Minnesota

promoted 2nd 1ST ON RENEE good; swing? blue? keith ELLISON, COACH TIM WALZ BLM GEORGE FLOYD ILHAN OMAR SOMALIA

alec?

see AG keith ellison climate lawsuits

bak 3 23

omg voter suppression swing state jok

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01/21/2026

Kyle Mantyla

Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: Trump in Davos: ‘Sometimes You Need a Dictator’

The president delivered an erratic address to the World Economic Forum, pushing for the U.S. to take control of Greenland.

Steven Bechloss @ America, America: The Goal Was (And Is) Dictatorship

This was clear years ago: Trump hungered for total power and retribution, while extremist Republicans mocked liberal government and right-wing groups plotted a fascist takeover.

Jim Carroll @ Flux: MAGA authoritarianism takes square aim at Minnesota

As the Trump administration unleashes repressive mayhem in Minneapolis-St. Paul, crippling biases and blind spots keep the Democrats and major media from conveying the full story to the public.

Nina Martin @ Mother Jones: Trump’s Abortion Strategy? Do Nothing. But His Base Has Other Plans

Historian Mary Ziegler sees conservative courts poised to force his hand.

Brian Kaylor @ Public Witness: Hegseth Shares War Psalm He Prayed During Venezuela Attack

During the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon in 2026 — and the first since the U.S. military operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth framed that military action as a godly mission. Hegseth also detailed the Bible passage he prayed during the mission and urged the military personnel present to similarly pray for their work decisions.

Ruth Graham @ The New York Times: An Alabama Pastor Credits Trump for Putting ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas

The president has given a new class of evangelists direct access to the White House. In return, many support him without question.

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Officials in President Donald Trump's administration have accused both Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz of "domestic terrorism." One legal expert says is arguing that phrase is being used for a specific reason.

In a Tuesday interview with Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern, Julia Gegenheimer — a former attorney in the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Civil Rights Division who is now a special litigation counsel at the Georgetown University Law Center – said the Trump administration's use of the word "terrorism" is done with intent to cause harm to leading Democrats in Minnesota.

"It is profoundly disturbing. And the reason why this feels different to you is that it is a bit of a different flavor," she said. "It’s pitting the federal government against the states and creating tension where it doesn’t need to be. And frankly, it’s implicitly encouraging acts of political violence against these elected officials by turning them into the enemy."

The Trump administration has so far issued subpoenas to both Frey and Walz along with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, alleging that they conspired to impede law enforcement operations. Stern remarked that the Trump administration was not only "falsely accusing" Frey and Walz of committing political violence, but effectively sowing the seeds for violence to be committed against them. Gegenheimer agreed and asserted this was part and parcel of Trump's agenda in Minneapolis.

"We’ve seen this throughout history, even recent history: When you put people in opposition like that — when you portray them as the enemy, when you describe them as kind of threatening a person’s way of life or things that they hold dear — that creates the conditions under which people are more likely to resort to political violence, and it becomes more and more the norm," Gegenheimer said.

Stern reminded readers that the Trump administration has taken numerous actions to antagonize residents of blue states, along with those states' leaders, in an effort to frame them as the "enemy of the federal government and even the American people." Gegenheimer pointed to the administration's deployment of troops in Washington D.C. and Chicago, Illinois as further illustrations of what she characterized as a politically motivated retribution campaign against people who didn't vote for him.

"It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to see that that’s what’s going on," she said.

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https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › 2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_legislators

2025 shootings of Minnesota legislators - Wikipedia

On June 14, 2025, Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman was assassinated in a shooting at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, United States. Hortman, the leader of the state House Democratic caucus, was killed alongside her husband, Mark. Earlier that morning, state senator John

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Mike Lindell Plots Run For Governor Of Minnesota | People For

heated 2 25

Earthjustice has filed “the first environmental lawsuit against the Trump administration.”The environmental law firm sued “to stop the Trump administration from opening up vast new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling,” the New York Times reports. “The suit is an opening shot in what is likely to be a series of cases aimed at thwarting the White House’s push for what it calls “energy dominance” by pivoting toward fossil fuels and away from cleaner energy sources like solar and wind.

Minnesota’s lawsuit seeking to hold Big Oil financially responsible for climate change is moving forward. A state judge denied a motion seeking to dismiss Minnesota’s 2020 lawsuit accusing Exxon, the American Petroleum Institute, and Koch Industries of running a “campaign of deception” to mislead consumers about climate change.

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These bills aim to make polluters pay

Climate superfund legislation is gaining traction in state legislatures across the country. How do the bills fit into the broader movement to hold Big Oil accountable?

EXXONKNEWS

JUN 27

Emily Sanders is senior reporter at ExxonKnews.

As communities across the United States grapple with the rising costs to protect residents and infrastructure from the worsening impacts of climate change, some state legislators are targeting a potential new source of resilience funding: fossil fuel companies.

Sometimes called “polluter pays” bills or “climate superfund” bills, a new wave of state legislation aims to make oil companies bear a portion of the expenses necessary to adapt to climate impacts and recover from climate disasters fueled by those companies’ greenhouse gas emissions. The bills are quickly gaining momentum in statehouses: Vermont passed one into law in May, another in New York awaits Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature, and similar proposals are under consideration in California, Massachusetts, and Maryland.

Oil and gas companies have generated the majority of the world’s climate pollution, the bill sponsors argue, and therefore they should help pay for the damage that pollution is inflicting on communities. While each state’s legislation has unique features and different mechanisms to determine how much oil and gas companies would pay, they all draw inspiration from the federal Superfund program, first enacted in 1980 and administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, which makes polluters pay to clean up hazardous waste they’ve dumped into the environment.

State climate superfunds established by these bills would function similarly by making fossil fuel companies pay for a portion of the damages caused by their greenhouse gas emissions.

“States and municipalities are suffering enormous costs from the damage associated with climate change and the money they have to spend now to prepare for the consequences they're going to face in the future, at the same time as fossil fuel industry actors are posting record profits from creating these harms,” said Martin Lockman, climate law fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and associate research scholar at Columbia Law School. While the superfund bills would not cover the full amount states will spend on climate adaptation, he said, communities “are looking for any tools that they have available to make sure that the people who are profiting from causing them harm pay for [that] harm.”

So how exactly do the bills work, how do they interact with the growing number of distinct state and local lawsuits seeking to hold Big Oil accountable for climate deception, and what challenges will they face? Here’s what you need to know.

How climate superfund bills work

All of the currently proposed climate superfund bills would assess a dollar figure that companies owe to the fund based on the amount of emissions attributed to the fossil fuels they sold over a set period of time: 2000 to 2018 in New York’s case, or 1995 to 2024 in Vermont’s for example. The costs of those emissions, or how they are proportioned among companies, are calculated using attribution science — a growing field also tapped for climate accountability lawsuits. Those calculations rely on companies’ self-reported data to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“It's looking at something they already did, and saying ‘this had a negative effect and now you have to clean up the mess you made,’” said Maggie Coulter, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, a group that supports a climate superfund bill in California that was recently shelved by its author but could be reintroduced later in the year.

Some of the bills direct a state agency to conduct a cost assessment of the climate harms companies’ emissions caused during a set time frame. In Vermont’s case, the state’s Agency of Natural Resources will have until the start of 2027 to conduct that assessment and determine each company’s appropriate share of the costs.

Those costs could include some portion of the estimated $1 billion response and recovery costs incurred after major floods devastated Vermont last summer, or the price of fortifying roads, bridges, and floodplains to lessen the damage caused by rain storms intensified by climate change. The agency will also help determine which resiliency programs — programs that could help municipalities, businesses, and farms in Vermont adapt to climate impacts — will be covered.

The law “is a common sense manifestation of a very well-established principle of American environmental law, which is that the polluter pays,” said Christophe Courchesne, assistant professor of law and director of the Environmental Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law School, which voiced its support for the bill before it passed. “It's not new, even as the application of this policy to climate damages is new, and is an extremely important concept that we certainly hope will be a model to other states.”

Other bills have already set a total cost that would be divided up by companies — like New York’s, which would require the oil majors to pay into a $75 billion fund that could be used for projects such as air conditioning schools or upgrading roads, bridges, subways, and stormwater drainage systems to account for more extreme weather. Still, that $75 billion is nowhere near the total costs New York faces for climate adaptation; in 2021, the city estimated it would cost $100 billion just to “recalibrat[e] our sewers for storms like Ida.”

Proponents of the bills say their popularity reflects growing public demand for polluters to pay; polling last year found that 70% of likely voters supported making fossil fuel companies pay for climate disasters including wildfires, droughts, and floods. “The science is more than clear on the outsized impact these companies have had on the climate crisis,” said Cassidy DiPaola, communication director for Fossil Free Media, one of the groups behind that poll. “It's time for them to pay their fair share, and this is one step in the right direction, but still not nearly enough.”

“Very complimentary, parallel tracks”

The bills come at the same time that dozens of state and local lawsuits to hold Big Oil accountable for climate fraud and damages are steadily advancing through the courts. So how do the two mechanisms interact?

The two tracks have some fundamental differences and aim to accomplish different things. Unlike the bills, the lawsuits center on disinformation, not pollution. They accuse the companies of engaging in deceptive behavior, citing evidence that the fossil fuel industry has misled the public for decades about the harms their products cause. Through the courts, the cases aim to stop companies from lying to consumers and hold them accountable through a range of remedies, including paying for the damage their deception has caused.

Lawsuits can also help address past disinformation by forcing defendants to set the record straight. A Minnesota lawsuit brought against Exxon, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute under the state’s consumer protection laws, for example, seeks to make the companies “disclose, disseminate, and publish all research previously conducted directly or indirectly… that relates to the issue of climate change,” and “fund a corrective public education campaign in Minnesota relating to the issue of climate change, administered and controlled by an independent third party.”

Similar remedies came out of lawsuits brought against the tobacco industry by U.S. states and territories for misleading consumers about the connection between smoking and cancer. Through the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, major tobacco companies were made to fund the Truth Initiative, a public education campaign that has drastically reduced youth smoking rates.

Discovery, the process of obtaining evidence for trial, can also produce internal company documents that shed further light on the industry’s deception about its products for legislators and the public — and can help inform a response. Such documents were obtained through litigation against the tobacco and opioid industries and made publicly available.

The climate superfund legislation, on the other hand, “does nothing to prevent [companies] from continuing business as usual if they want to,” said Coulter. “It's just saying that the business that you conducted has caused damage and you need to pay for that.” That’s why the bills and lawsuits, she emphasized, are “very complimentary, parallel tracks,” which together can both make the fossil fuel industry pay for a share of its pollution and bring an end to continued deceptive acts.

A similar dual strategy was applied in California, where the California Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act of 1991 taxed manufacturers of products containing lead to fund evaluations and medical services for children who were exposed. In 2019, 10 California cities and counties were still able to recover a court settlement from lead paint manufacturers after they sued the companies under public nuisance claims.

“This is how our democracy works,” California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta recently told Politico when asked about the relationship between California’s proposed superfund bill and the accountability lawsuit his office brought against Big Oil companies last year. “Different leaders elected to do their jobs think about the authority that they have, the jurisdiction that they own, and the action that they can take to solve a problem that affects their constituents.”

Legal battles ahead

The bills will likely implicate many of the same major oil companies facing climate deception lawsuits in state courts, including Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP. The industry’s lead trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, has already expressed its strong opposition to the bills, calling them “a punitive new fee” that “represents yet another step in a coordinated campaign to undermine America’s energy advantage and the economic and national security benefits it provides.”

Legal experts expect API and others to challenge the laws in court.

In March, API sent a letter to Vermont lawmakers claiming that the state's bill “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal” and “violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large.”

But experts and advocates refute those claims. “This bill is premised on a well-established, reasonable approach to assigning liability for pollution harms,” said Courchesne, of Vermont Law. “These issues around due process and the retroactivity of liability have been litigated and those laws have been upheld.”

Big Oil’s public communications have sought to shift the blame for climate change to consumers for years, despite growing evidence that the companies intentionally mislead the public about the harms their fossil fuel products cause.

While the superfund bills don’t rely on that evidence of deception like the lawsuits do, there is still plenty of precedent for laws that hold producers liable for their pollution, Lockman explained. “If you buy a product, and the company that made that product was dumping toxic chemicals into a river and killing off species, is the consumer responsible for that?” he asked. “Generally, as a society and a legal system, we’ve decided that it’s OK to hold the most immediate actors responsible for the pollution they’re causing.”

Thanks for reading ExxonKnews!

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Minn. AG wins climate skirmish weeks before election

Minnesota's Supreme Court sides with Attorney General Keith Ellison and says some office material is protected by attorney-client privilege and does not have to be disclosed to critics of his climate lawsuit against the oil and gas industry.

BY:

LESLEY CLARK

| 10/06/2022

CLIMATEWIRE | Minnesota’s highest court has delivered a victory to Attorney General Keith Ellison in legal action surrounding the state’s climate liability lawsuit against the oil and gas industry in what has become a campaign issue in the Democrat’s run for reelection.

The Minnesota Supreme Court in a decision last week sided with Ellison over whether internal office deliberations about Minnesota’s climate lawsuit can be kept confidential.

The case stems from a 2019 lawsuit filed by conservative critics of Ellison and other Democratic state attorneys general who have hired outside lawyers to work on lawsuits seeking damages from oil and gas companies for climate change-related damages (Climatewire, Aug. 19, 2019).

Energy Policy Advocates, based out of Washington state, had sought documents detailing the communication between Ellison’s office and a law firm that works on climate litigation against energy companies. The group had also asked for records related to Ellison's hiring of a lawyer through a Michael Bloomberg-backed fellowship program.

...

4 23 y mail

BREAKING: Minnesota has just become the first state in the nation to pass legislation prohibiting foreign-influenced corporations from spending money in elections. The bill now moves to the Governor’s desk who has pledged to sign it into law.

The Democracy for the People Act includes a provision that prohibits multinational corporations from spending money directly or giving it to a super PAC or other entity to spend in Minnesota state or local elections.

We know this is just the beginning. This legislation, based on the model we successfully passed in Seattle, is already under consideration in Hawaii, California, Washington, New York, and Massachusetts, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives.

https://www.alternet.org/abortion-2659334710/

abortion safe minne

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minnestota State Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen, in a recent interview, suggested abortion and pornography are the reasons for domestic abuse, and asserted trans children are influenced by Satan, Heartland Signal reports.

Heartland Signal shared a clip of the "The Pastor's Study" interview, tweeting, "MN State Sen. Gruenhagen (R) says gender-affirming care is "Satan going after the children." In the same interview, he blames domestic violence on pornography and abortion: "Women need to understand that [it] sends a certain message to men. It objectifies them."

The right wing lawmaker said, "Women need to understand that abortion and pornography sends a certain message to men. It objectifies them."

He continued, "So, women who care about this issue and women being abused they should look at limitations on abortion and they should also oppose the pornographic sewage which is flooding our society."

According to Heartland Signal, in addition to spreading anti-abortion and anti-trans rhetoric, "Gruenhagen is an avid climate change denier and attended a “Storm the Capitol” rally in St. Paul on Jan. 6, 2021, the same day as the U.S. Capitol riot."

The Senator also came after trans children, saying, "If I can say one thing from a Christian standpoint, we know that in reading the Bible, when society goes after and kills its innocent children, and destroys them like through gender surgery, there is a Satanic perspective on that.So I mean, it's Satan going after the children."

Gruenhagen's comments came just days before six people — including three children — were killed by guns during a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school.

whoohoo win!

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/7/2127500/-WSJ-Mad-About-Anti-Climate-Disinfo-Efforts-As-CFACT-Pretends-Not-To-Be

WSJ Mad About Anti-Climate Disinfo Efforts, As CFACT Pretends Not To Be - Daily Kos

Daily Kos

We promise that next week it'll be back to bad news only here, but for the third day in a row we're going to do a bit of celebrating, because once again, deniers are losing!

Lesley Clark _{reported yesterday at E&E News}_ that"Minnesota’s highest court has delivered a victory to Attorney General Keith Ellison in legal action surrounding the state’s climate liability lawsuit against the oil and gas industry."

More specifically, the Minnesota Supreme Court decided not to let tobacco-turned-_{fossil-fuel-backed lawyer and harasser of climate scientists}_ and public servants Chris Horner's _{front group try and recreate Climategate}_, but this time with emails from Attorney General Keith Ellison's office concerning their litigation against fossil fuel companies.

Meanwhile, it was heartening to see that CFACT is so desperate for signs of its effectiveness that _{it's emailing people}_ to brag about the "six hit pieces referencing [Marc] Morano since July."

Two of those are from MediaMatters, _{one where Morano is mentioned by name only once,}_ in passing, and another where _{his appearance was noted}_ in a larger piece on Tucker Carlson. The other four are from yours truly, who CFACT describes as seeming "to have a love-hate relationship" with Morano.

Which is true, in that we love how easy it is Morano makes it to write about how deniers are wrong on purpose for money by constantly saying dumb stuff, like that _{some 1930's New Deal book is proof}_ of a 2022 plot for world domination through a Great Reset. The other example they linked also only mentioned Morano in passing, as one of many disinfo-spreaders proving _{YouTube is failing to enforce its demonetization policy}_. Not exactly evidence of effectiveness.

They unfortunately did not _{clear up the mystery of whether our memory}_ that Marc Morano told Bill Nye that he uses Ambien to sleep at night is accurate, but the fact that even our petty sniping is enough to warrant an email blast to subscribers shows how little evidence they actually do have that they're making a real impact. People ridiculing you does not necessarily mean they're threatened by you. Sometimes it just means you're ridiculous.

Because this is, admittedly, not exactly a big news outlet with the largest readership in the world, and we're happy about that! This space is for people who have to deal with deniers, the general public shouldn't have to know about professional goobers!

Similarly, if some equally small-time, dedicated opposition outlet like the_{ Daily Caller were to run something on anti-climate disinfo efforts}_, that wouldn't be worth writing home about either.

But if the paper that does have one of the largest subscriber lists, the Wall Street Journal, took the time to complain about something its opposition is doing, thatmight be something worth celebrating!

And what do you know, Thursday's print edition of the Wall Street Journal, going to some 2 million subscribers, featured an editorial complaining about "_{the climate-change censorship campaign}_."

Yes, one of the biggest papers in the country decided that _{a letter from green groups asking Big Tech companies}_ to include climate disinformation when complying with the EU's Digital Services Act was worth its column inches and readers' attention.

Given that _{Bloomberg}_, _{Common Defense}_ and _{The Hill}_ were the only other coverage, landing news of the letter on the WSJ's pages was quite a score, if even in the shape of it calling on Elon Musk to use Twitter to "shut down the climate censors."

Sounds like the WSJ's the one that wants to censor its opponents!

asked for ppe covid $?

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/27/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-police-training-intelligence/

a corp can substitute video for a live cop in tresspass law?!

intercept 921 eileen brn?

POLICE RESPONSIBLE FOR public safety surrounding the construction of an oil pipeline in Minnesota have repeatedly denied having a close relationship with Enbridge, the company behind the controversial energy project. According to records obtained by The Intercept through public information requests, however, Enbridge has provided repeated trainings for officers designed to cultivate a coordinated response to protests.

By the time construction on Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline, began last December, a working relationship had been established between Enbridge and police officers. A public safety official even invited the company’s Line 3 security chief to regular intelligence sharing meetings. In one case, the official passed along intelligence to Enbridge’s security chief for Line 3: a list of people who attended an anti-pipeline organizing meeting.

Line 3 opponents have long raised concerns about payments made to law enforcement by Enbridge to cover pipeline-related policing. A special account set up by the state of Minnesota has distributed $2.3 million in Enbridge funds to public safety agencies so far.The records shed new light on the level of close coordination between law enforcement agencies and the Canadian oil company to police the Indigenous-led movement to stop Line 3.

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“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation.”

}:

“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation and an attorney representing opponents of the pipeline. “It’s highly inappropriate for law enforcement to target people based on First Amendment activity, collect identity information and then deliver that information to their political opponents.”

The effort to halt the Line 3 pipeline is the latest flashpoint in the movement to end development of new fossil fuel infrastructure amid a growing climate crisis. In Minnesota, members of the Indigenous-led resistance, known as water protectors, have turned to tactics that directly disrupt construction, sometimes trespassing on private property, blocking roads, or locking down to pipeline company equipment.

"Community police and sheriff deputies are responsible for public safety,” Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner told The Intercept. “Our security call the police when a disturbance occurs. Officers decide when an individual is breaking the law — or putting themselves or others in danger.”

How law enforcement responds to the protest movement is a matter of training and discretion.The documents obtained by The Intercept suggest that Enbridge has stepped in to influence officers’ choices.

Water protectors point to the close working relationship between Enbridge and law enforcement to explain escalating police tactics, with rubber bullets and other “less-lethal” weapons deployed in recent weeks.

Plans to Coordinate

Emails between Enbridge and members of the Northern Lights Task Force — a group consisting of sheriffs and public safety officials coordinating plans for expected protests against Line 3 — describe several joint training exercises and other coordination meetings set up by the energy firm. The largest of the trainings was in Bemidji, Minnesota.

In October 2020, according to emails, Enbridge organized an all-day training at the company’s Bemidji Emergency Operations Center. According to an email sent a day before the event, dozens of Enbridge employees, public safety officials, including local sheriffs along the pipeline route, and an FBI agent were invited to attend. A primary goal for the event: “Coordination between Line 3 project team and L.P.” — an acronym that typically refers to “local police.”

Indigenous Water Protectors Face Off With an Oil Company and Police Over a Minnesota Pipeline

The email sent out ahead of the training included a series of “Incident Briefing Maps” laying out scenarios where Enbridge and law enforcement might need to coordinate a response. The various scenarios had something in common: They all involved protests.

The list of scenarios — which were drawn up by the Response Group, a controversial crisis management firm that works for the energy industry — laid out four possible events: demonstrators blocking traffic, the breach of a construction site, “swarming” of a pipeline hub while streaming on social media, and project opponents locking themselves to the gate of an Enbridge office.

Training participants would be asked to come up with a plan to respond to each of the scenarios, as well as to develop an “Information and Communication Strategy” to keep government agencies, the public, and the media informed of what was happening, according to a list of exercise objectives. Enbridge planned to discuss providing local law enforcement with a project radio, according to an email describing the exercise.

It wasn’t the first conversation of its kind. In advance of a smaller version of the exercise, back in April, members of the Northern Lights Task Force filled out a questionnaire for Enbridge. The public safety officials noted that it was a “priority” for law enforcement to obtain access to Enbridge security camera feeds. It also referenced the possibility of placing an Enbridge liaison inside the two law enforcement emergency operations centers, as well as a law enforcement liaison in Enbridge’s emergency operations center.

The Northern Lights Task Force’s communications team did not answer a detailed list of questions. Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida, a member of the task force, said his office never received a project radio nor saw other agencies with one. Guida said that the scenarios served to show law enforcement how Enbridge runs its emergency operations center. “It was for Enbridge to learn. We didn’t get trained by Enbridge,” he said, adding that law enforcement might carry out a similar exercise with a bank. “We assisted them and told them this is how we do it, you do your own thing.”

It’s not clear how many officers attended the trainings offered by Enbridge. Clearwater County Sheriff Darin Halverson was copied on the invite and RSVP’d that he would attend an additional Enbridge security exercise as well as a “sensitive security information” meeting. He told The Intercept that he did not attend any of the gatherings.

Sharing Intelligence

By the time construction on Line 3 began, a comfortable working relationship appeared to have been established between Enbridge and some of the public safety agencies invited to the company’s meetings. Public officials repeatedly expressed interest in exchanging information on pipeline opposition with Enbridge.

In December 2020, a St. Louis County sheriff’s deputy distributed language to be used by officers issuing dispersal orders during protests against Line 3 and also sent a list of potential charges that could be applied to pipeline protesters. Another officer responded, noting that it would be legal to arrest water protectors even if they trespassed without a law enforcement officer present. “Hopefully Enbridge security would be videotaping when able,” the officer said. Other documents affirmed that Enbridge security would be wearing body cameras.

The Northern Lights Task Force, the group of public safety officials, occasionally suggested that Enbridge should be excluded from planning, the documents show. In November 2020, Guida, the Aitkin County sheriff, copied Enbridge public information officers on an email about the task force’s public messaging strategy. Another sheriff advised that the corporate representatives did not belong in the group: “It is not a good idea to have Enbridge employees in our group, but they would certainly be good contacts to have to know what info is being put out,” wrote Carlton County Sheriff Kelly Lake. (Guida told The Intercept he copied Enbridge on the email so that law enforcement and the company could avoid mixed or duplicate messages.)

In other cases, public safety officials actively sought out Enbridge security to assist with law enforcement officers’ efforts, inviting an Enbridge representative to share space and attend meetings. St. Louis County Emergency Management Coordinator Duane Johnson copied Enbridge’s security lead for the Line 3 project on an email inviting first responders to work out of the law enforcement emergency operations center as they monitored intelligence on a potential direct action the next day. “There is considerable intel on something brewing tomorrow. Let me know if you’d like to come over and work out of the EOC tomorrow just in case something pops,” the official wrote, referring to the emergency operations center.

In another email, Johnson requested that Enbridge’s Line 3 security lead attend regular intelligence meetings. “We have missed you on our 0900 intel meetings. Is there another time that would work better for you?” asked the emergency management coordinator in a January 2021 email. “It would be nice to have someone from your company on.”

The Enbridge security officer was kept in the loop. The next day, Johnson copied him on another email, forwarding a list of names of water protectors who had attended a “Line 3 Organizing Meeting” the night before.

“It was all I really got from last night,” Bruce Blacketter, emergency management director for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, wrote to Johnson in the forwarded email. “Well, this and a slight ‘back of the head’ headache from the musical performances and guided breathing/stretching exercises.”

St. Louis County did not respond to a request for comment, and the Fond du Lac Band declined to comment.

std boogie man roger stone dirty trick is to run fake/3rd cand to split vote, sometimes pick someoe w/ same name

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/gop-spolier-candidate/?rs=182

ablind veteran who ran for Congress in Minnesota last year under the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party now alleges he was tricked into running by a Republican Party operative to siphon votes from then-Democratic-Farmer-Labor Congressman Collin Peterson in Minnesota's 7th Congressional District, according to local news outlet KMSP.

Kevin Ne Se Shores, said the report, "was surprised by the unsolicited call he got in June of 2020 from a man who encouraged him to run against Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) as a candidate for the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. Shores, who suffers from Gulf War Illness, used cannabis to get off pain killers. He told the FOX 9 Investigators he assumed he was being recruited by a member of the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party. 'I was under the impression he was a part of that political party,' Shores said. 'That was my assumption.' He was wrong."

"Unknown to Shores, the man who called encouraging him to run was a Republican strategist, Kip Christianson, who at the time was on the payroll of the Republican National Committee, according to the Federal Election Commission," said the report. Shores also alleges that Christianson paid his $300 candidate filing fee, telling him, "Don't worry about it."

Shores only later became aware that Christianson was an RNC employee and 2016 Donald Trump delegate for Minnesota.

Ultimately, Shores lost the nomination for the third party to Rae Hart Anderson, and the combined 24,000 votes for the Grassroots Legalize Marijuana Party and the Legal Marijuana Now Party would not have been enough to secure re-election for Peterson, who lost to former GOP lieutenant governor Michelle Fischbach by 50,000 votes.

However, in races further down the ballot, GOP covert support for the Minnesota cannabis parties may have spoiled state Senate races, and may have been decisive in helping Republicans retain control of the chamber — which ironically makes cannabis legalization far less likely in the state.

Congressional candidate says he was tricked into running by RNC strategist | FOX 9 KMSP..[vid]

https://theintercept.com/2021/02/10/police-minnesota-enbridge-pipeline-ppe/

no lnx

MINNESOTA POLICE WANT A PIPELINE COMPANY TO PAY FOR WEAPONS CLAIMED AS PPE

Police monitoring Enbridge Line 3 pipeline opponents submitted invoices for tear gas, batons, flash-bang grenades, and other riot gear.

Alleen BrownAlleen Brown

February 10 2021, 3:00 a.m.

A MINNESOTA SHERIFF’S OFFICE has requested that the tar sands pipeline company Enbridge reimburse the department for nearly $72,000 worth of riot gear and more than$10,000 in “less than lethal” weapons and ammunition, including tear gas, pepper spray, bean bag and sponge rounds, flash-bang devices, and batons. The sheriff’s office of Beltrami County, which sits at the center of an Indigenous-led fight to stop the construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline replacement project, labeled the weapons as “personal protective equipment.”

The invoices, some of which were first described by the blog Healing Minnesota Stories, await review by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. The agency maintains an escrow account set up so that Enbridge can reimburse public safety agencies for expenses associated with Line 3 construction, especially costs for policing protests. In its construction permit, the utilities commission clarified that the fund “may not be used to reimburse expenses for equipment, except for personal protective gear for public safety personnel.” The commissioners did not define the term “personal protective gear.”

“I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination batons could be considered PPE — or grenades,” said Tara Houska, an organizer with the anti-Line 3 Giniw Collective. “Those are obviously militarized equipment to be used to subdue and oppress the Indigenous people and allies that are resisting this project from going through our territory.”

The Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office did not answer a detailed request for comment.

For nearly a decade, Anishinaabe organizers have fought to stop Line 3, which passes through their treaty lands and traditional territory. Enbridge is replacing a deteriorating pipeline with a new, higher-capacity line that would allow the struggling tar sands industry of Alberta, Canada, to more cheaply send its oil to a transport hub in Wisconsin and then on to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Opponents point to the spill risk the project poses to more than 200 streams and 700 acres of wetlands, as well as the fact that tar sands oil is one of the world’s worst fossil fuels for the climate. One researcher found that the project’s annual carbon output would be equivalent to 50 coal-fired power plants....

A modest, practically harmless October Surprise. But it’s typically down ballot where the average Project Veritas video tends to have its most pernicious effects. Less well known than O’Keefe’s blunders on the national stage are the numerous documented instances in which his stings have been cited to justify new and more onerous voter I.D. laws or other election integrity legislation in state legislatures across the country.

In April 2012, Chris McDaniel, then Mississippi’s Senate elections committee chairman, cited a Project Veritas voter fraud video as evidence justifying the passage of the state’s “photo identification requirement” bill⁠, which the state’s Republican Governor Phil Bryant signed that May. Despite legal challenges, this law is still on the books today.

Also that year, a Republican Minnesota state representative, Steve Drazkowski, praised a locally shot O’Keefe video—in which Project Veritas undercover operatives requested ballot applications for their friends “Timothy Tebow and Thomas Brady”—during a floor debate for his party’s own draconian voter I.D. bill. While Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Mark Dayton vetoed a strict version of that voter I.D. legislation, and Minnesota voters backed his decision in a ballot initiative later that year, the state’sRepublican Party stillplans to revisit the issue again this year. (“We have had a number of studies that have been completed, there’s a lot of new data on this topic, and there are court cases that have been decided,” as Minnesota GOP State Senator Scott Newman ominously put it, “none of which we had in 2012.”)

O’Keefe’s “Primary of the Living Dead” stunts during the and primaries in 2012—in which his operatives requested but crucially did not actually attempt to use, the ballots of deceased primary voters—aided the passage of stringent voter I.D. laws in those states. After New Hampshire enacted a law in 2018 tightening the state’s voting statutes, partly in response to a new series of Project Veritas videos, Democratic legislators made repeated attempts to repeal them, only to be thwarted by Republican Governor Chris Sununu’s veto....

1019 ggl:

somali immigrant minnesota terror recruit

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How Minneapolis' Somali community became the terrorist ...

https://www.foxnews.com › how-rep-ilhan-omars-minnesota-district-became...

Feb 16, 2019 - ... a foreign terrorist organization from the largely Somali-American Minnesota ... Somali community became the terrorist recruitment capital of the US .... Extremism Project concurred the immigrant community in Minnesota has ...

As The Intercept outlines,

In 2017, Enbridge began construction on the tiny portion of Line 3 that cuts into Wisconsin. Local police reports describe two security firms, Raven Executive and Security Services and Securitas, keeping tabs on protesters and reporting their activities to law enforcement. It was the protests in Wisconsin that sparked the multi-state coordination led by Minnesota. The state’s fusion center developed a reputation as “the keepers of information for the Enbridge protests,” as one sheriff’s analyst put it, receiving information on Line 3 opponents from police departments in at least three states. While fusion centers were originally established to facilitate counterterrorism intelligence-sharing, they have increasingly played a role in monitoring, interpreting, and criminalizing political activity.

State officials claim the fusion center monitors protesters to prevent crime and violence, but SUNY Cortland sociology professor Brendan McQuade, who is writing a book on fusion centers, described the activities revealed in the records as part of a broader, alarming trend.

“What the police aren’t mentioning is that people will likely be living lives of terror and privation by the end of the century due to climate change, and it’s these battles right now that will decide whether that happens,” he noted. “Instead, they are casting even entirely nonviolent actions as threats to so-called critical infrastructure.”

One Line 3 opponent, Honor the Earth executive director Winona LaDuke, was reported to the fusion center because she was suspected of owning property that may be used to house protesters. “I don’t understand why I’m being looked at as a criminal when a corporation is proposing to destroy my water,” she said. “I am not a criminal, I am a water protector.”

Attorney Tara Houska, a member of the Ojibwe from the Couchiching First Nation and the national campaigns director of Honor the Earth, is another key organizer against Line 3.

“It’s clear that Enbridge is doing everything they can to have a very highly skilled force of security and law enforcement at their fingertips to do what they can to stop any resistance to Line 3,” Houska, who also took part in the struggle at Standing Rock, told The Intercept. “And if anything, it seems like what they’re doing is much more coordinated than what we saw in North Dakota.”

Houska was among the Line 3 opponents who recently met with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Washington, DC to discuss the serious threats the project poses to treaty territories.

trump will target inhan omar to flip state (note too rubio punked on CBN video)

no lnx

Trump’s answer to losing the rust belt: Minnesota

Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly July 26, 2019

Writing for the ultra-conservative Federalist, Stewart Lawrence all but admits that, when it comes to the 2020 election, Trump is in trouble in the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—the three that put him over the top in 2016. But not to worry, Lawrence has a solution.

Thanks to the success of Trump’s policies and other fortuitous developments, several other blue-trending states are certain to be in play in 2020.

Of these, none is more important than Minnesota. Its 10 electoral votes alone could offset a possible Rust Belt loss. The mainstream media has barely covered Trump’s remarkable gains in Minnesota, a state that historically is the bluest of the blue.

Apparently, the president agrees.

@realDonaldTrump

In 2016 I almost won Minnesota. In 2020, because of America hating anti-Semite Rep. Omar, & the fact that Minnesota is having its best economic year ever, I will win the State! “We are going to be a nightmare to the President,” she say. No, AOC Plus 3 are a Nightmare for America!

Lawrence goes into a little more detail about what is happening in Minnesota that has conservatives convinced that Trump could win the state. First, he mentions the booming economy, with an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent. Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story, as Pete Kotz notes.

Our little northern outpost has been doing better than most for decades, precisely because we do what Trump does not: invest in education, health, public services, and wildlands. If you need a lesson in what Trumpism can do to a state, look no further than Wisconsin, which trails Minnesota in every meaningful economic category.

The one thing Trump has done that could directly impact Minnesota’s economy was to expand a major copper and nickel mining operation in a way that could affect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Lawrence seems to think that something the president’s administration did last month is responsible for Minnesota’s booming economy, even though, as Kotz suggests, it has been one of the strongest in the country for years. He also thinks that this move to expand the mining operation will help Trump, even though polling suggests that 70 percent of the state’s residents oppose it.

Some of us remember that Trump made one trip to Minnesota in 2016 and it came just two days before the election. It was clear that the only reason for the rally was to rile up his base against Muslim immigrants to this country.

Donald Trump on Sunday warned darkly of the danger posed by Somali migrants in Minneapolis, a deeply segregated city that has the largest Somali-American community in the US.

“Here in Minnesota, you’ve seen first-hand the problems caused with faulty refugee vetting, with very large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, without your support or approval,” the Republican nominee told a rally in the solidly Democratic state, two days before the presidential election.

He then claimed: “Some of them [are] joining Isis and spreading their extremist views all over our country and all over the world.”

“Everybody’s reading about the disaster taking place in Minnesota,” he added, before claiming, falsely: “You don’t even have the right to talk about it.”

In other words, the attacks on Representative Ilhan Omar, whose family fled Somalia when she was a child, are nothing new to the residents of Minnesota. But for both Trump and Lawrence, fanning the flames of fear and hate is a winning strategy.

What neither the president nor his fan club at the Federalist want you to know is that Trump’s approval rating is deeply underwater in Minnesota. According to Morning Consult, his net approval rating is -16 percent. Compare that to the Rust Belt states where Lawrence admits the president might be in trouble.

Wisconsin: -14 percent

Michigan: -15 percent

Pennsylvania: -9 percent

It is way too early to make any solid predictions about which presidential candidate will win Minnesota’s ten electoral votes. But in the spirit of being helpful, I’ll give Lawrence a tip: if Trump loses Wisconsin, he doesn’t have a prayer of winning Minnesota.

astroturf

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/06/06/enbridge-minnesotans-line-3-front-group-oil-pipeline

Minnesotans for Line 3, a group established last year to advocate for an Enbridge oil pipeline project, presents itself as a grassroots organization consisting of “thousands of members.”

But a DeSmog investigation has found that behind the scenes, the Calgary-based energy giant is pulling the strings. Enbridge has provided the group with funding, public relations, and a variety of advocacy tactics.

The investigation has also found that a public relations firm behind the operation recently tried to erase its ties to Enbridge.

Facebook Splurge and Secret Tactics

Minnesotans for Line 3 first appeared in the battle over Enbridge’s Line 3 Replacement Project early last year.

Opponents, who this week employed direct action tactics to block initial work on the project and delivered a petition to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, include several Native communities — among them the White Earth and Mille Lacs Bands of Ojibwe and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa. Of their main concerns, these groups cite violation of Indigenous rights, risks associated with oil spills, and climate change impacts.

Through a series of TV ads and op-eds, along with a social media campaign and a petition delivered to state authorities, Minnesotans for Line 3 called for approving Enbridge’s multi-billion dollar plan to replace and reroute its aging pipeline that transports Canadian tar sands oil through North Dakota and Minnesota to Superior, Wisconsin.

The group spent considerable funds on Facebook advertising, making it the tenth largest digital ad purchaser among interest groups between November 2018 and April 2019. And it allegedly engaged in more stealthy tactics as well: Dozens of young people wearing Minnesotans for Line 3 shirts occupied spots in a line at a state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) hearing on the project at the expense of the project’s opponents – only to disappear shortly after receiving the tickets.

The PUC’s eventual approval of the project suffered a partial reversal this week, after the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruledthat the pipeline’s environmental impact statement did not adequately address the potential impact of an oil spill in the Lake Superior watershed. That review will likely be sent back to the PUC to determine how to proceed.

Enbridge Behind TV Ads

Formally, Minnesotans for Line 3 says it was established by Bob Schoneberger, the former founder and CEO of United Piping, an Enbridge construction contractor. Schoneberger, who died unexpectedly from a heart attack last November, worked previously for Lakehead Pipeline, Enbridge’s early incarnation.

Minnesotans for Line 3’s website makes no mention of any affiliation with Enbridge, and other than United Piping, lists two other construction companies — JR Jensen Construction and Gordon Construction — on its advisory cou

...

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06062019/tar-sands-oil-pipeline-court-ruling-spill-risk-minnesota-michigan-enbridge-canada-climate-change

2 More Tar Sands Oil Pipelines Run Into Trouble in the Midwest

A court in Minnesota and officials in Michigan are raising concerns about

the Enbridge pipelines’ safety and risk of oil spills in or near the Great Lakes.

The State Policy Network is an umbrella organization and grant maker for conservative think tanks across the country, more than a dozen of which signed the anti-CRA letter. According to a document obtained and described by the Center for Media and Democracy, as of 2010 their funders included AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable. Tax records show that they group also received annual support from NCTA for their tech policy working group from 2012 to 2015. Organizations funded by the State Policy Network that signed the letter include the Goldwater Institute, John Locke Foundation, Montana Policy Institute, Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, Alaska Policy Forum, and several more.

...e&e

That led Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), managing the bill on the floor in the absence of Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), to object to Corker's attempt to offer the amendment and remedy the blue-slip problem yesterday.

Corker, in an impassioned floor speech, said he was disappointed that members of his own party were refusing to vote on the bill because it would "upset the president."

"I can't believe it!" he said. "I would bet that 95 percent of people on this side of the aisle support, intellectually, this amendment. I would bet that. I would bet more than 95 percent."

Corker said he would allow the process to move forward without his amendment, but the bill has hit a web of other roadblocks.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky are holding up the NDAA until they get votes on a pair of amendments related to indefinite detention at military prisons. Other senators, meanwhile, have threatened to hold up the process if Lee and Paul do get their votes, Inhofe said.

Corker estimated yesterday that there are "about 15 people blocking the bill." The situation has put the Senate in a bind and could effectively mean that no amendments get a vote.

"That's a possibility," said Inhofe.

That includes two proposals on critical minerals — elements deemed vital to national security — that have sparked an outcry from environmentalists.

One, from Heller, would make myriad changes to environmental permitting for mining, including designating a lead federal agency and slapping a 30-month time limit on National Environmental Policy Act reviews.

The other, from Murkowski and Heller, would require the Interior Department to determine which minerals are "critical" and address permitting delays.

Also included in a bipartisan manager's package of amendments awaiting approval is a proposal by Minnesota Democratic Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar to codify a land exchange between PolyMet Mining Corp. and the Forest Service, paving the way for a major copper-nickel mine in Minnesota (E&E Daily, June 12)....

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28062018/enbridge-tar-sands-oil-pipeline-minnesota-tribes-wetlands-watershed-route-approval

In a unanimous decision, state regulators in Minnesota approved a controversial new pipeline that will increase the flow of tar sands crude oil from Canada to refineries in the United States.

The long-anticipated ruling is a victory for Canadian pipeline owner Enbridge and a significant blow to environmental and Native American advocates who opposed the pipeline through northern Minnesota in a region rich in wetlands and wild rice lakes.

The "certificate of need" granted Thursday by the state's Public Utility Commission greenlights a replacement for Enbridge's Line 3, a 1,000-mile pipeline that runs from Hardistry, Alberta, to Superior, Wisconsin. The new Line 3 will have an initial capacity about twice that of the current pipeline, and that volume could be increased and also allow for other increases elsewhere in Enbridge's cross-border pipeline network

he exisiting pipeline, built in the 1960s, crosses Native American land, and a state judge recommended in April that the new Line 3 use the same path. However, the commission on Thursday approved Enbridge's preferred route instead, with some modifications.

While the Enbridge route would skirt the reservations, it would still pass through areas where tribal members harvest wild rice.

"The process kowtowed to corporate interests," said Tara Houska of Indigenous environmental advocacy group Honor the Earth. "Just because a regulatory body that is supposed to protect Minnesotans didn't do its job, it doesn't mean that this is a lost case."

The Pipeline Would Increase Tar Sands Exports

In anticipation of the decision, pipeline opponents blocked one of the streets outside the Public Utility Commission's building in St. Paul on Thursday with a sign reading "Expect Resistance."

When it became clear that the commission would approve the pipeline, Tania Aubid, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, stood and shouted, "You have just declared war on the Ojibwe!" the Associated Press reported from the scene.

Enbridge spokesperson Jesse Semko declined to comment on the decision, saying the company was waiting until after the hearing.

The new pipeline would allow for a significant increase in exports of Canadian tar sands crude oil, which is difficult to extract, costly to transport and has a high carbon footprint compared to other crude oil. Currently2.5 million barrels of tar sands crude is exported from Canada each day, and the region has an oil glut exacerbated by years of opposition to building new pipeline capacity.

While the Public Utility Commission's decision was seen as the last major hurdle before pipeline construction can being in the state, the project still requires various water and soil permits from the state's Department of Natural Resources and Pollution Control agency as well as the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps' permit was the key stamp of approval required in the fiercely contested Dakota Access pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois, a pipeline that began operation in 2017. The Army Corps permit has received little focus in the current pipeline fight as pipeline opponents assume the federal government, under the Trump administration, will approve the project.

"No one is really holding their breath around federal level permits these days," said Natalie Cook, an organizer with the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Appeals and the Possibility of Protests

Pipeline opponents could also appeal the commission's decision.

"There are parties in this case that have lawyers that will continue to fight," said Brent Murcia, one of thirteen Youth Climate Intervenors, ages 17-25, who oppose the pipeline project over concerns it will further fuel climate change.

From the time it is extracted to the time it is burned, oil flowing through the pipeline would add between 35 and 193 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year, according to the project's environmental impact statement.

"The idea that we would be making a long-term investment in that kind of oil transportation capacity at this moment in our history, it's not something we can do," Murcia said.

At least two protest camps near the Line 3 route, including one organized by Honor the Earth, formed in preparation for the Public Utility Commission's decision. The camps raise the specter of mass demonstrations along the pipeline's route similar to those that drew thousands to demonstrate against the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock reservation in 2016 and 2017.

"People are prepared to stand and engage in civil disobedience to protect their homelands and protect their treaty territory," Houska said. "We will do what it takes."

Industry, enviros fight over mining add-ons in authorization bill

Nick Sobczyk and Dylan Brown, E&E News reporters

Published: Tuesday, June 12, 2018

The Senate is set to advance controversial legislation to pave the way for a major copper-nickel mine in Minnesota as part of its annual defense authorization bill.

no lnx

How Enbridge Helped Write Minnesota Pipeline Laws, Aiding Its Line 3 Battle Today

By Logan Carroll

The Minnesota section of Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline accounts for nearly 300 miles of the longest crude oil transport system in the world, and it is failing. The multi-billion-dollar transnational corporation has applied for a permit to replace it. Opposition from tribes in the region and environmental groups is slowing the project, but the process at times appears so tilted in Enbridge's favor that, watching the court battles and utility commission meetings, it almost feels like Enbridge wrote the rules.

At one point in its application to build the new Line 3, Enbridge listed all the federal and state laws that regulate the permitting and construction of pipelines. Nearly all the Minnesota laws originated in one 1987 Senate bill: S.F. 90.

This bill was accompanied by unprecedented pipeline industry lobbying—led in spending by Enbridge—and included subtle but major handouts to pipeline companies. One such provision imposes a sweeping limit on the public's ability to oppose new pipelines, including the Line 3 replacement project.

On May 18, 2018, about 100 people gathered at the Minnesota capitol in protest of the Line 3 project.

Industry-Friendly Language

According to environmental lawyer Paul Blackburn, one of the largest barriers to pipeline regulation is actually the federal Pipeline Safety Act, which preempts most state regulations. He called the law "a beautiful example of how to appear to regulate something without actually regulating it at all."

Still, Blackburn said there are ways for states to regulate pipelines, with some of the most powerful being zoning, permitting, and routing laws. However, S.F. 90 includes industry-friendly language that undercuts these and other potential regulations.

The bill allowed pipeline operators to classify their own data after a spill, making it inaccessible to the public. It instituted stiff civil and criminal penalties for pipeline company employees who failed to alert the authorities or destroyed evidence after a spill, but the companies were subject only to relatively small fines.

Perhaps S.F. 90's largest handout was the overhaul of Minnesota's routing and permitting process. Before 1987, counties and towns could use zoning to exert some control over the routing and permitting of pipelines (how and where they were built), but S.F. 90 preempted local zoning of pipelines, a measure with implications for the Line 3 battle today. Instead, a new pipeline would require only a single routing permit, issued by the Environmental Quality Board, an authority which shifted to the Public Utilities Commission in 2005.

This is the commission that will decide the fate of Enbridge's Line 3 replacement project, a decision expected in June.

The bill's strongest provision established the call-before-you-dig system, requiring pipeline operators to register the locations of their lines. However, the system is overseen by a nonprofit run by pipeline and excavation industry representatives, and while excavators who don't comply are fined, there is no punishment for pipeline operators who don't register their lines.

Hidden Pipelines, Hidden Influence?

In 1986, in Mounds View, Minnesota, a gasoline pipeline exploded, leveling an entire city block and killing two: a woman and her daughter. After the explosion, the governor convened a commission to study how to better regulate the industry. The commission was co-chaired by state Senator Steve Novak, who was also S.F. 90's primary sponsor.

He describes the bill as a compromise between three sides: industry, government and environmentalists. Before S.F. 90, Novak said, "You'd be living in your neighborhood, going to a school, at a park—some damn pipeline was going right underneath you and you didn't know it."

The next legislative session, while S.F. 90 was being drafted in early 1987, Enbridge Energy Partners (then Lakehead Pipe Line Company) spent more than $15,000 lobbying the Minnesota Legislature. This might seem modest post-Citizens United, but it was more than the company would spend in the state in the next 18 years combined.

The petroleum and natural gas industry spent $47,101 in the first six months of that year, nearly all of it by pipeline companies, a figure that would drop to only $17,479 in the year that followed this period. Although not required to disclose how they spent this money, typical lobbying expenses include wining and dining public officials, advertising, or preparing and distributing lobbying materials.

Novak doesn't recall many specifics of how the bill was drafted, except that nothing was controversial at the time and everything was unanimous, including the preemption of local zoning. One of the problems S.F. 90 addressed was that no one—including counties and cities—was regulating pipelines at all. The routing and permitting provision wasn't meant to limit regulation, but to expand it by clearly identifying who was responsible for these decisions.

For his part, Novak doesn't recall the industry manipulating the process, though he admits the possibility. "If there were things that occurred in the seams and along the edges that, possibly, 30 years later, appear to be a manipulation, we didn't know it at the time," Novak said.

Novak's explanation echoes the conclusion of a 2014 Suffolk University study of the effectiveness of state-level lobbying: "By showing a willingness to work with a bill that an interest group opposes in its current form, the lobbyist reassures legislators who might otherwise worry about the intent of the lobbyist and the veracity of the information the lobbyist is providing." When using this approach, the study found, lobbyists were able to insert industry-friendly language into 65 percent of state legislation.

"There may be conspiracies," Novak laughed a little, "going on today that we didn't think of in those days … I would recommend you find some legislators to fix it."

Trying to Fix It

In 2013, state Rep. Frank Hornstein introduced a modest oil transport safety bill in response to the Lac-Mégantic, Canada, oil train disaster that killed 47 people and an oil train derailment in Minnesota that released 30,000 gallons.

The bill would have required pipeline and railroad companies to pay into a first responder safety fund and conform to some standards for responding to spills.

Early on, rail companies opposed the bill but quickly accepted many of the provisions. The pipeline industry was silent until the very end. "Out of nowhere, they almost literally parachuted into town," Hornstein said. They poured in from Washington, DC; Oklahoma; the Gulf Coast: "All these lobbyists descended on the capital and started lobbying against my bill."

Hornstein sat down with the lobbyists, who represented the American Petroleum Institute and pipeline companies, including Enbridge. He described a tense meeting which culminated in one lobbyist demanding to know his "philosophy of oil."

"I don't know," he said. "There's a lot of it and it causes climate change."

After that, things moved quickly. While Hornstein worked to get his bill through the House, industry lobbyists worked to get all references to pipelines removed from the Senate version. A small war erupted when reconciling the two versions, requiring the governor's intervention. In the end, the bill regulated only oil trains; pipeline operators would pay into the safety fund but all other references to them were removed.

New Line 3, Same Old Story

In the last several years, most of Enbridge's lobbying efforts in the state have been directed at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Last year, Enbridge spent more than $5 million to influence the PUC, including lawyers' fees to argue before the commission. However, the company now spends more than $200,000 a year lobbying the legislature. Perhaps not coincidentally, the legislature passed a bill last week that would have allowed Line 3 to bypass the PUC altogether. This week, the governor vetoed that bill.

Sections of pipe destined for Enbridge's Line 3 replacement project, in Hardisty, Alberta, August 10, 2016.

Most developments in the bureaucratic war over Line 3 happen at the state capital, politically and geographically removed from those the pipeline would affect most. The wording was subtle, but if S.F. 90 hadn't preempted local zoning, those opposing Line 3 could work with local officials to erect additional barriers.

For better or worse, S.F. 90 was an historic piece of legislation. Just last summer, Novak met with others who helped craft S.F.90 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its passage. He's proud of the bill and points out that call-before-you-dig has likely prevented another catastrophe. On the other hand, S.F. 90 continues to benefit oil and pipeline companies and limit public participation in decisions about pipelines.

"Maybe times have changed," Novak said of the law, "and it's time to revisit it."

Enbridge did not respond to requests for comment.

https://www.alternet.org/environment/how-chilean-billionaire-could-poison-minnesota-wilderness

https://www.ecowatch.com/youth-climate-intervenors-2500282730.html

enbridge minnesota

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/14/stopping-traffic-minnesota-lawmakers-try-increase-penalties-for-common-protest-tactic/

A Minnesota lawmaker proposed new legislation this week that would heighten the penalties for protesting on freeways in the state. The current law involving unlawful assembly on a highway amounts to a misdemeanor carrying fines up to $1,000 and 90 days in jail. The new bill, introduced by Minnesota Rep. Kathy Lohmer, would make the act a gross misdemeanor carrying fines up to $3,000 and one year in jail.

Last July, following the police shooting death of Philando Castile in the Twin Cities suburb of Falcon Heights, a protest march in St. Paul migrated onto a highway, disrupting traffic for hours. Over 100 protestors were taken into custody, as objects like rocks and even molotov cocktails were reportedly thrown at officers, resulting in 31 police injuries.

After the election, in which President-elect Donald Trump lost the state of Minnesota narrowly in a surprisingly tight race for a reliably Democratic state, students and activists gathered on the University of Minnesota campus for an anti-Trump rally. They would later march onto the same Instate 94 highway as they did for Castile — again blocking traffic for hours.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/01/12/minnesota-bill-freeway-protesting-serious-crime/

ST. PAUL, Minn. (WCCO) — A Ramsey County judge on Thursday dismissed riot against more than 40 people who were at an interstate highway protest in St. Paul following the police shooting death of Philando Castile.

And Minnesota lawmakers are proposing new legislation to get tough on freeway protesters.

About 300 demonstrators walked onto Interstate 94 last July, blocking traffic for five hours. Forty six were arrested on charges of rioting, public nuisance and unlawful assembly.

But no one was charged with obstructing traffic, which carries a light penalty.

Representative Kathy Lohmer says the growing number of freeway protests are a threat to public safety, not only to police, but drivers and protesters too.

“You need to obey the laws of the freeway,” said Lohmer, a Republican from Stillwater. “They are there for a purpose. Freeways are not really public spaces, like parks and places like that. You need a license to drive on the freeway. You can’t walk on the freeway.”

Lohmer’s bill beefs up penalties for obstructing highways, including entrance and exit ramps. Right now, it’s a misdemeanor carrying fines up to $1,000 and 90 days in jail.

The bill would make it a gross misdemeanor, carrying fines up to $3,000 and a year in jail.

Jordan Kushner is a civil rights attorney who represents the freeway demonstrators.

He calls the bill “very disturbing” and an effort to intimidate legal protesters....

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/court-rules-organic-farmers-can-sue-conventional-gmo-farmers-whose-pesticides-trespass-and-contaminate-their-fields/

iccc2

Rep. Pat Garofalo

Day Job: Member of Minnesota House of Representatives and serves as GOP Lead on the House Energy Policy Committee.

Industry Ties: He's written for Heartland. State co-chair at ALEC, which is heavily funded by fossil-fuel interests.

Fox News guest: No, but Garofalo made headlines this March when he tweeted, "Let's be honest, 70% of teams in NBA could fold tomorrow + nobody would notice a difference w/ possible exception of increase in streetcrime."

Climate Expertise: None. His only degree is in law enforcement.

He said it: "Solar is dumb."

“Reshaping a map is very powerful” for donors, said Spencer Kimball, a political consultant who is executive director of Boston-based Fair Districts Mass. “It’s a big opportunity to have influence at the state level and the congressional level not one race at a time but for 10 years.”

Skillful redistricting can, of course, help create Republican or Democratic districts, but it can also grace incumbents with virtually guaranteed re-election or leave them with nearly no chance at all. In the process, it can also create seats almost certain to be held by minorities or break those same groups apart, ensuring that they have almost no voice.

But it’s not cheap, and that’s where corporations and other outside interests come in. They can provide the cash for voter data, mapping consultants and lobbyists to influence state legislators, who are in charge of redistricting in most states. Outside interests can also fund the inevitable lawsuits that contest nearly every state's redistricting plan after it is unveiled.

In Minnesota, for instance, the Republicans’ legal efforts to influence redistricting are being financed through a group called Minnesotans for a Fair Redistricting.

Fair Redistricting describes itself as independent, but it has much of its leadership in common with the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota, a group with ties to the political empire of the Koch brothers, industrialists from Kansas who’ve spent millions funding conservative causes. The head of the Freedom Foundation, Annette Meeks, told ProPublica she has “no involvement” with Fair Redistricting. But both organizations’ tax filings list the same address: Meeks’ home address.

Fair Redistricting is registered under the name of her husband, Jack Meeks, who is also on the board of the Freedom Foundation. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Who is actually paying for Fair Redistricting’s lawsuit and lawyers? And what district lines are they pushing for? The group doesn’t have to say and has so far kept its finances and plans under wraps. Annette Meeks did not respond to questions about the group’s donors or its ties to the Koch brothers, but she said the group complies with all legal filing requirements. But the group’s public tax filings contain no information on its contributors

voter suppression:

april 7 12

Even as Texas and Wisconsin Republicans see their versions of ALEC’s voter ID model bill run into constitutional problems, Minnesota’s Republicans — who wafted into office on a magic carpet propelled in large part by cash from corporate voter ID backers — are prepared to flout that part of the state constitution that guarantees the right to vote. As Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat who vetoed last year’s GOP efforts to push the ALEC Voter ID Bill but whose hands are tied this year because ballot amendments can’t be vetoed, says:

“This is a partisan amendment based on a false premise that voter fraud is a significant problem in Minnesota. Our election system is the best in the nation. We have the highest voter turnout year after year and under intense, bipartisan scrutiny, the recent statewide recounts have highlighted how reliable the results are. Much of the strength of the system derives from over 150 years of bipartisan work and its federated nature – the 87 county auditors, hundreds of municipal clerks, and 30,000 volunteer election judges who administer Minnesota’s elections and ensure they are free and fair.

“Republicans in the legislature had two years to negotiate bipartisan reforms to election law, and it is disappointing that their failure to do so has led to an unnecessary constitutional amendment that would make it harder for law abiding citizens, including tens of thousands of seniors, service members, and students, to exercise their right to vote. I cannot support a constitutional amendment that is pushed through the legislative process by only one political party – and neither should Minnesotans if they see it on the ballot this fall.”

http://firedoglake.com/2012/04/07/come-saturday-morning-minnesotas-alec-inspired-chaos-amendment-paid-for-by-wells-fargo-u-s-bank-and-tcf/

education: kos blog

It was reported somewhere that currently 20 states are making massive cuts in funding to higher educations. A quick search of the web showed articles on the following states cutting higher education spending.

California, Texas, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Washington, Utah, North Carolina, Missouri, Maryland, Iowa, New York, Colorado

We are not talking about nuisance cuts to higher education here – we are talking about an on-going yearly reduction in funds to public institutions of higher education that will threaten the existence of our public education system as we know it.

Statements such as this

"It's the elephant in the room," said J. Bradley Wilson, a former chairman of the UNC system's Board of Governors. "We've always said we want to keep the doors open as wide as we can. The question is, can we afford that anymore?"

puts the problem of reduced funding to public universities in perspective - in probably the most profound and horrific manner.

And it’s not just an issue of keeping the doors open to the university – it is about keeping the doors open for generations to come – to reach for and achieve the American Dream.

Broadly available education and opportunity is fundamental to opening doors to better job opportunities, higher wages, and greater job security.

Advanced educational degrees correlate to higher earnings and greater employability.

So what do state schools do when the legislatures are constantly cutting their funding – year after year. For many they see privatization of certain sections of their school as the only answer.

A writer in Kansas asks the same question.

…with state support dropping for Kansas universities, what are the chances that KU’s School of Law or School of Business might consider operating without state funding? Apparently, a growing number of deans, chancellors and presidents across the country are thinking about it.

Unfortunately for state universities the biggest benefactors for private funding are also the people who have the most extreme political views in the United States – the Koch brothers.

Although the Koch agreement with Florida State was penned in 2008, it didn’t become a public issue until this year. During the last three years – Koch has had complete control over the University’s economic department.

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarianbusinessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.

During the first round of hiring in 2009, Koch rejected nearly 60 percent of the faculty's suggestions but ultimately agreed on two candidates.

Yale University once returned $20 million when the donor demanded veto power over appointments, saying such control was "unheard of."

Jennifer Washburn, who has reviewed dozens of contracts between universities and donors, called the Koch agreement with FSU "truly shocking."

Alternet reported that in addition to Florida State, other Koch funded schools include

George Mason University - Mercatus Center (public institution)

West Virginia University (public institution)

Brown University - Political Theory Project (private institution)

Troy University - Center for Political Economy (public institution)

Utah State University: - mostly for the Huntsman School of Business (public institution)

So when I read something like this

Officials at the University of Minnesota, one of the nation’s largest and most respected state-aided universities, currently are giving serious study to the possibility of depending on private money rather than unreliable state funds to support several of their schools.

Due to shrinking state funding, Minnesota’s School of Law and the Carlson School of Management are looking at the possibility of operating without state funds, relying on private support.

…. The University of Minnesota’s chief financial officer noted that as state funding approaches zero, “What does it mean for a college to be out of state money?

I become very concerned about the future of Minnesota state run colleges and universities. I become very concerned about the loss of the concept of a liberal studies education. I become very concerned about future generations of students – who rely on state run colleges and universities. I’m becoming more convinced the Minnesota ALEC legislators are doing this purposefully.

ALEC is inundating and influencing decision making of their ALEC member legislators and Alumni in the US Congress with privatization “success stories” such as this:

One of the country’s top research institutions, the University of Michigan, is for all intents and purposes a privately-financed public university today. Only around 10 percent of its budget comes from state subsidies thanks to greater control over its mission and operations combined with aggressive cost-cutting and private fundraising efforts.(10 Questions State Legislators Should Ask About Higher Education, 2011)

And ALEC had previsouly convinced the following states - Arizona, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Ohio, Texas, and Tennessee – that their higher education woes will be eliminated if they hire HCM Strategists to implement a program designed by Lumina Foundation for Education to do onsite management of their higher education programs and funding. Yet, if you look at the most current list of states cutting funds to higher education shown above, many of these same states are still cutting funding - what they have implemented is not working!

First of all, there’s appears to be a conflict of interest here, as Lumina Foundation funds ALEC activities

American Legislative Exchange Council (Washington DC) $295,000to help state legislators explore policy options intended to increase student success and productivity within American higher education.

An “article” in Inside ALEC September 2010, distributed to all ALEC members, has the following statement

The HCM Strategy Labs represent an opportunity for states to lead in trying times. By taking on the challenge of creating high-performing higher education systems that are responsive to our students’ and our national economy’s needs —we will help engineer an economic recovery and greater prosperity.

This one page article / advertisement was written by Martha Snyder, Senior Consultant for HCM Strategists

In a Huffington Post 2010 editorial it is noted that

With the support of the Lumina Foundation for Education, our firm, HCM Strategists, helped deploy "Productivity Strategy Labs" to help states tune up and overhaul their higher education funding and policies

Just what we need – more interference by ALEC hacks in our public entities.

Last, but not least – based on previous research and writing of mine – this ALEC experiment is going to fail, just like the other “free-market’ experiments that ALEC pushes on our states and the taxpayers end up paying for. Its failure will be caused by the same factor that causes failure for all the other ALEC initiatives – the sole focus of everything ALEC does is the money side – the benefits provided for the private sector (corporate) members of ALEC. They choose to ignore that there other factors involved – such as people.

Minnesota ALEC members have already brought HCM Strategists into our state. Its bad enough having to deal with the chaos caused by ALEC legislative members and ALEC alumni; now everywhere you look ALEC private sector members are trying to run every aspect of our government and our schools – because we have ALEC legislative members giving the states to the corporations.

I’m sure that as part of their higher ed indoctrination and brain-washing of ALEC members, ALEC has convinced them that the HCM and the Lumina program is their “last chance”. Why not create that level of fear? If ALEC’s proposed educational system fails because of this ALEC “free-market” “experiment”, so what?, it was a last ditch attempt anyway. Then the Minnesota ALEC members don’t have to feel quite so guilty when the Koch’s walk in and buy the university’s schools of business and law. The ALEC legislators can claim that the sale to ALEC corporate private sector members saved the state schools (the ones that the Minnesota ALEC legislative members destroyed with malice.)

Minnesota ALEC legislators have bought into this ALEC “free-market” experiment and brought it into our state and because of that, it is my opinion, Minnesota’s ALEC legislators will destroy the Minnesota state funded system of higher education. The best land grant university ever to exist (as far as I’m concerned) will be destroyed because Minnesota ALEC legislators have pledged their allegiance and service to the ALEC corporate members and have chosen to no longer serve their constituents, the citizens of Minnesota.

Minnesota legislators who are ALEC members are not the majority. But they are not the minority. Minnesota ALEC Legislators are having a tremendous impact on the state of Minnesota and everyone should be concerned. We must remove every ALEC member legislator from the Minnesota legislature and our one sole ALEC alumni from the US Congress (Erik Paulsen). They must not be re-elected. They are no longer serving the citizens of the state of Minnesota - they are serving ALEC corporate members.

We are letting 33% or so of our legislators ruin our state for the benefit of the ALEC corporate members. When is it time as Minnesotans we stand up and say, “No more ALEC! We want representative government!”? Would someone please let me know when the time comes – ‘cause I think we’re running out of time.

The University of Minnesota - Koch Brothers School of Management.

So sad, So sad.

Oops, almost forgot the proverbial “straw that will break the camels back” resulting in the sale of the U of M Carlson School of Business to the Kochs.

Two members of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents are known ALEC Alum

Laura Brod – Past Minnesota State Chair of ALEC

adn Steve Sviggum

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/11/993257/-U-of-MN-Goes-to-Koch-Because-of-ALEC

endit1

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