Legislature passes budget bills after dramatic special session

It looked like the setting for a mock legislative session: Instead of desks and nameplates on the floor of the Minnesota House, there were theater-style seats assigned by slips of sticky paper, while a small lectern stood in for the Speaker of the House's usual podium. There was a gallery for the public to watch, though it only had 20 seats. And there was a version of the Abe Lincoln portrait that usually hangs at the center of the chamber and watches over proceedings, though it was a miniature one.

However it seemed, though, it was all very real: the setting for a historic, one-day 2015 special legislative session.

The usual Capitol chambers were closed down in the midst of a messy restoration project, so legislative staffers retrofitted a ground-floor hearing room in the State Office Building to look like a miniature version of the Minnesota House. Down the hall, a similar room had been set up for the Senate, where they imposed the same strict dress code and rules of decorum that senators are required to follow in the Capitol chamber. 

"Members, we are making a bit of history today,” House Speaker Kurt Daudt said at the start of session, noting that this is the first time in 110 years a special legislative session has been held outside the halls of the state Capitol.

In the end, though, the odd setting of the proceedings was almost more notable than the final outcome — despite the hours of drama involved in getting to a resolution.  After weeks of negotiations, lawmakers sealed the deal early Saturday by approving three budget bills.

While there was uncertainty throughout the day about passage of an agriculture and environment budget, lawmakers ultimately passed a bill that honored their leaders’ original agreement on a 38-29 vote, after ping-ponging the bill between the House and Senate chambers throughout the day.

Legislators also passed a $17 billion education budget that spends $525 million more on schools over the next two years, as wells as a jobs and energy bill. All together, the three budget bills account for roughly half of the state’s $42 billion two-year budget. A bonus: Legislators rounded up enough votes to pass a Legacy amendment funding bill and a $373 million total package of construction projects, two non-essential budget measures that ran out of time on the final night of the regular session.

The whole affair stretched from Friday morning into early Saturday morning and averts a partial government shutdown. Nearly 10,000 state government workers had already received layoff notices in the mail in case legislators didn’t reach a deal by June 30, the last day of the fiscal year. Saturday morning, Gov. Mark Dayton said he will sign the final bills.

Rifts in the DFL

But the back-and-forth drama of the session exposed serious rifts between some Democrats — and left much business unfinished.

Tensions were particularly high in the Senate, where a majority of DFL members opposed the final agriculture and environment bill that was negotiated by their leader, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk. Those senators were upset with provisions in the bill that rolled back long-time environmental protections and eliminated the nearly 50-year-old citizens’ board of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

The first attempt to pass the bill, on Friday afternoon, failed in the Senate by a single vote, with very few DFL votes and fewer Republicans votes than had originally supported the bill. Bakk went back to the drawing board — and to his caucus — and emerged with a new plan: offering amendments to the bill that could win DFL support. 

Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, the lead opponent of the agriculture and environmental budget, amended the bill to restore the MPCA’s citizens’ board and eliminate a provision that would exempt mining sulfide waste from solid-waste rules. The bill passed, garnering many of the Senate DFL votes the previous version didn’t. 

But Republicans complained that Democrats were backing away from a deal they had made with Dayton and other caucus leaders: to not support any amendments to the budget bills. 

In the House, Republicans quickly took up the new bill — and amended it back to the way it was under the original deal, before sending it back over to the Senate for a final vote. “We are honoring the commitment we made to Minnesotans with the four legislative leaders and the governor,” Daudt said. “Now the Senate has the opportunity to do the right thing and send this bill to the governor.”

The final vote in the Senate ultimately passed, but not without Bakk having to make a deal with Senate Republicans behind closed doors to give them “significant, specific tax reductions” in a 2016 tax bill, Senate Minority Leader David Hann said. 

“The new agreement calls for substantial Republican tax cuts to be added to already-planned reductions in the existing bill,” he said.  “We’re very satisfied with the concessions made by Democrats to deliver significant tax cuts in the next legislative session.” 

Much to do

The conclusion of the legislature this year leaves much up in the air for next session. Legislators left nearly $1 billion of a $1.8 billion budget surplus on the bottom line to deal with those tax cuts, as well as a long-term transportation funding plan sought by Democrats. Those topics failed to gain traction in divided government this year.

Dayton also didn’t get his number one priority, universal preschool education, and plans to continue his push next year.

The near death — and second life — of the North Star Bicycle Festival

t took nearly 20 minutes for David LaPorte, director of the North Star Bicycle Festival, to weave the story of how close the event came to extinction. He laid it out on a sunny morning in Dinkytown earlier this week, at a coffee shop not far from his office at the University of Minnesota, where he has been a biochemistry professor since 1983.
This year’s festival, with four-time U.S. Champion Freddie Rodriguez heading the field in the men’s pro Grand Prix beginning Wednesday in St. Paul, includes a cycling coup — a special appearance by retired three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond, who lives in Medina and owns a bike-building company in Minneapolis.
Yet as recently as January, LaPorte thought he had a better chance leading a Tour stage through the mountains of France than putting on the festival again. It emerged without the usual women’s Grand Prix (a one-year blip, LaPorte hopes), but with an exceptionally long name reflecting its new sponsors: the North Star Bicycle Festival presented by North Memorial Health Care and Preferred One.

“When [former lead sponsor] Nature Valley pulled out, the goal was, we either wanted to continue the event or to know that we left no stone unturned, so we didn’t have to second-guess ourselves,” LaPorte said.
The festival has undergone name and format changes since LaPorte, with the lanky build and bearing of a marathoner turned cyclist, founded it as Tour de Wings in 1999. Best known as the Nature Valley Bicycle Festival, its six-stage pro Grand Prix — two in St. Paul and one each in Cannon Falls, Uptown Minneapolis, Menomonie and Stillwater — proved especially popular on the circuit. This year, the St. Paul Criterium, slated for Wednesday night, returns to Lowertown from the Rice Park area, where it relocated during light rail construction.
The whole thing is a massive undertaking that requires 400 volunteers and about $300,000 to put on. (Disclosure: I twice wrote for the festival web site, a paid position.) Profits benefit a designated charity — this year, Special Olympics Minnesota. LaPorte, who commutes nine miles by bike from his Roseville home to the U in all but the most treacherous weather has never taken a salary as director.
“People think I’m crazy,” LaPorte said. “They’re probably right.”
It still irks LaPorte that Nature Valley officials never told him directly they were done with the festival. In February 2013, after several fruitless months arranging contract extension talks before the deal expired in June, LaPorte said an executive from Nature Valley’s Chicago-based marketing firm asked to meet him for breakfast near Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. Nature Valley had been stalling because it planned to drop all its sports event sponsorships. 
“Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and he had to tell me over the phone,” LaPorte said. “Because if I had to drive across town during rush hour traffic to be told they were out, it really would have pissed me off.”
The festival had enough cash reserves to put on the event in 2014, even without a new title sponsor. After that? Trouble.
“We had in the neighborhood of $250,000 in reserve, plus a number of smaller sponsors,” LaPorte said. “We cut a few things, but not a lot. The goal was to put it on in 2014 without it looking noticeably shabbier, because (we wanted) to bring in sponsor prospects and let them see what they were buying into.”
That didn’t entice any new sponsors. With no prospects by the August deadline to reserve the 2015 dates, LaPorte told USA Cycling — the sport’s American governing body — he couldn’t pay the $8,000 non-refundable bid fee. USA Cycling hated to lose the event and granted him a two-month extension.
“Who wouldn’t want a stay of execution? “ LaPorte said.
By October, LaPorte still had nothing and prepared to cancel. In stepped financial angel No. 1 – Jim Pohlad, he of the Twins-owning Pohlads, who LaPorte said attended the Uptown criterium four months earlier. Pohlad’s radio station, then known as K-Twin (now Go 96.3), was a festival media partner.
“Jim Pohlad paid the bid fee out of his own pocket,” LaPorte said. “He thought it was a great event and didn’t want to see it die.” (Pohlad did not respond to an interview request, but his support for various events and entities around Minneapolis is well known.)
When another potential sponsor fell through, LaPorte figured they were really, finally done. A colleague suggested hiring Jean Ryan of JRI Marketing, a small Minneapolis firm, to aid in the sponsor search. LaPorte approached similar firms from out of state throughout the process, but never found one he liked. In a month, Ryan lined up North Memorial Health Care and PreferredOne, the health insurance firm, as co-presenting sponsors.
“They got started in the middle of January.” LaPorte said. “I told them they had until the middle of February to get the money together. I figured no way, but at least we’re going to hit our goal of leaving no stone unturned. Damned if they didn’t pull it off.”
The festival appealed to financial angel No. 2, North Memorial CEO Dr. J. Kevin Croston, an amateur cyclist who takes his family on bicycling vacations. “So when I heard that the sponsorship was available, I thought …why not?” Croston wrote in an email. “I love that biking can be enjoyed by all ages — from kids to seniors — and after seeing the excitement of a big biking event it will inspire them to become more active.”
The uncertainty left one downside. Only 17 riders and two teams signed up for the women’s Grand Prix, which LaPorte reluctantly cancelled. (He hopes to restore it next year.) To replace it, LaPorte added amateur races at every site except Cannon Falls. And next Friday night before the Uptown Criterium, LeMond will lead local executives and Special Olympians on the new CEO Ride for Kids. Proceeds benefit Special Olympics Minnesota and the festival’s programs for children. Croston is recruiting CEOs as well.
LaPorte credited Kathryn Jensen, a volunteer and the mother of a 12-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome, with securing LeMond’s commitment. Jensen helped established Sanford Hype, a Special Olympics team at Sanford Middle School in Minneapolis. Jensen emailed photos of Hype athletes to Kathy LeMond, Greg’s wife, and invited the LeMonds to ride with them in the CEO race. A week later, after Jensen sent a follow-up email, Kathy LeMond responded.

A walk in the woonerfs: rethinking a realm for bicyclists, pedestrians and cars

In my neighborhood of South St. Anthony Park in St. Paul, we tend to treat our alley like a woonerf. That’s not an autocorrect you’re reading, but a Dutch word for a “living street” designed specifically so that slow-moving vehicles, bicyclists and pedestrians can peacefully co-exist. In our alley, neighbors will actually sit down and visit while playing with each other’s pets; bicyclists will congregate before heading off on a day ride; dog owners will walk their furry companions while sipping wine, coffee or beer.
When a car comes along, it must make room for us … although we do politely step to the side to let vehicles pass. In all of these aspects, our alley is an accidental woonerf, meaning it functions as a public realm for multiple uses — including for pedestrians. Still, alleys are designed principally to provide access for cars and service vehicles — in spite of our takeover attempts. Woonerfs, however, are catching on in cities across Europe, as well as in Seattle and in Minneapolis.

“There’s been an interest in woonerfs in the landscape architecture and the urban design communities for several years,” says Brady Halvorson, associate partner and head of landscape architecture at BKV Group in Minneapolis, “because they really function well for moving people, cars and bicyclists in a safe manner. Where roundabouts were in the engineering vocabulary 15 years ago, we’re now there with woonerfs.”

They work, Halvorson continues, “because woonerfs are first and foremost about designing an interesting place that treats the street as a public realm. The challenge is deciding how much of that space you give away to vehicles versus creating a space everyone can share. But anywhere you can push an idea like this, by creating public space useful for more than just cars, is good.”

Another example of an existing accidental woonerf is the service alley outside of Café Lurcat on Loring Park in Minneapolis. Here the entrance to The Third Bird, a dance studio, the back of Luna Lux letterpress studio, and doors to various art galleries open onto a brick-paved thoroughfare and courtyard that exudes an Old European ambience.

“It’s a service alley, but also a charming place for pedestrians to walk and gather,” says David Graham, principal of ESG Architects in Minneapolis. “While there’s controlled auto access, this is a space that people can and do share.” Years ago, ESG explored and included a woonerf-like concept — a pedestrian drop-off area — in its Excelsior & Grand project in the first-ring Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, Graham says.

But in the U.S., where cars reign supreme, designers “need to clearly understand how woonerfs are used and implemented in the Netherlands. You can’t just import a woonerf and drop it in.”
 

BLV Group

Rendering of the Mill City Quarter woonerf.

Some of the design characteristics that define a woonerf, Graham continues, include limiting vehicular access; eliminating distinctions between concrete sidewalks, drop-down curbs and bituminous roads by installing a uniform high-quality pavement used by bicyclists, pedestrians and cars alike; creating stone bollards that demarcate spaces and provide visual cues to auto drivers; and installing trees, plantings and lighting.

Many of these features exist in BKV Group’s woonerf for the Mill City Quarter, a apartment complex planned between 2nd Street, 3rd Avenue, 5th Avenue, and the River West high-rise and Mill Place building near the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Currently, the site is a surface parking lot. Halvorson and his team are designing a woonerf along a historic rail corridor running through the middle of the site; the corridor also connects to the West River Parkway.

But because the rail-corridor parcel is owned by a third party, who required the design team to retain a number of parking spaces for daytime tenants in his office building, “our goal was to create something more than a parking lot,” Halvorson explains. “We also wanted to be able to close off the site for functions and gatherings, and we designed the space so people on bikes or on foot feel comfortable walking down the middle of it.”

While the number of cars parked in the space “is counter-intuitive to a true Dutch woonerf,” Halvorson explains, other woonerf-specific design elements are included. Reduced speeds for cars will be posted. The space will include “a vehicular circulation area with bollards, lights, plantings and pavers,” he says, and the area will have distinctive uniform paving, planted islands and festival lighting strung across the space from poles along the sides. “We’re calling it ‘woonerf-lite’,” he says.

Underneath the woonerf, he adds, is a “large gallery of storm-water pipes to reduce runoff into the river. The space is currently all impermeable surface parking lot, so with this woonerf we’re bringing the whole parcel into compliance with new, more sustainable storm-water regulations.”

The addition of environment sustainability to woonerfs could be MSP’s contribution to the design concept’s seemingly expanding definition. So could the notion of “complete streets,” described by the Minnesota Complete Streets Coalition as streets “planned to be safe and accessible for pedestrians, transit riders, bicyclists, and drivers — all users, regardless of age or ability.”

According to an article in The New York Times, “In the United States, more than 400 cities either currently have, or soon will develop, “complete streets,” which are much more broadly defined than woonerfs, even allowing for the likes of sidewalks and the authoritarian stop sign.Yet, according to the Chicago-based National Complete Streets Coalition, the spirit of the woonerf inspired even the American movement.”

As woonerfs take hold in MSP, perhaps in collaboration with the complete streets movement already under way here, alleys will no doubt continue to function as accidental spots for community gatherings, car access, and pedestrian and bicycle right-of-ways. The time is always right for seeking out ways to share our roads and our space.

Well that was awkward: With trade-deal vote looming, Congressional Baseball Game gets political

WASHINGTON — One night every summer, Democratic and Republican members of Congress trade their suits and ties for cleats and gloves in a longtime D.C. tradition: the Congressional Baseball Game. It’s meant to be a way for lawmakers to mingle and engage in a little good-natured bipartisan bonhomie, free of partisan posturing and rancor…or something like that.

For the most part, Thursday night’s game lived up to its romantic expectations, but — this being D.C. — partisan politics weren’t kept at bay for too long.

This year’s installment — the 54th under the sponsorship of the Roll Call newspaper — saw the Democrat and Republican teams’ all-time records in the series tied up. The Democrats came into the night having won the last six games behind the arm and bat of Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-Louisiana, a former college baseball player. This year, though, Republicans said they had fielded their best team in years, and felt poised to break the streak.

Two Minnesotans — 1st District Rep. Tim Walz and 3rd District Rep. Erik Paulsen — played for the Democratic and Republican squads, respectively. Baseball isn’t exactly the specialty of either man. Walz — a former high school football coach — is a Congressional Baseball Game rookie, and Paulsen is a hockey fanatic. According to an aide, the Republican likes to join in because his D.C. roommates — including Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana — play. It’s a prerequisite for living in their house.

As Republican and Democratic staffers trickled into Nationals Park just south of the Capitol, Walz and Paulsen joined their teams in warm-ups on the field. Walz, wearing the purple and yellow baseball uniform of Mankato State University, was, as they say, just glad to be there. “It’s really fun — I can’t believe it took me so long to do this,” he said. Paulsen arrived at the Republican dugout wearing the uniform of the Minnesota Baseball Association's Chaska Cubs.

While lawmakers were mostly fun and games, the consensus was that the environment surrounding the game was a bit more political than usual. It fell on the eve of the House of Representatives’ huge vote on Trade Promotion Authority and Trade Adjustment Assistance, and as lawmakers took the field, Obama and GOP leadership were furiously trying to sway lawmakers on both sides to vote for the package. Most Democrats intend to vote no on TPA, and may vote against TAA to block the package entirely.

Obama in the dugout

So when Obama showed up in the Democratic dugout in the bottom of the third inning — well, things got a little weird.

The Democratic side of the stands—where many held up “no to fast-track” signs — began cheering wildly when they got a glimpse of Obama, who’s arguably the face of fast-track. Chants of “O-ba-ma!” swirled around. The president then moved over to the Republican dugout to shake the players’ hands. This is not friendly territory for him, but that night, he was greeted by applause and chants of “TPA!”

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Barack Obama posing for photographs in the dugout at the annual Congressional Baseball Game.

When all of that subsided, though, there were some genuinely nice moments and playful displays of trash talk. The GOP side of the stands, crowded with young interns and staffers and felt like a college student section, held up signs like, “Democrats can’t get to first base.”

Rep. Linda Sanchez ignites the crowd

On the field, after Richmond hit a double to center late in the game, the Republican pitcher, Mark Walker of North Carolina, gave him a pat and looked to congratulate him. In the final inning, when the game’s only female player — California Democrat Rep. Linda Sanchez—took the field, both sides cheered. When she crushed a line drive to right field, the ballpark was loud — major-league loud.

No matter what happens on Capitol Hill today, Democrats can at least say they still own bragging rights on the baseball diamond. After a close contest for most of the game, the Democrats opened it up late, and ended up winning 5 to 2, extending their streak to seven. Paulsen stayed on the sidelines, but Walz—an avid runner — got in a pinch run late in the game.

How Senate DFLers are becoming like Republicans

Republican state Sen. Dave Thompson had been noticing it throughout the Legislative session: a growing fissure between urban and Greater Minnesota legislators in the Senate DFL caucus.
The urban-rural, moderate-conservative rift is old hat for Republicans, but this year it has beset Senate DFLers.
“One of the early signs that some of the urban core Democrats were not getting their way was the judiciary bill,” Thompson said. 
He was referring to public safety legislation, signed by Gov. Dayton, that legalized the use of gun silencers, referred to in the bill as “suppressors.”
“It demonstrated that the person running the caucus [Tom Bakk] is the more traditional conservative Democrat,” Thompson said.
But now, majority leader Bakk is facing something of a revolt from those urban Democrats, whose votes are needed to pass major budget bills in a special legislative session. Reports indicate that key DFlers such as John Marty, Sandy Pappas, and Scott Dibble plan on voting against the environment bill because of objections to policy changes, including elimination of the Citizens Board of the Pollution Control Agency.

The bill has even provoked an online petition asking Bakk to resign his leadership post.
DFL Sen. Terri Bonoff, chair of the senate's Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee, finds the disgruntlement with Bakk puzzling. As majority leader, she says, Bakk is doing his job finding consensus. “He does a very good job of accommodating views and opinions,” she said. “I think he puts the interests of Minnesota first.”
Bonoff, by the way, represents Minnetonka, and is not a natural ally for Bakk. “You have to remember, he did not want me to be an assistant leader,” she said.
But Bonoff, like Bakk, is a pragmatist. She often refers to herself as a “caucus of one,” and has advocated a spectrum of policy and spending reforms that often run contrary to DFL special interest groups. 

State Sen. Terri Bonoff

The standoff between Bakk and urban DFLers, she believes, stems from a refusal by some in the party to accept that Democrats no longer control all three branches of government.
“In my opinion, when you have divided government you must compromise to the middle,” she said. “When we had three years of Democrats in control, policies leaned far left. They didn’t have the reality check it takes to come to an agreement.”
Bakk stayed in the background during the negotiations over a special session. Bonoff said the bills in contention were already a negotiated product between Senate Republicans and Democrats. “Why negotiate against bills we all passed?” she asked.
Bakk may stay in the background on Friday. He’s already told reporters that he was not going to “twist arms” to get votes.

The art and science of construction detours in Minnesota

The word “detour” comes from the French, meaning “to turn away” or “change direction.” But it can also mean “evasion” or “excuse,” and as any driver knows, Minnesota’s contracted construction season can be synonymous with frustration.
Though it might seem like a simple matter of erecting orange signs, creating good detours can be maddeningly complex. How long will the road be closed? What kinds of roads are the nearest alternatives? What to do about unpredictable bicycles and pedestrians?
As technology starts to help with problems of getting good information to drivers, ensuring good detours might smooth out the messy reality of road construction.

Detours and induced demand

Probably the craziest detour in Minnesota history was the impromptu rerouting following the Interstate 35W bridge collapse. Needless to say, the 2007 bridge tragedy was completely unexpected, and forced state agencies to reroute 150,000 cars per day into other parts of the Twin Cities’ freeway system.

As it turned out, however, the detours worked surprisingly well. A University of Minnesota study determined that average commute times increased only marginally, less than half a minute on average.
Those unexpected results stemmed from two counterintuitive facets of detour construction. The first is the phenomenon of “induced demand,” or the dynamic relationship between road capacity and people’s willingness to drive. Simply put, the more available capacity on the road, the more likely that people will choose to drive; conversely, the less capacity, the less likely the car trip. That means that expanding roads might create more traffic, while reducing travel lanes might decrease traffic at the margins.
According to David Levinson, the engineering professor at the University of Minnesota who worked on the study, the I-35W bridge was a great example of “reduced demand” (the opposite of “induced demand”) where “about 1/3 of the trips across the river ‘disappeared,' and were either foregone or went to different destinations.”
The second conclusion is that the Twin Cities’ road system actually has a well-connected road network, relatively speaking. During a detour, most Twin Cities drivers are able to find alternative routes.

MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke

A traffic cop directing detoured traffic through Northeast Minneapolis in 2007, following the collapse of the 35W bridge.

Two key rules for detours

Though many people find detours frustrating, there are a few simple rules for making a good one. The first is to minimize impacts. For short-term projects, detours should only take place on weekends or in the evening. For longer projects (like the bridge replacement at Interstate 94 and Snelling Avenue), timing is everything; Snelling is scheduled to be re-opened before the start of the State Fair.
“Take shutting down Hennepin,” Tim Drew, a traffic engineer for the City of Minneapolis, explained to me this week. “You don’t want to do that on a weekday when there’s a ton of traffic out there. You look for weekend, one with no events downtown, if that’s possible.”

MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke

A "men working" sign blocking a bike lane on Fairview

Avenue in St. Paul.

The length of detour time might also force changes with signage or traffic signals. As Drew told me, for the yearlong closure of Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis, the city tweaked traffic signals on detour routes by adding left-turn phases.
(One more wrinkle is matching detours with the construction schedule. There’s nothing drivers hate more than seeing a detour without any road construction happening!)
The second rule of detours is to use similar types of streets. You don’t want to detour traffic from a busy arterial road onto a quiet residential street, or vice versa.
“In general, we try to detour traffic onto a similar type of roadway,” Tiffany Dagon, the Metro Area Workzone Engineer for Mn-DOT, explained to me. “For freeway traffic, we try to keep traffic on a freeway. We do it the other way too; if you’ve got a signalized road, we’ll try to keep the traffic on that type of road.”
A corollary to rule two is that agencies try hard to keep detours on “their own” roadways. When forced to detour traffic onto annother jurisdiction’s roads, agencies like MnDOT actually compensate counties and cities for the added wear. Sometimes, as in the case of re-decking I-35W in Burnsville, if an agency can’t find a suitable detour it will simply not post anything. Sometimes nothing is better than something problematic.

Complexities of biking and walking

Detours can be particularly frustrating for people biking or walking, especially if they happen across a road construction sign in a bike lane or a sidewalk closed on a busy street. But as more people begin getting out of their cars and choosing active transportation options, cities are being forced to pay more attention to detours that accommodate “complete streets.”

MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke

A sidewalk closed sign in St. Paul.

“We don’t want to say ‘sidewalk closed’ if at all possible,” Tim Drew, the Minneapolis engineer, explained. ”We want to use the same side of the street. For pedestrian closures, we might set up jersey barriers in the parking lane, or use a moving lane to make sure pedestrians are safe. A lot of times construction companies have to pay a ‘lane use fee,’ so that’s one of the more challenging situations.”
While on quiet residential streets, cities can simply close the sidewalk; for busier commercial streets, pedestrians pose particular challenges. (In St. Paul, pedestrian detours are referred to as T-PARs, or Temporary Pedestrian Access Routes.)
“We review each project case by case, because each individual project has its different issues and challenges,” Paul St. Martin explained to me. St. Martin, St. Paul’s assistant city engineer, oversees many of the city’s most complicated detours.
Compared to a decade ago, thanks to better inter-agency regulation and more attention to nonmotorized modes, the city thinks more carefully about detours for bikes and pedestrians. (For the past year and a half, the city has signed an elaborate detour around construction on the Sam Morgan bike trail while a key bridge is reconstructed.)
But one wrinkle is that pedestrians and bicycles don’t always follow signed routes. Unlike drivers, people on foot often simply bypass signs, walk in the street, or hop fences. That unavoidable fact forces engineers to think more carefully about people’s actual behavior, rather than theoretical lines on maps.

MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke

A bike route detour on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

For example, St. Paul made two separate detour accommodations around apartment construction at Snelling and Selby Avenues.
“Some folks don’t want to go that extra block to take that detour route [on Marshall Avenue],” St. Martin told me. “They’re going to cross at Dayton no matter how we sign. So we put some additional signage in at Dayton, adding one of those stop-for-pedestrian signs we have in the middle of streets around town.”
Similarly, for business owners, detours are often crucial. When commercial streets are under construction, St. Paul and Minneapolis require contractors to ensure access to open businesses during working hours, which can involve elaborate walkways and late-night sidewalk replacement. These detours might make a critical difference for small business trying to survive road construction.

Trends in detour technology

It might seem that detours are inevitably maddening, but compared to a generation ago, the advent of technology has shown promise in allowing drivers to take advantage of other routes. Some smartphone maps are now able to account for detours and road congestion, while technologies like “variable message signs” on freeways and shoulders offer drivers real-time information.
“About 12 years ago, we were just breaking out a handful of these variable message signs around the convention center,” Tim Drew told me. “We now have 84 of them and use them to facilitate detours. I’ve seen them work during a Twins’ game, and they’re real useful in guiding folks around a detour. The more detail you can throw out, the better people feel about it.”
Those signs seem like a great idea to me — just as long as you keep them out of the bike lane and off the sidewalk.

The new Mill City High will be unlike any other school in Minneapolis

John Miller had been teaching pretty happily for a quarter of a century when it occurred to him that he was in a position to fix the sundry small discontents of his professional life by dreaming up and opening his own school.
This fall, after nearly four years of planning, scheming, grant-writing and the completion of enough paperwork to obliterate a lesser vision, Mill City High School will open in downtown Minneapolis. It will be completely unlike any other school hereabouts, and if the reality lives up to the idea, it will rock.
It will also be one of five charter schools authorized by the Minnesota Guild of Charter Schools, an offshoot of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT). The MFT is the first teachers union in the country to begin authorizing charter schools. Accordingly, the new programs are teacher-led.

Located in the shadow of the new Vikings stadium in First Covenant Church, Mill City will offer a novel, four-pronged approach with Global Classical Studies as a lynchpin. Up to 150 students, spread across ninth-, 10^th-, and 11^th-grades, are expected this year, with the school eventually serving grades 9-12.
Global Classical Studies might most easily be explained by returning to the topic of Miller’s desire to change things up mid-career. In 2011 when the MFT received state permission to enter chartering, Miller was teaching at Eagle Ridge Academy.
A K-12 school located in Eden Prairie, Eagle Ridge is one of a number of Twin Cities charter schools, most of them located in affluent suburbs, to offer classical education. The classics being, of course, the works of Western thinkers ranging from the ancient Greeks to the U.S. Founding Fathers.
The approach is rigorous academically, and the schools are among the state’s top performers. Though they have been located primarily in affluent areas to date, student bodies have diversified in recent years.
(Classical education has also been popular in households which, for reasons religious or political, are not crazy about the multiculturalism they believe is invading public schools. One of Eagle Ridge’s missions, for example, is to foster “an appreciation for the United States of America and her unique role in the world.”)
Miller loved Eagle Ridge’s “blend of rigor and friendliness.” Yet when it became clear the school was going to undergo some transitions, he mulled until it became clear that what he’d really like was to design his own program.
Consider one of his frustrations: Over the previous four years he had taught 16 periods of high school humanities, 15 of which dealt with the Western world.
“The one period that deals with the rest of the world was called ‘Eastern Thought,’ ” he recalls. “They crammed everything in there — including Islam, just to have it somewhere.”

Classical approach, but opened up

Miller wanted to move away from the Eurocentric curriculum but keep the approach, which he believes is fabulously suited to driving students to ever-richer levels of understanding and to teaching critical inquiry.
Students proceed from a grammar stage, which consists of direct instruction in basic knowledge and skills, to a Socratic dialectic in which they attempt to think their way to a logical conclusion. That is followed by seminar discussion.

Courtesy of John Miller

John Miller

Why not keep the structure, but open the field of inquiry up to the classics of other traditions and civilizations?
“Have a conversation amongst students where you give them open-ended questions,” Miller explains, “but instead of Plato vs. Aristotle it’s Lao Tze vs. Buddha.”
Why not start with cultures that are 2,000 years old, and include indigenous and African traditions and — as students age and the global classics become more contemporary — Latin American and African-American experiences?
“We’ll teach the civil-rights movement, but also the gay civil-rights movement so kids from all kinds of modes of diversity will see themselves,” says Miller.
Big vision notwithstanding, opening a charter school — much less a high school — is a tough undertaking in the Twin Cities right now. One of the biggest hurdles is finding space. Schools require universal access, gyms, commercial kitchens and other expensive renovations. Most landlords don’t want to invest for a startup.

First Covenant

As it happened, First Covenant was in search of people who might like to use its four floors of mostly vacant space for activities that jibe with its social justice mission. Built in 1885, the church’s sanctuary was for a time the tallest building in the city.
A second building once housed Sunday school for 1,000 students. Mill City will max out at 300.
It didn’t hurt that a former student of Miller’s was the son of the pastor, who is a member of a downtown Multi-Faith Network that includes priests and imams and other clergy committed to working together.
“You can’t beat the location,” says Miller. “All roads lead downtown. Light rail leads downtown. Buses all go downtown.”

Attorneys shine a light on the growing problem of elder abuse in Minnesota

Reports of elder abuse are cresting as baby boomers’ parents age and their sometimes sketchy offspring and other opportunists navigate an uneasy economy – so much so that in 2006, the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse and the World Health Organization at the United Nations launched World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (June 15), which seeks to highlight what law-enforcement experts say is a largely under-recognized and under-reported crime.
The highest profile elder-abuse case in Minnesota thus far has been that of former Maple Grove council member LeAnn Sargent, who was sentenced last year after being convicted of a gross misdemeanor for cheating her dying father out of more than $120,000. In 2012, Dawn Kulbeik was one of the first people to be charged under a Minnesota law that made it a felony to withhold nutrition to a vulnerable adult.

That law was passed in 2012 and enforced in the Kulbeik case by Anoka County Attorney Tony Palumbo, who has been on a mission to let the public know about the growing problem of elder abuse in Minnesota, often comparing the crime to child abuse in terms of both its secretive nature within families and the act of loved ones taking advantage of vulnerable family members.
Palumbo is co-founder of Minnesota SAFE Elders, an educational and community service group that trains social workers and law enforcement workers in the particulars of the crime. He was also instrumental in the founding of the Minnesota Elder Justice Center at his alma mater, William Mitchell College of Law, which sponsors an annual conference in conjunction with World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (this year’s conference takes place at William Mitchell Friday, June 12; for more information go here).
MinnPost sat down this week with Palumbo and Assistant Anoka County Attorney Deborah Hilstrom in Palumbo’s office at the Anoka County Attorney’s Office to talk specifics about elder abuse, and the strides that have been made in getting the word out on World Elder Abuse Awareness Day:
MinnPost: How prevalent is elder abuse, and what should people look for if they suspect it’s happening in their family?
Tony Palumbo: There are three questions that professionals in the field want people to ask when dealing with older Americans, as they call them: 1) Is anybody taking your money without your permission? 2) Is anyone hurting you? 3) Are you afraid of anyone? If you ask those three very simple questions, you may gain at least a foot in the door as to what’s going on in many a vulnerable adult’s life. I do several lectures a year, and I lead with that.
If you think something’s going on, one of the signs you look at is, have they quit doing something that they regularly do? For example, attending a church group or paying their rent on time. People of a certain age are creatures of habit, and if they’re not doing it and there’s no particular external reason for why it’s not happening, such as illness or a stroke or something, then those are the three questions we ask friends or family to ask.
MP: How do you and law enforcement winnow it out? It’s a very under-reported and -prosecuted crime.
TP: We believe that it is; again, how much crime is out there? We don’t know until you find out. Estimates are that about $3 billion a year is lost to financial exploitation nationally. The population is growing, and they estimate by the year 2030, 19 percent of the population will be 65 and above, so that’s one in five. Those are the people that have all the money, because they’ve saved and they’ve sold their houses and they’ve got a lot of money.
MP: It’s really an unprecedented generation, too, in terms of accrued wealth in America. That post-war baby boom and economy led to a lot of enduring family wealth, the likes of which may never happen again.
TP: That’s exactly right. For the first time in our nation’s history – or in world history, actually – the middle class has never, by any stretch of the imagination, had that kind of money in the past. Now they do; medicine is allowing people to live longer; as you live longer your mental acuity begins to deteriorate, and you’re in charge of a lot of money and your mental capacity is that of a 12-year-old. The temptation to take advantage of somebody like that is overwhelming.
MP: I’m sure it’s dicey because the exploitation often is being done by family members, and you have to determine if they are actually being taken advantage of or if it’s a case of finances being a private family matter.
TP: We’re dealing with a case now where a grandchild took money from a vulnerable adult who died. The grandchild had been taking money out of the vulnerable adult’s account, unbeknown to the rest of the estate. We’re looking at how to pursue that case.
MP: And how does that come to you?
TP: That one came to us because the facility who had been caring for the grandmother made a report, because they discovered there were financial irregularities and she had not been paying her bills.
MP: Deborah, there are plenty of cases where it’s not being perpetrated by the family, yes?
Deborah Hilstrom: Correct. We have two open cases we’re working on now where facility workers were stealing drugs from the seniors.
TP: We have a case that’s resolved now where a person in her 60s gets power of attorney for the elderly parent, and this person started taking money out of her parent’s account and started giving it to her children to the tune of $125,000; the estate believes it’s more like $250,000. The horrible part of that one is that one of the defendant’s brothers was in dire need of medical treatment, and didn’t get that, and passed away and there appeared to very little remorse. That’s pretty typical: Person gets power of attorney and starts paying the bills, and then starts taking care of himself, and that is in violation of the law: If you are given any fiduciary responsibility for a vulnerable adult, any money spent must be spent on their care and nothing else.
MP: What have people been doing with the money?
DH: Gambling, we’ve seen some gambling. In one case, [the criminal] was trying to buy property for himself and trying to sell the vulnerable adults’ home right from underneath them, and we stepped in and got Adult Protection to stop the sale of the house. They would have been out.
MP: Tony, you’ve compared it to child abuse. What are the similarities?
TP: I would say that the abuser, or the defendant, obviously doesn’t have any regard for the victims, and they justify or try and rationalize what they’re doing. With child abuse and physical abuse because of discipline it’s, “He or she had it coming.” With a vulnerable adult they’re doing it because that person has just become a pain in the neck and they just want to get rid of them. With financial exploitation, they justify it because they think they’re going to get the money anyway (from the parents’ will), and they need it now so it’s not really a crime.
DH: Also, with child abuse cases, the person is often related and the victim doesn’t want to lose the love and care of the person who is exploiting or taking advantage of them. They still want to be with that person. They may not want us to intervene.
TP: They just want the bad things to stop, but they don’t always want bad things to happen to the person who did them to them. They just want it to stop, and that’s very similar to child abuse cases. I’ve prosecuted many, especially sexual abuse cases, where the young girls would want it to stop, but they wouldn’t want to see anything bad happen to the abuser.
When I would go speak to schools about child abuse, I’d open with the same three questions we talked about earlier. There would be 30 kids in a class, and as soon as I told them what my topic was, three heads would go down. Every time. Because those three kids knew what I was talking about. The other 27 were, “Oh my God, really?” And these three kids who put their head down, when I said, “Are you afraid of anyone?” and they put their head down, that’s as much as answering, “Yes.”
MP: How many elder abuse cases are you currently working on?
DH: Right now, I have 15 open cases and two sitting on my desk, waiting to be reviewed. I have three cases that are awaiting sentencing.
TP: I have some statistics: Since 2013, we’ve charged out nine felony cases involving elder abuse; two cases involve physical injury to a vulnerable adult; seven cases involving some sort of financial injury; nearly a quarter of a million dollars was swindled in the course of these seven cases, and seven of the nine suspects were family members of the victims, and five cases are still open.
MP: You’ve been training officers for a few years now in the fight against this. What do you tell them to look for?
TP: One of the things you look at in every elder abuse case is the isolation that the victim is put into from anybody who has any sort of ability to change the situation. In one situation we had, the son-in-law stopped all his father-in-law’s mail and actually tied up his father-in-law’s walker so the guy couldn’t leave the house and took all his in-laws Social Security payments for himself.
MP: What are the penalties for this? It doesn’t seem like it’s enough. Probation is all these people are getting, right?
DH: It starts out based on the amount of money you’re stealing. If it’s a thousand dollars, you hit the felony mark and it increases from there. But unless you have a lengthy criminal history, they are probation cases and not typically prison cases.
MP: I’m reminded of the Tolstoy quote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Do you ruminate on the nature of families in your work, or is it purely clinical at this point?
TP: Anecdotally speaking, I would say the overwhelming majority of families do the right thing and a small minority, when they don’t do the right thing, they really don’t do the right thing. What we see, many times, especially in the recession, would be son loses job, son gets divorced, son moves back with mom, son takes care of mom because the rest of the siblings are busy with their lives; mom has come to depend on son, grants him power of attorney and then looks the other way when son starts writing checks to himself.
And you know who turns him in? The siblings. So what you usually have is a little bit of an intra-family battle going on for people who feel that their mother is not being treated fairly by this ne’er-do-well brother of theirs. And that family sometimes goes through the entire spectrum of, “Oh just leave him alone” to “By God, hang him” and everything in between, and that’s reflective of families all over America, just in general.
MP: Knowing what you know about people, what do you know about humanity? Does it color your view about your fellow man and woman?
TP: Greed is everywhere, and as long as we have people who always want money, they’re going to exploit and take advantage of people. We’re seeing the financial crimes, more than property crimes, on the rise because it’s far more lucrative to steal money this way than it is to rob a gas station or do a drug deal. And why not? You steal $35,000 and only get probation or a few months in jail.
DH: Well, what it does it shows you that there are people who report, right?  There are people who call and step in and it shows that you have the ability to stop the bad things from happening. In one case we stopped the purchase of a house. They were paying down their own debt to qualify for a loan on a house and then they were going to use the vulnerable adult’s money to make the mortgage payment. And they weren’t sure if the vulnerable adult was going to get to live there when they were done.

There's a whole lot of earthquaking going on. Here's what is causing the record numbers.

Even if you’ve been following the subject of increased earthquake activity in America’s oil and gas basins, with fracking as the probable cause, you might still be impressed by the hockey-stick trend line above.
In the 36 years from 1973 through 2008 (blue line), there were 858 earthquakes in the central and eastern United States with a magnitude of 3 or greater.
These are quakes that are plenty strong enough to make you feel the earth moving underfoot, but not strong enough to cause much damage to buildings. They averaged about 24 per year.
In the six years and four months from 2009 through this past April (red line), there were 1,570 quakes in the same magnitude range — nearly twice as many — with both the running total and the rate climbing sharply.

The yearly average for the red-line period stands at 193. Last year alone there were 688. And already this year, through the end of May, there have been 430 quakes above magnitude 3.
If that pace continues through December, the level of seismic activity recorded in 2015 will exceed the entire 36-year period of the blue line.
What in the underworld is going on?
Oil and gas production development is driving this trend, according to new analysis from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), aimed at separating myths from facts about the rising tide of earthquakes across much of the country. And, yes, fracking plays a role, but kind of a minor one.
It’s complicated, as chief author Justin Rubinstein of the USGS office explained to me yesterday afternoon.

How to trigger an earthquake

“People think fracking, they think earthquakes,” he said, “and that was really part of the reason I wrote this article in the first place. I wanted to have something that I could point the public to, point the media to, to explain what’s going on and why.”
What’s going on is injection of fluids into the earth, in volumes and at pressures sufficient to cause rock on either side of a fault to shift into a new alignment. This shift, or failure of the fault, is the definition of an earthquake, and when the failure results from human activity, we have an “induced” earthquake.
But fracking — the injection of hydraulic fluid to break up underground rock and let oil and gas flow to the wellhead — is only one of three distinct activities that are inducing earthquakes in oil and gas country, Rubinstein’s paper explains. It was published this week in the journal Seismological Research Letters (paid access).

Courtesy of Justin Rubinstein

Justin Rubinstein

Fracking by definition causes micro-earthquakes by creating or enlarging faults, Rubinstein said. But the data show that fracking operations can be associated with “felt earthquakes” — detectable by humans with their normal senses, with magnitudes of around 2.0 or 2.5 are greater — in only a small percentage of cases. (His analysis set the bar at magnitude 3 to be sure of having a complete “catalog” of quakes above a common threshhold.)
But injection for fracking lasts a few hours, or maybe a few days, and the volume of hydraulic fluid is comparatively small.
Another cause of induced earthquakes — but, again, a comparatively small share — is “enhanced oil recovery” through the injection of water, steam or carbon dioxide into existing wells to bring more product to the surface. But because the injected material is mostly filling space vacated by earlier extraction, the pressure changes aren’t as significant.
So the most important cause by far, Rubinstein explained, is the injection of industrial waste water, sometimes called “produced water,” from oil and gas operations into permanent storage underground. He writes:
Produced water is the salty brine from ancient oceans that was entrapped in the rocks when the sediments were deposited. This water is trapped in the same pore space as oil and gas, and as oil and gas are extracted, the produced water is extracted with it.
Produced water often must be disposed in injection wells because it is frequently laden with dissolved salts, minerals, and occasionally other materials that make it unsuitable for other uses.
And the volumes are huge: some injection wells receive a million barrels of produced water per month, and the injection may continue for many months. These scale factors — the larger volume of fluid injected, the longer duration of injection, the much larger underground area through which the fluid distributes — have a strong influence on both the frequency and size of induced earthquakes.
They have also been shown to create quakes more than 10 kilometers from the injection point, and at depths exceeding four kilometers.

Most wells not problematic

In our conversation, as in his article, Rubinstein made clear that it’s only a minority of injections for any purpose that cause problems.
“Most of the time, these wells are not problematic,” he said. “There’s 35,000 or so injection wells in the West, and it’s really only a few dozen that have been directly linked to induced seismicity.”
So far, none of the industrially induced quakes have caused fatalities or catastrophic damage. But that has something to do with their being located generally away from densely settled areas.
An induced quake centered in Prague, Oklahoma, in 2011 damaged some 14 buildings, he said, notably including the Benedictine Hall at St. Gregory’s University in Shawnee, where a multimillion-dollar campaign was needed to restore the building’s four toppled towers.
Another, centered near Trinidad, Colorado, caused similarly light damage.
But there is concern that impacts of induced quakes could be intensified if they occur in larger cities, especially where building codes and construction styles didn’t anticipate shaking foundations.
“I live in San Francisco, for example, and we don’t have a lot of brick buildings anymore. But in other areas, with unreinforced brick structures, there could be problems.
“The earthquake in Napa last summer didn’t knock down a whole lot of buildings. But it did knock down brick buildings.”

No alternative for disposal

The problem of wastewater injection isn’t going to away, he said, because there’s really no other way to dispose of it in such huge volumes. Instead, he hopes the findings of research like his may help manage the risks a little better.
Earthquakes remain essentially unpredictable, he acknowledged, but with more robust networks of seismic sensors, early detection could be improved — and potentially preventive measures could perhaps be developed.
“In most of the central U.S., there might be one sensor every 100 miles. In Texas, I think there are about 25 for the whole state.
“But in Oklahoma, in response to the increased activity, they’ve been adding a lot more. And we’ve seen places where they’ve slowed down wastewater injection, and the earthquakes have slowed down in response.”
Another hurdle, he said, is getting better access to industry data about the disposal practices.
“There’s really good data about activity at fracking wells and enhanced-recovery wells,” he said, “because the results are taxed. The companies have to report on what they’re doing and they have to report promptly. That’s all pretty public.
“With wastewater injection, most of them collect data to meet the requirements, but they’re not very stringent — the states don’t really care.”

Walker performing arts season, 2015-16: It's a knockout

Each year, the Walker’s performing arts season has a hard act to follow: itself. With director and curator Philip Bither in charge since 1997, this eclectic, engaging and proudly risk-taking series of music, theater and dance is more than a beacon of the Twin Cities arts scene. Its grasp is global, and so is its sway.
Bither travels the nation and the world in search of projects fully formed or just taking shape, then adds them to the mix for the next season, or the next after that, commissioning new work, forming partnerships to move things along. By now, the season has deep roots and enduring relationships.
It’s always a special pleasure to hear him announce the new season. He did that for the press earlier this week and will do it for the public on Sept. 10 at the Walker’s McGuire Theater. Bither believes so passionately in each project that you’re swept up in his colorful stories, his boyish enthusiasm and his belief that these events matter deeply and we should all come out to see them. Even kids. (More about that in a moment.)

Quick facts: 2015-16 opens Sept. 24 and ends May 14. It includes 24 performance projects, eight Walker commissions, four world or Midwest premieres, and multiple collaborations: with the SPCO’s Liquid Music (five events), the Cedar (three), the O’Shaughnessy and the Givens Foundation for African-American Literature. Most events will be held in the Walker’s McGuire Theater,  others at Aria, the Cedar, the Fitzgerald, the O’Shaughnessy or in the Walker galleries.
About collaborations, Bither said, “This is a uniquely collaborative city. I’ve lived in and visited a lot of towns where people are at each other’s throats, competing for donors, competing for artists, competing for media attention. We’ve always felt it’s much better to find like-minded colleagues and join forces. We’re doing that more than ever.”
The 2015-16 season is a knockout. During the announcement, jaded journalists erupted in “wows!” It’s stuff we can’t wait to tell you about, though some events will take more ’splaining than others. Like, for example, “RoosevElvis,” a back-and-forth, gender-bending meeting between Teddy Roosevelt and Elvis Presley that kicks off January’s Out There series. By December we’ll have a better handle on that.
It’s a big season, with artists coming from as far away as Mauritania and Japan. More than half of the season is music, and for now, we’ll focus on highlights there. As the year unfolds, we’ll tell you more about the theater and dance events. You can browse the entire season on the Walker’s website.

Courtesy of the Walker Art Center

Meredith Monk

Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble (April 15, 2016). Now in her seventies, the enormously influential, endlessly creative Monk returns to the Walker after a seven-year absence. The night before, she’ll speak with Bither about her life and art in a public conversation.
We can count on the Walker for at least two nights of vitally important jazz each season. In 2004-5, Bither inaugurated the McGuire Theater with a three-day festival in honor of Ornette Coleman, the jazz pioneer who died yesterday. Earlier this year, Jason Moran and Robert Glasper shared the stage, and a supergroup of jazz giants from Chicago’s AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians), led by legendary drummer Jack DeJohnette, came to play.
This season brings Rez Abbasi’s Invocation Quintet with Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition (Feb. 26) and the Steve Lehman Octet (May 7).
Born in Pakistan, Abbasi fuses contemporary jazz with South Indian Carnatic sounds. He’s written a new suite with pianist and quintet member Vijay Iyer; the recording should be out just before the Walker date. Iyer, who was recently named artist-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a Harvard professor and records for the prestigious label ECM, has promised to do everything in his power to be here. (Bither gave Iyer his own two-day minifestival in the 2011-12 season, the year before Iyer won his MacArthur “genius” grant.)
This will be Lehman’s first time at the Walker; his fascinating 2014 recording, “Mise en Abîme,” was named the top Jazz CD of the year by almost everyone. He works in a world of spectral music (where individual instrumental voices are precisely juxtaposed, and harmonies are organized by frequency relationships … or something like that), bringing in traditional jazz, improvisation and live electronics. But you won’t need a Ph.D. to enjoy his music. Just open ears.

Photo by Nadya Kwandibens

Tanja Tagaq

Tanja Tagaq is an Inuit throat singer who won a 2015 Juno award (Canada’s Grammy). She’s been called a “polar punk who makes Björk sound tame.” Here’s her hair-raising live performance at the Polaris Music Prizes in 2014. On Nov. 19-20 at the Walker, she’ll sing her own soundtrack to the clichéd and inaccurate silent film documentary “Nanook of the North.”
Add five co-presentations with Liquid Music – including a night with Laurie Anderson at the Fitzgerald (March 19) – plus the all-star Irish group the Gloaming, the Japanese pop group OOIOO (oh-oh-eye-oh-oh) and more, and it’s an exceptionally strong line-up.
Tagaq probably isn’t one for the kids, but Bither made a point of calling three other shows “family-friendly,” which may be a first. They include “The Object Lesson,” an immersive installation and performance about the things we acquire, featuring actor/illusionist/inventor Geoff Sobelle (Nov. 4-8); “Nufonia Must Fall,” DJ/producer Kid Koala’s graphic-novel-turned-GoPro-movie-with-puppets (a Liquid Music co-presentation; April 1-2, 2016); and “Aging Magician” with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (March 5-6).
Tickets to all events are on sale now. September may seem like a long way away. It’s not.

Picks for the weekend and then some

Tonight (Friday, June 12) at the Loft: Mentor Series reading with Patricia Smith. Her “Blood Dazzler” (2008), about the human and environmental costs of Hurricane Katrina, was nominated for a National Book Award; “Teahouse of the Almighty” (2006) was a 2005 National Poetry Series selection. Smith is a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, so you know she can hold a crowd. Here’s a taste. She’ll read with Mentor Series program participants April Gibson (poetry) and Annette Schiebout (nonfiction). 7 p.m. Free.
Tonight through Sunday in the parks: The Cromulent Shakespeare Company: “Henry IV, Part 1.” The one where young Prince Hal hangs out with Falstaff, behaves badly and must redeem himself to his father the King. Shakespeare’s play is presented as a melodrama, with original music, swordplay and acrobatics. Bring a lawn chair or blanket, then cheer the good guys and boo the bad guys. 7 p.m. Friday at Lyndale Park Rose Garden (4124 Roseway Rd., Mpls.), 7 p.m. Saturday at Merriam Park (2000 St. Anthony Ave., St. Paul), 2 p.m. Sunday at Nokomis Park (2401 E. Minnehaha Parkway, Mpls.). Free.

Courtesy of the Hennepin History Museum

"Portrait of Ugaaso" by Pamela Gaard

Saturday at the Hennepin History Museum: Opening reception for “Hey, Aren’t You Somebody? Portraits by Frank and Pamela Gaard.” For years, the Gaards have been creating colorful portraits of their friends, family members, coworkers and Southwest Minneapolis neighbors. Along with being an artist, Pamela works as a health and wellness educator, so the portraits include members of our local Somali community. Especially interesting are the dual portraits, where each artist interprets the same subject. The show also includes traditional weavings created by eight Somali weavers, a nice tie-in to another show opening the same night at the small but charming museum up Third Ave. from the MIA: “A Loom Here, A Loom There: 75 Years of the Weavers Guild of Minnesota.” Historic and contemporary weaving, photographs, artifacts, and unique pieces by more than 40 member artists. The Gaards will be there, along with Somali weavers and Guild representatives. 3-5 p.m. Saturday. Museum admission is $5 adults, $3 seniors and students. Visiting at this time requires the use of stairs.
Sunday at The Museum of Russian Art: Atrium String Quartet. An evening of Shostakovich and Beethoven performed by the Atrium Quartet of St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida). Arrive early and visit the newly opened “Russian Samovars” exhibition or “Romance in Soviet Art.” 7 p.m. FMI and tickets ($30 general admission/$25 TMORA members).
Monday at Union Depot: Free Dance Night: Tango. Because you have always wanted to dance the tango. Professional instructor Deny Hukriede will teach you, with live music by violinist Sara Paunen, accordionist Patrick Harison and bassist Nick Gaudette. 6:30-9 p.m. in the Waiting Room. Dance instruction from 6:30-7, dancing from 7-9.
Monday at the Cedar: Brian Blade: “Mama Rosa.” Most jazz fans know Brian Blade as a superb drummer, leader of his own Fellowship Band and drummer for the likes of Wayne Shorter and Joni Mitchell. Most were surprised to learn he’s also a singer/songwriter with a sweet, soulful voice. “Mama Rosa” (the album came out in 2009) includes warm, personal songs about faith and family. Doors at 7 p.m., show at 7:30. FMI and tickets ($20 advance, $25 day of show). All ages.

The Beneficiaries of Republican Budget Bill: Arms Manufacturers

If the House Republicans have their way, Boeing, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin would be the big winners of last week's annual defense policy bill. The National Defense Authorization Act, which usually gets through easily in this era of war and national security fear with bipartisan support was approved in a closer than usual vote of 269 to 251 after Democratic party members decided to support the White House in opposing the measure. The close vote will give President Obama veto power.Now joining me to discuss the latest development on this is William Hartung. William is joining us from New York. He is a senior advisor with Security Assistance Monitor and the director of Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He's also the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.Bill, thank you so much for joining us.WILLIAM HARTUNG, SENIOR ADVISOR, SECURITY ASSISTANCE MONITOR: Yes, thanks for having me.PERIES: So Bill, explain to us what actually happened last week.HARTUNG: Well, there were two battles going on. One was over how to fund the Pentagon. And basically because of a bill a few years ago there's a cap on the Pentagon's regular budget. So what they do is they put billions and billions of dollars into the war budget that have nothing to do with the war. They're just pet projects that the Pentagon needs to--or wants to, rather, spend money on.So this year the Congress went really through the roof, and they added $40 billion to that war fund that doesn't belong there. And President Obama was against this, not necessarily because he doesn't want more money for the Pentagon but because he wants to lift those budget caps and fund it directly in the Pentagon budget. They're kind of battling really over how to give the Pentagon more money, not whether to. But in the meantime, there were some interesting provisions within there. For example, a whole new set of proposals about how to buy weapons, many of which were actually crafted and written by the defense industry.PERIES: Now, this is one that seems palatable. Giving more money to the military seems like a good thing to do, and sort of national patriotism kicks in with images of soldiers and so on. But hidden in this is really some big money for the defense industry. Lay out, if this bill passes, through I guess if President Obama actually signs it into law, what is it exactly they will get out of it.HARTUNG: Well, the biggest winners will be Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35. The most expensive weapons program the Pentagon's ever undertaken. And they've been ramping up that program, they'll probably get $10 billion or more if this bill goes through. Boeing, which builds a rival fighter plane, managed to get about a dozen of those added to the budget even though the Pentagon didn't even ask for them, so they'd be kind of a secondary winner. Then there's all kinds of money for new ships, for companies like Huntington Ingalls.And basically there's a surge of procurement, much of which has little to do with supporting troops in current wars. It has a lot to do with kind of bailing out defense contractors, or an outmoded strategy that assumes somehow that the United States should be able to police the entire globe all at once.PERIES: Now, earlier you said that President Obama is not in favor of this. Why so?HARTUNG: Well, he would like to get the Pentagon money directly. So he would lift those budget caps, and instead of putting the money in the war budget, he would put it directly in the Pentagon's base budget. So it's really--you know, on one level it's just kind of budgetary maneuvers. On another level if he could get those caps lifted then the Pentagon budget could go up year after year after year without any impediments. Whereas the way the House wants to fund it, every year they'd have to go back and fight for that additional money for the Pentagon.So it's, this would be in a way a better deal for the Pentagon. But it's harder to achieve, politically.PERIES: And there is a reference you made to the watchdog role that an agency plays within this system. Tell us more about that, and what is that watchdog role?HARTUNG: Well, there's an agency within the Pentagon, an independent testing office, which looks at weapons systems, their technical features, how much they cost, are they really performing as advertised. And they've played a useful role in slowing down programs that have cost overruns, that don't really work, so that the Pentagon doesn't buy hundreds or thousands of them before they are ready. So it's, they're really looking at money and performance rather than, you know, whether we need them in terms of strategy. But nonetheless they've been very useful and they've been very helpful to Congress.So this bill in the House basically hamstrings that independent testing office. It says, well, you know, if you do the tests it can't slow down programs too much, and it can't delay their schedule such that they might have to spend more money later. But of course you have to have some delay if you're going to do the testing. And if you do the testing and find out the weapon doesn't work, then there's no reason to rush ahead and spend money on it.So they've kind of injected these--contrary to, sort of contradictory impulses or requirements on this office, which means it might be harder for it to do its job as an independent entity.PERIES: William, this seems like in a state of fear we keep building up our military weaponry and capabilities. Meanwhile, the country's suffering from lack of investment in our infrastructure. Which, for example, last week the Amtrak derailment, and the House decided to also cut the Amtrak budget.Now, if we were to, in your opinion who follows this issue extensively, what better ways are there to spend that kind of money?HARTUNG: Well I mean, it's such a huge sum. You know, the Pentagon gets half a trillion dollars off the bat, and then another $50-90 billion in the war fund, and all kinds of other war-related expenditures.So even a small amount of that money, 5 or 10 percent, could be a huge benefit. I mean, certainly it would be more than enough to deal with Amtrak's problems, to begin building some affordable housing again, to think about training more teachers. So all manner of things that have been neglected for many years, we could get a start on investing in them again.PERIES: And just after the 2008 crisis, it was acceptable to reduce the military budget to some extent. Has that possibility gone out the window?HARTUNG: There's still a chance of at least level or declining Pentagon budgets. But it'll really be about whether there's gridlock between President Obama and the Congress. If they can't figure out a way to lift those caps, and he doesn't let them maneuver to evade the caps, they may end up with a budget that's a little lower. But that's not what they're trying to do, because they're arguing that with ISIS and the Ukraine, and other issues around the world, this is not the time to reduce the Pentagon budget.

Okinawan People Oppose Relocation of U.S. Military Base to Henoko

On Monday, February 2, an international coalition of scholars, journalists, and filmmakers sent a letter to President Obama to express their opposition to the U.S. Marine air base at Henoko in Okinawa, Japan. The letter raises concerns about the way that this military base would affect Okinawa residents, public health, quality of life, and the environment. Now joining us is because Peter Kuznick. Peter is a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University. He coauthored the book Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives. He's also the coauthor, with Oliver Stone, of The Untold History of the United States.Thanks very much for joining us, Peter.PETER KUZNICK, AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: Hi, Paul. Good to be with you.JAY: So if I understand correctly, in 1995, three American soldiers rape a 12-year-old Japanese girl near the base, an American base in Okinawa. It created a storm of protest and a demand from local residents to get the American base out of Okinawa, certainly at least that section of Okinawa. And then they came up with a plan to move it to /həˈnokɪn/ in northern Okinawa. And now there's a storm of protest about moving it there. So tell us a story.KUZNICK: Well, this is actually one of many American bases that's in Okinawa. In fact, 74 percent of all the U.S. bases in Japan are located in Okinawa. And Okinawa is six-tenths of 1 percent of the land mass of Japan. So you've got more than half of American troops in Japan located in Okinawa, 74 percent of the bases. And this one, however, is Ginowan City, right by Ginowan City, which is very, very densely populated. There have been accidents. There has been crime. There have been sexual crimes. This rape was only the most recent--not the most recent, but most notorious. So the population in Ginowan City and other parts of Okinawa protested about this base. So they cut a deal. The U.S. proposed to move the base from Ginowan City area up to northern Okinawa, the area around a new base called--at Henoko near Nago City.JAY: Peter, before we get into the specifics of that, how many U.S. troops are we talking about in Okinawa?KUZNICK: Were talking about 50,000 U.S. troops in all of Japan, and more and then half of them in Okinawa.JAY: And why is this so important to the U.S. military? Why are these bases so strategic? Why keep them there at all?KUZNICK: Good question, I think. Why keep the American military presence all over the globe the way it is? When I was in Okinawa this August, I met with Al Magleby, the U.S. consul general. I was there with Satoko Oka Norimatsu from Vancouver and Joseph Gerson, a leading U.S. peace activist. And I specifically asked Magleby, why is Okinawa so important? Why do they have to keep the base in Okinawa? And he said it is strategically essential, he said, given its location. It is near Korea, it is near China, it is near the Philippines. So the argument he made is that it was the location that made it essential. Other people have argued against that, even Joseph Nye, who's one of the real Japan hands in the United States, has said that because of China's military development and modernization, those bases are actually vulnerable now in Okinawa and that it is no longer strategically essential to keep them there. You have to remember the American troops now occupy--the U.S. bases occupy 20 percent of the land mass of Okinawa. Those people have been riddled with those bases and have been opposing them for environmental reasons, for safety reasons, for pollution reasons, for noise reasons, and many for political reasons.JAY: Well, I add to that what you just said. If it makes the base a target, then it makes the people of Okinawa a target.KUZNICK: Yes. They would be a target, just as they were a target during World War II. You have to remember--and this is very much part of their memory--that 30 percent of the population of Okinawa civilians were killed in the fighting in 1945. And they were in that sense even then a sacrificial lamb for the Japanese government. And the Abe administration is doing the same thing now.JAY: All right. Let's contextualize this a little more. So, if I understand it correctly, the Japanese federal government is supporting this move to Henoko. They want to get it out of the current place where it is in Okinawa 'cause it's so populated and the people are fed up with it. So everybody agrees it has to go somewhere. But the people in Henoko don't want it. So what's the politics of this?KUZNICK: The politics is the Abe administration is extremely conservative, extremely right-wing, has been very much in support of remilitarizing Japan. They want to do away with Article 9, which is part Japanese postwar Constitution that the U.S. basically imposed, which says that Japan renounces the right of war as a right of a sovereign nation. And Japan renounced having any kind of offensive military forces. This was a tremendously important document that really sets a standard globally, and Abe is committed to repudiating that. Abe has also imposed this secrecy law in Japan. He's been expanding Japanese military defense spending, increasing Japanese military sales overseas, rewriting Japanese history. The historical revisionism there is outrageous. And on top of that, they want to solidify the base presence in Okinawa. Obama has been complicit in this, which is why we sent the letter to Obama. You might recall that in 2009, the Japan Democratic Party got elected, ending that long span of LDP conservative governments, and Hatoyama, the Japanese prime minister, the Japan Democratic Party, had run--one of his campaign planks was that they were going to remove the bases from Okinawa and stop the relocation to Henoko. And Obama came down on him. Obama smashed him. Obama forced him to rescind that, to capitulate. And that destroyed the JDP government. The government collapsed. Obama is, in many ways, in Japan, like elsewhere, more comfortable dealing with these right-wing governments. And the Abe administration is the perfect foil for U.S. plans there. So the geopolitical and the U.S. political concern there is part of the Asia pivot. You also remember that in November 2011, Hillary Clinton in Foreign Policy magazine wrote an important article titled America's Pacific Century, in which she says the United States has to balance. We've got to pivot toward Asia, move out of the Middle East. Well, that hasn't happened, the Middle East part of it. But we wanted to rebalance our forces from 50 percent, our fleet, 50 percent Pacific, 50 percent Atlantic, to 60 percent Pacific, 40 percent Atlantic, and we wanted to do what we could to contain China. This was our containment policy toward China. And so this fits into that overall geopolitical strategic context.JAY: Yeah. The underlying assumption is the United States needs to be the dominant military power--well, frankly, everywhere, but specifically in Asia. Now, the big threat here is environmental. But I thought there was an environmental assessment made by the Japanese themselves and accepted by the Japanese government that said there really weren't environmental threats.KUZNICK: There was a very dubious environmental assessment that took place that the people of Okinawa rejected. However, Governor Nakaima, the previous governor, who was elected on an anti-base platform, betrayed the citizens of Okinawa, and under pressure from the Abe administration caved in and gave the go-ahead to begin the reclamation of /oʊrəˈbeɪ/ and the relocation of the base. There was just an election in Okinawa in which the current governor, Onaga, ran against Nakaima, the former governor, and defeated him handily, overwhelmingly. The people of Okinawa spoke up again. They spoke up in the Nago City elections, where Mayor Inamine got reelected. They spoke up at the prefectural elections. Over and over and over again the people of Okinawa have made very clear that they're opposed to the base relocation. They want the bases moved off of Okinawa. But the United States, working with the Abe administration, is using this pretext of an environmental impact study, which actually goes against Japanese requirements. It's a sham study. There's a case now--.JAY: But didn't the U.S. Congressional Research office more or less come out and say that it was a sham, that it was created under pressure by the Japanese government?KUZNICK: Yes. The Congressional Research Service did say that in its latest report, and said that the United States was going to be in for some serious problems if the U.S. goes ahead and tries to force its relocation. It is so undemocratic, so unpopular. The people of Okinawa have spoken out against it time after time after time. There's nothing ambiguous about this. And the people of Japan don't want it on the mainland either. Nobody wants these American bases. So the government in Tokyo is willing to sacrifice the interests and safety and health of the people of Okinawa, as it has done before, in order to maintain this base.JAY: Now, you've written this letter to President Obama with a bunch of scholars and other people. Is there any support for what you're proposing, which is, I guess, get the base out of Okinawa altogether? Is there any support for this in Congress?KUZNICK: Yes, there actually is support in Congress. Among the people who've opposed to the base relocation is John McCain. So we've got some bipartisan support in Congress. Progressives are opposed to it, of course. And we have the potential--.JAY: Well, hang on. What's McCain's position here? Is he for getting out of Okinawa or just against the move?KUZNICK: I think he's just against the move. He's not for getting out of Okinawa. But I've got a meeting on Tuesday with officials in the Japanese Embassy, at which I'm going to be presenting tens of thousands of signatures from people in Okinawa who are opposed to the base relocation. Some of us sent a letter back in--initial letter, which 29 people signed, followed up by another letter, which 103 leading scholars signed, followed up by an online petition of thousands of Americans who were opposed to this. So we've been mobilizing as much opposition as we can. There's strong sentiment about this.JAY: Okay, just quickly, what are the dangers facing the people of Henoko if it does move there?KUZNICK: If it does move, first of all, there's the ospreys, which the people there are very concerned about. Secondly, they've got--this is a very pristine environmental area. There is the Dugong who feed there, a highly endangered species of sea mammals there. What they would have to do in order to build the osprey pads is they'd have to actually reclaim the base. They would have to do a massive reclamation project there, turn /ɑːlɚˈbeɪ/ into a--turn it into concrete, basically. There are other pristine environmental factors there. This is a beautiful area, and that is going to be destroyed. It's going to be loud, it's going to be polluted. There are going to be the U.S. troops there. The people of Okinawa, and especially of Henoko, are just opposed to this on all grounds.

Congress and Pentagon Shielding Weapons Contracts from Budget Cuts

On Tuesday, the House unveiled a partial spending bill that would fund most of the government until September 2015 and at the same time delay a fight over President Obama's executive action on immigration. Included in the bill is spending for defense, $521 million for baseline funding, and then another $64 billion for overseas operations.WILLIAM HARTUNG, ARMS AND SECURITY PROJECT, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY: Pentagon's regular budget is about $500 billion a year. But if you add about $17 billion for nuclear warhead work at the Department of Energy, you had more than $60 billion for the war budget, which is known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, if you look at veterans benefits, the cost of intelligence and Homeland Security, some of the interest on the debt that's related to past military spending, you'll get about double that figure. You'll get up to about $1 trillion or more.HEDGES: William Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and says that Congress and the Pentagon could effectively reduce spending if it was willing to face the military-industrial complex. Instead, last Tuesday the House and Senate together finished a defense authorization act that'll shrink the Pentagon's budget by targeting benefits. Military pay raises, for example, will be cut from 1.8 percent to just 1 percent. The military will also cap basic allowance for housing for several years and increase beneficiary co-pays for drug prescriptions that are filled off-base. However, the one area of the Pentagon's budget that'll fare more lightly is Overseas Contingency Operations spending, or OCO, a category created after 2001 to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which is also exempt from sequestration cuts. Lindsay Koshgarian is the research director at the National Priorities Project, a nongovernmental organization that informs the general public on how the defense budget in particular works. She says that baseline defense funding lost because of sequestration has found a new and more secretive home in OCO spending.LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN, NATIONAL PRIORITIES PROJECT: It only goes back, has a history know of almost about 15 years. And it's a dedicated pool of funding that was established to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And the interesting thing now, as the U.S. has already left Iraq and is attempting to extricate itself from Afghanistan, even though that's taking a bit longer than planned, the interesting thing will be to see what happens to OCO, to the war funding. And one thing that military budget watchers have noted with some alarm is that sequestration has affected all federal budgets. And as there is growing pressure around fiscal restraint or reducing federal spending, that OCO budget has really become a slush fund for the Department of Defense.HEDGES: For a long time, the most salient example has been the F-35 joint strike fighter manufactured by Lockheed Martin at more than $600 million a plane and with a lifecycle cost of more than $1 trillion.HARTUNG: The thing is not ready to fly, so there's no way it's going to be used in a conflict. This year the House blocked the attempt to put a few more there, which was to their credit. But in general it's kind of an open season for putting weapons like that, which--there's just not enough money under the caps that the Pentagon has. But they want [crosstalk] anyway cost overruns, so let's just stick it over there. And then the National Defense Authorization Act compounds that problem, because it puts things in like the EA-18 Growler, which is a version of the F-18, which is built by Boeing in St. Louis, Missouri, area. That production line was going to close down. So they stuck these EA-18s in there to keep that production line open, even though the Pentagon did not want that system. They've done similar with M1 tank upgrades to help keep a plant at Ohio going. They've prevented the Army National Guard from retiring some helicopters that would be at some of their bases. In all, they added about a dozen--[it amounted to about (?)] a dozen programs beyond what the Pentagon was looking for. And then they did some funny money accounting--well, we'll change our foreign exchange equations and we'll take out of unobligated balances from other years. So, basically, they've sort of done this budgetary sleight of hand where the savings that they're supposed to be getting to replace the money that they're adding are kind of soft.HEDGES: But while the Pentagon has almost always protected high-tech weapons programs like the F-35, it has in the past few years recognized the need for reevaluating costs of operating bases at home and abroad, also known as Base Realignment and Closure Assessment, or BRAC. In November, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work expressed his frustration with those costs in particular. "Imagine," he said, "the largest private-sector companies being forced to maintain 24 percent of excess overhead. They'd be out of business in a heartbeat. Their shareholders simply would not stand for it". But Congress has resisted a new ground of BRAC, even though cutting back on expenditures tied to maintaining our 700 or so bases worldwide could save the U.S. tens of billions of dollars each year.KOSHGARIAN: And that's something that's a holdover, really, from the Cold War, when the United States established many, many military bases in the United States and abroad. And a lot of those bases are probably no longer militarily necessary. And the Pentagon has acknowledged that very openly. The Pentagon has actually asked for another round of BRAC, so another round of potential base closures. But Congress has been denying them and saying, basically, that we won't let you close these bases. And it does often come down to jobs. One ironic thing about that is that it's not as many jobs as it used to be, especially on the side of defense contracts. So, for instance, the biggest defense contract in the United States right now and for many years running has been Lockheed Martin. Well, Lockheed has cut down a tremendous number of jobs in recent years, despite the fact that they're getting more military contract dollars than ever. So what Congress is doing is throwing increasing dollars at these contractors for a diminishing number of jobs in some cases.HEDGES: Hartung and Koshgarian both argue that the compounded interests of Congress and the Pentagon have created a structure whereby corporate contracts that equip the military with high-tech weaponry are enshrined even in times of austerity.HARTUNG: It's ironic, because there's a program to help communities adjust to things like base closures, called the Office of Economic Adjustment in the Pentagon. And at the same time they are refusing to close bases, they're cutting money for that adjustment program. And in the past, communities that have had bases closed over a number of years have actually generated more jobs in other sectors than they had when they had the military base. So they're going about this entirely backwards, not only in terms of security, but in terms of long-term economic prosperity.HEDGES: While few in number, groups have taken advantage of the program that the Pentagon's Office of Economic Adjustment has to offer. The Connecticut machinist union, which represents more defense workers in that state than any other union, for example, has stepped beyond the neutral language of jobs and asked whether certain jobs are needed more than others.HARTUNG: The machinists supported the creation of a commission on Connecticut's economic future, which was precisely designed to look at alternative industries, alternative investments, so that Connecticut's dependence on the Pentagon could be reduced over time. As it is, at least until recently, Connecticut had the highest per capita reliance on the Pentagon of any state in the country because they build submarines there at the Electric Boat plant. They build helicopters for the military. They build aircraft engines. So the idea here would be, let's have a Plan B, so that these kinds of ups and downs of Pentagon spending don't rock Connecticut's economy. And, of course, it would also create a little bit of freedom for local representatives. If they knew that their economy could be secured in other fashions, perhaps they wouldn't fight so hard for systems that in some cases the Pentagon isn't even requesting.HEDGES: Last year, Connecticut obtained a planning grant from the office of economic adjustment and funded a state commission, part of whose mandate it is to diversify the states overly defense-dependent economy. Miriam Pemberton is a research analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies. She also testified in front of commission.MIRIAM PEMBERTON, RESEARCH FELLOW, INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES: The bill to create this commission went nowhere until the machinists union supported it. They said it makes perfect sense to figure out how to make this transition.HEDGES: In 2007, IPS commissioned the University of Massachusetts to produce a report that looked at how a $1 billion investment in various sectors of the economy affected job figures.PEMBERTON: The military came out the worst job creator all of those, including just giving it back to people. So it turned out, and the number--they've repeated the study several times, and the proportions stay constant, but the job numbers change a little bit. But, basically, if you put $1 billion into the military, you generate about 11,000 jobs; if you put it into transportation, you generate about 17,000 jobs; put it into education, about 26,000 jobs. So there are a lot of reasons for this, but you know among them is that the military is much more capital-intensive and education is much more labor-intensive. And so you can create more jobs in education than by investing in the military.HEDGES: As is often the case, the future of defense spending depends on the erratic trends of politics and military operations abroad. Obama's $5.6 billion request to fight ISIS, the Republican takeover of the Senate, and the nomination of Ashton Carter as Secretary of Defense are all developments that should be watched closely in the coming months.