News Cut: September 17, 2008 Archive

Hitting the links

Posted at 8:40 AM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Five suggestions for the day in no particular order.

1) The iPod as teacher. Wouldn't it be cool if the iPod ends up restoring the collective knowledge of history? A person can dream, which I will as I watch the first of several American Experience presentations on the presidents being made available for free download. Surely there's something we can learn from Franklin Roosevelt. (h/t: Open culture)

2. The Twins have lost again to one of the worst teams in the American League. They're now 2 1/2 games out of first place. Do the odds favor us continuing to hope or should we just focus on preparing our hearts for the exodus of Marion Gaborik? Baseball Prospectus updates the "postseason odds" each day.

3) The second annual Notre Dame Energy Week begins today. "The 2008 Forum on Sustainable Energy invites us to take note of the issues; to review a variety of perspectives--from science, the Church, and the media; and to come to an understanding of our own individual accountability," the school's Web site says. Use the "footprint calendar," which actually is from Berkley, which will never be confused with Notre Dame.

4) Real-life Tetris. An absolute time-waster. Thus, it's value.

5) The Atlantic apologizes for using an undoctored image of John McCain. Well, sort of. It apologized for using the work of a photographer who sold them an undoctored image of John McCain, and then put doctored ones on her Web site. How can you learn to doctor images with light? Easy.

If you spot something interesting today, send it to me.

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Minnesota is not making book

Posted at 11:18 AM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Marketing and advertising

If you didn't know any better -- and, of course, I didn't -- you might have thought the state of Minnesota had gotten itself into the sports bookmaking business.

An ad in the Star Tribune this morning (left) announced the Minnesota State Lottery's Fantasy Football Print-N-Play game.

Here's how I saw it: You watch this Sunday's game and (using the example in the picture as an example), hope that the Miami quarterback scores one or more touchdowns, that New England's running back scores one or more touchdowns, Oakland's kicker hits a bunch of field goals and the Eagles' starting tackle sacks the opposition quarterback. Then you add up all the points that go with each event and hope it adds up to more points than your opponent's team (in this case, the number of points registered by Dallas' quarterback, Denver's runningback, Houston's wide receiver, and the Colts' tight end).

That game, actually, would be a lot of fun. It also would be illegal.

Here's how it really works: According to Lottery Director Clint Harris, the results are predetermined and the scoring is not connecting to any real NFL game. The lottery player just goes down both sides of the ticket and fills in the number of points for the results already indicated. In the example, I end up with 16 points. So does the opposition. I lose. Some fun, eh?

Harris told me there actually is one state where the lottery is allowed to make book on sports in the manner I described earlier. Montana, one of three states that was grandfathered when state lotteries were legalized, allows fantasy football wagering in its lottery.

According to its Web site...

Play slip wagers will be allowed until 30 minutes prior to the first scheduled game of the week (either Thursday, Saturday or Sunday depending on the week's schedule). From 30 minutes before the first scheduled game until 30 minutes before the start of the last scheduled game of the week, only quick pick wagering will be allowed. The last scheduled game of the week is Monday night, except for the last week of the regular season when the last game is scheduled for Sunday. Quick pick wagers will be randomly selected players from the eligible player roster finalized prior to the start of the season.

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Questions and answers about the financial mess

Posted at 12:05 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Courtesy of Chris Farrell, Minnesota Public Radio's chief economics correspondent & Louis Johnston, economics professor, St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict as heard on MPR's Midday today.

Q: Is this the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression?
A: Yes. We're having a run on Wall Street, the worst run on financial institutions since the Depression, both guests say.

Q: Are we on the verge, then, of a Great Depression-style economic collapse?
A: No. The government has learned how to manage things properly.

Q: Is it possible the two remaining big investment banks will go under?
A: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley are historic names. If they were to disappear it would shake the financial system to the core, according to Farrell. "I don't think we're going to see that, but I worry about the mutual fund industry."

Q: Might the government nationalize the entire financial system?
A: Yes.

Q: What's going to happen with corporate boards and executives? Will there be any accountability?
A: The big shots on Wall Street didn't see it coming, Farrell says. Johnston says head of Lehman had most of his compensation in value of stock. "They made a lot on the way up but aren't making much on the way out."

Q: Is there any limit to how much the government has to put toward the bailouts?
A: Technically, the limit is how much the taxpayers want to shell out money to pay for them. When the government is looking to bail out a firm, Johnson says, it looks at whether the firm is insolvent (Lehman) or whether it has the assets to pay off creditors and debt (AIG).

Q: What interest rate is AIG paying for the government bailout?
A: As of today, about 11.75 percent.

Q: Should regulators have taken a bigger look at the financial industry after Enron collapsed?
A: Yes. "We took our eye off the ball" because of 9/11, the Afghanistan War, and the run-up to the Iraq war, according to Johnston.

Q: What about those of us baby boomers who don't have "the long run" to wait for the market to return?
A: It comes back to where you have your money in the first place. Part of the pain from these risks is going to fall on those who are closer to retirement. For people who are broadly diversified (the Harvard Endowment fund is up 6%).. if you're in your 70s, you should have gone for a more conservative portfolio. If retirement savings are more and more tied to something we can't control (the market), we have to (a) save more and/or (b) work longer.

Q: What will be the next financial institution in trouble?
A: Washington Mutual (WaMu)

Q: Are people who have been saving religiously for retirement going to wake up one of these days and find out there is no retirement savings left?
A: No.

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MinnesotaCare cuts loom

Posted at 1:14 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Health

Gov. Pawlenty and state officials are trying to talk the Bush administration out of cutting $135 million over three years to the state's MinnesotaCare program.

This afternoon the governor released a statement on a meeting with the Department of Health and Human Service's secretary, Michael Leavitt.

"In our meeting today with Secretary Leavitt, we expressed our goal to maintain federal funding for the 18,000 Minnesotans who would be put at risk by the federal government's proposal. The meeting was constructive and HHS has agreed to consider our request to maintain this critical federal funding and address numerous other outstanding issues between Minnesota and HHS. The Secretary and I will be speaking again regarding these matters in the coming days.

An estimated 18,000 low-income adults would lose their health insurance coverage. Most of them are parents of children who are covered.

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If the AIG bailout were a car loan...

Posted at 1:28 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

The federal government, as you probably know by now, is bailing out the ailing AIG with an $85 billion loan. It'll be paid back over two years as the insurance giant sells off its assets.

The terms: the LIBOR overnight rate banks lend to each other, plus an extra 8.5 percent for two years.

I figure the current LIBOR rate is 3.13%, so the total loan is 11.63%.

What if that were a car loan? How much would it mean to the old family budget? I fired up the Excel loan amortization schedule (which you can download and play with here).

Your first payment will be due in October:

Monthly payment: $3,986,574,012.02
Interest: $823,791,666.67
Principal: $3,162,782,345.35

Add an extra $39, of course, if the payment is late.

AIG should at least get a free toaster.

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They also serve...

Posted at 3:38 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: War

I rarely do a blind callout via News Cut to potential subjects of a story, but this time I'll make an exception. I'm looking for people who (a) Are in the National Guard and have to juggle deployments with a fulltime job and (b) I'm looking for an employer who has to constantly juggle losing an employee to deployments. (Use this form)

For example, Minnesota's 148th fighter wing of the National Guard is deploying to Iraq this fall, it's the third time in four years the unit has been shipped out.

Not everyone in the unit is going. About 300 of the unit's 1,000 members will ship out for a tour of anywhere from a month to 90 days.

"It's a different construct than the Army," International Falls resident Brian Briggs, the state's Air National Guard command chief to the International Falls Daily Journal. "It is done in a way to minimize the impact that the individual has with their absence from employers and gives them a sense of predictability when they will go."

It's no picnic for the unit, of course, but I wonder if some of the unsung heroes of the last few years have been the employers and other workers who have also had to sacrifice?

Over in Milwaukee, for example, Aurora Health System has lost a dozen employees to deployments. "What we do is rely upon the staff that we have that many times are working additional shifts we may hire someone from the outside on a temporary basis," said Dwight Morgan, vice president of human resources services for Aurora told WISC TV.

Last year MPR's Tim Post profiled a similar problem faced by the St. Cloud Police Department and other employers in that area. In that story, the head of the Minnesota National Guard seemed to suggest employers are getting fairly tired of the situation.

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The Border Patrol incident

Posted at 5:39 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice

MPR's Bob Kelleher visited a controversy that's been brewing in the Northern woods for some time -- the suggestion by some locals that Border Patrol agents along the Canadian border have been racing along like cowboys, putting the safety of residents in peril.

Much of it focuses on an October 2007 accident:

On a rain-slicked stretch of the Gunflint Trail, a Border Patrol vehicle struck and killed Kenneth Peterson, a prominent and well-liked local doctor. A tree had fallen across the pavement that night and Peterson was out of his car trying to clear it from the road.

The Border Patrol agent, Maranda Weber, was indicted on less-serious charges than some of the locals wanted and is trying to get the case moved to federal court, a move that some fear is the first step to having it quietly go away.

Emotions are pretty high in Grand Marais as evidenced by a writer who sent us an e-mail this afternoon:

I think the public ought to know: 1) There was a large tree down across the road that stopped traffic. 2) Two cars stopped, their occupants got out and left both their headlights and taillights on so that oncoming traffic FROM BOTH SIDES of the trail would be able to see them, and 3) Ken was using a chainsaw, so in addition to a fallen tree across the trail, two pair of headlights and taillights, and two people moving, there was the loud sound of a chainsaw. One wonders what anyone driving on the Gunflint Trail at night could be doing to miss all this; all of us who drive the Trail, even occasionally, know to slow down at night to avoid moose. It would also be hopeful for the public to know how fast the Border Patrol car was traveling when she hit Ken and then hit the tree.
I realize your article has a lot of detail, but feel some essential detail that explains why feelings are high among Grand Marais residents, and their friends, should be included.

Cook County Attorney Timothy Scannell said Weber refused to be interviewed or appear before the grand jury, according to the International Falls Daily Journal, and that the Border Patrol refused to provide basic information like how many hours she'd been working before the accident.

In an article this summer, the Star Tribune said the agent didn't react before the accident. She didn't swerve, she didn't brake, it said.

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Palin's e-mail account hacked

Posted at 6:01 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Politics

Hackers say they've broken into Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account. according to the blog, ARTVoice. Allegedly, someone with a group called "anonymous" posted the password to Palin's Yahoo account (gov.palin@yahoo.com) on a bulletin board last night, "and a field day ensued," the blog said.

Another member of the group said he changed the password to "avoid further damage."

None of the e-mail was said to be very titillating. The Associated Press reported that the Secret Service asked it to turn over copies of the e-mail it had in its possession. The AP declined, the story said.

Last week, the New York Times reported Gov. Palin uses her personal e-mail account to conduct state business in Alaska to circumvent attempts to subpoenas for public records.

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The bridge reopens

Posted at 7:11 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

The city of Minneapolis has sent out a list of changes to the city streets now that the I-35W bridge is reopening: