In the aftermath of the Market Basket labor settlement, one of the very few times that a CEO showed why valuing employees is good for the bottom line, CBS Sunday Morning provided a terrific analysis of the situation that’s entirely appropriate for Labor Day weekend.
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for August 2014
The St. Paul Police Federation, the police union, is disputing the assertion that police officers were at fault in the arrest of an African American man who was sitting in chairs in the St. Paul skyway. The video of Chris Lollie’s arrest in January, which was released this week (available here), has prompted a call Read more →
Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic pretty much gets it right today in his assessment of the arrest of Chris Lollie, the man in the self-taken video who apparently violated a law that doesn’t exist when he sat down in the St. Paul Skyway (The First National Bank building was listed as the “victim” in the Read more →
In the “two Americas,” the nation gets behind a kid who can play baseball, especially if the team is credited with “uplifting America” but tends to look the other way when a kid is homeless. Read more →
There’s little chance Arthur T. Demoulas will be invited to give the commencement speech next year at any respectable business school, where the next generation of CEOs are taught that their primary responsibility is to maximize shareholder value by any means necessary. That’s why his speech yesterday — at the conclusion of a summer-long protest Read more →
You know we’ve entered a new stage of political analysis when the analysts discuss whether a president should wear a tan suit while discussing serious subjects. Read more →
One observation about working the MPR booth at the State Fair again this year pretty much mirrors the observation from previous years: We need to be more like kids. P.O.S. (Stefon Alexander) had just started his performance with Mary Lucia on The Current yesterday afternoon when he stopped and told a young lady she could Read more →
After a decade of war, a peace group hangs up its signs Read more →
KTTC reports that an Amish family had to go to court yesterday for building without a permit. Ammon Swartzentruber and his wife, Sarah, say provisions in the permit violate their beliefs. Read more →
Slate and CBS political analyst John Dickerson suggests today that the end of the Scott Walker era may be at hand in Wisconsin. A poll shows Walker’s Democratic challenger, Mary Burke, has her biggest lead — just 2 percentage points — or the campaign so far. While that suggests that it’s anybody’s race, Dickerson says Read more →
No doubt there are legitimate terrorist threats to the world’s aviation system — that much is certainly obvious — but we’re going to suggest that this isn’t really one of them. Read more →
When’s the last time labor won a showdown with deep-pocketed corporate bosses? Last night. The long Market Basket grocery store dispute in Massachusetts has ended after employees got their way. The fired CEO, for whom they were protesting because he treated them well, is buying out his warring cousins’. The significance of the settlement cannot Read more →
We’ve got a better idea of how the new St. Croix bridge will look and whether it will ruin one of the most gorgeous vistas in Minnesota. Read more →
One small suggestion for Minneapolis public schools. Pick up the phone. KARE 11’s Boyd Huppert reports on the problem Sean Boyce had when a bus carrying his first-grader home on his first day of school didn’t show up. He called Minneapolis Public Schools and got put on hold. He called Kenwood Elementary on another line Read more →
Well, this is, according to Beverly Hills police, “unfortunate.” That’s the best the cops could do yesterday to explain why they handcuffed Charles Belk, a film producer who allegedly matched the description of a bank robber — large, and bald, and black. “The Beverly Hills Police Department deeply regrets the inconvenience to Mr. Belk and Read more →