The story of the moment is the Sunday New York Times’ front page report from Minnesota’s 8th District. Titled “Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It,” the piece by Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff puts a fine point on the disconnect between those de-crying government spending and the amount of taxpayer support on which they themselves are critically dependent. (Our Eric Black also draws reader attention to the story.) “Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government. He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.” It builds out from there. I’ll have to be reminded when the most prominent local newsrooms applied as direct a point and gave it such marquee treatment.
The family of the shooter in last year’s Cook County courthouse incident that left two people injured … is suing St. Louis County. Brandon Stahl of the Duluth News Tribune says: “About 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 26, the face of 42-year-old Daniel Schlienz had turned purple. A half-hour later he was taken by ambulance from the St. Louis County Jail to Essentia Health St. Mary’s Medical Center, and about 12 hours later, he died. The sudden death of the man who made national news for allegedly shooting two people at the Cook County Courthouse on Dec. 15 caused Schlienz’s family to question his care and say they are pursuing a lawsuit against the county.”
“The Fighting Sioux” have returned. Dave Kolpack of the AP writes: “The nickname was resurrected after residents generated 17,000 signatures seeking to put the issue to a statewide vote. As part of that process, a since-repealed state law requiring the school to use the nickname went back into effect — even though the university, the state Board of Higher Education and local lawmakers want it gone. … Minot attorney Reed Soderstrom, chairman of the referendum campaign, has said he hoped the campaign would end arguments about the nickname ‘once and for all.’ His group planned to release a statement this week regarding comments by school officials critical of the referendum. Soderstrom’s group is seeking to both restore the state law requiring UND to keep its nickname and change North Dakota’s Constitution to say the school’s teams will be known as the Fighting Sioux. That petition is due in August.” I know it’s North Dakota, but don’t they have something else to brawl over?
Stillwater attorney Jeff Anderson has pulled his 2010 suit naming Pope Benedict as a defendant. At the AP, Dinesh Ramde reports: “Lawyers for a man who was sexually abused decades ago by a priest at a Wisconsin school for the deaf have withdrawn their lawsuit naming Pope Benedict XVI and other top Vatican officials as defendants, a major victory for the Holy See, which has long insisted the pope bears no liability for the actions of an abusive priest. Attorney Jeff Anderson had filed the lawsuit with great fanfare at the peak of a European explosion of the sex abuse scandal in 2010. He alleged that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and his deputies knew about allegations of sexual abuse at St. John’s School for the Deaf and prevented internal punishment of the accused priest.”
Some Tom Petters news … Jennifer Bjorhus of the Strib says: “Long before federal bank regulators acted against Crown Bank last week, Doug Kelley had the Edina lender in his sights. The receiver in the Tom Petters bankruptcy has long maintained that the convicted Ponzi schemer enjoyed a special, and suspicious, relationship with the bank. Kelley argued in a 2010 lawsuit that Petters owned 3,333 shares of nonvoting stock in the bank, which regulators recently ordered to deal with troubled loans and to beef up reserves for covering them. Kelley asserted that Petters had a ‘close friendship’ with bank President Kevin Howk, and that $100 million was transferred in and out of Petters Co. Inc. accounts between 2004 and 2008, when authorities shut Petters down. ‘Crown was an integral part of Petters’ Ponzi scheme,’ Kelley wrote in court papers filed as part of the case.”
An Eagan man had his crossword puzzle published in The New York Times. Says Jessica Fleming of the PiPress: “Here’s the clue: 62 Across: Leave the drawers in the drawer, say. The answer, which made New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz laugh, helped Eagan’s Chief Financial Officer Tom Pepper become a published crossword puzzle writer. ‘I loved that it was at the bottom of the grid,’ Shortz said. ‘You get to the bottom and it’s sort of like there’s a punchline to a joke’. Pepper’s crossword ran this month in the Times. It was a Monday puzzle, known for being the easiest of the week to solve. The puzzle will run in syndicated newspapers, including the Pioneer Press, on March 12, and include the answer to ‘62 Across.’ “
Per Peterson at The Marshall Independent had a chat with Sen. Al Franken on the topic, among other things, of No Child Left Behind: “Calling No Child Left Behind’s test-driven standards unrealistic, Minnesota U.S. Sen. Al Franken on Friday said he was glad to see Minnesota was chosen as one of 10 states to receive a waiver from the nearly decade-old program and that he hopes legislation introduced in the Senate will improve the quality of education in Minnesota even more in the future. … Franken was unsure about the future of the Senate’s provisions in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He said there was a 90 percent agreement among Senate members that NCLB needed a massive overhaul and 75 percent agreement on how exactly to address it. ‘(What happens) depends to some extent whether we get something from the House that is somewhere in the ballpark as ours,’ he said. ‘So far what we’re getting out of the House is kind of piecemeal and different than what we’re doing in the Senate. I’m not quite sure if this gets done now.’ ”
At The Vikings Age website, Levi Satterlee reminds those who need reminding that this coming Wednesday has significance to local football fans. “Wednesday, Feb. 15 is the deadline for the Vikings to request permission from the NFL to speak to other cities about relocating. That doesn’t mean they will request permission for relocation. But it is a valuable bargaining chip and make no mistake, the Vikings will want to use any bargaining chips they have. This is one big chess match between the Vikings and the Minnesota Legislature. Unfortunately for the Vikings, the Legislature holds more pieces in the game, and they know it. But the Vikings do hold the ultimate piece, the ability to move.”
On the Times story mentioned at the top, Aaron Klemz of the liberal Cucking Stool blog writes: “The brilliance of this article is that it forces the realization that the ‘others’ are all around the Tea Party rugged individualists. They are the people you know and care about, your mentally disabled sister, your school-aged children, your elderly parents. The belief that ‘others’ abuse the system (while you use it for the right reasons) is one linchpin belief that allows Tea Partiers to manage the cognitive dissonance created by the inconsistency of their belief in the need for spending cuts and their actions that rely on government spending. Another defense mechanism is a highly distorted version of what the government actually spends on a variety of programs.”
