Bob Collins
Some images are getting out of Tehran, despite the ban on foreign journalists being allowed to cover demonstrations.
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
On MPR’s Midday this afternoon, Rep. Loren Solberg predicted massive property tax increases because of Gov. Pawlenty’s “unallotment.” At the same time, the League of Minnesota Cities has just posted a Department of Revenue spreadsheet showing the impact on each city in the state. Find it here. The League makes clear that pushing many of Read more →
Crowd-sourcing: Photoshopping Iran
Tweeting Iran, monitoring your e-mail, when you get a wrong number, Pawlenty’s unallotments, and the worst ideas ever.
Iranian protesters using new media to fight backGov. Tim Pawlenty is fond of comparing Minnesota’s social service programs with neighboring states — usually Wisconsin — to show that the state is overly generous. Today, he is expected to announce further cuts in health care coverage for the poor. Ironically, it comes at the same time Wisconsin is expanding its state subsidized health Read more →
I generally find discussions about health care to be endless and unenlightening. So why am I live-blogging today’s Midmorning discussion about the future of a single-payer health plan proposals?
Twitter had planned a network outage on Monday evening, but has now postponed it until Tuesday because people were depending on it too much for coverage of the events in Iran. “Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide–we commend them for being flexible Read more →
Thousands gathered at the Vietnam Memorial on the grounds of the State Capitol on Saturday for Minnesota Honors Vietnam Era Veterans. The idea was to give Vietnam vets the return they didn’t get in the ’60s and ’70s. But no one was around today (or perhaps, Sunday) when people scrawled graffiti over a page in Read more →