On Monday and Tuesday this week, I wrote about how the number of people employed in Minnesota has been falling since June. This is bad news. As I noted in…
Childcare is in a crisis. While employment in most sectors has returned to pre-pandemic levels, the same is not true for childcare. Nationally, over 100,000 workers are still missing from…
Education Minnesota’s Political Action Committee (PAC) spent nearly $4 million this year leading up to the statewide general elections, according to its 2022 Campaign Finance & Public Disclosure report through…
A recent story from the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) details how Xcel Energy is apparently approaching cities to join its Carbon-Free Future MN Coalition to promote Xcel’s goals of…
Despite the rosy reports of new jobs carried by Minnesota’s media, when we look at the number of people actually employed in our state, that number has fallen by 27,700…
A new study from National Grid has concluded that electrifying transportation, especially medium and heavy-duty transportation, will require an enormous increase in charging capabilities. According to Bloomberg: Researchers found that by…
The last time we last checked in April, the Rochester City Council desperately wanted to spend $65 million on a regional recreational complex with no clear idea of why or…
Teacher unions have long been involved in public education. Their track record, though, shows just how far these once well-intentioned organizations have strayed from their original purpose of focusing on…
Gov. Tim Walz dedicated a new statue of Nellie Stone Johnson today at the State Capitol. The press fawned over the ceremony, calling her an “iconic civil rights and labor…
Despite being one of the most expensive places for housing in the country, New York City has done very little, if anything, to reform its strictly regulated housing market. Instead,…
Activist voices, amplified by easily influenced masses, devastated our public safety and harmed our communities in recent years. While there are signs of a recovery beginning to appear in Minneapolis, there…
How widespread has the opioid epidemic become? In an ominous sign of the times, Rochester Public Schools recently began stocking the anti-overdose medication Narcan. The medication quickly reverses the effects…
Bloomberg recently reported that the biggest mistake made by the renewable energy industry was the promise that wind and solar would always get cheaper. This claim has turned out to…
Minnesota’s media carried the following stories last week: Twin Cities Business: Minnesota Unemployment Rate Inched up to 2.1% In October Pioneer Press: Minnesota added 17,000 more jobs in October, the…
Forget about ventilators, masks, test kits and vaccines. During the height of the pandemic, Gov. Tim Walz’s Department of Health spent $19,700 on the real solution to COVID-19: sauerkraut! Thanks…
Kite and Key media provides an excellent explainer on the enormous challenge of storing electricity in batteries.
State and local taxes and spending West Central Tribune: Litchfield school bond referendum fails, but operating levies pass in Hancock, Paynesville Pioneer Press: Real World Economics: Structural or cyclical in…
There’s a lot of catching up to do in schools following the catastrophic state policy of preventing students from attending class in person due to COVID. The drastic decline in…
In the aftermath of the Feeding Our Future scandal, this series has been documenting the fallout among unrelated food charities. Not only was Feeding Our Future shuttered by state authorities, so were…
On November 17, 2022, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) issued its 2022-2023 Winter Reliability Assessment, a document that identifies risks to the electric grid for all of North…
A new two-year, $300,000 marketing campaign is underway by the St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) district to reverse declining enrollment, reported the Pioneer Press. Families have been steadily leaving St.…
To protect everyone from the COVID virus, Minnesota state government shut down all the bars, restaurants and theaters, putting already starving artists out of work. But have no fear: the…
“What I shall argue”, writes Lorenzo Forni in The Magic Money Tree, “is that the main principles of economics remain unchanged; it is only the circumstances in which they operate…
Over 100,000 employed workers stayed out of work in October due to issues with childcare, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This is over double the amount during…