Did you miss "Become a Citizen Journalist" on July 21, 2007? Click above to see Eric Black's speech to mnpACT!
Garrison Keillor
Minnesota Network for Progressive Action
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The mission of mnpACT! is to build a progressive community based upon the
core values of respect, dignity and opportunity, by educating people about
progressive ideas, advocating for progressive issues, and electing
progressive candidates to local, state and federal offices.
You are going to hear a lot about this over the course of the next month or so....so I thought I'd pre-warn you.
The people who made the Left Behind, apocolyptic religious book and film series, are promoting a new DVD called the "12 Biggest Lies". Of course, they are lies because fundamentalists are telling us they are, but I assume they will try to give us "facts" that prove their version of things....and, of course, a lot of it will be centered on the Bible. That's a given.
But this is actually good for discussion and I always find this religious "fact checking" to be a good debate. There is too much to do just one post on this...so look for my own "series".
Congress passed a bill that will bring $167 million in direct education money for Minnesota. The idea is to help ailing school districts to keep education jobs and meet budget deficits.
But it will have zero effect.
As this MinnPost article by Beth Hawkins points out, school districts are so tenuous about future budgets that a lot of them plan to go with the patched together budgets they have in place and simply bank the money against future cut backs.
That's where we are. Districts can't count on state support and they are now budgeting out of fear. Fear of cutbacks, fear of the unknown.
And here is a quote that gives me pause:
As the result of more than $150 million in budget reductions and the Legislature’s ratification of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 2009 unallotment to schools, worth $1.4 billion, last spring metro area schools cut some . . .
Luke Hellier over at Minnesota Democrats Exposed got himself into a lather over the divorce records of Mark Dayton. He went into post after post about releasing these "unsealed" documents -- Republican translation: He has something embarrassing in there and we want it. He even got to ask Dayton a question about it at a press conference -- God knows how he got a pass for that -- and a local journalist even asked a follow up question. It was yet another embarrassment for the local press.
And, as usual, Hellier tries to whip up his echo chamber to draw attention to his loosely researched story. He even got PowerLine to gleefully comment on this "mystery".
But Powerline puts an addendum on this post. It goes like this:
CORRECTION: Luke Hellier has corrected his MDE post to reflect that the affidavits were removed from the court file . . .