Posts by Tom Elko

The Minnesota Pollution Control Authority (MPCA) citizen board voted 6-0 to move ahead with regulations on discharge of untreated ballast in state waters on Tuesday. The new rules put in place a permitting process for ballast discharges in Lake Superior and require ships to clean and treat their ballasts before entering the lake by 2016.

A few weeks ago the Republican Party adopted the latest iteration of its party platform during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The platform embodies the ideals and vision of the party on issues of importance, like rebuilding home ownership:
We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates [...]

A proposed constitutional amendment to provide dedicated funding for the environment and arts during the next 25 years is proving to be one of the most intriguing statewide election battles, with two patchwork coalitions at odds over issues of constitutionality, taxes and civic priority.

The Big Ten Battleground Poll of the eight states that are home to the eleven universities in the Big Ten conference shows competitive races within the margin of error in all but Illinois.
More details, plus video, below the jump.

Voter databases have become nearly as essential to national politics as money itself, and for the better part of the last decade the advantage has gone to the Republican Party and its Voter Vault database. This year the playing field has been leveled.

Also inside: Sarah Palin’s purloined Yahoo emails; Google Labs’ new audio search engine.

Campaigning for president of the United States sure isn’t what it used to be, and there may be no one more qualified to capture that sentiment than the perennial candidate. The campaign of Ralph Nader produced this lighthearted campaign spot in which the candidate solemnly pours his heart out to a parrot named Cordoza.

If Nader’s [...]

With six of the eight Great Lakes states being hotly contested battlegrounds, this election year the protection and restoration of the Great Lakes is being elevated to a major campaign issue.

Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama today proposed a major plan to jump-start the process. The Obama-Biden Great Lakes Restoration Plan calls for $5 billion over a 10-year period to go toward sewage treatment improvements, rehabilitation of toxic sites and wetlands restoration.

With more than five weeks remaining in the two-year race many of the decided voters are desperately wishing was over, one has to wonder, “Who are these undecided voters, and why can’t they make up their minds?”
Market data compiled by the private marketing agency Acxiom looks to answer that question by defining the swingingest voters [...]

Nearly 600 medical doctors have signed a statement calling for Republican presidential nominee John McCain to issue a full and public disclosure of all of his medical records. McCain is a 72-year-old four-time cancer survivor who has lived most of his life with physical disabilities as a result of torture endured as a prisoner of war.
In May [...]

Every year more than one million people around the globe, primarily children in sub-Saharan Africa, die because of malaria. That’s the equivalent of the entire populations of Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Plymouth and Eagan perishing at the hands of the mosquito-born disease annually.
Twin Cities Nets, a grass-roots organization founded by Minnesota Independent’s own [...]