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REPUBLICANS AND COMMISSIONERS

Notice a pattern?

Republicans in control of the Senate are threatening to reject the confirmation of Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm ("Health care chief on the bubble," Oct. 31). While public servants in this capacity have become targets of public wrath, it appears to me that Minnesota Republicans spend an inordinate amount of time targeting women in public office. Just last July, Laura Bishop, commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, resigned because Senate Republicans were prepared to oust her. Now 2022 is fast upon us, and if it were up to me I would make certain that every one of the eligible voters among the 2,745,132 females in Minnesota were aware of this issue.

Dan Gunderson, Minneapolis

Thank you, Jan Malcolm, for your never-wavering direction during an unprecedented journey through a novel pandemic. Shame on Republicans trying to use you as a political football. My relative in North Dakota recently almost died because there were literally no beds available at a hospital at the level he needed for his condition, anywhere in the state, due to demand for COVID treatment. Fortunately he was allowed to stay several days in an ER for treatment.

This is exactly the scene Jan Malcolm has worked tirelessly to prevent in Minnesota. Politicians, stop interfering in subjects you aren't trained in, and keep your hands off my right to scientifically informed public health.

Susan Corrado, Minneapolis

WHAT PEOPLE GET PAID

A little humility, please?

"Reform" is a word we hear quite a bit today. Reform for government, for policies, the Police Department, rent costs, drug pricing, health care, the minimum wage and so on. How about a little reform for the salaries of those who lead professional sports teams? P.J. Fleck, for example $35 million? (" 'It's home': Fleck gets 7-year deal," Sports, Nov. 4.)

Give everyone a break. Look at how ridiculous this is. His salary could do so much to help others who need it. Do we really need to pay a coach that much for a job that has little or no real socially redeeming value? P.J. could still be a coach and provide fans with a potentially great team. But, whatever happened to doing it for the love of the game? This salary is fundamentally and ethically wrong.

Susan J. Carlson, Wayzata

I am dismayed by the John Deere workers' rejection of a 10% raise in their contract (Nation & World, Nov. 4). As an RN in an ICU for 32 years, I do not believe I ever received more than a 3% raise at contract time and often less than that. It seems to me that 10% is a lot of money and a generous offer. Shouldn't we all be trying to compromise and be willing to set the stage on future negotiations for a less adversarial discussion/debate?

Susan Parham, Eagan

ELECTION RESULTS

Police reform now is up to all of us

Those in Minneapolis who want police reforms, no matter if they voted for or against City Question 2, now have an opportunity to see that serious reform efforts are implemented. A good starting list of reform items was suggested in a letter to the editor ("Next, the hard part," Nov. 4). Our mayor, police chief and City Council members will be coming up with additional reform points.

I suggest that Minneapolis residents study the proposed reform items, choose one that interests them especially, and commit to working on that point, by joining committees, forming task forces, contacting city officials and legislators, and following progress on the reform points of choice, to help further our citywide efforts to bring about police reform and increased public safety for our city's people. If we, as city residents want to have a better police force and public safety, it's up to us to be part of making it happen.

Lois Willand, Minneapolis

Just a little quibble about the Nov. 4 letter from our neighbor in Richfield, who weighs in on common sense vs. nonsense in Minneapolis and Virginia.

Yes, I entirely agree that Minneapolis voters used common sense to defeat Question 2. But equating this with what occurred in Virginia is where he lost me.

In Virginia, a very vocal group of frightened white folks fought to stop critical race theory from being taught in their schools. (FYI: Critical race theory is actually not being taught in Virginia K-12 schools though considering the vote, I'm guessing it should be!)

This sounds to me much more like the nonsense our writer spoke of. Just another "problem" in search of a solution. And the entire campaign was based on fear of the other.

Nope. That doesn't make "common" sense to me.

Carin Peterson, Minneapolis

I voted for Meg Forney for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board because of her qualifications. I did not give a second thought as to her gender. ("Women take over Park Board," front page, Nov. 5.) As to Forney's assertion that it is more likely that women "can govern in a more collaborative way," she forgets it was men like Theodore Wirth who provided the vision for the park system she now represents.

Emanuel Gaziano, Minneapolis

PRE-ELECTION ANALYSIS

'Magical thinking' comes from the centrists

D.J. Tice's Oct. 31 drive through the bucolic countryside of "moderates" past the urban chaos of Minneapolis politics fails to mention the proximate cause of that chaos the murder of George Floyd ("Experiencing political homelessness, makeshift moderates look for shelter"). Police-murder-with-impunity finally got the attention it deserved, and the bloody mess isn't likely to stop stinking anytime soon.

But Tice suddenly crosses the centerline, veers into a ditch and bleeds economic ignorance:

"Ours is an age of magical thinking. Government, we've been told under the auspices of 'Modern Monetary Theory,' can borrow any amount of money it pleases without consequence, and policymakers have long behaved as if they believed this. So naturally we're puzzled to see inflation rising, even after a decade and a half of easy money ."

If Tice had bothered to read Stephanie Kelton's recent book "The Deficit Myth," he would know that MMT adherents are perfectly clear about the consequences of, and limits on, so-called "easy money."

And although Kelton is more temperate about it, the idea that the federal government "borrows" the money it spends is pure fraud. We, the people, don't "borrow" our own money; we manage it.

The specious notion that easy money drives today's inflation ignores the economy of COVID and former Fed governor Daniel Tarullo's hapless admission that, "we do not, at present, have a theory of inflation dynamics that works sufficiently well to be of use for the business of real-time monetary policy-making."

A good amount of "magical thinking" in politics emanates from "centrists" who would prescribe Band-Aids for arterial bleeding.

William Beyer, St. Louis Park

'GRASSLANDS UPROOTED'

The farmland solution

"Grasslands uprooted" (front page, Oct. 24) was certainly a sobering article about the fate of prairie habitat. Much as with the Amazon rainforest, farmers experience pressure to put every arable acre under the plow. Increasing acreage planted is the most direct way to increase farm revenue, converting something that is owned but not used into a revenue-generating asset. The general impression from business reporting is that farming is risky, something for only those who inherit land or who work for agribusinesses. Use of labor on farms is generally going down as the use of machinery and technology increases. So the pressure is on farmers, and they are putting pressure on the land.

The urban parts of Minnesota, even the metropolitan statistical area of St. Cloud, have experienced employment and income growth, while the farmers generally have not experienced the same level of dependable growth. If Minnesotans as a whole want to preserve prairie habitat in sufficient quantity to sustain the ecology and wildlife of our state, it will be necessary to buy, not rent, what is now farmland. It also will be necessary to bring a diverse employment base to rural parts of the state so that those who are being displaced from farming by climate change, agribusiness practices and barriers to entry have alternate means to stay gainfully employed in their communities.

Clinton Kennedy, Lakeville

See the rest here:
Readers Write: Republicans and commissioners, what people get paid, election results and analysis, 'grasslands uprooted' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

TOPEKA Kansas Republicans serving in Congress continued to raise objections Friday to the COVID-19 vaccination mandate rolled out by President Joe Biden applicable nationwide to private businesses with at least 100 employees.

The five GOP members in the delegation raised constitutional criticisms about requiring millions of people to be vaccinated during the pandemic and argued decisions about medical care ought to be left to individuals. Theyve also expressed displeasure with Bidens vaccination order aimed at employees and contractors of the federal government.

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, of Manhattan, joined dozens of senators in a procedural effort to nullify Bidens vaccine mandate for private employees under a process allowing Congress to challenge executive branch regulations.

The decision to get vaccinated should be left to each individual in consultation with doctors they trust, Moran said. I ask the president to eliminate this mandate and let the decisions be made back home, between employee and employer.

Under the rule issued Thursday by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, an estimated 84 million American people working at companies with at least 100 employees must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or be tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis.

A separate rule released from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services mandated health care workers to be vaccinated by Jan. 4, but those 17 million people at health facilities receiving federal funding from Medicaid or Medicare wont have the option of weekly testing.

Together, these rules will cover about 100 million Americans two-thirds of all workers in America, Biden said in a statement from the White House. As weve seen with businesses large and small across all sectors of our economy, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose to get vaccinated. There have been no mass firings and worker shortages because of vaccination requirements. Despite what some predicted and falsely assert, vaccination requirements have broad public support.

Biden ordered federal government employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 22 and people working at companies or institutions contracting with the federal government have until Jan. 4 to complete the vaccination process.

U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a physician from Great Bend, said extending vaccination mandates to U.S. employers with greater than 100 people on the payroll would disrupt the economy by driving people from jobs, hobbling the supply chain and adding to inflationary pressures.

Setting the deadline after the holiday season indicates Biden understands the vaccination order on big businesses will cause economic challenges, Marshall said.

This federal vaccine mandate is unconstitutional and I cant think of a worse decision for Joe Biden to make right now, he said.

U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, who serves the 4th District that includes Wichita, said the president was improperly forcing people to make choices between getting the vaccination and staying in the workforce and adhering to personal convictions and losing a job.

This mandate does not instill confidence in the vaccine, which millions of Americans have freely chosen to take and experience its benefits, but instead it pushes the federal government deeper into the lives of our families and businesses. Regardless of ones views on the effectiveness of the vaccine, its clear this mandate is an overreach of the federal government and should not be implemented, Estes said.

U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, of the 2nd District that includes Topeka, said the Biden administrations vaccine mandates were an authoritarian power grab and OSHA didnt possess authority to compel Americans to be vaccinated or to undergo testing. In a similar vein, U.S. Rep. Tracey Mann of western Kansas 1st District said the vaccination order for businesses was a gross misuse of executive order privilege.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat serving the 3rd District of Johnson and Wyandotte counties, has been a consistent advocate for voluntary vaccinations along with several GOP members of the Kansas delegation to Washington, D.C.

More:
Kansas Republicans in Congress rip vaccination order applied to workers of private businesses - Kansas Reflector

During his Virginia gubernatorial campaign, Republican Glenn Youngkin's red sweater vest became a sartorial celebrity.

Media from The New York Times to Politico to Rolling Stone referenced the comfy attire Youngkin donned at rallies.

Now after winning an upset victory over Democrat Gov. Terry McAuliffe, there's much ado about whether Youngkin's Virginia playbook will work in other states including Illinois when the 2022 midterm elections arrive.

Politics aside, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker is no novice at the sweater vest game. Although typically adorned in a business suit, Pritzker has his own version of the power sweater vest that's appeared at a number of events.

What's the significance of sweater vests?

Harper College's Nupur Sharma thinks that "sweater vests are the underdogs of the fashion world."

The garment emerged during the Great Depression as a cheaper alternative to waistcoats, explained Sharma, an associate professor of fashion studies.

As other fashion trends emerged, people started associating it with an older, avuncular person, she noted.

Sweater vests did get a boost in the show "Friends," from the quirky character Chandler Bing who often sported them. "Chandler was a lovable loser that everyone could relate to," Sharma said. "He wasn't hoity-toity."

That cozy chic not only conveys a down-to-earth, approachable kindliness you don't get by wearing an Armani suit, it's also accessible, she noted. "Sweater vests are made by Old Navy," as well as pricier brands.

Original post:
Who wears the power sweater vest better? Democrats or Republicans? - Daily Herald

At least 10 Republicans who attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., that turned into a deadly insurrection were elected to office Tuesday.

Three were elected to state legislatures, and seven won positions at the local level.

Although most have claimed they didnt breach the U.S. Capitol on that day, all were participants in the demonstration leading up to the attack, standing alongside extremists to take part in the finale of a months-long anti-democratic campaign to falsely claim that then-President Donald Trump hadnt really lost the 2020 election.

Their victories on Tuesday are a possible sign of things to come: HuffPost previously identified at 57 state and local GOP officials who attended the Jan. 6 rally, many of whom will be up for reelection and will likely keep office next year.

That these candidates enjoy the support of the wider Republican Party and are winning elections does not bode well for American democracy, showing that one of the countrys major political parties, despite some initial gestures at being horrified by the events of Jan. 6, is almost completely unrepentant over its role in fomenting the historic attack on the Capitol.

Among the Jan. 6 attendees who won office on Tuesday were two Republicans reelected to the Virginia House of Delegates: Dave LaRock and John McGuire.

Bill Clark via Getty Images

Earlier this year LaRock, responding to criticism from a Black elected official about his role in the insurrection, said the official should focus on the needs of the colored community. (He later apologized for the comment.)

McGuire won his seat despite his Democratic opponent unearthing a photo showing him standing near men in paramilitary gear confronting police on Jan. 6. McGuire had previously claimed he hadnt heard of the violence at the U.S. Capitol until returning home. The news, he said, had shocked and horrified him.

Marie March, a restaurant owner who bragged in a campaign advertisement about her attendance at the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally and who in a since-deleted Facebook post warned of a coming Civil War in which she would be willing to fight and die for both her family and small businesses, also won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday.

In city councils across the country, Jan. 6 rally attendee Natalie Jangula won a seat in Nampa, Idaho, and Christine Ead, who did not enter the Capitol building and later wrote a Facebook post falsely blaming the violence on ANTIFA and other anarchists, won a seat in Watchung, New Jersey.

Charles Ausburger also won a seat on the town council of Mansfield, Connecticut, an official at the town clerks office confirmed to HuffPost. Ausburger didnt have to campaign too hard though: There were only eight candidates for the nine-seat council.

Susan Soloway, who helped organized a bus to transport Trump supporters to the Jan. 6 rally, won reelection to the Hunterdon County, New Jersey, Board of Directors. Soloway attended the rally and later posted on Facebook a selfie outside of the Capitol, which she later deleted. She claims not to have entered the building, and to have turned over footage she took at the riot to the FBI.

In Braintree, Massachusetts, a former high school teacher who resigned his position after local activists sent a photo of him outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 to the FBI, won a seat on the local school committee. Matthew Lynch received the second most votes in the six-candidate race for three open school committee seats. He told Patch earlier this year that the FBI has visited him twice since Jan. 6, but did not elaborate on what occurred during those interviews. In his correspondence with Patch, he accused the activists of slandering me as a domestic terrorist, and called them a digital Lynch mob. Its unclear if he breached the Capitol building.

And in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, wife-husband duo Danielle and Stephen Lindemuth who were part of a bus trip to the rally from nearby Lancaster won two seats on the school board. The couple, according to The Lancaster Online, campaigned on promising to keep critical race theory and The 1619 Project out of schools. In a March school board meeting on Zoom, the couple who have said multiple bigoted things online complained about a poster in their daughters classroom depicting Black Lives Matter protesters. Stephen Lindemuth told the school board that Black Lives Matter was a Marxist organization with anti-American values that are largely anti-family.

At least one race involving a Jan. 6 attendees is still undecided. Monica Manthey is still awaiting results in her race to join the Annapolis, Maryland, city council.

Im not a crazy insurrectionist person, Manthey, who attended the rally but claimed she didnt enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6, insisted to HuffPost on Wednesday morning. Asked if the riot made her rethink her support of Trump, Manthey replied: I never rethought my support.

Elsewhere across the country, at least five Jan. 6 attendees were defeated at the ballot box. In Virginia, two candidates Maureen Brody and Phillp Hamilton lost their bids to join the House of Delegates.

Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Steve Lynch, who pushed debunked conspiracy theories that the siege of the Capitol was a false flag event carried out by leftists, lost his race for county executive in Northampton County, Pennsylvania.

Incumbent T.J. Onerlaw, who said he got pretty darn close to where the door is at the Capitol but was unaware until later that night that anyone had breached the building, was defeated in his quest for another term in the Mason, Ohio, city council.

And Edward Durfee Jr., a member of the far-right militia the Oath Keepers, a group heavily implicated in the violence on Jan. 6, lost a race for a seat in the New Jersey General Assembly. Durfee, who previously told BuzzFeed News he did not storm the Capitol but was working as security for the Oath Keepers, currently heads up the Republican Party in Northvale, New Jersey.

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At Least 10 Republicans Who Were At The Jan. 6 Rally Just Got Elected To Office - HuffPost

What is critical race theory?

Developed by the former Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell and other scholars in the 1970s and 80s, critical race theory, or CRT, examines the ways in which racism was embedded into American law and other modern institutions, maintaining the dominance of white people.

CRT argues that racism is not a matter of individual bigotry but a systemic issue that creates an uneven playing field for people of colour.

Kimberl Williams Crenshaw, a law professor widely credited with coining the term, told the New York Times: It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced, the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.

A year or so ago few people had heard of it, yet Republicans have whipped up a moral panic that CRT is being rammed down the throats of schoolchildren. They caricature it as teaching Black children to internalise victimhood and white children to self-identify as oppressors.

Is it taught in schools?

No, it is not a part of the secondary school curriculum. The National School Boards Association and other education leaders are adamant that CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools, which teach students from five to 18 years old.

But Rupert Murdochs Fox News and other rightwing media have turned it into a catch-all buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history. They loosely apply it to concepts such as equity and anti-bias training for teachers.

Patti Hidalgo Menders, president of the Loudoun County Republican Womens Club in Virginia, told the Guardian last week: They may not call it critical race theory, but theyre calling it equity, diversity, inclusion. They use culturally responsive training for their teachers. It is fundamentally CRT.

Its dividing our children into victims and oppressors and whats a child supposed to do with that?

Efforts to weaponise CRT were reinforced by former president Donald Trump and a rightwing ecosystem including influential thinktanks. Last year Christopher Rufo, a conservative scholar now at the Manhattan Institute, told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson that CRT was a form of cult indoctrination.

In January the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel discussion where the moderator, Angela Sailor, warned: Critical race theory is the complete rejection of the best ideas of the American founding. This is some dangerous, dangerous philosophical poisoning in the blood stream.

What role did CRT play in Virginias election?

Winning Republican candidate Glenn Youngkins signature issue was education. He hammered government schools on culture war issues such as race and transgender rights and falsely claimed that his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, called his friend, President Joe Biden, and asked the FBI to silence conservative parents.

Youngkin said he would ban the teaching of CRT in Virginia classrooms. At a campaign event in Glen Allen last month, the candidate said to applause: What we wont do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race. On day one, I will ban critical race theory.

McAuliffe was forced on to the defensive and had to engage with the issue. He accused Republicans of using the Trump playbook of division and deceit, a message that did not cut through in the same way.

Why did the issue resonate with voters?

This can be seen as a rightwing backlash to last years Black Lives Matter protests and conversations about structural racism that followed the police murder of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis. It also can be seen as a response to Americas changing demographics, specifically the increase in the minority population.

It also comes after lengthy school closures during the pandemic infuriated many parents. School board meetings in Virginia and elsewhere have turned ugly, even violent, and protest signs calling for bans on masks and CRT are sometimes almost interchangeable.

This week conservatives targeted school board elections nationwide over masking rules and teaching racial justice issues. In Virginia, 14% of voters listed education as a top issue, and about seven of 10 of those voted for Youngkin.

McAuliffe did not help himself when, during a debate, he said, I dont believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach a line that was constantly replayed in Youngkin attacks ads.

Youngkin also highlighted a high school bathroom sexual assault case in affluent Loudoun county, in northern Virginia, to argue against allowing transgender students into their chosen restrooms.

Is it just Virginia?

No. Officials in Republican-controlled states across America are proposing numerous laws to ban teachers from emphasizing the role of systemic racism. Legislation aiming to curb how teachers talk about race has been considered by at least 15 states, according to research by Education Week.

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has described CRT as state-sanctioned racism.

Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, signed into law a measure banning public schools from teaching CRT, which it claimed will exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the wellbeing of the state of Idaho and its citizens.

Red states are also targeting the 1619 Project, a series by the New York Times which contends that modern American history began with the arrival of enslaved people four centuries ago and examines that legacy.

Republicans are expected to use the Youngkin formula to woo suburban voters in next years midterm elections for Congress.

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How did Republicans turn critical race theory into a winning electoral issue? - The Guardian