| Number 60 | February 25, 2000 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, A caveat to new readers: This is not a “typical” Nygaard Notes. But, then, what is a typical Nygaard Notes? No one really knows. But this week I am taking a break from my sort-of-typical format of one longer piece accompanied by a few shorter ones. This week you will find nothing but little bite-sized pieces, all drawn from items that appeared in the newspaper over the past week or two. In fact, some of this week’s headlines are taken directly from the local paper. Since I refer to it so much, I decided to include a few words this week about that local paper, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!). There’s nothing personal about my focus on this particular paper, it just happens to be the one in my home state. I could do almost exactly the same thing with the daily newspaper in Philadelphia, Newark, or Spokane if I lived there. They’re all essentially the same. So, new readers, welcome to Nygaard Notes. I wish I could tell you what to expect, but all I can say is that if you keep reading for a while, it will all start to make sense. And once that happens, then you’re really in trouble! See ya next week, Nygaard |
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“The charges are serious that the government indiscriminately scoops up millions upon millions of conversations daily over the Internet and the telephone.” -- U.S. Representative and former CIA employee Bob Barr of Georgia, commenting on the U.S.-coordinated global satellite spy system known as “Echelon.” |
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There are plans to have a big “GLBT Millennium March” on Washington in April, supposedly to “energize, mobilize, and activate our nation's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community, our friends, families, and allies.” However, “there has been considerable controversy surrounding the planning of this march,” I’m told, and the local GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender) Programs Office at the University of Minnesota is sponsoring a community forum and panel discussion to talk about the controversy and the larger issues of social change and how/why we might have some. I’ll be speaking on the panel. Organizers say that “Our overall goal for this forum is to have a discussion about the development of social movements and the role (or use) of specific strategies in the course of this development.” Local teacher and activist Lisa Albrecht will be on the panel discussing her participation in 3 previous GLBT marches on Washington, plus her take on radical social change and movement building. Also on the panel will be Alexa Bradley, previously from MN Alliance for Progressive Action, Nick Metcalf, coordinator for Minnesota Men of Color. And, of course, yours truly. Come on by and check it out. It looks to be an interesting discussion, and if any of you choose to come, please introduce yourselves. I’d love to meet you. Hey, maybe I don’t look anything like what you expect! The event will be held at the Playwrights’ Center at 2301 Franklin Avenue East in Minneapolis on Tuesday, February 29, 1999, at 7:00 p.m. For more information, contact the GLBT office at 612- 626-2324. |
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Newer readers may wonder why, when referring to the Star Tribune, I always add the ridiculous parenthetical slogan “Newspaper of the Twin Cities!”? It’s mostly just because I think it’s hilarious, but there is a bit more to it. Readers in other parts of the country may not be aware that the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul actually have two major daily newspapers. I always refer to the Star Tribune because it is the largest and most influential, and also it’s the newspaper I grew up reading. But there is another big city just across the river, and it’s actually the capital of Minnesota. It’s called St. Paul, and it has it’s own newspaper called the Pioneer Press. It’s neither particularly good nor bad; it’s pretty much like the Star Trib, as far as I can tell. To make a long story short, the Star Trib historically has been the Minneapolis paper, and the PiPress has been stronger in St. Paul. However, the Star Trib would like to take over the whole market, if possible, so they changed their name from the “Minneapolis Star Tribune” to simply “Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities).” It’s all part of the plan to market the paper to the whole Twin Cities, and has no particular meaning beyond that as far as I can tell. Since it has always been possible to buy either paper in either city (we’re right next to each other, fer chrissakes!) the whole naming thing seems silly to me. The idea probably came directly from the marketing department. Removing the name of the town where a newspaper is published also flies in the face of a long tradition of newspaper naming The New York Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, and so on and so on, are all identified - in their names - with the town where they originate, and rightly so – where one lives does color one’s view of the world. So, if I am talking to someone from another part of the country, I habitually refer to the local paper as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, just so they know what I’m talking about. Anyway, all of these are reasons why I insist on mocking the name of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) every chance I get. But mostly it’s just because I think it’s hilarious. |
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That was the headline in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) this past Tuesday, underlining a problem that is well-known here in Minnesota and around the country. The lack of affordable housing is an absolute crisis, by any measure, a subject about which I will be writing much more in coming weeks. In the meantime, a coalition of activists from all over the map are sponsoring a rally at the Minnesota State Capitol this coming Tuesday, February 29th, from 6 to 7:30 pm. For more information on the rally, call Jodi Nelson at the Metropolitan Interfaith Council for Affordable Housing (MICAH) at 612-871-8980, or E-mail her at jodi@micah.org |
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This headline appeared on the front page of the business section yesterday, February 24th. Northwest Airlines (NWA) is the dominant carrier at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport, with some claiming that it has near-monopoly status here in the Twin Cities. The U.S. Department of Transportation and the General Accounting Office have released studies showing that this airport is one of the highest-priced in the nation. NWA has “forcefully rejected any implication that it competes unfairly.” Amid rumors that NWA may move out of the state if the “inhospitable” business climate around here doesn’t improve, the committee, which will be “directed by the business community,” is supposed to “study and quantify the value of Northwest Airlines Twin Cities hub.” Northwest says that it is “gratified to learn influential public citizens are going to examine the issue. I bet they are. The two “prominent” co-chairs will be Republican former Governor Arne “Corporations R Us” Carlson, with Democrat Vance “Multi- Millionaire” Opperman providing “political balance.” Opperman said that “state tax policies and unfavorable media coverage” sure make life tough for the giant corporations in the Twin Cities, and he implied that he wouldn’t blame NWA for leaving if they just couldn’t take it anymore. That’s my kind of “balance,” I’ll tell ya, and led the Star Trib to report that “the committee is not expected to be unfriendly” to the aviation mega-corporation. Birds of a feather, y’know... I’m going to go out on a limb here, and predict the results of this “study.” Let’s see... I’ll bet they will say that being a major hub for a gigantic airline is a huge economic plus for the Twin Cities, and that we shouldn’t get too carried away with this “competition” stuff. Might even be good to consider a few tax breaks, and maybe a lessening of regulations for that huge airline. Or maybe they will tell NWA to take a hike. Hard to say; we’ll have to wait for the report to come out. In an apparently unrelated story on the same business page, Northwest will soon be upgrading the meals on its flights, including “meals presented on china and linen, hot towels, multi-choice menus served in courses, and chocolate-chip cookies hot out of the galley’s oven.” These are only for first-class passengers, mind you. No improvements are planned for Grandma taking a coach-class flight to visit the kids. Might the lower classes be upset when they “get a whiff of those fresh-baked cookies?” the Star Trib asked. Heck, no, NWA responded, adding hopefully that “Maybe it will entice them to buy a first-class ticket on their next flight.” |
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Headline from the front page of the February 22nd Star Trib. In 1994, Minnesotans elected former TV newsman Rod Grams to the U.S. Senate. Widely considered around the nation to be one of the most vulnerable Republican Senators facing up for re-election this year, ol’ Rod is gonna go at it again anyway. Best known for being an apostle of NC Senator Jesse Helms, I’m sure I will be unable to resist informing my readers of some of the more...interesting...positions that Mr. Grams has taken. And plans to take! For one thing, he says he wants to replace Social Security with a system of individual private retirement accounts. He has actually introduced legislation to do this, and has spoken extensively on the subject. Having studied the issue in depth over the past several years, I will have much to tell my dear readers about this plan. Allow me to use a technical economic term to characterize his ideas about Social Security: they are “cock- eyed.” Mr. Grams also says he wants to “scrap the federal income tax and most other forms of federal taxation, replacing them with a national sales tax.” I will not allow myself to even get started on this subject, preferring to wait until I can do it justice. [Note to non-Minnesota residents: No, Senator Grams does not represent most Minnesotans when he says these things, and I don’t know where he gets them.] Three Republican luminaries were in the audience to offer their support for Mr. Grams’ re-election bid. One was former Senator Rudy Boschwitz, who lost his seat to Paul Wellstone in 1990 despite outspending him by ten gadzillion to one, and then lost to Wellstone, a man he referred to as a “pipsqueak” again in 1996. A second was former Senator Dave Durenberger, who left office in disgrace after “engaging in a pattern of unethical misconduct which discredited the U.S. Senate,” according to the official Senate denunciation of the time, and who is now a lobbyist for the “health care” industry. The third Republican supporter was St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, who used to be a hippie, then was a Democrat, and now is the man who came in to professional wrestler Jesse Ventura in the 1998 Minnesota governor’s race. Hey, with supporters like this, no wonder he’s considered vulnerable! As Mr. Boschwitz put it in his inimitable way, “People not thought to be vulnerable, are, and people thought to be vulnerable sometimes aren’t.” Well, I can’t argue with that (I can’t even understand what it means!) Anyway, it should be a heckuva campaign. I could go on and on about Mr. Grams, but there’s time for that later. Let’s move on to our... |
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According to the Star Trib of February 15th, the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) has informed the State legislature that it will be cutting back the number of audits it performs on state nursing homes due to a lack of funding. That’s unfortunate since, as the article (“Agency’s Savings Could Cost Big-Time”) points out, these audits “help determine what kind of care residents will receive.” This should be reason enough to fund the agency sufficiently to do its job, but rising costs and a $5 million budget cut have forced the agency to the agency to “cut corners.” Governor Jesse Ventura has told state agencies that “special funding should be sought only for emergencies during this non- budget legislative session.” The lack of audits is in that categories of cutbacks that causes a lot of suffering but spreads it out over a long period of time. That is probably why Linda Sutherland, head of DHS inspectors, was moved to explain the lack of an appeal to the legislature by stating that “it was not considered an emergency.” The article points out that the state stands to lose about $7 million in revenue that it receives as a result of reimbursement for overcharges that its audits uncover. And how much will the audits themselves cost? $300,000 a year. If that doesn’t illustrate the lunacy of our current tax-cut mania, I don’t know what it will take... |