In the Sioux Falls Argus Leader Trent Abrego and Trevor Mitchell report, “A Dakota News Now reporter has been fired, following his arrest in connection with charges alleging he made a prank phone call to the former chair of the South Dakota Republican Party using Gov. Kristi Noem’s personal cell phone number, according to court documents. The Stanley County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that Austin Goss, the capitol bureau reporter for Dakota News Now, had been arrested Thursday morning and released on a personal recognizance bond. Dakota News Now and KOTA Territory News, which employed Goss, issued a joint statement at about 3:30 p.m. Thursday, which announced the termination of the reporter.”
For Billboard, Rania Aniftos reports, “Pop’s Queen of Flute has met her King of Flute! Lizzo took to Instagram on Wednesday to share a video playing alongside Irish virtuoso flute player and her longtime idol James Galway, whom she got to duet with for guests at the Met Gala earlier this week.”
At KARE-TV Lou Raguse says, “Just one week after the conditions of his release were finalized, his bail was paid by his mother and former St. Olaf College student Waylon Kurts returned to his home state of Vermont, the prosecutor is asking the judge to immediately send him back to Minnesota because his GPS monitor has no signal. Kurts is suspected of plotting a ‘mass casualty event’ at the St. Olaf campus. He was charged with terroristic threats and conspiracy to commit assault and threats of violence after a custodian found empty packages for high-capacity magazines and subsequent police searches found ammunition, extended magazines, tactical gear, hand-drawn maps and combat strategies, and more. The Vermont native comes from a high-profile family in that state. Kurts’ mother is a college professor, his uncle is a lawyer and his aunt is a judge.”
At the PiPress, Frederick Melo says, “Two sides in an escalating fight over the uncertain fate of the Hamline-Midway Library launched separate salvos on Thursday, with the city announcing a closing date this month in advance of planned demolition, and historic preservationists organizing a party on the library’s front lawn in advance of likely legal action to stop it. The St. Paul Public Library system issued a written statement Thursday indicating the library will close to the public on May 28 for decommissioning.”
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal writes, “Minnesota progressives now run all of state government, and the new majority is doing what comes natural: raise taxes, and more taxes. Their misguided plan for a worldwide tax on business earnings in particular may spawn imitators if it passes in the once business-friendly state. The tax change is part of an omnibus spending bill that Democrats hope to enact by May 22. It would extend Minnesota’s corporate income tax to profits that businesses earn overseas. Any company that owes taxes in the state would be required to report international earnings on top of its domestic taxable income. The state would then apply its 9.8% corporate income-tax rate to a combined income figure based on the company’s entire global profit. That would be a first for a U.S. state. … The prospect of this tax blunder traces to the turnover in St. Paul this January, when Democrats claimed unified control of the statehouse for the first time since 2015. Gov. Tim Walz took office in 2019 on a moderate platform, but the Trumpian turn in the state GOP has let Minnesota Democrats shift leftward. This isn’t your father’s Democratic Party.”
For inforum.com Mike McFeely writes, “A remote getaway and conference center near Park Rapids owned by one of Minnesota’s legacy corporations will soon be on the market. The 680-acre Wonewok resort complex will be sold as Twin Cities-based 3M continues to make cuts … 3M owns and operates the center, which is valued at nearly $15 million, according to Hubbard County property records.”
In The Minnesota Reformer J. Patrick Coolican writes, “I’m getting deja vu lately because I keep hearing a phrase from Minnesota Republicans that is some variation on how Democrats are ‘jamming’ this or that thing they don’t like ‘down our throats.’ Rep. Dave Baker, R-Wilmar, contrasting his own paid family and medical leave proposal to the Democrats’: ‘This is a really good deal. It’s not forcing something down someone’s throat.’ Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington: ‘There’s a lot of things happening at the Capitol with the Democrats jamming things down people’s throats, but sports gambling is not going to be one of them.’ Former Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka: ‘Minnesota Democrats jammed a liberal agenda down our throats.’ The reason I have deja vu is because President Barack Obama, who was elected convincingly twice, was also accused of jamming this or that thing down someone’s gullet.”
Stribber Briana Bierschbach writes, “School buildings across Minnesota might soon have to stock medication to reverse an opioid overdose as the state grapples with a spike in deaths, including among children, tied to the synthetic opioid fentanyl. A proposal tucked into state House and Senate budget bills would require schools to have two doses of naloxone, the generic version of Narcan, which can stop overdoses in people with opioids in their system. The medication is safe to use on people who aren’t overdosing.”
It isn’t your fathers Wall Street Journal either. Rag Murdoch Rag.
My Father was a Republican, but I think I know what they’re getting at.
Complaints that say that the Democratic Party isn’t what it used to be, and that assume implicitly that that is a bad thing, are based on a premise that there was an ideal spot for the Democratic Party to reach and at which to stop. The Party was fine, this line of thinking goes, when it was the liberalism of JFK or Hubert Humphrey, both of whom have been out of the picture for at least 45 years. Sure, pass Social Security and Medicare (both radical pieces of legislation for their days), repeal the laws mandating or allowing racial discrimination (also controversial back then), but that’s it. Don’t build on those successes, and certainly don’t do anything that imbues those successes with new meaning or a new dimension. While we’re at it, we might acknowledge that the people who still oppose those successful measures might have a point, and we “can see where they’re coming from.” Heaven forfend we should alienate anyone who opposes, say, racial or gender equality.
In other words, halt social, political, or economic progress. Make an arbitrary decision that justice has been reached and we need/can do nothing more. The necessary change has been accomplished.
Yes, that’s as absurd as it sounds.
Incidentally, it’s not my Father’s Republican Party, either, but that’s another matter.