Removing the Claws from Clawback

Mark Dayton signed into law Tuesday legislation that shields Minnesota nonprofits which are being asked to return millions in tainted donations, in cases when time had elapsed after the donations were made and the money spent. The retroactive legislation overwhelmingly endorsed in House and Senate votes became controversial only in the days leading up to Governor Dayton’s signature – perhaps because after years of budget cuts at newspapers, no one was left to write thoughtful pieces about what soon would be public policy. According to the StarTribune, it was discovered this legislation seriously affects the potential for collection attempts such as those to existing clawback cases stemming from the Petters bankruptcy, in recovery of losses for victims of a Ponzi scheme like Tom Petters’; Petters’ alleged co-conspirator Frank Vennes Jr., their associates, and Mr. Petters made as much as $425 million in tainted donations, bankruptcy trustee Doug Kelley estimated.

The issue is tainted donations. Charities asked for a pass because they claim that they lack the resources to do due diligence on all of their contributors and, in some cases, already have unwittingly spent the money by the time criminal activity is associated with the donation. Because nonprofits did not have the time or staff that the rest of the world should have to look into why the return on investments were so high? Does the law shield Minnesota nonprofits, but the nonprofits from other states are not shielded? After years of having news presented with a local angle, thinking had developed here that some were better than others – in need of a shield as this law does give extended immunity to charitable and religious organizations that take donations and contributions unwittingly which are a result of ill-gotten gains.

Estimating the sought contributions total as much as $445 million in the case of Petters, Kelley said those funds should be returned to to creditors of Petters’ business operations as well as the investors who were victims of Petters’ $3.65 billion scheme. Under the signed law, only half of the $445 million may be collectible under the new law.

The morality of keeping tainted money has nothing to do with the number of years after donations were made and the money spent, unwittingly. There is a lot of irony here to have a governor who comes from one of the most generous families in Minesota history to be left to decide the issue of tainted money. Legislative supporters of the bill – charitable groups like Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Twin Cities (Attorney Robert McCollum who sits on the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Twin Cities called Dayton’s action “a significant day in the history of the state for nonprofits.”) and chemical addiction treatment program Minnesota Teen Challenge, along with representatives of bankruptcy trustee Doug Kelley – were in the governor’s office Tuesday morning as the governor considered his last-minute options on the bill.

So no legislator knew how the issue of the rape of Europa was handled at the end of WW II, concerning stolen art? So legislators have no idea about the current state of fund-raising? A charity keeps dossiers on who their benefactors are before the head of a charity solicits a gift. There is a bit of irony of the timing of this piece, as Benedict XVI last week referred to the reality of “human evil and ignorance,” within even his church. He was alluding to a cozy relationship some clergy appear to have in Mexico with the overlords of drug cartels who sometimes give money to the church to demonstrate their Catholic bona fides. Maybe a lot like Tom Petters. So when it comes to inheritance, birthrights, and being the receiver of goodness, how are the Big Brothers/Big Sisters going to teach these kids how to live when faced with the hard decisions. Because Minnesota nonprofits did not have the time or staff or money that the rest of the world was expected to have to look into why the return on investments were so high? After years of having news presented with a local angle, thinking had developed here that some were better than others, and a law was need to shield Minnesota nonprofits – without comment on nonprofits from other states.

“Organizations can now move forward without the fear that they one day may have to pay back what was donated to them,” Attorney McCollum who does volunteer his time to sit on the board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Twin Cities, said in a StarTribune interview Tuesday. The signed legislation makes organizations liable to return tainted contributions received unwittingly within two years of a donation. The StarTribune vaguely stated that any questionable contributions — ill-gotten gains –discovered after two years are not affected by the law. In an e-mail Tuesday, bankruptcy trustee Doug Kelley told the StarTribune he would probably challenge the constitutionality of the new law.

On issues of tainted money, lobbyists were actively involved in this legislation, in the system set up financing elections. It has been previously reported that Governor Dayton’s chairman of the METROPOLITAN SPORTS FACILITIES COMMISSION, Ted Mondale, had started a company with money loaned from the ill-gotten gains of Tom Petters. Perhaps placed in charge to lead the charge to collect tainted public tax money so that athletes, in the age of free agency, can play in a place their games and receive their riches way above the working women and working men — without any claws to fight back — before they leave Minnesota, so much better than the rest of us.

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When Spring Turns to Falls

With investment in the country valued at $19.4 billion in 2009, with additional exports to Syria estimated to be $1.1 billion in 2010, the Russian government dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov to Damascus last week to urge Syrian leader Bashar Assad to halt “violence” against protesters, and implement promised political changes, The Moscow Times reports today.

Russian firms have quite a presence in Syrian involving infrastructure, energy and tourism, along with lucrative arms contracts. So, Russia has blocked efforts by the European Union and United States to impose punitive measures through the United Nations, after a “crackdown” on unrest since March. Russia also has rejected U.S. and European calls for Bashad Assad to step down. “Russia is categorically against any interference, especially military, in the internal affairs of a country,” Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Tuesday in response to e-mailed questions to the Moscow Times. “Efforts to resolve the problems in Syria through outside force would provoke utter chaos in the Middle East.”

This “utter chaos” has already resulted in the death of 2,200 Syrian demonstrators, according to United Nations estimates. But there is a lot at stake in Syrian, a Soviet-era ally, for Russia. Russia maintains its only military facility in the Middle East with its Tartus naval base in the Mediterranean. In January 2011, oil-producer Tatneft, based in Tatarstan, had announced it would spend $12.8 million drilling exploratory wells near the Syria- Iraqi border.

With a staff of 80 Russians on the ground, Stroitransgaz has been working in Syria for more than 50 years. Nikolai Grishenko, director of Sovintervod, compared today’s protests to the 1980s civil unrest in Syria, which the government “successfully” crushed at the price of up to 25,000 dead and wounded civilians. With a 20-person team in Aleppo, Grishenko added his belief that Assad was a “decent man.”

According to data from the Moscow Defense Brief, there are more than $4 billion in active arms contracts between Syria and Russian capital, including MiG-29 fighters, Pantsir surface-to-air missiles, artillery systems and anti-tank weaponry. The Arab Spring has already put at risk an estimated $10 billion worth of business contracts Russia had with Gadhafi’s regime in Libya.

The Russians are having as bad a year as the Minnesota Twins.

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When You Absolutely, Positively Needed it Overnight: Overnight Millionaires

With less than a six percent chance to make it to the big leagues, three of the following were made millionaires over night. Of course by waiting until the last minute before the August 15th deadline, these three guys lost out on interest of more than $4,000, at five percent interest, if not a year closer to their own development as big league players. If they truly really were big league players, where the average salary was somewhere between two million to three million dollars per year.

Here is the list of draftees of the Minnesota Twins, the round signed for in parentheses, along with the amount signed for, in a year where all 30 major league ball clubs spent approximately $228 million in draft bonuses:

SS Levi Michael (1) $1.175 million, last minute sign before senior year.
3RD Trevr Harrison (1), $1.05 million, out of high school, last minute sign.
RHP Hudson Boyd (1) 1 million, out of high school, last minute sign.
RHP Madison Boer (2), Oregon; $405,000, native of Eden Prairie, MN signed right away.
LHP Corey Williams (3), Vanderbilt reliever; $575,000, after missing much of last season with a shattered kneecap, a 5.64 ERA in 24 appearances. Signing at end of July double the slot.
RHP Matthew Summers (4), Cal-Irvine, hard-throwing pitcher, 9-2 with a 1.90, wanted $500,000 to sign out of high school as a pitcher but $100,000 to sign as an outfielder. Unknown amount signed for.
INF Tyler Grimes (5), Wichita State; 30 errors in 329 chances in 2011.
LHP Jason Wheeler (8), Loyola Marymount, 6-4 with a 3.84 ERA as a 6-foot-8 junior, last minute sign, 2010 Northwoods League pitcher of the year (8-1 with a 1.35 ERA last summer for the St. Cloud River Bats). How much do those signing at this point of a season want to play? The minor league season has less than 3 weeks left.
C Matthew Koch (12), Loyola Marymont, 313/.357/.483 this season

Described by scouting director Deron Johnson as a switch-hitting 20-year old college shortstop with speed, Levi Michael signed for $1.175 million, $86,000 above all the discussion of slots. Selected 30th overall, junior INF Levi Michael appeared in 65 games in 2011 for the University of North Carolina, batting .289 in 242 at-bats with 22 extra base hits, five home runs and 48 or 49 RBI. These are million dollar statistics? In 2010, Michael appeared in 60 games, with a .346 average and 76 runs scored. So his performance diminished over the last twelve months, as well as his own private hopes of player development missing the 2011 season, setting him one season behind his own contemporaries. He must have a really bad agent, if he can play the game. And I heard about a bad performance in the College World Series. Not exactly a jump on my back Kirby Puckett type.

Power-hitting third baseman Trevor Harrison, a 50th overall pick from Tustin High School in California, reportedly signed for $1.05 million.

Righthanded pitcher Hudson Boyd, a 55th overall pick as a right-handed starter from Bishop Verot High School in Florida, who once attended school directly across the street from the Twins’ spring training complex in Fort Myers, reportedly signed for $1 million.

All these guys who have a six percent chance to get to the big league asking for big league bonuses to sign. It was the system, from the free agency draft. What did a big league club have to budget to sign these guys the first time?

There was a lot of money in baseball over the last ten years. And what was the legacy built? By players like Mike Jacobs, who made it to the big leagues. Mike Jacobs was given his unconditional release by the Colorado Rockies after testing positive for Human Growth Hormone. Their press release said, “There is no place in baseball for such substances, and we have and will continue to do what we can to eliminate them from our game.” Mike Jacobs was leading the Triple-A Colorado Springs affiliate of the Rockies’ in home runs (23), doubles (30) and runs batted in (97). The 30-year-old first baseman did receive a 50-game suspension by MLB, should anyone elect to pick him up. In a 2005 call up by the Mets, Jacobs hit 11 home runs in 30 games. He was soon traded to Miami for Carlis Delgado before the 2006 season. Jacobs did hit 32 home runs for he Marlins in 2008 when he was traded at season’s end for Leo Nunez. He made $3.25 million playing for Kansas City in 2009, being used primarily as a DH, hitting 19 home runs. He was released following the 2009 season by Kansas City. The validity of his first 80 home runs are in question for this confessed cheater who played six seasons in the major leagues, with diminishing performance based upon the statistics, earning in his big league career $5.27 million, playing with the New York Mets, Florida Marlins and Kansas City Royals.

How could there ever be any remorse by those in the front office about having to let these one-time prima donnas go some day when they did not measure up, 94 percent of the time? Was it a wonder that the people working in the front offices today, as described in Pat Gillick’s Hall of Fame speech, had little deep concern for guys like Mike Jacobs, who should be scorned by anyone who ever played the game professionally — like a priest might hold scorn for a colleague who tarnished his profession — and maybe little deep concern for each other.

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Fairness at the Fairgrounds: Causes of Riot in Milwaukee

March 27, 2012 Downtown Minneapolis has been hit by six incidents of “mob” attacks since February, mostly around the Nicollet Mall by homegrown terrorists. On March 16, several of the seven males inside an enclosed bus stop surged toward a bicyclist, striking first a 23-year-old rider, as the group then surrounded a second bicyclist and began assailing him, police said. Approaching officers saw a group of about 15 to 20 youths running around a corner from the melee, ending up on a nearby restaurant patio, where assualts continued. A lot like what had happened in Milwaukee in 2011. Or at the Mall of America on the day after Christmas 2011. With more incidents anticipated with warmer temperatures.

Flash-robs-hit-downtown-Minneapolis

August 8, 2011 Milwaukee, Wisconsin is witnessing its own Arab Spring-like summer. Marauding black kids at the fairgrounds after sunset Thursday night started by beating up each other, police said, before turning on Caucasian families leaving the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds. Investigators reported that the African-American kids had gathered in West Allis in the perimeters of the fairgrounds and had not been enjoying the offerings of the fair. Thirty-five people were arrested either by fairground police, West Allis Police or Milwaukee Police. And a lot of people were injured.

Afterward, one blogger from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote that these homegrown terrorists needed to be stopped. “It bears repeating that the vast majority of African-Americans in Milwaukee are good, hardworking people, and that members of all races interact every day with mutual respect. Though I suspect plenty of these kids grew up with poverty, violence, unsafe neighborhoods, lousy parents or other challenges, forget about blaming society as the responsibility for this thuggery lies with the perpetrators.”

Again and again and again, there was a communication to white Milwaukee, as racial incidents kept happening. There was a public relations nightmare Thursday night for the Wisconsin State Fair, with Truth buried in the story about the community of Milwaukee. If these incidents of race-related violence keep happening. The “mob attack” was not an isolated incident, after similar occurrence at a Summerfest hip-hop show this year, along with the Riverwest looting and racially motivated beatings last month as a group of seventy-five to one hundred black youth disturbed traffic before moving across a bridge west to the Riverwest neighborhood where “ransacking” and robberies of two gas stations by the mob took place. These youths are trying to force the issue – the truth about life in Milwaukee. There had been in the recent past similar “wilding which forced the Greek festival to move out of its northwest side neighborhood, after the late Riversplash too was hobbled by violence.” The issue with all of the stages of life when a community was truly hobbled by violence for a spell, was denial, anger, and fear. In arriving at the acceptance of what was the community standard.

Now the institution of the State Fair, writes the blogger from the Milwaukee Journal, “is left to pick up the pieces, to try to focus back on fun.” Not that they care, but “the thugs had to know that they were damaging the reputation of a beloved institution.” When the issue was really over the acceptance or rejection of institutions.

Yes, black kids at the fair started by beating up each other, police said, and these “kids may not realize that the damage they’re causing may be inflicted mostly on themselves in the long run, as doors close and attitudes harden,”writes the Journal-Sentinel blogger. I have slightly modified his conclusion. About when normal day-to-day life returns, and the morning silence begins with issues of trust. In everyday relationships. At home. In neighborhoods. Maybe that’s the whole point. When so many of its loved ones are silently suffering, there are all of these beloved institution. In a land of plenty, there was this American Pollyanna image of county fairs as a midsummer oasis of fun, food and farm animals. And nowhere were people asking how the social institutions, which helped developed attitudes and behavior, had let the African-American community down. Over hunger and the acceptance of hunger. Or over what was missing in the black community about American life, as seen on television. How many were kids of single moms? The missing nurturing part which came from home-cooking, not just the suggested minimum daily vitamin requirement. These kids who had not been enjoying the offerings of another fair. There are all of these beloved institution, but why should these kids care, if no one truly cared about them? Especially an African-American president? Perhaps like their own fathers. With all of this lip service by communal leaders everywhere, where was this caring about a fair pursuit of happiness? For everyone.

Again and again and again, the problems were left to a new generation of single moms to try and discover the answer in their own homes, because the community seemed to be failing. And as the new immigrants with the same black skin seemed to demonstrate, it was not an issue of skin color but the issues of the community standard of care for each other. And deaf community leaders, letting these grandkids of Motown and Blues musicians rap — without any idea mentioned any more of love in the pursuit of the truth about it all.

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The State of the Union: A New Director of Pork

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota health executive Lois Quam will lead the $63 billion Global Health Initiative which President Barack Obama in 2009 committed to the program at the U.S. State Department, over six years, aimed at helping developing nations provide more aid for prenatal and postnatal care, improve nutrition, and fight disease. This appointment reunites Quam who had been in the 1990s a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton on Hilary Clinton’s health care task force. A State Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday that Quam will be executive director of the initiative under Secretary of State Clinton.

Lois Quam,of St. Paul is a former UnitedHealth Group executive who co-founded a health consulting firm last year. She was one of the executives who worked under Dr.Bill McGuire grossly enriched by the backdating of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of stock options at UnitedHealth Group, the private insurance company whose shareholders have been getting rich off the invasion of disease that threatened people’s lives, for which approximately 70 million took out their health insurance. The exit compensation of McGuire was alleged to be around $1.1 billion, when he immediately stepped down as chairman and director of UnitedHealth Group due to his involvement in the employee stock options scandal.

There is something wrong with this picture. As government leaders work to manipulate people, worldwide under the auspices of the United State State Department. No mention is made in the story if the $69 billion is directed at American citizens overseas, and the issues in their lives of prenatal and postnatal care, the nutrition, and disease on foreign soil.

She is married to Matt Entenza, a former state lawmaker who wanted to be governor of Minnesota but unsuccessfully failed in a primary election for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nomination for governor in 2010. He was not the endorsed candidate of the party. It was alleged that Ms. Quam financed his campaign.

No mention has ever been made about the issue of clawback for the undue profits that came to the team of UnitedHealth management. Clawback is now being used, under a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, against those who unduly profited in their investments with Bernie Maddoff.

Clawback on the Petter’s Ponzi Scheme Involving Mondale?

With the appointment by the new governor of Ted Mondale as chairman of the METROPOLITAN SPORTS FACILITIES COMMISSION, as the Minnesota Vikings have an ally in the fight to get a new stadium with public moneys, it is of note that our leading politically appointed prosecutors have not pursued issues of clawback, as has been going on in the wake of the Bernie Maddoff Ponzi scheme in the New York City area. It was less than six months ago that Tom Petter was convicted in his part in a Ponzi scheme.

Granted, the bloodless Petters trial does not evoke the emotions of the scars of the Rape of Europa, when seemingly innocent people ended up with the great art work as a result of the plunder of the Nazis in Eastern Europe. But the issues is still the same.

Clawback was the tool used with judicial oversight for getting back the unjustified profits of tainted money.

On Nov. 2, 2010, First American Financial Corporation announced the acquisition of NAZCA Solutions, Inc to add to their portfolio as a leading global provider of title insurance and settlement services for real estate transactions. Founded in 2003, “Nazca quickly built a reputation for innovation by developing technology that connected real estate professionals with a variety of databases needed for property and title research,” according to its website. Since that time, Nazca has been leveraging Web technology to aggregate disparate property data sets from multiple internal and external sources.

It is of note that in June 2002, Tom Petters, teaming with former Fingerhut chairman Ted Deikel, made purchase of the Fingerhut name, the customer list, along with their buildings in St. Cloud, Minnetonka, Plymouth as well as in Tennessee after Federated Department Stores decided to sell or close Fingerhut in 2002. Ted Deikel took over Fingerhut Direct Marketing Inc., which created the catalogs, while Tom Petters took over Fingerhut Fulfillment, based at a St. Cloud distribution center; the new Fingerhut restarted with online and catalog sales in November 2002. Deikel sold his interest in Fingerhut in 2004.

In the summer of 2002, Petters’ operations moved into Fingerhut’s former headquarters in Minnetonka. In April 2003, The Petters Group, with two minority investors, purchased uBid. The same month, Fingerhut Direct Inc. announced it had obtained a $100 million line of credit to finance inventory and receivables. In 2003, Petters allegedly invested in former Minnesota State Senator Ted Mondale’s Nazca Solutions. If you could believe Wikipedia. Nazca Solutions inevitably was hit by the slump in total real estate sales in 2010. And so the sale.

When bubbles burst. When the bough breaks. Like on a dome. “When the roof’s got a hole in it and I might drown.” Acquired by First American Financial for an undisclosed amount, Nazca Solutions works in partnership with clients to develop and integrate progressive data solutions, with a targeted focus towards settlement services companies and default management specialists. In the field of real estate which has not exactly been thriving lately.

Will there ever be an investigation of clawback of the Ponzi scheme of Tom Petters who allegedly invested in Nazca, and allowed a company to take off? Should the victims of Mr. Petters be allowed some fruits of the fraudulent transactions made with Tom Petter’s tainted money? Speaking of settlement services, will the son of Orville Freeman as the elected Hennepin County prosecutor be looking into the matter, if the federal judge did not, as Ted Mondale re-enters public service.

As the well-connected use their connections to see that the Minnesota Vikings spend little of their own capital, in the financing of a new stadium. With public moneys. Perhaps, people with not so dissimilar a philosophical outlook of someone involved in a Ponzi scheme. The sons of famous politicians who had been elected by farmers and laborers. When you had always been above the fray, and there seemed always to be privileges for the few. The lucky ones born who always had the art. And no one asked how it got there. For this bigger, stronger, faster high tech world. The one with steroids for weight-lifters. When so many of the ballplayers named in the Mitchell Report were the sons of former major league players.

Now with more public moneys. Speaking of sons, like the son of Bill Veek, who believes in using public money to build stadiums for the Saint Paul Saints. His Saint Paul Saints. Perhaps, people with not so dissimilar a philosophical outlook of someone involved in a Ponzi scheme, looking for an ally in the fight to get a new stadium with public moneys. Campaigning for a new stadium in St. Paul, with the help of a bonding bill, when that caliber of baseball was not expected to thrive much longer, with outdoor baseball now played outdoors at Target Field. When the Minnesota Gopher Baseball team was who really needed a new ballpark. Maybe Ted Mondale might differentiate between private enterprises and public entities with a state interest, in the latest Ponzi schemes under the auspices of football players, bush league baseball players, and their owners. As the rich get richer, only at public expense. When politics was always this modern day morality play reaching a consensus about goodness. Over public policy about what was truly good.

POST SCRIPT: It is worth note that clawback has begun in the Tom Petters’ case, sometime after this post.

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That Vagabond F. Scott Fitzgerald

To be among the lucky people who ever lived. It was September in Saint Paul. One hundred years later, after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birth, Saint Paul was celebrating his birthday. Even if those in charge seemed to be 4 years late.

I presently live in a building where Fitzgerald and Zelda had lived when their daughter was born. On occasion, strangers come looking, trying to get in, maybe thinking the Fitzgeralds still somehow were here.

Fitzgerald was born 17 days after my own grandfather. In the last year of the Gilded Age of American history. Across the river, my great grandfather was working at a stockbroker, the son of an Irish immigrant passing out the prospecti written in plain English on fledging American businesses. With a vagabond early youth spent in Syracuse and Buffalo, New York, the Fitzgerald family had returned to Minnesota when his father was fired from Procter and Gamble, the U.S.-based Irish soap-maker and candle-maker founded in 1837. I regularly pass the small school building where St. Paul Academy, a WASPish private school, had been in 1908 to 1911, until Fitzgerald was expelled for matters of effort and study habits, neglecting his studies. The vagabond theme continued at the age of sixteen when he enrolled in a Hackensack, New Jersey prep school in 1911–1912, Newman School. Never in his life did he ever purchase a home to call his own.

We are all connected in Saint Paul, and Saint Paul was reclaiming F. Scott. Though my sister told me last night at dinner that Garrison Keillor had said in his opening monologue that he no longer admires the man, as he once had. I had driven by the Keillor home yesterday on the way to church, where there were signs in the yard of a party the night before. Keillor now lived on the block where Fitzgerald had always dreamed to live. On the bookends of Summit Avenue, starting at the state capital, ending at the Mississippi. With the search for happiness in between.

Fitzgerald was oh so real. I walked past where his grandmother lived, regularly. And I almost bought a condo in what was then an apartment building when he was about five years old… where he had lived, in Saint Paul. he wrote about his search for happiness which he imagined inside the mansions –the governor’s, the archbishop’s, and every mansion in between, in this Catholic town, in this long thought of Scandinavian state.

The cultural canvas. A college dropout, a member of the Class of 1917, on academic probation at Princeton, neglecting his studies for his writing, no longer insulated from the Great War going on in Europe, he joined the army in 1917 and was sent to Camp Sheridan, not far from Montgomery, Alabama. Commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry, convinced he would die in the war, Fitzgerald rapidly wrote a novel, as he fell in love with 18-year old Zelda Sayre, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge.

That cultural canvas. The world provided the themes as he wrote, in a world of great promise, of a poor boy’s desperate desire for wealth, for the girl he could not have. The prospectus of just the dream of her. The street light at twilight, looking into the homes of the wealthy on Summit Avenue. Like James J. Hill. The Great War had ended just before he was to have been sent overseas. The romance intensified Fitzgerald’s hopes for the success of his novel, before his novel was rejected by Scribners for a second time.

Who was this vagabond, trying to marry a celebrated eighteen-year-old belle? As then came the imposed prohibition, National Prohibition, in 1919. Along with the influenza plague.

And so the prospectus as the Roaring Twenties began. Taking the good times away, in 1919, with Prohibition. Was it because of what liquor had done to the returning vets? With their battle fatigue or what now is called Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. During a parade celebrating the first anniversary of Armistice Day, a violent incident occurred in Centralia, Washington. On November 11, 1919, the Centralia Massacre contributed to the Red Scare of 1919-20. And thus the theme of aspiration of the idealism which he regarded as defining American character. And then dealing with mutability, if not with loss. With all the vagabonds returning home from war.

Fear was all around in the beginning of the Jazz Age. As fitzgerald took his vows to live in either a better or worse world, in sickness or in health. The Jazz Age which defined, historian Ken Burns wrote, defined the America character to the rest of the world. With all of the surrounding Post Traumatic Stress which no one talked about. Did it seem so wonderful at the time?

The first War on Terror in the United States began at the end of World War I. After the Great Influenza. At the start of Volstead Act. And the start of the great labor wars. Which would come even to Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

The Red Scare. After the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. With the returning war veterans. Missing the actual war. As Fitzgerald wrote This Side of Paradise. The outsider looking in, at the end of war, in an America fueled by bombings and labor unrest, with approximately 30 booby trap bombs in late April 1919, and eight bombs in June 1919, sent to intended targets who had participated in some way with the investigation of or the opposition to anarchist radicals.

No longer insulated, on this side of paradise, with political agitation in America, following the hyper-patriotism of World War I, starting in February 1919 with the Seattle General Strike as 100 local unions joined with 35,000 shipyard workers on strike seeking wage increases, and 24 cities mostly urban areas with racial violence in the summer and early fall of 1919, and especially in the labor movement. The Boston Police Strike in September 1919. Sacco and Vanzetti, alleged to be Italian anarchists, were convicted for a 1920 murder of two men.

Vagabonds. In those periods of reconstruction. The world scene included vagabonds swept back into the undercurrent of world events, starting on the other side of paradise. On November 9, 1918, in Germany hundreds of thousands of people poured into the center of Berlin, in a movement which had started in the final days of October 1918 when 47 sailors dispatched needlessly to be sacrificed in battle in the last moment of the war without authorization mutinied, while the new democratic government was seeking peace. The mutiny of 47 affected sailors led to a general revolution supported by sailors and workers which was to sweep aside a hope to save Kaiser Wilhelm’s monarchy. Then in January 1919, hundreds of thousands of people again poured into central Berlin as a revolutionary wave developed. On January 4, 1919 Emil Eichhorn, the chief constable of Berlin was dismissed by the government when he refused to act against demonstrating workers in the Christmas Crisis after sailors — insisting on only their pay — had occupied the Imperial Chancellery, cut the phone lines, put the Council of People’s Representatives under house arrest, and captured Otto Wels. Reacting to Emil Eichhorn’s dismissal, revolutionary stewards and the chairs of the Communist Party called for a demonstration to take place on the following day. This demonstration in Berlin, turned into an assembly of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them armed, on January 5, 1919. In the first months of 1919, further armed revolts occurred with violence all over Germany, which was violently suppressed. Vladimir Lenin’s counterparts in Germany, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were put to death.

The Red Scars. The Civil War in Ireland, between the Black and Tans. The Civil War in Russia over a six year period between the White and the Red armies. In Poland, the 1919-1920 Russo-Polish War, as the Russians attempted to carry their revolution westward, escalating when Polish Józef Pilsudski formed an alliance with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura in April 21, 1920, as the Poles captured Kiev.

And people in love, in search of peace. In the beginning. In the periods of reconstruction. After everything seemed to be collapsing. After his discharge, Fitzgerald went to New York City, reaching out for the glitter, to seek his fortune. With Zelda looking for a guy with more than just a pocket full of promises, came the broken engagement. In real life. In love…..using complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view…Fitzgerald wrote. On This Side of Paradise.

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After Dayton’s Became Marshall Fields

Marshall Fields.

Brand names. Remember those green shopping bags from Marshall Fields? After all the leveraged buyouts. Minnesota got those green shopping bags, after the merger and acquisition. Even though Dayton’s had acquired Marshall Fields. All those mergers and acquisitions in the age of divorce. In the New Millennium. When the age was over, the DFL Party had been infiltrated by the rich. It has been 24 years years since the Democrat-Farmer-Labor candidate won the office of the governor.

Brand names, after the power struggle. In the New Millennium. Spending millions, to change your identity. After leveraged buy-outs. As the young ponder exactly what inheritance would be left. Those Marshall Fields’ shoppers had tried to come to grips with these same kind of change twenty years ago.

Believing that the primary election was a more democratic method of choosing a candidate that the endorsement process, Matt Entenza and former Senator Mark Dayton competed against the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party endorsed candidate Margaret Anderson Kelliher, and Dayton appears to have won the primary election. Through July 27, 2010, Dayton had used only $2.76 million of his own money to finance the gubernatorial bid, where candidate Matt Entenza had spent $5 million of family personal spending that allegedly had come from his wife’s career at United Health. Together the three DFL candidates have spent more than $9 million to win position on the November ballot.

Through most of last night with the votes counted in metropolitan Minneapolis-St. Paul counties, DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher held a “strong” lead over “enigmatic department store heir” Mark Dayton, according to the Star Tribune description. Even though Dayton’s Department Store no longer exists. Dayton’s margin of victory reportedly grew early this morning when his totals from northern areas of the state helped overtake hers. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Dayton led Kelliher by more than 5,000 votes, though the Minnesota House Speaker had not yet conceded.

The great divide. In the New Millennium. Male versus female. Old versus young. Rich versus the rest. The ethics of it all. After the sexual revolution. All of the issues of gay marriage, abortion, medical marijuana. For now, the unity rally has been postponed.

Millions for your campaign, and then the millions from your tax base, without limits. Without controls. As the federal government had quit regulating the corporations funding the system. Those grass root movement, with the heirs of the pot smoking generation. When grass root movements seemed forever dead. When the system, the manufacturing part, had seemed to move to China. And all that was left of the Machine was the budget deficits.

The superficial, all of the superficial, with their superficial bleeding. And then having to live in such a superficial world, with the bleeding. No wonder a candidate suffered depression.

The great divide. The great divide. Yale University. The goalie on Yale’s varsity hockey team. Was he a fraternity brother there at the time of George W. Bush when he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon? Married to the fourth child of John D. Rockefeller the 3rd. It sounded like a story of The Great Gatsby.

Long since divorced from Alida Rockefeller, the sister of Senator Jay Rockefeller. More recently, after six years of the bubbling Bush Administration when a liberal coherent voice was needed in the U S Senate, (when he opposed the War in Iraq) he was named in April 2006 “the blunderer” by Time magazine. At the time he was rated as one of America’s “Five Worst Senators,” Dayton himself gave himself along with the entire Senate an F for progress. Having lost in the 1998 gubernatorial primary, Dayton was elected to the U. S. Senate, after spending nearly $12 million of his own money in 2000 to win this job. In that 2000 campaign, he stated in financing future campaigns, he would not “do the same.” Retiring from the Senate, he had cited his dislike of fundraising for political campaigns. Not unlike shoppers trying to come to grips with the change twenty years before, Dayton elected to retire rather than adapt to the change of the modern political world of change, in the always need for money.

Described this morning by Rachel Stassen-Berger, as an enigmatic department store heir, with a spotlight on his people skills, in current times of budget deficits which left an acrimony between Republicans and Democrats like that seen between Palestinians and Israelis. Not that Republican candidate Tom Emmer is any better. He seems worse.

The DFL Party had been infiltrated by the rich. With the ultimate Republican principle of spending your own money, when you could not or would not attempt to raise campaign funding from others. Was that the ultimate arrogance of it all?

Dayton had been a one-time legislative assistant to U S Senator Walter Mondale. Former Vice-President Walter Mondale was campaigning this week for DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher who had played by the rules. Did the one-timeformer State Attorney General have a similar experience in his life in 1962?

Union member Michael Lefkowitz of St. Louis Park was quoted today as believing Dayton, “stands for the little guy.” Maybe Michael believed the lead in the Star Tribune, or just all of the commercials. The lead of the story was “Kelliher’s DFL endorsement was no match for Dayton’s experience and name recognition.” With more than 600,000 votes cast, Dayton had won by little more than 5,000 votes,

After the mergers and acquisitions in the age of divorce. City versus rural, north versus south, the State of the Union in these once United States. In the New Millennium. The unity rally scheduled for 11 am was, for the time being, postponed.

POST SCRIPT: In following any talk of future ballparks in Minnesota, with the inauguration of the new governor, where new stadiums seem to take shape with a gestation period of a new born, it is worth noting the son of Gwendolen May Brandt and Bruce Bliss Dayton was related to Andy MacPhail, in a step relationships. The governor’s mother (who did pass away in November 2002) had married Leland MacPhail, the former president of the American League and the father of Any MacPhail? So Mr. Dayton was somewhat acquainted with the ins and outs of stadium talk. And as a sidelight, the philanthropy of Bruce Dayton is a profound story of philanthropy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/arts/artsspecial/19DAYTON.html?scp=1&sq=bruce+dayton%2C&st=nyt

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Dale Connelly Composted, in High Definition

It ain’t over until the Fat Lady sings. She sang yesterday. About Dale Connelly.

After 34 years, with Minnesota Public Radio. Dale Connelly will be leaving KNOW, 91.1 FM. The last day was June 4th. Friday. On Radio Heartland. On digital radio. Where ever that is. And re-broadcasted on “Radio Heartland” on Saturday evening. On KNOW, 91.1 FM.

And so it goes, MPR announced Wednesday. With the ax. In the conservatory.

It was on December 12, 2008. When “The Morning Show” on Minnesota Public Radio was first chopped up. The end had come to an institutions that I had loved, as part of the routine. Even then there there had been rioting in Greece. There seemed to be a question about how moral every day life would become. Without “The Morning Show.”

“The Morning Show” was not exactly canceled by MPR, upon Tom Keith’s retirement. Tom Keith was the sound-effects guy for “A Prairie Home Companion.” Connelly was to continue with an online version. To try to still affect the morning sound. With his soft quiet style. Or so the plan. Not quite put out to pasture. To the quiet pasture.

“The Morning Show” started 41 years and 6 months ago. This was where Garrison Keillor got his start, and moved on. That was the end, unless you had high definition radio. “Radio Heartland” was the morphing of “The Morning Show.” High definition radio. Some kind of recycling proposal. On the internet. Where the Prairie Home met the euphemistic pasture. Wherever that could be found. High definition radio had never had been picked up by sports bars.

The morning kindness. Dale Connelly and Tom Keith (with a stage name of Jim Ed Poole) had blended music and personality, before new fangled coffee companies ever thought of blending. When a good share of Minesotans only knew Mrs. Olson’s Folger’s coffee.

Dealing with change. Dale Connelly, “part of the fabric of what built MPR,” had not quite been put out to pasture. He was composted, with all the other coffee grounds. Minnesota Public Radio’s own private stash. Digitally removed, in less than 18 months. In the view of MPR, with the “cash for clunkers” program, it now was really over for Connelly’s 1976 gig. It was hard finding the old parts, on the internet highway.

It was now the end. The announcement touched on the aim for a sustainability which was not achieved. Though high definition radio would play on. With “Radio Heartland” producer, Mike Pengra, picking the music. Valerie Arganbright, senior director for MPR membership, wrote the announcement. “While we’ll be able to continue providing the wonderful music that you expect from Radio Heartland, we have cancelled Dale Connelly’s weekday morning show.”

So as the music heard on MPR’s Radio Heartland plays on, this would be the end Dale’s involvement with Radio Heartland. His own sustainability had not been achieved.

And so it goes. MPR announced Wednesday the end. The green movement in the new paradigm of public radio. The Current. With the ax. In the conservatory. After their most recently completed fund-drive. Perhaps a part of their own version of going green. While promoting composting and sustainability, in Minnesota. After acquiring that radio station in Northfield, but not being able to sustain the familiar on-air voices. More rioting was expected in Greece.

Where Are You When We Need You, Paul Revere?

Did you notice that Zygi Wilf was, after his purchase of the Minnesota Vikings, as lucky now as Prince Charles? Except for the issue of waiting, with so little hostility directed at the overall process of royalty. “If you got a bill in the mail every year for seven bucks — that’s the cost of a beer at new Target Field — would you consider that a worthwhile contribution for keeping your pro football team?” writes David DeLand in the St. Cloud Times.

Would they ever put the question to the voters in England. About the cost of Buckingham Palace? Or a new house every thirty years? Or about just continued public subsidies to The Royals? In a nation that never believed in royalty, would they ever put the question to Minnesotans?

Where, by the way, had the Kansas City Royals come up with the money to refurbish their stadium, Mr. DeLand of the sports department?

Did you have to be in the souvenir business to notice that licensing fees in the NFL went to the NFL. The NFL that never paid for new stadiums, like was required in Europe. MLB was late to the game over this concept of licensing fees, by about five or ten years. When, beginning in the 1970s and ever since, it was all about the cost of the official logos on your purchases.

Licenses and licensing fees. Driver’s licenses. Fishing licenses. The revenue always went to a government body. Except when it came to sports authorities. In these parts, the local NFL franchises never paid for new stadiums. The one that was demanded in the late 1970s, with a dome. The father of the mayor of Saint Paul spent a lot of time seeing that the bill was passed. Yeah, in a day before there seemed to be franchise rights sold for elected office, which too many politicians somehow had passed along. Since the days of the Kennedys. The Cuomos. The Bayhs in Indiana. All those bleeding hearts. And the Bushes. And the Clintons. Now with their organized ways to show up at every car crash. Or hurricane. Like they cared.

When public service was now something else. About only power. Too many thoughtless if not clueless sons and daughters of politicians. Jock sniffing for votes. Trying to run a show that a Prince Charles could only envy. With real power.

The NFL that never paid for new stadiums, like was required in Europe. Or out east. With too many politicians seeking autographs instead of tax revenue from these athletes. There should be a national tax on MLB and the NFL, for revenues raised to pay for the next sports stadium they felt they needed. And yes on the Player’s Association and the NFL Players’ Union, who got something like 55% or more of the revenue.

Prince Charles could envision himself in the picture, as the role model for local baseball people as they made trips to other fiefdoms in the kingdom of MLB, to view their new palaces. Though Prince Charles had been able once to send his wife, when he was married to a blonde, when he tired of it all.

There was a day when kings and queens gave everything away for free. For loyalty. Before the politicians and manufacture’s reps entered the picture, with blackout rights. Did you notice all the hostility directed at the Goldman Sachs who, like all the reptile oil salesmen at the reptile oil emporium, were making so much? And the ensuing jealousies there. Over money and good looking blondes.

Note all the ambivalence of the audience, the ones watching for free, about these thugs who had no investment in the game. Or the carpetbaggers, with only manufacture’s reps working for them as reptile oil salesmen at the reptile oil emporium, until they acquired the local NFL franchise, and entered the picture.

”There’s a critical mass of legislators, fans and business leaders,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ Vice President of Public Affairs and Stadium Development. “Who believe this is the year.” Were they the ones on the bicycles at rush hour, tying up traffic? Mostly on Fridays?

“We know that this is a tough discussion, and the economy is tough,” Bagley said. “But we think we have a good story to tell: What we bring to the community.”

His current neighbor across the street is Hennepin County Medical Center, a hospital in the community that was really bleeding, where they seemed to think 2010 was the year for them. Or hope. Like a lot of Viking fans. With bleeding hearts, over politics and sport. This was finally the year? But at HCMC, those fans would die, actually die, unless something was done about the budget issues. This year.

Just as the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, yeah under Prince Charles, was being shut down for fraud, the Redcoats were coming. One if by land. Two if by sea. Or maybe by bike. Or ambulance. Camouflaged in purple.

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