What's your New Year's resolution for Minnesota?
Posted at 5:00 AM on December 30, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(36 Comments)
Filed under: Culture, Politics/Government
Some people make resolutions for themselves at New Year's, but we'd like to think bigger. Today's Question: What's your New Year's resolution for Minnesota?
Comments (36)
Minnesota resolves to stop the divisive, hate-tinged, discriminatory (and probably itself unconsitututional) vote to restrict marriage to one man-one woman. The very reason the Constitution exists is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority! When a majority of voters get to pass a law that limits the rights of the minority....Constitutional law flies right out the window!
Hey, Jack, I heard you died about a week and a half ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Goldman
That our state expenses be lower than revenues and that the OWS crowd start supporting themselves.
Timothy @5:44 PM,
You shouldn't be so hard on Semites, Jews, Jewish, Hebrew, Zionists, Israeli, Old Testament, Torah, English, White, New Testament, Christian, European people. They did create civilization and invent the modern world. Why not look on the bright side of life? Love and be loved.
Seek the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth instead of politically correct half truths that lead to competition, social injustice, and war.
Why do they hate us? Takers are hated. Givers are loved. It's that simple. Takers are liars. Our money is a lie. Hundred dollar bills are printed for five cents each. $100,000 a year wages are printed for $50. Bankers, brokers, owners, and government seek to make us all free slaves with automatic deposit and debit cards working for "nothing". The elite seek to make us free slaves be being their free employees doing their work on line. Is Google really worth FIVE Ford Motor Companies? Is Facebook really a business or a spy network for corporate elites? Takers are hated. Givers are loved. Families are dissolving in this caustic brew of elite and evil takers that do more harm then good. Forty per cent of new born babies are born out of wed lock. We are in serious trouble.
Can we seek the truth? America, Great Britain, and Israel are evil nations and the axis of good evil. McVeigh and Bin Laden acted in response to American and Israeli evil and social injustice. The whole truth is denied. It's inconvenient.Takers are always hated. American FBI agents shot an American teen ager in the back in Idaho and murdered his mother? Clinton and Reno approved the mass murder of Americans in Waco, Texas? Obama authorized the assassination of an American citizen? Are we Nazis? Yes we are. Bush and Cheney should be tried for crimes against humanity. Where is social justice? Bush is far worse than McVeigh, Bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein combined. Where are the trials for New York City elites who robbed us?
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is inconvenient. We have met the enemy and he is us, promoting wars and rumors of wars for money, power, and fame. Protect yourself.
PS. I will also lose twenty pounds and work out three times a week. That's one I can do.
Love to all. Malice toward none.
Replace any representative who has signed a "pledge" of any kind other than their oath of office, and replace them with people who consider their sole obligation to be their constituents and the well-being of the country.
Get rid of any whose only stated objective is to make Obama fail by blocking every attempt to improve things -- thinking erroneously it will get them political advantage from people with short memories.
Defeat the evangelical fundamentalist hate-monger marriage amendment.
We should resolve to defeat the efforts of the so-called Christians of this state who seek to enshrine their bigotry in our state constitution in the name of their 'Prince of Peace' and 'Lord of Love'.
I challenge any Minnesotan who plans to vote yes on the anti-marriage amendment to find and spend an hour talking to a gay or lesbian couple. Share a meal with them. Find out how this discrimination affects them. See if they are as evil as the holy ones preaching from your pulpit professes them to be.
We need to resolve to provide equal rights and priviledges to all Minnesota families and their children. The proposed amendment would do nothing to stop these families from existing. It simply puts one more lock on the chains that keep these families from enjoying equal rights and privilidges.
That we would all wake up and smell the bullshit, so we can choose to smell the roses instead. Learn what really makes for happiness and quit believing the false promises of wealth, power, prestige, status, popularity, and ideological purity. Ignore the fear-and-hate-mongers, those who would upset you for fun and profit. Learn to be content when you have enough, uneasy when anyone else doesn't, and joyful when you are able to share. Everything else is futile.
Minnesota resolves to recognize that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Minnesota resolves to "educate and inform the whole mass of the people.They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
Minnesota resolves to "make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!"
Minnesota resolves to honor its Nature and Natures God:
We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia and pray that the breath of life continues to caress this planet home.
May we grow into true understanding — a deep understanding that inspires us to protect the tree on which we bloom, and the water, soil and atmosphere without which we have no existence.
May we turn inwards and stumble upon our true roots in the intertwining biology of this exquisite planet. May nourishment and power pulse through these roots, and fierce determination to continue the billion-year dance.
May love well up and burst forth from our hearts.
May there be a new dispensation of pure and powerful consciousness and the charter to witness and facilitate the healing of the tattered biosphere.
We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia to be with us here. To reveal to us all that we need to see, for our own highest good and for the highest good of all.
We call upon the spirit of evolution, the miraculous force that inspires rocks and dust to weave themselves into biology. You have stood by us for millions and billions of years — do not forsake us now. Empower us and awaken in us pure and dazzling creativity. You that can turn scales into feathers, seawater to blood, caterpillars to butterflies, metamorphose our species, awaken in us the powers that we need to survive the present crisis and evolve into more aeons of our solar journey.
Awaken in us a sense of who we truly are: tiny ephemeral blossoms on the Tree of Life. Make the purposes and destiny of that tree our own purpose and destiny.
Fill each of us with love for our true Self, which includes all of the creatures and plants and landscapes of the world. Fill us with a powerful urge for the well-being and continual unfolding of this Self.
May we speak in all human councils on behalf of the animals and plants and landscapes of the Earth.
May we shine with a pure inner passion that will spread rapidly through these leaden times.
May we all awaken to our true and only nature — none other than the nature of Gaia, this living planet Earth.
We call upon the power which sustains the planets in their orbits, that wheels our Milky Way in its 200-million-year spiral, to imbue our personalities and our relationships with harmony, endurance and joy. Fill us with a sense of immense time so that our brief, flickering lives may truly reflect the work of vast ages past and also the millions of years of evolution whose potential lies in our trembling hands.
O stars, lend us your burning passion.
O silence, give weight to our voice.
We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia.
Minnesota resolves to awaken within this dream and grasp the fact that we are dreaming so that all dreamlike beings may likewise awaken from the nightmare of illusory suffering and confusion.
Minnesota resolves to remove Cannabis from Schedule One and promote production and access to the life-giving, life-enhancing qualities of the world most useful and versatile plant.
"the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."
- Carl Sagan
"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?"
- Henry Ford
Minnesota stands resolved in solidarity with the 99% -- those people in America who do not have the power and privilege of owning 40% of the nation's wealth.
We support the efforts of OccupyMN and the peaceful encampment on the People's Plaza in Minneapolis, as well as similar occupations nationwide.
We support the "one demand" of Occupied Wall Street:
Ending capital punishment is our one demand.
Ending wealth inequality is our one demand.
Ending police intimidation is our one demand.
Ending corporate censorship is our one demand.
Ending the modern gilded age is our one demand.
Ending political corruption is our one demand.
Ending joblessness is our one demand.
Ending poverty is our one demand.
Ending health-profiteering is our one demand.
Ending American imperialism is our one demand.
Ending war (on drugs, on terror, on each other) is our one demand.
We are resolved to do what is just and kind.
Thank you, Ophelia, our last chance to hang onto our country.
District 6, let's resolve to get a real reprresentative in Washington. Bachmann has been running for president for 2 terms; she spends no time in the District listening to us and tending to our needs, and very little time in Washington voting and speaking out for our needs. It's time to elect a real representative who has good common sense, intelligence, loyalty (to us, not corps), and who is not a laughting stock to the rest of the country (some of her outrageous statements are even broadcast in Europe as comedy). So let us all resolve to elect someone who will bring pride back to District 6 instead of suffering through this constant embarrassment.
We of Minnesota Resolve to Evolve:
For when in the course of organic evolution it becomes obvious that a mutational process is inevitably dissolving the physical and neurological bonds which connect the members of one generation to the past and inevitably directing them to assume among the species of Earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent concern for the harmony of species requires that the causes of the mutation should be declared.
We hold these truths to be self evident:
That all species are created different but equal;
That they are endowed, each one, with certain inalienable rights;
That among them are Freedom to Live, Freedom to Grow, and Freedom to pursue Happiness in their own style;
That to protect these God-given rights, social structures naturally emerge, basing their authority on the principles of love of God and respect for all forms of life;
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and harmony, it is the organic duty of the young members of that species to mutate, to drop out, to initiate a new social structure, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its power in such form as seems likely to produce the safety, happiness, and harmony of all sentient beings.
Genetic wisdom, indeed, suggests that social structures long established should not be discarded for frivolous reasons and transient causes. The ecstasy of mutation is equally balanced by the pain. Accordingly all experience shows that members of a species are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, rather than to discard the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, all pursuing invariably the same destructive goals, threaten the very fabric of organic life and the serene harmony of the planet, it is the right, it is the organic duty to drop out of such morbid covenants and to evolve new loving social structures.
Such has been the patient sufferance of the freedom-loving peoples of this earth, and such is now the necessity which constrains us to form new systems of government.
The history of the white, menopausal, mendacious men now ruling the planet earth is a history of repeated violation of the harmonious laws of nature, all having the direct object of establishing a tyranny of the materialistic aging over the gentle, the peace-loving, the young, the colored. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to the judgement of generations to come.
These old, white rulers have maintained a continuous war against other species of life, enslaving and destroying at whim fowl, fish, animals and spreading a lethal carpet of concrete and metal over the soft body of earth.
They have maintained as well a continual state of war among themselves and against the colored races, the freedom-loving, the gentle, the young. Genocide is their habit.
They have instituted artificial scarcities, denying peaceful folk the natural inheritance of earth's abundance and God's endowment.
They have glorified material values and degraded the spiritual.
They have claimed private, personal ownership of God's land, driving by force of arms the gentle from passage on the earth.
In their greed they have erected artificial immigration and customs barriers, preventing the free movement of people.
In their lust for control they have set up systems of compulsory education to coerce the minds of the children and to destroy the wisdom and innocence of the playful young.
In their lust for power they have controlled all means of communication to prevent the free flow of ideas and to block loving exchanges among the gentle.
In their fear they have instituted great armies of secret police to spy upon the privacy of the pacific.
In their anger they have coerced the peaceful young against their will to join their armies and to wage murderous wars against the young and gentle of other countries.
In their greed they have made the manufacture and selling of weapons the basis of their economies.
For profit they have polluted the air, the rivers, the seas.
In their impotence they have glorified murder, violence, and unnatural sex in their mass media.
In their aging greed they have set up an economic system which favors age over youth.
They have in every way attempted to impose a robot uniformity and to crush variety, individuality, and independence of thought.
In their greed, they have instituted political systems which perpetuate rule by the aging and force youth to choose between plastic conformity or despairing alienation.
They have invaded privacy by illegal search, unwarranted arrest, and contemptuous harassment.
They have enlisted an army of informers.
In their greed they sponsor the consumption of deadly tars and sugars and employ cruel and unusual punishment of the possession of life-giving alkaloids and acids.
They never admit a mistake. They unceasingly trumpet the virtue of greed and war. In their advertising and in their manipulation of information they make a fetish out of blatant falsity and pious self-enhancement. Their obvious errors only stimulate them to greater error and noisier self-approval.
They are bores.
They hate beauty.
They hate sex.
They hate life.
We have warned them from time to time to their inequities and blindness. We have addressed every available appeal to their withered sense of righteousness. We have tried to make them laugh. We have prophesied in detail the terror they are perpetuating. But they have been deaf to the weeping of the poor, the anguish of the colored, the rocking mockery of the young, the warnings of their poets. Worshipping only force and money, they listen only to force and money. But we shall no longer talk in these grim tongues.
We must therefore acquiesce to genetic necessity, detach ourselves from their uncaring madness and hold them henceforth as we hold the rest of God's creatures - in harmony, life brothers, in their excess, menaces to life.
We, therefore, God-loving, peace-loving, life-loving, fun-loving men and women, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the Universe for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the Authority of all sentient beings who seek gently to evolve on this planet, solemnly publish and declare that we are free and independent, and that we are absolved from all Allegiance to the United States Government and all governments controlled by the menopausal, and that grouping ourselves into tribes of like-minded fellows, we claim full power to live and move on the land, obtain sustenance with our own hands and minds in the style which seems sacred and holy to us, and to do all Acts and Things which independent Freemen and Freewomen may of right do without infringing on the same rights of other species and groups to do their own thing.
And for the support of this Declaration of Evolution with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, and serenely confident of the approval of generations to come, in whose name we speak, do we now mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.
Minnesota resolves that Congress introduce an amendment to the United States Constitution to end corporate personhood effectively stating that, “corporations are not people and money is not speech.”
Minnesota resolves to adopt a more MODEST PROPOSAL
A drug policy respectful of democratic values would aim to educate people to make informed
choices based on their own needs and ideals. Such a simple prescription is necessary and sadly
overdue.
A master plan for seriously seeking to come to terms with America's drug problems might
explore a number of options, including the following.
1. A 200 percent federal tax should be imposed on tobacco and alcohol. All government
subsidies for tobacco production should be ended. Warnings on packaging should be
strengthened. A 20 percent federal sales tax should be levied on sugar and sugar substitutes,
and all supports for sugar production should be ended. Sugar packages should also carry
warnings, and sugar should be a mandatory topic in school nutrition curricula.
2. All forms of cannabis should be legalized and a 200 percent federal sales tax imposed on
cannabis products. Information as to the THC content of the product and current conclusions
regarding its impact on health should be printed on the packaging.
3. International Monetary Fund and World Bank lending should be withdrawn from countries
that produce hard drugs. Only international inspection and certification that a country is in
compliance would restore loan eligibility.
4. Strict gun control must apply to both manufacture and possession. It is the unrestricted
availability of firearms that has made violent crime and the drug abuse problem so intertwined.
5. The legality of nature must be recognized, so that all plants are legal to grow and possess.
6. Psychedelic therapy should be made legal and insurance coverage extended to include it.
7. Currency and banking regulations need to be strengthened. Presently bank collusion with
criminal cartels allows large-scale money laundering to take place.
8. There is an immediate need for massive support for scientific research into all aspects of
substance use and abuse and an equally massive commitment to public education.
9. One year after implementation of the above, all drugs still illegal in the United States
should be decriminalized. The middleman is eliminated, the government can sell drugs at cost plus 200 percent, and those monies can be placed in a special fund to pay the social, medical, and educational
costs of the legalization program. Money from taxes on alcohol, tobacco, sugar, and cannabis
can also be placed in this fund. Also following this one-year period, pardons should be given
to all offenders in drug cases that did not involve firearms or felonious assault.
If these proposals seem radical, it is only because we have drifted so far from the ideals that
were originally most American. At the foundation of the American theory of social polity is
the notion that our inalienable rights include "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To
pretend that the right to the pursuit of happiness does not include the right to experiment with
psychoactive plants and substances is to make an argument that is at best narrow and at worst
ignorant and primitive. The only religions that are anything more than the traditionally
sanctioned moral codes are religions of trance, dance ecstasy, and intoxication by
hallucinogens. The living fact of the mystery of being is there, and it is an inalienable religious
right to be able to approach it on one's own terms. A civilized society would enshrine that
principle in law.
Understand that professional sports teams do not or deserve public funds but schools and the environment does.
The mayor of Ely recently declared his town is dying. It is my resolution to make sure that doesn't happen.
May the good Lord be with you
Down every road that you roam
And may sunshine and happiness
Surround you when you're far from home
And may you grow to be proud, dignified and true
And do unto others as you'd have done to you
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you'll always stay
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young
May good fortune be with you
May your guiding light be strong
Build a stairway to Heaven
With a prince or a vagabond
And may you never love in vain
And in my heart you will remain
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young, yeah
And when you finally fly away
I'll be hoping that I served you well
For all the wisdom of a lifetime
No one can ever tell
But whatever road you choose
I'm right behind you, win or lose
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young
Forever young, forever young
For, forever young, forever young
I resolved to stop making New Year's Resolutions. I have my hands full trying to be a better person one moment at a time.
For me 2011 was a year of failure. It was marked by wars that didn't need to happen and never should have been fought.
When my wife told me at Christmas she was divorcing me it capped a year I wish had never happened. A year of missed moments, each one an opportunity to be a better person.
So without making a New Year's Resolution out of it, hopefully I've learned something from that awful, horrible year 2011 about how to be more tolerant and treat people better one moment at a time.
Resolved that Minnesota stands in solidarity with the Occupation of New York City:
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
*They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
*They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
*They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
*They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
*They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
*They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
*They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
*They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
*They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
*They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
*They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
*They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
*They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
*They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
*They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
*They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
*They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
*They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
*They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
*They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
*They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
*They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
*They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011
John - Cannabis ...maybe do non-drug hemp ... for starters. Lets get the agricultural and industrial - as well corporate beneifts of a much more useful ag product. the oils, chemicals ( BESIDES "THC") and fibers of hemp are far better replacements in many of our industrial processes. Paper and cloth are two very tangible areas where the use of hemp produces a better product and reduces the need for some very nasty chemical processing that required to make other sources useful in the marketplace.! .....
But as for Cannibis ... eventually that too .. for goodness sake - the tax potential is HUGE.
spliff.
Minnesota resolves: We are creating a global, sustainable community that values the health of the Earth and its inhabitants over corporate profits.
We are a diverse group of non-violent people and we find strength in that diversity. No one person or group speaks for all of us as a whole. We wish to see an end to the corruption of both corporations and government.
We will persist until the voices of the people overcome the corrupting influence of money.
Keep making the cities and state more accessible to bikes, don't sacrifice our natural resources for big money interests, and to the elected officials relearn who you work for and what is truly just and fair for everyone.
Resolve the end of Cannabis prohibition. Grow our health, happiness and wealth for the benefit of Minnesota and the Earth.
Expse all the charletans for who they really are.
I know.
It's a tall order.
Quit imposing personal beliefs on others - let he example of your life serve as the testimony for the correctness of your decisions. It's a free country others have the freedom to choose wrong. Build a society that allows those differences to exist.
Get Arne Carlson, David Durenberger, and Jim Ramstad to come out of retirement and retake control of the Minnesota republican party.
To defeat an amendment to the constitution that only purpose is to make sure that a group of people and their families, including their children, don't have an equal opportunity in the state of Minnesota, namely the marriage amendment.
actually be nice instead of the surface/fake Minnesota Nice.
Merge with North Dakota. Low unemployment, lots of oil and I believe about the only state that kept spending under control.
Create a better, more effective "snow dance" !
"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."
- Mark Twain
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