Posts in Minneapolis Issues Forum

7/20/08 Headlines: Art with your coffee; School gardens; Food and ethanol; Complaining about cops From: Mary Turck Date: Jul 19 23:04 UTC Short link

SUNDAY, July 20



HEADLINES



Want some art with your coffee?

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/11983

by Sheila Regan, TC Daily Planet

One day you may find yourself sipping your triple low-fat half-caf
espresso with a shot of hazelnut and dollop of whipped cream.  You'll
be typing away at your laptop and you'll look up and there on the wall
will be a painting that will catch your eye.  You'll stand up,
appreciating the gem that was there all along, but that you never
noticed before, and you'll decide it would go perfectly in your living
room.  So you'll inquire of the barista, after you bus your dishes,
and you'll arrange to purchase the painting.



  The case for community gardens

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12801

by Clara Peterson, Minnesota 2020

The garden at Loring School is an example of one of those few communal
community gardens.  Its story begins with a program called Kid's Cook,
an optional after-school cooking class that volunteers Robin Krause,
Starla Krause and Susan Telleen started teaching five years ago at
Loring Elementary School in Minneapolis.  Eager to help students
understand and appreciate the origins of food in this age of pre-
packaged, processed meals, they focused on the basics of home cooking
from scratch.  Children learned how to cook a chicken, roast
vegetables, bake bread, and make a variety of healthy foods like
vegetable stock for soup and curry.



Leaked food price report pushes ethanol debate

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12890

by Clarise Tushie-Lessard, Minnesota Daily

The University has done controversial studies on ethanol in the past,
but a World Bank report leaked in early July pressed the debate even
further.



  Complaints against cops frustrating but necessary

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12785

by Joel Grostephan, Mshale

Although it may take years for complaints against Minneapolis police
officers to be resolved, and only a few result in any disciplinary
action or victim compensation, city officials and civil rights
activists encourage immigrants to file formal complaints.



INSIDE THE DAILY PLANET



Natural-born leader

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12777

by Pam Taylor, Minnesota Women's Press

When Nancy Hone was 16 years old, her speech teacher asked the class a
question that changed her life. The shy teenager shocked even herself
as she shot her hand high in the air after being asked who would one
day be famous. Only two students raised their hands and she couldn't
believe she had the confidence to be one of them.



Readers, Writers and Books



Summer reads

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12774

by Glenda Martin, Minnesota Women's Press

Do you have a definition for "summer reading"? Some seem to suggest it
is a quick, pulls-you-in, you-can't-put-it-down read. Others might
indicate it's the time of year when a favorite author's novel or a
current 2008 book is waiting to be picked up for a relaxed read.



Book note: Wang Ping spans cultural chasm with <i>Last Communist
Virgin</i>

http://tcdailyplanet.net/node/12620

by Dwight Hobbes, TC Daily Planet

To span the cultural chasm between China and the U.S., Wang Ping
invokes a universal premise: lives unsettled by change and souls
determined to find harmony in an unstable world.



NEW IN BLOGS



What? Wasn't Phil Gramm available yet?

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12894

by Rich Broderick, July 19, 2008  Had to chuckle at the news that
Eric Schultz, former national spokesperson for the 2008 John Edwards
primary campaign, and a state communication director for the 2004
Kerry Presidential run, has decided  after what is described as
intensive lobbying by DNC mandarins  to swoop into Minnesota and help
rescue Al Frankens Senate campaign,  officially labeled by the
Washington Post a couple of days ago as foundering



Loni Anderson to be immortalized on Hennepin

http://tcdailyplanet.net/node/12881

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet

Hennepin Avenue will soon be home to our very own Walk of Fame,
wherein artist-designed terrazo plaques will remind downtown
denizens of the several Minnesotans who have gone on to achieve at
least a middling level of national name recognition. Loni Anderson
isnt even the first to be honored! She may be a former Miss
Roseville, but she still has to wait her turn behind Albert Leas
Marion Ross (Ritchies mom on <i>Happy Days</i>, and the voice of
SpongeBobs grandmother) and New Ulms Tippi Hedren, the <i>Birds</i>
star turned animal rescuer.



  And a Feliz Party to You Too

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/node/12697

by Daniel Cubias, 6/28/08  Youre no doubt familiar with this phrase.
Many times, Ive walked into a celebration and been greeted with the
shout Happy party! Happy party! And then everybody hugs.



Fringe top 10#2: No Refunds Theatre Co.

http://tcdailyplanet.net/node/12882

by Matthew A. Everett, TC Daily Planet

Im coming late to this party. After all, No Refunds Theatre already
had quite a following for its Fringe hit Kung Fu Hamlet. And they
amused the hell out of me at last years Fringe fundraiser, Five
Fifths of The Wizard of Oz. But after seeing two really great No
Refunds productions in less than six months (Sun Tzus The Art of War,
and Whats Done In The Dark), I am a convert.
    

Neither Democrat nor Republican From: Michael Cavlan Date: Jul 19 16:51 UTC Short link

Second Attempt to Post

Minneapolis Specific comment.

Bill, I obviously agree with what you say.

The obvious gerrymandering of Dean Zimmermannn and Natalie Johnson-Lee and
then the obvious set up of Dean Zimmermann was and still is, one of the
most shameful moments in Minneapolis political history.

If we had a paper that was worth a damn, these issues would have been
addressed.

However, the Start Tribune has proven to be the corporate friendly piece of
garbage
that many os us progressives have charged for decades.

Which is why it is a Democratic Party mouthpiece. With the credibility of say,
Cable
Fox News. Or indeed Air America radio.

Thank you Bill, you have given myself and others someone to vote for.

Jussie Ventura was right about what he said on Larry King. It is staged. The
entire
political process. The sooner people wake up to that reality, the sooner we can
start
to take our country and democracy back.

From the corporate crooks who have stolen it and corrupted the media to the
extent
that it is.


Good luck and give them hell.


Michael Cavlan
Powderhorn
    

Minneapolis Annexation history From: John Wilson Date: Jul 19 15:33 UTC Short link

Two questions re: annexation history:

1) What was the motive behind the 1985 annexation of that tiny piece in the
northwest corner? Wasn't it part of Brooklyn Center or Robbinsdale? Didn't they
object?

2) Some modern-day maps show the part of the 1922 annexed area that is Airport
property as being outside the city limits. Was it ever actually "de-annexed" or
is it just shown that way because as a practical matter the Airport is a
seperate entity?
    

Historic House Tours today From: Joan Berthiaume Date: Jul 19 06:01 UTC Short link

Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society will give free interpretive tours of the
THEODORE WIRTH HOME AND ADMINISTRATION BUILDING NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE


Saturday, July 19, 2008, 3954 Bryant Avenue South, Lyndale Farmstead Park,
Minneapolis, 55410

Program at Noon, followed by free tours until 4PM

. THEODORE J. WIRTH, FASLA, will welcome you at his Grandfather’s historic
home and offices.

FIND OUT why the park board built this home for Theodore Wirth and his
family.

HEAR stories and VIEW historic photographs to see how the Wirth family
lived.

SEE the offices where Theodore Wirth’s designed the Minneapolis Park System.

LEARN how Wirth exercised his genius to design and develop the Minneapolis
Park System

to become the Best Park System in the Nation.

VISIT Lakewood Cemetery and the Wirth family’s gravesites, within view of
the Wirth House.

FIND OUT why the Wirth family became known as ---

AMERICA’S FIRST FAMILY of PARKS for THREE GENERATIONS.

See you at the park!

Ted Wirth and Joan Berthiaume, cofounders

Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society
    

Join us in the Aquatennial Torch Light Parade From: Barb Lickness Date: Jul 19 01:44 UTC Short link

As part of the City of Minneapolis Sesquicentennial Celebration, NRP is hosting
a float in the Aquatennial Torch Light Parade next Wednesday July 23rd. You are
invited to join with us and march in the parade. Our float (graciously loaned
to us by the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood) is a model Mississippi River paddle
boat. (After extensive renovations it is very cute if I may say so myself) The
theme of our contingent is "Jazzin' up Minneapolis Neighborhoods".

NRP will host a "tailgating" party in our parking lot at 2nd Street South and
5th Avenue So. (kitty corner from the new McPhail School of Music and across
the street from the Depot) beginning at 5:00 p.m. We will shuttle people from
that site to the parade line-up site on Dunwoody Avenue (by the Walker Art
Center) Parking by the parade site will be limited and difficult so if you
can't make the tailgate try to walk or bus it there. Please try to be there by
7:00 p.m. The parade starts moving promptly at 8:30 p.m. No children under 10
are allowed to march in the parade. No pets.

Please wear your neighborhood t-shirt or carry a neighborhood sign. We will
have "Jazzin' up Minneapolis Neighborhoods" t-shirts available at both the
tailgating site and the parade site. When they are gone, they are gone so if
you really want one show up early.

Please let me know if you plan on marching with us or have physical challenges
that prevent you from walking and want to be on the float. e-mail me or call me
at 673-5216.

There will be music that will move the crowd as we walk down Hennepin. It's
going to be fun. Don't miss it. We have a special surprise!!! I found the song
"Minneapolis" that I was looking for and found a second song about Minneapolis
as well. Both are VERY COOL! The library nor the Hennepin County Museum have
these songs. (but they will now) It was a fun adventure looking for them. If
you don't want to be in the parade come and watch and celebrate 150 years in
the greatest City on the planet!



        hasEML = false;
    

Jon Olson running for 58A From: Justin C. Adams Date: Jul 18 21:17 UTC Short link

I too would have preferred Peggy, and remain very sad about the circumstances
which led to her withdrawal from this race.

That said, I think commissioner Olson could mount a significant challenge.  He
has difficulties to overcome, but the people in this district deserve someone
who will return emails and phone calls, who will stand up for residents rather
than special-interest "constituencies", and who will use their committee
assignments to get progressive/liberal results rather than using them to block
any potentially controversial bills.  My more complete opinion on this subject
is available at mnblue.com <a href=http://mnblue.com/blog/259>here</a>.

I will be very interested to see issue statements and, well, his website in
general, once the commissioner gets it up and running.
    

Why fewer MPS students, less revenue? From: Doug Mann Date: Jul 18 19:32 UTC Short link

In a message dated 7/13/2008 11:21:36 PM Central Daylight Time,
 writes:

> The biggest reason for the exodus [of Hmong students] was because of bus
rides.
>
> Like other Minneapolis high schools, North high had a two mile exclusion
> zone: you had to live more than two miles away from North High to
> qualify for a bus ride.  Most Hmong Thai students had to walk, many
> almost two miles.
>
> The Hmong Thai were very worried for their safety.  A Hmong girl had
> been murdered and stuffed into a van while on her way to school.  Many
> students had to walk past known drug houses.  Many Hmong Thai had to
> walk across Broadway, a favorite route for morning commuters to find
> prostitutes before heading into the office.  Hmong Thai girls were
> propositioned.

While canvassing the North Side as a school board candidate,
many parents voiced concerns about safety, and wanted their
children to take a bus to their designated neighborhood school,
but the district no longer provided bus service.

In the school board candidates forum at Washburn High School
in 2002 I spoke out against the cuts in bus service, warning that
this would do the district more harm than good financial because
many parents would try to enroll their children in schools where
bus service was offered, including charter schools.

David Jennings, superintendent in 2003-2004, presented the
outline of a plan to charterize a large part of the public school
system. The district would get out of the business of running
schools, with the possible exception of the SW area public
schools and high performing public schools in other areas of
the city. Students leaving the public schools would be enrolled
in charter schools, and the district could lease out its empty
school buildings to the charter schools.

Charterization of much of the public school system along the
lines recommended by David Jennings appears to be a
strategic goal of the board.  The last round of school closings
on the North Side left the remaining school buildings with
too little classroom space. This past year most of the district's
schools on the North Side were reportedly overenrolled. Actual
enrollment was much higher than had been predicted. And some
parents were reportedly encouraged to enroll their children in
charter schools.

Why did the issue of teacher-turnover get no attention in the
district's new strategic plan? The goal of bringing teacher-turnover down to
low levels in all schools was part of the district improvement plan
adopted in 2002, though that plan lacked baseline data, interventions,
and measurable goals and timetables related to cutting teacher turnover
rates. However, district research and experience with North Star and
Hall elementary schools indicates that cutting teacher turnover rates would
help to improve the quality of instruction.

-Doug Mann, Minneapolis School Board candidate, King Field neighborhood
    

Neither Democrat nor Republican From: Bill McGaughey Date: Jul 18 16:42 UTC Short link

Thanks, Michael Cavlan, for your comments.  The Greens are rather unique among
parties in leading with a focused vision of the future. Our democracy would be
improved if ballot access for all political parties were eased and instant
runoff voting were adopted so that supporters of the Democratic and Republican
parties could not use the “spoiler” argument to squelch candidacies from
other parties. They offer the voters stones for bread and then complain that we
are stealing their votes.

In the early ‘90s, I had the privilege of submitting articles on
international trade to a national Green Party publication,
Synthesis/Regeneration.  One, titled “A Labor and Environmentally Oriented
Trading System” appeared in the spring 1993 issue of that publication; the
other, “A Search for Trade Standards to Protect Labor and the Environment”,
appeared in the winter of 1996.  Today, the concepts developed in those
articles are the heart of the program that I am proposing as a Congressional
candidate.

Locally I was involved with a group of landlords called Minneapolis Property
Rights Action Committee which played a part in the Greens’ amazing victories
in two Minneapolis City Council races in 2001:  Natalie Johnson Lee’s victory
in the 5th ward and Dean Zimmermann’s victory in the 6th ward. To date, these
two elections represent a high water mark in my experience of citizen activism
going up against an entrenched structure of political power in what is
basically a one-party town.

The Independence Party has a rather different focus.  It began in Ross
Perot’s presidential campaign in 1992 and the subsequent organization of the
Reform Party.  In my views, the Perot campaign consisted of three issues:  (1)
opposition to perpetual federal budget deficits, (2) opposition to NAFTA with
its “giant sucking sound” of jobs going south, and (3) sympathy for the
forgotten victims and veterans of the Vietnam war.  As the Reform Party changed
into the Independence Party, it dropped its opposition to free trade. I would
say it lost its focus.  Instead, it has adopted a platform consisting of 70
plus planks which individually are commendable but collectively amount to a
blur.  I want to narrow the focus so that, in this campaign at least, voters
have a clear idea of what I stand for as an Independence Party candidate.

If the Republican Party were what it was 50 or 60 years ago, I might belong to
that party:  a bunch of “old fogeys” who believed in balanced budgets, free
markets and business promotion, and “isolationism” (which I would call
“minding your own business” internationally) while also producing reformers
like Theodore Roosevelt and visionaries like Harold Stassen, one of the persons
most responsible for the creation of the United Nations.  I would gladly accept
a president such as Dwight Eisenhower who liked to play golf when he might have
been shuffling through papers in the Oval office or Calvin Coolidge who in the
summer of 1928 took an entire month off to go fishing in northern Wisconsin -
provided that the country was prosperous and peaceful.

Instead, the years of the Bush-Cheney administration have been pure hell.
Whether it’s the disastrous Iraq war, the neglect of our veterans, the
foreclosure crisis, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the $900
billion budget deficit and the $700 billion trade deficit, the costly
prescription-drug benefit, the “no child left behind” program, the torture
policies and violations of civil liberties, the lucrative no-bid contracts in
Iraq, etc. etc., it seems that everything Bush has touched has turned to ashes.
You know something is seriously wrong with this Republican presidency when
Julie Nixon Eisenhower contributes thousands of dollars to Barack Obama’s
campaign.

I continue to support free markets and economies regulated primarily by the law
of supply and demand.  At the same time, government needs to regulate the
economy by impartial laws.  As economic growth butts up against finite natural
resources, government needs to intervene in the free market by giving tax
incentives and subsidies to support renewable energy while imposing an
additional tax burden on consumption of petroleum and other nonrenewable
resources.  If the government can get its act together, this would be the time
to push wind and solar energy and invest in battery technologies and
people-moving systems of public transportation in congested urban areas.

As a party which supposedly believes in the free-market economy, the current
Republican administration was run by three individuals who got rich through
their contacts with government rather than through honest free-market
competition:  Bush himself who sold his interest in the Texas Rangers at a huge
profit after getting the Texas legislature to build that baseball team a new
stadium; Dick Cheney, formerly of Halliburton, who led the charge on the
wasteful privatization of U.S. military operations in Iraq; and Donald
Rumsfeld, who became CEO of the Searle drug company by virtue of his ability to
convince the FDA to approve its medications.  This is corrupt capitalism.  As
a pro-capitalist party, the Republicans need to come to grips with who they
have actually become.

If the Democrats were an effective “loyal opposition”, they would be
aggressively challenging all this in Congress instead of complaining that Ralph
Nader or someone else was on the ballot stealing their issues.  When I listen
to the nominating conventions of the Green Party or the Libertarians, I hear
earnest proposals for government being discussed and not just vague references
to “health care”, “transportation”, or “education”, as if that
covers it.  So, standing on the back of past Independence Party candidates such
as Tim Penny and Peter Hutchinson who exceeded the 5% vote requirement, I’m
proud to be someone out there in the political wilderness running for Congress
at a time when our country desperately needs to change its politics.
    

KIPP: a party to end all parties From: Dan McGuire Date: Jul 18 13:52 UTC Short link

I'm going to jump on this band wagon with Kersten and CM Samuels even
though I'm somewhat dubious of his standing as a " good Democrat" who
"stands in stultified, singular loyalty to the current public school
solution" or that he has "actually fully paid obeisance to the stiffly
drawn lines of party politics."
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/letters/25596404.html?page=2&c=y No
matter that, CM Samuels, lets have the party begin.  Why don't we just
insist that the MPS put all African American kids in schools that are
comprised of  all African America kids and are run by idealistic twenty
something white folks,: and have the schools run from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM
and Saturday mornings, too (that solves a lot of day care issues); and
make sure that the teachers all have cell phones instead of the
antiquated voice system the MPS is currently using; and insist that
discipline be enforced strictly; and minimize the curriculum offerings
to the very basic; and provide door to door bus service for all kids at
these schools.  We'll leave the ELL kids, the special kids, all but 3%
of the white kids, and those requiring any other special services to the
"current public school solution."  Oh yeah, and let's not forget to
funnel any extra money that comes in over the transom from conservative
union busting corporate sources directly to the schools and not bother
with that wasteful district administration. Sounds like a great plan to
keep our tax dollars where they ought to be. Let's not bother to wait to
see if KIPP can actually produce the results that their advertising
campaign claims.  Let's not bother to examine independently their
results and practices-we've got lots of idealistic twenty something
white folks to churn through the KIPP system and we won't need to bother
with pesky retirement packages for them and we can keep benefits to a
minimum because they are twenty somethings.  The MPS can give KIPP a
break on the rent because it has so many unused buildings; that's a real
win-win.

And then,  after a year or two, we will be able to market our segregated
quasi public school system to other markets, kind of like the convention
and visitors software system.  Let the party begin.
    

Problem w/ Mpls' TJ Waconia 'seizures' ? From: cheryl luger Date: Jul 18 05:44 UTC Short link

Sorry, Michael....

Michael's article, Terry's Mirror post.

best wishes,
cheryl luger
nokomis east