Speed Gibson

My wife of 25 years and I will be on the road for the next two weeks, retracing our Honeymoon. I'll Twitter now and then, but this will be the last post until we return.

"Call it a case of unintended consequences," opens a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial. The new State-wide 11th grade math test that is now required for graduation has Big Education worried.

Last spring, before the exam affected graduation, only one-third of Minnesota high school juniors were proficient. Those results led many education officials to worry that half or more could flunk the test this year, when students need to pass to earn a diploma. A state graduation rate that low would be disastrous.

Disastrous for whom?

The students, of course, and frankly, I have to mostly blame those students and their parents if they haven't been mastering the material all along. After all, a third of the students are passing the test, having largely gone to the same classes I presume.

We're again facing the social promotion argument. Better to graduate struggling students than force them to earn their degrees say our experts, worried how a lower graduation rate might reflect on them. Pass the problem along to their parents, colleges, employers, welfare agencies, or the justice system. Out of sight, out of mind.

Our State public colleges report that over a third of their new Minnesota high school graduates need remedial work in mathematics (and English). That puts them immediately behind across all their classes, often leading to needing private tutors, summer classes, or an extra semester or two to catch up. That's an expensive remedy for a problem more readily addressed in high school. After all, a high school should be better at teaching high school material than a college.

More rigorous testing in high school seems an obvious and workable solution. It identifies weaknesses a year ahead of time, plenty of time to recover - for those who want to recover. Those who don't shouldn't graduate, assuming the test is fair. How could it not be? It was prepared by education experts was it not?

But of course, the Legislature never really did intend any consequences for not passing these tests. When passed, the tough enforcement was set many years out, letting them claim they had done something, without any immediate pain. The grace period is over, though, and they're meeting to lower the standards "temporarily" for reasons they were somehow oblivious to them earlier. The Star Tribune thinks we're "fortunate" that they are "wisely" pursuing various revisions, some of which seem permanent.

I prefer a different solution: accountability. Any Minnesota public high school that issues a diploma should be held liable if that student if found to need remedial work at a Minnesota public college. That District should have to pay for the extra classes, including books, fees, room and board.

The battle is over, the School Board having adopted the consultant recommendation to close three schools this fall. One of the stated advantages of this "K-5" solution is that it aligns the elementary and secondary boundaries. No elementary school's boundaries will straddle the new single middle/high school boundaries.

This allows the lower grade schools to better align its programs in support of what the higher grade schools offer, as in IB (International Baccalaureate) and AP (Advanced Placement). This seems logical, but some who spoke at the recent meetings made a good point, that it is a defacto division of the district.

Leaving aside Spanish Immersion (RSI) for the moment, District 281A will be the AP system comprising Armstrong High School, Plymouth Middle School, and four elementary schools. District 281C will be the IB system, comprising Cooper High School, Robbinsdale Middle School, and four elementary schools.

Trouble is, many will want to cross over, even do a blend. I heard this during the Strategic Planning meetings. Now, let's put RSI back in the mix. And what about sports and activities? I understand there is some sort of busing today, though not as much now.

Maybe this is an opportunity to explore online learning. The live AP course at Armstrong is on HDTV at Cooper, with a teaching assistant, just like college! Vice versa for an IB course taught live at Cooper. Maybe the live/HDTV switches once a week, so the teacher has equal contact with both sections.

Such interchange could go up or down grade levels. It could be translated to further support RSI. Best of all, it's relatively inexpensive.

My blog hoster apparently did a modest change this morning, had us unable to post most of today. It looks like they changed the rules slightly also, that if I don't have a final carriage return at the end, the comments don't always work correctly. Hopefully, I was the only one really affected.

***

Your faithful blogger will be going on vacation on Sunday for two weeks. As they say, "light blogging" until I return, probably nothing Minnesota related anyway. I may drop a line from the various cities along the way, however. And I'll Twitter now and then. And listen to the Saturday podcasts while I'm out walking - Strom, NARN, Jeffers.

It's over. The District 281 School Board tonight (Tuesday) adopted the Wold Consulting recommendation to close three schools this fall. They are Pilgrim Lane Elementary, Sunny Hollow Elementary, and Sandburg Middle School. Actually, Sunny Hollow will be the new home of the K-5 Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion (RSI) program. And Sandburg will be re-purposed to consolidate auxiliary programs like Community Education.

The vote was 6-1, the 1 preferring another option that had a major flaw, to create a mega-elementary school within the old Robbinsdale High School building.

There's no need to conduct a post-morten on the decision. The process is another matter, as it seemed a bit too detailed, too many times. The next round is ten years out at the earliest, so I'll just say that Board meetings are the wrong settings for extended discussion like we saw tonight.

Today, we again see the true test of a democracy play out, the transition of power, for the most powerful position on Earth.

I remember eight years ago actually being somewhat worried that the Democrats in general or the outgoing President et al were going to somehow mar the event in supposed retribution for Florida. I wasn't really worried about a coup. I was worried about some embarrassingly bad behavior. I watched every minute, live, and like Y2K, everything worked like it was supposed to. Sure, there was the vandalism and looting of the White House that even the Left criticized, but George W. Bush immediately rose above it - and stayed above it for eight years.

Work and a School Board meeting will keep me from watching it until I get home tonight, but I will watch it for all of its splendor and significance. For now, Barack Obama stops being an opposing candidate and starts being my President.

It's taken much longer than I thought it would, but "solid state disk" (SSD) is finally arriving. New PC laptops are sporting 32, 64, and now 128 GB SSD hard drives, for a few hundred dollars more. Having no moving parts, like a motor having to spin platters at 5400 rpm or more, they draw much less power, meaning much more battery life. Plus, they're faster.

It's been a race for some time now, silicon (sand) memory chips vs iron oxide (rust) disc platters. The trouble has been that sand has typically cost an order of magnitude more per GB than rust. Once again, mass production - capitalism in action - has brought down the cost to where most Americans can afford this technology that nobody on Earth could buy a generation ago at any price.

Twenty five years ago, I was buying mainframe memory for over $30,000 a megabyte. I bought a 256 MB USB memory stick for $40 in 2006. I could put dozens of them in my pockets. And now this, a single laptop drive that runs on a small battery for hours and holds more data than many data centers did 20 years ago. Wow.

*** UPDATED BELOW

There's breaking news on the District 281 web site. There is now a Public Hearing scheduled for 5:30 pm this Tuesday, ahead of the Robbinsdale Area Schools Board meeting at 7 pm. And, the "close Sonnesyn" alternative of the K-5 option (not to be confused with the "K-5 Variation" option) has been detailed in an additional Consultant report.

One suspects there has been some feedback since the Board work session last Thursday that set Tuesday's agenda. That agenda will take up option K-5 as recommended first, which will close Sunny Hollow, Pilgrim Lane, and Sandburg. But if that is not adopted, then the K-5 alternative that closes Sonnesyn instead of Sunny Hollow will be considered.

***

Monday: Still more information added to the web site, this time, FAQ's, suggesting a Q of my own I'll deal with after tomorrow night's meeting.

It seems that when budget cuts loom, when they can't have any walking around money for a while, our esteemed leaders find some "freebie" issues to occupy their time. The latest: taking up the war on trans-fats.

Never mind that government regulation and over-reaction to saturated fats helped spur the use of trans-fats instead, it has now become Reich Minister Rybak's and Commissar Coleman's duty to once again protect us from ourselves. Once again, we can't be trusted. We will bake or buy cookies with trans-fats and give them to our children, shortening their life-span by ... by how much Dr. Rybak? Dr. Coleman?

Wouldn't that depend on how many cookies, how often? After all, many natural organic foods have some amount of trans-fat in them. You can't eliminate them all.

Which is worse, one sinfully decadent Mrs. Fields milk chocolate chip cookie a month or a dozen reduced-fat Oreos a week? The latter of course - enough to add 6 pounds a year, ingesting twice the saturated fat along the way. But if the food police has their way, it is responsible eater who will suffer when they outlaw Mrs. Fields cookies.

The final Final Word as we know it has just ended. Michael Brodkorb is bowing out to keep up with his young family, and who can argue with that, especially given the lucrative pay?

Brodkorb and I don't agree on everything, like on the age old question of being a Republican or a Conservative first. I like that in that it's for the right reasons, none of them being that Brodkorb is an idiot. Yes, his driveway goes all the way to the street. We can both learn by listening to each other. Not so, oh, Larry Pogemiller.

The King will go on and on, building on what Michael helped build, which was my favorite two hours of the NARN.

Cars don't guzzle gas ... people do.

Listening to the network news during the NARN today, I heard the term "gas guzzler" used as if accepted parlance, i.e., a purely factual attribute, not at all loaded or political.

First things first. Mass market car dealers haven't sold a gas guzzling car in decades. You want a gas guzzling car? Try the 1958 Buick Estate Wagon my parents drove for a couple of years. It was a mass of steel and chrome, maybe 4,000 pounds. Ford Falcons and errant pedestrians bounced off harmlessly. It got 7 miles to a gallon of premium gas around town.

But even that Estate Wagon didn't burn a drop of gas just sitting in the driveway. Who burns more gas, the little old lady who proudly drives her land yacht to church on Sundays, the bus everywhere else? Or someone that chooses to live in Elk River, driving 500 miles a week commuting to their job and other venues in town, 20 gallons a week or so?

What counts is total usage. The same applies to water consumption. Do we all have to accept bunny-tinkle shower heads and micro-flush toilets? Or just those homes with two or more daughters children, where the owners might take these actions anyway?

The market regulates all this just fine, or would if the government would stop interfering.

Words like "overdue" and "deserved" and "predictable" will no doubt appear in various blog accounts. As we all knew, the Minneapolis Star Tribune will continue operating after yesterday's bankruptcy filing. There will be some pain for its employees in the form of layoffs, wage freezes, benefits cuts, and so on. Supplies will be cash in advance for a while.

Is the newspaper business going the way of passenger rail service? Is the medium truly the message? In a word, yes. There will be printed tabloids, like the local Sun weeklies and the City Pages, though even their business models are far from lucrative. But the days, even the idea of a major metropolitan daily are fading. The alternatives (competition) is gaining ground (market share) every year. For classified advertising, the cash cow, the war is all but over.

Could a newspaper like the Star Tribune recover? I don't think so. Yes, there and quality problems to address, the overt bias to be sure, but also the poor writing. Today's Associated Press account of the US Air jet ditched in the Hudson River is a case in point. No editor should let this novella reach his front page intact.

But even if the quality improves, too many have simply lost the newspaper habit, for whatever the reason. The newspaper of the future has to create some new habits, and be a bit more realistic about its niche. And, it clearly has to cut some costs.

I'd do two things immediately. One, I'd adopt the Lileks model, that the local news is the A section. On national or world news, what paper can hope to compete with TV? Two, I'd eliminate the Saturday paper. Make the Friday paper the "weekend edition" with all the playdates, reviews, etc, which still works in print, especially when page one is local. Besides, the early Sunday edition is out by noon on Saturday even now and the Saturday morning paper has the lowest circulation of the week.

In fact, I think I'll send them that idea.

Tonight, January 15^th, was a District 281 Work Session for the School Board. Its purpose was to sort through the four options for right-sizing the Robbinsdale Area Schools.

"Pros and Cons" were detailed for each of the four options, each of which has a small variation. The public input from Tuesday night's meeting was included where appropriate. I'll spare you the details, as they should be posted soon on the district web site, but it was a very exhaustive list.

Then came the consensus phase, to see if any could be dropped tonight, and two were, unanimously. The Two Phase option put off closing a middle school for 3 years, too little too late. The K-5 Variation just wasn't as good as the similar K-5 option.

The K-6 option had only one vote out of seven, meaning it may not even get its motion seconded next Tuesday if it comes to that. I think the thought of the old Robbinsdale High School serving as a mega-elementary just had no appeal. But Board Chair Tom Walsh elected to retain it as it was the only option that would keep Pilgrim Lane Elementary open. He also wanted to have it be the first option considered next Tuesday, but again, he was just one vote out of seven.

The original Wold recommendation - K-5 remains the front-runner. The variation to close Sonnesyn instead of Sunny Hollow seems to have equal support, however. It looks like Wold chose the larger Sunny Hollow to allow the Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion (RSI) program to expand. That apparently isn't as simple as it sounds, there being some policy and method questions to answer first.

And that highlights one last point the Board should consider next week: separate the program issues from the facilities issue. The decision to close buildings is all but permanent. Programs can start, stop, and move, and most can flexibly adapt to the facilities available.

Dr. Thomas Sowell was on The Dennis Prager Show yesterday, who understands the intelligentsia better than anyone. Quoting:

“I think our colleges and universities are turning out more and more people who will not be able to feel fulfilled unless they’re telling other people what to do.”

…

“What we believe doesn’t make us important. If you believe in judicial restraint, the market, and the family, you’re just a guy who believes in judicial restraint, the market, and the family. But if you believe in “social justice” – you’re one of the anointed!”

Much of the public input Tuesday night was about District 281's Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion (RSI) program. Currently, this is housed in part of the Robbinsdale Area Learning Campus (RALC), the former Robbinsdale High School closed in 1982. The Robbinsdale Middle School (RMS) is housed in another part of the RALC building.

As I understand it, RSI is currently a K-8 program. Students spend most if not all of their day taking classes using Spanish, not English. Demand is so high that a lottery was set up, with over 100 candidates turned away I believe.

I don't really understand the appeal of this program. In fact, I have a relative who nearly "drowned" in this program. When his parents relented, his grades shot up from D's to B's. So it's not for everyone. But who is it for, and how does it compare with a more traditional Spanish program, like I took from 4th through 12th grade in St. Louis Park?

The obvious difference would be fluency. How valuable is that as an employment skill? Some, but don't forget, you would be competing with "ESL" (English as a Second Language) graduates, who may in fact have the superior bilingual abilities. And, the global marketplace deals in many languages, not just Spanish.

Getting back to the right-sizing questions and the public input, it looks like RSI would be changed from a K-8 to a K-5 with some enhanced but otherwise traditional middle school language classes. Some said this appears to be a broken commitment, and I'm inclined to agree.

Effectively Open Enrolling your student at RSI, up to 3 miles further away than your neighborhood school is a multi-year commitment by the parents. Part of that consideration is the understanding that RSI is a K-8 program. It's not a hard or enforceable contract, but the District should nonetheless consider refining the right-sizing decision.

In the K-5 recommendation, K-5 RSI leaves the RALC, but 6-8 RSI could be grandfathered there. All new RSI students would use the modified RSI structure, but existing RSI students could be allowed to finish, at RALC. Or, the Plymouth Middle School and RMS 6-8 RSI programs could be beefed up a bit, as one parent suggested. (Sorry for all these abbreviations!)

The K-5 plan is a sound recommendation, but I think the RSI parents have a point, one that a small change or two should resolve.

The Robbinsdale Area Schools held a Public Hearing to present the Wold Consulting team's recommendation (1 hour) and take public comment from about 90 speakers (3 hours). There were about 200 present at the Cooper High School auditorium tonight, January 13^th.

You get several types of input at these meetings: objective, subjective, anecdotal, incorrect, and vindictive. Overall, I think it went pretty well.

That the two Elementary schools recommended for closure would be the most represented was no surprise. What did surprise me despite a friend's prediction was that the Sunny Hollow delegation was larger than the Pilgrim Lane delegation. They worked together well to push the "K-6" option that spares them both.

Some from each school also engaged in a little brinkmanship, reminding us that as border schools, they had open enrollment options close by. Truth is, Northport is closer to the border than Sunny Hollow or Pilgrim Lane, and their choices are more viable.

A Sonnesyn parent made a couple of good points. One, bricks and mortar don't teach our kids, it's the teachers, staff, and yes, parents. Two, he said that those claiming to being blind-sided, rushed, or railroaded haven't been paying attention.

I did pick up on one point repeatedly made regarding RSI (Spanish Immersion), which I'll save for the next post. But otherwise, the Board should proceed with the consultant's recommendation, the K-5 option.

I won't begin to claim any understanding of Minnesota election law as possibly affected by Seventeenth Amendment. But it does bother me that a national office should sit vacant while teams of lawyers engage in a lengthy proceeding, months some predict. It seems like a bad precedent to set, if it hasn't been already. It seems like a process that could be abused in the future, candidates filing frivolous challenges even when the results are not as close as this.

Maybe our laws will be changed or clarified for the next such occasion, but for now, I think we have to seat the recount winner, yes him, Al Franken, for the interim.

But first, Mr. Franken (and Mr. Coleman) must sign or otherwise publicly vow to be bound - immediately, unconditionally - by the results of contest phase of this election. Just as happened to Governor Elmer Anderson in 1963, he may find himself turned out of office after only a few weeks into the term. I don't want to have to send Moose and Rocco to drag Franken out and down the Capitol steps should he lose.

If I thought Majority Leader Harry Reid's word was any good, I'd make him sign, too.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is still heading full steam for the iceberg, objectivity be damned! Today's front page has a splashy "In the metro, it's Mass Transit vs. Mess Transit" article explaining the dilemma of just where to build the next piece of Light Rail Transit, after Central Corridor of course.

For you journalism students out there wondering what a "puff piece" is, look no further. Not mentioned at all is that Light Rail projects start with a "B" as in billions of dollars. Also not mentioned are past and certain future fatalities that accompany such street level trains.

The east side residents wring their hands how they need better service. I'd guess whatever transit they have now is more abundant than twenty years ago, but regardless - <Sam Kinison> you moved there!</Sam Kinison> Why does the train have to come to you? Can't you move? Can't you get a job closer to home?

And how is Metro Transit, which can't even afford to keep some Park & Ride locations open, supposed to pay for this when Washington and St. Paul are broke?

After a year of strategic planning and facilities study, District 281 now must now choose and adopt a "right-sizing" option in response to declining enrollment. The consultants have made their recommendation from among four options they developed as I posted last week. I agree with that recommendation, the "K-5" option, and no, not because my local Elementary (Northport) is staying open. I frankly expected the opposite, and would have accepted such a decision if that's where the facts led.

I liked Wold's approach to first resolve the Middle school situation, then pair those choices with complementary Elementary decisions. That's why we have only four scenarios this year vs. ten last year.

The Two Phase plan doesn't close a Middle school for 3 years. The second phase selects that school. Savings are delayed and at least 600 students will again be relocated in 2012. It is an incomplete solution at best.

The K-6 plan moves 6^th grade from the Middle schools to the Elementary schools. It closes two unremodeled schools (Lakeview and Northport), but because these are where the most students are, a compensating Elementary operation has to be created at the Robbisndale Area Learning Campus (RALC). That in turn means the Middle school operation there has to move to Sandburg Middle School, which works because Middle School is now only 7^th and 8^th grades. This is clearly the most convoluted solution of all. Don't forget, the RALC is a high school building that would now have to serve as a double Elementary plus the Elementary portion of the Robbinsdale Spanish Immersion (RSI) program.

The two K-5 plans make the RALC a pure Middle School, i.e., the Robbinsdale Middle School, closing Sandburg. The recommended option moves K-5 RSI to a closed and repurposed Elementary (Sunny Hollow). The variation moves the entire K-8 RSI to a portion of a repurposed Sandburg Middle School, which also would house most auxiliary functions like Community Education. Of the two, the recommended option is the better match of function and facility. Elementary buildings house elementary programs, including K-5 RSI. Middle school is at the newly remodeled Plymouth Middle School and at the RALC, a former high school well-suited to exclusive Middle school use. And all the auxiliary functions are now also combined in a single, larger building (Sandburg), not just some of them.

This doesn't answer the District's other big facility challenge: eventual replacement of its aging buildings. Forest Elementary (2005) is the only District facility built since 1970. Several are more than 50 years old. We may hear more about this facet in the upcoming four meetings.

***

Work Session: Monday, January 12^th 6 pm, ESC Boardroom.
TV: First hour live, full replay Jan. 13, 7 pm.

Public Meeting: Tuesday, January 13^th 7 pm, Cooper High School.
TV: Replayed Jan 14 and 15, 1 pm

Work Session: Thursday, January 15^th 5:30 pm, ESC Boardroom.
TV: Live, replay Jan. 17 noon.

Board Meeting: Tuesday, January 20^th 7 pm, ESC Boardroom.
TV: Live, replayed Jan 21 7 pm, Jan 22 8 am, Jan 25 pm.

Via True North, Chief at Freedom Dogs says that we Republicans need a simple consistent message going forward. His three are "Cut Taxes, Cut Spending, and Education Choice." Quoting the Big Dog:

I will cede that some may have a different 3 points they feel are better. Fine, let's hash them out, dress them up. Please put them in the comments. But once agreed, and it needs to be damn soon, all of these should be hammered every minute. None of them are losers with any constituency except for Ed. union employees and lefties who will never consider us anyway."

As he says, we may each have a different three, as do I, which I dutifully left as comments.

• Honest Elections
  
  Regardless of how the U. S. Senate race turns out, this issue should be in play for the 2010 cycle, starting with photo ID.
  
  
• Responsible Spending
  
  The word "cut" is loaded and means different things to different people. Instead, I combine Chief's related calls to cut taxes and cut spending into this single point. It doesn't matter is something is cut or expanded. What matters is if a given spending program is responsible, addressing a truly public sector need, and crafted to effectively address that need in a reasonable efficient, fair way.
  
  
• Educational Choice for All
  
  The time has come for a counter-offensive against Minnesota Miracle IV. Don't just let the deficit turn this aside, as it must. Show that the previous three attempts failed, simply led to flat test scores despite skyrocketing costs. What else is there to try but choice?.
  

Notice my choice of words, designed to put the opposition on defense from the start.

"So you oppose Honest Elections, letting the same day registration voter fraud continue? And you have no problem with tallying more ballots than voters in selected precincts?"

"We could wish that transit was in private hands like it was 50 years ago. But it isn't and we can accept some subsidy for the current Metro Transit operations. We'll meet you halfway and call that Responsible Spending. But given what we both now know about Light Rail, to expand it further, especially now, can only be labeled as irresponsible."

"Some already have choice, the wealthy and connected, able to use private or charter school alternatives with little impact on their lifestyle. What we want is Educational Choice for All Minnesotans. You're for equal access in Health Care, but not Education? Tell me why."

I'll admit we'll have a little trouble here and there within the fold. Some rural legislators may just not be able to oppose further Ethanol subsidies and mandates. Some urban legislators may feel they cannot now withdraw support for Light Rail. Some governors may still need some education on "green" economics.

But the broad agreement on a few core issues should be possible. That's the essence of a viable political party.

We saw "Gran Torino" on Friday, Clint Eastwood's latest that pushed aside "Bride Wars" to win the early weekend results. We really liked it, still talking about it today, as in we'll be buying the DVD later.

It's about widower Walt Kowalski whose neighborhood is now quite diverse, including the new Hmong neighbors next door. I won't go further other than to say we had to pick up some Vietnamese takeout on the way home.

The spectre of bankruptcy looms next Friday for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, labor talks having stalled yet again. But they still have enough cash to send me yet another (final?) mailing, to get the Sunday paper delivered for just $1.25 a week. I'm about due for another phone offer, too.

As a former seven day a week subscriber for decades, it's not that I don't at least reconsider. I do miss it. I still flip through the lunchroom copies at work during the week. But the final straw, their incompetent, even shameful coverage of the 2006 Fifth District Congressional election remains a final straw. I've seen nothing that tells me that they have rediscovered the real journalism columnist Nick Coleman remembers - from 1973. No change, no sale.

Getting back to the bankruptcy, a source tells me that many in the unions believe that the paper is actually making money, just not enough to please the owners. That might explain the current impasse.

Meanwhile, the owners continue to focus only on expenses, not revenue, as the way out. But there will be no new revenue until they raise the quality and intellect of what they're publishing.

I'd like to subscribe again, I really would. But that will require a reality check from both the unions and the owners.

The Left likes to say that some areas of the world just aren't ready for democracy. Is Minnesota one of them?

We pass the ridiculous Constitutional sales tax for the arts in 2008. We elect Lori Swanson Attorney General and Mark Richie Secretary of State with our eyes wide shut in 2006. We nearly elect Mike Hatch Governor and Al Franken Senator. And with Richie in charge, Franken may be our next Senator anyway.

That's the price of Democracy I suppose. Governor have to be an elected position, even if we occassionally get a Governator. But Attorney General shouldn't have a political dimension to it. Neither should Secretary of State. But by leaving it up to us voters, both offices in fact have become political. Odd how the candidate promising to de-politicize the Secretary of State's office has the opposite effect.

We're looking at runoff elections for future close elections. We also should look at eliminating elections for Attorney General, Secretary of State, and the State Auditor. There is precedent for this, the elimination of the State Treasurer office by Constitutional Amendment. It was obsolete in that it couldn't function effectively with the Governor and Legislature precisely because it was independent and because it could be held by an incompetent.

The Governor should appoint the Attorney General and Secretary of State, subject to Senate confirmation. The State Auditor's office should be eliminated, any actually valuable work given to the Department of Finance and the Legislative Auditor.

This greatly opens the field of candidates. Many fine executives would be willing and able to serve in an appointed capacity, but unwilling to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous campaigning.

All of this should save us some money, and what better year?

One more thing, as long as we're amending the State Constitution. The Senate should have no more than 30 days in session to confirm these or any other appointments by the Governor. Our Senate is another example of where Democracy doesn't always seem to work, viz. Yecke and Molnau.

Like many other struggling retailers, Macy's is closing several underperforming stores nationally, among them their Brookdale. It was originally Dayton's fourth store, after Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Southdale. It's hard to see Brookdale surviving this latest blow. The only viable businesses left are Sears and Barnes & Noble, both on the west side of the mall.

As a Brooklyn Center resident, I'm somewhat buoyed by this. The property has to "die" before it can be redeveloped. It would have been a great location for the Twins stadium, but of course, there's some unpublished statute somewhere that says that all professional sports arenas must be built in a downtown location. And near a Light Rail station.

The Vikings might be an exception, as you cannot tailgate downtown, not like the old Met or Lambeau. The Brookdale location has freeways every direction and transit, too. But I digress. I oppose public money for stadiums beyond the nominal surrounding infrastructure - pipes and roads.

Maybe the WalMart SuperCenter can now happen, though last I heard, Sears was still blocking this.

I suppose I should be saying "Hey, great!" but I'm not. From the St. Paul Legal Ledger:

As part of the state’s efforts to pare down a projected $4.8 billion budget deficit for 2010-11, Gov. Tim Pawlenty and a bipartisan group of seven state legislators on Wednesday announced a plan that would require Minnesota school districts and charter schools to combine efforts to reduce costs.

The Minnesota K-12 Shared Service proposal would compel charter and public schools to pool limited resources in order to deliver more cost-effective services, redirect administrative costs and reduce duplication of services, the governor said at a press conference.

It sounds wonderful, but it's little more than an amuse bouche in terms of relative financial impact. Besides, it's another intrusion by the State into local affairs. Notice the words "require" and "compel" above.

Pooling for volume purchases is a proven strategy but there are multiple ways of doing this in the Internet age, including e-Bay. It's an opportunity that has been increasingly addressed over time and doesn't need yet another law, yet another bureaucracy to finish the job. And ultimately, Districts will be "told" to buy textbook A because it's on sale, not textbook B that their top-rated chemistry teacher would rather use.

Updated. The "showdown" is Tuesday, January 13th, not the 15th as I originally posted.

***

When it comes to showcasing the Neighborhood School concept, you would find few better examples than Pilgrim Lane Elementary, in east Plymouth. As one of the three District 281 schools up for closing a year ago in response to the failed 2007 Referendum, the parents came to every meeting, with numbers and conviction. They only have the misfortune of being located where capacity is just not needed.

We saw many of them again tonight, during the one hour "Listening Time" ahead of the School Board. The recommendation has been made by the consultants to close Pilgrim Lane as part of their plan to shed excess capacity in 2009.

Actually, it went pretty well, in part due to the thoroughness of the consultants. The big showdown, if it comes to that, will be Tuesday, January 13, at Cooper High School, 7 pm.

***

Also tonight in the annual Organizational Meeting, Robbinsdale School Board member Patsy Green stepped down as Chair. The new officers are now Chair Tom Walsh, Vice Chair Linda Johnson, and Treasurer Sherry Terrell. Helen Bassett continues as Clerk.

The economy must be taking its toll on the World Wildlife Fund. During a cooking show, they ran a spot with a somber Sharon Lawrence of Atomic Twister fame saying:

A tragedy is unfolding in the world today. Climate change is threatening one of the most magnificent wild animals on the planet. Polar Bears: they’re struggling to survive. The ice is melting all around them, and food is becoming harder to find as they lose their hunting grounds.

Climate change: it’s happening right now and it’s leaving mothers weaker and unable to provide for their young and cubs dying without enough to eat. As the struggle and search for food continues, Polar Bears are hanging on for survival.

Polar Bears are on their way to extinction. If we don’t act now, most will die in our children’s lifetime.

Really? The Arctic ice isn't melting. The Polar Bear population is rising, not falling. And of course, the food supply limits their population like almost every other animal species. There will always be a number of starving cubs and mothers that won't live long enough to breed. That's life in the wild.

A more honest appeal might go something like this:

A tragedy is unfolding in our world. Global warming stopped ten years ago, threatening one of the most prestigious non-profit organizations we know. The World Wildlife Fund: it's struggling to survive.

The climate change movement we aligned with no longer commands any urgency. Their lack of credibility is hurting our credibility. Grants are evaporating in this uncertain economy. As the struggle and search for money continues, we are hanging on for survival.

If you don’t act now, our jobs will be lost.

Well that didn't take long! The Transit fares were raised 25 cents in October and Metro Transit is already broke again. To be fair, they didn't promise that would fix everything. Their 2008 action included the option to raise fares by another 50 cents in 2009. Happy New Year.

Ridership was up big in 2008, though that 8 percent gain suddenly fell to 3 percent in October. Sure, the sagging economy could explain this, but not a sharp decline the very month the increase took effect. With gas prices back down, obviously some drivers now find their cars the cheaper option, or cheap enough vs the added commute time and inconvenience of public transit. I'll further speculate that the "lack of Global Warming" we saw in December would explain the minuscule 0.4% gain that month.

Anyway, the theory is that increased ridership is bad for business, even when fuel prices are falling fast. I don't buy it. Given the very high fixed cost of public transit, additional fares should almost totally fall to the bottom line. Adding a few people to every bus requires no more buses, no more drivers, and uses very little additional fuel to travel the same number of miles.

No, we all know what's again at the bottom of this rat hole: Light Rail. It's time the Met Council came clean on the true costs of running the Hiawatha Line. It's also time for the Legislature to put the brakes on any more LRT given the $5 billion deficit.

Yesterday, I posted that every election has a margin of error, if for no other reason that it is conducted by humans. I also contend that the final margin of victory in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race is likely to be well within that margin of error.

Some are talking up a run-off system for Minnesota, like Georgia used, where the top two face off a month later if no one gets an outright majority, 50 percent plus 1. But if it's 49 to 44 with a smattering of third parties, this is pointless, maybe even wrong, just a protracted version of "instant runoff voting." The voters have made a clear choice.

A run-off election does make sense if the margin of victory is comparable to the margin of error. The outcome truly is in doubt. So fine, let's say we say the threshold is 0.1% - one in a thousand for a state-wide race, which would be about 2,400 votes in the Franken - Coleman race. Rather than watch this endless, embarrassing hair-splitting, we would have voted again four weeks later in December and all but certainly had a winner by December 3rd.

There are some details to work out, like financing the extra campaigning and avoiding frivolous demands for recounts or re-votes if the difference is 2,401 votes. Maybe the Governor should ultimately have the power in the gray areas.

Right now, this looks like a much better solution than the mess we're in now, no matter who wins.

Remember how we all hated getting clothes for Christmas? This year's best present for me was - clothes, specifically a pair of lined jeans.

I've never been much about denim, never got that "ooh ahh" feeling so many others get from wearing their old favorite pair of jeans. Given my walking habit/hobby, my wife saw some lined jeans at the store, thought I might like them on these cold winter days. And I do!

I was out around Cedar Lake on New Years, Cedar Riverside today, both about three hours total, and these jeans kept me warm throughout, and without long underwear.

They're so comfortable, even around the house, not at all stiff or scratchy. If I had only found these a few decades sooner, I might have been forever in blue jeans.

Sometimes it takes a prominent case to truly expose a problem and rally support for reform, despite the public officials' claims that the system is working. The Kelo case resulted in needed reform of Eminent Domain laws throughout the country, even Minnesota. And now we have the Minnesota Senate recount of 2008.

Mostly, the system is working, mostly those parts that our Secretary of State cannot influence. When this is all done, a few dozen votes will decide it. But there's another number to consider - the margin of error.

As the ballot challenges show, a number of voters can't seem to follow the instructions. And being humans, we may have all voted incorrectly at one time or another. It's impossible to codify every situation in law, so there must always be some subjectivity. It's doubly subjective when the election officials seldom have any prior experience in recounting.

Maybe we should stage a recount just to exercise the machinery, sharpening the saw. Here's my idea: pick one of the Congressional races every two years and recount it, no matter how lopsided. Let's just see how close the final tally is to the announced total.

The specific Congressional District to recount should be picked entirely at random, after the election, drawing a ping pong ball perhaps. It might happen that the same District is recounted twice in a row, maybe more. Maybe we draw an extra ball when that happens. All election officials must "fear" a recount, every time.

The resulting audit reports will help us find problems in the system, and help quantify just what the margin of error really is. It also might prove helpful in educating the voters on proper procedure.

Dick Clark made a cameo appearance on his New Year's Rockin' Eve. As someone Twittered, Dick Clark looked like a mummy. He suffered a stroke at age 75 four years ago, and it looked like it took all he had to get those few words out. I admire his determination and courage, but Dick, it's time to go. Just as others left, retired, or passed away to give you the spotlight, let Ryan Seacrest take it from here.

Forgive the gloom on this otherwise festive day, but there are others that should consider retirement in this new year.

Paul Harvey turned 90 last year. He also has medical issues, some sort of viral damage to his vocal cords in 2001, and he hasn't been the same since. Paul Junior has most of act down. It's time to pass the microphone.

Our own Sid Hartman, Social Security # 47, needs to consider retiring as well. His voice is starting to go, but more concerning is that he's having trouble staying focused, frequently losing his train of thought on air. (I know, I know, ..., Sid jokes another time.) Keep writing, Sid, but let the rest go on your terms.

"A man's got to know his limitations," said Dirty Harry. Mr. Clark, Mr. Harvey, Mr. Hartman, you all have nothing left to prove. A long life to you all, but be realistic about the effects of those many years. Go out as the winners you already are, coaching those who follow.