CLEAN WATER PARTNERSHIP GRANTS
Jul 22, 2009 Environment, News
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has several grant programs for water quality. New funding from the Clean Water portion of the Constitutional amendment is also available. MPCA has issued the notice for these grants. Information is available at their website; applications are due by September 18, 2009. This is the information at the home page for that web site:
Financial Assistance for Nonpoint Source Water Pollution Projects:
Clean Water Partnership, Clean Water Legacy and Section 319 Programs
Small Business Health-insurance Dilemma
Jul 21, 2009 Economy, Health Care, News
This morning I participated along with Sen. John Marty in a press conference focusing on a study by US PIRG on the dilemma small businesses find themselves in finding access to health care for their employees.
We stood outside Tracy Singleton’s Birchwood Café in Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, and visited with her, John Kolstad of the Metro Independent Business Alliance and John Stewart of US PIRG. Stewart read from the report and the rest of us responded and talked about the Minnesota Health Plan and our efforts to pass it in the House and Senate.
Reporter Casey Selix from MinnPost published the following story about the event:
U.S. PIRG offers ‘human snapshot’ of small businesses’ health-insurance dilemma
When Tracy Singleton opened the Birchwood Café 14 years ago, she was able to offer health insurance to all full-time and part-time employees. Today, she can only afford to offer coverage to full-time workers at the organic eatery.
“Every year, the costs kept going up, going up, going up — double digits like 22 percent; 26 percent was the highest,” Singleton said today at a press conference in front of her café in Minneapolis’ Seward neighborhood. “What that means is that every year you have to spend a whole lot of time shopping around to find the most-affordable health care plan for my employees. And what that means is that I’m trying to mitigate the cost to them because I can only pay 50 percent. … To mitigate the cost to them means we have to lower the actual plan they’re getting. So, they’re getting these high-deductible plans with not very much benefit.”
To read the rest of the article and read the report in a pdf file click (here)
Modern Myths and Fables: Are Taxes Really as Bad as They Say?
Dane Smith writes about a new book by a Minnesotan that debunks the proposition that the more money we keep away from government, the freer we are.
“If freedom varies with the portion of our income we keep,” Handelman observes in the book, “then we were freer in 1900.
“Yet most of us, I suspect, would prefer the freedom we had in 2000 … The capacity to exercise choice is an important part of our freedom and there is no question that the number and quality of choices increased over the century … (And) that growth would not have been possible without significant investments in the public sector.”
Here is Dane’s article:
Smith: If taxes are bad for us, then how did we get so healthy, wealthy and wise?
By Dane Smith, Guest Commentary
July 9, 2009
Here’s a tax-and-budget Question for the Century, as we brace ourselves in Minnesota this summer for continued cuts to our state and local governments, all in the holy cause of not raising state income taxes ever again under any circumstances whatsoever.
Answer this: If government and taxes are so bad for growth and general prosperity, why did we grow so much and get so generally prosperous over the last century, a period during which government and taxes grew exponentially – especially in Minnesota?” (Read More)
I came across this article reading Charlie Quimby’s blog, “Across the Great Divide” where he writes about what’s happening from the ground level. I first met Charlie in the early ’70s when he was a student at Carleton College. I was a few years younger and a student at St. Olaf but we had mutual friends. I enjoy Charlie’s insights and his perspective, in the same blog entry he mentioned Smith’s article he made reference to this article as well:
Small Business, Big Fable
By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, July 8, 2009One of the most enduring lies in American politics is the myth of small-business job creation.
You probably know it by heart: Small businesses create 60, 70, even 80 percent of all the new jobs in the United States.
Back in the 1980s, I was a senior editor at Inc. magazine, where I worked on some of the articles in which some of the seeds of this myth were planted. Up to that point, there was a widespread tendency to conflate the success of the economy with the fortunes of big business, so it was rather useful to have some data highlighting the importance of small firms.
By now, however, that analysis of net job creation has been repeated and embellished and oversimplified by so many lobbyists and politicians that it is only a matter of time before the magic number swells to 100 percent of job creation and small businesses will be demanding to be exempted from all taxes, all regulation and the Ten Commandments.
This is not the time or place for a long statistical explanation. Suffice it to say that, in terms of new job creation, the data show that most of it happens in a small number of very fast-growing companies that are no longer what most of us would consider small. There are lots of reasons for the success of these fast-growing firms, among them the ingenuity and hard work of their founders, the availability of capital and a culture that celebrates risk-taking. (Read more)
What does the future hold?
We must secure for our children and grandchildren a recovery that lays the foundation for a good and prosperous life and not a mountain of debt placed at their feet by the misbehavior of others.
I want schools that work, a transportation system that can deliver the goods, a health care system that values people more than profit, and a world we will want to live and grow in and jobs that can support a family in a healthy economy. We have a lot of work to do and we have learned policies that do not reflect an understanding that the cost of a good society must be met with proper investments or we are doomed to fail.
Increased job losses and home foreclosures are not positive signs of hope. This is why I think we need a different approach. An amendment to our constitution to protect our middle class society would go a long way toward assuring the kind of recovery we need. A recovery that would make sure local economies can once again be strong and vibrant.
This is exactly what my project organized to save the middle class attempts to do.
You can join my facebook group too to help spread the word.
We need a new way to look at our country and our economy to bring us back to that time when we all had opportunity and the potential to improve our lives.
The middle class amendment would put the people first. For too long we have been governed by the notion that profits at the top would trickle down to the rest of us. But as we have seen this does not happen and instead of restoring commitments made to workers we are seeing those promises broken by the need to rebuild the old wealth structure. We see a retreat from the very investments we need to maintain our equal opportunity society. Transportation, education, health care etc. all the things we need to sustain our middle class.
My amendment project is about securing a recovery that benefits everyone and ultimately strengthens our democracy and our future by laying out a roadmap for recovery. I discovered a similar sentiment in a recent blog entry.
Robert Reich in his blog wonders “When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.”
The so-called “green shoots” of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the “V” shape . . . (Read more)
July economic update: Revenues below forecast again
FISCAL YEAR ENDED DOWN $150 MILLION
Commissioner Tom Hanson provided the July 2009 Economic Update. Here are pdf files of July 09 and July 08 by clicking on the dates. You can compare if you wish. We don’t know what this means down the road for our future but clearly this recession is not over though it may be slowing. Visit the website for more info.
update-july09.pdf
update-july08.pdf
FY09 collections 8 percent below a year ago
Coming Dark Age?
Jul 14, 2009 Economy, Middle Class Amendment, News
In her 2004 book “Dark Age Ahead” urban economist Jane Jacobs, describes the decay of five key “pillars” in the U.S. and Canada. She argues that this decay threatens to create a dark age unless the trends are reversed. Jacobs characterizes a dark age as a “mass amnesia” where even the memory of what was lost is lost. The way Thorstein Veblen talks about the loss of industrial knowledge disappearing when a society loses its manufacturing base. He thought one could lose the tools but if you lose the knowledge of how to use the tools you have lost the ability to produce. This is what has happened when Walmart and the wealthy elite of our country shipped manufacturing overseas.
The pillars Jacobs lists as threatened are: 1) community and family, 2) higher education, 3) science and technology, 4) taxes and government responsive to citizen’s needs, 5) self-policing by the learned professions. Although, these pillars do not match up directly with what I have described as the five building blocks of a middle class society, she describes in convincing detail what a society is like that can’t deliver what it needs to survive. She quotes Jared Diamond’s work on cultural survival and makes the case that without proper investment in the very things that cultures need they will decline and fall into decay. She describes the loneliness and desperation of families that are over worked and unsupported by the loss of community and neighborhoods that have a cohesiveness and care. Schools, cities and communities are stretched too thin and don’t have the resources to provide for parents and their children.
A reviewer summarizes her thoughts:
Community and Family
People are increasingly choosing consumerism over family welfare, that is: consumption over fertility; debt over family budget discipline; fiscal advantage to oneself at the expense of community welfare.
Higher Education
Universities are more interested in credentials than providing high quality education.
Bad Science
Elevation of economics as the main “science” to consider in making major political decisions.
Bad Government
Governments are more interested in deep-pocket interest groups than the welfare of the population.
Bad Culture
A culture that prevents people from understanding/realising the deterioration of fundamental physical resources which the entire community depends on.
This I fear is where we are headed unless we can figure out how to bring about a recovery that will benefit all of us and not just those at the top of the income scale. We have been on a twenty year path of divesting ourselves from the things that truly support our survival as a democracy. I believe if we achieve a recovery that does not address the concerns that Jane Jacobs mentions we will have no recovery. How can we call it a recovery if Wall Street is swimming in the black again and yet wages are low and the economy stagnant? How can we call it a recovery if we get things moving and do so at the expense of our environment or health because we have taken a short cut and further polluted our earth? We may need some way of assuring that the recovery will be shared by all.
Perhaps we need an amendment to our constitution to assure that we all have a part in the recovery
HISTORY PROGRAMS UNDER LEGACY ACT
Jul 13, 2009 News
Here’s something from the MN Historical Society: “As we begin the implementation of history programs contained in this year’s Legacy Act appropriations, we wanted to provide you with an update on these programs, including a series of informational/input meetings, and a solicitation for Historic Resources Advisory Committee applications as called for in the legislation.
The 2009 Legislature appropriated significant funding for a variety of history programs. These important programs will continue and extend the educational benefits of learning about our past to a variety of state and local history organizations.
In order to update history organizations and citizens, as well as to gather input on implementation of Legacy programs, the MN Historical Society is organizing a series of public meetings across the state.
The history section of the Legacy Act appropriations also calls for the creation of the Historic Resources Advisory Committee to assist in setting policy for grants programs, as well as to make recommendations for grant expenditures to the Society’s Executive Council. An announcement for membership applications, which was recently published in the State Register, is attached. This announcement has been circulated to history organizations across the state, but please help us to spread the word about this important committee. The deadline for applications is July 31, 2009.”
For more information, contact: Matt Hill, Educational Outreach & Governmental Relations, Minnesota Historical Society at 651-259-3428 or by e-mail: matthew.hill@mnhs.org
EMERALD ASH BORER BULLETIN
Jul 13, 2009 News
From the Minnesota Department of Agriculture:
The link to this week’s Emerald Ash Borer Bulletin is found here. City and county officials, or, if you are in charge of an organization that would benefit from the information contained in this bulletin, please forward this email along to your staff and members.
Last week’s can be found here (pdf)
On Rebuilding Equalizing Institutions
Jul 13, 2009 Economy, Education, Middle Class Amendment, News
I’ve been reading Robert Kuttner’s “The Squandering of America” he makes a great case for why we need to transform our country to restore the middle class and our democracy. He makes it clear how the misguided policies of the last decade have cost us dearly as a nation and a people. He offers hope though, “A rebuilding of equalizing institutions could broaden American prosperity. A 
very different set of regulatory policies could once again harness capitalism for the broad public good. A new approach to trade, industry, and technology could bring America’s foreign accounts back into balance and reduce the threat to the dollar and to our living standards. A restoration of progressive taxation could restore fiscal order and substantially increase investment in people.”
He concludes the book with, “It was Bismark who said that divine providence protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. The republic has faced worse challenges, and one must be optimistic that it will survive this one. But if our society is to reclaim broadly shared prosperity, we had better revive our democracy.”
This is exactly the point of my effort to promote a Middleclass Amendment to save our middle class society, the core of our democracy. After the last thirty years of a steady retreat from the efforts of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s to bring an economic bill of rights to the American People with his New Deal we need to restore that sense of what Sen. Wellstone used refrain, “we all do better when we all do better.”
If you haven’t read my little book on the Middleclass Amendment you can read it online here
