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In 1983, the organization received initial funding, enabling it to become incorporated and provide both individual advocacy and support groups to victims of battering. Since then, The Alliance has assisted over 8,400 women and their children, in their struggle for a violence free, healthy family life.
-Crisis phone line opens, serves five women. Since then, trained advocates have answered more than 6,200 first contact calls from abused women.
-Women's support groups begin. Since then, more than 2,000 support groups were run by volunteer survivors of domestic violence, trained in support group and facilitation skills.
-Community education programs begin. Domestic violence affects people of all ages, races, religions and socioeconomic levels. Rather than ask, "Why does she stay?", the Alliance community education program asks, "What in our community is keeping her there?" Our community education programs have reached more than 125,000 people face-to-face. Speakers explain that silence and misinformation allow batterers to continue to assault women. They teach what we all can do to stop domestic violence.
In 1985
-Legal advocacy services begin. To date, they have attended nearly 2700 court hearings.
- Safe homes introduced. These homes are private homes where women and their children can stay with a family for up to three days while shaping longer term plans. Nearly 200 women have been sheltered in safe homes.
- Presentations begin in schools. Nearly 1,000 presentations have reached nearly 30,000 children and youth.
In 1991
- Children's support groups begin. Because of severe budget cuts in 2003, Children's Support Groups are no longer available.
In 1993
-Carver County Criminal Justice Intervention Project begins. This project along with one in Scott County (1998) has assisted more than 2,000 women. Because of severe budget cuts in 2003, the Carver County Intervention project is no longer available for Carver County residents.
-"Living Violence Free" classes for juvenile offenders begin. Over 550 groups have been initiated, with over 2,800 youth in attendance.
-Support groups at MN Women's Correctional Facility in Shakopee, MN begin.
- Sheila Wellstone visits several times to analyze the "state-wide role model" for safe home programming after referral from the MN Dept. of Corrections.
In 1996
-i'M o.K. Children's Visitation Center opens. At the Center, children can visit their non-custodial parents in a safe, comfortable setting. Supervised exchanges between custodial and non-custodial parents also are offered. Since late 1996, the Center has hosted more than 1600 visits and nearly 500 exchanges.
GIANT SUNSPOTS: Astronomers can't remember the last time this happened: two Jupiter-sized sunspots crossing the face of the sun at the same time. Sunspots 484 and 486 have tangled magnetic fields that pose a threat for powerful X-class solar flares--like the one this morning. The pair are easy to see, but never look directly at the sun. Use safe solar observing methods instead.
Severe Solar Activity -- Massive X-17 flare, Earth directly in path!
One of the most powerful solar flares in years, a remarkable X17-category explosion, erupted from sunspot 486 this morning at approximately 1110 UT. A strong solar radiation storm is in progress. (Click here to learn about the effects of such storms.) The explosion hurled a coronal mass ejection almost directly toward Earth, which could trigger bright auroras when it arrives on Oct 29th or 30th.
Look at the blue image at the bottom to see the CME heading almost directly for earth. This one will at the least give us some powerful northern lights. Note also the prediction for more M-class remain at 90% and more X-class at 50%!
On October 16, 2003, the Northern MAPP Sub-regional Planning Group, chaired by Mike Steckelberg of GRE, met at MAPP headquarters in St. Paul. These meetings are where the transmission plans for the MAPP northern region are reviewed from an engineering perspective -- a cohort compares this to "watching paint dry!" Oh well, no accounting for taste...
The majority of those attending these meetings are utility engineers, from GRE, Minnesota Power, Xcel, WAPA, Rochester Public Utilities, non-utility engineers from firms such as Dahlen-Berg and enXco, and representatives from the state's Department of Commerce, Public Utilities Commission, and Environmental Quality Board. Plus there's always a couple of independent engineering and energy wonks like myself.
A few items from the agenda:
* The SPG has been working to make information accessible through an "e-community" project, led by Tom Jones of Minnesota Power, and Tom provided an update.
* There was a discussion of "Study Criteria: rate A versus rate C" which is in essence a debate about how system limits are determined and how costs of upgrades or new infrastructure are transferred to a party seeking transmission service. Very important issue when no one wants to pay for infrastructure.
* Another big issue is the state's Biennial Transmision Plan. The first report was filed last year and utilities are now planning for the next one. Regional meetings have been held throughout Minnesota and they are working on incorporating the public comments into the plan. The plan should go to the printer next week, and will be available soon at the utilities' Minnesota Electric Transmission Planning website. Comments from the public will be solicited.
* The SPG was looking at a "loss analysis methodology" but the state engineer behind this effort has retired and it's stalled. "Line loss" is the energy lost when electricity is transmitted over distances through wires. This is important because, as Steckelberg pointed out, the amount of line loss can be a determining factor in which transmission alternative is selected, as it was in the SW MN Xcel 345kV proceeding. Line loss was the focus of the direct and rebuttal testimony of expert witness Art Hughes, Ph.D., E.E.
Stimulating stuff, eh? The next MAPP SPG meeting is January 13, 2003 at Great River Energy headquarters in Elk River. If you have questions, contact Mike Steckelberg, Project Engineer at GRE: (763) 241-6223 or msteckelberg@grenergy.com
Because of President Bush's "No Child Left Behind Act," our schools are already receiving additional resources and historic levels of federal funding to ensure that students succeed, and more positive changes are on the way. Recently, the president announced that every state had put in place an accountability plan to ensure that all schools make progress.
As part of these plans, and the No Child Left Behind Act's strong accountability provisions, school districts will be required to test students and give parents annual report cards. Schools that don't make progress will offer their students additional services, such as free tutoring; and parents will be given new options.
Through these new reforms, we have a real chance to ensure that every child receives a quality education; and President Bush deserves enormous credit for focusing our nation's attention on this challenge.
Phillip Rossing
Northfield
Reality for a teacher
I'm confused. I am a seasoned professional teacher in a Minneapolis public school. I love my job, my students and my colleagues. I really care for and work very hard with the students and resources I get every year, and each year these both change dramatically. Last year, as a result of poor performance, our school received a supplemental program. What did this mean? Well, after teaching all day every day, we had the opportunity of working overtime to give our students more reading help in a student-teacher ratio that was much lower than we could offer during the day. The teachers who elected to participate were paid their contractual, hourly, straight-time rate. This year we made so much progress that the program was going to be discontinued. Through much effort, the program is back. One small change, however. If a licensed teacher wants to teach in this program, after a full day of teaching middle school students, the pay will be less than what a first-year teacher earns per hour. Welcome to the joys of overtime for a "professional" teacher. Now, governor, tell me again about this program to pay teachers $100,000 a year?
Lynette Cargill, Apple Valley.
Hamline's Center for Excellence in Urban Education tries to get teachers in city schools to see that their students are capable and motivated but that those qualities may not always have been tapped. "Family and community culture profoundly affect how a child learns and responds to school,"said Barbara Washington, the center's director.
"New teachers are often ready to teach content, but you can have all the content you want and you're not going to get very far if you're not relating to students and families," she said. "We can't change dysfunctional families, so we have to look at what we can control."
That means combining understanding of a child's situation with high expectations that treat children with respect. An example, Washington said, is a 10-year-old from a dysfunctional home who is effectively raising younger siblings, cooking dinner, putting them to bed and making sure they get off to school. Used to acting independently, that child may do better in school if given a leadership role, Washington said. The trick is to make the child feel like they're in charge, but get them to do what the teacher wants.
As the bad news about America's public schools has poured in, with large numbers falling short of state targets demanded by the new federal education law, local officials are blaming the White House and Congress for asking the impossible. How could rational leaders demand, in just 12 years, that 100 percent of students do well enough on standardized tests to be rated proficient in reading and math?
The No Child Left Behind law is "out of touch with reality," said Ron Wimmer, school superintendent in Olathe, Kan., and many of his counterparts across the country agree...
...Critics of the law, such as George Mason University educational psychologist Gerald W. Bracey, are less hard on its goals than on what they say is a severe lack of money. For the 2004 fiscal year, congressional Democrats want the $32 billion initially authorized for No Child Left Behind, rather than the $22.6 billion Bush has requested.
"If you want to try to get poor kids to high proficiency, you take the JFK man-on-the-moon-in-a-decade approach and fund the program adequately," Bracey said. "To succeed, this task needs an $87 billion supplemental appropriation more than the rebuilding of Iraq needs an $87 billion supplemental appropriation."
The issue is made more confusing because each state will have its own definition of proficiency. Before No Child Left Behind, when educators used the word "proficient," they often meant that level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal exam given to a sampling of students to get a sense of national achievement levels. Only 31 percent of fourth-graders tested proficient or above on the latest NAEP reading test, in 2002, and only 26 percent were proficient or above on the math test given in 2000.
But under No Child Left Behind, each state sets its own standards, which are turning out to be much lower than that of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In Virginia last year, for instance, 72 percent of third-graders passed the Standards of Learning test -- the state's measure of proficiency -- in English, and 80 percent passed the state math test. Still, many Virginia schools have not made adequately yearly progress under the federal law, because their low-income and special education students have not been that successful.
Ever wonder how No Child Left Behind's formulas can turn a real-life good school into a failing school on paper? Micro-Pine Level has 45 special education students -- with handicaps varying from speech impediments to retardation. To make adequate progress under the federal formula for North Carolina, 74.6 percent of these 45 students -- 34 -- need to score as proficient in math.
Of those 45, 8 were immediately counted as failures. They were all borderline retarded children who took an alternative state assessment because they were several grades behind. While all 8 showed progress, the federal law counts them as failures because they could not pass the regular state test for their grades. That meant 34 of the remaining 37 special education students had to pass. Only 31 did. And those 3 failed special education students turned Micro-Pine Level, a school of 500, into a failure.
There is more formula magic. For a subgroup to be included in the federal assessment in North Carolina, it must have at least 40 students. So if Micro-Pine had 6 fewer special education students, 39, they would not constitute a subgroup, and the school would suddenly be a federal success. Even if all 39 failed!
In dark moments, Ms. Wellons has considered reducing her special education census to 39. "I could take off a few with mild speech impediments," she said. She could have the borderline retarded children take the regular state test. "We could teach them testing skills," she said. "Maybe they'd get lucky."
But she will not. "I couldn't," she said. The borderline children experience enough failure, she said, and do not need to be humiliated by a test far beyond their abilities. And she will continue to offer special education to any child she feels will benefit, even those with mild speech impediments.
What makes Ms. Wellons a valued principal has little to do with test scores. As is true of many of her students, Ms. Wellons lives on a farm. She knows her children and what they are up against.
"This is one of 14 living in the same house with grandmother," she said during a school tour. "This one had to sleep at the bus driver's house the night before the state tests because there was a drug raid going on at home."
If children act out, she drives them home for a talk with the parents. Ms. Wellons is known in the white, black and Mexican farmhouses and at every trailer park, from Country Store Road to Berry Acres to Beulah in the Pines.
"You have to have the heart for teaching," she said, "and if you don't, it doesn't pay enough."
Until the people in Washington figure a way to factor that into their formulas, educators like Ms. Wellons believe, No Child Left Behind is likely to remain, for many, a baffling law full of statistical hocus-pocus. (Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company)
What oinks and has its head on backward?
The legislature:
* Approved Mesaba by exempting it from the Certificate of Need process.
* Approved future upgrades without a Certificate of Need
* Approved any transmission associated with the project with a Certificate of Need
* For the first time in history, granted eminent domain to a private company that is not a public service corporation engaged in supplying essential services to the public
* For the first time in history, mandated a purchase contract with a utility (Xcel).
* Gave Excelsior $10 million dollars of our public money.
Congress later this month is expected to vote on an energy bill that could have an impact on our environment for many decades to come.
Unfortunately, it appears that impact will be mostly negative.
The House and Senate earlier this year passed differing versions of
the energy bill, and conferees are attempting to hammer out a compromise. Details on the work-in-progress legislation are unclear because the conference committee has been meeting in secret. But some information on what's likely to be included in the final bill has been made public.
It appears the new energy bill is likely to be a disaster for the environment. It would further increase our dependency on pollution-belching coal, do little or nothing to reduce consumption of petroleum, expand nuclear power, and harm pristine natural resources.
"The bill is more an infrastructure and regulatory relief bill as opposed to a mandated conservation or incentivized production bill," Texas congressman and lead negotiator Joe Barton told the Dallas Morning News earlier this week.
And therein lies the problem.
The Bush administration and Republican leaders have made it their priority in this energy bill to establish regulatory concessions for big utilities. And they appear to be sacrificing our children's future to do it.
Consider this. If the Bush administration has its way, the bill coming out in the conference committee would include incentives to increase nuclear power in this country, even though Congress still has not come up with a viable plan for how to deal with nuclear waste that remains toxic for millions of years.
In addition, the administration appears to have successfully jettisoned from the bill a provision that would have mandated that utilities, by a certain date, generate at least 10 percent of their power from
renewable resources such as wind.
Also missing from the bill are any reductions in fuel efficiency standards for U.S. automobiles. At the rate we're going, people will soon be driving small houses down the road that get a mile to the gallon.
Finally, there are also rumors that the compromise bill could again include provisions for drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and along the outer continental shelf.
And, to make matters worse, there is nothing in either the Senate or House versions of the energy bill that would do anything to increase power reliability, which could increase the chances that we will have more blackouts like the one that hit the Northeast this summer.
No matter what shape this bill takes, it appears certain that it will increase our reliance on polluting fossil fuels and cause us to further foul our nation -- and the planet -- will toxic pollutants.
We recognize that coal power is and will continue to be the nation's primary electric power source for some years to come. And we also recognize that depletable fossil fuels, such as natural gas and, possibly, nuclear power, must also be included in any energy equation for the next two or three decades.
However, reduced fossil fuel consumption, stricter fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, an increased emphasis on renewable energy sources, and more stringent standards for outdated coal-burning power plants like the one in Rochester must also be included in that equation. We simply cannot accept the status quo, or worse, where our national energy policy is concerned.
Here is our advice for Senate and House conferees. Scrap the bill. There's no need to rush. Start over and do the right thing. We need a balanced, sensible energy bill that keeps power affordable while at the same time preserving the environment, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and ensuring that future generations will breathe clean air.
Copyright 2003 Post-Bulletin Company, LLC All Rights Reserved
RANGE POWER PLANT PROJECT BRINGS POLITICAL PARTIES TOGETHER, by Lee Bloomquist
EVELETH - In the heart of Democratic-Farmer-Labor country, a rare political occurrence took place Wednesday on the Iron Range.
Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's senior policy adviser and Iron Range Democrats sat at the same table and broke bread in bipartisan support of a proposed power plant that would bring about 600 jobs to the Iron Range and provide a new source of electricity for the Twin Cities. Click here to read more
"This is the environmental technology of the future. This is the way to produce significant amounts of electricity in a very environmentally friendly manner," says Micheletti.
Some environmental activists disagree. Michael Noble is the executive director of Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy. He says such a plant would produce huge volumes of carbon dioxide, which, he says, would contribute to global warming.
"There's nothing about this coal plant that would qualify as to call it clean coal," says Noble. "This would be the largest, or the second-largest, contributor to global warming of any industrial facility in Minnesota." Read more.
If U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman succeeds in getting up to $800 million in federal loan guarantees for a new power plant in Hoyt Lakes, Minn., the money would help finance a tiny and little-known company called Excelsior Energy Inc. that is little more than a husband-and-wife team with political savvy and a big dream...(But)...So-called merchant power generators have found financing impossible to come by since the collapse of Enron and the California energy crisis.
Noble doesn't believe the plant is necessary. It would produce up to 2,000 megawatts of power from burning coal-based gases and another 1,000 megawatts from wind power, but Minnesota needs are growing far more slowly, meaning the plant would have to rely on selling power, Noble said. Minnesota currently requires about 15,000 megawatts per year and demand is growing by about 150 megawatts annually, he said. Excelsior would have to sell the excess into a soft market for electricity with too much supply and too little demand.
"It's just too risky -- it's what Enron was," Noble said.
Indeed, excess supply has led to a marked decline in construction of new plants, said Jaffray. "People aren't building much of anything right now,'' he said. "We are in a surplus position right now.''
"They're talking about $800 million in federal loan guarantees for a pork project that's got two people in it," said Lisa Doerr, executive director of Minnesota League of Conservation Voters. "That's pretty stunning."
EVEN WITH HANDOUTS, ENERGY BILL STILL STINKS
What oinks and has its head on backward? The federal energy bill emerging from plutocrat-manipulated conference dirty dealing to reconcile two bad bills to make a worse one. As conference leaders, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., have been abusing the conference system, picking and choosing items to exclude - and more outrageous - to include in this pulled pork feast of subsidies and regulatory sidesteps for the fossil-fuel industries.
The acid test of venality in these dealings is the fact that permission to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge remains in the conference version despite the Senate's emphatic "no'' to this folly in its bill. Now, with a filibuster threat hanging over this exercise on behalf of the extractors and public-lands foes, Domenici is dipping into that old pork barrel to heap more state-specific projects into a bill that already hands out $18 billion in subsidies, tilted heavily toward fossil-fuel interests.
One of those handouts is $800 million in federal loan guarantees to build a coal-gasification power plant in Hoyt Lakes, Minn. The offer to Sen. Norm Coleman, one of the few Republicans who opposes drilling in ANWR, apparently is a tempting one to sway his vote for the whole bill, although on Monday his spokesman said Coleman still considers the issue of ANWR a distraction from the central tasks of energy policy-setting. Similar enticements for senators of other states are appearing in the last-minute grub for votes to make the whole energy bill filibuster-proof in a reluctant Senate. And at a billion here and a billion there, pretty soon the already $500 billion deficit gets substantially larger and the energy policy future more problematic - except for the fossil-fuel guys who make a killing.
There are parts of this energy bill that meet the need for a forward-looking approach, supporting renewable fuels, conservation and technology innovation. In the Upper Midwest, cold and at the mercy of others for oil and gas, the conservation and alternatives tactics are of utmost importance. All the senators in the region know that and have been keen backers of increasing homegrown fuels.
The federal energy bill, a greased pig waddling to the finish line, stinks. It is too much to hope that it won't pass. At least the Senate should retain its good sense and say no to drilling in ANWR and ordinary citizens should remember the energy bill fiasco, say, when filling the tank in the family van or paying the heating bills.
Dear Senator Coleman,
I read with great disappointment quotes attributed to you regarding your willingness to agree to both drilling in ANWR AND federal loan guarantees for a boondoggle coal gasification plant in Minnesota.
Sir, you have the equation exactly wrong. The coal gasification plant is a bad idea. It demonstrates no new technology, it consumes valuable federal loan guarantees for an established industry that does not need federal subsidization, and it significantly increases state exposure to the risks associated with unattenuated carbon dioxide emissions. It is the LAST project you should be willing to use as an argument for breaking your word on ANWR.
Please, sir, adopt a conservative approach - don't "spend" market distorting loan guarantees to provide corporate welfare for this coal gasification idiocy. This corporate welfare coal plant is NOT worth it by itself. It is certainly not also good enough to justify going along with the truly stupid and insidious House proposal to spread 2000 acres of environmental devastation across the Arctic wilderness for oil that we don't need to develop. The coal gasification plant should make it in the marketplace on its own terms or not at all. The oil in ANWR is not worth drilling for under any principled economic, much less environmental, analysis. Together they do not represent a better idea; together they are just two bad ideas coupled with an unprincipled reversal of your previous, correct position on ANWR.
If you want to create jobs in Minnesota, please focus your attention on renewable energy. Supporting renewables generates far more jobs per dollar than fossil technologies. Please use your power as a US Senator to do something positive for the future, rather than merely subsidizing the continuation of yesteryear's mistakes.
Please abide by truly conservative principles - conserve scarce loan guarantee dollars for innovative and deserving technology, conserve the atmosphere for future generations, and conserve the integrity of political decision making by not creating a disappointing argument to vote for twice as many mistakes.
Karl Rabago
Minnetonka
