Franken, Bachmann, Walz and Ellison "Bobble Reps"

Asked at Saturday’s Netroots Minnesota conference what blogs he follows, Rep. Tim Walz pulled out his iPhone and rattled off a few sites: Talking Points Memo, Bluestem Prairie, MN Publius and others. Then he showed off his favorite iPhone app — a new one that features his likeness and that of every other member of the House and Senate as shakeable cartoon bobbleheads.

The 99-cent “Bobble Rep” app helps users find out who represents them in Congress, either through a direct search or by using the iPhone’s GPS locator. The caricatures — heads for each of 540 legislators put on one of 12 bodies — were drawn by MAD Magazine artist Tom Richmond to be fun and nonpartisan. But Apple didn’t see it that way: it rejected the application claiming “it ridicules public figures.”

Richmond wrote:

This is truly ridiculous. These caricatures aren’t mean or very exaggerated. They are simple, fun cartoon likenesses of the politicians and the purpose of the app is an informational database. There is no editorial commentary involved at all.

Indeed, related projects, while likewise tame, could probably be construed as far more “offensive,” to use Apple’s word. Sen. Franken, for instance, was rendered as a 3D vampire bobblehead, “The Count,” (along with Norm Coleman) by the St. Paul Saints baseball team in March. And earlier this month, Franken and Coleman were given the MAD Magazine treatment in a spoof ad for “Democra-cialis, ” a cure for the kind of “electile dysfunction” that plagued their 2008 Senate battle, in MAD’s list of “dumbest people, events and things” of 2009.

But last Monday, Apple reversed its decision, green-lighting the app that made its way to Walz’s cellphone.

Walz’s wielded smartphone could’ve been a good prop for another question he answered — about net neutrality. He said he’s “absolutely convinced that we must keep net neutrality,” and thanks to his resolve, “AT&T doesn’t even come to my office anymore” to lobby against it, he added. He said he’s surprised that conservatives aren’t more concerned about the freedom issues surrounding the possibility of corporations controlling what internet users can and can’t access.

“If you want to wave the patriot banner,” he said, “wave it on net neutrality.”

Here’s how each of Minnesota’s Bobble Reps look:

End the Fed rally last April. Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

Minnesota’s End the Fed group has something to celebrate Sunday as they march on the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis: U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s effort to audit the Fed passed in the House Financial Services Committee last Thursday.

Six of Minnesota’s members of Congress are among 313 co-sponsors to Paul’s bill: Republicans Michele Bachmann, John Kline and Erik Paulsen, and Democrats Jim Oberstar, Collin Peterson and Tim Walz.

Bachmann and Paulsen serve on the House Financial Services Committee and voted in favor of the amendment Thursday, which passed 43-26. Democrat Keith Ellison is also on the committee; he voted no.

Organizer Melissa Hill said she expects “a couple hundred” people to turn out for the local End the Fed group’s fourth rally at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank in the last year.

For the first time they will gather elsewhere — at 11:30 a.m. at Loring Park on the other side of downtown — before marching (on sidewalks) to a 12:30 p.m. rally the Fed building on the Mississippi riverfront.

Hill says the Minnesota group tries to be nonpartisan and is not affiliated with the conservative Tea Party movement. “We lean a little more toward the left” than other End the Fed groups nationally, she said.

For Hill, the march comes on the heels of losing her race as a “Civil Disobedience” candidate to incumbent DFLer Diane Hofstede in Minneapolis’ city council election. And she is still the target of criminal proceedings in Pittsburgh, where she is appealing a charge of  disorderly conduct arising from the recent G20 economic summit there.

Ending the Federal Reserve (a move for which Paul also has a bill pending) would, Hill says, mean getting control of the nation’s money supply again  – “in our control instead of behind shadowy doors.”

A more politically progressive protest kicked off the string of demonstrations at the Minneapolis Fed in late September 2009, when groups (including ACORN) protested federal bailouts for Wall Street financial firms without similar aid for homeowners threatened with foreclosure on Main Street (video).

Donald McFarland, who spoke at that rally, told MnIndy those groups had no affiliation with the End the Fed protests.

A few weeks earlier, during the 2008 Republican National Convention, Ron Paul himself made an appearance at the Minneapolis Fed’s plaza at the culmination of a Green Bay-to-Minneapolis “Walk for Freedom” — which some people call the beginning of the national End the Fed movement, Hill says.

The Manhattan Declaration is the religious right’s line in the sand: They’re vowing to ignore any laws that contradict their worldview. The document reads:

Therefore, let it be known that we will not comply with any edict that compels us or the institutions we lead to participate in or facilitate abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, euthanasia, or any other act that violates the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every member of the human family.

Further, let it be known that we will not bend to any rule forcing us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality, marriage, and the family.

Further, let it be known that we will not be intimidated into silence or acquiescence or the violation of our consciences by any power on earth, be it cultural or political, regardless of the consequences to ourselves.

The Human Rights Campaign immediately lashed out at the signers of the Manhattan Declaration, pointing out that LGBT-rights groups have gone to great pains to make laws that protect both LGBT people and people of faith.

“This declaration simply perpetuates the fallacy that equality and religious liberty are incompatible and that every step toward fairness for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is another burden on religious people. In reality, non-discrimination laws are working all over this country, where religious freedom is existing side-by-side with equal opportunity,” Harry Knox, director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program, said in a statement. “Advocates of LGBT equality have taken great pains in their legislative efforts to ensure that the rights of religious organizations and people under the First Amendment are protected. It is deeply cynical for the authors of this document to paint themselves as victims because they cannot have a free hand to discriminate, including with taxpayer dollars.”

The Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch hotel in Beaver Creek, Colo., site of a $113,753 Xcel board of directors retreat

DENVER — With St. Paul–based Xcel Energy on pace to disconnect power to some 70,000 Coloradans this year for nonpayment, energy activists there are openly questioning why ratepayers should pick up the tab for lavish executive board-member dinners, hotel and spa retreats and luxury box tickets to professional sports games. But those who want the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to establish a firm policy cracking down on such excesses likely won’t get their wish anytime soon, according to a commission spokesman.

The PUC is set to begin final deliberations on Xcel’s latest rate-increase request — its second in the last year — on Dec. 3, but PUC spokesman Terry Bote said the commissioners will probably only consider the merits the of the $136 million rate hike and not delve into rule changes for travel and entertainment expenses.

“The commission can’t set a rule by deliberation in a rate case, so if they were going to make a rule, they would have to go into a rule-making proceeding to do that,” Bote told the Colorado Independent. “If they choose to, they can put language in the order that says, ‘We don’t expect these types of expenses to be included in future rate cases,’ but that’s not binding, obviously.”

The issue first came up during testimony in the nearly $180 million rate case in Denver earlier this month (Xcel has since reduced that amount in a settlement with consumer groups by nearly $44 million). Clean energy and consumer advocates pointed out Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson had a serious problem with excessive Xcel travel and entertainment charges last summer.

Some of those charges included a $113,753 Xcel board of directors retreat at the ultra-luxury Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch hotel near Beaver Creek in Colorado’s Eagle County — of which Xcel tried to pass $36,149 on to Minnesota ratepayers, according to testimony by the state AG’s office. Other items included first-class airline tickets and luxury hotel stays for top Xcel executives during conferences in Europe.

That testimony prompted Xcel, which provides power to 5 million customers in eight states, including Colorado, to trim $3.9 million in travel and entertainment expenses from its $132 million rate case in Minnesota last summer. Regulators ultimately allowed for an overall $91 million increase in that state.

The Minnesota rate case caught the attention of Colorado energy activists who tried earlier this month to introduce the Minnesota AG’s testimony into the Colorado rate-case docket. The Colorado PUC rejected that move but did request more information from Xcel on whether similar charges were being included the Colorado rate case. Xcel introduced an exhibit on the final day of testimony detailing more than $120,000 in expenses.

The tab included dinner bills in excess of $10,000 and board retreats at luxury spas in Boulder for more than $40,000. Xcel immediately offered to remove those expenses from its rate-increase request.

“The commission has never disallowed these sorts of expenditures in the past and the company finds that these occasional expenses are a reasonable cost of business, but offered to remove the costs from its historic test year during the hearings,” a company spokesman said. “The company will offer to remove the same amount from its forecasted test year, meaning that customers in Colorado will not be paying for these types of expenses.”

However, attorney Dennis Kelly, an “intervener” in the rate case on behalf of a grassroots Arapahoe County group called the ArapaHOPE Community Team, said his organization and others fought hard to get the Minnesota case into the record because they want the Colorado PUC to establish a firm policy on exorbitant travel and entertainment expenses.

“One of the reasons we really wanted to get this into the docket is because I don’t think that these costs had ever really been reviewed by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, and I don’t think they really have set guidelines on any of this,” Kelly said.

Now activists in Minnesota are calling out Xcel for its annual $5.8 million corporate aviation budget, according the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The company maintains two eight-passenger Learjets — which cost about $1,200 an hour to fly – mostly for company executives to travel between Minneapolis and Denver, its two largest markets.

David O. Williams writes for the Colorado Independent, sister site to the Minnesota Independent.

As if Iraq weren’t already riven enough with its own internecine antagonisms, prisoners there under U.S. military guard are siding with Minnesota in the bitter, cross-border gridiron rivalry between the two neighbor states.

The detainees clued into the Guard members’ loyalty to the Green and Gold after the soldiers repainted camp walls in those colors.

“They know Favre by name,” First Lieutenant Tim Boehnen said of the former Packers quarterback, in an interview with Milwaukee radio station WTMJ-AM.

“They obviously then started up the conversations and started talking about Brett Favre,” Boehnen said. “They soon learned about Favre going to the Vikings, and things just started going downhill from there.”

The abuse is apparently entirely verbal, and good-natured, according to Boehnen …

One of the big words they know now is shenanigan. They’ll constantly talk about “Favre shenanigans,” “He’s so good for the Vikings,” and “The Packers have got to really feel bad about that one.”

… unlike, say, the abuse of a goat in Winona that fans painted green and gold before shaving the number 4 into its side and stuffing it into the trunk of a car earlier this football season.

Kelliher picked up the endorsements from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49 (yesterday) and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (last week).

How important are such endorsements?

“[B]ecause of changing demographics, union political endorsements may not move the rank-and-file members, whose interests may not be the same as the union leadership, the way they used to be,” Hamline University professor David Schultz told the St. Paul Legal Ledger.

AFSCME Council 5’s executive director disputed that.

“[O]ur members are incredibly motivated to elect a new governor who will promote public services, rebuild the economy of the state and deal with the budget crisis in a way that asks the wealthiest people in the state to pay their fair share of taxes,” Eliot Seide said.

Elsewhere in Minnesota News this morning …

STATEWIDE: Local property taxes up 3.5 percent. That’s an estimated average; the truth comes out at Truth-in-Taxation hearings starting next week. [Associated Press]

RAMSEY COUNTY: She gets put on the Coleman-Franken recount board, the unallotment lawsuit, now the dad-shirt case. Doesn’t Judge Kathleen Gearin deserve a “Stay Out of the News Free” card?” [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

STATEWIDE: Al Franken’s bill would aid homeless kids. Bill would help them stay in the same school when possible. [ECM Publishers]

OWATONNA: Texts (both kinds) prompt race tensions. White kids and Somali kids are fighting after anti-Somali writings circulate. [Star Tribune]

MOORHEAD: Native Americans in college. They’re the focus of a national conference today.  [Associated Press]

ALBERT LEA: “Pay-to-play” charges could sink junior-league puck squad. The whistleblower is a bowling alley owner in Elkhorn, Neb. [Albert Lea Tribune]

lllustration: George Peters

WASHINGTON — Mortgage giant Fannie Mae’s recent announcement that it will give homeowners facing foreclosure the chance to stay in their properties as renters for as long as a year is the latest aggressive move by the government to help troubled borrowers and tenants avoid being evicted. But as past efforts to stem the foreclosure crisis have already shown, even well-intentioned programs haven’t managed to reach significant numbers of people in peril – meaning any new approach faces a tough road ahead.

Consider, for example, a new federal law approved in May that protects renters from foreclosure evictions by giving them the right to stay in their residences after foreclosure for 90 days or for the duration of of their leases. Despite the new law, some tenants aren’t getting notice of their rights and are simply moving out, housing advocates said.

The problem has been particularly widespread surrounding a provision in the law, called the Helping Families Save their Homes Act, that allows for borrowers with Section 8 affordable housing vouchers the option to also stay in their residences when their landlord is in foreclosure. Some tenants who call their state or local housing authorities in Massachusetts and Connecticut after a foreclosure eviction notice are mistakenly told they have to move, noted Judith Liben, a senior housing attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a nonprofit legal services advocacy group. Better training of housing authority staff would help fix the situation, she said.

“Even with well-intentioned policies, there’s a disconnect between a good idea put into law, and what really happens on the street,” Liben said. “We see that disconnect on the ground, all the time.”

Despite anti-foreclosure initiatives by the government and lenders, the housing crisis has continued to worsen. Foreclosure notices totaled a record high of nearly 938,000 in just the third quarter of this year, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure database. The Center for Responsible Lending predicts a total of 9 million foreclosures by 2012. Vacant and abandoned foreclosed properties are adding to neighborhood blight problems. Renters increasingly have become caught as innocent bystanders, evicted often without notice when their landlord faces foreclosure.

The new federal protections are supposed to address that. But in some cases, tenants in foreclosed homes either can’t reach real estate agents in charge of selling the properties to let them know they want to continue renting, or they get incorrect information from agents and think their only option is to move out immediately, said Shelley White, litigation director at New Haven Legal Assistance in Connecticut. In some instances, law firms send misleading letters that imply a financial incentive to move, known as cash for keys, is a renters’ only option, she said.

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of problems with tenants that just get notes from Realtors that say the bank has foreclosed on your property, and it’s time to get out,” Wright said.

The difficulties in outreach to tenants comes as the government continues expanding options and assistance to borrowers and renters dealing with foreclosure. In addition to the new federal law, the Treasury Department plans soon to rollout its plan encouraging more short sales by offering financial incentives to lenders and borrowers. In a short sale, a homeowner sells his home for less than the amount owed on the mortgage, and lenders forgive the remaining loan balance.

Both Fannie and Freddie Mac earlier this year began allowing qualified tenants in foreclosed homes under their control to sign month-to-month leases. Freddie Mac also started offering former owners of foreclosed homes the month-to-month lease option. Last week, Fannie announced its new policy, which significantly expands on the idea, allowing some owners who didn’t qualify for a loan modification and can’t afford their mortgage  the option of staying on in their homes. The owner would voluntarily turn over the property to Fannie in a “deed for lease” transaction, instead of going through a lengthy foreclosure process. The former owners in exchange would be given the option to rent back their homes for at least a year. Unlike in a short sale, their credit is unlikely to take a hit because of the transaction. And even investors may be eligible, meaning they would turn over their properties to Fannie, but their tenants would have the option to remain.

“This is huge,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who proposed a similar own to rent idea when the financial crisis first hit two years ago.

Baker would prefer that Fannie’s new policy extend the the rent-back period even further, to five or 10 years. But, overall, Baker said Fannie’s program addresses the problem of growing numbers of vacant properties, and represents a shift to promoting rental policies as a foreclosure solution. “You’re guaranteed a year, and that gives you some stability and a chance to plan ahead,” he said.

He and others also described Fannie’s new program as a big step forward over some efforts currently in place to help renters in foreclosed homes.

Fannie Mae, for example, already gives renters in foreclosed homes the option to continue renting on a month-to-month basis, or to accept a cash for keys offer. According to Fannie’s data, the financial help has been a far more popular option. Since January, it has tallied 3,500 cash for keys agreements, and 300 signed leases. Fannie Mae spokesperson Amy Bonitatibus said the program was set up to offer both choices to renters. It is open to all tenants of Fannie Mae-owned properties, but she had no information on specifically how many tenants had been approached with offers.

The small number of leases signed isn’t really surprising, said Danilo Pelletiere, research director for the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The options to renters were offered post-foreclosure, by which time some tenants may have decided to make other living arrangements. Cash for keys can be a more attractive option than a month to month lease. The new federal tenant protection law also overlapped with Fannie’s program, so some tenants may not have felt a need to sign leases, he said.

Pelletiere and other advocates said they have much higher expectations for Fannie’s new approach for former owners. A deed for lease transaction can happen far more quickly than a foreclosure, and having a longer-term lease will be more attractive to many people. Fannie also has hired a national property management company to handle the new program, while its existing rental initiative for tenants uses local real estate agents and property managers.

“Because of the way it’s designed, it should do a much better job,” Pelletiere said. “That makes it much more likely that we’ll see a national response. It provides a way for Fannie to be proactive and to get to the property earlier. And it costs less than getting someone out of a home and foreclosing on them.”

Alan Mallach, a senior fellow at the National Housing Institute and the Brookings Institution, agreed. “What’s interesting will be to look at how many people this new policy affects,” Mallach said. “I think it will be significant.”

Pelletiere said he also found some encouragement in early results from Freddie Mac’s program earlier this year to rent back properties to former owners of foreclosed homes on a month by month basis. According to Freddie Mac’s figures, almost 12,000 units entered its portfolio of foreclosed homes between April and October. In 70 percent of cases, a borrower is working on a mortgage loan modification, leasing the home back, or accepting cash for keys. In another 27 percent of cases, the property was vacant by the time Freddie Mac took it over. In three to four percent of cases, an owner or renter faced eviction. Of those occupants who signed leases, two-thirds were owner occupants and one-third were tenants. Spokesman Brad German said he had no further breakdown of the numbers.

The long-held belief has been that owners would decline to become renters again, so having more owners than renters sign rental leases is an encouraging sign for Fannie’s new program, Pelletiere said.

Still, he and others noted the government wouldn’t be prompted to move toward a more aggressive rental policy if a greater number of loan modifications were successful. A recent report by the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government’s taxpayer-funded bailout program criticized the progress being made under the administration’s Making Home Affordable program, saying that in a best case scenario it would prevent fewer than half of expected foreclosures.

As foreclosure notices pile up, troubled tenants and borrowers don’t always understand they might be eligible for help, or they don’t know who to contact to apply for programs, or they just give up and leave upon a foreclosure – even in cases where they have new federal laws and programs intended to avoid evictions. To Liben, the Massachusetts housing attorney, one constant of the housing crisis has been that some people “get lost in the shuffle.” She’s waiting to see if that will finally change.

The center, which has existed in one form or another since 1977, has been planning a new children’s area at its centerpiece museum and has a fundraiser and holiday program on the calendar for December. The center also houses a 7,000-volume library and research center and hosts events throughout the year.

In January, the museum was scheduled to open an exhibit of photographs from Walden Woods in Massachusetts, a project involving the Walden Woods Project. That’s a cultural nonprofit (dedicated to preserving the place that Henry David Thoreau made famous) founded and supported by musician Don Henley.

Now would be a good time for a famous son or daughter of the Iron Range to do the same for the former Ironworld.

“Minnesota showed civic resilience in a year when much of the nation saw a sharp drop in civic effort,” the report found.

Its findings show that the state continues to lead in civic participation:

1st in voter turnout, with 77.8 % of those eligible voting, 14.2% higher than the national average.
1st in citizen consciousness of having a “strong civic tradition,” with 26.5 % saying it is strong compared to other states, compared to 13.2% for the national average.
3rd in donations to charitable organizations, with 60.2% donating $25 or more.
4th in statewide volunteering, with 60.5% volunteering in the last year.
6th in working with others to fix something in the neighborhood, with 12.4%.

Despite economic problems, the state fared better than most:

72.2% nationally said they had cut back in volunteering; in Minnesota the figure was 58.6%
41.4% of Minnesotans said they had increased volunteering – compared to 27.8% for the nation as a whole.
40.3% reported being involved in community discussions about the effects of the economic recession.
50.9% of Minnesotans say they would be willing to “work less” if doing so would create more jobs for those who are unemployed.
Almost 53% say they are willing to volunteer more.

And support for efforts to increase civic participation is still high:

86.4% believe that young people should be able to earn money for college through community service projects.
80.8% believe that young people should be required to do community service in higher school.
71% believe that students in high school need to pass a new civics test.
43.7% support training opportunities to learn skills as part of volunteer activities.
15.3% value the opportunity to learn and to be challenged as the first priority for their career, while 9.3% of Minnesotans seek to make a “public benefit” as the first priority. The quarter of the population who prize civic and educational aspects of jobs contrasts to 18.7% for the nation as a whole.