The idea here was pretty simple. With “The Big Short” getting some Hollywood love at today’s Oscar nominations — it received nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay — I’d chat up local business/financial columnists and gurus for their impressions of the movie. Impressed, distressed, bored … whatever.

As Paul Krugman, one of the few in the press who foresaw the financial crisis, wrote about the movie: “You don’t want me to play film critic; you want to know whether the movie got the underlying economic, financial and political story right. And the answer is yes, in all the ways that matter.”

Quickly my problem became this: Almost none of the locals had seen it. There’s no law requiring anyone to be a movie buff. But after three weeks on screens all over town and very good to enthusiastic reviews, you’d think people with, presumably, a higher-­than-­average interest in how The Great Recession went down and who saw it coming would find time and invest $10 in a ticket.

But, whatever, it was pretty much nada. Maybe I should have asked people if they had seen “Star Wars”?

The one outlier among the local mainstream was Ross Levin of Accredited Investors, who wrote a bi­monthly column for the Strib’s business pages for 15 years. Levin not only had seen “The Big Short,” but took his entire office of roughly 40 people along with him.

The film is an alternately hilarious and fury-­inducing adaptation of Michael Lewis’s eminently readable book, built around a handful of characters who: understood what Wall Street was actually selling in its opaque tranches of “AAA”­rated mortgage investments long before the business press and financial experts; and bet — at enormous risk — that the junk would inevitably fail and ended up making a bittersweet fortune.

“I thought it did a nice job of handling the facts of whole event,” says Levin. “The concept of derivatives is not an easy thing to explain, and I was impressed that they did it as well as they did.”

As you might expect, criticism for what is a two-­hour piece of popular entertainment has turned on what for some is a too-­facile depiction of the meltdown, the notion that these characters alone saw the apocalypse on the horizon and the insistence that this was a case of conscious fraud on the part of the giant banks. That, and that the main characters are to some minds beatified for pocketing enormous profits as millions lost jobs, retirement income and homes. (Here’s such a view from the nakedcapitalism.com blog.)

“I don’t know about that,” said Levin. “I think the movie makes it pretty clear that while there were a lot of black hats out there, there weren’t too many white hats. I mean, I thought one of the most poignant parts of the movie is when Brad Pitt’s characters scolds the two young guys for celebrating their good fortune when so many people are going to be devastated by what’s about to happen.”

I then turned to Andrew Winton, professor and chairman of the Carlson School of Management’s Finance Department. He says, “I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how close the movie is to the specific reality of the characters,” he said. “But I found a lot of it very real in terms of presenting the sub­prime speculation that was going on at the time, the way the regulators were, at best, looking the other way, how the ratings agencies rated the stuff out of fear that the banks would take their business somewhere else and how fraud may have played a role in the way some of the big banks sold those products.

“One criticism I would make, and this kind of echoes what I read in the [New York] Times, is that there certainly were others who were talking about and warning about a credit bubble. These characters were not alone. But that said, these people put their money where their mouth was, and made the bet.

“Like so many others at the time, I thought that at worst the inevitable bursting of the bubble would be like the early ’90s again: a bad slump from which would quickly recover. I had no idea it would come as close as it did to taking down the whole financial system. What too few people understood was just how seriously overexposed the banks were. Or put another way: how even the major players didn’t fully understand how deeply exposed everyone else was as well.

“I was also a little surprised the movie didn’t mention John Paulson, who also shorted the market and turned a huge profit. Paulson was clearly a major player. The irony there being that he then turned around and lost a fortune betting on gold, which just goes to show that no one is right all the time.”

“As bad as the movie shows things to have been,” Levin said with a rueful tone, “things, I think, were actually worse.”

Like others who followed the story of the crisis, an event arguably more destructive than the 9/11 attacks, Levin was struck by the movie’s fleeting presentation of major players like Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank, and the much­-vilified Richard Fuld, former CEO of now­ defunct Lehman Brothers. Images of each man flash by with no on­screen identification. Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein isn’t seen at all, although an early scene with Christian Bale’s character proposing his bet to incredulous Goldman staffers is one of several classic moments.

Also glossed over, partly because Lewis lends less credence to their essential impact than the recklessness and group­think of the overall system of investment banks, ratings agencies and regulators, are the roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (The canard about Barney Frank is completely ignored.)

Asked for his impression of how well the business press foresaw the crisis, Winton says, “Well, in the papers I read, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist I recall them writing frequently about excesses in lending prior to the collapse. But as I say, it was very difficult to see just how exposed the system was.”

But that is their job, isn’t it? To know and report on something so enormous and potentially perilous? “Well, you can say that. But I think it’s more a case of there being a lot of guilt to go around. I mean, it’s just very hard for a reporter to learn how exposed a company like Lehman Brothers was.”

Winton says he has modest level of confidence the system has been sufficiently shocked by the experience laid out in “The Big Short” to avoid it … for maybe 10 years. “After that, after a lot of the current players have retired and left the scene, a new generation moves in who believes everything is new and better and doesn’t think anything like it could ever happen to them. It’s human nature.”

Says Levin: “For me, the irony is that the financial products we’re seeing today have actually gotten more complicated, not less. True, the big banks are now required to carry more cash. But if anything the complexity of what they’re selling has increased. You watch the movie and you do wonder how none of the people in authority have been indicted. I mean look at what they did to Martha Stewart. It’s a peculiar situation.”

All going according to plan. In the Brainerd Dispatch, Zach Kayser follows up on the case of the American Indian activists who are challenging the Minnesota DNR:“Authorities charged American Indian treaty rights activists late last month in connection to a protest last summer, giving them a pathway through the court case to assert their purported right to harvest on ceded territory. … In documents filed Dec. 30, three men and one woman were charged by the Crow Wing County Attorney's office in relation to a protest on Gull Lake and Hole-in-the-Day Lake on Aug. 28. The protest intended to claim modern-day gathering rights in territory the Anishinaabe ceded to the U.S. government in the 1800s, on the grounds those rights were granted to the Indians through treaties.” 

Another win for divided government. The Pioneer Press’ David Montgomery makes note of some delightful Minnesotanness:“Last year, Minnesota adopted a Republican-sponsored provision requiring the Minnesota Department of Human Services to ask for a waiver from some of the rules in the federal Affordable Care Act. … This week, the department complied with that law by releasing a draft version of the letter to lawmakers on the MNsure oversight committee. … The one-page letter signed by new commissioner Emily Johnson Piper is a masterpiece of Minnesota passive-aggressiveness.”

A tough situation.The Star Tribune’s Paul Walsh gets another side of the story of the Minneapolis student who allegedly attacked her principal:“The mother of an 18-year-old Minneapolis student vigorously defended her daughter after the teen was charged with repeatedly punching in the face and giving a concussion to the principal of Harrison Education Center, a high school in north Minneapolis for kids with severe behavioral or emotional disorders. … Melody Dunigan said Thursday that it was Principal Monica Fabre who provoked her daughter, Lashawnte Bright, during the Dec. 7 confrontation that has kept the educator from returning to work. … Dunigan said the principal grabbed her daughter’s coat and purse while ordering her out of the school.”

For a historical perspective on the enduring rivalry between Minneapolis and St. Paul,here’s City Pages’ Cory Zurowski:“St. Paul and Minneapolis never melded into one giant city for a simple reason: Theirs was a relationship was built on a foundation of contempt. … In the beginning, it was Minneapolis that tried to cuddle up to its older sibling across the river, according to Dr. Mary WIngerd, history professor at St. Cloud State and author of Claiming the City: Politics, Faith and the Power of Place in St. Paul.’ … Four years before the Civil War, an economic bubble — much like 2008's collapse — gutted St. Paul's economy. Virtually overnight, wealthy land speculators, who had helped to drive the city's prosperity, turned paupers. Meanwhile, Minneapolis, was better positioned to survive the crisis and emerge from it prepped to thrive.”

In other news…

Incidentally, “Illicit Discharge of Material” is also the name of our new band:“A pump malfunction at the Jennie-O Turkey Store plant in Faribault resulted in the illicit discharge of material into the Cannon River last week.” [Rochester Post Bulletin]

If it’s about Best Buy, you know it’s going to be bad news: “Best Buy reports weak holiday shopping results, outlook” [AP via MPR]

If there’s a silver lining to the Vikings’ crushing defeat last Sunday, it’s this: “Vikings kicker Blair Walsh tells 1st-graders he'll 'cherish' their cards forever” [Star Tribune]

Just going to leave this headline here for your enjoyment:“Twin Cities company urns a final gig with Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister” [Star Tribune]

Oscar noms! Congrats to Minnesotan Pete Docter for his Best Screenplay nomination for “Inside Out” (which is also up for best Animated Feature Film). [LA Tribune]

GOOD QUESTION:

Who is freezing pants in NE on Columbia Parkway? pic.twitter.com/yhJoDjEER5

— Jason DeRusha (@DeRushaJ) January 14, 2016

Photo by Keitaro Harada

Ryan Taylor

The Minnesota Opera will have a new president and general director starting in May. And he’s no stranger to Minnesota or the opera company.

Ryan Taylor, currently general director of Arizona Opera, succeeds Nina Archabal, who has served as Minnesota Opera’s interim leader since Nov. 2014.

Along with solid experience off-stage, Taylor spent over a decade as an operatic baritone, performing more than 30 roles. He received some of his training here as part of Minnesota Opera’s Resident Artist Program during the 200-01 season. He returned in 2004 to sing Sharpless in “Madame Butterfly.” He has also performed in concert with the SPCO.

“Minnesota Opera’s remarkable 50-year history of innovation and excellence in opera, education, and longstanding dedication to developing new works make it one of the premier arts organizations in the nation,” Taylor said in a statement. “Having been fortunate enough to receive valuable training from Minnesota Opera at a formative time early in my career, I am especially honored to carry the organization’s remarkable reputation forward.”

Board chair James E. Johnson described Taylor as “an opera artist of the first order, a skilled executive, and a respected leader in our field.”

At Arizona Opera, Taylor is credited with beginning a dramatic turnaround of the organization’s finances, marked by record-breaking success at fundraising. He conceived and implemented Arizona BOLD, a community-based initiative that brings new and classic stories to a larger, more diverse statewide audience. Taylor has been at the Arizona Opera since February 2012, where he was hired as director of artistic administration and rose to director.

He previously held positions at ADA Artist Management in New York, Wolf Trap Opera Company, the Berkshire Opera Company, and Singers Beyond Borders, and he co-founded the Southeastern Festival of Song.

Fingers crossed that Taylor will bring stability to Minnesota Opera’s leadership, which has seen too many chiefs in the past few years. Archabal stepped in when Kevin Ramach resigned after 2½ years in the role. Ramach’s predecessor, Allan Naplan, lasted a year in the job before resigning for personal reasons. His predecessor was Kevin Smith, who served the opera company for 30 years, 25 as president and CEO. Smith is now president and CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra.

The Tunheim public relations firm said it will partner with former Duluth Mayor Don Ness on business projects in the Duluth/Superior area.

Ness, who didn't seek re-election last year after two terms as mayor, is also starting his own firm, Hillside Ventures, which will "specialize in business and economic development, executive strategies, organizational development and public affairs messaging in the Twin Ports area."

Earlier this month, he told the Duluth News Tribune about his plan to start his own business while entering into the "strategic partnership" with Tunheim.

Ness said he won't be a lobbyist with Tunheim, which he called  “one of Minnesota’s premiere public affairs agencies.”

He said of Tunheim: “They have a strong mix of primarily private-sector clients. But they also do some higher-level public affairs messaging and coalition-building work.”

Kathy Tunheim, president and CEO, said: “We’ve known Don Ness for many years and have greatly admired the leadership and innovative spirit he brought to his time of service in Duluth. We’ve also had opportunities to work with organizations in the Twin Ports and fully expect that Don will be as engaged as ever in the continuing emergence of that region."

In a statement, Tunheim said it will work with Ness "to help organizations identify innovative solutions to solve their most complex problems and rethink their approaches to capitalize on their most important opportunities."

Bill Maher, the liberal/libertarian comedian/political satirist with a show on HBO, apparently favors Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton (although he says in the interview linked below that “she’d be a capable leader” and he “wouldn’t be concerned with her blowing the world up”).

But my only reason for troubling you with his views at the moment is to pass along, from this interview with the Daily Beast, his hilarious-but-serious and frighteningly accurate summary of the status of Donald Trump’s “electability,” thus (warning, it’s a tad vulgar):

“I know Nate Silver and lots of other people say it’s impossible for Donald Trump to get elected president, but as I’ve always said: Something is impossible until it isn’t. And so far, Donald Trump has defied everybody’s predictions, and he’s still there, and he only seems to get stronger. The guy eats third rails for breakfast. I mean, what would he have to say? He’s already said, ‘Carly Fiorina, you’re too ugly to be president! John McCain, you’re not a war hero! Hey, would you like to see my impression of a guy with cerebral palsy?’ I mean, what would he have to do, fart in Jesus’ face or call Ronald Reagan a fag? I have no idea what this guy would have to do to make his crowd turn on him. He’s like a movie monster who only gets stronger with the stuff that you’re using to try to kill him. So with this atmosphere, I think anything is possible — and that means Bernie Sanders is possible.”

Of course, many much-less-humorous Republicans are equally alarmed by Trump’s rise to and endurance as the GOP frontrunner. The most recent exhibit, from today’s New York Times, is long-time Republican insider and campaign operative Scott Reed, who has worked for such mainstream Republicans as Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole and George Bush and works now for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has mostly been backing Jeb Bush this cycle.

As Reed explains it, there has been an establishment and an outsider candidate for the Republican nomination in almost every recent cycle. It’s not unusual for an “angry” outsider who is “completely unacceptable” to the party establishment to look strong early in the campaign. But once the field winnows down to an establishment candidate against a “completely unacceptable” one, the insider would always win, fairly easily.

As Reed sees it, the other Republican frontrunner in current polling, Sen. Ted Cruz, is also in the “completely unacceptable” category to the party establishment. The trouble is (from the Times piece):

“In 2016, that formula for stopping Mr. Trump may not work. The chunk of Republicans embracing an angry message, Mr. Reed said, ‘is two to three times its average size.’

“Consider the combined support for Mr. Trump, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and the former neurosurgeon Ben Carson — all cast by conventional strategists for the ‘totally unacceptable’ role. The three outsiders command two-thirds of Republican support nationally. ‘Establishment’ favorites like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John R. Kasich remain political weaklings by comparison.”

Reed just doesn’t have confidence that — even when it unites behind someone “acceptable” — the establishment can beat the outsider, especially if it’s Trump because (again from the Times):

“Mr. Reed has an increasing appreciation for Mr. Trump’s political ability. For all of his rhetorical fireworks, he has driven home his simple vow to ‘make America great again.’

“Mr. Trump ‘is the most on-message candidate of this cycle, by a factor of 10,’ Mr. Reed said.”

The same edition of the Times contains an op-ed, headlined “Why I will never vote for Donald Trump,” by lifelong Republican and former member of the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations Peter Wehner, who starts off the piece by noting that he has voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election since he reached voting age.

Wehner gives many reasons for the headline pledge: Trump’s willful ignorance on many of the most basic issues every president must understand (Wehner calls it his “indifference to facts”) plus Trump’s boorishness and egotism, plus the long-term damage it would do to the Republican brand to have nominated such a person. And more.

I recommend you read the whole piece, which seems to gather strength as it goes along, but if you want a taste, there’s this paragraph:

“Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. The prospect of Donald Trump as commander in chief should send a chill down the spine of every American.”

What an interesting election cycle we are having! We may be able to elect our first woman president (Carly Fiorina or Hillary Clinton), first Hispanic president (Sen. Ted Cruz or Sen. Marco Rubio), first Jewish president (Sen. Bernie Sanders), first socialist president (Sanders again), first “third-in-a-family” president (Jeb Bush), first “former president’s spouse” president (Clinton again), first “never-held-any-elected-post” president (Donald Trump, Fiorina, or Ben Carson), first Seventh Day Adventist president (Carson again), and at some point we had a shot at electing our first Indian-American president (Bobby Jindal). So many possibilities, so many choices — but why does it matter? We are not trying to add to the Book of Firsts, are we?

Ideally, it all should be irrelevant, and I wouldn’t be writing about this if not for a constant flow of Clinton’s supporters making a big deal out of her chance to become the first woman president. And recently even Clinton herself said that she would make a better president because she is a woman. What? We are constantly told that women are equal to men so they can do the same things men do, such as become CEOs, serve everywhere in the military, lead countries, and so on. But now we are told that women are better than men?

More diversity in GOP lineup

Interestingly, the Republican field is an example of diversity and would have been praised as such had it been a Democratic field. Republicans have plenty of young candidates as well. Instead, many Democrats call all the Republican candidates clowns and scary. If Republicans were reacting this way to a Democratic field of this nature, they would have been called racists and sexists. The Democratic field is (or used to be) almost the direct opposite: There were four white men (one of them is Jewish, though) and Hillary Clinton.

The Democratic nomination was supposed to be simple: Clinton was the presumptive nominee and Democrats just needed a few figureheads for show to give an impression of a genuine nomination process. Instead, Sanders is going strong — but why?

He actually explained it himself: Democrats have to bring more people to voting booths to win. And that, of course, means bringing more inexperienced, uneducated, young voters because others vote anyway and mostly have their minds made up. But those are the voters who can be brought in only by promising them pie in the sky — and that is what Sanders is doing: free college education, more child benefits, higher minimum wage, free medical care, decriminalization of marijuana …. Despite his claims that he cares about the middle class, most of these measures will benefit the young and I think that is the goal, because they can’t analyze the promises and distinguish between facts and fiction. (Remember that the human brain fully develops only by the age of 25 and the last parts of the brain to develop are the ones that are responsible for critical thinking — and that skill, as I learned recently, is not being taught well in colleges anymore.) But at least Sanders honestly if mistakenly believes in his dreams.

A bandwagon of giveaways

It seems to me that Clinton, on the other hand, does not believe in anything except for her ability to get what she thinks she is entitled to and would say anything to get it. So during the Democratic debates, it was clear that she was jumping on the bandwagon of “giveaways” because it is her only choice to win the nomination. In fact, one entire debate looked to be about who could promise more. It doesn’t matter that none of those promises will ever come to life because a Republican Congress will never support them (and no one seriously doubts that Republicans will keep control of at least the House); it doesn’t matter that all those promises are out of reach because the country doesn’t have the money. All that matters is that people like hearing that they may get free stuff (and I have to admit that some people even like hearing that other people will get free stuff), even if it is a fiction, much more than they like hearing that they have to work hard, even if it is a reality.

So for Democrats the choice is between Clinton and Sanders — i.e. in my estimation between an untruthful, self-centered candidate with zero accomplishments and multiple failures and whose single advantage seems to be being a female — and a self-proclaimed socialist who can’t see the difference between America and Denmark and thinks that money grows on trees (in the billionaires’ gardens, that is). The other candidates never counted, and now only one of them remains (Joe Biden was clearly frightened into refraining from running), leaving a pathetic field of two and a half candidates.

Where were the hard questions?

Of course, debates also go as expected, based on media’s favorites. While Democratic debates were a giveaway with minimal attempts to raise hard questions or ask candidates to express opinions of each other, the Republican debate moderators were constantly pushing candidates to bicker and argue with each other. How come we didn’t hear “Secretary Clinton, please name a few of your accomplishments that benefited America,” “Governor O’Malley, please explain the sad situation in Baltimore in light of your being its council member and mayor for fifteen years,” and “Senator Sanders, do you know that students must pass vigorous entrance exams to colleges in Europe in order to get free tuition?”

Well, it is obvious that the media are not doing their jobs, so there is even more reason for all of us to do our jobs as citizens and voters. We should see past rhetoric about gender, past fear mongering (and I mean both Trump’s and anti-Trump ones), past political correctness, and past partisanship. We should distinguish between real threats, such as terrorism and unchecked illegal immigration, and the fake ones, such as war on women or drowning in a hundred years. And we should demand real solutions from the candidates, not the politically expedient ones – and that is the most difficult thing to do.

Ilya Gutman is an immigrant from the Soviet Union who now lives and works in Marshall, Minnesota.  

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Big money for cleaner water.Don Davis at the Forum News Service says, “Minnesota communities and farmers would receive a $220 million boost in their efforts to clean up the state's water under a proposal Gov. Mark Dayton unveiled today. Much of the money would help cities, mostly in rural Minnesota, to improve water and sewage treatment facilities. Dayton sets aside $30 million to meet a new law requiring vegetative buffers between cropland and streams and lakes. … A Minnesota Pollution Control Agency proposal indicates communities statewide needs to spend $11 billion in the next two decades to fix water quality problems.”

Talk about long overdue. Ricardo Lopez of the Strib reports, “Minnesota has launched a state-backed program for state residents interested in refinancing their student-loan debt. The state ranks fifth nationally in the amount of college-loan debt carried by residents, who have on average nearly $32,000 in outstanding loans.”

Think of it as a “fun” tax. Says Rachel Chazin at KMSP-TV, “Powerball sales from the record 20-draw run that began on Nov. 7 generated $20,722,081 for Lottery beneficiaries, the Minnesota State Lottery announced Thursday.” So do I still get to buy a boat?

The Strib’s Mary Lynn Smith adds: “Don’t crumple up that Powerball lottery ticket just yet. The big winners of the record-breaking, billion-dollar jackpot may be in Florida, Tennessee and California. But somewhere out there in Minnesota are 379,573 players who can claim some prize money in Wednesday’s record-breaking Powerball jackpot, including 12 tickets that are each worth $50,000 because the holders matched four numbers and the Powerball.” So you’re saying there’s still a chance?

Not often you get “warm” and Lake Superior in the same sentence.MPR says,“A new study released in December showed that lakes are not only warming, but they're warming faster than the oceans, according to MPR News meteorologist Paul Huttner. NASA and the National Science Foundation collaborated on the study, which focused on 235 lakes on six continents over 25 years. The study concluded that lakes are warming at an average rate of 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit every decade. Four of the five Great Lakes were included in the study, and Lake Superior was found to be one of the fastest-warming lakes on the planet. Superior is warming at a rate of 2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, Huttner said, which is three times the global average.”

A scam for every fear.WCCO-TV’s Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield says, “Minnesota parents are getting a frightening email in their inboxes.  It says there is sex offender activity in their area, and offers resources to protect them against sexual predators. The emails aren’t true, but they are bringing a whole different kind of danger into people’s homes.”

There’s also this, from the AP.“Rochester police have arrested a man suspected of scamming churchgoers out of hundreds of dollars with a story about his dead family. Investigators say the man visited Pax Christie Church and St. John the Evangelist Church Monday where he talked about how his family was killed by explosives in Beirut. Police say that between the two churches he received more than $1,000. Police were called when the man was spotted at Trinity Lutheran Church Wednesday night.”

Now this old guy deserves some kind of Total Minnesotan medal.The KMSP-TV story says, “A 101-year-old St. Paul man hasn’t let old age, or Minnesota winters, keep him from helping out his neighbors. A neighbor filmed him outside shoveling his neighbor’s sidewalk after a snowfall one morning, and the inspirational video is going viral. The video was posted on Jan. 8 by Facebook user Keven O’Bannon. In the video, O’Bannon approaches his 101-year-old neighbor, Mr. Mann, who is shoveling the sidewalk of a neighbor who is out of town.”

No break for The Last Place on Earth guy.MPR’s Dan Kraker tells us, “A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld the conviction of a former Duluth head shop owner for selling millions of dollars worth of synthetic drugs. A three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal synthetic drug law used to convict Jim Carlson, the owner of the store Last Place on Earth, is constitutional.”

Well, he’s saving us trial costs.Peter Cox of MPR says, “A former University of Minnesota engineering student who brought a bag of explosive devices into the Coffman Memorial Union last summer has made a guilty plea in the case. Jason Johnson, 35, pleaded guilty in Hennepin County Court to one count of terroristic threats. He'll be sentenced next week. On Aug. 9, police were called about a suspicious bag that smelled of gasoline that was sitting near a fireplace, a criminal complaint said. A bomb squad searched the bag and found bundled smoke flares, towels soaked in gasoline, gloves and a lighter.” If I heard the GOP candidates right last night, that guy might be an “existential threat.”

Smartphones, or the lack thereof, are apparently to blame for Best Buy’s bad 4Q.Drew Fitzgerald of the Wall Street Journal says, “Shoppers picked up fewer mobile devices and shunned the cases and headphones that come with them, executives said. For all its spending on brighter stores and a sharper website, Best Buy remains at the mercy of big-name manufacturers. Apple hasn’t reported its holiday results, but Chinese parts suppliers have recently warned of slower iPhone production. Samsung executives this month said they were adjusting their strategy to adapt to pressure on smartphone sales.” I don’t know about you, but I get a little tired of having to buy a new one every two years.

This is good.Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine has some thoughts about Nikki Haley’s comments on anger in politics. “There are four approaches a politician can take to the Obama years: (1) one can be angry about them and show it, (2) one can be angry and not show it, (3) one can be not angry but show anger, or (4) one can be not angry and not show anger. The third approach is a good definition of demagoguery; it is deplorable. I doubt that the fourth approach is available to non-saint conservatives. Given Obama’s ruinous, doctrinaire leftist tenure, nearly every conservative surely feels some anger.”

Last week, I attended a forum held by a coalition of neighbors who live near St. Paul’s Smith Avenue High Bridge. The group gathered to discuss ways that community members can build connectedness between individuals in order to help prevent suicides on the landmark structure.

One of the speakers invited to the event, which was attended by some 60 people, was Melissa Heinen, suicide prevention coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Health.

Heinen, a Minnesota native with a background in nursing, public health and accident reduction, spoke to the group in an accessible, knowledgeable manner. She outlined basic strategies for suicide reduction, safe responses to suicide deaths and talked about how the community should reclaim the bridge as a beautiful landmark, a place for walking, sightseeing and photo taking.

A few days ago, I talked to Heinen about her strong commitment to reducing suicide deaths. Heinen also outlined recommended strategies for responding to such incidents in schools.

MinnPost: How did you get interested in this kind of work?

Melissa Heinen: My brother-in-law died by suicide in the summer of 2001. Prior to that I hadn’t done much work in the area of suicide. I’m a nurse. But after my brother-in-law’s death, I became interested in suicide prevention.

For a time, after my brother-in-law’s death, I lived in New Hampshire, where I worked on reducing overdose poisoning. I also was on a survivor speakers’ bureau, sharing my story to help others who are responding to suicide.

MP: What are your job responsibilities at the Department of Health? 

MH: I have three roles. One is to assist other agencies and communities in implementing the state Suicide Prevention Plan [PDF]. That’s a big piece of what I do. I’ve been meeting with the Department of Human Services and the Minnesota Department of Education to make sure that they think about suicide prevention when they are thinking about overall community health. The second piece is overseeing and implementing community grants and making sure that they are going where they need to go for suicide prevention. The  third piece is providing community technical assistance for suicide prevention.

MP: How do you assist communities in implementing the state Suicide Prevention Plan?

MH: One of the ways I do that is by going to events like the West Side community gathering last week. When a community wants to get together to talk about the impact of suicide, sometimes they come to us to find out how we can help. A big part of what I’m doing at meetings like is trying to create local community capacity, to educate individual community members and inspire them to take further action so that eventually we will have a team of community “experts” who can educate others about preventing suicide.

MP: You said you give out grant funds to community organizations. Can you give me an example of one of your grantees?

MH: We have provided a grant to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE) so that they can run a training program for journalism schools and members of the local media. The training will help them better understand how to avoid promoting contagion with post-suicide stories.

MP: When a school experiences a suicide, how can your office assist them?

Courtesy of Melissa Heinen

Melissa Heinen

MH: A school in that situation might want to schedule a day focused on suicide prevention. I could help the school respond in the case of a student suicide. I’d have to be invited by the school, though. I can’t just show up: We don’t have the capacity to do that. And it really only works when you’re invited.

Some schools have invited us to help out in these cases, and I think we’ve been able to help. But our presence is not the end-all-be-all at these events. The most successful interventions take a community approach. We might be there, but our job is to keep a low profile, to introduce community members to the supports that are available for them and then let them take the lead.

It’s important that organizations take a coordinated approach in these cases, that they have consistent messaging about what happened and that they maintain control over how that message is communicated.

MP: How can more people get trained in suicide prevention strategies?

MH: This last spring, in partnership with DHS, MDE and NAMI Minnesota, we hosted two trainings on postvention, or ways to respond to suicide without creating contagion in the community. We trained 30 people in one day. In that group there were about 16 people who were train-the-trainers so they could go forward after the workshop and train other people.

There have also been a series of postvention trainings going on throughout the state. We started out working with schools. This is an area we know. Youth are more impulsive and responsive to an immediate crisis. Because of where they are developmentally they can over identify with someone who died by suicide. We’ve also done trainings specifically for tribal communities so they could use this information within the tribes. We want trainers who know how to be present and supportive after a suicide in a culturally responsible way.

MP: Why is postvention important when a young person dies by suicide? 

MH: Based on surveys of youth, we know that if someone experiences the suicide of a loved one, they are at increased risk of suicide themselves. And it’s not just close friends or family members: We used to think that if a young person’s close friend or relative died by suicide, it increased their thoughts of suicide. Research has showed us that a young person doesn’t even have to really know the kid who died to be at increased risk of suicide. If the kid who died went to the same school, that could be enough to increase a young person’s thoughts of suicide. Contagion can be that strong.

MP: Suicide prevention experts have told me that it is better to downplay a suicide, to limit dramatic public memorial services or symbolic tree plantings. Why is that?

MH: This is especially true in schools. We know youth act more impulsively. They are more likely to experience a mental health crisis on the day of a suicide attempt. And also young people are developmentally more likely to over identify with someone who has died by suicide. Say a young person is a soccer player and the kid who died was also a soccer player. If that kid is struggling with mental illness, she might think, “We’re similar. This is something I should think about.”

If there’s a big memorial at the school and the kid who died gets celebrated in front of their peers, a person who’s feeling like no one cares or notices them might feel like suicide is a way to really get noticed.

MP: So how do you handle that? Is it emotionally healthy to ignore a death or brush it under the rug?

MH: One of my roles is helping schools understand that they can still acknowledge the suicide death of a student but they can do it in a way that doesn’t increase contagion. I don’t recommend memorials or posters, but a school can put out a roll of white butcher paper and have kids write memories of the peer who died on that. Then school officials can roll up the paper and bring it to the family at the funeral. That’s a way to acknowledge the loss, but also a way to put some closure on it. From there you can move on, restart the kids and help move them forward.

We want the school to support students in their grief. We want to acknowledge the life that was lost. But we don’t want to make the way in which they died the focus of the event. We don’t want to make one death more shameful than the other.

It doesn’t matter how a student died: Their name doesn’t have to be on a bench. We don’t want to make the family feel like the school doesn’t care, but if a student dies by cancer or car crash, that usually doesn’t create contagion. We want to acknowledge the death without making it a permanent thing. You don’t want memorials that make suicide seem like a valid choice. When you’re feeling like your life sucks, if you walk by that memorial every day and you remember that that kid died by suicide, it normalizes it as an option. We don’t want to do that.

Posteveniton guidelines even recommend talking to the clergy before the funeral and making sure that no one says something like, “Now he is at peace and in a better place.” If I’m struggling with thoughts of suicide and I hear how my loved one is now peaceful and in a better place, that isn’t helpful to me as an individual.

We understand that this is a tough thing for people to balance and work through.

MP: Lately, I’ve seen more obituaries that are open and honest about a person’s struggle with mental illness and ultimate suicide. How do you feel about that?

MH: It makes sense to talk about the struggle with mental illness and say it is a risk factor for suicide. Doing that is different than having a reminder that this person killed him or herself. Wearing green ribbons to acknowledge mental illness is different from memorializing or glorifying how a person took their life. It’s a nuance and no one has mastered it yet. We have to balance destigmatizing mental illness with not making suicide seem like a valid option. It’s a complex thing.

It’s not an easy thing, but we have to be so careful about all of our communications around suicide. Everything makes a difference. Research has shown that even neutral reporting on suicide may increase the risk of suicide in a community.

MP: Are there Minnesota schools or communities that you think have done a particularly good job at responding to suicide?

MH: The Jed Foundation has a suicide-prevention model for college campuses. St. Cloud State has received the Jed Campus seal. I’d like to see other universities take hold of this approach and follow St. Cloud’s lead. 

A full year has passed since former Minneapolis Public Schools Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson announced her resignation. And as evidenced by the turmoil of MPS' Tuesday night board meeting, her successor — whoever it is — will have to grapple with ongoing board dysfunction, a lack of community-board consensus, and a slew of issues surrounding a glaring achievement gap and high suspension rates.

Curious to get her take on it all, MinnPost reached out to Johnson for an interview. Prior to the board meeting, Johnson — who recently announced plans to write a “tell all” book on her experience as superintendent — said she didn’t have a strong opinion on who the best candidate might be, and planned on tuning out the clamor of the meeting. But after the board rejected preferred candidate Sergio Paez and attempted to move forward with interim superintendent Michael Goar, Johnson admitted she couldn’t resist the urge to watch.

You told me you were going home to unwind, but Twitter tells me you were following the board meeting …

People were calling me, asking, “Are you watching this?” I was actually out to dinner with friends. I said, “I can’t stay here any longer, sorry.”

She drove straight home to watch the meeting, missing the State of the Union address for the first time since she can remember, because she was so sucked into the drama of what was happening in Minneapolis.

I wasn’t shocked by anything. Anytime I’m shocked by something in Minneapolis, something else happens that changes the shock factor. You get to the point where you’re no longer shocked. I think what you saw is people who care, who are committed.... What I don’t like about it is I don’t like when a board meeting is disrupted [because] you’re distracting from the work getting done.

Do you think the board should move forward with Goar?

It’s just a common-sense approach to have a leader who’s been here, who knows the community, who’s worked in the community, who’s worked for the district before. People haven’t talked about that. This is not Michael’s first tour of duty with Minneapolis. He knows a lot of teachers and principals within the organization. And to me, he’s the best candidate for the job now. He can be a unifying voice. If they're gonna start the search over — which it sounds like they’re thinking about doing — they need somebody who can keep the buses moving and make sure that there’s no distractions from the work. To me, he’s the person who should be put in that role.

There was a lot of talk about addressing dysfunction among board members. Do you think it holds any weight?

I believe they’re well intentioned. I can say this board has held — not just this composition of the board — retreats and opportunities to try and get on the same page for years. … [But] what’s the plan to make sure that you revisit what you’re gonna do and how do you hold each other accountable? This is not a new conversation. … It’s like a family and a marriage. It's not reasonable to think that nine different people with different backgrounds, different experiences, different values will agree on everything. But they have to find a way of coming to a consensus around the things that they should support.

Community members voiced support for a homegrown candidate. What are your thoughts on this?

My thing is that every principal who has a superintendent license has had no superintendent experience. That, to me, is a little risky. I think it’s a huge leap to go from principal to superintendent in a district that’s as complex, political and large as Minneapolis is. It’s like going from playing pee wee football to playing for the Vikings.

There’s talk you have been approached to lead the district again. Is there anything to the speculation?

No one who has the power to make it happen has. No board member has talked to me, or has had a delegate talk to me about coming back in the interim. I have had people ask me, or tell me I should go back or call the board. But I think that day is gone. Part of me says I would…. But I think when I left, it was clear that we were separating. If a school board opportunity did open out here [in Brooklyn Park], I think I would consider it. I’m always looking for opportunities to give back and serve. I still feel like I have more to give.

What other thoughts do you have on the search for your successor?

Here’s the thing about the superintendent search that the community should understand. The two most important things the board does is search for a superintendent and support them. It’s all around that leader. Statutorily, also functionally, the relationship between the board and the superintendent is key to the functioning of the district. People forget a superintendent is looking for a board. You could start the search over, but do they feel like the better candidates were holding back? And how do they think candidates will think about the district after what just happened? The other thing is I believe after you pick your finalist, you do your site visit. Everything around gathering information about the candidate should be done before the final naming of the [top pick].

Do you think the board would have success attracting a new candidate, if it were to open up the search again?

Here’s what people don’t think about. If you put your name in a hat to be a superintendent — and you’re already in a current position, are selected as a finalist and you don’t get it — how do you go back to your current district? As soon as you say you’re leaving, you might as well resign from your district…. The reality is, with the revealing of names, if you get on a list, you’ve already got to repair relationships. In some ways, they’ve gotten people who felt like they could walk away. They didn’t have any sitting superintendents who applied, as far as I know. If I think back to the pool, there is an untapped source of people. The question is: Are they willing to take a risk with this board?

While Johnson didn’t make any clear predictions on Paez’s future, she did offer her take on where he went wrong. In her opinion, the issue isn’t necessarily whether the allegations of staff abusing special-education students during his tenure in Holyoke, Mass., hold as much merit as some think. The issue is in how he addressed the allegations.

Do you think Paez could have risen above the allegations?

He basically said “I followed the law, did an investigation.” So the law says it’s OK to restrain kids like that. But, see, this is when you have to know your community. In Minneapolis, where 19 or 21 percent of our students are special ed, we used to have doors that had padding on the walls. When kids were misbehaving, we’d push the button on the wall, so the kid couldn’t get out the door. You could see them through the glass. That was legal, but we stopped doing it. This is when you’ve got to reach down in your gut and say, I know that legally we can do it, but I have to tell you the practice itself appalls me. I find it immoral and inappropriate to restrain students with special needs. To me, he missed an opportunity to share his personal feelings about the restraint of students. We can follow the letter of the law, but we also can be compassionate. People want their leaders to be strong, superhuman. But ultimately, they want you to be compassionate, empathetic and caring. I don’t know if anyone’s giving him that feedback.

What advice would you give your successor in terms of navigating school-board politics?

The thing that I tried to do with the board, that my predecessor didn't do, is I tried to meet with them one-on-one every month. No one board member should know something that all the board members don’t know. I would also say, if there’s something you believe is important to student achievement and you don’t have the board’s support, do it anyway. Be willing to lose your job. Be willing to come and fight for the children as long as you can, but know that you could lose your job. Don’t ignore any level of micromanagement. Because as soon as you do, it’s a slippery slope. Before you know it, they’re calling staff to tell them what to do. I had board members going directly to staff, telling them what to do.

The ongoing saga of the superintendent offers a perfect backdrop for Johnson’s future book. It’s not that she wants to see leadership of the district fail. Rather, she anticipates her book — once it comes to fruition, she jokes, adding that just talking about is making her anxious to put pen to paper — might serve as a valuable resource for future superintendent candidates, who find themselves blindsided by the political nuances of a major urban school district.

Johnson says she learned some of her most important lessons as superintendent through trial and error. Closing in on her first year of retirement, she’s been inspired to outline some possible chapters, and she anticipates the project will be “cathartic … a form of closure and moving on.” 

What topics will you cover in the book?

The book will [feature] female superintendents, especially women of color, because I do think their experiences are different. Things were done and said to me that would never be done to a white man. For example, when you’re in a room and talking about something, making this profound statement and people don’t respond. Then five minutes later a white man says the same thing [and people give him credit.] I would call it out, because I couldn’t help myself. I felt I owed it to myself, but it was exhausting.

Johnson says her book will address the politics of the job, including topics like school board governance, labor relations and community relations. But it will also venture out into some eyebrow-raising chapters like “stories of mischief,” where Johnson plans to address the challenges of dealing with staff who misbehave. Even though she often prayed her employees would make responsible decisions, dealing with staff issues was a regular reality of the job. And, of course, she’ll include a chapter on students.

I’m so deeply impressed with the high school students of Minneapolis; they’re thoughtful, they believe in social justice. They are articulate around the issues that impact their communities. They have the potential to do and be anything. When they [were coping with] the Ferguson and Trayvon Martin [shootings], my students walked out. To me, this is the best lesson they will ever have. We have to have safety, but nobody's going to be suspended, punished for [exercising] their constitutional rights. One of my proudest moments was telling the St. Paul superintendent, “My kids don’t wait [for National Walkout Day] to walk out.”

Last year, during her exit interview with MinnPost, Johnson cited family obligations as one of the main reasons she decided to resign. She wanted to focus on being the primary caregiver for her grandparents, 107 and 99 at the time. Reserving more energy for her husband and children, as well as for herself, also proved beneficial, she says.

She also currently serves on the boards of TPT and the Phillips Eye Institute's “Investing in Sight, Changing Lives” campaign. And, curious about a new charter school that’s opening near her house, she suspects she’ll volunteer there as well.

How else have you been staying busy in retirement?

My grandfather passed away two months ago, at 107. It was a celebration of life. We’re certainly sad, but he’s done a lot for the community. And my grandmother is still being naughty. I’ve been trying to exercise, eat better, eliminate as much stress as I can. I’m doing some work with E4E [Educators 4 Excellence], and the Mankato State University Edina campus, working with leaders on developing their equity lens around issues that impact students of color. That’s been really good work for me because it’s been work where I’ve had more freedom to talk about issues of race and inequality.

It’s no secret that strained relations with a board fractured by an expensive, bitter election last year contributed to Johnson's decision to resign. She felt the board was questioning her leadership capabilities and failed to support her when her integrity came under fire. Self-described as sensitive, she says she struggled to rebound emotionally.

What aspects of the job weighed on you most during your tenure?

I started to see the lack of civility, especially when you have people that are really competent of communicating in ways people would understand. The name calling, shaming and embarrassing — all I could think about is, is this how we model for the children? Come with an agenda of things you want to be a part of changing. Name calling is a nonstarter, nonproductive.

What do you miss most about being MPS superintendent?

The thing I miss the most is being around students and children and dedicated adults who are committed to making a difference in the lives of students. I also miss some of the challenges, without a doubt. I miss identifying a problem and saying, “Let’s do it.” I wasn’t able to put a dent in lowering the achievement gap. I wanted to be among the educators in Minneapolis who said, “We finally got some traction around changing it.” That opportunity is missed for me, but I think it’s available to the next leader who comes in and works with a united board to get it done. I don’t miss making decisions about cold weather. That was the craziest.

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page to saddle President Obama, in advance of Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, with blame for “The Carnage in Coal Country”– which  the Journal says has cost 40,000 jobs since 2008, and moved Arch Coal Co. to file for Chapter 11 protections on Monday.

And leave it to Paul Krugman at The New York Times, who knows more than a bit about business and economics, to knock that pitch out of the park:

• First, by noting that the nation’s burgeoning solar energy sector has added more than 100,000 jobs in a shorter period of time (a figure drawn, like the Journal’s, from industry data – in this case, a U.S. Solar Foundation report).
• Second, by pointing out that the coal industry’s ongoing contractions, for economic reasons, had made it “a shadow of its former self” before Obama took office.

So obvious and well understood are such contributing factors as falling world demand and cheap natural gas that Krugman didn’t feel a need to list them. The Journal opinionators acknowledged that market factors were also at work, but in a fleeting and almost grudging way:

We told you in November that coal production nationwide has declined by about 15% since 2008. Reasons include slowing global demand and competition from natural gas in electricity generation. But commodity prices are cyclical, while regulation is forever.

It’s hard to keep track of all the new rules billowing out of Washington and overwhelming coal producers and their customers.

Partial credit, at best, to Obama

Actually, it is not so hard to track the general trend in regulatory philosophy during the administration of Barack Obama, formerly a coal-state senator who championed government-backed “clean coal” initiatives until they died of infeasibility.

This president has often claimed credit for expanding coal, oil and gas production from federal lands under an “all of the above” approach to sourcing U.S. energy needs; roughly 41 percent of U.S. coal production comes from leases on those lands.

Environmental impact has been a factor in leasing decisions since Richard Nixon was in the White House; what this administration proposes to do is to have the review and the rates reflect the climate impacts of coal use, and to temporarily halt the granting of new leases until new policies are in place.

Which is hardly a sellout to environmental groups who want him to stop expanding, and start shrinking, coal production from federal lands. Or a crushing burden to coal companies, which haven't been buying all the federal coal available anyway.

Overall, on the regulatory front, I think the White House deserves far less blame/credit for contraction in the coal-fired power sector than a concerted, grass-roots campaign by savvy activists who use existing legal tools – coupled with investor outreach – to challenge and kill new coal projects in largely local and state-level proceedings.

Yes, this administration has tightened the rules on greenhouse gas emissions from the electric power sector, and yes, the most important curbs will further disadvantage  coal as the Clean Power Plan phases in over the next 15 years.

But it’s worth remembering, too, that this is a sector that for decades enjoyed a sweeping immunity from curbs on other, non-greenhouse pollutants that the Clean Air Act applied to other fossil-fired U.S. industries starting in the 1970s.

The theory was that coal-fired power plants were obsolescent anyway, heading for retirement within a decade or two; utilities found myriad ways to extend those lifespans, with active encouragement from Obama’s predecessors.

Another coal-state senator, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, brought a constituent to Tuesday’s speech to humanize his complaints about the president’s supposed “war on coal.” He was Howard Abshire, who used to be a coal miner and now has a job dismantling and removing equipment from closed coal mines.

Not sure whether his case would count toward the Journal’s tally of 40,000 lost “coal jobs,” but it would appear to demonstrate that there are jobs available to miners after they stop mining, even in the coal sector.

I began to wonder if the Journal had editorialized in solidarity with all the U.S. workers who lost their jobs in cigarette factories, tobacco warehouses and such when the government finally got serious about discouraging smoking, especially among young people.

Views from business press

Instead, I thought it would be more productive to look at how the business press and trade publications are apportioning responsibility for coal’s fading fortunes.

Discussing the proposal to raise the price of leases on federal lands, starting with parcels in the Powder River Basin that hold about 600 million tons of coal, mining.com reports that

The promised changes come amid historically weak prices for the commodity worldwide, which have had a major impact on the government’s lease program. The Obama Administration had to put off lease sales involving some 2 billion tons of coal over last year because companies were unwilling to buy.

Tom Sanzillo, director of finances for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told mining.com that the President's reform of federal coal leases does for the coal industry what it cannot do for itself — “discipline production, shrink supply and better manage the nation's energy security and this vital resource."

Over at Bloomberg, it was noted that Arch Coal has been losing money since 2012, and has adopted a bankruptcy strategy that includes “an agreement with a majority of its senior lenders to erase $4.5 billion in debt from its balance sheet and allow it to keep operating without interruption.”

Industrywide troubles including slower demand from China, competition from Australian exports and cheap gas pushed competitors Patriot Coal Corp., Walter Energy Inc. and Alpha Natural Resources Inc. into bankruptcy last year. High pension costs and the threat of stricter environmental regulation have compounded the coal miners' woes.

Coal's share of electricity generation in the United States fell to 30 percent in April, as the historically popular fuel was overtaken by gas for the first time. Coal still generated more than 40 percent of electricity globally and is used in the production of 70 percent of the world's steel, according to the World Coal Association.

Arch has also had to cope with the effects of its 2011 purchase of International Coal Group Inc. The $3.4 billion acquisition, made when metallurgical coal was selling for $330 a metric ton, increased its exposure to a thermal coal from Appalachia, which has been particularly hard hit as cheaper thermal coal is mined in the Midwest.

Central Appalachian coal fell 13 percent in 2015, capping a fifth annual decline on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices closed at $44.33 a metric ton on Friday.

As for the notion that Obama’s last State of the Union message amounted to a notice that your electric bill will be going up, utilitydive.com observed that

For electric utilities, the possibility of these new regulations would mean that the price of fossil resources such as coal or natural gas could rise, although it's worth noting that both commodities are priced near historic lows today. 

And though we wouldn’t call it a business publication, I admired a synopsis of the global coal market from Mother Jones, under the headline “The Coal Industry Is Off to a Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Year.” Excerpts:

The onslaught started at the end of December, when China announced plans to close 1,000 coal mines as part of its campaign to reduce crippling air pollution and the world's highest greenhouse gas emissions. China also plans to reduce its share of electricity production from coal to 62.6 percent by next year, down from 64 percent now, according to Bloomberg. That's great news for Chinese citizens, who have recently been subjected to air pollution up to 40 times higher than what the World Health Organization considers safe. But it's a big letdown for coal producers in the United States, who have been increasingly desperate for new foreign markets for their product; coal demand in the United States has dropped 10 percent just in the last three years. The assumption that China's seemingly insatiable growth is a safe long-term bet for coal is vanishing—in fact, the latest official estimate is that Chinese coal consumption already peaked back in 2013.

As domestic and foreign demand dip, U.S. coal production has also crashed to a 30-year low, according to federal data released this week. It's the latest low point of a trend that has been heading downhill since Obama took office.

That trend is being driven somewhat by electricity companies' anxiety about the Clean Power Plan, Obama's new rules to limit emissions from power plants. But even more importantly, coal is getting hammered by competition from cheap natural gas. Since Obama took office, natural gas production in the United States has jumped 20 percent, and prices have correspondingly fallen to record lows. ... An editorial in this week's Lexington Herald-Leader argued that "no one should expect a revival of Eastern Kentucky coal jobs when not even Kentucky's electric utilities can afford to buy the region's coal."

All of this is devastating for coal companies' bottom lines. One recent study found that in the last five years, U.S. coal producers have lost 76 percent of their value. The latest casualty is Arch Coal. ... As Think Progress reported, "In early 2011, stock in Arch Coal peaked at $260 a share—on Monday, shares in Arch Coal were worth less than a dollar."

After sitting through the two hours plus of the Republican debate Thursday night, I learned nothing about the shape of the race, and even less about how to address the challenges America will face in the next couple of years.

If, for some reason that surpasseth understanding, you want my guess as to how it will affect the race for the Republican presidential nomination, I would say not much, pending confirmation or negation by the next round of polling, which will then be confirmed or negated by the next round.

Frontrunner Donald Trump seemed comfortable and in control all through the evening. I’d be surprised if he took any damage with likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers, or likely Repub primary voters in New Hampshire or South Carolina (a category that captures the universe of most of the people who matter in the race for the next few weeks).

Trump was seldom the target of attack by anyone other than Ted Cruz, which surprised me. And, by the debased standards of factual accuracy and logic that the world applies to Trump, I don’t believe he committed any major new gaffes.

Sens. Cruz and Marco Rubio, who are currently deemed by the great deemers to be the second and third likeliest nominees, mostly attacked one another rather than Trump, which might be interpreted as a struggle to be the one still standing, other than Trump, when the field shakes out.

Many of the attacks involved relatively obscure provisions of bills that one or the other had voted for or against. Each of them constantly said or implied that the other was lying or exaggerating whatever vote or provision was under disagreeable discussion. Perhaps the professional fact-checkers can sort it out, but even they (whose work I generally admire and appreciate) will have a hard time making it sound interesting or explaining to Joe and Jane Citizen why they should care.

‘Natural born citizen’?

Likewise, Trump and Cruz got into a hilarious back and forth on the issue of whether Cruz (who was born in Canada, of a Cuban father and an American-citizen mother) qualifies as a “natural born citizen” as necessary to be president. Trump suggested (joked) that he might want Cruz as his running-mate, but how could he pick him unless Cruz can clear up the “natural born” issue and not leave it out there as an issue for a possible Democratic Party lawsuit during the campaign to knock Cruz off the ballot? Cruz expressed unshakeable confidence that this was not a problem. Absolutely no new light was shed on the question, nor is such light likely to be shed unless Cruz becomes president or vice president and the matter reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was also present at the debate, but once again unable to produce a big favorable moment. He urged Trump to reconsider his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from coming to America, based on the argument that such a policy will alienate the Muslim world, which includes many key allies who help the United States in fighting ISIS.

When Trump was asked by the moderators whether he wanted to take back that suggestion, he answered with one word: “No.” When the audience laughed at the brevity of his reply, he said it again: “No.” This time the audience applauded, and at that point I tentatively formed my belief that this would not be the night, if there will ever be such a night, when Trump’s astonishing candidacy implodes. In fact, it led the moderators to ask all of the other candidates whether they agreed with Trump. Most of them agreed, to varying degrees, focusing mostly on such a moratorium for refugees fleeing Syria.

The moderators reminded Bush that he had referred to Trump’s suggested Muslim ban as “unhinged.” Bush said he still believed the idea was “unhinged.” Which led to this classic Trumpian “win,” as measured by polls, and also demonstrated Trump’s constant willingness to cite his poll ratings as proof of his excellence.

Moderator NEIL CAVUTO (to Bush): Well after he made them [meaning Trump’s remarks suggesting a Muslim ban], his poll numbers went up eight points in South Carolina.

TRUMP: Eleven points, to be exact.

CAVUTO (still speaking to Bush): Are you saying that all those people who agree with Mr. Trump are unhinged?

BUSH: No, not at all, absolutely not. I can see why people are angry and scared, because this president has created a condition where our national security has weakened dramatically. I totally get that. But we're running for the presidency of the United States here. This isn't, you know, a different kind of job. You have to lead. You cannot make rash statements and expect the rest of the world to respond as though, well, it's just politics. Every time we send signals like this, we send a signal of weakness, not strength. And so it was [inaudible] his statement, which is why I'm asking him to consider changing his views.

TRUMP: I want security for this country. OK?

Funniest line

Dr. Ben Carson made little impact on the overall shape of the evening and, although he has improved, is still not very good at policy details. But he did provide (by my lights) the funniest line of the evening. There’s rule that a candidate, even when it’s not his turn to take a question, gets to respond if he is mentioned in someone else’s remarks. This led to a long exchange between Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that included an extensive accusation by Rubio that Christie had committed heinous acts of liberalism, like once donating to Planned Parenthood. Christie denied he had ever “written a check” to Planned Parenthood (although it turns out that he did say in 1994 that he had supported “Planned Parenthood privately with my personal contribution”).

During Christie’s rambling rebuttal, he mentioned Bush, in passing and not in a critical way. But Bush (who has been working, without much success, at being more assertive and noticeable in these debates) nonetheless claimed the right to chime in on the ground that he had been mentioned. He then used his time to say that everyone on the stage would be a better president than Hillary Clinton. Then Carson chimed in to ask for time on the grounds that he had been mentioned. Moderator Cavuto said, “You were?” (Because, in fact, Carson had not been mentioned.)

Replied Carson: “Yes, he [Bush] said ‘everybody,’” meaning Bush had said that everyone on the stage was better than Clinton, which not only got a laugh but succeeded in buying Carson a few extra seconds of camera time, which he used to urge Republicans to stop attacking each other because “if we manage to damage ourselves, and we lose the next election, and a progressive gets in there and they get two or three Supreme Court picks, this nation is over as we know it.”

OK, saying the “nation is over as we know it” wasn’t all that funny. The funny part was just the way Carson — who has routinely complained about getting too little time — gamed the rule.  

Now, to make you feel even better if you decided not to watch last night, here is an exchange between Cavuto and Trump, which, perhaps in some parallel universe, clarified Trump’s position on whether he favors a 45 percent tariff on trade with China. At least it gave Trump a chance to dis The New York Times, a paper that, according to Trump, is “always wrong.”

(The transcription of the exchange below is from this excellent annotated transcript of the full debate by the Washington Post.)

And, since I don’t plan to chime back in after the excerpt below, thanks for getting this far, and for not smoking and have a nice day…

CAVUTO: Mr. Trump, sometimes maybe in the heat of the campaign, you say things and you have to dial them back. Last week, the New York Times editorial board quoted [you] as saying that you would [impose], "up to 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods."

TRUMP: That's wrong. They were wrong. It's The New York Times, they are always wrong.

CAVUTO: Well...

TRUMP: They were wrong.

CAVUTO: You never said because they provided that...

TRUMP: No, I said, "I would use —" they were asking me what to do about North Korea. China, they don't like to tell us but they have total control — just about, of North Korea. They can solve the problem of North Korea if they wanted to but they taunt us.

They say, "well, we don't really have control." Without China, North Korea doesn't even eat. China is ripping us on trade. They're devaluing their currency and they're killing our companies. Thousands of thousands — you look at the number of companies and the number in terms of manufacturing of plans that we've lost — 50,000 because of China.

[CROSSTALK]

CAVUTO: So [you’ve] never said to put a tariff on their...

TRUMP: We've lost anywhere between four and seven million jobs because of China. What I said then was, "we have very unfair trade with China. We're going to have a trade deficit of 505 billion dollars this year with China." A lot of that is because they devalue their currency.

What I said to The New York Times, is that, "we have great power, economic power over China and if we wanted to use that and the amount — where the 45 percent comes in, that would be the amount they saw their devaluations that we should get." That we should get.

What I'm saying is this, I'm saying that we do it but if they don't start treating us fairly and stop devaluing and let their currency rise so that our companies can compete and we don't lose all of these millions of jobs that we're losing, I would certainly start taxing goods that come in from China. Who the hell has to lose 505 billion dollars a year?

CAVUTO: I'm sorry, you lost me.

TRUMP: It's not that complicated actually.

CAVUTO: Then I apologize. Then I want to understand, if you don't want a 45 percent tariff, say that wasn't the figure, would you be open — are you open to slapping a higher tariff on Chinese goods of any sort to go back at them?

TRUMP: OK, just so you understand — I know so much about trading about with China. Carl Icahn today, as you know, endorsed. Many businessmen want to endorse me.

CAVUTO: I know...

TRUMP: Carl said, "no, no —" but he's somebody — these are the kind of people that we should use to negotiate and not the China people that we have who are political hacks who don't know what they're doing and we have problems like this. If these are the kinds of people — we should use our best and our finest.

Now, on that tariff — here's what I'm saying, China — they send their goods and we don't tax it — they do whatever they want to do. They do whatever what they do, OK. When we do business with China, they tax us. You don't know it, they tax us.

I have many friends that deal with China. They can't — when they order the product and when they finally get the product it is taxed. If you looking at what happened with Boeing and if you look at what happened with so many companies that deal — so we don't have an equal playing field. I'm saying, absolutely, we don't have to continue to lose 505 billion dollars as a trade deficit for the privilege of dealing with China.

I'm a free trader. I believe in it but we have to be smart and we have to use smart people to negotiate. I have the largest bank in the world as a tenant of mine. I sell tens' of millions of [inaudible].

I love China. I love the Chinese people but they laugh themselves, they can't believe how stupid the American leadership is.

CAVUTO: So you're open to a tariff?

TRUMP: I'm totally open to a tariff. If they don't treat us fairly, hey, their whole trade is tariffed. You can't deal in China without tariffs. They do it to us, we don't it. It's not fair trade.

Women in the United States are waiting longer to have their first child — a trend that is occurring in all states and among all major ethnic and racial groups, according a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The mean age of first-time mothers in 2014 was 26.3 years. That’s up from 24.9 years in 2000 — and the highest it’s been since 1970, when the government first started collecting this particular statistic.

As the authors of the new report point out, this trend “can affect the number of children a typical woman will have in her lifetime, family size, and … the overall population change in the United States.”

The main reason for the rise in the age of first-time mothers is the decline in the number of teenage births, which has fallen 42 percent over the past 15 years, according to the CDC data.

In 2000, one in four births was to a teenage mom. That compares to one in seven births in 2014.

The 2000-2014 drop in teen births, by the way, is not related to an increase in abortions. As the Guttmacher Institute reported in a study published in 2014, the teen abortion rate has dropped 66 percent since its 1988 peak.

Older women also behind trend

Yet, as the new CDC report shows, women aren’t just waiting until they are out of their teens to have their first child. An increasing number are delaying childbirth even further — until they’re out of their 20s.

From 2000 to 2014, the percentage of first-time mothers in the U.S. who were 30 to 34 years old rose 28 percent (from 16.5 percent to 21.1 percent), and the percentage aged 35 and rose 23 percent (from 7.4 percent to 9.1 percent).

Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System

Increase in mean age at first birth, by state: United States, 2000–2014

Women who are most likely to be first-time moms, however, continue to be those between the ages of 20 and 24. Both in 2000 and in 2014, some 28.7 of all U.S. babies were born to women in this age group.

Interestingly — and perhaps not unexpectedly — as the mean age of first-time mothers has increased, the amount of time they wait to have their second child has decreased. In 2000, women were waiting an average of 2.8 years before having their second child. In 2014, that gap had narrowed to an average of 2.4 months.

Across all groups

The delay in childbirth is occurring in all major racial groups and in all groups with Hispanic origins. Non-Hispanic black women experienced the largest gains in mean age at first birth (up 1.9 years between 2000 and 2014), while women of Cuban background had the smallest gains (up 0.5 years). 

Overall, Asian/Pacific Islander women had the highest mean age at first birth in 2014 (29.5 years), and American Indian/Alaskan Native women had the lowest (23.1 years).

Source: CDC/NCHS, National Vital Statistics System

Mean age, by birth order: United States, 2000–2014

Along with Asian/Pacific Islander women, three other groups had a higher mean age at first birth in 2014 than the overall average of 26.3 years: non-Hispanic white (27.0 years), Cuban (27.0 years), and Central and South American (26.5 years). 

Conversely, three groups joined American Indian/Alaskan Native women with having a lower mean age than the average: Non-Hispanic black (24.2 years), Puerto Rican (24.1 years), and Mexican (23.7 years).

Across the country

The CDC data also reveals that the trend toward having first children at older ages is occurring in all states — and the District of Columbia. 

States with the largest increases (1.7 years or more) in the mean age of first-time mothers tended to be in the western United States (California, Oregon, Washington, Utah and Colorado). But greater increases were also seen in Illinois, Arkansas and Washington, D.C.

States with the smallest increases (less than 1.2 years) were all east of the Mississippi River, from Tennessee to New Hampshire — with one exception, New Mexico.

In most Upper Midwestern states — including Minnesota — the mean age of first-time moms rose between 1.2 to 1.4 years. (The CDC report does not include specific state-by-state data.)

FMI: You can read the CDC report in full on the agency’s website.

Tom Warth, who founded Books for Africa in 1988, will lead a walk across Zanzibar next month to raise awareness and money for the program.

Warth will turn 80 on the 20-mile walk across the island, which is off the cost of Tanzania in East Africa.

Books for Africa, with headquarters in St. Paul, has sent 34 million books to 49 countries in Africa over the years. Warth founded it after visiting a small library in Uganda that had few books.

Joining him on the Zanzibar walk will be David Robinson, son of baseball legend Jackie Robinson. David Robinson has lived in Tanzania since 1981 and runs a cooperative of coffee farmers.

Also on the walk will be Emma Kasiga of Minneapolis, who was born in Tanzania. Her aunt, Mama Anna Mkapa, the former first lady of Tanzania, will also be in the group of 25.

Brian Cladoosby

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama delivered his annual State of the Union address from the U.S. Capitol — but 36 hours later, and a few blocks away, a representative of another sovereign nation gave an address on the status of his people.

On Thursday morning, Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, delivered the annual address on the State of Indian Nations at D.C.’s Newseum. The NCAI is the oldest and largest organization of sovereign tribes in the country, and the speech is considered an important opportunity for the American Indian government and advocacy community to reflect on what its goals and priorities are for the upcoming year.

In attendance were American Indian tribal leaders from across the country, nonprofit advocates, and officials from a number of federal agencies. Present to deliver an official federal response was Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum. The eight-term Democrat is the ranking member on the House panel that appropriates money for tribal schools, initiatives, and other programs, and she is co-chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus.

In their speeches, Cladoosby and McCollum affirmed two key themes: that, while American Indians have made immense progress in recent years, serious problems still hamper Indian country — and that tribal governments, not the federal government, hold the keys to solving them.

Empowering tribal governments

In his address, Cladoosby, who hails from the Swinomish Tribe in Washington state, began by asserting the right of Indian tribal nations to self-determination, citing the Founding Fathers, and a long history of treaties between the U.S. federal government and tribal leaders.

But he also described a history of government intervention, urged on by an agenda of cultural assimilation, and later, a heavy-handed intent to “fix” Indian country, that has led to deeply negative outcomes for Indian peoples. President Richard Nixon, Cladoosby said, “urged Congress to empower tribal governments to do what is best for tribal citizens. And 46 years later, we have proven the wisdom of his conviction.”

Cladoosby, flanked at a podium by the U.S. flag and a traditional staff lined with eagle feathers, outlined recent successes resulting from increased tribal sovereignty, mentioning specially Minnesota’s Fond du Lac Band of Chippewa, which took the initiative to build its own assisted living facility for tribal elders.

While his tone was broadly optimistic, Cladoosby addressed some of the grave problems facing Indian country: high rates of unemployment and desperate poverty, the country’s highest rates of domestic violence, the prevalence of chronic disease like diabetes, the sorry state of many reservation schools.

Cladoosby emphasized that federal policymakers have to realize that allocating funds for tribes to address these problems isn’t money wasted — it’s an investment, he said, that will prevent more American Indians from going on welfare, to the hospital, or in jail.

McCollum’s response

Rep. McCollum followed Cladoosby, addressing a familiar crowd of Indian leaders and advocates that has gotten to know her well over the years. In her remarks, the congresswoman affirmed what she called a bipartisan commitment in Congress to respect tribal sovereignty and give tribes the resources they need to solve their problems.

Rep. Betty McCollum

McCollum rattled off a list of 2015 policy achievements for tribal communities, namely, increasing funding for the Bureau of Indian Affairs and completing key Bureau of Indian Education projects. She said that more needs to be done to bolster existing law with regard to tribal sovereignty, especially on child welfare, hunting and fishing rights, and land trust issues.

She urged those in the room to hold members of Congress accountable, and to ensure that the next president follow what she called Obama’s lead to serve as a top ally for Indian country.

Speaking with MinnPost after her speech, McCollum said that non-Indian Minnesotans should consider the welfare of Indian communities as central to the welfare of the state. Minnesota is home to approximately 102,000 American Indians, making it one of 14 states with American Indian populations greater than 100,000.

“I think we’re very fortunate in Minnesota to have tribal nations that are achieving some of the success and promise for the future, but they’re still struggling with many of the same issues that rural communities and our urban schools deal with,” McCollum said, and referenced the dilapidated state of the “Bug” School in northern Minnesota, which made headlines last year.

“We still have our challenges. But I think the 11 tribes in Minnesota have put together a path forward and a plan to embody opportunities and achieve success,” McCollum said. “But we need to do that in partnership. When those tribal nations are strong, Minnesota is strong, and all Minnesotans benefit.”

Stephen Prutsman

An internationally acclaimed pianist/composer and one of the SPCO’s first artistic partners (2004-07), Stephen Prutsman remembers playing piano to silent films when he was seven or eight years old. “Our family had old Super 8 movies of Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin, and I messed around with them,” Prutsman said by phone from San Francisco earlier this week.

Starting in his mid-teens, he was house pianist at a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor, where he played ragtime music. “It paid $3.50 an hour, which was a lot for the time. Wearing a straw hat, white shirt, red bow tie and arm band, I got up at an old beat-up piano. Sometimes, when the crowd got unruly – after a football game, when folks had been drinking – I had to dodge pieces of thrown pizza.”

As a teen, Prutsman was a contestant on TV’s “The Gong Show.”

“I started off playing the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ very slowly, and they were ready to gong me, so I broke out into ‘Alley Cat’ and they put the mallets down. Then I jumped to ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ playing faster than I could handle, and I won.”

Years later, having won even bigger awards (top medal in the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow, gold medal at the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Music Competition, an Avery Fischer Career Grant) and well into his multifaceted career, Prutsman was commissioned to write a new work for a film of his choosing, to be performed with the St. Lawrence String Quartet in an art deco movie house. He chose Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.,” a 45-minute 1924 comic masterpiece with fantastic (for the time) special effects. “A lot of the music in ‘Sherlock Jr.’ is ragtime,” Prutsman said.

And now you’ve followed the circuitous path that brings Prutsman back to St. Paul for two very different concerts.

On Tuesday at the Ordway Concert Hall, he’ll join the chamber group Accordo for an evening of music and silent film. The program includes “Sherlock Jr.” for piano and string quartet (he’ll be at the Steinway) and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” for string quartet. The quartet for both will be Stephen Copes, Ruggero Allifranchini, Maiya Papach and Julie Albers. For each, Prutsman has written music he describes as “reflective in some way of the time the film was made, and the environment of the film itself.”

“The ‘Caligari,’ a horror film made in Germany [in 1920], is expressionist, an art film,” Prutsman said. “It was striving to do something new and different, intriguing and unsettling artistically.” So he wrote a 12-tone, dodecaphonic score … sort of.

“The basic rules of 12-tone are to use all 12 of the pitches in a chromatic scale before you repeat one of them,” Prutsman explained. “The idea was to obliterate tonality … With true 12-tone music, you have to listen to it 100 times before you start to hear it melodically. I didn’t want people to have to do that, so the score to ‘Caligari’ is not a true 12-tone piece.” He uses smaller fragments, harmonic hints and musical motifs. Don’t worry, just watch the film and see how Prutsman’s music fits and it.

As a comedy, “Sherlock Jr.” invited a different musical approach. “I used a language that would have been appropriate at that time,” Prutsman said, “with lots of jokes and gags, and punch points directly connected to the visuals.” There’s a dream scene with dreamy music, some aforementioned ragtime, stride piano, and nods to Duke Ellington. (Prutsman also plays jazz piano.) Some listeners have heard hints of Faure and Richard Strauss.

Here’s a brief trailer that will give you a taste of what to expect:

Accordo with guest Stephen Prutsman. 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Ordway Concert Hall. FMI and tickets ($21-$36). Following the concert, everyone is invited to a reception with the musicians at Vieux Carré. Show your ticket stub for free entry.

A few days before, on Saturday morning, Prutsman will give a concert at the Landmark Center for children and young adults with autism and their families. Prutsman and his wife, Sigrid Van Bladel, are parents of a young teen with autism.

“We noticed that activities for families with kids on the spectrum are limited,” Prutsman said. “These are kids with nonvolitional behaviors – hand-flapping, super high anxieties, vocalizations. So you really can’t go to the movies. You certainly can’t pay $110 to hear the orchestra play a symphony; you’ll get kicked out. You can’t go anywhere neurotypicals have paid money to hear something without distraction. These kids of ours on the spectrum can be a distraction. So we decided to make our own events.”

In 2012, Prutsman and Van Bladel founded Autism Fun Bay Area, where activities include hikes, a summer camp, a swim program, jazz jams, beach outings and sensory-friendly concerts, like the one that will take place in St. Paul.

“It’s a chance for families to come with their kids,” Prutsman said. “All behaviors are welcome. If little Jimmy is jumping down in his seat or vocalizing, Mom doesn’t have to worry or get embarrassed. It’s all part of the event.

“The saddest thing about developmentally disabled kids is the family feels trapped. They can’t get out as a family. Having lived this journey for twelve years, that’s the most important thing for me.

“We try to engage the kids as much as possible with the instruments, music, and eye contact. I have them come up at the end and noodle with the keyboard while I play some pretty chords. Cool stuff happens. The kids don’t know me, they haven’t touched a piano, but they noodle on the keyboard. That’s engagement, something kids with autism have a really hard time with. That’s what I really love.”

Azure Family Concert for Autism Families: Stephen Prutsman. Saturday at 11 a.m. in the Weyerhaeuser Auditorium on the Landmark Center’s lower level. FMI, including a downloadable social story (a tool to help children with autism). Space is limited, so a reservation is required.

The picks

Ongoing at the Walker: 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards Screenings. For Walker and IFP members only, the chance to see the nominated films in four categories – Best Feature, Best First Feature, Best Documentary and the John Cassavettes Award – for free. This year’s films include Charlie Kaufman’s “Anomalisa,” Todd Haynes’ “Carol,” Laurie Anderson’s “Heart of a Dog” and Marielle Heller’s “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Free tickets; first come, first served. FMI including screening schedule.

Courtesy of the Walker Art Center

Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s “Anomalisa,” nominated for Best Feature in the 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Opens today (Friday, Jan. 15) at Como Park Zoo: Dr. Entorno’s Palace of Exotic Wonders. A traveling exhibit of real live, bizarre and freakish insects and invertebrates from around the world, presented as an old-fashioned circus sideshow. Things like glow-in-the-dark scorpions, the cyanide-secreting Giant African Millipede, the Chilean Rose-Haired Tarantula and Giant Mealworms. And the (suddenly ordinary-sounding) Black Widow. Daily 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Ends April 17.

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Dr. Entorno’s Palace of Exotic Wonders

Starts tonight (Friday, Jan. 15) at the Film Society’s St. Anthony Main Theatre: Wim Wenders Retrospective. Seven films showing in rotation, including “Paris, Texas,” the “Road Trilogy” (in chronological order), the rare director’s cut of “Until the End of the World,” “Buena Vista Social Club” and his latest, “Every Thing Will Be Fine.” FMI including schedule and tickets ($8.50; $10 for “Buena Vista Social Club”).

Starts Saturday at the Sabes JCC: Twin Cities Jewish Humor Festival. Nine nights of standup, stories, improv, art and laughter, featuring comedians from around the country including Mark Matusof, author Christopher Noxon and the “Not So Kosher” podcasters. At the Sabes JCC, the St. Paul JCC and Brave New Workshop. FMI and tickets (all-festival pass $54; prices vary for individual events). Ends Jan. 30.

Hot tickets

On sale today at 10 a.m.: Zakir Hussain at the Pantages on March 19. Hussain is to the tabla what Béla Fleck is to the banjo. Both are world-class wonders (actually, the two have performed together). A national treasure in India, Hussain has played with everyone from Mickey Hart to Yo Yo Ma. FMI and tickets ($32.50-$48.50).

DFL Gov. Mark Dayton kicked off the 2016 bonding debate this week with an ambitious $1.4 billion package of borrowing projects, focusing heavily on clean water, higher education and public safety projects.

Dayton stretched his bonding announcement into a two-day affair, proposing Thursday to spend $167 million to help mostly small, far-flung communities update their clean water infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates there’s an $11 billion need in Minnesota over 20 years to update aging wastewater treatment facilities and drinking water systems. Dayton, who is holding a clean water summit in February, said the issue will be one of his top priorities for his final three years in office.

“Minnesota has long been known for the abundance and quality of its water,” Dayton said Thursday. “It’s no longer something we can take for granted.”

Dayton unveiled the rest of his bonding proposal Friday — his largest bill yet — investing heavily in infrastructure repairs on college campuses across the state, affordable housing and public safety improvements, including funds to construct less-restrictive housing options for offenders locked in the state’s controversial sex offender program (a full list of the projects here, and a county-by-county breakdown here).

Some highlights: 

• $135 million for repairs to buildings on University of Minnesota and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities campuses across the state
• $125 million for public safety, including $70.3 million to complete the renovation of the Minnesota Security Hospital in St. Peter
• $85 million for oil rail safety improvements, including $69.6 million for highway rail grade separations in Moorhead, Prairie Island and Coon Rapids
• $90 million for affordable housing projects
• $42.9 million to rebuild the Kellogg Boulevard Bridge, which connects downtown St. Paul with the city’s eastern neighborhoods and suburbs
• $31.9 million to fully restore the 10th Avenue Bridge, which connects downtown Minneapolis to the University of Minnesota campus

Governors typically set the tone of the bonding debate, but legislators will have a big say in what gets included. Bonding bills require a three-fifths majority to pass in both chambers, meaning Democrats in control of the Senate must court Republican minority votes, and House majority Republicans will have to include projects for Democrats in the minority. 

Dayton is already facing an uphill climb with his $1.4 billion package of projects. Lawmakers typically bond for $1 billion each biennium, and many Republicans are reluctant to borrow over that amount.

“Gov. Dayton’s historically large borrowing proposal should be cut in half before we even begin talking about statewide priorities and specific projects,” Senate Republican Minority Leader David Hann said Friday.

Democrats, on the other hand, welcomed Dayton's proposal and praised his focus on things like water quality and higher education. “Governor Dayton’s robust bonding package demonstrates strategic investments that will keep up the momentum as the state’s economy continues to gain steam," Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, said. "His proposal preserves state assets, repairs critical infrastructure, and wisely invests in higher education, public safety, and affordable housing.

Since session ended, legislators on the two capital investment committees have been traveling across the state to review projects.

Traditionally, legislators craft bonding bills on the even-numbered years, but lawmakers have passed a package of projects nearly every year since the 1980s. During a June special session last year, legislators agreed to a $180 million bonding bill.

Dr. Deborah Swackhamer

On Monday, Feb. 22, MinnPost’s Earth Journal Circle presents “Land of 10,000 Lakes: Can We Achieve Water Sustainability?” The program featuring Dr. Deborah Swackhamer will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at Hell’s Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis.

MinnPost Silver, Gold and Platinum members ($5/month or more) can buy tickets below. The public sale starts Jan. 18. To verify your membership status, contact Claire Radomski, our new development director, at cradomski@minnpost.com or 612-455-6954.

Swackhamer, former director of the University of Minnesota’s Water Resources Center, will discuss issues threatening regional water quality and quantity. Earth Journal writer Ron Meador will moderate the Q&A session. In May 2015, Earth Journal was named Best Independent Blog (on any subject) by the MN Society of Professional Journalists. 

Swackhamer led the effort to produce the massive Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework – commissioned with funds from the Legacy Amendment to provide policy guidance for decision-making over the next 25 years – and has served in leadership roles on scientific panels advising the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Joint Commission. Because of her scholarship on chemical pollution of water sources, she now serves on a National Academy of Sciences panel focused on environmental science and toxicology.

Tickets including dinner, soft drinks, tax and gratuity are $28 for MinnPost Silver, Gold and Platinum members and $38 for others. Dinner will be served at tables during the program. Dinner choices are mac & cheese, BBQ pulled pork sandwich, walleye fish & chips, Greek salad with chicken, and classic beef burger. Registration deadline is Feb. 15. 

You may want to plan some indoor activities this weekend. Here’s MPR’s Paul Huttner with a chilling report: “ Batten down the weather hatches. … The season’s coldest air mass so far, and likely winter’s best arctic punch, arrives this weekend. Seriously folks, the level of cold this weekend enters the danger zone. Wind chills to -40 degrees can freeze exposed skin in less than a minute. … The ‘Minnesota hunch’ is back.”

The Ice Road Man Cometh No More. The Pioneer Press’ Mary Divine has bad news for some employees of Andersen Corp.:“Dave ‘Swanee’ Swanson was a godsend for Andersen Corp. workers who live in Wisconsin. …As soon as the ice on the St. Croix River was thick enough, Swanson would fire up his white 1986 Chevy half-ton pickup truck and start plowing the popular "Ice Road," a route commuters used to save time. … After 24 years of plowing, Swanson is done. He sold his beloved pickup truck and plow attachment in November.”

This is just what Uptown needed. In the Star Tribune, Kavita Kumar and Kristen Leigh Painter write:“Target is opening a store in the heart of Uptown, anchoring a new building with apartments and offices on the bustling site. … The Minneapolis-based retailer is building its smallest-format store in one of the city’s hippest neighborhoods, which is a magnet for young professionals. The new store, to open in October 2017, will occupy the ground floor of a new office and apartment building on the site of the former Cheapo music store along Lake Street.”

It’ll be interesting to watch this shake out.Also in the Star Tribune, Dee DePass writes:“Starkey Laboratories’ ousted president on Friday filed a long-threatened lawsuit against the company, alleging several instances of wrongdoing by owner Bill Austin and members of his family. … Starkey’s attorney, David B. Olson, shot back that the company cannot comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but denied the allegations. In addition, ‘we are confident that the investigation will show that [fired president Jerry Ruzicka] abused the trust that was placed in him, by among other things, stealing millions of dollars from the company and its employees over a period of several years.’ ”

In other news…

City Pages’ mistake is your gain:“Minnesota beers strike back at City Pages with ‘Worst Happy Hour’” [City Pages]

The Saints ballpark won recognition from the American Institute of Architects— the first minor league ballpark ever to do so. [St. Paul Saints]

Welcome to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin:“Wisconsin ACT scores plummet” [Urban Milwaukee]

“Black-ish” star Yara Shahidiwas born in Minneapolis. [Pioneer Press]

The Lee House: Preserving a relic of racism

from streets.mn by Scott Shaffer

There is a modest, white house at the corner of 46th Street East and Columbus Avenue South in Minneapolis’s Field neighborhood. The architecture of the 1923 home eludes classification — its low-pitched rooflines hint at the craftsman style, but the white exterior, columns, and pediment seem neoclassical. The house lacks the charming stone work and brick and stucco exteriors of quainter homes in south Minneapolis. Despite its architectural insignificance, the home it has immense value, and can connect us to an important story about our city’s past, which has ramifications for our present and future. In fact, it’s so valuable that in 2014, the National Park Service added the property to the National Register of Historic Places. (Here’s the application.)

The white house was built in what was at the time a predominantly white neighborhood. In 1927, the Field Neighborhood Association, wanting to protect the character of the neighborhood, asked homeowners to sign contracts promising that they would not sell their homes to non-white buyers. In June 1931, Arthur and Edith Lee moved into the home with their six-year-old daughter. Arthur was a World War I veteran and a U.S. Postal Service worker. The Lees were also black.

Ear plugs in: This is what recycling looks like

from News Day by Mary Turck

It’s noisy in here. Crashing, clashing, grinding, headache-inducing noisy — and that’s with earplugs in. Not only earplugs: for this visit to Eureka’s Materials Recycling Facility (MRF), I’m also outfitted with a safety vest, plastic goggles, and protective hard hat. Watching a big, yellow front-end loader move across the floor toward us, I’m glad that I also have an earpiece and transmitter so I can follow the directions given by my guide, Lynn Hoffman, Eureka’s chief of community engagement.

Characters from the not so new west

from Wry Wing Politics by Brian Lambert

Over the recent holiday week I took a 2000-mile spin up from Phoenix around central Nevada and back, veering through Death Valley in hopes of shaking off the high plains chill. I had no explicit intention of feeling out Trumpist America. But I have an affinity for the truly unaffected, or at least the unconsciously unaffected, although that’s a bit of an oxymoron. Point being: Spend enough time around media and PR types and you develop an appreciation for people who say whatever is on their minds, cautious, delicate, socially-strategic parsing be damned.

Look on the sunny side of winter

from After Thought by Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Molly never moves livelier than on her return trips, prancing so high and so quickly that those frozen paws barely touch the earth. If the temps are warm enough for snowballs, she’ll burst back into the house with snowblobs crusted in her curls, flinging canine curses as she makes a bee line for her favorite blanket on the couch.

This winter, though, the dog is the only one at our address who’s permitted to complain. Russ and I are pursuing a serious scientific inquiry into the Scandinavian way of winter, namely this: If you appreciate these January days instead of whining, can you make the season sing?

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The following is an editorial from the Mankato Free Press.

While critics say the recent executive actions on guns taken by President Obama threaten Second Amendment rights, the actions will actually strengthen lawful gun use and by extension Second Amendment rights.

Obama’s actions put teeth into current gun law and bolster the resources for more rigorous enforcement. They also create a fairer playing field for gun commerce.

More and more people see unquestioning allegiance to lax gun-law enforcement as a significant threat to public safety. By strengthening enforcement, Obama will reinforce the rule of law and the idea that Americans can have firearms if they obey the laws on possessing firearms that have been in place for decades.

The executive action adds 230 FBI analysts to the ranks of those who do gun background checks, an increase of 50 percent. The current background check law is a convoluted reverse permission system, allowing a gun sale to go through if a background check cannot be completed in 3 days. The gun is then issued, no questions asked.

The new rules for stepped up 24-hour processing of background checks may have made a difference in the killing of the members of a congregation of a South Carolina church. The killer bought a gun because his background could not be determined after three days.

Other critics say Obama’s actions won’t stop mass shootings like those in Newtown, Connecticut, because the guns were purchased legally. So they’re right in one respect, but no one is saying the new rule will prevent those kind of killings. It’s a false premise. There are still hundreds of thousands of single and multiple victim killings that the new rules have a chance of preventing. To think otherwise is just beyond a reasonable assessment of the facts.

The executive action gives the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms another 200 investigators to do license checks on the increased number of people who will now fall under the definition of “gun dealer.”

The ATF even had trouble sanctioning rogue licensed dealers. The biggest gun seller in Washington state finally lost its license for a horrific record of failing to do background checks, losing track of some 2,400 guns in its possession and being on the list for guns most used in crimes. But it took the ATF 10 years to shut it down, according to a report in the Seattle Times.

The new rules will require more gun sellers obtain a license and conduct background checks.

The increase in enforcement does not require more congressional funding, and Obama said he would much prefer Congress act on these issues. But Congress has been moving slower than ever as it become more a political battleground than a place to solve the country’s problems.

The executive actions are a step in the right direction. A large majority of Americans, including gun owners, support background checks for gun buyers. These reasonable and warranted measures to strengthen our enforcement will improve public safety and protect the integrity of the Second Amendment.

Reprinted with permission.

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