For decades, voting for the lesser evil has been normal. Northeastern Minnesota’s DFL, however, was and has always appeared the last bastion for ordinary people’s needs. In many ways, that remains true, but in others, it is now so utterly destructive that to vote for them is to destroy the very place we live.

The peculiar history of Northeastern Minnesota and the Range in particular has, after five generations, made destroying the communities and the natural world the norm. While southern Minnesota was first to be destroyed, settlement was dominated by agriculture and by its very essence, was very different than the ecocide of the north. The north was not settled at first; after the conquest, native lands were legally stolen and turned over to land speculators and railroad men. The first exploitative assault was to denude the forests of its most ecologically and financially valuable timber; the forests were not “cleared”, but instead demolished. Hapless American and European peasants were shipped in, railroads built, the finest timber removed, and the land covered with the remaining debris. Genocide and the catastrophic Hinckley and Cloquet fires were the first children of the rape; the second were the mineral prospectors. In the brute exploitation of both human and nature that was 19^th century capitalism, gold wasn’t found, but iron ore was. I will not glorify the destructive history of earlier times, for the history sits all around us in a demolished landscape, tainted water and desperate communities.

This history, however, is constantly refrained and built into monuments honoring destruction; these show how the extreme becomes the normal and the thinking of the exploiter becomes the thinking of the exploited. And this is where I need to break with those I used to support.

Recently, Range Dfler’s joined the state’s Republicans in rewriting the state’s environmental review rules. The complaints justifying the need all spoke of timeliness and jobs, but none dealt with the actual results. They added their own special privilege: Any Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) project is exempt from the environmental review process. This, of course, means the taxpayers are now forced to give the Polymet project money despite its potential destructive effects. In short, the public is now forced to hand over land, cash and profits to private investors, many of them foreign, in hopes that several hundred desperate people might hopefully be employed for 20 years. The refrain is always “jobs” and “community” while two concepts are never mentioned; the mysterious word “profits” and the always ignored fact that any community built completely for exploiting a finite resource is doomed from the very beginning. That the Range DFLer’s don’t recognize this shows they are now as much of the problem as the former land barons and “iron men” now honored in ridiculous murals and statues. Now, as part of the local elite, they assist the destroyers with endless subsidies; the DNR’s mineral research, infrastructure funding, education, and finally, handing over our land, water and the very resources we sit on. The communities and employees, trapped in the hapless modern equivalent of the company town, their incomes bound to the corporations, hand over their very lives and landscapes. That they are comparatively well paid only leads to more co-option; the endless supply of over-size trucks, ATV’s and bound mortgages colors the thinking of everyone. The desperation that is the modern United States surrounds us; we work for corporate investors so we can pay debts to corporate investors so we can buy plastic toys from corporate investors who use slave labor to build them overseas. Mysteriously, this is called the zenith of civilization.

The Range’s problems are complex yet simply defined; the communities, despite any booster’s glorification’s, are graveyards next to wastelands. The people are beholden to their corporate master's, a truth fully evident yet never spoken; it as if saying “the sky is sometimes blue”. No one mentions it so they do not have to acknowledge the drudgery that is modern life for most. We have toys, yes, but we do not have what matters most, and that is community. And now we watch helplessly as the one group who used to define something different be the group willing to hand over the most; our land, our water and more of our community.

In a rational world, albeit imaginary, we might ask of ourselves 'We have this resource, perhaps of wealth, perhaps of trouble, but what do we do with it and how will it benefit us? What do we charge the corporation for exploiting our land? What do we get in return? What will be left? How do we assure our grandchildren will still want to or be able to live here?

This is, of course, not the case.

The mining laws of Minnesota, like most dealing with “Natural Resources”, sets the state's role as promoter of exploitation, or truly, the mother of destruction. We pay for research, we pay for infrastructure, we pay for what little of reclamation occurs and then we finally pay for destroyed communities and dysfunctional lives left over when the profit takers “downsize” or walk away. No matter what, it's a temporary fix and a devil's bargain.

The two communities most affected by the Polymet project have problems deriving from their very origins; they were both built specifically for mining only, standing at road’s end, miles from anything, surrounded by a scavenged landscape or forest. The project’s proponents want to resolve this by destroying more public forest for private profit, supported by countless subsidies, in exchange that a few will get paid for 20 years. Their aim, of course, is to start more projects on the same ore bodies, to destroy more land, to destroy more water, it all at public expense for private profit.

When I think of where I'm from, I think of the earliest labor organizers, some of whom I met and knew. Despite their so called ignorance, they knew one fundamental fact: the owners were exploiters, and nothing more. They were not our friends, and not to be trusted. They would sacrifice anything , including their worker's lives for a few dollars more profit. Fortunately, and unfortunately, the labor fights and unions brought us better conditions and a share of the profits., but they also co-opted us. Now, many are slaves bought and paid for, their lives a collection of mortgages, four wheel drive trucks and other toys. Like Orwell's well trained dog, they roll over without the masters watching. Anyone who questions the constant cycle of destruction and subsidy is labeled treehugger. No one sees the fundamental truth behind what is done; we borrow from the future to keep it all going, ignoring the mess we make in exchange for a big screen tv, burgers at the bar and a boat at the inherited lake property.

To end, there is one question that needs to be answered by those arguing for any extraction project: What will be left when it's done? Until the Range DFL answers that question, they are nothing more than puppets who want to sweep the crumbs off the table to the public's mouths.

Considering the results we see now, with emptying communities, rampant social problems and addiction, aging infrastructure we can't afford and environmental destruction all around us, the experiment's results are obvious; we simple need a better way.

Having just watched Part 1 of Adam Curtis' "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom" to be viewed here; his "Power of Nightmares" is also worth viewing. Curtis argues that right wing political doctrine is derived from two main ideas; the war justifying selfish game theory of John Nash, and the lunatic selfish economics of Frederick Hayek. These ideas and their assumptions underlie much of Anglo-American political thought. Curtis traces the variations through our two countries, ending with the lunacy of the Bush Presidency and the empty ending of the Tony Brown ministry. What is fascinating to me is noone in mainstream thought asked a very simple question: Maybe those who argue that human beings are nothing more than self serving paranoid sociopaths do so because that is what they are?

In a late night daze, my friend and I hopped over to Hibbing for the Jubilee street dance to wander around. Since he is from here, and I am not, I always end up being an observer. I am always stunned by one thing on the range; almost entire missing age groups. Now at my age, I do not expect thousands of raving near middle age people roaming around as we usually have children, jobs that actually require us to show up and perform and other categories under that evil responsibility word. But one thing is always a shock...the age group between 25 and 45 seems to almost not exist. It seems that beyond 22 or so and after mid baby-boomers, the lack of compatriots is obvious; you feel as if an alien. So, is my perception correct? The best data we have is now 9 years old, but it can tell us something:

From Hibbing, the first is the table;

22 to 24 years	254	2.9	285	3.1	539	2.97
25 to 29 years	438	5.0	426	4.6	864	4.77
30 to 34 years	461	5.2	498	5.3	959	5.29
35 to 39 years	570	6.5	629	6.7	1,199	6.61
40 to 44 years	708	8.1	722	7.7	1,430	7.89
45 to 49 years	823	9.4	750	8.0	1,573	8.68
50 to 54 years	634	7.2	594	6.4	1,228	6.77
55 to 59 years	436	5.0	476	5.1	912	5.03
60 and 61 years	140	1.6	152	1.6	292	1.61
62 to 64 years	192	2.2	237	2.5	429	2.37
65 and 66 years	115	1.3	168	1.8	283	1.56
67 to 69 years	199	2.3	275	2.9	474	2.61
70 to 74 years	368	4.2	484	5.2	852	4.70

And this table includes projections:

2000 Population*	17,071
1990 Population*	18,046
Percent change from 1990 population*	-5.4
2007 population estimate***	16,170
2010 population projection***	--
2000 Total minority population*	530
Urban population**	12,603
Rural population**	4,467
Median age*	41
Population by Age
Population under 18 years*	3,891
Population 18 years and over*	13,180
Population 65 years and over*	3,372

Now for my old district on the west side of St. Paul:

22 to 24 years	580	5.2	524	4.8	1,104	5.03
25 to 29 years	1,042	9.4	1,006	9.2	2,048	9.32
30 to 34 years	946	8.5	853	7.8	1,799	8.19
35 to 39 years	869	7.9	755	6.9	1,624	7.39
40 to 44 years	833	7.5	645	5.9	1,478	6.73
45 to 49 years	638	5.8	569	5.2	1,207	5.49
50 to 54 years	481	4.3	496	4.5	977	4.45
55 to 59 years	354	3.2	385	3.5	739	3.36
60 and 61 years	116	1.0	156	1.4	272	1.24
62 to 64 years	156	1.4	181	1.7	337	1.53
65 and 66 years	96	0.9	107	1.0	203	0.92
67 to 69 years	132	1.2	146	1.3	278	1.27
70 to 74 years	180	1.6	284	2.6	464	2.11

and the projected numbers, which are unfair due to size:

2000 Population*	287,151
1990 Population*	272,235
Percent change from 1990 population*	5.5
2007 population estimate***	287,669
2010 population projection***	--
2000 Total minority population*	103,253
Urban population**	287,151
Rural population**	0
Median age*	31
Population by Age
Population under 18 years*	77,827
Population 18 years and over*	209,324
Population 65 years and over*	29,647

Remember, most of the numbers are now 9 years old, and simply moving forward the clock you can get new age cohorts; reality is more complex, however, as the economy and movement will alter things quite a bit. The stunning difference is in the old 25 to 44 Year old age classes. which in the simple sense are the new 35 to 54 year olds. Especially in the thirties, the difference is quite striking. The median age is ten years difference, which tells you the weight of the pyramid. Hibbing, and probably most range cities, is skewed much much older. The projections are also different; almost 30% of Ramsey county in 2000 was under 18. Hibbing's was slightly less, but the important thing was how many were already in child bearing years. Alot of Hibbing has since passed beyond true child bearing age. It will be interesting to see what the changes are in next years census.

I guess my perceptions are true...but darnit the pics I grabbed of the dance itself didn't turn out. Alot young people drinking like fish and standing around ...and far less people wanting hair band music, thank goodness.

What kind of state do you want?

With Governor Pawlenty's pronouncements on the Corporate tax rate, I thought it would be interesting to do some comparisons since this plan, like most Republican thinking, makes a number of assumptions without consulting that abstraction called the real world. The source of his numbers is this corporate think tank. For 30 years, tax rates and loopholes for corporations and the wealthy have been expanded to where the they only pay 6% of taxes collected in the U.S. The first question might be to examine where tax rates are by state; Minnesota is at 9.8 % and the rate is high, but it does not tell you what breaks and subsidies there are. It also does not say why it is a much more succesful state then such tax paradises like South Dakota, home of the poorest county in the United States. But let us compare this with states with much lower rates, then look at this to how a society might be contrasted rationally, such as by social measurements like access to health care, education, literacy and poverty rates. There it is a bit more confusing, but we can look at states that compare completely opposite of Minnesota by social measurements; For example Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi or Kentucky. These are states with many conditions like the third world, yet have some of the lowest corporate tax rates. In short the world is much more complex than the governor lets on; handing breaks or having low corporate rates is not connected to advancement. In fact, it might show a connection between low rates and low quailty of life. The governor's beliefs, like most of republican thinking, does not work with the real world. After years of budget cutting on the backs of working people, we now have this tired old bucket of drivel. You would think they would come up with something new. In short, it appears the governors model is from down south, with hordes of poor people and a small elite, with no worker's rights and conditions like the third world for much of the population.

Do Unicorns steal the tusks of Narwhal's and other new age theories...

I think it is easily discovered...All unicorns must die !

Range Radio and crazy talk:
Of course all media is in a shuffling state and has been for years, but the talk radio on the range is entering a bizarro world. The am station in Virginia, owned by the local right wing lunatic from Duluth, is best listened to when accompanied by films from the Nuremberg rallies and goose-stepping practice, while that out of Hibbing gives the standard right wing fare...a day to day rehashing of an imaginary world, liberal conspirators preparing children to live off welfare. Knowing a little about the place, I still have not quite figured out just how many whack jobs in the area listen to this drivel. Are they mostly rural? Are they just a skimming of the local elite? Closet cross dressing gun nuts who happen to listen to crazed, obese, multiple divorcees? There is nothing local about it, and there is only one true local station, unfortunately set a little west of here. But as I occasionally listen, I see how the obvious failures of multiple station ownership, lack of local media and lunatic politics come together...Don't bother listening. Just pull some old speeches of Mussolini and at least learn some Italian.

Hopefully non-wonkish;

Minnesota State of the State: This is it?

Listening to the speech was the as if revisiting a bad republican policy document from the Reagan era...no taxes..blah blah blah...the family budget..blah blah...It shows just how ideologically right wing and blind this man is.

His homey family simile might be a great form of communication, but like most of his ideas, it is not based in reality and it does not work. Tucking children in when working two crappy jobs without health care, or working the family budget when it consists of avoiding medical bills, the landlord or foreclosure, or watching your job go up in smoke due to speculation built from the governor's same ideology.

But the government is not a family; it is just a little more complex than that. (By the way, if one continued his way of thinking, his children would be viewed as lazy, irresponsible wastrels leeching off the family income and not earning their own way, rather than, as let's say, children.)

And here is our problem. For three decades now, both at the federal and now state level, there has been a movement, by the wealthy, corporations and right wing true believers to undo the reforms of the New Deal that actually made this a somewhat fair society. More of the tax burden has been placed on working people while the wealthy, investors ( most of whom invest in speculation and not productive capital), corporations have received breaks, loopholes or subsidies in volumes. Supposed centrists like Jesse Ventura, with little understanding of how any of this worked, merely saw it as an equation involving their pocket books, not on where and whom the money was coming from. And now, in this last decade, especially since the Ventura "reforms", we are in yet another mess, and this governor wants to shove the consequences down the road out of pure, blind self and own class serving insanity. By proposing this bag of highly refined manure, he shows what little he knows: In short, he is dealing with a "slump in private spending by reducing public spending". There are alternatives, and here is one proposal, but more could be added.

And decreasing corporate income tax will not solve our budget or make us a a better place to live. The lowest tend to be in states with the worst social statistics, some rivaling third world conditions in the southern U.S.

But that shows where this governor wants to bring us, perhaps. His vision is not of a happy middle class family, but of a small, white elite employing everyone else without benefit of protection or incomes. And that should scare us.

One of the great Electronic Library projects relaunched after it crashed from over use in the first hours last month...http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ combines many libraries from all over Europe. But there are already others: http://www.archive.org/index.php aka the Internet Archive holds collections including books, concerts(!) and other collections. Another project within the archive is the Open Library project at http://openlibrary.org/ which also includes a scan on demand service for book access. I think this is the true Geek Heaven...

Excelsior, Lobbying, and old connections. ( Yes it will be long)

If you have not seen it, which might be difficult, the auditor's report on Excelsior's loan came in this week. It shows money not well spent, mostly on love-ins amongst officials to try to keep the money sucking leviathan moving. It still has no private investment, no market, no building, no shoes, no wallet...But I digress. The ultimate questions are 1) Is it truly needed? and 2) Will the money spent in other place(s) provide the same return on energy? The second question answers the first; if the energy can be found in some other way, by some other method, with all costs included in the price, then there are alternatives to shipping coal 1500 miles to the Range. The IRR has loaned this behemoth consisting of one non-engineer ex-Hibbing Hockey player and his wife 9.5 million$. I will assume the IRR's expected that Rangers would humbly follow along with whatever boondoggle they handed money to, but not in this case they have not. So, getting back to fundamentals, I still want to ask the above question; can the energy be found in some other way less harmful, less costly, or perhaps less environmentally damaging, a cost usually not included? Could, let's say, the 9.5 Million$ have been spent elsewhere and have provided an immediate return in energy? Investing in efficiency on the range cities' aging housing stock perhaps? Model community programs, modifying our aging infrastructure for efficiency and long term sustainability, rather than strip malls, asphalt and coal fired steam heat? Planning for transportation alternatives and efficiency as liquid petroleum becomes more expensive? ( It will). Perhaps just studying where energy is wasted, then planning on how to correct it. All of these are possibilities, and infinitely better than the lobbying party cash they have handed out so far. It is not just a question of 40,000$, but a question of energy return on investment, including the environmental costs (See this). This monstrosity serves no purpose other than to build for the sake of building, to benefit certain connected Range interests, and to continue the insanity of living as inefficiently as possible.

Can we please stop handing money over to these people and start living in the last century?

Not Another Bailout...

In the last thirty years, I have watched as as deregulated industries receive billion dollar bailouts. The investors and executives somehow always walk away still wealthy, while taxpayers are left with the debt, the bad assets and the bill. This one is a monster, thanks to Phil Gramm and other pseudo-economists espousing the bs about the free market. So here we go again. The Details at Krugman

A great article by Chris Hedges on Sarah Palin; it is fairly frightening.

Here...

An Alaskan Native on Sarah Palin:

An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska
By Evon Peter

9/8/2008
My name is Evon Peter; I am a former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in tribe from Arctic
Village, Alaska and the current Executive Director of Native Movement. My
organization provides culturally based leadership development through offices in Alaska
and Arizona. My wife, who is Navajo, and I have been based out of Flagstaff, Arizona for
the past few years, although I travel home to Alaska in support of our initiatives there as
well. It is interesting to me that my wife and I find ourselves as Indigenous people from
the two states where McCain and Palin originate in their leadership.
I am writing this letter to raise awareness about the ongoing colonization and violation of
human rights being carried out against Alaska Native peoples in the name of
unsustainable progress, with a particular emphasis on the role of Sarah Palin and the
Republican leadership. My hope is that it helps to elevate truth about the nature of
Alaskan politics in relation to Alaska Native peoples and that it lays a framework for our
path to justice.
Ever since the Russian claim to Alaska and the subsequent sale to the United States
through the Treaty of Cession in 1867, the attitude and treatment towards Alaska Native
peoples has been fairly consistent. We were initially referred to as less than human
“uncivilized tribes”, so we were excluded from any dialogues and decisions regarding our
lands, lives, and status. The dominating attitude within the Unites States at the time was
called Manifest Destiny; that God had given Americans this great land to take from the
Indians because they were non-Christian and incapable of self-government. Over the
years since that time, this framework for relating to Alaska Native peoples has become
entrenched in the United States legislative and legal systems in an ongoing direct
violation of our human rights.
What does this mean? Allow me to share an analogy. If a group of people were to arrive
in your city and tell you their people had made laws, among which were:
1. What were once your home and land now belong to them (although you could live
in the garage or backyard)
2. Forced you to send your children to boarding schools to learn their language and
be acculturated into their ways with leaders who touted “Kill the American, save
the man” (based on the original statement made by US Captain Richard H. Pratt
in regards to Native American education “Kill the Indian, save the man.”)
3. Supported missionaries and government agents to forcefully (for example, with
poisons placed on the tongues of your children and withheld vaccines) convince
you that your Jesus, Buddha, Torah, or Mohammed was actually an agent of evil
and that salvation in the afterlife could only be found through believing otherwise
4. Made it illegal for you to continue to do your job to support your family, except
under strict oversight and through extensive regulation
5. Made it illegal for you to own any land or run a business as an individual and did
not allow you to participate in any form of their government, which controlled
your life (voting or otherwise)
How would this make you feel? What if you also knew that if you were to retaliate, that
you would be swiftly killed or incarcerated? How long do you think it would take for you
to forget or would you be sure to share this history with your children with the hope that
justice could one day prevail for your descendents? And most importantly to our
conversation, how American does this sound to you?
To put this into perspective, my grandfather who helped to raise me in Arctic Village was
born in 1904, just thirty-seven years after the United States laid claim to Alaska. If my
grandfather had unjustly stolen your grandfathers home and I was still living in the house
and watching you live outdoors, would you feel a change was in order? Congress
unilaterally passed most of the major US legislation that affect our people in my
grandfathers’ lifetime. There has never been a Treaty between Alaska Native Peoples and
the United States over these injustices. Each time that Alaska Native people stand up for
our rights, the US responds with token shifts in its laws and policies to appease the
building discontent, yet avoiding the underlying injustice that I believe can be resolved if
leadership in the United States would be willing to acknowledge the underlying injustice
of its control over Alaska Native peoples, our lands, and our ways of life.
United States legal history in relation to Alaska Natives has been based on one major
platform - minimize the potential for Alaska Native people to regain control of their lives,
lands, and resources and maximize benefit to the Unites States government and its
corporations. While the rest of the world, following World War II, was seeking to return
African and European Nations to their rightful owners, the United States pushed in the
opposite direction by pulling the then Territory of Alaska out of the United Nations
dialogues and pushing for Statehood into the Union. Why is it that Alaska Native Nations
are still perceived as being incapable of governing our own lands, lives, and resources
differently than African, Asian, and European nations?
Let me get specific about what is at stake and how this relates to Palin and the
Republican leadership in Alaska and across this country. To this day, Alaska Native
peoples are among the only Indigenous peoples in all of North America whose
Indigenous Hunting and Fishing Rights have been extinguished by federal legislation and
yet we are the most dependent people on this way of life. Most of our villages have no
roads that connect them to cities; many live with poverty level incomes, and all rely to
varying degrees on traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting for survival. This has
become known as the debate on Alaska Native Subsistence.
As Alaska Governor, Palin has continued the path of her predecessor Frank Murkowski
in challenging attempts by Alaska Native people to regain their human right to their
traditional way of life through subsistence.
The same piece of unilateral federal legislation, known as the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, that extinguished our hunting and fishing rights, also
extinguished all federal Alaska Native land claims and my Tribe’s reservation status. In
the continental United States, this sort of legislation is referred to as ‘termination
legislation’ because it takes the rights of self-government away from Tribes. It is based in
the same age-old idea that we are not capable of governing our people, lands, and
resources. To justify these terminations, ANCSA also created Alaska Native led forprofit
corporations (which were provided the remaining lands not taken by the
government and a one time payment the equivalent of about 1/20th of the annual profits
made by corporations in Alaska each year) with a mission of exploiting the land in
partnership with the US government and outside corporations. It was a brilliant piece of
legislation for the legal termination and cultural assimilation of Alaska Natives under the
guise of progress.
Since the passage of ANCSA, political leaders in Alaska, with a few exceptions, have
maintained that, as stated by indicted Senator Ted Stevens, “Tribes have never existed in
Alaska.” They maintain this position out of fear that the real injustice being carried out
upon Alaska Natives may break into mainstream awareness and lead to a re-opening of
due treaty dialogues between Alaska Native leaders and the federal government. At the
same time the federal government chose to list Alaska Native tribes in the list of federally
recognized tribes in 1993. Governor Palin maintains that tribes were federally recognized
but that they do not have the same rights as the tribes in the continental United States to
sovereignty and self-governance, even to the extent of legally challenging our Tribes
rights pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act. What good are governments that can’t
make decisions concerning their own land and people?
The colonial mentality in and towards Alaska is to exploit the land and resources for
profits and power, at the expense of Alaska Native people. Governor Palin reflects this
attitude and perspective in her words and leadership. She comes from an area within
Alaska that was settled by relocated agricultural families from the continental United
States in the second half of the last century. It is striking that a leader from that particular
area feels she has a right, considering all of the injustices to Alaska Native people, to
offer Alaskan oil and resources in an attempt to solve the national energy crisis at the
Republican Convention. Palin also chose not to mention the connection between oil
development and global warming, which is wreaking havoc on Alaska Native villages,
forcing some to begin the process of relocation at a cost sure to reach into the hundreds of
millions.
Our tribes depend on healthy and abundant land and animals for our survival. For
example, my people depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates into the
coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge each spring to birth their young. Any
disruption and contamination will directly impact the health and capacity for my people
to continue to live in a homeland we have been blessed to live in for over 10,000 years.
This is the sacrifice Palin offered to the nation. The worst part of it is that there are viable
alternatives to addressing the energy crisis in the United States, yet Palin chooses options
that very well may result in the extinguishment of some of the last remaining intact
ecosystems and original cultures in all of North America. Palin is also promoting off
shore oil drilling and increased mining in sensitive areas of Alaska, all of which would
have a lifespan of far fewer years than my grandfather walked on this earth and which
would not even make a smidgen of an impact on national consumption rates or longer
term sustainability. McCain was once a champion of protecting the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge and it is sad to see, that with Palin on board, he is no longer vocal and
perhaps even giving up on what he believes in to satisfy Palin’s position.
While I have much more to say, this is my current offering to elevate the conversation
about what is at stake in Alaska and for Alaska Native peoples. Please share this offering
with others and help us to make this an election that brings out honest dialogue. We have
an opportunity to bring lasting change, but only if we can be open to hearing the truth
about our situations and facing the challenges that arise.
Many thanks to all those who are taking stands for a just and sustainable future for all of
our future generations,
*This essay is a personal reflection and should not be attributed to my tribe or organization

Christopher Hedges, the future on display at the Republican Convention.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080908_tyranny_on_display_at_the_republican_convention/

By the way, Truthdig is one of the best places for actual news.

St. Paul.

A quick hit: The St. Paul police arresting journalists. Journalists doing nothing but reporting. That and giant fence through the middle of the city. Here is a link...

No Strike at United and Hibtac:

According to WDIO, the steelworkers union and Cleveland Cliffs reached a tentative agreement, avoiding a strike.

Thought Police and Population Control.

Exactly why does the Hennepin County Sheriff have an undercover operation infiltrating peace groups? Search warrants on a group named "Food not Bombs"? Charged with conspiracy..to riot? How is this provable? And why is any law enforcement given this free reign? Is it just the Patriot Act? ( They have done this before..years ago). This is why Police, military, or anyone else cannot be given authority...More at Minnesota Independent.

People who need to stay away from me.

This group of troglodytes needs to be in a cage. Like most missionaries, they simply have a need to interfere in the lives of others, and rather than bring useful things like clean water, medication or education, they instead bring their lunatic beliefs and a compulsion to demand everyone else join them. They are so joyful in the lord they include a counter of death, declaring most of them go to hell.

Then, of course, as usual, they ask for money. Money. Why does god need money?

Energy Costs

We are all feeling it at the pump, and many of us have changed our behavior or absorbed the cost. But this is not the heating season, and that will add more to the burden. Here is a table of heating oil futures:


Avoiding an explanation for the the index numbers, the gist is this: heating oil price has increased around 100 percent in the last year. 100 Percent.

This next table is for Natural Gas out of the New York Mercantile exchange:


This is cost per million BTU, the actual energy content. It shows a recent drop.

The other chart I will link to for it is too large; it is propane prices for the last 18 years. Relative stability until 2004, but over a 100 % increase since then. Ouch.

Essentially, the last several years have seen enormous increases. Most have been able to absorb the costs, though low income people haven't. This is crucial for our area. Living here is energy intensive for over half the year. Not everyone can adapt by throwing more wood in the stove however, and large institutions definitely cannot. Their budgets will truly hurt, and that impact will really start to hit home now. I would argue that efficiency investment should come first. Handing out cash to boondoggles like excelsior needed to end yesterday.

Rural School District transport costs.

Knowing the already existing troubles for the school districts in the area, fuel cost increases will play havoc with spread out districts. One of consolidation's truism's is that economies of scale will provide greater opportunities for children. Does the data support this? One of the few studies examining this shows it does not work for rural districts because transport costs do not allow the economy of scale solution to the problem; transport costs eat up the supposed savings. To quote from this study:"As the number of children per school multiplied five-fold between 1930 and 1996, the per pupil transportation cost actually doubled". What does this mean for our districts in the time of near 100% fuel price increases, both for transport and heating? What will the solution be for this area, already hit by other problems?

An old table. Yes, I know my tiny readership just ran or fell asleep. But being a scientist, I like numbers, for they tell us something. This is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service from two years ago, with fuel around 2.50 a gallon. I use it for one reason, to show average rural miles driven. Then there is this:

It is an average fuel price graph from August 2007 to June of this year, courtesy of AAA. Rural area's simply have to use more fuel. This is especially important for our area's school districts, rural residents or lower income people. The important thing is the budget percentage transportation takes up as costs go up. Most are still in a daze over the increases, but are either changing behavior( smaller cars, driving less), or have simply absorbed the cost. But my worry is for institutions such as already struggling school districts, hospitals or government services. In many ways, these costs are fixed, and at what point does the child per mile transport cost overwhelm our school districts? It is in the next budget rounds this will take hold, and I do not envy anyone trying to solve it...I will look at home heating oil next....