#632 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #53. Political Signs

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Earlier this week I was paying a tiny bit of citizen dues to the Democratic candidates I support, and walking along a street in Maplewood came across a hand-lettered piece of poster board with two words on it: Vote NO!
That was all it said.
The owner of the house, an older man of my vintage, was in the yard raking leaves, and I asked him if it was his sign, and he said yes.
“I like your sign. Does it refer to both proposed amendments?”
“Yes”, he said.
He wasn’t on my literature distribution list, which was a clue, but I told him what I was doing, and offered him campaign literature for my candidates, including JoAnn Ward and Susan Kent.
He declined, politely: “I’m Republican”.
We continued a nice chat about other things, like when we used to be able to burn leaves this time of year, even in the cities, and how their smell added to the ambience.
And then I moved on.
A few houses earlier I’d gone to the door and noticed another familiar sign in the front window within easy view of anyone approaching the door:
(click to enlarge)

Sign in a home window, October 2012


These owners weren’t home, but obviously had feelings about Senator Wellstone. It was 10 years ago, October 25, 2002, when the Wellstone plane went down near Eveleth, all killed.
I walked in Wellstone parades and supported him strongly.
Some would call him a crazy liberal, but he was vexing to the anti-Iraq war movement till he finally voted against the war in early October, 2002, and in one of the last parades I walked with him, it was VFW members who were front and center, riding with him on his bus. He was a class act, a people’s politician.
I still have the Paul Wellstone T-shirt with my favorite saying on the back. It was part of my uniform in the Woodbury Days Parade this summer. It says it all, really:

Paul Wellstone t-shirt, about voting, Woodbury, summer 2012


Here’s my own tribute to the Wellstones.
There are other signs, too.
Sometime around October 1 an immense billboard appeared facing eastbound traffic on I-94 between Century and I-494. It supports the candidacy of a local candidate for State Senate.
It has to be a very expensive piece of advertising, located as it is on a prime spot on one of the most heavily traveled roads in the state of Minnesota.
All such political signs require disclaimers, but this one’s disclaimer can’t be seen from the freeway, so some days ago I found my way over to it. Indeed there was a disclaimer for a group with a Minnesota PO Box address. (I decline to name the group: it is easy to find out by doing what I did…driving over to the Billboard and looking.)
I looked the group up. It has no website I’m aware of, but it was possible through FEC (Federal Election Commission) required disclosures, and assorted analyses and commentaries about it, to learn that it is likely a group of a very few members (55 on the report), almost all men, probably men of considerable means, an informal club whose membership is by invitation only. Other than political expense, their group has almost no expenditures. They seem to be equal shareholders and best I can tell from most recent FEC filing, perhaps only one actually lives in the Senate candidates legislative district of over 70,000 residents.
I also know that this group is also funding some of the mailers coming into our mailbox, as well as some TV spots on local cable television; and it is similarly involved in other races.
All of this is legal, but nonetheless covert and devious.
But it’s how the game is played these days.
November 6 comes soon.
Most of us over 18 years of age have the opportunity to go to the polls Nov. 6; many of us won’t bother.
That’s a shame.
In most respects that gentleman raking leaves on a Maplewood lawn and I will probably cancel each other out when we vote. But I don’t know that for sure. I think the local Republican candidate lives in his neighborhood.
He and I had never met, and probably will never meet again, but we had something in common: people who care about public policy in our state and nation.
Please do as the Wellstone t-shirt advises on Nov. 6: Vote, and vote well-informed.
Because this is my space on the internet, here are my local candidate choices: more here

October 16, 2012

#630 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #51. "Taxes" and other words.

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The best blogger on politics I know is a retired guy in Los Angeles. Alan, aka Just Above Sunset, offers very long commentaries six days a week, summarizing what other well informed people are saying about political issues of the day. His posts typically arrive in my e-box about 2 a.m. I always scan their contents, but don’t always read them in detail.
Today’s Just Above Sunset, “Just Words Alone”, fits like a glove the topic I have been forming in my mind for a long time, ” “Taxes” and other words”. If you dislike long pieces of writing, at least read his first five paragraphs, then perhaps half way down read the three paragraphs which start with “Maybe words alone don’t create reality after all….”
We have been captured by wordsmiths who have created a “reality” that isn’t at all “real”, and in a few weeks (if we haven’t already voted) we will make extremely important decisions based on what we have been told to believe. Fantasy replacing reality is a very dangerous way to make decisions.
For years I have known that people like Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, Newt Gingrich and others had decided to create certain words and phrases as representative of evil, and to then attach those words to despicable people like myself, who they have labeled as “liberal”, “Democrat”, “union”…. Such lists are easily available on the internet and have a long history.
So when a nice lady in my town, Kelly DeBrine, said she wanted an “open, honest chat on taxes” in the July 18, 2012, Woodbury Bulletin, and the editor of the Bulletin supported this chat, I decided to go to her meeting on July 31.
The room was packed, and Ms DeBrine and colleagues had a very orderly conversation involving what appeared to be about 50 of we citizens, divided into table groups of six or so, almost no one I’d ever met before.
We never really talked about Taxes on July 31, a frustration to many attendees. Rather we talked about our Priorities – what was it that we wanted from our community (which, by extension, would require expenditure of tax dollars.) (see postnote)
We met, mostly civilly, and departed.
There hasn’t been another such conversation.
But in preparing for that meeting, I decided to make a list of what I would call “synonyms” for “taxes”, since I have observed that Republicans hate the word “taxes”, and try to make only the Democrats responsible for such an outrageous term.
I created an interesting and doubtless only partial list of these synonyms for payment of services we expect from our government which somehow are or must be paid at least in part by government:
Penalty
License
Fine
Fee
Dues
Assessment
Surcharge
Premium
Tuition
Interest (on borrowed money; bonding)
“Borrowing” from other entities, as from school districts, as an alternative to state taxes
Accounting Shifts (from state to local; from one tax year to another, etc.)
Gambling revenue
Naming Rights for buildings
Mandating things but not funding them, while expecting results
Tax cuts and rebates
PROFITS….
Yes PROFITS.
I emphasize PROFIT as a form of tax, largely thanks to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who upheld the Affordable Care Act this summer, saying that the proposed Penalties to people who refused to buy Health Insurance premiums were in fact legal Taxes. It was Roberts who decided to use the word “taxes”, which was immediately attached to Democrats.
But, the beneficiaries of this legal TAX are not only the persons who buy the insurance, but the insurance companies who hold the policies.
Thanks to a friend who’s a retired vice-president of a major state-wide health insurance provider, PROFIT is a big part of these Penalties. “Medicare operates on 1-2% administrative costs. Blue Cross plans operate on 10% and other insurance companies are upwards of that, sometimes approaching 30% and 40%. The Affordable Care Act reins in some of those outrageous insurance company profits.”
We won’t rein in WORDS as PROPAGANDA any time soon, and we have weeks to go till the bombardment of television advertising ceases, but we do have control of our own ability to discern fact from fiction.
We are well advised to do so.
For other related articles, put Election 2012 in the search box.
POSTNOTE October 15, 2012: Today on my daily walk I saw a new sign that reminded me of a real-world example of the issue of taxation and service. Here is a photo of the sign:
(click to enlarge)

Sign at Carver Park, Woodbury MN Octoer 15, 2012


I’ve walked the same route for all 12 of my years in Woodbury so I have awareness of all that happens there; all the changes.
At one point a couple of years ago a woman had approached me, asking that I petition the city to not construct a mountain bike path in the park area. She was sincere and serious in her concern. I saw no problem with the path, though I don’t bike, so I didn’t act on her request.
At the Tax meeting, I brought up this issue, as described above, and a younger man at the table said he was a mountain biker, and he initially had liked the idea of the bike trail, but he was more of a individual responsibility type and didn’t like the idea of taxes going for such a trail.
But he seemed conflicted on the issue.
I set it aside until I saw the above sign today. Here is a closeup of an important part of the sign:

At Carver Park, October 15, 2012


I’m guessing the local anti-tax mountain biker uses the trail in question, even though it is supported by tax dollars.
I wonder what he thinks.
Bottom line: even tax haters think taxes is okay so long as it isn’t called by that name, and it directly and personally benefits them.

Franco-Fete 2012 Minneapolis MN: Martine Sauret on Louis Hennepin

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At Franco-Fete, Martine Sauret, visiting professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, gave a talk on Louis Hennepin.
Here is the pdf text, in French, of Dr. Sauret’s remarks: Louis Hennepin. Texte
Dr. Sauret’s remarks were presented to a diverse group, including students and teachers of French, persons of French-Canadian descent, and others. For those not conversant with French, there are numerous commentaries in English of and about Father Hennepin, who first saw and named the Falls of St. Anthony in today’s Minneapolis MN in 1683. These can be easily found independently.
Here is Dr. Sauret’s description, in both French and English.
Martine Sauret a reçu son Ph.D., avec mention très bien en juin 1991 à l’Université du Minnesota sous la supervision de Tom Conley (Harvard Univerity). Elle enseigne actuellement comme Professeur associé à Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota.
Elle a publié plusieurs livres: Les voies cartographiques. A propos des cartographes sur les écrivains français des XVe et XVIe siècles. ( 2004),
“Gargantua et les délits du corps.’’ (New York: Peter Lang, 1997). Sa traduction en français de The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French writing de Tom Conley a été publiée en 2000.
Elle est l’auteure d’articles sur la littérature à la Renaissance en France, l’Histoire des Idées en France au XVIe siècle. Elle a également publié sur des études francophones dans des journaux académiques.
Son livre Relire les mondes des cartographes normands et des voyages de Parmentier au XVIe siècle sera publié en 2013 avec les éditions Peter Lang.
Martine Sauret received her Ph.D., with Honors, in June 1991 at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Tom Conley (Harvard University.) She is currently a visiting Professor at Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota.
She published several books; Les voies cartographiques. A propos des cartographes sur les écrivains français des XVe et XVIE siècles. New York : Mellen Press, 2004.
“Gargantua et les délits du corps.’’ (New York ; Peter Lang, 1977). Her translation into French of The Graphic Unconscious in Early Modern French writing by Tom Conley is published by Presses Universitaires de Vincennes (2000).
She has written extensively many articles on Renaissance Literature, Early Modern France and Francophone studies in various scholarly journals.
Her new book Relire les mondes des cartographes normands et des voyages de Parmentier au XVIe siècle will be published by Peter Lang in 2013.

#629 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #50. The Senate District 53 Candidate Forum in Woodbury October 9.

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Last evening we attended the candidate forum for Senate District 53 at City Council Chambers in Woodbury. The event was expertly moderated by the League of Women Voters, and was televised by South Washington County Telecommunications Commission, and will likely be rebroadcast there between now and general election November 6. Check with SWCTC for details.
I don’t go to such events to become well-grounded in the candidates understanding and position on the issues. Only so much can be done with six candidates in one hour and many substantive questions, each limited to one minute answers.
Nonetheless I am glad we went.
Arriving home, there was an e-mail from a friend lamenting that she had forgotten about the Forum until it was too late. I responded “I thought everyone did pretty well (on both sides).”
In this case, “everyone” were candidates for Senate in SD 53 Susan Kent (DFL) and Ted Lillie (IR); candidates for HD 53A Pam Cunningham (IR) and JoAnn Ward (DFL); and candidates for HD 53B Andrea Kieffer (IR) and Ann Marie Metzger (DFL).
Five of the six candidates are female; two candidates are first term incumbents running for reelection, albeit in newly configured districts.
I didn’t expect any big surprises in this Forum, and there were none. I follow politics more closely than most and thus I’m more aware than most of the often huge gap between rhetoric and reality, especially when incumbents are defending their record without risking rebuttal by an equally well-informed colleague.
The battle-scarred veterans of the 2011-12 biennium at the legislature could, of course, defend their honor, and criticize the Governor and Democrats who were not there to give the other very substantial side of the story. It is to be expected. There is no priority for giving the two sides to the story, which there is, in abundance, in these “win-lose’ political hothouse days.
Mostly, I watched for sound bites and talking points and emphasis.
It should surprise no one that the DFL candidates (my partisan preference ‘side’) emphasized the needs of the middle class and support for labor; while the Republican candidates are tied to Business and Wealthy interests.
The Republican incumbents, Lillie and Kieffer, seemed to try to delicately dance away from their very real ownership of the two proposed Constitutional Amendments, even though they were architects of these proposals. Kieffer, in fact, was one of those who signed one of those ‘pledges’ to go for Voter ID. The DFL candidates were clear that they were in opposition. I don’t recall the Republican candidates saying how they, themselves, would vote.
(To me, these proposed Constitutional Amendments are the two defining issues of the difference between IR and DFL in this election. They are evidence of a breakdown in bipartisan problem solving.)
I was surprised by only one talking point that Rep. Kieffer actually decided to use in the gathering. It is the old Tea Party mantra: “we don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem”. It is an old and very tired saw. Tuesday night was only the second time I have actually heard it in person. The first time was in the Woodbury Post Office line two years ago. I wrote about it then, here.
Oh, if it were all so simple as to reduce government of our city, state and nation to simple words and catchy phrases….
I think about what passes for political discourse these days.
Personally, I hope we’re getting to the end of the days of politics of slogans without substance.
Before driving to City Hall for the Forum last night, I picked up our mail, which included two attack ads, one against JoAnn Ward and the other against Susan Kent. One was from the Republican Party and the other from one of those ubiquitous “independent expenditure” groups. We are still a month from election, and I have kept all of the campaign mail that has come to our mailbox. All but 2 of the 17 ‘lit pieces’ have been from the Republican side; all but 2 of those have been attack pieces against the Democrat. All relate to this single local legislative district.
While completing this post, I was interrupted by a independent expenditure phone message in favor of one of the Republican candidates.
There is apparently a lot of money floating around for such campaigning this year.
There must be reason for Republicans to worry.
Yes, I’m DFL, and proud of our three candidates in SD 53. You can read about them here.
Directly related: here.

#627 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #48. A short seminar on Minnesota Public Schools and Public Policy

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Recently, there seems a sudden reverence for public schools in Minnesota.
After years of using the schools and the local communities as a piggy bank to avoid political decision making requiring use of the word “tax” in the state political conversation, the architects of damaging schools are suddenly proclaiming that they are about the business of supposedly saving those very same schools by proclaiming that they are heroically restoring cuts they have been diligently making all these years…and the political opposition is standing in their way.
What is one to believe?
School finance, and indeed public schools themselves, is an exceedingly complex topic, and it is very easy to make mischief with data which hardly anyone, including parents, understands. Such is how it is when the schools are charged with daily care of one of every seven Minnesota residents of kindergarten through high school age.
School opens this morning, and not many pay much attention whether there are 20 in a class or 40, etc. School policy is low hanging fruit for critics. There are endless opportunities to criticize….
But it’s not as easy as “reforming” schools as political rhetoric. Not only is every student different, bringing different baggage from home, but there is great diversity in community needs and makeup.
It is unfair to compare, for example, isolated Angle Inlet, not directly accessible by road in extreme northern Minnesota, with the large urban school in the most troubled neighborhood. One can theoretically create an ‘average’ out of two extremes, but it would be an unfair comparison.
A year ago, in November, 2011, a senior group in Burnsville asked me if I would be willing to talk about the business of schools and school finance.
Though I worked in public schools for a full career, I had already been retired for eleven years.
I agreed to do the workshop, and with the help of a wonderful non-partisan parent organization, Parents United for Public Schools, MN State Department of Education and the MN House of Representatives Fiscal Analysis Department, I prepared a presentation which was well received. Recently a man, over 90, who had been at the workshop, said that he learned more about school finance in that hour and a half than he’d ever learned before.
Here is the summary handout, with definition of the basic information presented a year ago: Minnesota Public Schools001 It is, of course, a year old and thus outdated, but my understanding would be that overall there have only been relatively slight changes over the past twelve months. Anyone is welcome to update the information and interpret as they wish.
My efforts still make sense, and the link may help you the reader better understand some of the basics about Minnesota Public Education.
Those 800,000 kids in Minnesota Public Schools today are OUR future. We best pay attention to their needs.

Franco-Fete Nouvelles Villes Jumelles Minneapolis September 29, 2012. Hon. Jacqueline Regis

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On September 29, those attending Franco-Fete heard very meaningful remarks from Hennepin County Judge Jacqueline Regis.
Her 12-page remarks, printed here with her permission, “Serving our Community through the unique perspective we acquired through our French language”, can be seen here: Jacqueline Regis at Franco-Fete Sep 29, 2012
Her talk concluded with sustained applause.
Judge Regis, who grew up in rural Haiti, has her own inspirational story, “The Daughter of L’Arsenal”. It is accessible at a number of sources which can be seen here.
Judge Regis is profiled in the Journal, Francophone Roots in the Midwest, Vol 4, Issue 1, Fall 2012: Hon. Jacquie Regis001
At page 7ff Judge Regis comments on a personal hero of hers, Toussaint L’Ouverture, a leader in the slave revolution which led to Haiti’s declaration of independence from France in the early 1800s. There are numerous references to L’Ouverture on the internet. Take some time to take a look.

Dick Bernard: A graduation and a commencement.

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September 9, 2012, was a remarkable day for me. It has taken till December 10, 2012, to complete this brief post.
There were two events on September 9, one immediately following the other. That day I was to meet a young man I’d never met before, 15-year old Eric Lusardi, over in New Richmond Wisconsin.
The same afternoon, a little later, was the Memorial Service for Rev. Verlyn Smith, 85, a man I cannot say I knew well, but for whom I had huge respect.
I knew Verlyn for the same reason I was about to meet Eric Lusardi: both were about the task of making the world a better place.
Eric was about to become an Eagle Scout, and his Eagle Project was to develop a Peace Garden at the local community center in his town of New Richmond WI. This was his idea, and as we all learned at the actual ceremony on September 21, he had enrolled the community in his efforts.
A main service project of his was to help the community effort called Empty Bowls, an initiative on-going since 2007.
On September 9, Eric seemed most proud to tell Melvin Giles and myself about Empty Bowls.
(click to enlarge)

Melvin Giles with the Lusardi family, September 9, 2012

Eric and Mark Lusardi explain the Empty Bowls Project September 9, 2012

In one of many ways yet to come, Eric was involved in his own commencement into the rest of his life.
I left New Richmond early, to get back to Minneapolis for the Service of Thanksgiving and Remembrance” for the man I knew as Verlyn.

Verlyn was a South Dakota farm kid from west of Sioux Falls, a child of the Great Depression. He knew the hard times from experience.
The unseen markers of life took him to the Lutheran ministry, and within that ministry to the Vietnam era college ministry in California which is where, he said, he became acquainted with the Peace movement. He last ministered in the same Church at which he was buried, and he was a quiet but giant advocate for peace and justice in our world. Here is an excellent description of his life and work: Verlyn Smith001
He would have loved to meet Eric in person.

Verlyn Smith (second from right, in tan coat) one of honorees at the Nov. 5, 2010, Hawkinson Foundation* annual awards dinner.

I’m not sure what Verlyn’s hopes, dreams and aspirations were when he turned 15 in 1942, on the South Dakota prairies.
What is certain is that he added to the value of our world by his presence in the next 70 years.
It is the best that we can do, to make the world a better place by our having been part of it.
Congratulations, Eric, as your life continues, and commences.
And farewell, Verlyn**.
* – The Hawkinson Foundation website is here.
** – It is important to note, also, that one of Eric’s grandfathers passed on in the summer of 2012. Life continues.

#616 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #41. Labors Last Day?

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UPDATE Tues Sep 4: This long post, Just Above Sunset, entitled “Another Labored Day”, pretty well describes the tension existing on this Labor Day, Sep 3, 2012.
click on photos to enlarge them

An annual tradition at the Minnesota State Fair: the free photo calendar at the Education Minnesota booth.


Last Friday I was at a very stimulating conversation about the future of my teacher’s union: the one for whom I worked full-time for 27 years, representing public school teachers.
One of the group, a retired teacher from a metropolitan area suburb who still substitutes regularly in his old school district told of a conversation he had with a young teacher who thought unions and work rules like contracts were no longer relevant. The youngster had better use of his money than to pay union dues. Unions only got in the way.
His wise colleague, who had had a great part in making a decent contract and working conditions for the young teacher, thought a bit and responded.
“Everything looks great for you now”, he said. “Try to think out 20 years, when your career is well along, and one year things aren’t going quite so well. There’s no union any more, and no rights such as you now have under law and contract. Your Principal calls you in and says ‘ sorry, we don’t need you any more. We have somebody who’ll cost less and is fresher than you are’. And there you are, fired at a most vulnerable time in your own life. What will you think then?”
Our conversation continued.
There was no closure on how the young teacher responded. There didn’t have to be. It is a common scenario.
The siren song of “I/Me/Now” easily trumps “We/Long Term” today. I see this shortsighted individualism in many quarters, in many ways.
The campaign to demonize unions has been successful. It’s been going on for years. Newt Gingrich memorialized it in his 100 words GOPAC literature in 1996, but destruction by use of code words preceded him, and is very much alive and well today.
(Newt’s list actually lists 128 labeling words, 64 that are good words, 64 that are evil. One of the evil words is “unionized”.)
The same week of the conversation came a Republican Party mailer inveighing against the local Democratic candidate and made four false and demonizing assertions, two of which were as follows:
“SCHOOLS THAT SERVE TEACHER UNIONS FIRST – KIDS LAST
Putting teacher unions before kids by blocking common sense solutions to improve our children’s education.”
“FORCED UNIONIZATION
Mandating that workers and small businesses, even in-home child care providers, become union members and pay costly union dues.”
Labeling.
Saturday, I walked by a booth at the State Fair which claims to put children first, but whose main objective is destruction of any union rights. At the end of this month this bunch says it is going to roll out a well financed movie presumably advancing its claims.
I haven’t lost hope. I care a great deal especially since we have many grand kids in Minnesota public schools.
But it is the youthful employees who think they don’t need a union who’ll have to rethink their self-righteous arrogance. Failure to do so will have big consequences for them.
They are the one who’ll wonder, in 20 years, why they were fired, and why they had no recourse.
And nobody – not teachers, not administrators, not students, not parents, not taxpayers, not business – will benefit by the destruction of labor unions.

A conversation about the future, August 31, 2012

#615 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #40. Four years after Peace Island

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Today, September 2, 2012, is the fourth anniversary of the first day of Peace Island, “Hope in a Time of Crisis, A Solutions-Driven Conference”. Peace Island was a remarkable and exhausting Tuesday and Wednesday running at the same time as the Republican National Convention just two or three miles down the road in downtown St. Paul, September 2-4, 2008.
Earlier today, I received word that my committee colleague who helped organize that Conference, Verlyn Smith, passed away on Friday, August 31, 2012. Susu Jeffrey, who originated the idea of Peace Island, commented “Oh, the loss! What I liked so much about Verlyn is…just himself, this large, gentle presence with the thoughtful, often humorous, comments.”
Indeed.
Verlyn’s memorial service will be next Sunday, Sept. 9, at 3 p.m. at Grace University Lutheran Church, 324 Harvard St., Minneapolis 55414. He was a retired Lutheran Pastor and his last call was at Grace Lutheran. Here’s the only photo I have of him at the Peace Island Conference. He’s the man seated at the right. (click to enlarge a bit)

Verlyn Smith (at right) Sep. 3, 2008 at Peace Island. Speaking is Ray McGovern, in background is Coleen Rowley.


Peace Island was a rather remarkable event. In the end a total of at least 23 speakers, mostly nationally known, addressed the audience in a half dozen plenary, and several other specific sessions. Several hundred people attended one or more of the sessions.
Peace Island was so peaceful that it attracted no interest from the news media, including the alternative media from the the progressive left who, to our knowledge, never did any reporting from or even about the event.
This wasn’t due to lack of effort on the Peace Island organizing committee’s part.
Our event was just too peaceful, apparently. It was boring from a news standpoint, in other words.
The action was down the street in St. Paul, inside and outside the Republican National Convention. Paradoxically, even those committed to peace and justice seem to revel in conflict.
Peace Island covered a great array of topics. Here is a five-page portion of the program booklet for Peace Island: Peace Island Sep 2-3 08001
Our committee quite literally wrestled with all aspects of the agenda for nearly two years before it convened. We were all volunteers. Visionary with the idea was Susu Jeffrey who, with Dennis Dillon, ultimately the chair, moved the idea forward.
Others on the committee included Dick Bernard, John and Marie Braun, Rebecca Janke, Ann Lewis, Bob Milner and Verlyn Smith. A couple of us, including Verlyn, were laid low with serious illness at one time or another.
The program was solely sponsored by the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers (MAP).
We early on decided that the conference would be solutions based. It is difficult to keep such a focus when there are so many problems, but the speakers generally did their best.
Perhaps the speaker with the greatest problems to confront ‘back home’ was Anne Hastings, Director of the Haitian microfinance group Fonkoze. During the summer and fall of 2008 four separate hurricanes hit Haiti causing immense disruptions and death and destruction in the tiny country. Fonkoze was a nationwide agency serving the needs of the poor, and its members severely hit. This was one and one-half years before the earthquake of January, 2010.

Anne Hastings, Joseph Schwartzberg and Bharat Parekh, Sep. 3, 2008


At demonstration on Labor Day 2008 in St. Paul MN


Massive police presence on the streets of St. Paul Labor Day 2008. Note policeman filming the protestors.


Concert at Peace Island Picnic Sep 4, 2012. This was separate from the Conference but a directly related event. In foreground is Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, Pete Seeger's grandson.


Preparing a giant peace sign to be photographed from above (it worked)


Completed peace sign can be seen here.

Gunboat on the Mississippi "protecting" RNC convention goers from peace island folks


In 2008, Peace Island was scheduled at the time of the Republican Convention in St. Paul.
Today, four years later, September 2 is between the Republican Convention (in Tampa last week) and Democratic Convention (in Charlotte, this week).
Problems continue and will continue so long as people are on this planet.
Working towards solutions should still be our objective, for the ultimate good of the planet earth.
Final Thought: Reports on events like this, including mine, are almost impossible to objectively report about. They are full of emotion from one side or another.
But there are other ‘sides’ to the story. When I was scanning the photo with the armed and dangerous police along the parade route, I got to thinking about a burly uniformed Ramsey County officer I was standing behind at the local coffee shop some months ago. I had noticed his shoes and we struck up a conversation about the kinds of shoes police personnel wear. The only thing I remember from the conversation was his comment that his feet hurt when he was on guard during the Republican National Convention….

#612 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #38. Joe Biden, Pat Kessler and Niall Ferguson

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Today, I decided to attend the Vice President Joe Biden event at the Depot in Minneapolis.
I’ve attended these kinds of events before, so I knew exactly what to expect. It took an hour out of yesterday to pick up the ticket, then four hours today to drive over, stand in line, stand inside waiting for the Vice Presidents half hour speech, then drive home afterwards. I was there for the entire event.
It was a good day. I’m tired.
(click on photos to enlarge them)

V. P. Joe Biden, August 21, 2012, The Depot, Minneapolis MN


There was nothing unexpected in the vice-president’s remarks. I heard Pat Kessler of WCCO-TV report live back to the Noon News on ‘CCO that Biden was in the Cities to “fire up the troops”, or words to that effect.
Of course, motivating supporters is a totally appropriate use of time for a candidate. Kessler, who is my favorite local TV reporter on political matters, was stating the obvious.
(Like all the camera people and reporters, Kessler was “penned in” the press area, certainly not roaming the crowd. I watched Pat as he did his work, writing his notes, walking around in the ‘pen’, contemplating his thoughts.)

Pat Kessler reporting at noon, August 21.


I wondered how much time Kessler’s piece would get on the WCCO-TV evening news. Back home I watched, and he got about three minutes, only perhaps a minute of which was about the event in which I had invested five hours of my time. This is not a criticism. He was doing his job. And he does it well. He always seems fair, and cares about getting his information right, and conveying it in as objective manner as possible.
But if TV news is where people get a lot of their political news, they certainly get no depth of coverage at all. Maybe 20 minutes of that half hour news program is advertising; the rest divided into the traditional “news, weather, sports” with perhaps some special features thrown in (the State Fair is coming up and ‘CCO will do the news from there….)
Back home, I picked up the mail which included, this day, Newsweek’s August 27 edition, with President Obama on the cover, and the cover article, “Hit the road, Barack. Why We Need a new President” by Niall Ferguson.
I’d gotten a preview of this article the previous day through two commentaries challenging Ferguson’s methodology and his interpretation of facts. You can read them here and here. UPDATE Aug 22: Another one, from Business Insider, came today and is here. And another, here.
Because Ferguson is a writer of some prominence, and because Newsweek remains a magazine of some credibility, Ferguson’s printed words get credibility that apparently they don’t deserve. Likely very few of the Newsweek readers get the benefit of a critique of Ferguson’s objectivity. The choice is to accept his opinion or not.
Back to the Depot and V.P. Biden, I think most of us felt it was time well spent. But it was tiring.
Well before the invocation opening the gathering, I struck up a conversation with a lady who was sitting on the floor near the media platform.
She was surprised that there were no chairs (it is the usual for these kinds of events).
At the same time, so far as I know she stayed till the end, and she was a supporter. It was just too tiring.
I ran into one fellow I knew and we had a good conversation about things political; and it is always interesting to just people watch at events like this. I become aware of how diverse the scrum is that goes by the name “Democrat” at such gatherings. (And you also notice people who are quite obviously not Democrat, but they are at such meetings for reasons of their own.)
In the long line before entering the old Depot, I got to thinking about the time in 1960-61 when I first came to Minneapolis, via the Soo Line, for a student union conference at the UofM Farm Campus in St. Paul. I was a college senior at the time, and I’d never been on a jaunt like this before. The bustle of the twin cities was new to me.
Where Joe Biden was speaking was where I and my fellow students had debarked from the train from Valley City ND over 50 years ago, sometime during the transition period from President Eisenhower to President Kennedy. A memory from that era is here: Politics 1960 vs 1996001
Things have really changed….

The line into the refurbished Milwaukee Road Depot August 21, 2012


There’s about two months till the election.
Get engaged.

Message t-shirt seen at the Joe Biden event


Portion of Milwaukee Road Route Map 1954, seen at the Hotel which now occupies the former Depot.


The old smokestacks from the days that the Depot welcomed coal-burning steam engines.