State Representative David Bly, MN District 25B

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]