Reversal of Endangered Species Rulings

Here's a link to an AP story about the lynx and other endangered species rulings. This is a national, not a local, story but we might be tarred with the Bushie Undue Influence Brush for wanting to exempt private landowners from the strict habitat rules since only nine percent of the county is privately owned.
Read on:

Reversal of Endangered Species Rulings

Oh, look out: here comes the lynx habitat thing again

The fish and wildlife service is reopening the lynx critical habitat issue:

http://www.fws.gov/endangered/news/macdonald/rahallsigned.pdf

This is because of a determination that the original decison on this and six other rulings was based on politics and not science.

Big Brother is watching Us

Big Brother is watching you

Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. Well, actually, it’s a GPS satellite watching every move you make. In the wee hours, however, it truly is a plane flying surveillance through the night, shattering the peaceful silence of our North Shore nights for the last hundred years.

Around town there are lots of new, white unmarked vans but you can recognize them by the “DHS” on their license plates. That means “Department of Homeland Security,” doncha know. Does this make you feel more or less secure?

As for yours truly I don’t really have anything to hide; I put it all in the shop window. I spend my days writing letters and signing petitions in protest against the lawless abuses of the Bush administration: torture, illegal wars of aggression, warrantless surveillance, outright thievery in the name of privatization, dismantling governmental oversight that protects our air, water and food, cutting safety net programs for children, the poor, and the elderly while awarding billions in no-bid contracts to cronies, flouting the Constitution, the list goes on and on.

For me, it’s the principle of the thing: I thought I lived in a country where warrantless spying was illegal and a Man’s House is his Castle. Another president, Richard Nixon, got into big trouble for similar shenanigans but those were different times. Nixon was a pussycat compared to Bush and Cheney. He even dealt with the energy crisis by, gasp, asking Americans to conserve gas and drive more slowly. Too bad he was paranoid, but he didn’t really ever advocate the overthrow of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

So, maybe someday I will be “renditioned” for my opinions but probably not since I am free, white and well over 21. No, it’s the people of color who are targeted by the Border Patrol agents (unless said officers happen to be speeding along the Gunflint Trail and hit a man and a tree in the road). Some people say the agents speed a lot, just because they can. Just reporting the local gossip here.

Our sleepy county is asleep at the wheel here. Where is our righteous indignation, where is our rage? And where are the terrorists sneaking across the Pigeon River?

New True

Gmail - Minnesota's mining boom/Getting ready for a Range boom: / Duluth Metals receives metallurgical study...Anderson, Bethel

Here's the latest email post from Lori Andresen, our Mining Correspondent:

Gmail - Minnesota's mining boom/Getting ready for a Range boom: / Duluth Metals receives metallurgical study...Anderson, Bethel

The Poor Tax: Desperately poor in Grand Marais

Dear New True,
I am writing on behalf of the many near-poor who live in Cook County of whom I am one.
We mange to scrape by or we used to. But the recent cost increases for food, gas, heat and electricity not to mention health care have left use reeling.
I just now paid my electric bill to Grand Marais Public Utilities Commission. I hope the check won't bounce. If my payment is late I am charged a fee of eight percent of the bill. Even in Shakespeare's time this would be considered usury.
I normally receive something from Energy Assistance due to my low income. Last year the amount was cut by more than half, due to the huge numbers of applicants and the refusal of the Bush and Pawlenty administrations to provide more relief.
No matter how much I receive, I don't get any credit from Grand Marais PUC to offset the eight percent penalty. This works out to be a Poor Tax. I noticed this year that if I don't manage to pay what the state considers sufficient they will cut off all of my electric service except for heat and refrigerator.
In my case that would mean I could not do my self-employment w0rk which is the only source of paying my bill. My computer, phone and even my water source require electricity.
Most of us poor are too shy to speak out and I am also. I won't sign my name to this mainly because the PUC could make me a target, a horrible warning who dares to challenge their usury.
But I am an elderly person who has not been able to find a living wage job in Cook County in the wake of Repug iniaitives that give the big tax breaks to the filthy rich.... all of my jobs here have been cut, cut, cut to increase corporate profits.
This is just another impact of a Republican onslaught against poor people and for rich people, I know. And yet, the straw that breaks the camel's back for me is the poor tax of eight percent of my electric bill which no way can I pay on time.
Everything costs a lot more now, a result of our remote place at the tip of the Arrowhead and the challenge of getting goods and services here but also and most importantly on account of the vicious policies of the US government that spends billions on war for oil but nothing on renewable energy.
Hannah Jumana Banana

Naomi Wolf: The End of America May Happen

Here's a post that I wish all would read, and especially the "young patriots" Naomi Wolf is writing to in her latest book. She despairs that the young are not taught their history in civics classes.
In recent years there has been a synapse gap between the past and the present. The past I grew up honoring: the US Constitution, the rule of law, the checks and balances among the three branches of government, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, and even the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness have all been challenged or simply cut off by a renegade administration which considers itself above the law. But worse, this has happened without a peep from the People who cower at their own shadow in the wake of manufactured fears.
The neocons who want an aristocracy of the super-rich, not a democracy, and don't have any scruples about pursuing it joyously seized on 9/11 as a way to destroy our free society.
That would be bad enough, but add to it the engendered debt of trillions for oil-wars to future generations, the reckless damage to the environment by the war machine and corporate profiteers (think about leveling the beautiful Appalachian mountains to get more coal, the dirtiest energy source except spent uranium and that's another story).....
Anyway I don't really want to rant. I would just like for civics classes and plain folks to read and consider the premises in this article:

Naomi Wolf: The End of America May Happen

Think globally, shop locally

Happy Thanksgiving! As the holiday season officially opens I love to give thanks for the wonderful privilege of living here in Cook County amid the woods overlooking Superior, Queen of Lakes. Lucky, lucky me.
But. This isn't a fuzzy, feel-good post. The choices I made to come and live here include not having the big bucks. I have traded them for the wealth of beauty that surrounds me and don't regret it even though it means I don't have a lot to spend on gifts.
Nonetheless, the dollars I do spend will be recycled back into our local economy. I was shocked last year to read in a News Herald straw poll that most people don't buy their gifts locally.
Well, ya, doncha know, we don't have all the stuff they sell at Toys R Us, Wal Mart, Target and all the other big box stores. For the excellent reason that we don't WANT these stores here. So why the hell would we want to go down to Duluth and Minneapolis, paying huge sums for gas to get there and at the same time squandering oil resources, adding more greenhouse gas emissions to global warming, supporting companies that don't pay a living wage to their workers and rack up profits by exploiting the international poor for cheap labor, while we are basically just buying more junk we don't need?
On the other hand, look at the benefits of shopping here. You might pay a few extra bucks but you have a huge choice of locally crafted gifts, original artwork, books and calendars by local authors, handcrafted chocolates, candies, candles and syrups, as well as unique opportunities to create your own cards and gifts that you won't find anywhere else. Take a class at North House, the Quilt Shop or the Art Colony or Community Education and learn to bake delicious breads or scones, potting, rosemaling, knitting, basket weaving, fabric arts to name only a few.
No time for that? Well, the awesome rounds of holiday arts and crafts shows will kick off this week at the Community Center on Saturday. There are items for every budget by many local artists and artisans.
If for some amazing reason you can't find anything you like, try Johnson Heritage Post, the Art Colony, North House's gift shop, the Hovland crafts sale, or Betsy Bowen's Art Underground sale and many others. The local papers and WTIP 'Community Calendar have all the information about when and where.
This doesn't even mention our wonderful bookstores, art galleries, Joynes Ben Franklin and even our eclectic hardware stores that offer fabulous stuff at reasonable if not big-box prices. When I was a kid about half a century ago there were lots of Ben Franklins but nowadays there is no other place like Joynes for "all your needs and necessities." Hey, if you can't get it in Cook County you and the people on your shopping list just don't need it.
Not to mention, you are supporting your friends and neighbors who like you have chosen to live here and need to earn a living.
May all of your holidays be filled with joy and local products. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Solstice and all the best for a New Year (Hogmanay) which surely has to be better than this one.