U.S. Sen. Al Franken is up with his first re-election ad, entitled "3.5 Million Jobs." It references the so-called "skills gap" in which higher-skilled employers can't find qualified employees. The ad features Elizabeth Abraham, owner of Blaine's Top Tool.

The ad is straightforward, betraying none of the cleverness Franken has downplayed in the Senate, and isn't humorous and personal in the style of GOP challenger Mike McFadden's intro ads. If nothing else, the ad — which ties jobs to education — signals a meat-and-potatoes campaign from Franken, who faces presidential off-year headwinds from the botched ObamaCare rollout and a tepid middle-class recovery.

The ad is also interesting for featuring an employer from Michele Bachmann's 6th district, beyond Franken's traditional Democratic base, but home to many blue-collar workers, employed or not. 

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society

View of the Hennepin Bridge from Nicollet Island, c.1868.

The Father Louis Hennepin Bridge was built in 1855 to take advantage of the transport possibilities provided by the Mississippi River above St. Anthony Falls. It was the first bridge built to span the Mississippi river, and made crossing its length above the Falls much easier. The rushing rapids helped to created industry on the river and spurred a population boom that made Minneapolis the most populated city in Minnesota.

In the 1850s, the rock ledge above the Falls of St. Anthony was the only place where the Mississippi could be crossed in the area. In the winter months a thick layer of ice made travel easy. The high waters of spring and summer, however, made passage over the river slow and unsafe. In 1847 businessman Franklin Steele and his friend John Stevens established a rope ferry from Nicollet Island to the western side of the river to help travelers cross.

While the ferry helped initially, an increase in traffic necessitated new construction. In 1851 a bridge was built from St. Anthony to Nicollet Island to make the trek to the island easier for travelers. A short time later Steele and local business leaders took steps to build a bridge that would reach both sides of the river.

On March 4, 1852, Steele and his associates were granted a charter by the Territorial Legislature to build a bridge. The group formed the Mississippi Bridge Company and soon after began planning for a new bridge along the same path as the rope ferry. They hired Engineer Thomas W. Griffith to head the construction project. Griffith and his team began work on a suspension-style bridge on May 5, 1854. The cost of the completed bridge was $36,000.

The bridge opened to the public on January 23, 1855. A grand celebration marked the occasion. At one o'clock a large parade formed in front of the St. Charles Hotel in Saint Anthony, complete with sleighs filled with people, banners, and a marching band. Their route took them over a smaller bridge to Nicollet Island, where they were welcomed by a cannon blast as they stepped onto the Suspension Bridge. After crossing the river, the parade moved through the business district of the municipality of Minneapolis and returned to St. Anthony. A celebratory dinner followed.

Since Steele and the Mississippi Bridge Company owned the bridge, crossing it required the payment of a toll. Pedestrians paid three cents (five cents for a round trip); horses and mules cost fifteen cents each; single-horse carriages cost twenty-five cents; cows and oxen cost ten cents each; and pigs and sheep cost two cents each. Due to safety concerns, all who crossed were required to do so at no faster than a walking pace.

The bridge was almost immediately plagued with safety issues. On March 25, 1855, a tornado tore through the area, nearly destroying the bridge. Although it was rebuilt and reopened on July 4, safety and capacity concerns persisted throughout its lifetime that eventually led to its being replaced.

The rapid growth of St. Anthony and Minneapolis meant that a new bridge would soon be needed. When the work began in 1854 there were roughly 450 inhabitants in Minneapolis and nearly a thousand in St. Anthony. By 1860 the cities' populations had grown to 2500 and 3200, respectively.

In 1869 the charter the Mississippi Bridge Company held on the bridge expired and Hennepin County paid the company $37,500 to assume ownership. The toll requirement continued until the bonds sold to buy the bridge were paid off in 1872. In February St. Anthony officials agreed to merge their city with Minneapolis. The county-owned bridge was turned over to the new city. Now a single entity, its connection over the river became even more important. Calls to build a new bridge to handle increased traffic multiplied almost immediately.

A second suspension bridge was built directly to the north of the first one. Thomas Griffith was once again hired to serve as engineer. On February 22, 1877, the second Hennepin suspension bridge opened, making its predecessor unnecessary. The first bridge built to give travelers the ability to cross the Mississippi River was destroyed soon after.

For more information on this topic, check out the original entry on MNopedia.

On Jan. 21, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people when it comes to speech. 

The Citizens United ruling, buttressed by the Supreme’s recent McCutcheon decision, opened the floodgates for ever-more money to pour into elections. But it also inspired organizations nationwide to counter the court’s 5-4 decision with a constitutional amendment that essentially would end “corporate personhood.’’

The fight-back effort underscores how difficult it is to amend the Constitution.

Nowhere is the difficulty more clear than in the Minnesota House, where partisanship, fear and apathy have blocked Rep. Ray Dehn’s proposal merely asking the U.S. Congress to support an amendment.

Last year, the Minnesota Senate supported a stronger measure calling for a Constitutional convention. But last week, when the Minneapolis DFLer counted noses in his caucus, he came up about 10 votes short.

“I haven’t totally given up,’’ said Dehn. “I’ll keep talking to people. But, with only two weeks left in the session … .’’

An arduous journey

As Dehn discussed the dynamics last week, the Minnesota Wild hockey team was about to play its deciding playoff game against Colorado. The media was filled with stories, and chat lines, tweets, blogs, radio talk shows were crammed with hockey.

Millions of dollars impacting democracy? Ho hum.

“I understand the power of pro sports,’’ Dehn said. “You have the stresses of daily life, we’re coming out of a terrible recession; people need a place to relax, have fun. Pro sports have become the modern day form of release … ."

People such as Dehn and Roseville DFL Sen. John Marty have embarked on a long, arduous journey that seemingly has little chance of success. The great hope is that over time, a national movement builds that will demand a future Congress’s attention.

Time out for some basics civics: There are two ways to amend the Constitution. One requires that two-thirds of the U.S. House and Senate send an amendment to the states. The other process, which has never been used, requires that two-thirds of the states call a Constitutional Convention to draft an amendment. Either way, 75 percent of the states, through their legislatures, must approve the amendment.

The task is huge, which explains why there are only 27 amendments.

The amendment-by-convention approach would require 33 states to call a convention and 38 legislatures to approve it. In this “anti-corporate personhood’’ effort, 16 states have passed resolutions that would lead to an amendment that would overturn Citizens United.

Rep. Ray Dehn

Additionally, in most states that have passed resolutions, there has been bipartisan support. An amendment, it should be noted, would not only limit and better disclose corporate contributions, but also union money.

“I’m not sure why it’s become partisan here,’’ Dehn said. “I do know that ALEC (the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council) opposes. But there have to be other reasons as well.’’

Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, said he doubts that any GOP members would support the resolution.

“I admire his [Dehn’s] passion,’’ Davids said, “but for now, the Supreme Court ruling is the law of the land. I think the best thing is to bring other cases forward [through the court process] and see how that goes.’’

Laughing, Davids added, “After what happened to us, I’m a little nervous about amendments in general.’’

He was referring to the GOP-inspired amendments opposing gay marriage and pushing voter IDs. Minnesotans rejected both, and many believe the GOP lost legislative majorities in the House and Senate over the efforts.

However, two states that have passed the resolution, Colorado and Montana, asked voters directly through the petition-and-referendum process. In both cases, the resolutions had huge public support, passing with more than 70 per cent of the vote.

DFL can’t back a weaker proposal

But of course, given its Minnesota legislative majority, the DFL could pass Dehn’s resolution, which to many would not seem all that controversial.

The resolution states, in part: “Clarifying that the rights protected under the Constitution are the rights of natural persons and not the rights of artificial entities and that spending money to influence elections is not speech under the First Amendment.’’

Unlike last year’s successful Minnesota Senate resolution, the House version would not call for a Constitutional convention if Congress doesn’t act.

Dehn eliminated the convention option because pols of both parties fear that convening such a session could fundamentally change the entire Constitution.

Essentially, then, Dehn is left with a “please’’ resolution to the currently gridlocked Congress. And still he can’t get the votes in his own caucus.

Some DFL legislators simply refuse to support any resolution, apparently believing such things are beneath their dignity. Others, in an election year, fear unintended controversy and union concerns. Others likely aren’t sure just what the resolution means.

Dehn, like Marty, is profoundly fearful of the influence of money in campaigns.

“The way we’re headed, we’re going to have about 80 families in this country determining the outcome of elections,’’ Dehn said.

The money even pours into Minnesota legislative races.

Under law, there’s supposed to be a $60,000 cap on how much money a candidate can raise in an election. Individuals can give no more than $1,000 to legislative candidates. Just $12,500 can be raised from “large donations” and from PACs and lobbyists.

Yet, Dehn said, there were legislative races in which more than $500,000 came pouring into districts from obscure sources. These were “independent expenditures,’’ typically in the form of attack ads. Those attacks, from both sides, have already begun showing up in mailboxes of voters in some competitive districts.

In national races, nearly $1 billion in independent expenditure money was spent in 2012, half of that in the presidential race.

“We are moving from a democracy to a plutocracy,’’ says Marty. “What we’re doing is a difficult effort. But many of us think our democracy is worth it.’’

Effective Democracy is a year-long series of occasional reports supported by the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, as part of a grant made to MinnPost and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Photo by Joe Kramm

Sousada Chidthachack

As Sousada Chidthachack came of age in Minneapolis, she watched her Lao-born immigrant parents struggle to make ends meet.

Winger (father) and Bounmy (mother) had escaped from Laos’ Communist government, and arrived in the United States in 1986 by way of Nakhon Phanom refugee camp in Thailand, where Chidthachack was born and where she spent the first two years of her life.

The early years in Minneapolis were tough on the immigrant family.

“I remember from an early age that my mother and father would go to bed at strange times because they had to work odd hours,” said Chidthachack, whose parents held multiple jobs as hotel and airport cleaners. “So I made a note to myself: ‘When I grow up, I’m not going to work odd hours, and I’m not going to wear a uniform to work.’”

“We were on government assistance, ” Chidthachack said. “We lived in the projects in north Minneapolis, at least for four years. There was always a language barrier. As early as fifth grade, I can remember that I would be the translator for my parents at the doctor’s office. If there was something about work that they needed translated, or something of an emergency, I was the one doing that.”

Chidthachack said some of her schoolmates and others tried to isolate her by falsely linking her to gangs. “I was associated with this community, even though I wasn’t ever in a gang,” she said. “So I felt like I had to constantly overachieve to prove people wrong.”

And prove them wrong she did, always keeping her eye on the education prize.

A matter of degrees

After graduating from South High in 2002, Chidthachack attended the University of St. Thomas, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in math in 2007 and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction in 2010.

Chidthachack spent five years teaching in Minneapolis schools. While teaching, she stayed engaged as an education activist, an outspoken justice advocate and an inspirational figure to thousands of young people of color.  She currently serves as a math tutor and mentor to low-income high school and college students in the Twin Cities.

When the University of St. Thomas begins its fall semester, Chidthachack, now age 30, will join the faculty as a math instructor. And next spring, she will graduate from the University of Minnesota with a Ph.D. in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

While interest in STEM jobs grows apace, so does racial disparity in the field: About 71 percent of STEM workers are non-Hispanic white, 15 percent are Asian, 7 percent are Hispanic, and 6 percent are black. 

Chidthachack said she hopes her community service will help shrink that gap.

“My aim is to engage communities and say, ‘Hey, here is what I have to offer; here are the resources I had access to because I was once a Ph.D. student at the U,’” she said. “My aim is to use the gifts that I’ve been given to inspire young kids.”

No. 1 teachers

As Chidthachack reflects on her relative good fortune, she credits her parents, “my No. 1 teachers,” she said. “They are the reason why I continue to strive for excellence because their expectations were very high. For example, when I was a young student, I would get 95 on a test, and my dad would be like, ‘Good, what happened to the other 5 points?’”

There are also mentors and coaches to whom she’s grateful. Among them is Beverly Davis, a retired principal of MetroTech Career Academy. The Harvard-trained educator has been a cheerleader and a shoulder to cry on, and is the person who encouraged Chidthachack to pursue a Ph.D.

“She is disciplined,” Davis said of Chidthachack. “She is focused. Her goal is making math more accessible to students of color. I’ve no doubt that she will be a major force in education around math.”

‘I defy the odds’

Chidthachack has committed her personal and professional journey to the pages of her forthcoming (self-published) memoir, “The Lesson is Never Just a Number: A Mathematics Teacher's Journey From the Projects to Pursuing a Ph.D.”

The book is partly Chidthachack’s life story, and partly about Twin Citians who are serving the community. One of the nine people she has interviewed so far is St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith. Chidthachack said she wants to reach a wider audience with her message about what can be achieved with a good attitude and a good education.

“People who look like me don’t usually get to where I am now,” she said. “I don’t fit the mold, I defy the odds. In that, I want people to find inspiration.”

When the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra took the stage at Northrop on Friday for “Echoes of History,” the crowd went wild. When freshly reinstated Music Director Osmo Vänskä followed shortly after, walking briskly to the podium, the applause would have gone on and on, except Vänskä wouldn’t allow it. After a big smile and a brief bow, he turned, raised his baton, and went to work.

Past, present and future met in a glorious concert in a splendid new space. The program was the same as the then-Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra played when Cyrus Northrop Memorial Auditorium first opened in 1929: Wagner’s Prelude to “Die Meistersinger,” the Largo from Dvorák’s “New World” symphony, Liszt’s “Les Preludes,” Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture. All warhorses now, but still mighty, and well suited to an event conceived in desperate circumstances. When “Echoes of History” was announced last November, the musicians were locked out, Vänskä had resigned in frustration, and the musicians were producing their own concerts. With the lockout over and Vänskä officially returned as of May 1, most of the drama was back where it belongs: in the music, not behind the scenes. There’s still a lot to be done and not much time before the current contracts end (the musicians’ in Feb. 2017, Vänskä’s in May 2016), but there is reason to hope that the orchestra can rebuild and the audience can grow.

A big part of the newly revitalized Northrop is the state-of-the-art acoustics. So, how did the concert sound? We were especially taken by the quietest parts of the Dvorák – moments of radiant, limpid beauty, hushed and quivering – and the (digital) cannon booms in the Tchaikovsky. And the U of M choirs and marching band. And the fact that we could hear all the sections of the orchestra, and single notes from William Wolfram’s piano during the Liszt piano concerto, even when there were a lot of notes pouring out of it (this was Liszt, after all). To our ears, it sounded great. But what do we know? We turned to the real expert behind the Northrop’s sound, acoustician Joshua Cushner of Arup, the global company behind the Sydney Opera House, the Beijing Olympics, the Concert for Diana and concert halls around the world. 

Cushner has been involved with the Northrop redo since 2008, through design and construction. “We provided the acoustics, all the performance sound, video, and communication systems, and some of the architectural lighting design as well,” he explained when we spoke on Saturday. Plus theater consulting, which involves “everything from planning layouts to designing the room form itself for sightlines and technical.”

MinnPost: Where were you sitting on Friday, and how did it sound?

Joshua Cushner: I was sitting in the President’s Box. First balcony, side box on house left. Those seats, as in any hall when you’re in a side box, are cool seats but never acoustically the best seats. I like to be more toward the center. 

I thought the sound was great. You could hear the orchestra over the course of the night getting a sense of the hall. They rehearsed without an audience. A micro-adjustment happens once the hall fills with people. As the show went on, [the musicians] got more and more feel for the room. 

MP: What would you say are the best seats in the new Northrop? 

JC: Some of the acoustically best seats are more toward the center. The orchestra level, the lowest level, is great. Any of the balconies in the center are fantastic. I personally think the best for a performance like this is probably the second balcony. It’s sort of a sweet spot in the room between getting the blended sound from the orchestra and what the room is acoustically producing. If you’re going to pick seats for their acoustics, those would be the premium seats in my book. But different people like different flavors of steak. 

MP: What were you listening for?

JC: One of the key things I listen for is the togetherness of the entire orchestra, that you’re not hearing anything disparate, but the sound as the full organism. After that, you’re looking for some sense of envelopment, the sound that’s surrounding you. That’s the characteristic of a good hall. But you can have too much envelopment, where you lose clarity and it gets too reverberant. That’s definitely not a characteristic of Northrop.

What we tried to do is strike a balance between having an enveloping hall and still having clarity. A lot of feedback we’ve gotten so far is that people have really enjoyed the clarity of being able to hear all the instruments, all the melodies while still getting that enveloping sound. That’s one of the reasons to put down your iPod and phone and come to a live show. You feel the three-dimensional character of the sound, as well as some intimacy with the folks performing.

MP: What can we expect at other performances, with other kinds of music?

JC: The most transformative part of the audience chamber is there’s two fundamental modes of the room. One is for natural acoustics. That’s when the orchestra shell is in place. Then there’s the amplified mode of the room, for amplified music and spoken word. Rock bands don’t want to play into a lot of reverb. So there the shell goes away, and we have acoustic banners that run down the side walls. They’re hidden in the ceiling. If you look at the side walls of the seating area, there are pilasters – columns – and recesses in the walls. The banners fill those recesses and look like part of the architecture of the room. Anytime there’s an amplified show, the banners will come down.

There’s nothing you can’t do [in the new Northrop]. We’ve tried to make it the best multi-purpose venue. That’s a pejorative term in a lot of people’s minds, but it doesn’t have to be. I think in many ways it’s the best venue you can do almost anything in.

Note: You’ll have a chance to check out the rock side of Northrop when the Moody Blues perform there on Aug. 26. FMI and tickets ($55-$125).

***

Photo by Craig VanDerSchaegen

Nicholas Freeman as Buddy Holly in
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story

Four of the five plays in History Theatre’s 2014-15 season, announced today, are world premieres, including Garrison Keillor’s first full-length play, “Radio Man.” Celebrating the 40th anniversary of  “A Prairie Home Companion,” drawing on Keillor’s personal memories of the show, it will feature singing groups, the private eye Guy Noir, the cowboys Dusty and Lefty, and residents of Lake Wobegon. Pearce Bunting (“Boardwalk Empire”) has been cast as the host. Starts Sept. 27. In February 2015, we’ll see the new play by Presbyterian pastor and former Star Tribune op-ed contributor Kristine Holmgren,“God Girl,” about women who broke through the stained-glass ceiling within the Protestant church. March brings “The Debutante’s Ball” by Eric “Pogi” Sumangil, a look into Minnesota’s annual Filipino-American celebration and a co-production with Mu Performing Arts. In May, Joe Minjares’ “River Road Boogie: The Augie Garcia Story” tells the tale of the Mexican-American quintet that opened for Elvis Presley at the St. Paul Auditorium in 1956. The only non-world-premiere on the roster is a bring-back in November of History Theatre’s popular “Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story” written by Alan Janes. Season passes go on sale today.

Twin Cities author William Kent Krueger has won the Edgar Award for “Ordinary Grace,” a stand-alone novel (not part of his hugely popular Cork O’Connor series) set in a small town in the Minnesota River Valley in 1961. Krueger told MPR’s Kathy Wurzer that the Edgar is “kind of the Oscar of our business.” And that “it looks like … a ceramic bust of Edgar Allan Poe.” The New York Times best-selling author is currently visiting libraries in greater Minnesota. Here’s his schedule if you want to go meet him. (He’s in Ortonville tonight, Benson and Appleton on Wednesday.) Last month, Krueger won his fifth Minnesota Book Award. Cork O’Connor fans, no worries; you can expect a new one in August.

After a terrific close to its 2013-14 season – an April 26 concert featuring Puerto Rican musician and composer Miguel Zenon, one of the world’s great alto saxophonists – JazzMN Orchestra has announced a strong 2014-15 season, its 15th as Minnesota’s premiere big band. On October 11, drummer Dave Weckl will be JazzMN’s guest. November 22 is a program of music by little big bands – larger than a combo but smaller than a big band. On March 14, 2015, JazzMN will welcome bebop tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb, formerly of the Tonight Show Band led by Doc Severinsen. And on April 25, Yellowjacket Bob Mintzer will join the band. Season tickets go on sale June 1, singles later this summer.

Closes May 11: “Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take” at the Walker. Closes May 18: “Matisse: Masterworks from the Baltimore Museum of Art.” MIA will extend viewing hours starting May 9. Now at the Museum of Russian Art: “The Art of Collecting,” with 55 paintings from the Raymond and Susan Johnson collection of 20th-century Russian art – the largest, most comprehensive such collection outside of Russia. Opens June 6 at the Weinstein: “Robert Mapplethorpe.” The first dedicated show of Mapplethorpe’s work in Minneapolis in four years.

***

In Gallery 306 on the third floor of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, there’s a portrait of a lady who looks like a dude. Painted around 1763, John Singleton Copley’s “Portrait of Sarah Allen, née Sargent (1729-1791)” was the unlikely inspiration for Freshwater Theatre’s new play,“Mrs. Charles.” Playwright Ruth Virkus imagined that Allen really was a man living as a woman, then delivered a sensitive, touching and beautifully written LGBT historical romance set in Minneapolis in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Rising young executive Walter (Nathan Tylutki) and schoolteacher Charlie (Neil Schneider) are lovers in Philadelphia who see each other clandestinely. When Walter is offered a job managing a mill in Minneapolis, Charlie comes up with an outrageous plan: he’ll join him there – as his wife. He’ll live a lie in crinolines and corsets in order to tell the truth.

Although there are funny moments throughout the play – particularly in the characters of overly enthusiastic Quaker activist Margery (Katie Starks) and socially inept Clyde (Matthew Cawley) – “Mrs. Charles” is neither comedy nor joke. Imaginatively staged, rich in historical references and mannerisms, it’s a powerful love story with a strong thread of suspense: Will Walter and Charlie be outed? Schneider is brilliant in the title role, going from slender, attractive young man to proper Victorian lady and maintaining that illusion for almost three hours.

See this play if you can. Then be glad we live in different times. Through May 18 at Nimbus Theatre. FMI and tickets ($15/$13). 

Our picks for the week

Wednesday at Once Upon a Crime: John Sandford. The New York Times best-selling author talks about his latest, “Field of Prey,” answers questions, and signs books. 7 p.m., free and open to the public. (On Thursday at noon, he’ll do a signing at the Barnes & Noble on Nicollet Mall.)

Wednesday at the Dakota: Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge. Two important young guitarists share the Dakota stage. Lage has been touring with Gary Burton; he also recorded an album with Fred Hersch. Eldridge is a member of the Grammy-nominated Punch Brothers with mandolinist Chris Thile. So one is mostly jazz, the other is mostly bluegrass, but fewer and fewer people (including many musicians) seem to care about such distinctions anymore. 7 p.m. FMI and tickets ($25).

Wednesday at Northrop’s Best Buy Theater: Sacabuche! Playing music for voices, sackbuts and violins, the early music ensemble shows how Italian music of the late 16th and early 17th centuries spread throughout the courts and musical life of Europe, especially Poland. If this sounds a bit brainiac, get used to it; this concert is being presented by the U’s Institute for Advanced Study, who will (let’s hope) bring us more smarty-pants events. 7:30 p.m. FMI and tickets ($35 general admission, $10 U of M student).

Thursday through Saturday at the Lab Theater: “Some Assembly Required.” Part of Theater Latté Da’s “Next: New Musicals in the Making” series, this improvised musical will work with audience suggestions to create a brand-new musical in real time. Come for one evening to be entertained, or all three to watch a new show take shape. With artists from Comedy Sportz and Huge Improv and musical direction by Todd Price. 7:30 p.m. FMI and tickets ($30 three-show passes, $12 single tickets).

Courtesy of Bob Briscoe and the Minnesota Potters

Covered jar by Bob Briscoe, part of the 22nd Annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour

Friday-Sunday: The 22nd Annual St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour. This is the big one, the tour pottery fans and collectors look forward to each year – and people fly in from other states to see. Seven potters who live and work in the St. Croix valley open their studios and invite guests from near and far; this year’s tour features 51 potters from Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Oregon, Montana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, New York, and other states. Buy a mug, buy a plate, mix-and-match a set of dinnerware, or just look around and learn. Friday, 10-6; Saturday, 10-6; Sunday, 10-5. Free, with refreshments along the way. FMI. P.S. Accordion guy Dan Turpening will be making music at Connee Mayeron’s studio in Shafer.

“A decade ago, [the government] could easy shape the story,” said one Yemeni official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Now – if they’re smart enough – a group of people with an Internet connection can do the same.”

It is hard to believe but there hasn’t been a single reaction in MinnPost to the latest Supreme Court decision that let stand Michigan’s ban on affirmative action. I think this case deserves some commentary and discussion.

I will remind people what this is about. In 2006 Michigan voters, by a huge margin, approved a constitutional amendment that prohibited any consideration of race in college admission. Predictably, affirmative-action supporters (consideration of race is usually a euphemism for affirmative action) sued, alleging that they would not be able to petition for affirmative-action use in admission policies while supporters of all other causes can still do it. By doing so, they did not claim that affirmative action is a civil-rights issue but rather that banning it is unlawful.

The case had made its long way through all possible courts before it ended up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. All of the federal courts had sided with the plaintiffs, so this decision overturned the previous ones. The Supreme Court decision was 6-2 (one justice did not participate), with Justice Sonia Sotomayor reading a 15-minute excerpt out of her 58-page dissenting opinion. However, it is notable that one liberal judge supported the majority’s decision.

I will base my analysis on several of Sotomayor’s excerpts from her speech and also her book. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” she wrote in her dissenting opinion, “is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”

Sotomayor later reiterates, "Race matters. Race matters in part because of the long history of racial minorities' being denied access to the political process." And in her book she praised affirmative action, said that it played a role in her admission to the law school, and said that “it opened doors in [her] life.”

So let’s take Sotomayor to her words and “speak openly and candidly on the subject of race” (and remember that both President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have repeatedly made the same call). Let’s remember, however, that speaking openly includes presenting the opposite point of view, even if that point of view may seem unpleasant and even offensive to some.

The issue of past discrimination

There are two points that Sotomayor is trying to make here. First, she clearly refers to the history of past discrimination as a justification for affirmative action. However, the Supreme Court, even when it allowed consideration of affirmative action in college admission, used a completely different justification – diversity, and diversity only.

If past discrimination is the reason for affirmative action, logically the length and strength of discrimination shall determine the level of affirmative action applicability to different groups of people. Therefore, the Jews should be the ones who are given the greatest advantages and both Catholics and Mormons should be included as well. But that is not how affirmative action is being applied, so I would say that Sotomayor’s argument is not persuasive.

Her second point is that, since affirmative action benefited her, it must be good. But let’s see: If it opened doors for her, it without doubt means that it closed those doors for others (since the number of people who can go through those doors has always been limited). So affirmative action, while benefiting Sotomayor, did just the opposite to someone else who was at a minimum not worse than she. How is it fair? 

Obviously, the only reason affirmative action helped Sotomayor was her race/ethnicity. But how would all of us react if the only reason for someone’s advantage would be his or her white race? We would be appalled and rightfully so. That was the reason affirmative action was implemented to begin with. 

How can different treatment of different races be reconciled with the Constitution?

Other advantages offered

Some may argue that colleges give advantages to some people anyway. That is correct, but those advantages are different. For example, considering athletic ability is still a merit consideration, the same as past alumni relation – they are individual qualities that eventually bring money to college. I do not like either of those considerations and think that at best they should affect scholarships, not admission, but at least they are constitutional.

At the end, I also want to address another point made by affirmative-action supporters which argues that it’s not past discrimination but present inequality that justifies affirmative action. I am not going to argue here that it just doesn’t exist – it does (inequality, not discrimination), even though it is not necessarily based on race only. But these disparities are being addressed in a different way already; additional programs, support systems, and money that are devoted to eliminating those inequalities are there. And, fortunately, they are fully constitutional: The government has the right to tax people, and it also has the right to use that money for the common good, and that is what it is doing even though the definition of common good may vary greatly. But considering race in merit-based selections is unfair and unconstitutional, no matter how Justice Sotomayor tries to justify it.

Ilya Gutman is an immigrant from the Soviet Union who now lives and works in Marshall, Minnesota. 

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If you're interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, email Susan Albright at salbright@minnpost.com.)

In a joint statement to MinnPost Monday, the Metropolitan Council and the city of Minneapolis confirmed that in order to "address the situation with SWLRT," they have agreed to use a "facilitator." They chose Arthur J. Boylan, retired chief magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court.   

In case you don't recall, the "situation" is this: In early April, the Met Council, over the objections of Minneapolis, voted 14 to 2 to endorse a route for the $1.68 billion Southwest light rail train that would keep freight trains in the Kenilworth Corridor between Cedar Lake and Lake of the Isles and add the light rail line in shallow tunnels. Both Mayor Betsy Hodges and the Minneapolis City Council wanted the freight train to be rerouted to St. Louis Park and/or the LRT to be run through deep tunnels, which would add another $150 million to its cost.  

The next step is municipal consent. All government parties along the line — Minneapolis, St. Louis Park, Hennepin County, the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority, Hopkins, Minnetonka and Eden Prairie — must hold public hearings on the plan, take testimony from the public and then vote. The process  may stretch into July. The seven counties are kicking in 40 percent of the cost, and they had  threatened to move to other projects if the issues weren't resolved by the end of June.

The first hearing, before the HCRRA, was supposed to happen in mid-May but was postponed to May 29. The two-week delay occurred after the Met Council sent Minneapolis a plan for the route that it later said was incorrect. It showed one of the two light-rail tunnels in the Kenilworth corridor built in 13-foot-high berms, which had never previously been included in any public plans. Two weeks passed before the Met Council furnished the correct berm-free plan.  

Boylan stepped down from the bench at the beginning of the year to start his own mediation practice. As an alternative dispute-resolution neutral for the federal court, he worked on settlements involving medical device, copyright and whistle-blower cases. But his biggest claim to fame was his 2011 mediation of the labor dispute between the National Football League and its players. He was assigned the case in April and wrapped it up in July.

It's not clear at this point what elbows Boylan could twist or carrots he could offer to bring the two sides together. The NFL and the players, after all, had dozens of issues on which both sides could give and take. Perhaps the Met Council could add back the 21st Street station it deleted in Minneapolis. Or maybe it could offer some money to finance the proposed streetcar line. Or maybe it will spend the extra $150 million for deep tunnels in Kenilworth. All that assumes, of course, that the Met Council has and is willing to spend the money.

The task facing Judge Boylan looks like mediation impossible.

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton Tuesday signed a bill simplifying the process that allows drug suspects to retrieve cash and other assets law enforcement seized, if those individuals are not convicted or do not admit guilt in a crime.

It’s the latest reform to the state’s civil asset forfeiture process, since the 2009 Metro Gang Strike Force scandal. The 2012 Legislature voted to expand everything from government reporting and notification requirements to court access for individuals.

The newest changes — passed 55-5 in the Senate and the House unanimously — would shift the burden of proof from suspects to the government. Also, those found not guilty could get possessions through small-claims court, rather than filing suit.

Following through with a suit costs an average of $1,200, Senate sponsor Dave Thompson says. 

“For people who are middle class or lower-middle class, that is their vehicle and that’s their only means of transportation to and from work,” said Thompson, a Lakeville Republican and gubernatorial candidate. “It’s not thousands of dollars like more complicated legal proceedings can be, but it still can be enough to keep some people from getting their property back, even though they were never charged with a crime.”

He added, “For me this is a freedom and liberty issue.”

Less crime, more forfeiture

The push for the changes dates back five years, when the multijurisdictional Metro Gang Strike Force was shut down after it misplaced evidence and repeatedly seized cash, televisions and other items from those never charged with a crime.

The issue has grown beyond the “policing for profit” scandal, uniting urban liberal Democrats and libertarians who feel the issue is not about targeting law enforcement but cutting down the state’s complex judicial requirements.

An Institute for Justice report showed civil forfeit proceeds climbed 75 percent between 2003 and 2010, despite a drop in crime. But even after the Strike Force scandal broke, civil forfeiture cases grew to 6,851 cases in 2012, up roughly 8 percent or 500 cases from 2011. Overall, 2012 saw $6.7 million worth of seizures, according to the state auditor’s office.

Sen. Dave Thompson

Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, civil cases only require that law enforcement allege a criminal connection. To get property back, citizens first have to file a lawsuit, then prove their innocence. Fewer than 3 percent actually file such a suit, says Lee McGrath, executive director of the Institute for Justice’s Minnesota chapter.

Says McGrath, “The way I look at it, the scandal from the Metro Gang Strike Force raised awareness at the state Legislature about civil forfeiture. No one acquitted of a crime in criminal court should ever lose their property through forfeiture in civil court. This legislation makes consistent in Minnesota forfeiture law that a person and their property are innocent until proven guilty.”

Reforms and compromises

Reform has been slow going, with successes hinging on compromises with prosecutors and law enforcement.

The Minnesota County Attorneys Association received a provision allowing prosecutors to pursue civil forfeiture beyond just a guilty conviction. They can use an admission of guilt if, say, someone works with police as part of a deal and have not yet been formally convicted.

Supporters also dropped a provision directing any forfeiture money to the state’s general fund instead of law enforcement coffers. GOP Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, a retired county sheriff, notes that most police agencies don’t take in extra money from civil asset forfeiture.

House author Susan Allen said the original bill was “very, very broad. It completely turned [the process] upside down. People were opposed, and it went too far. The current bill doesn’t upset the current process, it just provides more due process. It’s a modest reform.”

For DFLer Allen, the bill is about repairing relationships between law enforcement and her south Minneapolis community. “We have racial profiling, and relations are strained,” she said. “I thought this would be a way to improve that relationship so that people felt like there was due process, and that it was fair.” 

The next battle

Civil asset forfeiture reforms aren’t easy to come by in state legislatures. In March a forfeiture reform bill in Georgia — whose laws are considered the nation’s least fair — was blocked for the second time because of law enforcement opposition. Late last year, lawmakers in Utah rolled back some reforms to their asset-forfeiture laws.

Another Minnesota forfeiture reform — known as the “Innocent Owner Forfeiture Bill” — stumbled at the finish line this year.

Rep. Susan Allen

Under current state law, if a someone commits a crime that involves a vehicle, including violating DWI conditions, that vehicle could be seized even if a spouse owns it. The bill aims to give innocent spouses more claims to their property in court.

However, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in a 2009 case — David Lee Laase v. 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe — that the “innocent owners” defense doesn’t apply in joint-ownership cases with forfeiture. County attorneys opposed the “innocent owner” bill, arguing the spouse who committed the crime could still have access to the vehicle. 

McGrath said joint ownership cases mostly impact women, and the Institute for Justice plans to pursue that change again next year.

“Innocent owner claimants, most of whom are wives, faced locked courthouse doors. They could not even raise a claim that they didn’t know or had nothing to do with the crime that their spouses who were joint owners of the property were involved in,” he said. “Looking forward we thing there is an opportunity for the Legislature to give innocent joint owners their day in court.” 

umn.edu

Deborah Dillon

On Friday, May 9, the state Board of Teaching is scheduled to vote on a first-of-its-kind Alternative Pathway to Teaching Program, which includes a partnership between the University of Minnesota and Teach for America (TFA) to prep TFA recruits for Minnesota classrooms. As seems inevitable with all things TFA-related, the proposal has been the subject of numerous headlines.

Newsworthy as the partnership is, it turns out to be just the first — and most visible — partnership to capitalize on a quiet revolution in how the U of M College of Education and Human Development prepares teacher candidates for Minnesota’s most challenged classrooms. Deborah Dillon, associate dean for graduate, professional and international programs, described the changes in a recent interview.

An edited version of that discussion follows. It’s longer than most MinnPost Q&As, but readers who are educators will want the level of detail Dillon provided.

MinnPost: I hear the proposed U of M-TFA partnership is just one of a series of innovations in teacher education you’ve got in the works.

Deborah Dillon: Over the last six years we’ve completely redesigned our comprehensive teacher preparation program, or our initial licensure program. We got a fabulous grant from the Edith and Archibald Bush Foundation and we formed a partnership with several other institutions of higher education in the state.

We started talking about, “What would you do if you really redesigned your teacher prep program and put in the best of what we know from the research literature into practice?” Some of those hallmarks are getting teacher candidates out into schools earlier and doing a different kind of student teaching than we have ever done before.

Traditionally the way we prepared teachers was they took foundational coursework and then they learned their content pedagogy strategies. After this they student taught. And sometimes you had some clinical experiences, where they went out and tried something, sprinkled in along the way.

But really that model is out of date and wasn’t very effective. Now we get our teachers out into schools on day one using a different kind of model, which we call co-teaching, where they actually start to teach alongside a mentor teacher from the beginning of their program. Then we layer in the content knowledge and the content pedagogical knowledge along the way. We’re finding that the preparation of the teachers is incredibly enhanced.

Part of that is they work side-by-side with an experienced classroom teacher who is very effective and provides strong mentoring that we mutually value. The K-12 students they work with recognize them both equally as teachers. They plan together.

We’ve not been able to redesign our program alone. We formed partnerships with schools. Part of their mission is to work on the co-teaching model with us because they want to help us prepare teachers who are going to be successful in their schools and successful in specific contexts.

Our partnership relationships right now include Minneapolis Public Schools, Forest Lake, Brooklyn Center, St. Paul, Columbia Heights and White Bear Lake. We meet together with all of these partners — 23 elementary schools and eight secondary schools — and our 20-plus licensure program faculty. We come together and share ideas about how to best prepare and support teacher candidates.

That has never been done before. So it is very exciting. And it’s collaborative — it requires a great deal of communication and a lot of work together. It is definitely paying off.

I’m going to use the example of Roosevelt High School. Our teachers have been co-teaching there now for a couple of years and student test scores have gone up. Roosevelt colleagues are so excited about the U of MN teaching candidates that have co-taught in that setting that they have hired several into permanent positions.

Our candidates are valued because they know the school culture, they know the kids, they know what is expected of them, and they’ve contributed to making a difference. Candidates hired by Roosevelt are likely to stay because their co-teaching experience has been so positive and they feel like they have been mentored so beautifully.

One of the goals in our comprehensive program is to enroll more teachers of color and more multilingual teachers. We certainly need and desire to do that to better meet the needs of our changing Minnesota K-12 student population. We’re making some really good gains and one way we are doing that is by supporting our teacher candidates of color with funding.

We’ve been working hard to secure scholarships, and that has made a difference in helping defray tuition costs. For example, in the 2012-13 cohort, of the 32 students self-identified as students of color, 23 of them have received on average about $7,000 apiece, amounting to about $162,800 in scholarship monies awarded.

To maintain a high-quality preparation program, we’re collecting data on our teacher candidates all the way through their program so that we understand at different points how they are developing as individuals prepared to teach students from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Several of the assessments require that they design and teach lessons and that the lessons are videotaped and critiqued, and the teacher candidate reflects on their critique. They have to conduct several case studies of various learners, such as English-language learners and students with special needs. These two emphases, along with culturally relevant teaching, are areas of teaching expertise that we focus on in our teacher preparation program.

And our teacher candidates are doing quite well. They are feeling very well prepared. And when we ask those who employ them about their preparation they say these are fabulous new teachers, and we want to hire University of Minnesota graduates.

The principal at North Park Heights Elementary in Columbia Heights really likes the way we are training candidates as urban teachers. As he notes, U of MN candidates don’t come to his schools like teachers sometimes can where they feel really sorry for kids living in poverty who may not be where they need to be. Instead he says the teacher candidates come in with clear, high expectations for students saying, “We’re going to hold them to those high expectations. Let’s see what strategies we can use, what tools we can use, to really help them learn.”

MP: If results in your established teacher prep programs are so strong, why create alternative pathways?

DD: I wanted to start our conversation by describing our comprehensive, albeit nonconventional post baccalaureate program so that you know what we are doing to effectively prepare new teachers. But that said, we know one route to becoming a teacher is no longer enough. Our faculty are committed to preparing individuals who want to be teachers and for whom our comprehensive program, the way it’s designed, just isn’t workable for their lives.

Essentially an alternative pathway to teaching is a way to take individuals from non-traditional backgrounds and prepare them to be teachers. They might be teaching aides right now. They may be people who are coming to teaching from another workforce area who need to keep their day job to keep their families running. They may need a more flexible schedule for coursework and learning, but they still need a rigorous program to prepare them to teach.

And school districts are really interested in these alternative pathways because they don’t have enough highly qualified teachers who may be multilingual, who really want to work with kids in urban settings, or who are in high-need areas like math and science.

And we need alternative pathways to teaching for rural schools as well as urban sites. Our colleagues in the Ojibwe Nation, for example, are also interested in preparing members of their community to become teachers. They’ve approached members of our faculty saying, “What can we do together to create a grow-your-own program?”

To develop an alternative pathway program we had to think about how we could take the very best of what we know from our comprehensive program and rethink it, redesign it yet again into an alternative pathway program. We knew we would have to front-load some knowledge base, maybe in a summer program. And then to continue to work with the alternative pathway teacher candidates over two years while they co-teach with a highly qualified teacher for a portion of their preparation and then teach on their own while concurrently taking coursework.  

But we knew we wouldn’t be able to have the alternative teacher candidates for an extended period of time before they became the teacher of record in their own classroom. So we had to ask ourselves: What is the most important knowledge and experiences that teacher candidates need to have immediately? How might we front-load that knowledge in a summer residency program where they are studying with us full time, for eight hours a day, for eight weeks, but at the same time putting those ideas into practice by co-teaching with a skilled teacher and working with kids? This intensive summer residency would be the first layer of their preparation — what they need to know and be able to do to be successful as they start teaching in the fall.

As they serve as the teacher of record at the start of the school year, the alternative pathway teacher candidates would still get a lot of support from the university supervisors and school liaisons or mentors as they teach during the day across the first year of teaching.

We will also be continuing to develop their knowledge and pedagogical skills in evening coursework during their first two years of teaching and during special Saturday course experiences. And U of MN supervisors — along with mentor teachers on site — will observe and provide feedback to new alternative pathway teachers as they develop their knowledge and pedagogical skills.

It is important to note that the alternative pathway candidates will be held to the same standards as our comprehensive candidates in terms of the assessments along the way that they would need to complete successfully. They would need to pass the state tests, just like our comprehensive students do, to be recommended by the University of Minnesota for licensure. Alternative pathway candidates would also have the option of earning another six credits on their own — that we are going to make very accessible — that would allow them to earn an M.Ed., a master’s degree.

MP: What you are describing sounds like a model that can be easily adapted to preparing specific groups of teachers.

DD: Yes, we have designed a high quality program, but we can organize the way the program is configured and provided to best meet the needs of groups who partner with us. And the partnership aspect of creating and delivering alternative pathway programs is a critical component of state law.

A partner might be a local school district who seeks to partner to prepare educational aides who might be multilingual at the elementary level. The U of MN would work together with school colleagues to determine how that program could be configured to best meet the needs of the candidates while still providing a quality experience.

We might start with a summer experience, for example, and some school districts might have the financial means to continue to pay their educational aides while they are co-teaching for a year or more beyond the summer intensive work. The district may also exact a promise from the aides that they will continue to work within the district for multiple years if the district invests in their preparation program.

We’ve also learned that many prospective teachers need to work in the summer because their jobs or teaching-aide contracts are only nine months. So we’re going to need to figure out how to work within these parameters. 

Each alternative pathway program may look a little different in its configuration. Professionals who form the partnership will need to figure these details out — including what school sites the preparation program will take place in, and the kind of support that’s going to be offered by the school partner and the university to make the program successful.

In the end, the university will assume the responsibility for recommending candidates for licensure who have completed all program components and assessments in a high-quality manner.  This is because the U — as a nationally accredited institution for teacher preparation — is accountable to the state.

MP: I think that brings us full circle to your first partnership.

DD: Yes. The proposed “Alternative Pathway to Teaching: U of MN-TFA Partnership” will be the first configuration of an alternative pathway to teaching that we have created. I have really enjoyed working with TFA colleagues, Crystal Brakke in particular. Just as university colleagues have rethought their ideas about how to prepare teachers in alternative pathways, so too have the national TFA staff, primarily due to the work of Crystal and her colleagues.

For example, the U of MN-TFA partnership will be the first preparation site that will expand the summer program beyond its traditional five weeks. It’s also been revamped and renamed as a summer residency program because the candidates will co-teach with experienced teachers as they learn to teach. The candidates will also have their preparation program here in Minnesota, vs. being prepared in a state different from the one they are to teach within — which occurs elsewhere across the country.

The TFA teacher candidates’ eight-week summer residency program will be in Minneapolis. Our partner there is the Northside Achievement Zone, which we are very excited about. They have a summer program, but they haven’t had as much of an academic component to it prior to this year, and we will be providing that with the corps members’ work.

Our teacher candidates will be learning and working in the very sites that we want them to be prepared to teach in. This is a very different model for Teach for America.

The corps members are accepted by TFA at their national site, but they will have to be admitted to the University of Minnesota, which means they will have to meet our admissions criteria. So if someone plans to be a secondary science teacher, for instance, they will have to have a science background. In addition, the University of Minnesota will be the licensure recommender at the very end of the program, and we will be holding the corps members to the same accountability standards as our comprehensive program candidates.

We will be preparing teacher candidates in just four areas as we begin our partnership: secondary science; secondary mathematics; K-12 English-language learners, and elementary teachers who will primarily work in bilingual classrooms. These are high-need areas, as expressed by our school partners, who are seeking to hire these individuals.

Teach for America has accepted a group of 42-45. One of the really exciting things I’ve learned about the corps members we’ve accepted is the high percentage of corps members who are persons of color. Of the 31 who have accepted the offer TFA has extended so far, 53 percent received a Pell Grant in college, which is an indicator that TFA uses as a measure of socioeconomic status, or self-identify as a person of color.

When TFA started in Minnesota in 2009, they had about 21 percent of corps members self-identifying as persons of color. They have put, as we have, a lot of emphasis on diversifying their teaching force.

Part of our goal with the TFA corps members we prepare at the University of Minnesota is to ensure that they want to stay in teaching beyond their two-year commitment and beyond the national statistics for TFA. We have a deep commitment to preparing individuals who want to stay in the classroom for four to six years or more. And I think that will play out because our candidates will be well-prepared and supported as they learn to teach and develop as new educators.

We examined five alternative pathway programs nationally and took the very best of those programs, along with our own comprehensive program, to create the partnership with TFA. So, for example, the University of Michigan, which prepares teachers for the Detroit public schools, indicated that their partnership has resulted in a very high percentage of people staying in teaching beyond two years. They are at about 60 percent retention rates of TFA teachers beyond the two-year commitment.

MP: Clearly, you’ve designed this to evolve.

DD: That’s one of the reasons the University of Minnesota was interested in exploring alternative pathways to teaching. We have an active research agenda focused on understanding the best ways to prepare teachers well and keep them in the teaching profession.

And we plan to design a research agenda to study our alternative pathway programs as well. We are not interested in comparing our comprehensive program with alternative pathways because that would be like comparing apples to oranges, but we need to look at our different pathways to teaching to analyze how we are preparing individuals, what’s working with our preparation programs, and what we can continue to create to meet the needs of new teachers.

We are so excited about the future — alternative pathways and partnerships with school colleagues have a lot of our faculty excited because we feel this holds great promise for meeting the needs of our diverse K-12 Minnesota learners.

(Two disclaimers — one standard and one new: Teach for America Co-CEO Matt Kramer is the son of MinnPost founders Joel and Laurie Kramer. Matt is married to TFA alum Katie Barrett Kramer. His brother Eli Kramer is married to TFA’s senior managing director of alumni engagement, Jessica Cordova Kramer. None of the aforementioned Kramers were involved in the preparation of this interview.

This blog is supported by a grant from the St. Paul-based Bush Foundation, which has also supported the U of M’s work on redesigning teacher preparation. The author is grateful to Associate Dean Dillon for mentioning this support; otherwise I wouldn’t have known a second disclosure was in order.)

Adolescents who consume sports and energy drinks at least once a week are more likely than their peers to drink other sugar-sweetened beverages, to smoke and to spend sedentary time playing video games and watching television, according to a new study from the University of Minnesota.

For example, boys in the study who drank energy drinks at least once a week spent an average of about four hours more per week playing video games, and girls who drank sports drinks at least once a week were twice as likely to smoke cigarettes.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the consumption of sports and energy drinks is causing the teens to engage in those other behaviors. But the findings are troubling because they suggest that these beverages are part of a cluster of behavioral choices associated with poorer health outcomes, said Nicole Larson, the study’s lead author and a senior research associate at the U’s School of Public Health, in a phone interview Monday.

Part of Project EAT

For the study, Larson and her colleagues surveyed a racially, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of almost 2,800 teens from 20 different middle and high schools in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The teens were asked about a variety of health-related behaviors, including how often they drank sports and energy drinks.

The surveys were part of the U’s Project EAT, an ongoing research initiative that began questioning Minnesota teens and their families about their dietary habits in the late 1990s. The data for the current study came from surveys taken during the 2009-2010 academic year (EAT 2010).

The data did reveal what might seem at first glance to be a positive association: Teens in the study who consumed sports drinks at least once a week tended to be more physically active and more likely to participate in organized sports than their non-sports-drink-consuming peers.

But that link worries health officials. As the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) pointed out in a 2011 report, sports drinks offer no benefits to young people, only risks. For unlike water — the best form of hydration for young athletes, stressed the AAP — sports drinks are laden with sugar, which can contribute to excess weight gain and tooth decay.

Energy drinks, which are often confused with sports drinks, contain an additional health risk: a large amount of caffeine and other stimulants. These ingredients can be hazardous if consumed quickly, in large quantities or with alcohol, and have been linked to seizures, heart rhythm problems and even death among young people, according to the AAP.

Energy drinks “have no place in the diet of children and adolescents,” the AAP warned.

Targeting youth

Unfortunately, the consumption of both sports and energy drinks are on the rise among adolescents — even as the young people’s consumption of other sugar-sweetened beverages has declined.

Indeed, 38 percent of the teens in the U’s study said they consumed sports drinks and 15 percent said they consumed energy drinks at least once a week.

Those numbers are likely to climb, for the beverage companies that make these products are increasingly targeting youth, said Larson.

“They’re often promoted in terms of their health benefits, so they tend to be viewed [mistakenly] as a healthier option than sodas,” she added.

One study found that between 2008 and 2010, exposure to TV advertisements for energy drinks increased 23 percent among children and 20 percent among teens. Black youth seem to be particularly targeted. The same study found that black children and teens were exposed to more than twice as many of these advertisements as white youth.

In addition, as was reported last year, energy drink companies have recently hired lobbyists to fight government investigations into the safety of their products.

That development, write Larson and her colleagues, “signals an even greater need for public health advocacy in this area.

In the meantime, parents should be “encouraging their teens to drink water for hydration, particularly now as we head into summer,” said Larson.

The U study was published Tuesday in the May/June edition of Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

WASHINGTON — One day after MNsure executive director April Todd-Malmlov resigned her position last December, a consultant for the troubled Cover Oregon health insurance exchange emailed two top Oregon officials recommending Todd-Malmlov as someone “who may want to dig into some kind of temporary project ASAP.”

The email was obtained last week by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, which requested a log of correspondence between state and federal officials from a handful of health insurance exchanges, including MNsure, in March.

The committee is still waiting on documents from MNsure, an Oversight Committee official said, but Minnesota’s exchange has already popped up in at least once in other states’ internal exchange deliberations.

“I wanted to let you guys know that [Todd-Malmlov] is one of the brightest and most technically proficient of the exchange leaders that I have seen,” wrote Joel Ario of Manatt Health Solutions. Later, he wrote, “would not put her in charge but she does know her stuff.”

Two Oregon officials, then-director of the Oregon Health Authority, Bruce Goldberg and the governor’s chief of staff, Mike Bonetto, replied briefly to the email, but that seems to have been the end of it — the state never offered Todd-Malmlov a position on its exchange.

(In addition to replying to the Oversight Committee, Oregon released troves of emails to the press last week. Here’s The Oregonian’s read through them.)

Ario was the director of the office of health exchanges at Health and Human Services in 2010 and 2011, so he had a hand in initially getting more than a dozen state-based exchanges off the ground. In an interview, he said he worked with Todd-Malmlov while meeting with Minnesota officials on setting up MNsure.

Oversight Committee members largely ignored MNsure when the committee heard testimony on state exchanges last month, focusing the fiercest lines of questioning on the directors of the Maryland and Oregon exchanges. Cover Oregon has already announced it will close its state-based website in favor of the federal system (Goldberg resigned his position in March), and Maryland is scrambling to rebuild its exchange before the second open enrollment period begins this fall.

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry

MinnesotaCare plays an essential role in Minnesota’s health care system, even after the creation of MNsure. As we note in our new issue brief, MinnesotaCare: A Vital Part of Minnesota’s Health Care System, this unique program ensures access to health insurance for lower-income, working Minnesotans who lack coverage through their employers and cannot afford it in the private market.

Minnesota policymakers led the way by establishing MinnesotaCare over 20 years ago to provide affordable health insurance that meets working families’ health care needs. It is funded through a combination of federal and state funds, with the state’s portion coming from the Health Care Access Fund, which is funded by:

• A special state tax on hospitals and providers.
• Federal Medicaid funds.
• Premiums paid by enrollees.

The passage of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provided states with an option to create a Basic Health Program. Minnesota policymakers took advantage of this opportunity in the 2013 Legislative Session, and modified MinnesotaCare to operate as the state’s Basic Health Program.

By maintaining MinnesotaCare, our state continues to be a leader in health care. Minnesota was the first state to establish a Basic Health Program, but other states are expected to follow suit.

State policymakers can continue to ensure the long-term sustainability of MinnesotaCare by bolstering the Health Care Access Fund and reinforcing that these funds are for health insurance coverage for lower-income working Minnesotans.

This post was written by Amy Brugh and originally published on Minnesota Budget Bites. Follow the Minnesota Budget Project on Twitter: @mnbudgetproject.

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Nine Minnesota businesses are finalists for ethics awards that will be announced Wednesday, May 14 at the Minnesota Business Ethics Awards luncheon in Minneapolis.

The MBEA awards, now in their 15th year, recognize "businesses that exemplify, raise the bar and promote ethical conduct for the benefit of the workplace, marketplace and community."

The awards luncheon May 14 is at the Nicollet Island Pavilion from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 and available online.

The keynote speaker will be Mary Brainerd, president and CEO of HealthPartners.

Finalists this year:

Small Company Category

• Irish Titan, Edina
• Spanlink Communications, Minneapolis
• Western Bank, St. Paul

Midsize Company Category

• Bay West LLC, St. Paul
• Doherty Employment Group, Edina
• North Star Resource Group, Minneapolis

Large Company Category

• Alexandria Industries, Alexandria
• Marvin Windows and Doors, Warroad
• Restaurant Technologies, Inc., St. Paul

The MBEA was founded by the Society of Financial Service Professionals – Twin Cities Chapter and the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC) at the University of St. Thomas, Opus College of Business. Joining these two organizations as a sponsor is the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) — Minnesota.

The first direct flights between St. Cloud and Chicago take off today, and officials urge the business community to take advantage of the route or risk losing it.

SkyWest Airlines is operating the route as a United Express partner, flying a 50-seat jet between St. Cloud Regional Airport and Chicago's O'Hare International.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who represents the district, said she'll be on the first flight from Chicago to St. Cloud, then will fly right back on the return flight to O'Hare.

And the St. Cloud Times is sending a reporter on the inaugural trip to Chicago to document the event.

City leaders have been seeking commercial service to a hub for four years, since Delta dropped it's flights from St. Cloud to MSP.

But they say the service will have to be well-used, with at least 70 percent occupancy on the flights, in order to have the one-year contract renewed.

Al Kremers, who led the Greater St. Cloud Development Corp. initiative to get the flights, told the St. Cloud paper that area business people and residents have get out of the habit of flying from MSP, about 90 minutes south.

"Now comes the hard part. It's an awesome challenge, but I think it's doable," Kremers said.

And St. Cloud Airport Manager Bill Towle told the paper that price is a factor:

"Our goal is for them to be within $100 of whatever the MSP fare is. You can't drive down there and park for $100. But the bottom line is people need to use the service, regardless of the dollar amount, or it goes away. If you believe this air service is important to the economic vitality of St. Cloud, and the research shows it can have a $17 million impact on the Central Minnesota economy, you need to fly on it whether it's $100 or $200 difference. The economic impact outweighs the $100 you're going to save."

Sen. Al Franken and U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden both talked about job creation today. Franken did so via a new TV ad that focuses on a bill he introduced to create partnerships between manufacturers and community colleges to produce better-trained workers.

McFadden did so during a brief interview after remarks he made Tuesday morning at a meeting of the Republican Seniors of Minnesota in Bloomington.

“I am a proponent of anything that creates job in the private sector, but what Al Franken has done is put regulation upon regulation upon businesses that has caused there to be less jobs,” he said. “The unemployment rate of people 20 to 29 is 11 percent. The crime is that we have the opportunity to get the economy going to jump start it, and I know how to do that.”

In his prepared remarks, McFadden offered the Republican seniors a taste — just a taste — of a jobs creation policy he would pursue in the Senate.

“I am a huge proponent of the energy industry,” he said. “As a businessman that’s worked in manufacturing around manufacturers my whole career, I know that with low-cost energy, we have a manufacturing renaissance. We can manufacture competitively on a global basis. That’s how you increase jobs, that’s how you increase wages.”

For some media members, McFadden has been maddeningly vague on policy positions, but promised to make a more detailed statements on jobs and business policy soon.

“It’s Minnesota’s sweet spot; it’s my sweet spot,” he said. 

Working off the just-released National Climate Assessment,MPR and the AP say,“Midwesterners can expect a longer growing season, should climate change continue along its current path. But the benefits of more crops with higher yields will be tempered by the extreme weather events that have already begun to shake Midwestern weather expectations. ‘In the long term, the combined stresses associated with climate change are expected to decrease agricultural productivity,’ the report says.” Not that you’ll hear a peep about this from any TV weather guy/gal.

Pretty much the kind of people no one wants in town … . Mara Gottfried’s PiPress storyon the Mexican cartel torturers says, “A Mexican drug cartel had a 'stash house' in St. Paul, and when drugs and money were stolen from it last month, several people thought to be involved were kidnapped and tortured, according to charges filed in Ramsey County District Court. A federal grand jury has indicted four men in the case. ... The kidnapping victims were released, but the little finger belonging to one of the men was nearly severed by his captors... .”

Over in the Strib, Paul McEnroe writes, “Federal authorities who cracked the case say they are not surprised by the no-tolerance approach of the Sinaloa cartel, which has built a multimillion-dollar Midwest drug trade with brutal efficiency. What made this mission startling, they say, is that rather than using its own muscle, the cartel hired members of one of the most feared transnational gangs in the United States and Latin America— the MS-13 organization.” Is TSA watching for these characters?

Exercising his Second Amendment rights … .  Nicole Norfleet and Paul Walsh of the Strib report, “A 57-year-old New Brighton man is in jail Tuesday on suspicion of fatally shooting a neighbor and wounding the victim’s girlfriend in a long-running dispute over what another neighbor said was the alleged gunman’s anger over the feeding of deer.… The accused gunman has been involved in at least two lawsuits with neighbors, the most recent filed a year ago against him by the woman now in the hospital, according to court records.”

Similarly, an MPR item says, “ … from the Benson School system's Facebook Page: 'This morning, the Benson School system, in conjunction with the Benson Police Department and the Swift County Sheriff’s Department, received a report at 8:05 a.m. of a firearm on the premises of Northside Elementary School in the city of Benson, MN. The firearm was brought to school by a kindergarten student. Other students became aware of the firearm and immediately notified a teacher.’”

Housing inspectors anyone? Tim Harlow and Walsh file a piece saying, “At least part of a retail building in south Minneapolis where a third-floor addition was being built collapsed Tuesday morning, according to police. Part of Karmel Square, a mall that houses about 150 Somali businesses at 2910 Pillsbury Avenue, gave way around 8:45 a.m. There were no immediate reports of injuries, said police spokesman Scott Seroka.”

The Strib can take credit for this bill … . Brandon Stahl writes, “The Minnesota House approved reforms on Monday night that would allow the Minnesota Board of Nursing to take tougher action against problem nurses, one week after the Senate passed a similar bill. Nurses who fail out of a state drug and mental health monitoring program could be automatically suspended, while nurses convicted of a felony sex crime would have their licenses revoked unless they could prove their practice was not a threat to the public.”

On Target’s talent search for a new CEO, Walter Loeb in Forbes writes, “[I]t is a necessity to find a strong visionary to position a company like Target for a future where internet sales will continue to grow and affect the operating cost of the core store units. ... The need for training a new cadre of retail executives is becoming more evident every day. It is fascinating to contemplate the diminishment of several large retailers due to a lack of skilled, industry developed, talent.”

A trio of Bloomberg reporters say, “Potential candidates for the top job include HSN Inc. CEO Mindy Grossman, Bon-Ton Stores Inc. chief Brendan Hoffman, Gap Inc. head Glenn Murphy and Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Turney.  … ‘They really need to restore some confidence, and I don’t think anyone is going to have any confidence in someone from inside, even though that’s their culture to promote from within,’ said Kathy Gersch, executive vice president at Kotter International, a leadership and strategy firm.” That speaks well of the current team, doesn’t it?

CC/Flickr/Craig Myran Photography

There were 666 people identified as homeless in Bemidji in 2012.

A new report finds the number of homeless people in the Bemidji area to be greater than expected, reports Crystal Dey of the Bemidji Pioneer. The Nameless Coalition for the Homeless hired Duluth-based Center City Housing to conduct a needs assessment. "What we've learned is your needs are huge," said Rick Klun, CCH executive director. A statewide survey shows that in the 12-county northwest region of the state, which includes Beltrami County, homelessness grew 170 percent from 2009 to 2012. There were 666 people identified as homeless in 2012, according to the study. The survey didn’t include results from the state’s reservations, said Patty Beech, CCH Planning Consultant and primary author of the study.

Despite a week of regular rain, the U.S. Drought Monitor rates southwestern Minnesota as experiencing moderate drought conditions. It’s an assessment area farmers concur with, reports Anna Haecherl-Smith of the Marshall Independent. The weather is warm enough for planting, said University of Minnesota climatologist Mark Seeley. Soil temperatures are around 40 degrees in most of the area, so farmers just need a chance for the ground to dry up a bit. Bruce Johnson, who farms northwest of Walnut Grove, said the rain is nice but it’s time to get back into the field. "We have about 70 acres of corn planted," Johnson said. "But that's only a 10th of what we need to do."

Mankato has park problems. Mark Fischenich of the Mankato Free Press writes that if the city wants to simply maintain its parks, it faces a shortfall of about $1.6 million over the next five years. If it upgrades the pool and baseball field, that figure is $3.3 million. Put in a wish list pushed by local groups and that number jumps to nearly $8 million. Add plans for trails, water quality and year-round sports facilities, and that number hits $20 million. Which is why the Mankato Pickleball Association went home from Monday’s City Council meeting happy. They got approval to convert two tennis courts at Tourtellotte Park to six or eight pickleball courts. Recoating, line painting and new nets will cost about $11,000, but “There’s a lot of pickleball tournaments and a lot of people go to them,” said John Sandry of Mankato, who said the Tourtellotte facility would be “one of the premier facilities in southern Minnesota.”

One of the biggest drug dealers in Duluth has been arrested and a dozen more are still wanted on arrest warrants in connection with the largest heroin trafficking investigation in state history, officials said Monday. Tom Olson of the Duluth News Tribune reported on “Operation Exile,” a statewide investigation involving local, state and federal agencies from Duluth, Rochester and the Twin Cities metro area. More than 150 arrest warrants were issued statewide, including 41 in Duluth. Duluth police Lt. Steve Stracek said the task force arrested Antonio Dantinue Long, 38, last Thursday. He is charged with possessing more than 25 grams of heroin and cocaine, third-degree sale of a controlled substance and felon in possession of a firearm. The alleged dealer was in possession of more than an ounce each of heroin and cocaine. The heroin alone was worth about $17,000, police said. Most of the 29 arrests were for second- or third-degree sale of a controlled substance.

Over in Henning, astronaut and Vining native Karen Nyberg came back to her alma mater to discuss her trip on the International Space Station.The Wadena Pioneer Journal said Nyberg was launched into space on a Russian rocket in May and returned to earth in November. Her research on the station ranged from the practical, such as helping develop a more concentrated laundry detergent, to the futuristic, like figuring out how to safely send astronauts beyond low orbit. She offered a challenge to Hennings students: "I dare all of you kids to go out and do great things. I dare you." They heard the challenge: Eighth-grader Zac Araca said "kids all over the world from small schools can do something just like her."

A 5-year-old boy died in a farming accident last week, reports Heather Rule of the Fergus Falls Journal. The Becker County Sheriff’s Office said the boy tried to get into a skid steer by crawling between the bucket and the frame. When the child grabbed the control lever to pull himself up, it released the hydraulic pressure and pinned him between the hydraulic rams and skid steer frame. The boy was pronounced dead at the scene. His parents are Jethro and Molly Impola of rural Menahga.

For two years, Cornerstone Church in Austin has offered a car-care clinic in which they perform basic maintenance on cars for free. But last Saturday, Tammy Lawson got more than she bargained for, reports Jason Schoonover of the Austin Daily Herald. She thought she was going to get an oil change, new blinkers and perhaps some other work done on her car, but her 1999 Buick Century had a bad head gasket, oil in the gas and radiator, and several other problems. The church gave her a 1990 Dodge Caravan that, while older, has fewer miles and can fit more people comfortably, something that will be helpful for her three sons who live at home. She also has two sons in graduate school and two daughters in college. “It’s really nice to have something we can all fit in and be comfortable,” Lawson said. This is the second year Cornerstone’s Mission 507 ministry hosted the free car clinic to help single mothers, widows and women with husbands deployed overseas. The women dropped off their cars and were treated to pedicures, manicures and massages, while Mission 507 leaders took their cars for servicing and cleaning at Holiday Ford. “We’re put here on the Earth to help other people and that’s really what our mission, our goal is,” said Terry Miller, a Mission 507 member who worked on cars Saturday.

Well, this is a bummer. Sarah Stultz of the Daily Herald reports of an Albert Lea man who was injured last week after his vehicle struck a pontoon boat that fell off a trailer on Interstate 35 near Faribault. Richard W. Fitzlaff, 74, was transported to District One Hospital in Faribault for injuries deemed not life-threatening. No one else was injured. The Minnesota State Patrol said a 2004 Nissan Titan, driven by Brady Kuiper, 42, of Mankato, was driving southbound on I-35 pulling the pontoon when the pickup lost a wheel and fishtailed. The pontoon then came off the trailer, stopping in the lane of traffic. A 2005 Pontiac Grand Prix swerved to miss the pontoon and collided with a 2006 Chevy Aveo, which went into the ditch and collided with a road sign. Fitzlaff’s 2013 Ford Edge then struck the pontoon, according to the report.

As a small business owner, I know that I need to constantly evaluate my processes and service to ensure that I’m meeting the needs and wants of my customers and not falling behind my competition.

Unfortunately, in government it seems like the same folks hang around, and that leads to the same old ideas. We have a chance in the upcoming Hennepin County Board election to inject some fresh ideas to the board. Marion Greene is, to me, the woman to do that.

Marion has lived in the district for 15 years but isn’t a part of the county apparatus. She’ll be a new set of eyes to look at the issues. And she has strong health-care finance experience, which is crucial given how much the county spends through HCMC.

I’ll be voting for Marion Greene in the upcoming elections for County Board because she’s not beholden to any current agendas on the board and she’ll bring a fresh perspective to serving us in Southwest Minneapolis. I hope you’ll join me.

— Scott Graham, Uptown Realty & Management.

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