Bob Collins1) A Star Tribune look at the way a sales tax increase is being divvied up by arts groups proves an old saw usually applied to journalism: It doesn’t take a conflict of interest to undermine credibility; it only takes an appearance of a conflict of interest. The paper reports that half the groups who sit on a panel recommending appropriations to the Legislature — the panel includes a representative from Minnesota Public Radio — get money from the panel.
The sales tax increase was authorized by voters via a change in the state Constitution dedicating the revenue to outdoors and arts projects. The outdoors group completed its recommendations last week.
Judging by the comments section of the newspaper article, some voters feel they were duped into voting for a bill they thought was only about the outdoors. Here’s a WCCO pre-election story on the amendment. Here’s an op-ed debate in the Star Tribune. And here’s the actual ballot question:
Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to dedicate funding to protect our drinking water sources; to protect, enhance, and restore our wetlands, prairies, forests, and fish, game, and wildlife habitat; to preserve our arts and cultural heritage; to support our parks and trails; and to protect, enhance, and restore our lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater by increasing the sales and use tax beginning July 1, 2009, by three-eighths of one percent on taxable sales until the year 2034?
Did the question play down the “arts” component in favor of the imagery of the outdoors?
2) In Washington state, Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin wants to rewrite the state’s laws to get rid of “negative” descriptions. She says negative labels are hurting kids’ chances for success. On her list for removal: “at risk” and “disadvantaged.” Instead of “children at risk,” for example, the senator suggests “children at hope.”
3) Big bottoms, hips, and thighs are healthy. And you just forked over the dough for the health club membership.
4) The recent cold snap in this hemisphere has some people claiming it disproves global warming.
And now the weather: In Melbourne overnight, the low temperature dropped to 93. It’s the worst heat wave in Australia since 1902. Farmers are predicting 70 percent of their crops have or will be destroyed.
5) The Star Tribune has posted its story based on its request for gubernatorial candidates to reveal their substance abuse and mental health issues. Twelve candidates complied with the Star Tribune request. DFLers Steve Kelley and Republicans Leslie Davis, David Hann, Bill Haas, and Tom Emmer were the only candidates to decline the survey. A political scientist claimed the survey is no big deal because mental health doesn’t have the stigma it once had, especially for politicians. It’s a claim that’s been made several times since candidate Mark Dayton acknowledged his alcoholism and battles with depression. Name one non-incumbent candidate who’s gotten elected after acknowledging getting mental health treatment. There may well be a few, but none of the claims have been accompanied by proof.
The BBC considered this a few years ago and found relative ambivalence among the UK pols:
But a lead has to come from the top. For all the supportive words we hear from politicians, endorsing such anti-stigma work and criticising prejudice when called upon to do so, there remains a sense of ambivalence about their being too closely identified with this agenda.
The article mentions an unidentified MP who decided not to go public with his illness because of “a thread of real cruelty that runs through the modern media”.
Tangent time: China has moved ahead of Germany as the #1 exporter in the world. America? We export our brand of mental illness, Essayist Ethan Watters says in the New York Times. He’s a guest today on Talk of the Nation.
This unnerving possibility springs from recent research by a loose group of anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists. Swimming against the biomedical currents of the time, they have argued that mental illnesses are not discrete entities like the polio virus with their own natural histories. These researchers have amassed an impressive body of evidence suggesting that mental illnesses have never been the same the world over (either in prevalence or in form) but are inevitably sparked and shaped by the ethos of particular times and places. In some Southeast Asian cultures, men have been known to experience what is called amok, an episode of murderous rage followed by amnesia; men in the region also suffer from koro, which is characterized by the debilitating certainty that their genitals are retracting into their bodies. Across the fertile crescent of the Middle East there is zar, a condition related to spirit-possession beliefs that brings forth dissociative episodes of laughing, shouting and singing.
Bonus: The Dallas media is pretty cocky about the Cowboys facing the Vikings this weekend.
TODAY’S QUESTION
Should candidates for public office disclose their mental health history?
WHAT WE’RE DOING
Midmorning (9-11 a.m.) – First hour: Two war journalists talk about the war in Afghanistan.
Second hour: As genomic science expands, and more rare diseases are discovered and understood, it has been brought to the forefront of preventive care, even for reproductive genetic screening.
Midday (11 a.m. – 1 p.m.) – First hour:Former U.S. ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine discusses the politics, economy and culture of Yemen.
Second hour: TBA
Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) – First hour: New York Times’ labor
correspondent Steven Greenhouse.
Second hour: Journalist Ethan Watters says we’re exporting American mental illness.
All Things Considered (3-6:30 p.m.) – Prosecutors have until this afternoon to charge the two juveniles they’ve arrested with the shooting deaths of three people at the Seward Market in Minneapolis last Wednesday. Officials have said they’ll wait to disclose a motive in the shootings until the pair is charged. We’re following the story, of course.
MPR’s Euan Kerr lights the candles for the Ordway’s 25th birthday. and looks at how it helped put Minnesota performers on a national stage without having to leave St Paul.
