Combine longer life expectancies with the size of the baby boom generation, and it shouldn’t be surprising that the next several years promise historic changes in Minnesota.
Here in St. James and throughout southwestern Minnesota we’re already seeing that future. People over now make up about 20% of the region’s population. The rest of Minnesota is not far behind.
In the next quarter century, Minnesota’s over-65 population will expand nearly twice as much as all other age categories combined. There’s never been anything like this in the history of our state or anywhere else.
When we think about our future, we tend to overlook this seismic demographic shift. And we simply can’t afford to do that. We’ve got to innovate on health care, on housing, on transportation, on building communities where older Minnesotans can stay in their homes, live dignified lives close to their loved ones whenever possible, and contribute for as long as they can in their own neighborhoods.
As your next governor I will move aggressively to make that vision a reality. In the Legislature, I’ve already been at work preparing for the age wave, leading the way with creative solutions to support family caregivers, encourage more saving for retirement and long term care, and empower communities like St. James to develop tailored local solutions to an aging population.
We can’t get caught flatfooted by the age wave. It will demand our next governor’s energy and focused attention. It already has mine.
The State Fair means a lot of things, including that a new school year is almost here. Soon Minnesota parents will be asking their kids around the dinner table “How was school today?”
At the same time, we must all keep asking ourselves “What is it that makes a successful school?”
As the son of two career public school teachers, and the father of three public school students, I am personally invested in the success of our state’s public schools.
When I talk to my own kids about heading back to school, they are excited about seeing friends and favorite teachers, about field trips and history projects, plays and sporting events. And they’re on to something. Our goal should be making sure that every Minnesota school is a place where students, teachers, and volunteers are excited to be learning and teaching.
The way I see it, we’re too focused on what comes out of our schools, and not focused nearly enough on what we’re putting into them.
Currently, reading and math test scores dominate how we measure a school’s success. And we do need to keep advancing the stronger reading and math curriculum that my kids and many others are fortunate to enjoy in their Minnesota public school.
But we sell our kids short when we judge our schools by that standard alone. We need to strive for more.
Every public school in Minnesota should have faculty with the talent, and the time, to build one-on-one relationships with their students. Should have flexible academic environments that serve a diversity of learning styles. Should have offerings in visual arts and music to ignite the creative power in every child. Should have an emphasis on personal safety and health, through physical activity and good nutrition. And should have technology to properly and cost effectively prepare successful twenty-first century citizens. That means state of the art science labs, and equipment to teach students the skilled trades.
As Governor I’ll make sure that we apply the resources, and create the jobs, to make this happen. The truth is that every child’s education should matter to all of us. As a state there is no more fundamental way for us to say ‘Yes’ to Minnesota’s future.
I’m only able to stand here today running for Governor because of the Minnesota values held tenaciously by the two public school teachers who raised me.
My parents recognized a duty to educate the next generation not just in their classrooms, but by working second jobs in order to help my sister and me go to college.
My generation of Minnesotans came of age in a state whose leaders understood that investment in higher education is the key to our sustained economic success.
But in the last decade we’ve badly lost our way. We were a perennial leader among states in supporting our public colleges. That distinction is gone. We’re not even average anymore.
To bridge the gap, tuition at the University of Minnesota has doubled since 1999. And today’s MnSCU students are being asked to carry not the traditional one-third — but fully one-half — of the actual cost of in-state higher education. Not surprisingly, Minnesotans now graduating college carry the fifth highest debt load in the nation.
It is the worst kind of shortsighted folly to reduce our investment in higher education while radically increasing the tuition we charge for it. Full support of our state universities results in better research and development, more valuable patents, more innovative alumni, and more successful enterprises and jobs in Minnesota.
And my focus as Governor will also be on our community and technical colleges. Those institutions hold incredible potential for shaping Minnesota’s future. We need a renewed commitment to post-secondary education in Minnesota, and creative thinking about how to make that commitment a reality.
In addition to direct and smartly targeted investments in the University of Minnesota and our MnSCU institutions, as Governor I would provide tax relief to offset the repayment of student loans for college graduates who stay in Minnesota and return home to their communities after graduation.
And I won’t forget the growing numbers of nontraditional students who, after years in the world of work, are returning for additional education. We should provide extra incentives for employers to partner with local community colleges to fund advanced training for their workers.
Affordable higher education for more Minnesotans is not a luxury. It’s the solution. Our parents and theirs before them understood that. It’s now time for this generation to step up. And as your next Governor I’m ready to work with all of you to make sure that happens.
In 1886, a time when unwed mothers were largely denied hospital admission, Dr. Martha Ripley established this maternity hospital and opened it to any woman regardless of financial or marital status. Dr. Ripley was also an early president of the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association. She died in 1912, eight years before women won the right to vote.
In 1915, on the 6th floor of the Plymouth Building, Lena Olive Smith opened her office as the first African-American woman realtor in Minnesota. At night, she attended law school one flight up. In 1921, she became the third black woman lawyer in America, and for the next forty years she battled discrimination as a founding member of the Urban League and the first woman president of the Minnesota NAACP. She lived to the age of 81: just long enough to see the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In 1971, not long after he organized the first Vietnam teach-in at the University of Minnesota, Brian Coyle came out. He spent the next twenty years of his life fighting for civil rights, as a tenants’ rights activist and a tireless advocate throughout the 1980s for a domestic partnership ordinance in Minneapolis.
For more than a century Minnesotans have put themselves on the line to break down discrimination and to deliver on America’s promise of equal opportunity and equal justice. But that fight is far from over.
We can’t rest until every Minnesotan is protected against discrimination. None of our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters, should be treated differently because of a disability, their sexual orientation, their religion, their age, their gender, or their race. I will advocate for marriage equality and will proudly sign legislation that reinforces America’s ideal that all are created equal.
As a young lawyer, I served as a public defender, fighting to make sure that Minnesota lived up to its ideal of equal justice under the law. I founded the organization Access For Persons With Disabilities to break down barriers to understanding and opportunity. And I represented families fleeing violence in their own countries and seeking asylum here in the United States.
But I know that good laws on the books are meaningless without practical results in the community. I will work with you to make sure that we close the achievement gap. I will continue my fight to eliminate disparities in health and in housing. And I will keep working with you to root out youth violence that is tearing communities apart.
The work of Minnesotans like Martha Ripley, Lena Smith, and Brian Coyle is ours to finish. Together, let’s get the job done.
Minnesota’s farm economy faces a critical decade ahead. Rural Minnesota’s future depends on our ability to provide midsize and small farmers across this state with more of these three things: stability, predictability and opportunity.
To accomplish this above all, we need sustainable fair commodity prices that will allow a hard-working farmer to raise a family.
I’ll work with our federal partners – and enforce the corporate farm laws – to help our family farms grow and compete in this era of consolidation.
I’ll reach out to farmers and others with forward-thinking policies to help attract the next generation of talent to agriculture.
I’ll work with the private sector to develop financial tools for today’s farmers to modernize and create new value-added enterprises that they can pass on to the next generation.
And I’ll help agricultural innovators solidify our state’s prominence in developing fields like clean energy and green chemistry – areas where I’ve been proud to have been a leader in the legislature.
Visiting 83 counties in 2009 has renewed my belief that the fertile fields of our state are as critical to our economic future as the bank towers in Minneapolis or the suburban office parks in Plymouth or Woodbury.
I want to work with you to lead Minnesota’s farm economy to a brighter future.
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