Betsy DeVos gets a lump of coal for Christmas

Just a small lump, in context. But this is not disheartening, as far as it goes. It has been signed into law.

By contrast, the bill largely ignores the Trump administration's proposed Education Department budget, which would slash aid to the agency by about 10 percent. In fact, the spending bill continues to fund all the 29 programs the administration sought to eliminate. The spending deal also ignores Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' signature proposal, Education Freedom Scholarships, which would use federal tax credits administered by the Department of the Treasury to pay for private school costs and a host of other educational services. The Treasury Department's budget under the deal includes no mention of new funds to administer these tax credits. - Education Week

Really inflicting their agenda on our education system has never been a big priority for Trump and his crowd of almost equally despicable witlings, so DeVos doesn’t have anyone’s ear at budget time. That said, she absolutely has done a lot of (under-reported, in corporate media), damage.

House plan would give immigrant farm workers some well-deserved breaks

This would be a good thing. Though as the article points out if you go down a ways there are caveats.

Of course much of Trump’s base would hate it. But after any initial feelings of anger and betrayal, they’d just go into full, cognitively rigid denial. As they do, for example, when confronted with evidence of Republican plans to destroy earned benefits like Social Security.

As part of a compromise to allow farmers to hire year-round foreign guest workers, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to create a path to legal status for over a million undocumented farm workers, in what could be the most significant action on immigration in decades.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a sweeping, 224-page bill, passed the House by a 260-165 vote. Backed by hundreds of farm groups, and politicians on both sides of the aisle, supporters said the act would end the shadow of uncertainty and fear of deportation experienced by many field workers in the U.S. - New Food Economy

Latest big China "deal" does little for farmers

Or for anyone else. In their desperate efforts to produce some - indeed, any - kind of plausible false equivalence in the case of Trump, corporate “news” media has been pimping this as a triumph. Which is a preposterous, and pathetic, take.

The agricultural purchases required in the agreement are both vague and clearly far too small to restore even the conditions that existed before Trump’s actions sent China looking to South America and other regions to replace goods they would have previously purchased from America. In 2019, farm debt topped $416 billion—absolutely swamping the scale of Trump’s “enormous deal,” even when including non-agricultural products. 

Even as bankruptcy is up 24% in a single year, Trump is telling America’s farmers that it’s time to buy “much larger tractors” to generate all the grain required by this deal. Trump says that he expects China to buy $50 billion of U.S. agricultural products. That $50 billion figure is one that Trump has deployed before. It’s just that the date keeps shifting. And shifting. That number is imaginary, but the exploding farm debt and bankruptcies are very real. - Daily Kos

About that Trump order on "campus anti-Semitism"

I acknowledge that when I first saw something about this, it qualified as one of those “just when I thought I was inured to anything this demented, despicable, just plain sick crew might try…” This article explains some things, including how it’s not so unprecedented. And it’s well worth reading in full for other reasons as well.

Trump signed the order on Wednesday, and, in viewing the text, some Jewish leaders have said it is not significantly different than the guidelines issued by Barack Obama in 2010, which provided an expanded definition of anti-Semitism. Sam Bagenstos, a University of Michigan Law professor who worked on the same issues in President Obama’s Justice Department, told Vox, “The text of the EO is really a nothingburger that doesn’t change the law in any way. The key question will be how it is applied in practice.” The application, some fear, could “result in reclassifying campus advocacy for the Palestinians as anti-Semitism—forcing universities to either crack down on student free speech or risk losing a whole lot of federal funding.” To that end, many believe the order has nothing to do with protecting American Jews and everything to do with Israel—which is not hard to believe given that the president doesn’t actually seem to know that most Jewish people who live in the United States are not Israeli, not to mention his repeated insistence that American Jews who don’t support the country are traitors who need to be brought to heel.

The whole thing has naturally brought up a lot of talk about how, while Trump claims to love himself some Hebrews, he has a strange way of showing it, i.e. running wildly anti-Semitic campaign ads, tweeting Hillary Clinton’s face atop a pile of money next to a Star of David and the phrase, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” and claiming that a group of neo-Nazis had some “very fine people” in the mix. It’s almost as though, and we don’t want to step on any toes here, Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, a charge to which his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, says, How DARE you. - Vanity Fair 

New NAFTA apparently limps to the finish line

To be clear, New NAFTA, aka the U.S., Mexico, Canada Trade Agreement, regarding which a deal was announced yesterday, does have some improvements over the existing one.  According to the text it does, anyway. Whether, for example, new environmental and labor protections will be enforced remains to be seen.

But in other ways it’s not really any better at all. The content of this blog often reflects my interest in farm issues, and that’s where I’m going, here:

But what exactly is the win for farmers in the new USMCA? Nearly all tariffs for agriculture were removed under the original NAFTA. The International Trade Commission, which analyzes trade deals for Congress, projected that the USMCA would result in a slight net deficit for agriculture trade: meaning we would import slightly more than export. The small projected increase in agriculture exports – mostly dairy to Canada – would have no substantive effect on the ongoing, dramatic loss of small and mid-sized dairies in the Midwest.

Grading trade deals solely on the value of goods crossing the border has always obscured the real winners and losers. The original NAFTA, combined with the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 1996 Farm Bill, led to the ramping up of agricultural production and an increase in agriculture exports. It also led to an almost immediate drop in commodity crop prices and farmer income. In fact, since the original NAFTA we’ve seen the steady consolidation of agribusiness firms and of farmland ownership, the loss of hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized farms and independent ranches, and the rapid growth of large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) fueled by cheap (often below cost) feed. We now have a largely integrated North American agriculture market, where young cattle from Mexico and feeder pigs from Canada routinely cross borders to be finished here. For agriculture, NAFTA’s real winners were not countries, but global agribusiness firms like Cargill, JBS, Tyson and Smithfield that operate in all three countries. - IATP

As far as the politics goes, this isn’t going to be huge for the 2020 election. Nothing else has changed the fact that half of American adults (that is, almost twice the percentage that actually voted for him, in 2016) - including 60% of women - want Trump gone, like, yesterday, whatever it takes, and this won’t, either. We just rightfully loathe and despise the guy, as the utterly repugnant, despicable failure as a human being that he is. But I’m adding this as a politics junkie thing.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said a deal that the AFL-CIO's endorsed "could be problematic," but vowed to reserve judgement until senators got a presentation on the agreement. "I just hope he hasn't gone too far in Speaker Pelosi's direction, and the AFL-CIO's direction that he might lose some support here," he said. "My concern is that what the administration presented has now been moved demonstrably to Democrats, the direction that they wanted." - The Hill

Why is NATO still around?

I found this to be quite enlightening. I also found myself to be, by the time I got there, in full agreement with the conclusion. Which I'm quoting.

In an age where people around the world want to avoid war and to focus instead on the climate chaos that threatens future life on earth, NATO is an anachronism. It now accounts for about three-quarters of military spending and weapons dealing around the globe. Instead of preventing war, it promotes militarism, exacerbates global tensions and makes war more likely. This Cold War relic shouldn’t be reconfigured to maintain U.S. domination in Europe, or to mobilize against Russia or China, or to launch new wars in space. It should not be expanded, but disbanded. Seventy years of militarism is more than enough. - Truthdig

Another back door effort to privatize the VA

Yes, the attacks on Veterans Administration services being a public good are ongoing. Though you have to look around quite a bit, to find out about that.

The influence of health care industry interests and ideological groups like the Koch-backed Concerned Veterans for America was on full display (two weeks ago), when a hearing of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (HVAC) considered legislation to deal with the vexing problem of veteran suicide. Before, during, and after the hearing, Republicans launched a series of attacks on the integrity of the committee’s Democratic Chairman Mark Takano of California, who has dared to question a Trump administration bill that would further outsource veteran care to the private sector.

The bill, deceptively titled the Improve Well-Being for Veterans Act, would, in the name of reducing veteran suicide, fund millions in grants to a plethora of private-sector providers outside the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) networks. These providers would be tasked with conducting outreach; helping with social support and delivering outpatient mental health treatment; and potentially other types of medical care, to the highest-risk veterans. 

While not a massive privatization measure like the VA Mission Act, the Improve Act is arguably more dangerous, as it begins paying for health care services for veterans and their families in the private sector, without pre-authorization or oversight by the VHA. - The American Prospect 

Trump trade war farm bailout keeps favoring the fat cats

As is noted later in this article, substantial sums are even finding their way to city slickers who wouldn't know how to plant a petunia.

EWG today released new USDA data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that show that the biggest, richest farmers continue to get the most MFP money.

Updated information in EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database show that from Aug. 19 to Oct. 31, MFP payments were about $6 billion, bringing the total for 2018 and 2019 to $14.5 billion. Of the payments since August, the top 10 percent of recipients – the largest, most profitable industrial-scale farms in the country – got half.

Three of these farming fat cats got more than $1 million each. Forty-five got more than $500,000 each, and 514 got more than $250,000, which under the program’s rules is supposed to be the limit any single recipient can get.

The richest of the rich, the top 1 percent of recipients, received 13 percent of payments. That’s an average payment of more than $177,000. But the bottom 80 percent of recipients, including small farmers, got an average payment of $5,136. - Environmental Working Group

This article, from Mother Jones, gets into Democratic presidential candidates' positions on food and farms.

Minnesota will do its own Twin Metals review

From late last week:

Minnesota officials announced Friday that the state will conduct its own environmental review of a proposed copper-nickel mine, rather than join the federal government’s environmental assessment of the project that some say will pollute a pristine wilderness area.

The Department of Natural Resources said a separate process for preparing an environmental impact statement for the proposed Twin Metals mine near Ely will best ensure a credible and neutral review, an announcement that some project opponents said shows the state does not trust the federal government. - KTAR News

I don’t know if this is because those making the calls on this, here in Minnesota, really have serious issues with the whole Twin Metals thing. Or if they’re just looking for more cover, legal and political and whatever else. The answer to that should become apparent at some point.

Deal reached among solar players in Minnesota

Well, I suppose. Given the crap that other Big Energy interests are trying to pull, in Minnesota as elsewhere, I too should probably not be displeased. But my take is that Xcel should have been made to yield further. They can afford it.

Minnesota regulators will allow Xcel Energy to modify a calculation that would have doubled the amount the utility pays to subscribers of newly approved community solar gardens.

As a result of the change, community solar projects authorized in 2020 will likely receive credits nearly 4% higher than in 2019. The Public Utilities Commission recently approved the rate, along with a temporary fix to the “value of solar” calculation Xcel uses to pay subscribers...

The compromise drew praise.

“My impression was that it is a decent outcome for everyone,” said Isabel Ricker, senior policy associate with Fresh Energy, which publishes the Energy News Network. “The rate is going up a little bit for community solar subscribers after declining for several years, and it’s within the range of historical value of solar rates.” - Energy News Network

Trump Ag Sec tells exploited, desperate farmers to get a job

My first thought was that, even for a Trump Cabinet member, this guy really is something else. But that’s wrong. They all have this same mindset. Sec. Perdue is just more willing to be explicit about it.

Dykshorn is exactly the generation of farmer Armstrong asked Perdue about on the taxpayer-funded Sonnyside of the Street podcast: one who entered the business amid a “long, dark tunnel” of low prices. “What kind of words of encouragement do you offer?” Armstrong wondered.

“What we see happening is what farmers have done over the years—many of them have to have off-farm jobs in order to survive during this period of time,” Perdue advised. In other words: get a job. In early October, Perdue delivered a similar lecture to struggling dairy farmers at an industry expo: “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out…I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.” - Mother Jones

Someone gets slammed on Twitter for suggesting progressives need to cool it

I’m not a big Twitter person. But I do use it some. And if you follow, you will get a follow back as long as you’re not a spammer. And unless after you get that follow back you turn around and unfollow later. I do check.

Anyway, I dug this.

In turn, many who fit the description were not going to let the former president—especially a Democrat who swept to power in 2008 on the campaign promise of "hope and change"—get away with the comments without a characteristic retort. On Saturday, the hashtag #TooFarLeft was trending on Twitter.

Political operative Peter Daou, who took credit for launching the hashtag, said: "I launched the #TooFarLeft tag because I've had it with Republicans, media elites, and corporate Dems enabling fascists while denigrating those who seek economic and social justice as 'too far left.'  I'd like to ONCE hear them complain America is too far right." - Common Dreams

Minnesotans vote for school spending at near-record rates

I don’t know how much of this might have to do with a Trump backlash. Trump himself, after all, wasn’t on ballots, and except for an occasional school board race neither were candidates associated with him. But, certainly, one way of assessing the whole Trump thing is as a perverse glorification of ignorance and stupidity, happily pandered to by corporate media.

A full 88 percent of school operating levies on Minnesota ballots passed on (November 5). That’s an approval rate surpassed only in 2015, when Minnesota saw 90 percent approval.

School bond questions — in the form of property tax increases to pay for repairs or new schools — also fared well. More than 7 in 10 passed, which is the third highest rate since the MSBA began tracking school referendums in 1980. - MPR

Vultures target failing Big Coal

One apt term for this situation is "fraught." Scenarios in which, for example, asshole parasites send minimum-wage temp workers down into dangerous mines are by no means inconceivable. On the contrary, they'll do it in an attosecond, if they think they can get away with it.

For years, the coal companies operating on the high plains here were among the best known in the world: Peabody Energy Corp., Rio Tinto, Arch Coal Inc. But as the coal industry contracts, the former giants are being replaced by a different brand of mining firm: virtual unknowns...

Local mine suppliers, already burned by previous bankruptcies, are wary of extending credit to firms they do not know. State and local tax collectors face the prospect of declining tax revenues. Looming over it all is the question of whether the new companies will be able to afford hundreds of millions in reclamation costs needed to clean up some of the largest coal mines in America.

          "It tells you a lot about the coal industry right now," said Robert Godby, an economics professor who studies the industry at the University of Wyoming. "These large mining conglomerates have been replaced by what some people call vulture capitalists. They have less experience; they have less transparency. It used to be what was in minerals' interest was in Wyoming's interest. Now, given where the coal industry is, Wyoming has to be careful about protecting itself."- E & E News

Good luck dealing with the latest Keystone oil spill

You've probably seen some mention of this. This article has key details which have generally not been noted in other, namely corporate media, coverage I've seen.

When the Keystone Pipeline burst last week, half of an Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth of a particularly dirty fossil fuel spilled into wetlands in North Dakota. And the thick liquid, known as tar sands oil, will be nearly impossible to clean up.

The pipeline project started pumping back in 2010, despite opposition from farmers, indigenous groups, and environmental organizations. It carries oily sludge from the enormous tar sands fields in Alberta, Canada, across more than 2,000 miles of pristine wetlands in the Dakotas, through Nebraska to Patoka, Illinois. And now with this latest spill, some of the worst fears about it have been realized.

The company, TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, projected that the pipeline would spill just 11 times over the course of 50 years, or about once every seven years. Since it started pumping, it’s already spilled large amounts of oil four times. - Vice

Farm bankruptcies jump, thanks to Trump

I say, that title rhymes, did you notice? But this is in fact nothing to be lighthearted and clever about.

A tit-for-tat tariff dispute between the Trump administration and China has piled on pressure in an already strained Farm Belt, leaving an increasing number of growers unable to stay afloat. 

Farmers filed 580 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings between January and September, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm advocacy group in the country. That was a 24% increase from the previous year and the highest level since 2011, when there were 676 filings. 

China placed steep tariffs on US farm products last year to retaliate against punitive moves by the Trump administration, adding to challenges for farmers already faced with harsh weather conditions and low commodity prices. Those have sent exports sharply lower and made it difficult for growers to plan the next harvest. - Business Insider

Democrats bear some responsibility for the farm crisis, too

The whole system is messed up, though Trump and his allies are certainly making it worse than it's ever been. Or at least since the era of wholly unregulated exploitation, leading up to the Dust Bowl days.

In recent years, consolidated agribusinesses have translated their rising profits into formidable political power. They have successfully weakened or killed many measures that would have limited their control over farmers’ lives and livelihoods, including fighting laws that would give farmers the right to repair their own equipment, something that overzealous copyright protections have prevented them from doing. When these and other nasty practices get too much attention, Big Ag wields its considerable weight to silence critics, whether that means getting a newspaper cartoonist fired or suing the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to close a public comment period on a proposed merger.

Over the past few decades, Democrats have too often either supported the policies that got us here, or fallen short in resisting them. - AlterNet

SCOTUS taking up CFPB case is not what you may have feared

Anyway, it’s certainly not what I feared, when I first saw the headlines.

Nerves frayed among progressive judiciary watchers on Friday afternoon as the Supreme Court announced plans to take up Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This case will decide whether the bureau’s leadership structure, in which a single director can only be removed by the president for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” is constitutional...

Everyone expects that the Court will follow Kavanaugh’s lead from 2016, and will grant the president the power to fire the CFPB director for any reason. But this could be a very positive step in the current context. It would mean that an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders (or likely any Democratic) administration wouldn’t be stuck with anti-regulatory director Kathy Kraninger in place until December 2023. - The American Prospect

Concerns that the radical-right brigade on SCOTUS might take this as an opportunity to quash the CFPB, and even Dodd-Frank, entirely, are addressed later in the article.

Following the money in "border control"

One of the few Latin phrases in my long-term memory is Cui bono, which can be translated as "Who profits?" Of course what's going on now isn't all about money, by any means, but it's an aspect of it that corporate "news" media certainly doesn't dwell on. And the trend started well before Trump, though his administration has brought things to a horrifically degraded extreme.

The report begins by tracing the history of border control and militarization. It shows how US budgets for border and immigration control massively increased from the mid-1980s, a trend that has been accelerating ever since. These budgets rose from $350m in 1980 (then run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)) to $1.2 billion in 1990; $10.2 billion in 2005 and $23.7 billion in 2018 (under two agencies, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)). In other words, budgets have more than doubled in the last 13 years and increased by more than 6000% since 1980. This growth was matched by a similar growth in border patrol from 4,000 agents in 1994 to 21,000 today. Under its parent CBP agency (which includes an Office of Air and Marine, investigative units, and the Office of Field Operations) there are 60,000 agents, the largest federal law- enforcement agency in the United States. - tni

Greedheads foiled in effort to mess with electric vehicles in Minnesota

For now, anyway. I don't know what kind of court challenges might be available. Where do these assholes from Big Filthy Fossil Fuels get off?

Minnesota regulators on (October 7) stamped out manufacturing and petroleum groups' attempt to reverse approval of Xcel Energy's $25 million electric vehicle pilot program.

The state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved the program in July, and five large industrial groups, including oil groups Marathon Petroleum and Flint Hills Resources, filed a petition with the commission on Aug. 6 asking regulators to reconsider the decision.

Those groups argued the commission did not have authority to regulate Xcel for behind-the-meter charging and raised general ratepayer concerns. EV and clean energy stakeholders were skeptical of the groups' involvement, noting that it may be the beginning of a longer fight between oil and electric power interests as EV adoption grows. - Utility Dive

Trump starts stealth attack on seniors' health care

Corporate "news" media is of course not presenting this as it should. (If, that is, it expects to still be regarded as legitimate journalism. Maybe they really have explicitly given up on that.) If you do a search, as I did just now, you'll find, likely without the slightest trace of surprise, that they're mostly just passing along the Trumpies' bullshit claims. Here's some reality:

Watch out, older Americans and people with disabilities! President Trump just announced a plan to give corporate health insurers more control over your health care. His new executive order calls for “market-based” pricing, which would drive up costs for everyone with Medicare, eviscerate traditional Medicare, and steer more people into for-profit “Medicare Advantage” plans.

Seema Verma, the Trump appointee who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), may not have warned Trump about the slew of government audits revealing that many Medicare Advantage plans pose “an imminent and serious risk to the health of… enrollees.” They also overcharge taxpayers to the tune of $10 billion a year. - Independent Media Institute/AlterNet

Farmers seething over Trump betrayal

Seething enough to change their voting habits, in numbers big enough to make a substantial difference in 2020 and beyond? That remains to be seen. But at this time it certainly seems to be a viable hypothesis.

As the Trump administration fights political fires raging in Washington, another one is smoldering on the prairie. Farmers in the corn belt, the cluster of states centered on Iowa that produce the great bulk of corn and soybeans, supported Trump overwhelmingly in 2016, helping swing battleground states like Iowa and Wisconsin. But now many of them are furious, because the administration has been messing with one of the pillars of the region’s economy: the government-created market for corn-based ethanol. And that’s on top of a long-running trade war with China that has cut demand for the region’s two other main farm products, soybeans and pork. - Mother Jones 

Trump’s Ag Secretary, Sonny Perdue, told traditional, small dairy farmers, in so many words, that they’re obsolete and have no future.

Trump gang screws workers again

With the excitement over impeachment finally happening, a lot of bad things might end up, per an overused phrase, “under the radar” for a while. It would be better if that doesn’t happen.

Labor rights advocates and progressive economists slammed the Trump administration after the Department of Labor announced Tuesday a final rule on overtime pay to replace a bolder Obama-era proposal blocked by a federal court in Texas.

"While the administration may be trumpeting this rule as a good thing for workers, that is a ruse," said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). "In reality, the rule leaves behind millions of workers who would have received overtime protections under the much stronger rule, published in 2016, that Trump administration abandoned." - (Common Dreams)

A progressive president could indeed accomplish a great deal, no matter what

Closest thing I’ve seen in a while to what I’d call a “must-read.”

A president has a thicket of checks and balances to maneuver through. But America has also been passing laws for over 232 years, and buried in the U.S. Code are the raw materials for fundamental change. It doesn’t take Green Lantern’s ring to unearth these possibilities, just a president willing to use the laws already passed to their fullest potential.

The Prospect has identified 30 meaningful executive actions, all derived from authority in specific statutes, which could be implemented on Day One by a new president. These would not be executive orders, much less abuses of authority, but strategic exercise of legitimate presidential power.

Without signing a single new law, the next president can lower prescription drug prices, cancel student debt, break up the big banks, give everybody who wants one a bank account, counteract the dominance of monopoly power, protect farmers from price discrimination and unfair dealing, force divestment from fossil fuel projects, close a slew of tax loopholes, hold crooked CEOs accountable, mandate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, allow the effective legalization of marijuana, make it easier for 800,000 workers to join a union, and much, much more. We have compiled a series of essays to explain precisely how, and under what authority, the next president can accomplish all this. - David Dayen/The American Prospect

35K Minnesotans may face added food insecurity, thanks to Trump and his party

Hopefully every one of them who is eligible will get out and vote, not only against Trump himself (if he’s still running by Election Day) but anyone and everyone from the Party of Trump. Plenty are rural residents whose votes could make the difference in close state legislative races.

If the option is available, voting for progressives (as opposed to corporate DFLers) in primaries would also kick butt.

More than 35,000 Minnesotans could lose federal food stamp benefits under a proposed Trump administration rule change that would leave more people hungry in the state, Minnesota officials say.

Some 18,000 children in Minnesota would be affected, according to the Department of Human Services. A public comment period on the proposal ends Monday and interested people can submit their comments online through the Federal Register. - MPR

MN-08: Rep. Stauber supports ripping off military families for Trump's wall

From a few days ago.

Congressman Pete Stauber might have appeared caught in the middle of national reporting last week that the White House was canceling $3.6 billion in military projects in favor of spending on the border wall with Mexico.

Married to a former command chief of the 148th Fighter Wing in Duluth, Stauber has been an avowed supporter of the military. But he was unequivocal in his approval of the diversion of military funds for the border wall in a conversation Sunday with the News Tribune.

"At West Point in New York there's $65 million intended for a new parking lot — it's now being prioritized to secure the southern border," Stauber, R-Hermantown, said. "I think that parking lot can wait. We have a crisis on our southern border." - Duluth NewsTribune

It's not about parking lots, Congressman. Get your shit together.

A number of schools and daycares that serve military families in the United States and abroad will be forced to forgo much-needed renovation and expansion to pay for the wall President Trump is determined to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Pentagon released a list this week of more than 127 Defense Department projects canceled due to the reallocation of $3.6 billion to Trump’s wall. Nearly $572 million was slated for school and daycare construction projects on military bases.

Some leaders in Congress have expressed outrage that Trump would compromise the well-being of military families to pay for the wall after Congress refused the funding. - EducationVotes

Addendum: Be sure to click and read the comment, for an explanation of what the parking lot is really about.

Greedheads skim plenty from "nonprofit" charters

The Minnesota metro has thus far escaped the worst of the charter school scandals. But the charter-industrial complex here is by no means pristine, and there’s likely more to come.

Charter schools, once the darling of politicians on the right and left, have become a hot potato in the Democratic Party 2020 presidential primary with nearly every candidate voicing some level of disapproval of the industry. A common refrain among the candidates is to express opposition to “for-profit charter schools.” Charter school proponents counter these pronouncements by pointing to industry data indicating only 12 percent of charter schools are run by overtly profit-minded entities, and that most charter schools are overseen by outfits that have a nonprofit, tax-exempt status.

But the singling out of for-profit charter schools is somewhat beside the point as residents of a St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood learned this summer when a treasured local landmark was threatened by an expanding charter school. The charter was decidedly nonprofit, but as families and preservation advocates would learn from their tenacious, but ultimately unsuccessful, battle to save a beloved, historic church, charter schools, regardless of their tax status, have become powerful players in a lucrative real estate market in urban areas where land values are high and empty lots or school-ready buildings are hard to find. - Sarah Lahm/Salon

As always when I blog stuff like this it’s not aimed at teachers and classroom staff at charters, “nonprofit” or otherwise.

Further victimizing defrauded student borrowers

Basically, a sick, demented, vicious person who is not Trump - though this move undoubtedly has his explicit approval - is abusing her power, again.

Critics condemned Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Friday for replacing Obama-era federal loan forgiveness regulations for student borrowers who claim that they were defrauded by their schools with new policies that could make it more difficult to access relief.

"On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Betsy DeVos is gleefully forcing hundreds of thousands of students defrauded by for-profit colleges to suffer yet another indignity," Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement. "Shame on her."

...Since DeVos was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to lead the Education Department in early 2017, she has "refused to follow existing law and cancel the loans for these students, leaving them in debt they can't get away from," Eileen Connor, legal director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, told the Times. "Now, she's shredding a set of fair, common-sense rules that level the playing field between students and those who take advantage of them." - Common Dreams

Big Ag, Big Oil at daggers drawn

For public view, anyway. Since the two actually have a symbiotic relationship, and ultimately the same greedheads get rich beyond the dreams of avarice from both, I imagine this will be dealt with in ways that protect the interests of both, though not of farmers. Or of the environment we all live in.

Clashes between farmers and the oil industry over biofuel policy have posed a challenge for Trump, who is counting on the support of both constituencies in next year’s presidential election.

U.S. farmers and ethanol producers have ramped up pressure on Trump over the past few weeks to quickly take steps to boost ethanol demand. The oil industry has struck back, saying such moves would increase costs for refiners and could cost manufacturing jobs. - Reuters

Star Tribune pimps deranged MN lege bigot

I’m not going to bother putting a link here; it’s right there on the front page of this morning’s print edition.

The article notes Rep. Steve Drazkowski’s (R-Mazeppa) little splinter-group nonsense, but ignores other key facts. Apparently the ridiculous image of the pitiful ignoramus gazing portentously into the distance, like some true far-seeing statesman of old, is judged more worthy of newsprint.

I was able to find an excellent old item about the real Draz. The links therein are unfortunately to a crashed website and therefore broken, but you’ll readily get the point.

Update: An absolute must-read from Developers Are Crabgrass.

Ongoing Trump vs. the VA stuff

A congressional investigation into the Mar-a-Lago trio is continuing, but it doesn’t seem to be a big priority at this time. Which I suppose in context is understandable. For now.

The more than 300 pages of emails, obtained by Freedom of Information Act request, show the outsized influence of Ike Perlmutter, Marc Sherman and Bruce Moskowitz. None of the men have ever worked for the government, nor do they have any specific expertise on the policies they were allowed to shape at one of the largest agencies in the U.S. government. Their main qualification for the unprecedented arrangement was that they were the president’s paying customers as members of Mar-a-Lago, which he continues to own and profit from in office. 

Despite misgivings, career VA employees were obligated to waste taxpayer time and resources to respond to the trio of Mar-a-Lago members—purely because of their connections to Trump. “They are coming from POTUS friend/doctor,” reads one response to a frustrated official, saying that the career official would need to “handle sensitively and with facts.” Many of the VA employees’ frustrations had to do with the trio’s intervention into a VA information technology project; the emails provide hard evidence of what was previously only reported as anonymous sources within the department in a Politico story. - CREW

Also:

Top officials of the Department of Veterans Affairs declined to step in to try to exempt veterans and their families from a new immigration rule that would make it far easier to deny green cards to low-income immigrants, according to documents obtained by ProPublica under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Department of Defense, on the other hand, worked throughout 2018 to minimize the new policy’s impact on military families. - ProPublica

Reality about Trump's farm bailout and the trade war in general

This is from an item that's a good summary of a lot of things.

But TrumpLove turns out to be highly selective, with more than half of the government payments going to the biggest farm owners. The Department of Agriculture initially announced a $125,000 limit on the amount any one farm could get, but every Trump deal seems to have a gimmick in it to give a special break to the slickest operators. The slickum in this deal is that assorted members of a family can claim to be owners of the same farm and be eligible for bailout money, even if they do no actual farming and live in New York City! Thus, one Missouri farm family got $2.8 million worth of subsidy love from Trump, and more than 80 families topped half a million in payments.

Meanwhile, the great majority of farmers — 80% of eligible grain farmers — got zilch from Donald the Dealmaker. The smaller producers who are most endangered by his export collapse got less than $5,000. So Trump’s “Market Facilitation” is squeezing the many who are most in need while helping a few of the largest get even bigger. - AlterNet

David Dayen has a take on the bigger picture regarding the “trade war.”

This extend-and-pretend scenario, where both sides act as if in a war but undertake no fundamental changes in the relationship, doesn’t give hope to workers on either side of the Pacific Ocean. As Robert Kuttner pointed out this week, years of neglect of China’s economic aggression gave the country putative bargaining leverage over the U.S. But the answer to that was not a tit-for-tat with tariffs, which were never going to break a mercantilist country with plenty of tools to minimize the pain. Only by disentangling supply chains that should never have been bound together in the first place would America—and even China—find a better path.

In the interim, that has begun to happen, although not through onshoring but through a race to the bottom to other low-wage Asian countries. In many ways, that exodus explains the yuan devaluation...

The bigger problem lurks around the corner: The United States has lost its productive capacity and internal know-how. We don’t know how to make many things anymore. This has reached epidemic proportions in the defense sector, where previously perfunctory operations like casting a submarine are now beyond U.S. capabilities. Boeing, our main aircraft maker, apparently has lost the ability to build safe planes. When you relentlessly outsource to cut costs for decades, you don’t just lose jobs, but the intelligence and know-how and muscle memory to manufacture. And in a number of industries that’s what has occurred. - The American Prospect 

Trump Ag Sec calls Minnesota farmers whiners, to their faces

It just never stops.

At a Farmfest listening session with farmers in Minnesota, (U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny) Perdue hit back at the complaints with his joke: “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.”

As he pounded the table in mirth, some of the thousands of farmers at the event laughed nervously — which was followed by boos.

“It was definitely not an appropriate thing to say,” Minnesota Farmers Union President Gary Wertish told HuffPost. “It was very insensitive. It took everyone by surprise. He doesn’t understand what farmers are dealing with, and he’s the head of the Department of Agriculture. He’s supposed to be working for farmers.” - Huffington Post

This article, from Zero Hedge, summarizes what farmers and equipment manufacturers are facing right now.

Is Gov. Walz starting to get it, on sulfide mining?

From a couple of weeks ago:

(MN Gov. Tim) Walz’s press secretary Teddy Tschann said the governor “takes these concerns seriously. The [water quality] permit is currently being reviewed in court, and he believes that process should continue.” - MPR

From a couple of days ago:

Gov. Tim Walz has urged Glencore, the Swiss mining giant that recently took a majority of shares in PolyMet, to work with unions and to add its name to numerous permits at an hour-long meeting with company officials Thursday, Aug. 8...

“There are still questions to be answered, and I made it clear that there’s not a lot of confidence in Glencore, whether that’s fair or not, that is their perception,” Walz said Thursday afternoon. - Grand Forks Herald

This is certainly welcome, but it’s far short of any indication that Gov. Walz has seen the light on sulfide mining in the state, and is prepared to do what he can to end this crap. What he’s doing now is the safest political play.

As far as getting back the state legislative seats the DFL has been losing in or near the Iron Range, that’s highly unlikely for as long as our nominees continue to be pro-sulfides corporate Dems.

MN-06: How about some real anti-Semitic stereotyping?

I think the stress of failing as NRCC chairman is really getting to someone.

A letter sent by National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Emmer that said wealthy Jews “bought” Congress has been called anti-Semitic by local Jewish leaders...

The letter by Rep. Emmer, who represents Minnesota’s Sixth District in the U.S. House, says “the news of impactful, real progress on turning our nation around was undercut by biased media and hundreds of millions of dollars of anti-Republican propaganda put out by liberal special interests, funded by deep-pocketed far-left billionaires George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.”

                    “These left-wing radicals essentially BOUGHT control of Congress for the
                    Democrats,” the letter continues. Soros and Bloomberg are Jews; and Steyer
                    had a Jewish father. - American Jewish World

Of course as far as Minnesota’s “mainstream” media is concerned, no politician’s statement is anti-Semitic unless it comes from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The facts that she is at least twice as intelligent, and probably more like a hundred times more reality-connected than Emmer, notwithstanding.

Trump never had a coherent tariff/farm plan

When Trump was just a failed "businessman," what he did didn't matter so much.

That giant cliff in Thursday’s stock market report comes down to one thing—one big thing. Donald Trump has admitted that his negotiations with China have gone nowhere, his promised deal in which China was going to buy more U.S. farm products never existed, and in a month he plans to increase the tariffs on China to cover another $300 billion worth of goods...

Meanwhile, former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn admits that the tariffs are doing more harm to the U.S. than to China. Speaking to The Independent, Cohn stated that he didn’t really think the tariffs are impacting the Chinese economy. But they are having a “dramatic impact” on American manufacturing. - Daily Kos

There has been news and discussion, though little of it in corporate "news" media, about Trump's pathological narcissistic and delusional disorders. But what gets far less attention anywhere is that the guy is just so god-damned pathetically just fucking unbelievably stupid.

The latest U.S.-China trade talks broke down after half a day.

Trump may potentially want to let dangerously unskilled people build your house

This is from an email I got from the Minnesota AFL-CIO:

The future of America's construction workers is at risk. A new federal proposal could drive down training and labor standards in registered apprenticeship programs and set off a race to the bottom throughout the industry.

In June, the Department of Labor proposed regulations to implement Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Programs (IRAPs). Unlike the Registered Apprenticeship model that Building Trades unions have used for decades, the IRAPs puts the fox in charge of the henhouse.

The new IRAP system will give private organizations, such as employers and trade associations, free rein to create new watered-down standards and certify subpar apprenticeship programs.

It’s actually a little more complicated than that. It looks like, for now, the intent is for the construction industry to be exempt from the proposed change. Emphasis on “for now.”

In any case, the public comment period is ongoing, and you can leave one, if you like, here.

Weirdness in Round 2 of Trump farm bailout

Happened yesterday:

The U.S. government will pay American farmers hurt by the trade war with China between $15 and $150 per acre in an aid package totaling $16 billion, officials said on Thursday, with farmers in the South poised to see higher rates than in the Midwest. - Reuters

The "weirdness" is political. Why would they send more to the safely red states of the South, than to the much more iffy (to say the least, for Republicans in 2020) Midwest?

Here's more information. Things are being figured differently this time around, and apparently that's what's leading to the notable geographic differences.

In other words, political calculation is not overtly the #1 factor here. What's best for corporate ag profits is. That's my inexpert take, based on what I've seen so far, anyway.

Fucking asshole from Minnesota has Trump trying to kick millions off food stamps

Revolting. Despicable. And I haven't been able to bring myself to see whether Minnesota's corporate "news" media is deifying this prick.

Three million poor people could be booted from the food stamps system under a Trump administration regulatory proposal issued Tuesday.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is aware the proposal will shrink grocery budgets for that massive share of people. It just cares more about making a conservative millionaire in Minnesota happy...

Enter Robert Undersander, a Minnesota retiree with a net worth north of $1 million. He and his wife applied for and received food stamps, intending to serve as living examples of the Republican argument that the program is systematically rotten. Had Minnesota not gotten rid of the asset-limit component of its eligibility test for SNAP, Undersander claimed, people like him never could have fleeced taxpayers.

Undersander’s story quickly went viral in conservative media circles after he published an op-ed in his local paper recounting the stunt. When Democrats convened a House Agriculture Committee hearing this June in anticipation of the kind of regulatory assault on BBCE that Perdue unveiled Tuesday morning, Undersander didn’t make the official witness list but became the star of the show anyhow, after Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) recounted the Minnesota millionaire’s story. - Think Progress

China is not loading up on U.S. farm products

Yeah, guess who got totally suckered again.

In a humiliating (July 11) statement, Trump was forced to admit that he was wrong when he promised farmers that China would soon buy large quantities of American agricultural products.

Trump was reduced to groveling, essentially begging China to start buying products from U.S. farmers.

"China is letting us down in that they have not been buying the agricultural products from our great Farmers that they said they would," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Hopefully they will start soon!" - Shareblue

Though I don't often link to Politico, this one is important: "Trump's trade wars thrust farmers into desperation loans."

Trump seems to have gotten away from targeting veterans' earned benefits, for now

- When I searched recent news for “Mar-a-Lago Trio” just now, the most recent thing there was from February, when a House committee started investigating. Whether that means that Trump really has ditched those despicable greedheads (though certainly no more despicable than himself), I don’t know.

- However, an effort at some privatization is continuing. It’s a gray area, of course - it’s hard to argue that an elderly veteran who lives six or eight hours from the nearest VA facility shouldn’t be able to go to a closer clinic or hospital, instead. But the expansion of that needs to be carefully monitored for abuse by profiteers, and additional efforts at privatization need to be crushed, and I don’t know that either will happen. Not as long as Republicans are in charge, anyway.

- A recent poll shows that a majority of veterans agree with a majority of Americans that US involvement in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria hasn't been worth it. How questions are worded means everything in polling like this, and for a majority of veterans to admit, even anonymously to a pollster, that sacrifices made by fellow military personnel, including those who were killed, weren’t worth it, is very notable.

An important step backward for Line 3, if we're lucky

Hopefully, what with one thing and another, the whole plan will plunge into a bottomless pit.

Minnesota regulators announced (July 3) that they will revisit their environmental review of the Line 3 pipeline project, rather than asking the state Supreme Court to take up the case.

Last June, the state Public Utilities Commission approved Enbridge Energy's $2.6 billion plan to replace its aging Line 3 oil pipeline across northern Minnesota.

But early last month, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the PUC's approval of the project's environmental impact statement — a review of potential impacts the pipeline might have on the surrounding environment — saying it didn't adequately address the potential impact of a spill in the Lake Superior watershed. - MPR

Also: "'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime" - The Guardian

Trump's immigration goons target Minnesota farm workers

As you would expect. It’s a good article, well worth clicking and reading in full.

Morrison County is Trump country, with the state's highest voter turnout for the president in 2016. It's also a place where local farmers rely on Hispanic immigrants for labor, and the president's national push to catch unauthorized workers is starting to bite. A rise in farm worker arrests and deportations the past few months has Little Falls on edge.

Concerns about the increased level of enforcement echo throughout this rural community of about 8,000 people, two hours north of the Twin Cities, where several residents, activists and farmers say Border Patrol trucks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been highly visible in the area since last fall. - MPR

As a matter of fact the Trump administration has sought to make it easier, at least as far as getting here, for seasonal farm workers to do their thing. But that has not been well-publicized, as there’s no question as to what Trump’s base would “think” of that. It’s also entirely unclear what really will happen when harvest time rolls around, soon.

Getting more concerned about Trump/Iran

I am more worried about Trump starting a war with Iran than I was, especially given the pretty much daily evidence of his deteriorating mental health. Not sleepless nights-worried, yet. But maybe getting there.

Rightwing hawks in the US criticized Trump for calling off the attack. Liberal Democrats pointed out that he started the whole mess by withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Trump supporters tried to pass off the flip flop as a brilliant tactical move that threw the Iranians off balance.

In fact, the Iranian government saw Trump’s vacillation as a sign of weakness, according to a Tehran journalist with close government ties, who is not authorized to speak to the media.

“Iran was ready to retaliate on an unbelievable scale,” the journalist tells me in a phone interview. “After the first US missile launch, Trump wouldn’t be able to control the consequences, not only in the Persian Gulf but from Saudi Arabia to Israel.” - Informed Comment

What does "media losing its Trump bump" really mean?

I saw this this morning, though what it’s about has apparently been noticeable for a while.

Top news executives tell Axios that a real "Trump slump" is hitting digital, cable and more.

Why it matters: The shock factor around President Trump's unplanned announcements, staff departures, taunting tweets and erratic behavior is wearing off, and media companies are scrambling to find their next big moneymaker.

Driving the news: Executives tell Axios that Trump fatigue is very real: Interest in political coverage overall is down, which is spurring investments in other beats, like technology and the global economy. - Axios

The following is just a few thoughts, not the result of any effort at deep profundity. Several possibilities come quickly to mind:

1. People who have been pretty solid Trump fans are becoming disinterested, even disillusioned. (He will always have his real diehards.)

2. A lot of people across the political board are experiencing Trump fatigue, for now. That is, they’re just no longer into following his daily displays of demented buffoonery. But many will start paying attention again in the coming election year.

3. People are deciding that the utterly corrupt, degraded, and at times actually quite frightening spectacle of this deranged lunatic in the White House is really no big deal after all.

Obviously, #1 is best, and #3 is worst. It’s probably some combination of the above, along with other things I haven’t thought of.

The extent to which media losing its Trump mojo may or may not equal Trump losing his electoral mojo remains to be seen.

Seriously, Line 3 might really not happen

Which would be so great.

Enbridge's proposed Line 3 oil pipeline replacement likely could see more delays, after two state agencies involved in the project said (June 18) that the permitting schedule for the pipeline needs to be revised.

Just how long those delays could last remains unclear. But in a joint statement from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, officials said that a recent state Court of Appeals ruling that the pipeline's environmental review was inadequate will have implications for their permitting process. - MPR

Enbridge makes a great deal of money pumping filthy fossil fuels around, and they will very likely keep pushing to the desperate end if it comes to that. There’s also sunk-cost bias involved.

To be clear, when in this context people reference Enbridge Line 3 we’re generally talking about the proposed replacement for the existing Line 3. And when I and many others talk about stopping Line 3, what we really mean is keeping the replacement from being built and shutting down the existing line for good. Because we don't need tar sands oil.

PolyMet/Glencore permitting scandal erupts

From last week.

After months of stonewalling, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has released staff comments that the agency had prepared for the state-issued water quality permit for PolyMet Mining. The release came on the same day that the agency was required to respond to a lawsuit over access to the comments, filed by Water Legacy and other environmental organizations.

The comments are potentially devastating to efforts by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to defend the water quality permit they issued to PolyMet late last year. That permit has been the subject of ongoing litigation by tribal governments and environmental groups. - MinnPost

Clearly, after you've clicked and read the article, something very iffy has gone down. At this point, “corrupt” certainly seems apt. As for words like “criminal” and “felonies,” I don’t know, yet.

How much are farmers supposed to put up with, from this pitiful idiot?

The latest.

President Trump is bragging about a new deal with Mexico that provides for "large" sales of U.S. farm goods, but it doesn't appear to exist.

In weekend tweets, he announced in all capital letters that he had won the agreement to benefit America's "great patriot farmers," and that U.S. sales would begin "immediately." There isn't any sign of that happening, however. Mexican officials denied that anything on agriculture was included in the deal on border security reached Friday to avert Trump's threatened tariffs. - MPR/Associated Press

Incidentally, Trump is in conniptions over media coverage of his latest “triumph.” Yet corporate media for the most part keeps coddling him. We’ll see if that keeps up into next year, when most people will actually start paying some attention to the 2020 election.

One more related item:  “As foreign investment in U.S. farmland grows, efforts to ban and limit the increase mount” - The New Food Economy

MN lege: Some bad things in 2019

This sums it up, with incisive brevity:

Unfortunately, the Senate’s agenda for Minnesota was not aligned with the vision that we created together.  The Senate majority did not allow hearings on Paid Leave, Driver’s Licenses, Restoring the Vote or 100% Clean Energy. They did not hold a single hearing on any of our policy proposals or many of the policy proposals of others in our movement, such as common sense background checks for gun owners. Instead, they worked for months to roll back the progress we have made towards a caring economy: they opposed protecting the Healthcare Access Fund, which helps fund more than a million Minnesotan’s healthcare, they tried to roll back paid sick days and minimum wage for more than 150,000 workers, and they attempted to fully defund the child care assistance program. - ISAIAH

If I had to pick one thing that especially pisses me off, it would be this:

At the start of this year’s legislative session, the debate over child care policy was focused primarily on making it cheaper and easier to find amid high prices and a lack of options across Minnesota.

But by the time lawmakers adjourned this month, attention had shifted almost entirely to something else: fraud.

A state audit in March found that fraud in the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), a prominent subsidy for low-income families, was tough to root out and likely more pervasive than what prosecutors have been able to prove. The politically explosive report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor could not substantiate some allegations made in an attention-grabbing Fox 9 story from 2018 — namely a link between fraudulent CCAP money and terrorists in Somalia — but it nevertheless mobilized Republicans and some DFLers to call for sweeping reform.

Now, Republicans are cheering the two-year state budget approved last weekend, which has a long list of anti-fraud measures and a freeze on most new CCAP spending. A CCAP expansion was a top child care priority for some advocacy groups and DFLers headed into the 2019 session. - MinnPost

The obvious solution will be available on Election Day 2020, or for some weeks before that if you vote early.

MN lege: Some good things in 2019

I’m noting a few things that I considered to be particular priorities/concerns.

First of all, on the whole the session ended better than I feared it might. Gov. Tim Walz did the “moderate” thing as a U.S. Representative for southern Minnesota, and I was concerned that as governor he’d be willing to give too much to the Party of Trump to make deals. That didn’t happen.

Some positives happened for workers. Especially a strong wage theft bill.

The Legislature’s work isn’t over, however, with Minnesota AFL-CIO priorities such as new revenue to fix our roads and bridges, paid family & medical leave, OneCare public health insurance, and the 40-hour work week waiting for the 2020 session. Additional Labor priorities including teacher licensure reform, drivers licenses for all, a two-person train crew requirement, restoring voting rights, protecting Minnesota’s call center workers from outsourcing, and a state Equal Rights Amendment were all met with obstruction in the Republican-controlled Senate. - Minnesota AFL-CIO

I thought the GOP would really demand a king's ransom for extending the medical provider tax, although it did take a cut from 2 to 1.8%. I’m not entirely sure why there actually wasn’t all that much drama. All of those polls showing health care as the public's top issue, or very close to it, for 2020 presumably had something to do with it.

One more:

...the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives passed the Omnibus Agriculture Policy Bill which includes dedicated funding and support for Farm to School and Early Care initiatives across the state. The bill will now head to Governor Walz to be signed. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and a coalition of other farming, nutrition and anti-hunger stakeholders worked to support this policy that will expand access to fresh, local and healthy foods for Minnesota students and new, stable markets for Minnesota farmers. - IATP

Right-wing war on farmers elevates

Some views from the ground on Trump’s trade war. Most farmers' options are of course limited.

The soybean markets have been the source of much heartburn this spring, particularly in (mid-May), when prices rode a rollercoaster of Twitter announcements of additional tariffs and another round of trade mitigation payments to farmers.

Farmer reactions varied widely, from anger and disgust to stoic support and even Zen-like detachment.

"The markets just feel like a punch in the gut right now," said Honebrink. "Every time I get my new budget and plan figured out, markets drop and I have to go back to the drawing board."

Rendel added: "I can't tell you how worried and on edge I am every day watching the markets, wondering what is the next thing I'm going to see on Twitter. I'm walking on pins and needles every day."

In central Ohio, Keith Peters believes not all our trade partners will return when the dust settles. "We have to go forward with the realization that we have lost market share for the foreseeable future," he said. - Progressive Farmer

While it looks unlikely that the “new NAFTA” is going to get through Congress, this has useful facts to bear in mind in any case.

"The ITC computer model forecasting does not include the likely impacts of non-tariff measures in New NAFTA," said Dr. Steve Suppan, IATP senior policy analyst. "New provisions streamline approval of foreign food safety, plant and animal health and animal welfare measures as 'equivalent' despite well-documented evidence they are not. New rules in New NAFTA will lock in a process to further lower U.S. food and agricultural chemical safety standards for decades. Based on the historical record, there is real reason for concern over foodborne illness from imported food and New NAFTA's provisions to enable trade of legally unauthorized products of agricultural biotechnology."

The original NAFTA hurt farmers and hollowed out rural communities in the United States, Mexico and Canada, and despite claims from President Trump and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue that New NAFTA is needed to fix the farm economy, the ITC report shows this rhetoric does not match reality. In fact, the New NAFTA will entrench underlying structural issues, exacerbating our ongoing farm crisis, plagued by low prices, rising debt and increased bankruptcies. It locks in a system where global agribusiness firms exploit farmers and extract from rural communities in all three nations. - IATP

An addendum:

The second issue is that this year’s plan is expected to mirror that of last year, when Trump handed out $12 billion to address the problem he created. And under last year’s plan, most of that money went to huge corporate farms, including corporate farms owned by foreign companies, and not to small farmers. In fact, as The Des Moines Register reported, hundreds of Iowa farmers ended up with a payment of less than $25. Not $25 million. Or $25,000. $25. Some payments were less than $5. The average payment was $7,236, which is a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost of operating the most modest farm. And even that number was inflated by the large checks written out for the largest corporate farms. 

Trump is handing out $16 billion. It’s a genuinely large amount of money. But it’s too late, it’s going to the wrong people, and it’s still just a tiny fraction of what’s needed to repair the damage that Trump has caused. - Daily Kos

23 (I think) Dem prez candidates, and counting

Don't get me wrong, there's always plenty of good stuff on the progressive web. But this is the best thing I've read in a while.

The second question is fairly asked. If (Montana Gov. Steve) Bullock should stumble on his path to glory, the Democratic Party’s center-right contingent will still be championed by (in alphabetical order) Sen. Michael Bennet (Colorado), former Senator and Vice President Joe Biden (Delaware), Mayor Pete Buttigieg (Indiana), former Rep. John Delaney (Maryland), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), former Gov. John Hickenlooper (Colorado), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), Rep. Seth Moulton (Massachusetts), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (Texas), and Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio).

That is 10 stalwart banner carriers for the “centrist” vision of whatever it is they see when they look in a mirror, all crowded together in a clump of half-loaf mediocrity, trying to distinguish themselves from the pack without (gasp) leaning too far to the left. Remember the phonebooth stuffing fad from the 1950s? Like that, but just so much worse....

Running for president has become an industry of its own, and a multibillion dollar one at that. “Across America, the business of politics now channels up to $10 billion a year,” report Dave Helling and Scott Canon for the Kansas City Star, “much of it pocketed by the pros who conduct the polls, craft the ads, buy the airtime, spin the news releases.”

The kind of bottomless spending orgy that typifies modern campaigning makes its own gravy, and is one hell of an incentive for political consultants who have the ear of high-profile politicians: "Listen to me, Senator Frackeverything, I know there are 94 other candidates already running, but you can win! I just need $10 million for the ad buy to get you started. Trust me, this will be great!" What big-ego politician doesn’t want to hear that? Plus, as stated, the candidates get to keep what they raise for use in future campaigns. - Truthout

Actually, if you search the question of how many are running for U.S. President in 2020 as Democrats, it's 244 as of May 13. (Click on that link and scroll down for a full list, which I think will be updated regularly.) 23 are apparently currently considered to be significant, more or less.

Sen. Sanders calls for ban on for-profit charters. Would it fly?

I of course wholeheartedly support the concept. And if you click and read it all, he seems to have a lot of bases covered. (It's a little unclear, from what I've seen, if the proposal includes shutting down existing for-profits. I'm taking a bit of a leap of faith here and presuming that that's part of the intent of the entire package.)

Sen. Bernie Sanders will unveil a major plan to support public education and rein in privatization on Saturday, CNN reports. Sanders will call for a ban on for-profit charter schools and pledge that, as president, he would refuse to use federal funds to open new charter schools.

On the anniversary weekend of Brown v. Board of Education, Sanders will take up the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on charter school expansion, at least while the schools are audited. Sanders will also propose subjecting charter schools to the same oversight as public schools—something that charter backers have oh-so-mysteriously fought tooth and nail—and transparency measures like financial disclosure and student attrition rates. That oversight and transparency would be combined with requirements for representation of parents and teachers on charter school boards.

Sanders isn’t stopping there... - Daily Kos

But:

- Even to my not-a-lawyer head it seems like there would be constitutional issues with an outright ban. Moreover, that could very possibly have been the case even before the Trump/McConnell savaging of our federal courts. Perhaps denial of federal funds to existing for-profits would have pretty much the same effect as a ban. But I wouldn't put it beyond the far-right majority on our current SCOTUS to knock that down, and even have the gall to cite Brown as a precedent requiring purported "equality of opportunity," here.

- Plenty of “non-profit” charters are being strip-mined for big bucks by greedheads. I don’t know that for-profit charters couldn’t just make a few cosmetic changes in how their cash flows are treated, label themselves non-profit, and go the same route. It’s the charter-industrial complex in general, not just the overt for-profits, that needs to be cut way, way, way down to size. Full funding of our public schools, along with much stiffer federal regulation of all charters, would be good starting points.

Trump in full-on lunatic mode as his trade policy crushes farmers

I know, when is he not in “full-on lunatic mode?” Anyway:

President Donald Trump is seeking an additional $15 billion in U.S. subsidies in an effort to protect farmers from the devastating impact of his trade war with China. That’s on top of $12 billion already earmarked for the farmers to help them weather the fallout.

That would be an additional bill for U.S. taxpayers already shouldering the cost of increased tariffs in the form of higher costs for products and parts from China. 

Trump revealed the subsidy figure in a tweet Friday. He suggested the government use the funds to buy agricultural products to ship to other nations for humanitarian aid, though setting up such a system would be extremely complicated. In his most recent budget proposal, Trump proposed eliminating three food aid programs, Politico noted.

The president appeared to dismiss the impact of the cost as he falsely claimed — again — that “massive” tariff payments are being paid by China “directly” to the U.S. Treasury, which would presumably be used to cover the cost of the subsidy. There is “absolutely no need to rush” to negotiate a deal with China, he tweeted. - Huffington Post

Even South Dakota’s right-wing governor is bemoaning what Trump is doing. But I’ve seen little indication that his political support is really plummeting in farm country the way it should. Making that happen would seem to be a “hard row to hoe.” (Weak, I know. I typed it anyway.)

MN-04: Rep. McCollum keeps trying to do something for the Palestinians, but without enough company

From a recent email I got:

Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota just reintroduced her legislation in Congress that would prohibit our tax dollars from funding the Israeli military detention of Palestinian children—and this time, it’s an even stronger challenge to occupation and apartheid! The groundbreaking bill is the followup to H.R. 4391 in the last Congress, which boasted 31 cosponsors.

This bill exists because every year, Israel detains and prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts that have a conviction rate of 99.74%. Instead of living free and safe childhoods, Palestinian children fear Israeli soldiers pulling them from their beds in the middle of the night to face torture and ill-treatment. - US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

I get that Israel has a “right to exist.” I also get the population and resource pressures that country is facing. But that doesn’t give the country’s politicians, or any of its citizens, any right to treat the Palestinians as subject people without rights - up to and including extremes of exploitation, abuse, and even murder.

Charters are not escaping accountability, try as they might

I figure that those who run, and ultimately profit from, the charter-industrial complex thought they'd never have to deal with teachers unions and/or strikes. Wrong.

Chicago charter teachers are racking up firsts. In December 2018, Chicago saw the first-ever walkout at a charter network in the United States. And on Thursday, teachers employed by two other private operators launched the nation’s first multi-employer charter school strike.   

“We’ve been bargaining since last summer, and the process has been insulting to educators,” said Carlene Carpenter, a social studies teacher at the Latino Youth High School (LYHS), which is affiliated with the Youth Connection Charter School network. “If charter operators really cared about education, we wouldn’t be here today.” - Working In These Times

And:

In Milwaukee’s recent school board election, a slate of five candidates swept into office under a banner of turning back years of efforts to privatize the district’s schools. The win for public schools was noteworthy not only because it took place in a long-standing bastion of school choice, but also because the winning candidates were backed by an emerging coalition that adopted a bold, new politics that demands candidates take up a full-throated opposition to school privatization rather than cater to the middle.

Unsurprisingly, the coalition includes the local teachers’ union, who’ve long been skeptical of charters, vouchers, and other privatization ideas, but joining the teachers in their win are progressive activists, including the Wisconsin chapter of the Working Families Party, and local civil rights advocacy groups, including Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and Voces de la Frontera. - Jeff Bryant/Salon

The Minnesota Senate budget proposal is quite a deal

Here’s a look, for example, at what they have in mind for Health and Human Services. And the environment.

One area of specific note is education. From Education Minnesota:

The education budget proposals by Gov. Tim Walz and the House DFL represent strong first steps toward fully funding our schools. They include:

3 and 2 percent formula increases

Special education funding increase

Dedicated $ for more support staff

$ for paraprofessional training

Full-service community schools funding

Senate Republicans? Not so much:

.5 percent formula increases

ZERO dedicated $ for more support staff

ZERO $ for paraprofessional training

ZERO full-service community schools

Never has the phrase “Minnesota Party of Trump” been more apropos, because there is a suspiciously marked ideological resemblance here to the White House budget plan. Which might seem odd, given Traitor Trump’s job approval ratings here. About the lowest in the upper Midwest, along with Illinois, though the numbers aren't good for him anywhere in our region except in the Dakotas.

Objective, rational people would not produce something like the MN Senate plan. But diehard right-wingers are anything but objective and rational. On the contrary, they strongly tend to reality-bereft cognitive rigidity in the extreme. They also tend to extreme authoritarianism, which will make picking off the two votes that would be needed in the state Senate to pass DFL proposals very challenging. I expect that Minnesota’s next budget will end up looking a lot like the current one. Not awful, but not what it should be. We need the trifecta, beginning in 2021, for that.

MN-01: Ignorant, bigoted drivel from Rep. Hagedorn

Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R-MN) won a very close race in 2016. For the most part he hasn’t made a lot of noise since then. But a lot of people knew that it was just a matter of time. These are both from an apparent doozy of a recent public address.

“Agriculture is a national security issue,” he said, according to The Globe. Hagedorn grew up on a grain and livestock farm near Truman and serves on the House Ag Committee.

In fact, it was because of agriculture, he said, that “nobody [in America] goes to sleep at night wondering if they’ll be able to feed their families.”

Jim? Jim?

As wondrous and bountiful as America’s yield is, it still routinely fails to feed everyone in the country. It's estimated that 1 in 8 Americans are “food insecure,” a polite way of saying they often go without. That translates to roughly 40 million people, 12 million of them children. - City Pages

And:

“What’s going on at the border is an emergency,” Hagedorn said. He added that Democrats in Congress are “turning our border patrol agents into having to care for children and families.”

He claimed that 5 to 6 million people are in America undocumented because they have overstayed their visas. He said many of these individuals are “from terrorist countries” and that this phenomenon is what caused 9/11. - The Globe