Across the Great Divide

Coleman's Concession is "Gracious" by Half.

After his third (or was it fourth?) defeat in his appeal process, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman may have been "gracious" in finally conceding the election to new Sen. Al Franken. But Coleman is doling out the graciousness selectively.

I heard an MPR reporter say that cameras from The UpTake were excluded from livestreaming Coleman's announcement. Instead, the news service shot shaky video from a neighbor's yard and posted it here — a mute commentary on the snub.

The UpTake has provided the most in-depth video documentation of the various proceedings associated with the recount, but has been systematically stiffed by Coleman's staff. If Coleman does decide to run for office again, he's certainly not paving the way with citizen media.

UPDATE: David Brauer has a good account of what went on.

Water: Simple Solutions to a Basic Problem.

When we built our house in Colorado, we decided putting a cistern under the driveway to cache rainwater was going to cost too much. But it also would have made us lawbreakers.

Harvesting the rainwater that falls on your property is now legal on Colorado.

A study in 2007 proved crucial to convincing Colorado lawmakers that rain catching would not rob water owners of their rights. It found that in an average year, 97 percent of the precipitation that fell in Douglas County, near Denver, never got anywhere near a stream. The water evaporated or was used by plants.

As growth continues in the arid west, water rights will provoke a bigger fight than gay rights.

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Elsewhere in the world, access to water may produce greater conflicts than over access to oil. And clean water in third world countries may do more to extend lifespans than vaccinations.

Hal Davis sent me a link to this video awhile back. It shows the winner of the 2008 Innovate or Die design contest sponsored by Google and Specialized bikes.

The Aquaduct, like a Detroit concept car, is slick and visionary and so far out of sync with the realities of the market — in this case ensuring clean water in developing countries. They designers say they are "working to evolve the concept into a viable solution," but the hurdles of cost and maintenance seem pretty high.

Segway inventor Dean Kamen has another device he showed on The Colbert Report that uses vapor compression distillation but requires much less power than conventional technology. His solution to the cost problem is micro-capital loans to entrepreneurs who sell water and power in poor communities.

Contrast the Aquaduct solution for transportation with this simple one — and the purification solution with this very low-tech one.

Personally, I can see the entry from Mayapedal working better with the bikes and conditions I've seen.

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And one last related bike link. It looks to me like George is going all right with his current can-hauler.

"You Will Pay, Prendergast! You Will Pay!"

Politics in Minnesota so far has the best take on "False Witness! The Michele Bachmann Story."

The comic is a great format to illustrate the ominous ideas and symbols that Bachmann's linked with -- from the black helicopters to the teabaggers, icons like this deserve a graphic treatment. Two other classes of characters, mainstream journalists and non-sectarian Republicans, get portrayed as happy faces and anxious elephants. Much wrath is justly directed at the journalists, who repeatedly failed to get Bachmann's most outlandish comments in print [though perhaps more blame ought to go to their editors].

You can order here.

Transparency Requires Time to Read.

I hate to sound like Michele Bachmann, but sheesh!

Rep. Michele Bachmann was complaining Friday about whether Congress had actually read the "1,200 plus cap-and-trade bill that will impose massive energy taxes on businesses and consumers" — implying, of course, that she had read it.

But that's unlikely, if only because, as The Sunlight Foundation reported:

Today is the day that the House plans to vote on the cap and trade bill that has mysteriously changed this week. Last night, the bill changed again.

Overnight, the House Rules Committee dropped 300 new pages into the bill that was passed on Friday.

I don't believe for a second that even the most diligent members of Congress read entire 1,200-page bills — but even their staffs can't adequately vet 300 pages overnight. And watchdog groups have little chance, either.

Bachmann isn't all that interested in government transparency; she just wants it to disappear. But if you think effective government should allow time for someone to read the bill,The Sunlight Foundation has a petition for you to sign.

The New Retirement: Work Until You Win the Lottery.

A guy works for the same company for 26 years, likes his job and company and finally achieves the American Dream.

Now he can stop working three jobs to support his family.

Clyde Persley [that's his 1977 high school yearbook picture] won $39 million in a California lottery. But the kicker is that he worked part-time as a limo driver and was on-call at Santa Cruz restaurant, while also working full-time for a company operating candy-making machines.

Here's the quote that really stuck with me:

"I really appreciate my life with Harmony Foods," he said of his 26-year stint there. "I can't say enough how much my work has meant to me."

His story started me digging for statistics about the underemployed. How many Americans work multiple jobs just to stay afloat — because of low wages, inadequate hours, seasonal employment or lack of health care coverage? How many good workers hover near the poverty line and never work their way out?

But stories of real people, not numbers, are what brought the issue home for me.

Nearly a decade ago a researcher studied how rural Utah families met their family's needs despite low-paying work:

Jill, a single mother with four children, is a good example of multiple job holding.

At one time I was working four jobs. It was when I was first divorced ... about four years ago. I was working for the bank in town ... thirty five hours a week. And then because ... I have problems getting child support, I was working also in the evenings about three or four days a week ... for a convenience store for minimum wage. I was doing typing for an insurance agent. I was doing his billing and his correspondence at home on my computer and then on weekends I cleaned house for people.

That year, she told me, she "made $9,000 total," several thousand dollars below the poverty threshold for her family; thus, while working four jobs, she qualified for AFDC. After a spell on AFDC, she wasn't eligible for Medicaid without a spend down or for Food Stamps because of her vehicle, and was uninsured for several years as a result. Two of her children have chronic medical conditions for which they need prescription medication, but health insurance through her job at the bank would have cost her over $200 per month and "we needed that money to live on." Food was watched carefully during that time: "we had a gallon of milk ... this has got to last all week, kids. I was really thankful that my kids could get like free lunches at school and free breakfast. So they could go to school and eat and then they'd get a good lunch and we'd work out dinner."

Jill was able to keep up that schedule for about two years because her oldest daughter assumed many responsibilities at home, including meal preparation and child care. But the strategy of multiple job holding exacted some heavy costs on the family. "I was really lucky because my oldest daughter was very, very responsible and one of the reasons I quit was because ... we still needed the money, but my daughter's grades were dropping in school because she was spending so much time helping" with the younger children. Jill quit the job at the convenience store in order to stay home in the evenings with the children. In addition to the effects on her daughter, Jill found those years took a toll on her, as well. "It was really hard emotionally. I really think I aged a lot in two years ... just worrying. The stress of trying to carry on four jobs, make ends meet, you know, wondering how we were going to pay the next bill.... So I had no choice." During the years of multiple job holding, Jill also availed herself of some church-based assistance, mostly for groceries. In her case, low wage work meant she "balanced" her budget by devoting more time to paid employment, depending on family-provided child care, using local resources for groceries, and foregoing health insurance.

Clyde Persley says "I can't say enough how much my work has meant to me" and he seems to be a pretty centered guy. Yet his secure future is a matter of pure luck.

UPDATE: Bob Herbert talks about today's job prospects of the underemployed, and they're not as good as when Clyde graduated from high school.

Bachmann Goes on TV to Demand Privacy.

"Between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up," [Rep. Michele Bachmann] said. "I'm not saying that that's what the administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up."
— Star Tribune

Perfect timing.

Rep. Michele Bachmann gets media play on her stated intention not to complete the U.S. Census Survey. Today, she sends an email blast soliciting donations before the fund raising filing period ends June 30th. An excerpt:

 

She pretty much lays out all her obsessions, but my topic today is the Census. She says:

They don't want you to see me speak out to protect your privacy from invasive census questions. [Actually, we love it, and we understand why you're mad about that mental stability question.]
 
I asked you to read the census for yourself and see what you think.  [Though apparently only Congress members have copies of the new forms, so you'll have to rely on sources like this one: PDF.]
 

Bachmann links to a recent Glenn Beck appearance, in which Beck summons up visions of ACORN members asking Census questions (not true) and the Feds using non-compliance as a "loophole" to take away his gun permit.

Bachmann fumes, "'Are you a U.S. Citizen?' One question they don't ask is resident status."

The short form doesn't ask it, but it appears the longer community survey does. That should satisfy Bachmann's need to estimate the extent of the illegal immigration problem. But she wants it both ways: Let's preserve privacy and root out aliens. But not the way they did it in 1940's with the Japanese, not that I'm saying we would... just that it happened once. I'm not filling it out, but I'm not saying people shouldn't fill it out. But why does the federal government need your phone number?

So ACORN can call you and ask for donations to support terror, of course.

At bottom, this is typical Bachmann — combining fear of the other, paranoia about government, extreme self-righteousness (while criticizing elitists), a demand for personal privacy while refusing it to others and celebrating knownothingism while trying to defeat anything (including the Census) that might challenge this rickety system of self-delusion. Plus asserting a lie forcefully over and over while denying any responsibility should others act in response to the lie.

Shelter Report: Syllables and Bru-tal-i-ty.

Down at the shelter today, things started out okay. Kids were sharing and being cooperative. I made Play-Doh turtles for some. We had a reading period in which the kids rapped out the number of syllables for words like seeds (click), broccoli (click-click) and tomato (click-click).

I was willing to cut some slack for the mis-syllabification of  brock-lee, but I had to file a protest over t'may-doh. I'm only a volunteer, but I'm also an English major, after all, and I've never forgotten the day I missed when they covered syllables in third grade. The teacher let a girl in class bring me up to speed, and she did a good job. I've been impeccable on hyphenation and click-click-clicks ever since.

One boy in the class is pretty disruptive. He's been known to bite and he's quick to hit others, often clawing at the face. He has a strong tendency to grab a toy he wants, but that's just not the way we do it. During reading time, he's restless, purposely intruding into the space of other kids and being a distraction rather than paying attention.

All the kids have their moments of this, but D requires a constant watchful eye. While we're trying to work with him every day to socialize him better, the more immediate focus of attention is to make sure he doesn't hurt someone or cause discord and disrespect to spread.

We were outside on the playground where my role is to be more physical with the kids. Some days that means keeping balls aloft or spotting kids on the equipment. Others, I might be a monster chasing them around. Or making sure they only pretend to eat the wood chip birthday cake. Today, I was giving shoulder rides, letting kids admire their height in the reflection of the windows, pull leaves off the lone tree or grab ahold of the brick pillars and then pretend to fall so I could catch them.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the lead teacher snatch D and sit him down decisively on a bench. It was a familiar move — remove him abruptly from where he's causing trouble and isolate him. A quick grab-and-plop contains an element of surprise and a little reminder that adults really do have the upper hand. Once he starts acting out, D doesn't respond to subtle appeals to reason, but he'll listen a bit once he's been cowed.

On the other side of the fence, residents come outside to smoke. Literally, the no-smoking sign in the playground is back-to-back with the smokers' benches.

A very large woman sharing a cigarette with another woman saw the teacher sit D down. She started shouting about how the teacher had jerked him and slammed him on the bench. I'm calling D's mother to tell her how they're beating her son. That's why I won't put my kids in day care! (No. I'll make them sit out on the hot concrete while I smoke cigarettes and ignore them.)

She stormed around trying to enlist other people to join her outrage. D's mother, who was at work, no doubt got a call from Angrywoman and was needlessly distressed over this. The teacher may face a complaint. She was asking us, did you see it? Did I sit him down too hard?

We've all done the same thing with D when he had to be separated from the other kids. We're firm and we don't take his crap. But we also see the good in him and keep trying to bring more of that out, to teach him how to play with others, to show him that bad actions have consequences. We have a responsibility to keep all the kids safe.

Angrywoman is living in a shelter with her kids. Maybe there's no man around. She's hugely overweight and has a bit of a beard. Life isn't going well for her right now. She's got to fell pretty powerless.

So she sees a white woman act roughly toward a black kid, and she's not going to stand for it. Her outrage is genuine and her protest feels righteous. In this case, she's going to make a difference.

I get all that. But in this case, she's wrong.

Helping Commissioner Johnson.

In Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson's weekly "watchdog" blog entry, he questions why Minneapolis spent $180,000 on a campaign to get more people to drink Minneapolis tap water, more often.

Let's break it down for the commissioner.

Hennepin County ends up burning or landfilling a good deal of the waste produced in Minneapolis. That garbage burner next to the Twins Stadium is county-run. An estimated 86 percent of plastic water bottles do not get recycled and end up in the solid waste stream, so for every 100 times someone in Minneapolis chooses bottled water over tap water, 86 of those bottles are headed the county's way.

It's not just the city of Minneapolis that benefits when it persuades residents and businesses to reduce plastic waste. It's for people breathing the air — incinerating plastic bottles produces toxic byproducts. For those who pick up litter. And for those who'd rather see their natural gas and petroleum used to heat and drive to their homes in Maple Grove, instead of to make and transport plastic bottles there.

"Minneapolis water" is also used in several Hennepin County suburbs, including Golden Valley, where I live. Buying "Minneapolis water" meant our city did not have to build its own filtration plant. Overall, having other customers for the state-of-the-art Minneapolis plant means Hennepin County residents can enjoy better tap water for less.

The Minneapolis PR strategy, then, seems to support this statement on the Hennepin County website: "We want to avoid the cost of new and expensive waste management facilities. Our goals are to help protect the environment and conserve resources."

And best of all, commissioner, you're getting that help from Minneapolis for free.

Midweek Diversions.

Two local events this week combine irreverent thought and maybe beer, or as Solutions Twin Cities says, "where happy hour meets show and tell."

Tonight, Wednesday the 24th, Solutions Twin Cities presents Give & Take, a new monthly event co-presented with Intermedia Arts. There's a 7:30 - 9pm program with a social hour to follow. They say:
the format is based on asking everybody in attendance, presenters and audience, two questions:

1) What do you know about?
2) What do you want to know about?

Some of the presenters:

Peter Rich knows about traveling the country as a costume character unbound by brand or affiliation.

Kristen Murray and Sarah Peters know how to build community around building boats by hand.

Bill Prouty knows about the monkey man of India, and how one might track him.

It's happening at:

Intermedia Arts
2822 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55408

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Drinking Liberally is at its usual 331 Club location. The guests of honor will be Ken Avidor and some of the other creators of "False Witness," the Michele Bachmann comic book previewed awhile back at City Pages.

Use Bubbles Sparingly in Measuring State Budget Differences.

Mitch Berg cites this infographic from Many Eyes that uses a bubble chart to compare the size of estimated state budget deficits.

The four states missing from the graph?  The low-tax, low-”service” states run by conservatives (whose education systems generally keep pace with Minnesota’s vaunted system, and clobber the bejeebers out of California, New York, New Jersey and Massachussetts’): North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska; South Dakota’s deficit comes to around $60 per South Dakotan, so it’s close.

As Junk Charts reminds us, "Bubble charts are okay for the conceptual ('this is really big, and that is really tiny')." But they are lousy for more nuanced comparisons — because people have a hard time estimating differences in area and the bubble format may obscure what's actually being compared.

For example, that huge California deficit bubble is much bigger than the others, but so is California's population, economy and state budget. (To his credit, Mitch also provides a couple per capita comparisons. But comparing per capita deficits is a bit like comparing per capita debt. An important calculation in figuring how much you owe is how much you can afford to pay.)

Maybe the bubbles are okay, because Mitch's point is conceptual — that low-tax, low-service states run by conservatives do better than ummm... some other low-tax, low-service states run by conservatives, such as Florida and Nevada, both of which face proportionately larger budget deficits than Minnesota.

You could see that quickly if you looked at the much less sexy data set that was used to calculate the randomly arranged bubble charts. You'd also have to do a little reading to figure out that governors in two of those conservative states are Democrats. And that Alaska's SAT scores are on a par with California's, and Nevada's are worse.

You'd also miss that all Mitch's favorites (plus many of the other low tax states) do a good job of exporting taxes to non-residents — through energy and mining, permissive banking regulations, higher than average federal payments and tourism-related taxes.