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Legislative hangups

Legislative members attending the New Ulm Farm-City Hub Club Farm Show Saturday gave generously of their time to answer questions in a legislative forum devoted to farm issues. No doubt it took them that long to try to explain why the Minnesota Legislature still hasn’t passed legislation providing drought relief for farmers affected by last year’s dry season. Practically everyone in the Legislature, Republicans and Democrats alike, are agreed that livestock and specialty crop farmers who didn’t qualify for crop insurance last year need help, and there is a plan for $10 million ...

Ugly attitude

Ugliness — it’s about the only way to describe the events that happened in games between the New Ulm and St. Peter high school basketball teams this year. According to a report in the Star Tribune Saturday, reprinted on Monday’s front page, a St. Peter player was subjected to anti-gay slurs and was physically attacked, in the form of pinching from a New Ulm player that left bruises. Alex Bosacker, a senior center on the St. Peter team, had come out as gay to his teammates this winter. He also came out on social media. According to the reports, Bosacker heard taunts from the New ...

War on civilians

The Russian strategy in Ukraine has been thwarted since its invasion began by stiffer than expected military resistance and an armed and motivated civilian population that have turned targets like the capital city of Kyiv into fortresses. So the Russians have adopted a new strategy, apparently — attack those who can’t fight back. In the city of Mariupol, Russians have been bombing and shelling the city’s civilian population. When people try to flee the fighting, they are shot down. Corridors for evacuees have become killing fields. Those inside the city are bombed out of their ...

Fuel tax holiday?

With gasoline prices at the pump rising like a SpaceX celebrity rocket launch, governors and state lawmakers around the country are looking for ways to ease the impact for their citizens. One idea being pushed is to call a holiday on state or even federal gasoline taxes. These are the per-gallon taxes collected at the pump with every gasoline purchase. The money collected usually goes into the state or federal transportation fund to build or maintain roads and bridges. Governors from several states, including Minnesota, are writing to congress members asking them to support a gas tax ...

Our gas price pain nothing like Ukraine’s

Residents and business owners in southwest Minnesota are feeling the pain of high gas prices. The prices are set by a number of factors, from who the individual station buys it from, how much they pay, demand and how competitive the local market is. It also depends on supply, and right now the international supply is being disrupted by Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the world’s economic sanctions against Russia. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced a ban on all Russian oil imports in response to Russia’s stepped-up assaults on civilians and non-military targets. While ...

List shaping up in First District

There is a week left in the filing period for candidates to run in the special election to replace the Rep. Jim Hagedorn. So far, the list of candidates is leaning far to the right. Four Republicans have filed to run to fill out the rest of Hagedorn’s term. The one DFLer is Richard W. Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who converted to the Democratic Party a few years ago after serving as the chief White House ethics lawyer in the Bush Administration from 2005 to 2007. He unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Tina Smith in the 2018 DFL U.S. Senate primary. We suppose it is ...