This is sounding like a broken record … for those of you who remember records. Kevin Diaz of the Strib says: “As time runs short to mount a realistic challenge to Sen. Al Franken, once an inviting GOP target, Minnesota Republicans are struggling to find a new face. Far from lining up to take on a liberal DFL icon who won by 312 votes in 2008, much of the Republican old guard has begged off, or remains noncommittal. Anticipation of another shot at the former Saturday Night Live star, often a subject of derision at Republican rallies, has yielded to a sense of political snakebite after the 2012 Senate race. … Some analysts believe Bachmann could walk away with the GOP nomination, setting up a titanic Bachmann-Franken duel. But hardly anyone sees her as a strong general-election contender. Politically sapped after her 2012 presidential bid, Bachmann has said nothing about a potential Senate run.” Oh, please … please …
Speaking of … MinnPost's Devin Henry has coverage here, and Caitlin Dickson of The Daily Beast credits Our Favorite Congresswoman with saving Day Three of the big CPAC event: “Jacob Champion, one of the eager Rand [Paul] fans who was super-psyched to be at CPAC on day one, was still sporting a red tie and jacket adorned with ‘Stand with Rand’ stickers, but by now he looked decidedly dazed. He ambled into the main auditorium, telling me he was exhausted, while Newt Gingrich wrapped up a snooze of a speech. Everything changed, however, when Michele Bachmann bounded onto the main stage. As the music of tween pop stars One Direction announced her arrival, the audience leapt to its feet to greet her. ‘I’m so glad you’re here!’ the congresswoman and former Republican presidential candidate proclaimed. ‘I love you, too!’ … The Minnesotan continued to raise her voice so that by the end of her speech she was basically yelling, leaving the dedicated day-three audience energized. ... Bachmann's voice boomed through the hall above the riotous screams: ‘This is our movement, the movement of love, the movement of care. We do this because we love each other and we love our nation!’” What … a … gal.
Here’s a breath of fresh air … In a Strib commentary, Paul John Scott of Rochester applies a gimlet eye to the Mayo Clinic’s grand expansion dream. He says: “[T]his seems less like a need in front of Mayo officials than like a strategic decision to stay in front by staying big. Going big may make sense in a rational marketplace, but medicine is no rational marketplace. We’re not talking here about the usual problems one associates with health care — the lack of transparency in pricing, the lack of negotiated drug buying power in the government, and the problems with fee-for-service medicine. Those are all drags on the system, but they miss a deeper issue. The market Mayo now seeks to dominate is that of serving sick people, and if one is honest about it, these are strange times to be fighting for market share of sick people. The reason: We have witnessed a near complete takeover of medicine by private industry.” I’m guessing Mr. Scott fully digested Steven Brill’s TIME piece.
Key words: “more oil than previously reported.” Lee Bergquist of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writes: “Enbridge Inc. is seeking approval from the U.S. State Department to sharply upgrade its oil delivery from Canada's tar sands region to Superior, according to government documents published on Friday. Enbridge potentially could nearly double its capacity, the documents showed, indicating that the Canadian firm has plans to transport more oil through Wisconsin than previously reported. … The U.S. State Department reported in the Federal Register on Friday that the Canadian firm is seeking permission to boost capacity from between 450,000 and 500,000 barrels a day, to 570,000 barrels a day. In a second phase, Enbridge is seeking to ship up to 880,000 barrels of oil a day through its pipelines.”
“An item of interest” … is how the cops are describing something pulled out of a Maplewood lake. KMSP-TV’s Jonathan Choe and Scott Wasserman report: “Investigators say they're analyzing an item of interest found Saturday in a Maplewood lake in connection with the disappearance of Kira Trevino, who remains missing but is presumed dead. Authorities declined to say what the item is or how it's related to the Trevino case, but her family members believe there could be more clues hidden nearby. … investigators say they found the item in the lake after receiving a new tip. ‘I called in the tip because somebody I knew told me a story about the night it happened. She had saw two guys out on the lake — looked like they were struggling carrying something and it was just too weird for that time of night around one in the morning,’ the tipster, who did not want to be identified, told FOX 9 News. The tipster explained that the witness was too afraid to call and turned to a friend for help.”
More and more like those socialist European hellholes every day …Tim Harlow of the Strib writes about car-sharing . He says: “Joe Laha’s car quit and he had a decision to make: Either buy a new one or go vehicle-free. He chose the latter. Laha bikes 2 miles from his home in Minneapolis’ North Loop neighborhood to his job as audio visual director at the Westin Hotel downtown at 6th Street and Marquette Avenue. He drives only when the need arises, such as running errands or making his weekly trip to the grocery store. For those occasions, he borrows a vehicle from Hourcar, a Twin Cities car-sharing program. … The car sharing service recently announced that it will nearly double its fleet from 39 to 70 this spring to serve its exploding membership that now totals more than 1,900 and serves 3,500 people.” So what does he do with his weekends if he’s not Armor All-ing the tires?
Sam Cook of the Duluth News Tribune files a piece on the people who … count … wolves: “ ‘Trying to count wolves is a challenging thing,’ [John] Erb said. ‘When you’re talking about 30,000 square miles (of wolf range), and it’s a secretive animal, there are always going to be uncertainties’. But he believes the DNR’s survey methods are sound and that the state’s wolf population estimates are good. ‘I do believe it’s been a very useful and reasonably accurate method,’ Erb said. Some Minnesotans aren’t as comfortable with the DNR’s last estimate of 3,000 wolves, within a range of 2,200 to 3,500.”
The Strib’s Lori Sturdevant is a kind of/sort of optimist. She writes: “[Revenue Commissioner Myron] Frans steered me to a New York Times report last October that said that in the first full year of recovery from the Great Recession, the top 1 percent of earners captured 93 percent of all U.S. economic growth. ... His own department’s latest Tax Incidence Study projects that in 2015, the top 1 percent of Minnesota’s earners will take home 16.3 percent of the state’s total household income, up from 13.9 percent in 2002. Meanwhile, the bottom 40 percent’s share in 2015 will be 9.6 percent, down from 10.7 percent 11 years ago. … My guess: Proposing to raise taxes on the rich for the sake of some numerical or populist notion of fairness won’t stir Minnesotans much, or for long. But asking the people on the winning side of the income divide to pay more so that the state’s best elevator out of poverty can be kept in good working order?” Yeah, let's just ask. What can they say?
A sobering story from the PiPress’s Dave Orrick:“[Fairmont’s] predicament speaks to the many challenges facing residents of rural Minnesota, as well as state regulators, as they deal with a prolonged drought, a thirst for job-creating growth and the prospect that current water practices in some areas are unsustainable— yet demand is growing. The situation, especially stark the farther south and west one travels in the state, could preview changes for the Twin Cities metro, from water rationing to taxpayer-funded quests for additional water. Minnesota's water woes are spreading, and the drought, while not the only cause, is shining a spotlight on them. The city of Marshall is venturing 23 miles from town, leapfrogging other communities, to find water. In Worthington, the reservoir designed to replenish its groundwater wells nearly dried up in the fall.”