Bob Collins
Opponents of frac sand mining in Winona County have lost a legal challenge at the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
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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 been a steady drumbeat of ‘not business friendly’ over the years as opponents of Minnesota’s tax structure have lamented the state isn’t more like South Dakota.
Now it’s South Dakota’s turn to lament the loss of a company to a neighboring state.
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Neighborhoods in the United States will look just like this today when the United States plays Ghana in the World Cup competition.
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What’s the whole Medtronic-Covidien deal all about? It depends on who you read. @medtronic purchase of Irish Covidien for 43 billion and move of exec. headquarters to Ireland sure to fuel debate on corporate tax rates — esme murphy – WCCO (@esmemurphy) June 16, 2014 Maybe not. You can’t do much better than hearing the Read more →
Kalevala, Minnesota? Never heard of it until Friday when I was driving the back road from Hibbing, had time to spare, no one to nag me, and a faded “historical marker” sign to follow.
The township in Carlton County only takes a few seconds to miss if you’re in a hurry to get to Moose Lake, especially with the road construction going on on Minnesota Highway 73. Read more →
his is the sort of flooding we see in March in western Minnesota but this time it’s because of 6 inches of rain that fell overnight in Luverne. Read more →
Tomorrow is Flag Day in the United States, honoring the day in 1777 when the flag was adopted. It’s had a good run, despite our best attempts to embarrass it, as documented every year at this time on NewsCut (example). Minnesota Public Radio’s Nikki Tundel has been stashing her most disturbing encounters with the flag Read more →
“Ice girls” face the same lousy pay, poor working conditions and exposure as other team cheerleaders. Read more →
Can we please get on the same page on the issue of bike helmets, America?
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A father-son bike ride, for no particular reason. Read more →
Today’s StoryCorps from NPR offers a vivid reminder that it took more — much more — than freedom riders and and bus protests to advance civil rights in this country.
Fifty years ago next week, for example, several African Americans jumped into a whites-only swimming pool at a Florida hotel. In response, the owner poured acid into the water. Read more →
The interview carries a significant message: Politicians in the coming elections — especially Democrats — are going to have to answer for their past positions on same-sex marriage, the same way politicians of days-gone-by had to answer for their views on race and segregation. Read more →
The Minnesota Lynx were feted at the White House — again — today. The WNBA champions, as is custom, gave President Obama one of their jerseys. The new jersey — no Lynx, all advertisements — never looked more inappropriate.
It’s amazing, really, how one word can dog a person. Newsweek applied the “W word” to former President George Bush in 1987. And people repeated it until it stuck for the same reason characterizations stick today in social media: People often believe what they’re told to believe, and much of politics is marketing. Not a Read more →
Can we call ourselves the United States when we so very clearly are not? This graphics, released today from Pew Research, is a stunning characterization of the polarization of the United States, as evidenced by the politicians we send to Washington. The researchers aggregated every roll call vote back to the 1700s on the two-dimensional Read more →