(Midwest Energy News, January 25, 2012)—A presidential election year is upon us again, and that means the return of maps splitting the nation into red and blue states. James Lenfestey thinks we should be seeing green and black instead. Lenfestey, a Minneapolis poet and former journalist, spoke at a monthly Environment Minnesota breakfast Tuesday about the politics [...]
The budget forecast delivered by state finance officials on Wednesday is perhaps the bleakest outlook in Minnesota’s history. “This is the worst, without a question,” said Jay Kiedrowski, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. As the state’s chief financial officer under Gov. Rudy Perpich in the 1980s, Kiedrowski [...]
He did it before. Will he do it again? A year ago this week, state finance officials broke the news to lawmakers about a projected $426 million budget deficit facing the state. The report set the table for a round of controversial budget cuts by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who used a once-obscure administrative power called [...]
A panel of Republican candidates for governor on Wednesday painted a dire portrait of a state in fiscal crisis. Speaking at a private forum for Medtronic employees, the five GOP contenders described a state budget broken from unsustainable spending. And they spoke about an alarming migration trend they see in which businesses are fleeing the [...]
Greenhouse gases are trapping heat in our atmosphere and warming the planet at an alarming rate. Climate scientists believe if we don’t respond appropriately in the next decade or so, global warming will cause oceans to rise, disease to spread, droughts to prolong, storms and wildfires to intensify, and scores of species to go extinct. [...]
