The specifics are not tasteful. Joe Carlson of the Strib says, “Medtronic Inc., which plans to cover its top leaders for certain taxes they face as part of a controversial merger plan, has calculated the cost for the CEO’s tab alone at $25 million. The Fridley-based medical device giant disclosed to shareholders this week that it would pay an estimated total of $63 million to compensate high-ranking executives for special excise taxes they would incur if Medtronic acquires surgical supplier Covidien and moves overseas in the process.” That’ll need a lot of lipstick.
It’s kinda like an apology. Mark Zdechlik of MPR says, “DFL Sen. Al Franken said Thursday he regrets a moment a few years ago when he held two traffic cones to his chest. Until today Franken hadn’t commented about a short video clip Republicans have been circulating that shows him playing with the traffic cones. Franken said it was a moment when he ‘wasn’t thinking’. ‘I just think it was a thoughtless moment. Obviously, someone was shooting me that I wasn’t aware of, and it was just a moment I regret.” The moral of the episode? Don’t ever try to be funny again, Al.
The Minnesota State football player severely beaten outside a Mankato bar four months ago planned to attend his team’s first game. Stribber Rochelle Olson says, “Kolstad’s survival, let alone his ability to walk and talk, was in doubt for weeks as he lay in a coma with a portion of his skull removed to alleviate brain swelling. Now he’s walking, working on talking, and eager to return to work and watch his former teammates in Thursday’s home opener with St. Cloud State.”
The deep thinkers at American Thinker try to grapple with the two deceased jihadis from Robbinsdale High School. Says Victor Keith: “Not to blame the school system for their ultimate fate, but perhaps one of the reasons these two young men answered the call of a death cult is that the education system did not help arm them with tools to resist such insanity such as common values, ethics, morality accountability, ambition and self-reliance. It seems Mr. McCain was missing something other than an ‘r’ in his middle name: a reason to live. What led these men to their decisions is unknown but it hardly could have been helped by an education system, news media and entertainment industry that withholds judgment from anything save antipathy towards America.” He missed a shot at including Obamacare and Big Gummint spending.
Movin’ up the progressive bureaucracy. Rachel Stassen-Berger of the Strib says, “The Alliance for a Better Minnesota has found a new Democratic operative to direct its operation through the election, the group announced. Ben Goldfarb, who ran Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s first campaign and has been active in other campaigns, will guide the big spending Democratic interest group as a senior strategic advisor. Goldfarb is currently the executive director of Wellstone Action, which trains ‘progressive’ candidates. Carrie Lucking, who has directed the Alliance since 2011, is leaving to work for Education Minnesota. This is her last week at the Alliance.”
Now we get a fuller story of the U of M women’s gymnastics coach’s sudden departure. Says Jason Gonzalez in the Strib, “The school determined that Meg Stephenson, one-time national coach of the year, retaliated against someone at the university after a student-athlete claimed she was sexually harassed by Stephenson’s husband, volunteer assistant coach Jim Stephenson.”
More on yesterday’s police shooting of a rock-throwing man in St. Paul. Tim Nelson and Jon Collins of MPR say, “When they arrived, officers were immediately confronted by the man who was throwing rocks, aggressively approaching the officers and ignoring orders to stop, [Chief Tom Smith] added. ‘Next, the suspect immediately and aggressively came at the other officer, who then fired multiple shots, fatally wounding the suspect.’ Police said more information about the incident will be released in the next day. Smith said he couldn’t yet provide information on whether the officers had Taser guns available but emphasized that the officers believed their lives were in jeopardy.” And so you shoot to kill?
Also haunting the Chief: MPR’s Brandt Williams says, “The videotaped arrest of a man by St. Paul Police in January has been the talk of social media this week — so much so that Police Chief Tom Smith felt compelled to defend his officers. … In the video, a man later identified as 28-year-old Christopher Lollie tells an officer he was sitting in a public area and that he didn’t see any signs saying the area was off limits. ‘No one can tell me I can’t sit there,’ Lollie said. When the officer asks Lollie to identify himself, he refuses and asks why she’s asking. ‘Because that’s what police do when they get calls,’ the officer replied. ‘The problem is I’m black,’ Lollie said. ‘That’s the problem … I didn’t do anything wrong.’” Then they Tase him.
The curtain fell on Midway Stadium last night. Frederick Melo of the PiPress says, “As the St. Paul Saints prepared for the final home game of their 22-year-tenure at Midway Stadium, fans said their goodbyes to the facility that helped resurrect the career of baseball legend Darryl Strawberry and launch the careers of amiable mascot Mudonna T. Pig and Sister Rosalind, the massage therapist nun. … The Saints, who moved into Midway Stadium in 1993, will relocate to a new city-owned ballpark under construction off Fifth and Broadway streets in Lowertown for the 2015 season. The 7,000-seat, $63 million ballpark is being touted as an anchor for the burgeoning entertainment district near Mears Park and the St. Paul Farmers Market.” See more on the story from MinnPost.
Police arrest
The arrest of the man was obviously racist but also showed a total lack of people and professional skills from the officers. On the recording, the officers were obviously escalating the situation not trying to bring it to a more reasonable conclusion. Was it because their training appears to be one of military style confrontation not that of old fashioned police patrol in a neighborhood?
I hope the officers all get fired and the City has to pay.
Problem starts at the top
St. Paul police chief Tom Smith defended the officers and said the following:
“With no information on who the man was, what he might be doing or why he refused to leave the area, responding Saint Paul police officers tried to talk to him, asking him who he was,” the chief said. “He refused to tell them or cooperate.”
First, that isn’t true. He explained exactly what he was doing – he was waiting for his kids to get done with preschool. He “refused” to leave because he needed to be there for his small children. What he refused to was give his name, which under Minnesota law he is not obligated to do.
So in St. Paul we have a chief of police who is 1) ignorant of the law, 2) a liar, and 3) willing to overlook blatant racism and poor policing by his officers.
Medtronic to shareholders: “UP YOURS !!!”
If this perverse deal goes through, Medtronic is no longer an American company, and should be treated EXACTLY like it.
I’ve heard no news that the negative tax impact on the average shareholder will be mitigated. I guess these kind of compensatory benefits apply only to those earning millions.
“And so you shoot to kill?”
There is no other reason for an officer to shoot.
Shooting to warn or wound is a fantasy based on to much TV, to many movies and poorly written crime fiction.
If at this point on the Use of Force Continuum, that deadly force is appropriate the officer must aim for center mass and keep firing until the aggressor is no longer capable of the aggressive action.
An excellent answer
It troubles me that so many people who are obviously intelligent and well-read believe police should ever shoot to wound. Once the decision is made to shoot, they are trained to shoot at center-mass and to keep shooting until the threat is eliminated. There are sound reasons for this. This is also why so many shots are often fired. It is only in the movies and on television that a single shot from a sidearm knocks an assailant down or out the window.
It is entirely another matter, of course, to question the decision to shoot.
QUESTION is an active word…use it or lose it?
The arrest of C Lollie in St Paul probably has happened more often lately than ever recorded. But the haunting picture is that no citizen walking by did not speak up or follow the cops and Lollie to its destination; cop car etc?
At the time not after the fact; when no one speaks out and sees injustice and avoid what was obviously more than a bad scenario acted out by two police exhibiting bad policy toward a citizen , for what reason?.
Sounds like abuse of authority to this reader and I do wonder where are we going here too quickly without questioning the police actions who acted out of some hidden hate or fear? Are not those actions labeled clearly… abuse of power?
…and NO ONE SPOKE UP at the time?
These are the most ‘unacceptable’ icons of a society afraid to speak out or at least to question ,” What is happening here officer?”
Whatever lulls a society to complacency …or even the poor excuse, out of fear failing to question an officer, something is lost already in a free society?
Can you be picked up by street police for not giving out your name in a public place but being arrested for the right of silence?
Has it come to this…”name,rank, and serial number”; and where does that root phrase have its origins if not in a society that reflects a military stance? Do we want to go there and not question always?
Talking to police
A number of states have “stop and identify” laws, meaning that you have to give your name and sometimes your ID to police if asked. Minnesota is one of the states that does not have such a law. Lollie was not under any legal obligation to give his name to the police. He understood the law. The police, and sadly, the St. Paul police chief, do not understand or do not care about the law.
Dave Titus, the city’s Police Federation president, had this to say:
“These three cops in the skyway, you couldn’t get nicer individuals. This guy was acting like a jerk.”
Apparently waiting for your kids to get out of school and exercizing your constitutional rights is acting like a jerk. And enough to get you arrested in St. Paul.
School correction
The two deceased jihadis were students at Robbinsdale Cooper High School. Robbinsdale High School closed in 1982.
I’m at the Age Where It’s Likely
an angioplasty catheter, pacemaker or other high-tech medical device may be in my future.
You can be sure that I’ll be doing everything in my power to make sure that those products do NOT come from Medtronic, should that need arise,…
since every product Medtronic produces can also be had from other, equally-capable companies.