When I was growing up in extreme NW Iowa we had Wealthy apples on the place along with Dutchess of Oldenburg, Whitney crabs, and Wolf River apples, also pie cherries and quite a number of plum trees. All inherited from the original developers of the farm.

Those folks needed the same sort of hardiness much of Minnesota does and they searched out their trees both fruits and grove trees pretty carefully. They relied heavily on state university and research facilities for advice along...

The Dakota people from the Minnesota River Valley, also later known as the Santee when some of the refugees joined the Lakota farther west, did not make much use of buffalo meat. There were few bison herds in either Iowa or Minnesota east of the Buffalo Ridge on the Minnesota/South Dakota border, even before white settlement. In those areas the largest major herbivore were the prairie elk, until white settlers massacred the heavily yarded elk herds during the harsh winters of the 1850s....

"And of those 46.4 percent who don't pay federal taxes, 60 percent of them were paying payroll taxes. What that tells me is they are working but are paid so poorly that because of the economy and their own limitations, our US tax codes, which have had input from both Republicans and Democrats, sees them as too poor to be taxed. That's the real crime here: people who work hard and can't make enough to be taxed."

That says a whole lot that needs to be said over and over. Something is...

Four years ago almost to the day, gasoline prices were almost exactly where they are now. That $100 difference vanishes completely in light of the facts.

There always businesses that put off hiring in the end of a national election year, waiting to see what changes if any are going to happen after the election, Affordable Care Act or not. As the Romney campaign continues to implode, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Affordable Care Act isn't going away anyhow.

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