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The COVID solution is sitting unused

The recent daily COVID-19 reports by the Minnesota Department of Health are not encouraging for the state or southwest Minnesota. The number of positive cases in Lyon County are now well over 4,000 since Jan. 20, 2020. Twenty-nine new positive cases were reported on Monday. The COVID patients are filling hospitals across the state. It is discouraging that in the second year of the COVID pandemic, we are dealing with numbers of cases that rival the height of last year, and this at a time when we have the means to protect ourselves. Vaccinations started last December, and by April, ...

‘Inflation tax’ prediction proving true

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has been stalwart in his concerns over inflation and Democrats’ desire to spend trillions to fund new social programs: “An overheating economy has imposed a costly ‘inflation tax’ on every middle- and working-class American. At $28.7 trillion and growing, the nation’s debt has reached record levels,” Manchin wrote in a commentary published in the Wall Street Journal. “Over the past 18 months, we’ve spent more than $5 trillion responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Now Democratic congressional leaders propose to pass the largest single ...

Why aren’t drivers license exam stations all open?

The Minnesota Senate Transportation Committee is held a hearing Friday with a very interesting question for the Department of Public Safety. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, the state shut down a lot of businesses, of course, and it also closed down some government offices, including the Department of Vehicle Services 93 stations across the state, where drivers license driving tests are given. A few centers in regional hubs reopened in May 2020, but more than 70 remain shuttered, especially those in rural MInnesota. In this area, teens who want to take a driving test to get their ...

Platitudes won’t stop mass shootings

Saturday night’s mass shooting at the Seventh Street Truck Park bar in St. Paul was a hellish scene, according to police and survivors. An argument in the bar escalated, and two of the arguers pulled guns to settle it. In the crossfire, one woman was killed and 14 people were injured. Officials decried the violence, saying it was unacceptable, that it must never be allowed to happen again — the same kind of platitudes that get pulled out after each mass shooting. But it happens again, and again. It is going to keep happening, until we get serious about keeping guns out of the ...

Facebook’s in need of regulation

The American public has been made aware of some disturbing things that social media giant Facebook has been doing. Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen told, in a “60 Minutes” interview and in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, how Facebook, and its subsidiary Instagram, knew that its policies and algorithms that promote various kinds of content, are damaging to its users. Young girls on Instagram tend to develop harmful body images, for instance. It has allowed misinformation to be spread, widening the divide that already exists in our ...

Crisis averted, until December

Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate have come to an agreement to extend the U.S. debt limit into December, which will avoid a government default that would have occurred next week, and giving time to come up with a solution by December. They are not toning down the hyperbole, however. Democrats are still accusing Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of “playing politics” with the nation’s economy, while McConnell is saying the agreement now gives Democrats the time they said they lacked to deal with the debt limit through budget reconciliation, a process that will not ...