macenczak, Delta's executive vice president of sales and customer service, told a business luncheon that "rising fuel prices, increased global competition and customer demand are driving his company's pursuit of Northwest."

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Lunacy

Posted at 7:42 PM on February 20, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)

A lunar eclipse in Minnesota is the last one we'll see until 2010.

If you're one of those people with nifty photographic equipment, we'd love to post your favorite eclipse photo. Use this form.

I, on the other hand, have your basic cheap digital camera, the kind you get free for subscribing to some magazine. Alas, it'll have to do.

The Saturn-like ring is actually a twig from a tree. This was taken at 9:30 p.m., just about at the height of the eclipse.

Jered Jackson in Eden Prairie has just sent this. Nice!

And he followed it up with this beauty.

Mike Moore of St. Paul gets big style points for the following photo. He took this at 9:20. I guess I should've asked for lens and shutter specifics for those people who have nice cameras. I can see that the contributors know what they're doing around cameras.

Michael Custard's contribution. Taken in St. Paul. Apparently the city lights offer no barrier here.

St. Paul seems to be "eclipse central." Sara Kim, of St. Paul, writes "I took this picture in St. Paul at 8:17 p.m. I was amazed that it turned out! I have a pretty nice camera but am far from a professional! I somehow had a very steady hand in the freezing temps! The other eclipse pictures are fabulous! Thanks for posting them. And thanks for the great blog." And here's her picture:

I'd love to see a picture or two taken in the rural parts of the state.

In South Minneapolis, Andrew Fetzer proved that you can stay warm and still get off a good shot. He took this picture through his living room window.

Also from South Minneapolis, Terence Brashear. Note the copyright notice:

Say, why do we see a red moon when it's in the shadow of the earth? Why do we see it at all? According to Astronomy.com:

The atmosphere acts like a filtered lens. It bends red sunlight into our planet's shadow and scatters out blue light. It's the same reason why sunrises and sunsets appear reddish. If Earth were an airless planet, its shadow would be pitch black and the eclipsed moon would be invisible.

The pictures are still coming in! Jimmy Hodges in Swainsboro, Georgia has sent this one:

It was taken around 9:01 central time. Terence's was taken at 9:03. I've rotated Jimmy's slightly to align the moon to the same point in both. Notice how the orientation of the part of the moon still in sunlight is slightly different? I presume the difference in geographic location of the photographer has something to do with that.

Twenty-four hours later, and they're still coming in. Here's one I received from Mathew Brenengen, who says he took it from his kitchen in -- you guess it -- St. Paul. I have no idea how you create something like this.

And here's one from Minnetrista that makes me want to delete my top photo out of sheer embarrassment. Thanks to Michael Smart. The file info on the photo says the f6.3 and shutter speed 1/2500.

Out at the airport, something had their attention. "What is that? A plane arriving on time?" Nope, it's the eclipse. (Thanks Julia Schrenkler)

Other pics here, and here.

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Leave me alone

Posted at 4:40 AM on February 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

A transplanted Minnesotan, craving privacy, builds a backyard retreat, while keeping the reason for it a secret from his wife.

Hmmmm. I wonder what other retreats Minnesotans create for themselves (besides ice houses). Sounds like an opportunity to submit your pictures. Use this form.

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Why?

Posted at 8:49 AM on February 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Rev. Paul Hadusek asks the unanswerable question in the aftermath of Tuesday's school bus crash that left four kids dead:

"Why, Lord? Why this?" Hadusek asked. "I don't know if anyone of us, me included, would accept any answer from the Lord as a right answer. I don't know."

It's a question that's asked all the time, of course. But never answered, as in the shooting rampage last week in Illinois. Even on the basic facts that might lead to understanding in that case, the trail has gone cold.

Update 11:27 a.m. - Colleague Kristin Gay refers us to an episode of WHYY's Fresh Air from earlier this week. with the author of the book, "God's Problem."

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Weber says he isn't source of New York Times' McCain piece

Posted at 12:37 PM on February 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

This posting updated at 1:51 p.m.

By now, most people have heard that the New York Times ran a story this morning, purporting to look at ethical lapses of Sen. John McCain, but effectively revealing the assertion -- without proof -- that the presidential candidate may have had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Says the Times:

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Then came the claim that one of the anonymous sources for the story is former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, who was the policy chairman in the campaign of former McCain rival Mitt Romney.

Says The Radar, a Web site devoted to politics, showbiz, and scandal:

Sources told Radar that one of these associates was John Vincent (Vin) Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who was an advisor to McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. In 2007, Weber became Policy Chairman for the Romney for President Exploratory Committee.

"I know absolutely nothing about this whole story involving Senator McCain. I read it in the New York Times this morning when I got up, which is absolutely the first time I've heard of the name of this female lobbyist, first I've ever heard of this story," Weber told me this afternoon. "And then all of a sudden around 11 o'clock this morning I heard that some trashy blogger said that I was the source of it, which is just completely not true. I don't know anything about this. It's absolutely, positively not true in any way. I don't have anything to do with this story and even though I've been involved in public life for a long time, I learn something new every day. How in the world I could get attached to this story, I don't have any idea." (Listen)

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The professor track

Posted at 4:12 PM on February 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)

Are we led into our professions by our politics? Or by economics?

A few years ago, Alan Kors at Penn lamented the state of the academic world, specifically the rarity of the conservative professor. ''One is desperate to see people of independent mind willing to enter the academic world. On the other hand, it is simply the case they will be entering hostile and discriminatory territory,'' he told the New York Times, when asked about his reaction when a conservative student reveals his intention to become a professor.

The Times suggested the reason for the imbalance of conservative vs. liberal professors is that hiring committees, made up of mostly liberals, aren't excited about that which the conservative is likely to research and pursue. And thus, the campus is skewed.

Now there's a new theory. Conservative students are less likely to pursue a PhD. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Matthew Woessner, a conservative Penn State assistant professor of public policy, has finished a study ("Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates") showing conservative students "put more value on achievement and orderliness, and on practical professions, like accounting and computer science, that could earn them lots of money."

How big of an issue is this? "I don't sense that for many faculty who consider themselves conservative it's a major problem," says Dr. King Banaian, the chair of the Economics Department at St. Cloud State University. "I've been treated well. And, in fact, treated well by people who know my political views and want to engage in a discussion about them."

Banaian says most faculty don't want to engage in political discussions. "They want to come in, do their research, teach their students... and then go home at the end of the day," he said.

So what's the problem? "Sometimes you have people all of one viewpoint discussing a problem that's happening on campus -- issues regarding the proper curriculum, behaviors in the dormitories, or off campus, where I do think faculty that come from different viewpoints can provide a different perspective on what kinds of things students should be learning. What should be the mission of the university? And those are the places that because you are going to have this imbalance that we find, you're also going to find those discussions are dominated by left-of-center faculty, and those are the discussions I'm more concerned about."

Banaian, who also writes the blog SCSU Scholars, and also hosts a weekend radio show aimed at conservatives, contends the imbalance of philosophy shows up in the curriculum, by "marginalizing the Western Canon."

Banaian says at least to some extent, there is a political distinction between the students he sees and the career track they follow. But he also thinks the track a student chooses is based on economic realities. "I would say we probably have a higher proportion of students in the business and economics fields than we would have, say, if you look at an English department or a sociology program. I think more to the point, is that there seems to be a strong socioeconomic reason why students pick certain professions over others. There are some professions they know where you can get a return on your investment, you can get a paycheck faster, and for those students who come from lower-middle-class backgrounds, that can be quite attractive. It turns out your students who come from higher-income backgrounds typically will choose professions where a PhD is needed to do what it is you're trained to do."

(Listen to the interview with Dr. King Banaian)

And you? Consider your career track. Did political philosophy, economic reality, or something else guide your decision?

(Photo: University of Minnesota)

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A new Microsoft?

Posted at 9:21 PM on February 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

There was a blockbuster story today and it doesn't involve affairs with lobbyists. You can follow that story in a million places. Microsoft, the company that practically invented the industrial bunker mentality, announced it was opening up some of its programs to encourage developers to build add-ons.

Call it Microsoft 2008.

According to Reuter's

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who called the financial impact from Thursday's shift "relatively minimal," acknowledged that Microsoft may lose some market share as a result of these policies, but said what is good for customers will ultimately be good for the company.

Who are you and what have you done with Microsoft?

Forrester Research analyst John Rymer, quoted on CNet said...

"When you rip this all apart, what we're seeing is Microsoft responding to market demand, to be more open and play better with others."

I'll be seeking out Jon Gordon first thing in the morning.

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Questioning the Times

Posted at 8:39 AM on February 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

So, who was the source of the New York Times' story on John McCain?

David Brooks guesses today that it was John Weaver, a former McCain aide who left on bad terms. Weaver, according to Brooks, claims it's somebody else. But Brooks says he checked the theory out:

"I checked that possibility out, and it doesn’t hold water. But while calling around to a dozen senior McCain friends and advisers Thursday, what struck me was the enormous tragedy of the rift. They all love McCain. They all say it is absurd to think he abused his power in the way that is alleged. But the rift is like some primal sore. It affected every conversation I had Thursday, as it has infected McCain efforts again and again over the past many years."

At least we know who it's not.

The situation, as you've heard, has put on the hot seat the Times' editors and the general policies of when to use anonymous sources.

Executive Editor Bill Keller went on All Things Considered last night to do some damage control.

"It's not a 'gotcha' story about some kind of quid pro quo," he says. "We don't know if there was a quid or a quo in this case. What we do know is that people very close to him, who watched him day after day, were worried enough by his behavior that they felt that he was endangering his career."

Keller says the Times was unable to prove there was a romantic relationship and so instead they approached the story from an angle that people close to him were concerned there was a romantic relationship. Oh. That's different? In other words, a guy who's "just sayin'" is a good enough story now?

Where have we heard of a place for this sort of stuff? The land of blogs, a place Keller visited last year in a speech in London that ripped on that method of "journalism," and distinguished why the Times is different.

"We believe in a journalism of verification rather than assertion, meaning we put a higher premium on accuracy than on speed or sensation. When we report information, we look hard to see if it stands up to scrutiny."

and more to the point...

"We believe in transparency - that is, we aim to tell you how we know what we know, to attribute our information as much as possible to named sources, to rely on documentary evidence when we can. When we need to protect our sources, which is often necessary to bring you information powerful people don't want you to know, we should explain why we regard the information as credible, and whether the source has an axe to grind. As my math teacher used to say, we show our work."

If Brooks is right, the Times source was a person "with an axe to grind." The story never so indicated, putting Keller in a position that is akin to saying, "just trust us."

Jay Rosen at Press Think is nervous. And when journalists are nervous about journalism, that's a bad sign:

... when I read the story I expected… more. Any report alleging a damaging affair by a current presidential candidate needs to be air tight and locked down, especially when the events in it date from two election cycles ago. But for this purpose the Times has only anonymous sources; that makes me nervous. While any story like this says to readers, “trust us, we’re the New York Times,” this one puts the Times reputation more completely on the line because there is virtually nothing else for us to trust than the rectitude of the people running the paper. For, 'Convinced the relationship had become romantic…' there is nothing we can check, no one we can ask, no digging we can do. ... But watch for Clark Hoyt’s next ombudsman column. I would not be surprised at all if he comes out with a verdict esssentially saying: you didn’t have it."

Another concerned journalist is David McCumber, the editor at the Seattle Post Intelligencer. His paper took a pass on the story...

This story seems to me not to pass the smell test. It makes the innuendo of impropriety, even corruption, without backing it up. I was taught that before you run something in the newspaper that could ruin somebody's reputation, you'd better have your facts very straight indeed.

"Nailed" would be one way to describe that.

The Washington Post ran its own story a few hours later. It was less contorted and easier to follow. Still based on some anonymous sourcing. It did bother me a little today when Len Downie, like Keller an outstanding editor, said The New York Times story "helped" them get their sources to confirm certain things and enable them to run their story. That seemed a little co-dependent in terms of sourcing.

Others will point out that the story wasn't about an affair, per se. It was about the perception of ethical lapses; a claim that simply has to be accompanied by a wink.

The timing for our group session on ethics in online journalism couldn't be better.

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What Microsoft's new 'openness' means

Posted at 11:14 AM on February 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

As I posted downstream, Microsoft is embracing the idea of "open source," in which it collaborates with developers who might build interesting components once the company throws open the secrets behind how some of its programs work.

So I've turned to my favorite tech guru, Jon Gordon of Future Tense and wavLength to explain it in English.

Q: Is this a big deal?

Not necessarily, because as the European Union has pursued several actions against Microsoft for competitive issues, Microsoft has sort of promised to become "interoperable" ... at least four times in the past. So the EU, as well as several open source advocates are saying, 'well, Microsoft, you certainly promised to become this way in the past but, 'show us the beef,' so if they do what they say they're going to do rather than just promise it, then it could be a big deal.

(Listen to the full response)

Q: What would be the net effect of that sort of thing?

"Open source" means usually that the software is free. Any software developer can get his or her hands on the code and make it better. It's a collaborative software development scheme. So you take a software program like Thunderbird and an enterprise.... could use Thunderbird instead of Microsoft Outlook when they're the Microsoft Exchange Server.

So a big company would use the Microsoft Exchange Server for e-mailing, or calendaring, for contacts and things like that, and pretty much Microsoft Outlook is the program that sits on peoples' desktops to use the Exchange Server. Maybe now they could use an open source program like Thunderbird.

One of the technical guys at Microsoft also had a couple of other examples when this was announced. An example that Ray Ozzie had was, say you have a program that could tap into a doctor's schedule that is kept online somewhere. That program could tap into your calendar information in Outlook and schedule appointments for you at the doctor's office.

So we're talking about programs that offer some value to Microsoft programs and Microsoft programs have not been very interoperable in the past. They haven't shared the code like Google has, for example, to allow other functions or other programs to work along with other Microsoft programs. Those are the kind of things that you might see if Microsoft sort of shares its codes for real.

(Listen to the full response)

Q: They're not getting into this early on. Internet Explorer, for example, trails Firefox in terms of useful add-ons. It's not too late for Microsoft, right? But they're not at the head of the parade either.

I think that's exactly right. It's not too late. Microsoft could certainly commit to the open source movement in a positive way. And why are they making this move? Part of it is that open source software has been around for awhile and it's been successful and Microsoft could believe that open source software, the rising use of it in business and government, is sort of forcing its hand.

Also keep in mind that the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, in which Microsoft is trying to take over Yahoo, could draw new takeover scrutiny as well, and this could be an attempt to blunt future criticism of the company.

And finally, Microsoft is trying to win approval from the ISO, which is the international standards setting body, for their Office Open format, which is like a document format. And a lot of government contracts that require software to have a more open standard depend on that open standard, and so Microsoft could see a lot of big government contracts hanging in the balance.

(Listen to the full response)

Q: But this "openness" thing... it's not exactly Microsoft's culture. They'll have to teach their managers how to think in a different way.

I think this comes from the top down. I really think it's a Steve Ballmer-Bill Gates thing. Microsoft has shown it can sort of turn on a dime when it wants to. Look at the focus on security with Microsoft Vista. Say what you will about Vista, it certainly has proven to be a much more secure operating system than previous versions of Windows, and Microsoft showed a big commitment to improving that area, and that certainly has not been Microsoft's culture in the past.

I'm sure it would be a change to start thinking all "crunchy and granola" and open source for Microsoft, and I don't think they're going to go that far. But I think they have shown they can commit to an idea that is radically different from the way they behaved in the past.

(Listen to the full response)

Follow Jon Gordon via Twitter

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A shot in the 'news war'

Posted at 1:01 PM on February 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

Record companies have found it almost impossible to control the distribution of music. The Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis is trying to tighten control of its news.

Local Associated Press boss Dave Pyle confirms that starting on Monday, the Star Tribune will restrict the use of AP stories that are rewritten from the Minneapolis newspaper. Currently, media organizations pay the Associated Press -- a news cooperative -- to use the stories of other news organizations. In exchange, the media organizations make their stories available, via AP, to other news sources. MPR is a member of the cooperative.

Starting Monday, no AP member broadcast news outlet within 30 miles of Minneapolis will be permitted to use Star Tribune material.

Pyle believes it's an issue that springs primarily from the ability of Web sites owned by traditional media companies to use Star Tribune content.

It's not a policy without risk, however. Although the Star Tribune clearly is the dominant news provider in the Twin Cities, there is value to the viral nature of distributing content based on Star Tribune reporting.

Similarly, if other stations and news outlets follow suit, and retaliate by prohibiting the use of their news content, it becomes more difficult for any news outlet to fill its pages at a time when original reporting staffs are being cut.

Can news organizations put a cork in the news bottle and control the distribution of their content in the digital age? Perhaps we should ask the record companies.

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Ghost town

Posted at 6:03 PM on February 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Yes, I know, technically it's two words, but it appears in Webster's which makes it a legitimate destination for the news finger.

And so take a trip around news stories surrounding ghost town

In Austin, Minn., says a writer for the Rochester Post Bulletin, Oak Park "is becoming a ghost town." The mall moved businesses out of the downtown, he says, and then big box retailers moved businesses out of the mall; the retail circle of life that's repeated in many communities.

In Pine Island, Minn., the city's population will grow by 5 times its current number if Elk Run is approved. The development along Highway 52 would include a biobusiness park, housing, stores and a healthy-living campus, school buildings, a sports complex, an amphitheater and a hotel. "I'm scared it's going to make our town die," said Carl Krause, owner of CJ Auto Sales, invoking the... well... you know. (Rochester Post Bulletin)

Gamers, a ghost town map has been unveiled for Halo 3.

In Somerville, Mass., "Ghost Town Planet" has opened at an art gallery. Artists envision the earth in a "transformation period" (as if we don't know what that means). Pictures here.

Rolling Stone has just posted The Myth of the Surge. "Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what victory looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets," it says.

Time Magazine reports today the Ark of the Covenant is nowhere near Egypt. A real-life Indiana Jones says he's traced it to a dusty museum shelf in Zimbabwe, by way of a ghost town in Egypt.

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Golf's decline

Posted at 8:59 AM on February 23, 2008 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)

Colleague Jon Gordon pointed out an interesting thing to me the other day. On the day that the John McCain story appeared on the New York Times' Web site, the most popular/most e-mailed story on the site was this one. Three days later, the declining popularity of golf is still a more popular story on the New York Times site than the story which, if you listen to some people, threatens to upend the election for the leader of the free world.

The "most blogged about" Times story, however, is the McCain story.

From this we can draw only one conclusion: the reason golf is declining in popularity is that bloggers aren't interested in golf and that golfers -- in great numbers -- are giving up golfing and starting blogs.

The irony of the situation is inescapable. If golf is declining in popularity (and it is), how can a story about it be more popular than the biggest political/journalistic story of the year (so far)?

Golf courses in Minnesota have found the Times article to be true; fewer rounds of golf are being played. In the suburbs, this is particularly distressing because of a tactic developers used to gain favor for the construction of McMansion neighborhoods. The developers would, in exchange for a city's permission to build the neighborhoods, build a golf course for the city in the middle of it, and turn it over to the city to run. A McMansion on a golf course was an easier sell. Now, the cities have golf courses to maintain and less revenue coming in.

The Times documents the problem when the communities try to diversify the benefits of having a golf course by, for example, using the property for weddings:

One neighbor, Dominique Mendez, whose home is about 600 feet from the 18th hole, said, “We bought our house here because we wanted to live in a quiet place, and we thought a golf course would be nice to see from the window. Instead, people have to turn up their air conditioners or wear earplugs at night because of the music thumping.”

During weddings, she said: “you can hear the D.J., ‘We’re gonna do the garter!’ It’s a little much.”

Unfortunately, for golf courses, the article never really explains why golf is becoming less popular. As a person who loves golf -- and who has never broken 100 -- let me take a couple of whacks at this:

1. People don't like meeting people as much as they used to. Go ahead, walk in any skyway in the Twin Cities and note how when a stranger approaches, the carpet becomes a much more interesting thing to study. In golf, unless you're already a foursome, you'll get paired up with people you don't know, which brings us to...

2. People don't like embarrassing themselves in public. Golf requires embarrassment and we are genetically predisposed to believing that we aren't as good as the people we are likely to be paired with. Thus, we elect not to play or we seek times when we can get on the course when nobody's watching.

There is but one obvious solution: Play when they "do the garter."

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What the Times -- and others -- missed

Posted at 6:22 PM on February 23, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

It's been a tough week for the New York Times, but let's give the newspaper credit for this: it employs an ombudsman who has no problem telling the bosses they got it wrong, and the paper has no problem -- apparently -- allowing him to do it in public. The Star Tribune once did the same thing (who can ever forget Kate Parry's Sid Hartman "the rules don't apply to me" column?).

Clark Hoyt, the Times' ombudsman has rendered his verdict in the case of the John McCain story:

"A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide."

That, of course, leaves only this question: Why on earth don't the folks who put the article together, and the Times' blogging apologists understand this? We're not talking about the Boofus Bugle.

As Hoyt said, without the sex angle, the Times was on to a good story about cronyism, something that local media critic Brian Lambert pointed out.

Here's what I hear from people in the business, including some people in my own newsroom : "if the Times didn't have the goods, they wouldn't have gone with the story." In his otherwise solid post, Lambert said, "The New York Times would not have trotted out this angle if they didn't have plenty to back it up."

Whether that's true or not is irrelevant to the central fact that, as Hoyt says in the following paragraph, failure to follow the best two-word guideline for journalists -- prove it -- violates basic standards.

"...If you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed."

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The buzz on the bees

Posted at 6:50 PM on February 24, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

It's hard to keep up with all of the things we have to worry about. Bees probably aren't on your list but for crops to produce food for the table, bees have pollinate the plants. The problem is they're disappearing and nobody seems to know why.

CBS' "60 Minutes" looked at the problem Sunday night in a piece updated from its original October airing, and included an interview with University of Minnesota bee expert Dr. Marla Spivak. "They're stressed," she said of the bees. "You know, they fly out, either there's no enough food or it's contaminated. And they come back in the nest and the nest is contaminated with diseases or mites and so their whole environment is not healthy, and they're saying, 'I can't live here. It's toxic.'"

If the die-off/disappearance continues, Spivak said, "we won't have the quality or quantity of fruits and vegetables, and this can mean higher prices at the grocery store, and it'll hit the public directly."

Back in 2004, National Geographic said some fruits and vegetables could actually disappear.

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What's ours?

Posted at 8:08 AM on February 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)

What is it with our obsession with the "elusive Minnesota connection" news filter?

"Minnesota's Night to Shine" blares the Star Tribune from its doorstep position today. Inside, there was plenty of documentation of how people who knew natives Joel and Ethan Coen were considered "kind of creepy" by some people who knew them growing up.

The obsession with Diablo Cody as a Minnesotan is harder to understand, beyond the overreaching attempts to make the Oscars seem relevant to you, presuming that unless a "Minnesotan" is involved, you couldn't possibly be interested in -- let alone understand -- the event.

Perhaps tomorrow's headline will carry this bulletin: Diablo Cody is not from Minnesota. She moved here in 2003 to live with a guy she met on the Internet, wrote a little for City Pages, did some stripping, and then got the heck out of here. This has now earned her the distinction of being referred to as "former Twin Citian." People have spent more time here waiting for a connection out at the airport. And as anyone knows who has ever moved to Minnesota and tried to fit in among the natives, it takes more than a few years to be a Minnesotan.

For the record, MPR is just as guilty. Witness this collection of stories in the last few days:

Former residents score big at the Oscars
Juno wins indy Spirit top honor
Oscar nominees: are they really Minnesota's
And the winner is....

Meanwhile, down at the Chicago Tribune, Cody's hometown newspaper, the headline is: "'Old Men' the big winner," and "Coens take four statues." Why? Because that's the story and Chicagoans apparently are interested in the story. A mention of Cody does not mention her place of birth.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. We claim Judy Garland as one of us. She -- then known as Frances Ethel Gumm -- left when she was 3 and not filled with memories of the Gopher State.

And, of course, we still treat Mary Tyler Moore as "one of us" because her fictional character on a fictional show about a fictional news station was set -- but not filmed -- in Minneapolis. We even put a statue up in the middle of our real downtown.

The newsies think you won't care about a story if it doesn't involve a Minnesotan. Are they right?

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On perfection

Posted at 9:26 AM on February 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Women, you're too hard on yourselves. So says psychologist Alice Doma, who's spent a couple of decades studying these things. "What's hard is to get women to accept what she says is obvious to men: Perfection is not attainable," she tells the Boston Globe.

Hmmm, perfection as a gender-specific goal?

John Gray, author of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus," doesn't think so. "We all seek it. It's why we have trouble delegating when we're overwhelmed and why we find ourselves overwhelmed in the first place. Gender aside, our to-do lists are just too long these days," he says.

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Raked over

Posted at 12:13 PM on February 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Can a dead-trees publication live in an online-only environment? The Rake is going to find out. It announced today it's stopping publication.

Said the announcement on its site:

The Rake will continue to publish online at www.rakemag.com, with its “Secrets of the Day” emails, event calendar, searchable restaurant database, and select blogs.

But since 15 of 16 employees are being let go, the publication of the magazine online is likely to be temporary.

Various blogs David Brauer at MinnPost reported last week that publisher Tom Bartel was trying to sell the Rake for $395,000.

One of the Rake's biggest online draws -- media critic Brian Lambert -- jumped ship to Minneapolis St. Paul magazine late last year.

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Photo op

Posted at 1:39 PM on February 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)

The blogs are all atwitter this afternoon over who sent a picture of Barack Obama to The Drudge Report. The Obama campaign blames the Clinton campaign for "fear mongering," and so far nobody has asked either camp if they really think Americans in general are so stupid as to believe that every person wearing a traditional Somali elder clothing represents... what... a terrorist? And as for Drudge, well, what do you expect from Drudge?

But maybe it's time for a new question in the next presidential debate: how stupid and gullible do you think we are?

Rather than create another "us vs. them" conspiracy, the best answer to the inquiring reporter is, "yeah, so?"

Update 3:12 p.m. Mon. - Here's a picture I found on Getty images from August 27, 2006. Note the same shirt, the same pants, the watch. I'm guessing - and it's only a guess -- that this was taken on the same day as the photograph that, apparently, is stirring fear from coast to coast.

Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo has update on Clinton conference call denying any role in the developing scandal. Still no sign of anyone asking "who cares?"

Update 3:28 p.m. - In other turban news, how did America miss this one?

And if only we had the Drudge Report to tell us about the day -- in 1975 -- that Mike Love of the Beach Boys announced his intention to join the Taliban.

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U.S. still a Christian country

Posted at 3:33 PM on February 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

The U.S. is still a mostly Christian country.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released today, however, shows Protestants may soon be in the minority, according to the L.A. Times.

Barely 51% of Americans are Protestants, and among people between the ages of 18 and 29, just 43% identify with this branch of Christianity, according to the study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

All the particulars are here.

In Minnesota (see chart), the percentage of evangelical Protestants is below the national average. The number of Catholics is above the national average.

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Ethics in the digital age

Posted at 6:19 PM on February 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (61 Comments)

There are various places online to get details of Monday night's forum on online ethics and standards, sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Metroblogging Twin Cities has the live blog here. They didn't like it. Note also the image of me, always the last picked for any team during gym class, winning the arm wrestling portion of the event with Chuck Olsen from The UpTake.

UpTake live blog here. A poster asks:

Here's another question, Why does MPR remove comments from their blogs when the comment is relevant to the post? I've heard this complaint from several people and I've seen it happen.

I need to amend what I said at the forum (hey, this is what it's all about, right?). I approve every comment unless it contains an uncivil diatribe in which case there's no such thing as relevance. I delete a lot of spam comments.

Some posters complain we weren't taking their questions. See? That's what they get for not reading News Cut, where there was a form to submit questions/comments. BTW, 100% of those surveyed on the UpTake site say the media is not honorable. But 14% rated the forum as "fantastic."

There were numerous Twitter conversations going on at the same time. Jon Gordon has been on my case to twitter. Twitter seems like digital spitballs to me. Jeff Jarvis has a different view here.

Update 7:02 a.m. Tue - Chuck Olsen has analysis on his blog and in the comments section below.

So it's settled, then.

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The farmers' message

Posted at 9:51 AM on February 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

What's wrong with interest groups funding research? This.

A couple of agriculture groups has suspended grants to the University of Minnesota because of studies (plural) from the U that biofuels may contribute to global warming.

Bev Durgan, dean of University Extension, says "this is not about telling a researcher what they can or cannot do, this is talking about all the issues around renewable energy, around environment, what they are now and what they are going to be. This is all about having that academic conversation."

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New look for the Pioneer Press

Posted at 11:17 AM on February 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

I have no design sense in any facet of life, but I know a new design when I see it and today the Pioneer Press moved the furniture around, presenting a new design.

I have to admit, I don't get the point of putting some sort of time stamp on the top story that says "online at 5:28 p.m." It must be some sort of tactic to compete with the Internet, but I pulled the paper at 11:15 this morning and to me that says, "here's a 19-hour old story for you to read," and is that something you want to promote?

Fortunately, there is VisualEditors.com, a place where people who design things for newspapers hang out. They're just getting around to analyzing the thing, although the conversation is sluggish.

Not so at the PiPress Web site where the customers are weighing in.

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GOP coming apart at the seams?

Posted at 1:01 PM on February 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

For most of the Pawlenty administration's tenure at the Capitol, the key to Republican success has been the ability to keep a caucus together, even on those occasions when individual members disagreed. It's why the governor got virtually everything he wanted in last year's session, even though the Senate and House were in the hands of DFLers.

Those days may be over.

On MPR's Midday today, Rep. Kathy Tingelstad acknowledged she has given up her leadership position in the caucus because of her vote for the gas tax.

"I did give up my (leadership position) on bonding," she said. "I was told going in that that would be the penalty of the vote ... I felt like I made the right decision and I have to stand up with the retribution of what happens with the vote I took."

"Is that a good way for the Legislature to operate?," MPR's Gary Eichten asked.

"No," she said. "I know there's a lot of time there are informal things that happen but overall Rep. Seifert is handling it as well as can be... We'll live through it." (Listen to the entire show here.)

Tim Pugmire's story this morning said:

Rep. Rod Hamilton, R- Mountain Lake, voluntarily gave up his lead role on the agriculture committee. Rep. Bud Heidgerken, R-Freeport, lost his GOP lead spot on the K-12 finance committee. But Heidgerken said he didn't get a choice.

"I was told that if I don't fall in line, this is what is going to happen," he said.

Rep. Marty Seifert, the Republican boss in the House, has a 2 p.m. news conference to clarify things. (Update: Seifert iced the renegade Republicans.) But the situation invites another round of questions about what politicians mean when they say the things voters want to hear?

But Sen. Geoff Michel, R-Edina, is less optimistic. Michel predicted hard feelings will linger at the Capitol.

"I worry that this will poison our ability to work in a bipartisan fashion," he said.

On Midday, Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, may have given voice to a larger problem of Minnesota politics when she said, "(for people in the middle) it's hard to find a home in either party."

All of those who voted with the DFLers may face Republican opposition at election time. Rep. Jim Abeler, Rep. Ron Earhardt, Rep. Bud Heidgerken won their re-elections in 2006 by an average of 26.6%. Their seats are considered safe.

Rep. Rod Hamilton won his last election by just 464 votes and Republican backlash against him could actually push the seat into the DFL's lap. Rep. Neil Peterson won his re-election in 2006 by just 6.8% in a district that is trending more DFL. Tingelstad, however, retained her seat by just 8.8% in a district that's in the 6th congressional district, one of the reddest in Minnesota.

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Gas prices

Posted at 2:49 PM on February 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)

Today's average price for a gallon of gasoline in the Upper Midwest:

South Dakota $3.17
North Dakota: $3.16
Michigan: $3.12
Nebraska: $3.12
Illinois: $3.11
Wisconsin: $3.11
Iowa $3.08
Minnesota $3.04

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Antidepressants don't work

Posted at 3:28 PM on February 26, 2008 by Bob Collins (21 Comments)

From the earth-shattering news that got no "play" file: "Antidepressants Hardly Help," says Time Magazine.

Researchers published their finding (in the journal PLoS Medicine), claiming patients "at the upper end of the very severely depressed category" experience benefit from drugs like Paxil, Efexor, and Prozac. For everyone else: not so much.

It was big news in Europe and elsewhere, but this topic is still a hard one to discuss -- publicly -- in the U.S., where mental illness rates a high reading on the "taboo scale." It rated not a mention on the NPR "health" section.

But that doesn't mean Americans aren't heavily into antidepressants. A study in 2004 found one in every three visits to a doctor by women was for an antidepressant prescription.

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More on the Pioneer Press redesign

Posted at 6:33 AM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

It's day two. How are you holding up?

Ben Ramsden is one of the people who helped redesign the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper. He has a blog and talks about it.

This slice of workplace life is illuminating:

The only time we knew we were on the right track was when Media News Group chair Dean Singleton visited the Pioneer Press and loved the direction we were going.

Here's how today's version looks.

I'm still trying to figure out the "online time stamp" thing. Today's says "online at 4:26 p.m." Intriguing.

Meanwhile, local media analyst David Brauer notes that the "the web tail is clearly wagging the print dog." (I admit to muttering "it's about time" when I read that but perhaps it's worth more thought.)

For another look at life inside life's intrusions, Lost Remote's Liz Foreman compares her TV station job to her newspaper job. It turns out some people are actually leaving TV to go work at newspapers. Who knew?

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The daily grind revisited

Posted at 7:21 AM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Starbuck's closed all of its stores yesterday afternoon to hold a giant training session to "refocus on the customer experience." CEO Howard Schultz is trying to get the coffee shop's vibe back. "This is about the love and the passion and the commitment that we all need to have to the customer," he said in a training video.

It should be quite a morning at Starbuck's, then.

So kindly report here how passionate you found the delivery of your joe today.

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You say you want a revolution

Posted at 8:49 AM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

A faithful read of the blogs, news sites, and talk radio reveals the beginning of a "tax revolt," according to Gov. Tim Pawlenty. People are apparently that much in arms over the override of the governor's veto of the gas tax.

"We're all struggling around here just to keep our houses," a driver at a gas station in Anoka told MPR's Curtis Gilbert. "A lot of us around here are going into foreclosure almost because we can't pay our bills. No work, no nothing. It's tough."

But a check of newspapers around the state today suggests the farther one gets away from the Capitol, the different the tune.

In the Worthington Daily Globe (reg. required):

Never mind that already high gas prices — at more than $3 per gallon — will be compounded by a 5-cent gas tax in coming months, or that license tab fees and vehicle taxes will also be increased. Reaction from community and business leaders on Tuesday was overwhelmingly positive.

The Marshall Independent (the home of House Minority Leader Marty Seifert):

“We will have more money for safer and better roads,” county commissioner Steve Ritter said of the transportation bill that passed Monday after a successful vote to override Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto.

“We know for sure that gas tax money will come to Lyon County,” commissioner Bob Fenske said. “I’m very pleased.”

An editorial in the Bemidji Pioneer:

Gov. Pawlenty’s dismissal of the override is disingenuous, that at a time when the federal government is issuing rebate checks, “Democrats in Minnesota have decided to burden our families with hundreds of dollars a year in new taxes to pay for a massive $7 billion tax increase.”

The Grand Forks Herald suggests service station owners aren't all that concerned about competition from North Dakota says gas stations adjust prices to the competition anyway. As for drivers...

"We kind of gotten used to high gas prices," said Paul Mehrkens after paying $36.02 for 11.6 gallons of unleaded regular gas at East Grand Station.

And down along the Iowa border, MPR's Tom Weber found a similar view:

Jason Trout, a resident of Decorah, Iowa, wrote that politicians talk about how people will cross the border to buy gas cheaper. He calls that "poppycock."
"Who is going to spend $6 in gas and a half hour of their life to save a few cents in taxes?" he asked, before concluding, "While I commend Minnesota for raising its tax, I won't be crossing the border to show my support."

... even though Minnesota has the lowest gas prices in the Upper Midwest.

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There once was a man named Bly...

Posted at 12:44 PM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Robert Bly, the only Talking Volumes guest to refuse to wear shoes, has just been named the poet laureate of the state by Gov. Pawlenty.

The requirements for the position, which is supposed to promote poetry in the state are:

What's in a name?

Posted at 1:54 PM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Little things intrigue me, and I fully acknowledge this is a little thing.

Here's the St. Paul Pioneer Press pre redesign:

Here's the paper in St. Paul after the redesign:

Here's the paper, purchased in Golden Valley:

We await reports from Wisconsin.

(Hat tip: Sara Meyer, MPR's Midday producer)

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Transportation bill: What good is it?

Posted at 2:08 PM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

A reader -- Lee -- writes about the transportation bill:

Why is the press covering this as only a "Tax Increase" story? Why isn't MPR/Local Papers/etc talking about the bill as a complete package? We need a bit more of the fair and balanced news (sorry I couldn't resist). We need a story about the details of what it does and why its really a GOOD thing. Oddly I couldn't find a single story on MPR website detailing the bill." (Read more)

Lee is right about it being a tax increase story. That's the way most media has played it. I notice today that that's the way the Star Tribune played it with a breakdown of how much it's going to cost you (or not), and a look at the MPR coverage of the political process shows a focus on the politics with a side of dueling political philosophies, mostly.

That's not necessarily a sin. Why? Because we know the numbers -- it's a revenue bill afterall -- we just don't know the specifics until whoever is in charge gets around to spending the money.

And so we're left with terms like "highway maintenance," in stories. That's encouraging, certainly, because who among us wants to fall into a pothole on the way home today? But what does a term like that actually mean? Does it mean a bridge won't fall down or an extra lane will be added? And if so, when? And where?

The bill provides $41 million for infrastructure operations and maintenance. What does that mean to you and me? The bill doesn't say. It includes $34 million for "infrastructure investment support," but what does that mean? Part of it -- $200,000 -- is for the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs to participate in the U.S. Department of Transportation Urban Partnership program.

We know it appropriates $125 million over the next two years to put up the new I-35W bridge. When they were debating this bill last year, the bridge hadn't fallen yet, so $125 million gets us back -- maybe -- to where we were a year ago.

The Met Council gets $400,000, the Department of Administration gets $18 million and the Department of Finance gets almost $1.9 million, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to get a bus out of Woodbury (a city of 60,000) to St. Paul by 9:20 in the morning. The graphic above tells me that's not possible.

$40 million is earmarked for the construction of interchanges that promote economic development and, presumably, jobs. Does that mean getting another SuperAmerica in town? Or a high-tech company with lots of jobs? We don't know. Nobody does.

We do know there'll be a toll lane on I-35W from Minneapolis south. I guess we can thank former Rep. Mark Kennedy for that. He's the guy who pushed toll lanes. If the gas tax is the difference between people keeping or losing their homes -- as some of the rhetoric suggests -- what are the odds of folks paying to drive in the toll lane?

Chaska, Rochester Maple Grove, and Mankato will get new garages for MnDOT trucks, and we know there's $50 million for local bridge replacement and rehabilitation. $50 million? Will that make a big difference across the state? The new I-35W bridge will cost $195 million.

$18 million is going to pay to fix up the exterior of the State Transportation Building. Will that mean anything to the state's transportation problems? Not unless there's a danger of a wall collapsing and closing the I-94 on-ramp.

And that's pretty much the bill in terms of the "what for" part -- 14 pages of the 40 page bill; the rest is mostly how the state will get the money and general ideas of how it will be used. It will create a "strategic management and operations advisory task force" to help decide such things.

So that's why it's difficult to say precisely what the net good will be. That's not to say there won't be some net good, but until the people we're supposed to trust start spending it -- and really until we even know who those people are -- it's mostly guesswork.

Wake me when the bus from Woodbury pulls in.

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What happens in Iowa, stays in Iowa

Posted at 4:34 PM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

A fascinating story with a final quote that will make your chuckle turn into an outright guffaw.

It all started when a casino employee near Iowa City got rewarded for his good service with a free stay in the resort's hotel. Things were going well until he started pestering the hotel staff for hookers. (More)

(Hat tip: Nikki Tundel)

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The gas tax roadmap

Posted at 5:01 PM on February 27, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

MPR's Than Tibbetts has helped News Cut out by putting the state's current gasoline price picture into some perspective. In the aftermath of the gas tax bill veto override, a few gas station owners -- mostly in border communities -- wondered whether they'd lose customers to the competition in the nearby states.

We wondered, too. And now we're wondering why they're wondering.

With few exceptions (one county in Iowa), the average price of gasoline in every Minnesota border county is less than the average price in the county across the border. In a few of those cross-border counties, you can actually see where the price of the "other state's" gas has been lowered slightly, presumably to stay as low (comparatively speaking, of course) as the Minnesota stations.

Than added the full 2008 gas tax increase -- 5 cents -- and found that there still is no competitive disadvantage for the Minnesota gas stations, even assuming the other states' stations don't raise their prices. The maps appear to support the conclusion that prices are slightly lower in other states, only along the Minnesota border, because Minnesota's prices are lower in general.

As I pointed out this morning, the verbal opposition to the gas tax seems more pointed in the Twin Cities than "outstate." Oddly, the Twin Cities have much cheaper gasoline prices than greater Minnesota does.

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Political ferment

Posted at 6:40 AM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

There have been many eloquent words written in the last day or so about the death on Wednesday of William F. Buckley Jr. Many conservatives pointed out that it was Buckley who led them to their philosophy.

For others, it was Buckley's and Gore Vidal's 1968 debates that led them to the passion behind politics and the art of personal punditry.

See? Bloggers didn't invent this stuff.

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The end of the 'hot rod' guru

Posted at 7:22 AM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

I find this morning that reality TV series have given us a "connection" to people we never would have had a connection with otherwise.

Boyd Coddington is dead.

I can't change the oil on the News Cutmobile in under 4 hours, and yet I was riveted by American Hot Rod, not so much for what I learned about hot rods, but by the realization that other workplaces are as -- how do I put this and still be able to write in this space tomorrow? -- "occasionally dysfunctional" as the ones I've worked in.

Coddington was the poster boy for the "Stressed out bosses of America" club. And yet, like a drag race out on the edge of town, we couldn't turn away, even though we knew the end could be bad.

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Waiting for the bad news

Posted at 7:50 AM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (10 Comments)

I'll be live blogging the news conference today at 11 during which the size of the state's budget deficit will be made clear. Later, Gov. Pawlenty will hold his own news conference. A Webcast of the events will be available on the Minnesota Public Radio Web site.

Tom Stinson, the state economist, described Minnesota's economy this way last month:

The National Bureau of Economic Research - the group that actually calls whether the U.S. is in a recession -- says what they look for is an economic slump that is broad-based and of some significant duration. And what we've seen over the last six months in employment in Minnesota certainly qualifies."

That earned him a rhetorical smackdown from the governor:

"Tom Stinson tends to be a bit on the pessimistic side of things, to put it charitably...I don't think it's helpful - unless it's clearly justified by the data - for people to get overly pessimistic or overly scare people, either."

Nonetheless, the smart money at the Capitol says the deficit could approach $1 billion, and even some top-ranking DFLers are saying the budget will have to be cut. So let's take another whack at the "shared sacrifice game" while we're waiting for the sessions to start:

If you were to give up something in the state budget from which you derive a benefit, what would it be?

I usually don't get many responses when I ask the question.

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Budget forecast live blog

Posted at 11:14 AM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

We're off and running...

11:16: Tom Hanson, commissioner of finance, says $935 million deficit is projected for the next two years. About a half-billion worse than was forecast in November. Reveals a recession is expected in the first two quarters of this year and be short. Corporate revenues have dropped 20 percent from a year ago. Individual income taxes have dropped, too. A $1.1 billion deficit is projected for 2010-2011. Worse with inflation (what? Budget folks for Minnesota are acknowledging there's such a thing as inflation, now?)

11:19: State economist Tom Stinson says it's wrong to focus on the change between November and now. Says it's "misleading." Wants to focus on total change from end of session estimates and current estimates. That end-of-session change has the income tax down 1.8 percent (20% of revenues), sales tax is down 3.4% (25% of change in revenues). Corporate income tax down 21% (a third of the change). Other taxes down 3.2%. "A widely dispersed reduction. It's not just a one-tax problem, it's a problem with the economy."

11:23 - Stinson: Income tax's reduced receipts are from "non-wage sources" like capital gains, interest, and dividends. In other words, businesses aren't being sold, for example.

11:26: Corporate refunds are "much higher" than expected over the last 6-8 weeks."That's money that's out the door." (bob: what will corporations do with the refunds?)

11:27: Stinson expects higher sales tax receipts because of rebate checks.

11:27:30: DING DING DING. "We're in a recession," Stinson said. Over to you, governor. Stinson says since stimulus package runs out at the end of the year, we could have a "double dip" recession. What does that mean?

11:30: Stinson's tone now is very much like the funeral home person who helps pick out a casket.

11:33: Time for questions from the reporters (which nobody can hear). Hanson doing the talking. "Certainly doable," Hanson says in ability to fix things this year.

11:34: Legislative TV coverage shifts to Senate debate of Molnau's future. Turning off TV sound.

11:36: Hanson says other states are in deep doodoo, too. "Even states like Texas that have oil revenue," he says.

11:37 - Gas tax won't make any difference. "It's outside of the current biennium," Stinson says.

11:37 - Unidentified presenter. "It all depend on whether the economy goes into recession or not." Wait a minute! I thought they just said we are in one?

11:41 - The Minnesota Department of Finance has just made all the charts and reports available online. Go here.

11:42: "This is troubling because the uncertainty isn't going to be resolved very quickly," Stinson. Warning: The forecast assumes the price of oil drops to $75 a barrel this summer. Likely?

11:45: The stimulus package from Washington "will almost certainly stop" a recession after the second quarter. Is that the recession we don't know we're in? Or the one we do?

11:48: The $75 a barrel projection for oil assumes there's a recession and we drive less.

11:49: Loss of any jobs in the Delta-NWA merger would affect the forecast. "Not to minimize the problems of the individuals, but with 2.7 million jobs in the state, this isn't something that will bring the economy to its knees" Stinson said.

11:50: Two areas of strength in the national economy -- energy exploration and defense industry -- aren't Minnesota's strong suit. Not so in North Dakota. Timber industry is Minnesota's ace.

11:54 State not laying people off. Hiring "freeze" means a "slowdown" in replacing employees who leave.

11:55: Current budget reserve is about $653 million. "We also have $350 million cash flow account. That's an appropriation." Yahtzee... that's $1 billion! "It would be wise to keep some money on hand in case our November and (next) February forecast goes down," Hanson said. Oh.

11:58: Hanson says Stinson would "have his economist card pulled away if you called him optimistic."

End of news conference. Back later with the governor's response.

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Budget deficit trivia

Posted at 12:54 PM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

The two-year budget deficit forecast today works out to $180.95 for every Minnesotan.

(Update: By the way, we lost the audio feed from the Cap for the Webcast. So no live blogging on that.)

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Marriage or divorce?

Posted at 1:14 PM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

There are a few reports around today that Delta and Northwest have walked away from their merger talks. The blogs appear to be quicker to declare the merger dead than anyone else.

The difficulty, apparently, is the merging of seniority lists for the pilots, according to Marketwatch:

One possible hangup is that Delta has more junior pilots flying the better-paying routes than Northwest, Kasper said. Since Delta wants to protect its pilots' seniority, integrating the lists probably won't be based on date of hire or how may hours a pilot has flown -- and that might be causing resentment among Northwest pilots.

According to a memo from Delta CEO Richard Anderson, it's clear the word "merger" is an inaccurate business euphemism for "takeover," since he wants Delta to keep the name, keep the headquarters in Atlanta, and keep the seniority of Delta pilots.

In any case, it's far too early to declare the marriage dead.

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The universe, thanks to Minnesota

Posted at 1:28 PM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Guess where a particle of "dark matter" -- the substance that forms the skeleton of galaxies -- may be hiding? Minnesota.

According to Science Daily, scientists are sitting in the Soudan Mine in northern Minnesota...

A consortium of research scientists, including Stanford physicist Blas Cabrera, anticipated the detection of a predicted-but-undiscovered dark particle known as a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. The hope was that several WIMPs would travel through space and a half-mile of Earth to plunk themselves into the nuclei of germanium atoms in the detectors, each collision creating a vibration and a tiny puff of heat that would signal the WIMP's existence.

OK, granted they've been there for awhile, but what if the building block of the universe turned out to be right here in Minnesota? Why, that might be a bigger claim to fame for Minnesota than Diablo Cody.

But time is running out. Pretty soon they're going to move the operation to Canada.

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After Amanda

Posted at 1:53 PM on February 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)

(This post was updated at 4 p.m. to include reaction from an attorney for one friend.)

Where do we start with the sad case of Amanda Jax, the legal adult who drank herself to death on her birthday? Our time to discuss it intelligently is short. Those being sued actually were served three weeks ago but the family had a news conference today. The subject is the stuff talk radio hosts dream of and once they awake, well, you know.

According to a story by MPR's Art Hughes, five of her friends are among those being sued by the Jax family. Their alleged crime? They, not Amanda, bought the drinks for her.

The odds are Hannah Marie Becker, Richard Thomas Johnson, Per David Kvalsten, Kathryn Ann Lensing, and Jonathan Robert McIntyre are going to spend a lot more now on attorney fees, although homeowner's insurance will likely cover the tab.

A description in the Mankato Free Press makes it hard to feel sorry for them:

An exhibit included in the paperwork is a picture (lawyer Alan Milavetz describes as Jax taking her last shot, a mixture of cherry vodka and an energy drink called a “cherry bomb,” with her friends and the bartender, Beau Ryan.

Those friends, also named as defendants in the lawsuit, took pictures of Jax as she sat unconscious outside Sidelines, according to the civil complaint.

Jax's friends had at least a moral responsibility to take care of her, but did they have a legal one, too?

Mark Solheim, the attorney for Becker, told me this afternoon his client had no legal obligations under state law, and there's a good reason for that. "Let's say I have you and your wife over for dinner and at some point I say to you, 'Bob, that's your third glass of wine, I have a duty to stop you,' where does that end? How long would that duty last? What if you fell down and hit your head the next day? How long am I liable?"

Solheim says Becker is devastated by her friend's death. He says the lawsuit could take up to a year and a half. He says he's never heard of a case quite like this, adding he has an "active practice in cases involving alcohol."

Meanwhile, it'll be open season on the memory of Amanda Jax, who while an underage student in Mankato, was twice convicted of drunken driving; once in 2005 in Hennepin County and in 2006 in McLeod County.

It's hard to see what a "win" in the case accomplishes.

Criminal charges were not filed in the case.

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Sports leagues take on media

Posted at 7:29 AM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Major League Baseball, which has profited handsomely from selling the notion that baseball teams are part of the community -- like the local park, or the high school -- in order to get public funding for baseball stadiums, is shifting back to we're a private business mode for a dispute with news organizations' Web sites.

Editor & Publisher magazine reports MLB is trying to quash the use of pictures of baseball games by newspaper Web sites.

Targeted are photo "galleries," a series of snapshots depicting -- usually -- the most recent game.

The Photo District News Web site says MLB is also requiring reporters "to seek permission to produce audio and video reports of game interviews, and limits audio and video reports made within the ballparks to two minutes or less."

"Your new terms impose a form of prior restraint on the use of visual images (both still and video) that will negatively impact the editorial independence of our members and the press as a whole," said Tony Overman, head of the National Press Photographers Association.

Historically, media organizations and pro sports franchises have had an incestuous relationship, but the trend now -- as shown by the NFL's media moves -- is to control the marketing, err, coverage, of the product and cut the news organization out of the picture.

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The cupcake miracle

Posted at 7:43 AM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

In the incredible sorrow surrounding the funerals for the kids who were killed in the bus crash in Cottonwood, comes a little bit of a lift from Rae Krueger, the reporter for the Marshall Independent.

Krueger tells the story of thousands of cupcakes which showed up to help feed the people who attended the funerals:

“We had no idea where some came from,” said Marilyn Jarcho, the head cook at Lakeview School who helped with the Javens and Stevens funerals at the school. Jarcho also helped with Olson’s funeral at Christ Lutheran Church in Cottonwood on Sunday.

In the big scheme of things, of course, they're just cupcakes, but sometimes, that's all we've got.

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Reflections on Seeger

Posted at 11:30 AM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (31 Comments)

A few weeks ago in this space, we kicked around the question of what defines patriotic. Unfortunately, the discussion was spawned by Michele Obama's comments, and it's near impossible to have a reflective conversation that's not tainted by the passion of a current campaign.

As it happens, though, I stumbled across an American Masters documentary on PBS last night on Pete Seeger, who changed a lot about this country with a banjo and a song.

It came painfully says Seeger, now nearly 89, who acknowledges he still has some friends who are Communists. "I read their newspaper and there's occasionally some good stories there. And I read the Wall Street Journal and occasionally they have some good stories there."

His biographer noted that the FBI pursued Seeger until the only job he could get was singing to kids, said David Dunaway. "They never thought there'd be a problem with Pete Seeger singing to six year olds. Little did they know that out of that came not a subversive movement, but an American folk music revival that I think we have to give the FBI credit for helping to establish."

"My father was a total patriot and his patriotism was completely misunderstood," his son said in the documentary.

Seeger also visited North Vietnam during the war, though anecdotal evidence suggests he's not quite as reviled in some quarters today as Jane Fonda, who also visited Hanoi.

Lost amid the fog of age, however, is the role a TV variety show could play in political debate in the '60s. In November 1967, the height of the Vietnam War, the Smothers Brothers invited Seeger on their show (he hadn't been allowed on TV in more than a decade), in which he sang "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." It was censored by CBS. The Smothers Brothers protested, and he was allowed back to sing it again He set the audience up with 4 minutes of traditional folk music considered acceptable, and then hit them with one of the most powerful -- if forgotten -- moments in the history of television.

Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Pete Seeger still stands on a street corner of his town in upstate New York, holding up a sign that says "Peace," and people still drive by wondering why one person thinks he can change the world.

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The EPA airs it out

Posted at 12:01 PM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Efforts to lower auto emissions in Minnesota probably have been weed whacked by the White House.

The Environmental Protection Agency did so by refusing to grant California a waiver that would've allowed it to enforce emissions rules that are tougher than the federal standards.

According to the Associated Press, EPA argues that California doesn't have the "compelling and extraordinary conditions" required for a waiver under the Clean Air Act, because the rest of the nation also suffers the effects of global warming. Today's 48-page decision can be found here.

A dozen states have similar laws pending and Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, wants to add Minnesota to the list. Her bill has advanced past one committee but may now be moot.

"A patchwork quilt of inconsistent and competing fuel economy programs at the state level would only have created confusion, inefficiency, and uncertainty for automakers and consumers," said Dave McCurdy, president and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

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The end of the blogger-newsie argument

Posted at 1:11 PM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

A lot of bandwidth was expended -- some would say wasted -- after Monday night's forum about online standards for bloggers, at least as it relates to those traditionally held -- if not always followed -- by the media.

Mark Glaser, a media critic/new media "expert" writes on PBS.org, "the time-worn debate of Bloggers vs. Journalists has finally run its course." Well, it should have run its course by now, and moved on to the next phase. And for the most part, it has.

We all probably could've saved a lot of time this week by reading Glaser's post today out loud.

Still unclear is whether anybody who doesn't blog and isn't employed by a news organization cares.

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Spanking

Posted at 4:53 PM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults.

Professor Murray Straus, at the University of New Hampshire renews the debate over spanking today with a study that says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. Straus found that people who were spanked as children were more likely to coerce their partner into having sex.

One has to be careful about these sorts of studies that ask two questions and then create a cause and effect. Unless other questions are asked, the link can be questionable. We saw this a few months ago with a terribly flawed study that suggested people without children are happier.

Add the study on spanking as a datapoint to all the other -- occasionally contradictory -- studies on the subject, such as:

* Children who are spanked tend to be more anxious and aggressive than those who aren't, but this is less true in cultures where physical punishment is common. (2005)

*An occasional swat, when delivered in the context of good child-rearing, has not been shown to do any harm. (2001)

* Children spanked by their parents are twice as likely to develop drug and alcohol problems in adulthood. (1999)

* Parents who spank their children risk causing long-term harm that outweighs the short-term benefit of instant obedience. (2002)

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I've got a secret

Posted at 5:59 PM on February 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)

Among the very odd -- though entertaining -- elements of journalism, is when a beaten news institution applies an unspecified ethic to another.

The New York Times' "The Lede" blog appears to excoriate Matt Drudge for blowing Prince Harry's cover as a war grunt in Afghanistan.

What we do know is that the site claimed the story as an exclusive with the trademarked attribution, “the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.” Neil Wallis, the executive editor of News of the World, today slammed Mr. Drudge for the “cheap shot,” considering all the publications that obeyed an embargo, including his own.

“Any number of newspapers or broadcasters in this country could have claimed that as far back as December,” he told Sky News.

The Times goes further, posing several questions that, though not their own, also appear designed to force Drudge -- certainly no factor in the high-fact, low-ego competition -- to explain himself:

– Why did he blow Harry’s cover?

– Would he have done the same if it were the children of President Bush or Senator Hillary Clinton?

– What took him so long? (The secret was safe for 10 weeks).

Let's take a step back here and recall that it was the New York Times that published a story that didn't bother with the proof of an intimation that John McCain was having an affair with a female lobbyist.

It was also the Times, of course, that printed the Pentagon papers. More recent, it was the Times which printed details of how the government tracks the finances of terrorist organizations, it was the Times that revealed the domestic eavesdropping by the U.S. government. And it was the Times which withheld plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, certainly a disaster that could've been avoided.

The Prince Harry story, for the record, was a good story. Should it have been leaked? That's open to debate; a debate we can now have -- and it pains me to write the following words -- thanks to Matt Drudge.

But if we're going to question Drudge on his ability not to keep a secret from us, it also behooves us to question the world's leading journalism organizations to explain to us fully why they did.

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