2010 Census Awaits: An undercount of Minnesota residents will likely result in our loss of one Congressional district. In addition, an inaccurate population assessment will reduce our ability to identify needs for crucial services.

My Idea

While most of the work will conclude prior to the Election, Rep. Thissen can add the emphasis of Minnesotans’ full Census participation as a pillar of his campaign. Campaign stops can feature distribution of literature explaining the significance of being counted. This would appeal to residents’ pride in our state, and draw a meaningful contrast with recent comments from political figures that are suggesting the opposite.

Resources

How Much Will 2012 Reapportionment Reduce Minnesota’s Political Influence?

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2008/12/how_much_will_2012_reapportion.php

In our economic situation with more families on tighter budgets due to hour cuts, or job losses in the family with Schools and Teachers also on tight budgets to buy supplies for classes. A sales tax free holiday would help encourage families buy the stuff they need.

My Idea

I propose a sales tax holiday weekend every year before the start of the school year to help parents and teachers buy the supplies they need for the school year. the following would exempt during the sales tax holiday.

Pencils
Book bags
Laptops or PC’s
notebooks
papers
crayons
folders
binders
all forms of calculators
all miscellaneous educational related items

Resources

New “hybrid” courses offered this year at Jefferson High School give students the opportunity to spend some days working online at home, in the library or at the local coffee shop and other days in a traditional classroom with an instructor.

Online courses are nothing new in the increasingly technological world, and hybrid courses are becoming more common at the college level. But Bloomington school officials aren’t aware of any other Twin Cities high schools that offer them.

Many of the classes are in major subject areas, such as physics and language arts.

My Idea

I would recommend that other schools look at hybrid courses. It better prepares students for college, increases technological skills, and its not a boring traditional method that will put the kids to sleep.

Hybrid courses are often preferable to online courses because students don’t completely give up the social interaction of the traditional classroom, said Richard Beach, a professor of English education at the University of Minnesota.

Hybrid classes work best for independent learners, good troubleshooters and good organizers.

Bloomington school officials don’t know if the classes have a positive impact on students’ test scores, but in surveys, students have said the classes are more engaging. They say they have improved their technology skills and that they feel better prepared for college.

Resources

http://www.startribune.com/local/west/42016602.html?page=1&c=y

In a world of abundance, people are hungry. Children are eating unhealthy foods, (corn syrup, transfats, ramen noodles, etc.). Our industrial farming practices are robbing future generations of safe drinking water. We are fearful of not having enough. Not enough money for retirement, for educating our children, for caring for our older population.

Does our fear create realities of scarcity? What if we could create a Minnesota where EVERYONE knew there was always enough food to eat.

My Idea

Start a free food movement by:

1) Identifying public lands that can be responsibly used as gardening space.

2) Utilize our wasted “human resources” with a “volunteer-driven” growing free local food movement. Receiving and giving food can be a natural system.

3) Support micro-farms and micro-businesses. Right now there are lots vacant shopping centers. Can they be transformed into mini-farms AND mini-businesses. A local pasta maker, Minnesota spaghetti sauce, handmade furniture, handmade toys & instruments, etc.

Resources

The sun, rain, water, people

Growing “dead zones” are threatening the health of water resources.

My Idea

FERTILIZING the MISSISSIPPI

As we observed Earth Day, we paused to consider the state of our natural environment. If we are to care for the Earth, we must include the health of its oceans(71% of its area), and its fresh water lakes and streams(1% of its area). A place to start is with our own Mississippi River system. During the past several thousand years, the river has carried enough silt to build a substantial delta into the Gulf of Mexico. For more than one hundred years, it has carried other products like nitrogen(N) and phosphorous(P) from the fertilized farm fields and sewage systems of mid-America. These nutrients cause algal bloom in both fresh and salt water. As the algae decay, they rob the water of oxygen (hypoxia), making it uninhabitable for fish. This causes so-called “dead zones” in fresh water and at the ocean mouths of many of the world’s rivers.

A joint study from the Universities of Sao Paulo, Arkansas, and Cornell states, “In the U.S., over 60% of the coastal rivers and bays are moderately to severely degraded from nutrient pollution.” The demand for corn and soybeans to make ethanol and biodiesel has caused planted acreage for those crops in the U.S. to increase by 12 million acres from 2006 to 2008. Ten million of those newly fertilized acres came from conservation and pasture lands. This experience is being repeated throughout the world, resulting in coastal dead zones as the P and N from fertilizer nourish the algae.

We are currently producing about 9 billion gallons of ethanol per year, nearly all of it in the Mississippi River Basin. The federal mandate calls for a steady increase to 36 billion gallons by 2022. The above study concludes, “that continuing the current direction in biofuel production, particularly with the focus remaining on grain and sugar crops as primary feed stocks, has serious implications for coastal water quality, and it will almost certainly worsen already serious hypoxic conditions in many locations around the world.”

In adding to a river’s natural content, we tamper with Mother Nature, an activity that has uncertain consequences, often unattractive.

Rolf Westgard

Resources

Long term storage of spent nuclear fuel, from both nuclear power plants and the nuclear navy, is a growing need.
Yucca Mountain deserves careful consideration.

My Idea

President Obama is withdrawing funding for Yucca Mountain, a storage site for spent nuclear fuel that sits in the center of a desert mountain, 1,000 feet underground and more than 90 miles from Las Vegas. Thorough geologic studies showed Yucca Mountain to be an appropriate place for our nuclear waste. Instead, we now have storage spread over 121 above-ground sites located within 75 miles of more than 161 million people in 39 states.

With Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste problem is manageable. Just 5% of the spent fuel is highly radioactive fission products which can be separated by reprocessing as France does. The remaining 95% of the spent fuel is 94% low radiation uranium and 1% plutonium, all of which can be recycled into new reactor fuel. A Department of Energy report stated the following:

“Yucca Mountain has changed little over the last several million years. Extensive scientific studies of potential natural hazards at the site show it is highly unlikely that volcanoes, erosion, or other geologic processes and events would disrupt a repository at Yucca Mountain. In addition, by locating the repository in solid rock about 1,000 feet under the surface and on average 1,000 feet above the water table, the waste would be protected from the impacts of earthquakes. Damaging ground movement is the most intense at the earths surface and decreases with the depth underground.”

We have spent about $8 billion to develop Yucca Mountain. The issue there is political, not geologic.

Resources

Department of Energy

My recent editorial from the St Cloud Times, St Paul Villager, Brainerd Dispatch, etc. I will be interested to hear comments.

Rolf Westgard, St Paul (writer is a professional member of the Geological Society of America)

My Idea

In its latest Annual Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration(EIA) is forecasting that U.S. wind turbines will supply 101 billion kilowatt hours(bkwh) of electricity to our electric power grids in the year 2020. That is just 2.14% of total U.S. electric power supply of 4,723 bkwh projected for 2020.

Undeterred by this, our Minnesota legislature has passed SF0004, the Renewable Energy Standard Bill which requires our largest utility, Excel, to get 25% of its energy from wind turbines in the year 2020, ten times the average wind contribution estimated by the EIA.

There’s a reason for the caution about erratic and intermittent wind power by EIA’s analysts. Unlike conventional electricity fuel sources, coal, natural gas, and nuclear, which schedule their down time, wind turns itself on and off, whether the electric grids need it or not. Denmark’s electric grid is widely reported to get 20-30 percent of its fuel from wind energy. It doesn’t.

Denmark’s 5,300 turbines can produce 20 percent of Denmark’s total electric demand, but when they do, Denmark has to look around for somebody to buy it, as the grid can’t use most of the wind power at the time it is generated. Wind farms typically operate at about 25-30% of their total capacity, about one third of the 80 to 90% capacity factor of coal and nuclear.

Hundreds of giant corn to ethyl alcohol(ethanol) stills now dot our Midwest landscape. They use four tenths of a corn bushel to produce a gallon of ethanol which currently sells for $1.53/gallon. The raw corn alone for this ethanol gallon costs $1.50.

That’s before the costs of production and transportation. Even with a 30-35 cent benefit from selling by product animal feed, ethanol production doesn’t pencil out. This is a major reason why VeraSun, our largest independent ethanol producer, recently declared bankruptcy. And the wholesale price of a gallon of gasoline, which has 30% more energy than ethanol, is currently $1.09/gallon.

For ethanol to achieve 20% of our gasoline supply, a dream of state legislatures, would require our entire 10 billion bushel corn crop. Cellulosic ethanol is still a research project, and it is inherently more expensive than the corn product.

Another frequently ignored issue is the time required to bring forth a major new fuel to the world’s energy supply. Until the mid-19th Century, wood burning powered the world. Then coal gradually surpassed wood on into the first part of the 20th Century. Oil was discovered in the 1860s, but it was a century before it surpassed coal as our largest energy fuel. Trillions of dollars are invested in the world’s infrastructure to mine, process, and deliver coal and petroleum.

As Distinguished Professor Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba recently put it, “It is delusional to think that the United States can install in 10 years wind and solar generating capacity equivalent to that of thermal power plants that took nearly 60 years to construct.”

There is a role in our energy needs for alternatives like wind and biofuels; but the assumption that they will make a major near term supply contribution is distracting us from hard choices involving aggressive conservation and life style changes.

We do have a looming energy crisis. Coal is an increasing environmental problem, and oil supplies may well peak in the near future. We need to improve energy efficiency with upgraded buildings, high mileage vehicles, and electric public transport. The way we produce and transport food may have to be recast to avoid transporting so much of it for great distances. Funding and encouraging these efforts will require energy taxes, especially on gasoline.

Recent well intentioned statements that we can repower our electricity generation in a decade with alternatives are the kind of delusion that we cannot afford to harbor.

Resources

U.S. Energy Information Administration
Numerous peer reviewed technical papers

I have had a Wind Turbine for about five years. The energy that it produced fed into the grid. There was not much excess after my household consumption, but there was some. I live on White Earth Reservation at the edge of the North Dakota plain. My turbine almost never stops. However it stopped working about a year ago and needs repairs, but there are not enough repair people to keep up with the repair demands.

My Idea

There are a few problems that I have encountered that the state could help with.

1. My Wind Turbine is manufactured in Minnesota just south of the cities. Help that company re-design and re-fit to make their turbine more productive.

2. Assist Minnesota Technical Colleges in developing educational programs for erection and maintenance of farm and family turbines.

3. Give incentives to local Electric Companies to train personnel to help erect and maintain wind turbines.

4. Help companies manufacture different affordable energy packages to including: smaller turbines, battery packs, converts of amperage, etc.

Resources

Gas taxes

Minnesotans value higher education, and we all agree education is key to remaining competitive in today’s fast-paced global economy.  But college tuition in Minnesota has been rising for years, and with it, student loan debt.  More Minnesota students are borrowing to go to college and those that borrow do so at amounts greater than the national average. (Source: Minnesota Office of Higher Education)

Repaying those debts can dramatically affect where a graduate will live and work and what career they will choose. And for smaller Minnesota communities, this can add up to a real brain drain.

That’s why I authored legislation to support low- and middle-income college graduates so they can continue to live, work and pay taxes in Minnesota.  Under the Education Opportunity Credit, any Minnesota student who earns an associate or bachelors degree from a Minnesota college with a student loan can receive a 50 percent tax credit on tuition loan repayments. The degree can be from any Minnesota two- or four-year college or community college, public or private.

Minnesota is facing a dramatic shift in population. More Minnesotans are retiring, leaving a smaller workforce pool to support an aging and dependent population. This legislation will help us retain the skilled and educated work force necessary to remain competitive and attract well-paying jobs. And only Minnesotans who live, work and pay taxes in Minnesota after graduating will benefit.

Minnesota’s past success is largely due to our highly trained and motivated work force.  Helping Minnesota college graduates to live and work in our state ensures the Minnesota promise works for everyone.

During Pawlenty’s last campaign he just spewed lies after lies. He’s has done nothing to help education, he’s a true republican. He also abandoned Minnesota when he believed he was going to be a V.P. pick. for two years he put Minnesota on the back burner. His most embarrassing moment was not standing up for Minnesota when we endured a horrific bridge collapse. He allowed Mccain to blame pork barrel spending. No one blamed pork barrel spending on 9-11.

My Idea

My idea is to have a governor who has both his states and country’s interest at heart, a governor who wants to fight for Minnesota, not a national spot light job.

My idea is to start early and remind Minnesotan’s just how little Tim Pawlenty and his cronies have done in the past 8 years.

Resources

Knowledge and the evening news.