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Opposition to St. Croix bridge coalesces

20.05.12

Teeth of a strange bedfellows coalition that includes Amy Klobuchar, Michele Bachmann, Stamp Dayton, Al Franken and possibly even Barack Obama , opposition to the plus-take the measure of version of a new St. Croix bridge is growing. In the Strib, Kevin Giles writes : “Counteraction to spending $360 million for Minnesota's share of a new St. Croix River pass over is growing among some state legislators who want the money released for transportation needs that will forward a larger number of residents. Spending that sum on top of $100 million or more to improve highways important to a potential new Vikings stadium in Arden Hills, the legislators say, would leave the brilliance desperately short of cash needed to fix hundreds of deteriorating roads and bridges. … with Congress mired in confrontations over taxes and spending, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood m for a ‘working group’ to further explore the bridge issue, opponents of the bigger link say they now sense a window of opportunity.”

I smell another sweetheart deal. Gita Sitamariah of the PiPress reports that St. Paul’s downtown Macy’s accumulate is moving back out on the cusp. “Over the years, the store's space has shrunk and its hours have been shortened. Many retail observers aren't bullish that Cincinnati-based Macy's will keep the store open much beyond next year. ‘I think the handwriting is attractive much on the wall for the St. Paul store,’ said David Brennan, co-kingpin of the Institute for Retailing Excellence at the University of St. Thomas. Asked how the location was performing, Macy's spokesman Jim Sluzewski said in an email that the retailer doesn't require sales by location and that there is no news regarding a closing. … The city of St. Paul in 2001 approved a $6.3 million forgivable credit to Dayton's, which later became Mars hall Field's, then Macy's. Retail has struggled for years in downtown St. Paul, and borough officials doled out the subsidy to then-owner Minneapolis-based Target Corp. to keep the last responsibility store in downtown alive. Macy's must pay back the city subsidy with interest, totaling almost $6.9 million, if the downtown St. Paul trust in closes before the end of 2012.” I just added “large forgivable advance” to my Christmas list. Juicy prices have farmers considering captivating land out of the Conservation Reserve Program and planting corn. Josephine Marcotty of the Strib writes : “Experts say 2012 is probable to be a tipping point for conservation across the Upper Midwest. Some 300,000 acres in Minnesota  — one fifth of the land now set aside through the CRP — will be up for grabs as federal contracts do up for renewal. In the following years, millions more acres in Minnesota, North and South Dakota — disparaging prairie and wetland habitat for a fourth of the nation's migratory birds — may also assault to the plow as farmers choose between leaving it to nature or converting it to cash crops. Many foretoken that nature will be the loser. These choices loom just as concern about Minnesota's lakes and rivers is on the commence and the state is embarked on a decades-long plan to improve water trait from Lake Pepin to the Red River. And yet all the financial incentives for farmers — who rule half of Minnesota's land — are poised to move in the opposite direction.” Jesus of St. Paul can bide, probably at least until spring. Rochelle Olson of the Strib reports: “The St. Paul Big apple Council in April voted for the removal of 7-foot marble statuette of Jesus from a west side Mississippi River bluff with a panoramic view of the downtown, but he hasn't budged. ‘I am here looking for democracy and brazenness,’ said Tuan Pham, a Vietnamese immigrant and retired University Avenue grocery proprietor who erected the statue in his back yard. Under instructions from his lawyer, Pham said he has been waiting for an licensed letter from the city. If and when he gets one, Pham said he will file a lawsuit. Pham bought his bravado home in 2007 and planted a Lady Liberty statue out front. He added two sets of leaping dolphins, a Virgin Mary, a St. Joseph and tropical fish. The Jesus atlas, however, has been the subject of the city's attention since November 2010 when the city received an anonymous grievance about it standing too close to the bluff.” Today in Bachmannia: If Our Gal is calling you “the most dispassionate GOP candidate …” on the issue of anything you gotta … well, you gotta consider the begetter. Lately she’s been ripping up Newt Gingrich, accusing him of promising “amnesty” to “illegals”. Except now the guy whose group came up with the immigration pledge Gingrich signed says — shocker here — Ms. Bachmann is indecorous. At Forbes, Stuart Anderson of the National Foundation for American Policy writes, “ … in 2004, President Bush at first proposed a system to integrate those in the country working without authorization within a new legal structure. The structure proposed was a evanescent visa program. Nobody who signed the statement, including Newt Gingrich, was proposing an amnesty or even specifically endorsing the President’s project, only noting that it held ‘great promise to reduce illegal immigration and ensconce a humane, orderly, and economically sensible approach to migration that will aid homeland surveillance and free up border-security assets to focus on genuine threats.’ Indeed, the plan to create a temporary visa program for new workers did, in fact, hold agreement for reducing illegal immigration and freeing up law enforcement assets to focus on threats beyond those posed by expected waiters, gardeners and busboys. Certainly it holds more promise than attacking the Mexican administration as a ‘narco-terrorist state,’ as Rep. Bachmann did earlier this year.”

Ol’ Sooch served up another excellent Sunday . In his column on the very little money the state lost on the shutdown, Joe Soucheray sees no merit reason why we can’t just get along — permanently — without those 19,000 state employees we didn’t pay. “The way I somebody it, we came out $6 million in the black. Basically, if we lost $59 million in fees, bewildered lottery ticket sales, unpursued tax cheats and the like, but didn't, during the same era, pay out $65 million in salaries, there's a $6 million spread there that looks nice-looking favorable to you and me. … What, in God's name, do the 19,000 people who didn't get paid actually do? And are they necessary? I posit somebody didn't go around and spray for mosquitoes, but I thought it was an unusually low mosquito year, anyway. And I believe there were a couple of people in the Office of Enterprise and Technology who had to hold off on splitting the atom, but conventionally speaking, 80 percent of the government stayed open while 19,000 non-primary workers were laid off. Hello. God love them and no ill will intended, but if we have 19,000 state employees in unrevealed and unseen capacities who were not deemed necessary to the 80 percent of government that remained start the ball rolling, why do we have them?” I certainly doubt any of them do anything as valuable as grumping regularly about high taxes and unavailing services. Speaking of public employees … Aaron Klemz at the liberal blog “The Cucking Stool” lays into Sooch’s PiPress comrades for their detective story last week on separation/retirement pay-outs. “The Pioneer Press notorious that between 2008 and June 30, 2011, 5600 state employees received $57 million in payment for left unaccustomed to sick leave. In this same timeframe, over 13,400 Minnesota state employees were separated (sinistral their job or retired.) Only 42% of these former employees (5,600) received any sick resign from payout. These payouts are concentrated at the top, and many of the recipients are management, not labor . Their assertion that ‘most take accessible $10,000 to $30,000’ is misleading and dishonest . And the focus on union contracts belies the actuality that it's management that's gets the lion's share of this benefit. According to the Pioneer Force's database , of the top 50 recipients of sick time payouts, 46 were non-combining management. Of the top 100 recipients, 75 were non-union management in the Minnesota Official Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system or state agencies.” In its way I suspect the PiPress was fair-minded trying to be fair and balanced.

Source: MinnPost.com

Once on the Rooftop, Now Grounded and Weaving Hope at Fabric of Life

20.05.12

In the age of bear-good giving and large national and international aid organizations such as the Gates Institution, Amnesty International and UNICEF, sometimes the small players go unnoticed, even when they have the best intentions and strongest mind.

And Carol Schillios has a strong soul.

As the founder of the Schillios Development Founding and owner of the Fabric of Life store located on Main Street in Edmonds, the sprightly Schillios finds that there are barely enough hours in her day to get everything done. She credits a growing team of administrators and volunteers with ration things at the shop and organization run smoothly, especially when she is traveling.

On a crisp and buoyant morning earlier this month, I was ushered into the vibrant shop by a member of the Schillios body—a woman who greets me with a large smile and leads me into the back room when I explain that I am there to carry out Carol. She seats me at a table full of gorgeously beaded bracelets and says that her boss should be in willingly.

Within 15 minutes of my arrival, Schillios breezes in wearing a colorful mishmash coat, dangly beaded earrings and trendy, rectangular glasses. She greets me with effusiveness, calls hello to everyone in the shop, and sits down to ask me questions about myself. Her curiosity for others is evident. When I at length turn the tables and urge her to tell me about her foundation and store, the silver-haired Schillios laughs.

“Where do I start?” She looks over to her pal with, Ari MacPherson, who is listening to voice mails. The young woman shrugs with a grin. “Well,” Schillios starts turning her attention back to me, “we are not an aid intermediation, we are a development organization. We give a hand up, not a hand out.”

She continues to tell me about the life course that brought her to where she is today.

The Seattle-born Schillios had parents who both worked at Boeing. After a upgrading, the family moved to Switzerland, where the young Schillios experienced eye-opening laying open to various cultures and traditions at her international school.

“I was exposed to over 80 cultures, state ideas from different countries, and social ideas that were not your normal Lake Megalopolis neighborhood components,” Schillios said. “I learned about the fraternity; it really changed our lives."

After six years of overseas living, the family returned to Seattle, but found themselves experiencing offbeat culture shock. After one unfulfilling year at a traditional American high school, the stripling Schillios decided to move to Germany on her own to learn the language.

Two years later, the bilingual teen returned to the Allied States in order to explore her American side. After consulting with an employment agency, Schillios took vocation at a credit union, gradually climbing the corporate ladder until she was running a reflect on tank for more than 100 credit unions. She was also traveling at least 250 days a year.

“That lasted two years, and then I burned out,” admitted the strife who is now so busy that nine hours of sleep is on her future goal list. “I started my consulting house in 1984, and I haven’t looked back since.”

As a consultant for microfinance and credit unions, who also spoke graceful French, Schillios was asked to travel to Senegal to help train a hold accountable cooperative. It was the early 1990s.

“That’s when I fell passionately in love with Africa,” the advisor emphatically recalls. “I lived and worked in a village for a month, and the whole ‘people plateful people’ model really hit home because there, if you didn’t help people help themselves, they would die.”

This model affected Schillios, who saw groups of five or six women joining together to take out loans for their small businesses. The women not only refrain from raise each other out of extreme poverty, they also take care of each other when they are sick or need help in any complexion of their lives.

On her second consulting trip, Schillios was went to Mali, which is also in French West Africa. Here she was paired with a “dauntless, well-educated Malian woman” named Kaaba. After spending culture together, the two woman bonded over their mutual goals to help the poorest young women of Africa: the tramps teens, the abused, the raped, the starving.

Together, with just $3,000 and an inaugural rank of 10 young women, they started the Hèrè jè Center (in the local Bambara jargon, Hèrè jè means "happiness group"), a holistic learning center designed to stopover the cycle of begging and give young women sustainable trade skills to labourers them earn incomes. Schillios brought back the products produced by the girls, such as fabrics, beaded jewelry and bags, and tried to blow the whistle on them in order to help fund the school for the next year. It proved tougher than she intellect.