Bob Collins
You know you’ve made it when the iconic On the Road feature from CBS News stops at your door. Martha Olson has made it…
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
It’s Labor Day, you may have heard. So here’s a little history they generally don’t teach in school. How two women and 11 children were among those who died at the hands of government forces so we could have decent working conditions. It was the Ludlow Massacre.
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.
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 →