The Fridley City Council adopted the final 2015 budget and levy during the final meeting of the year on Dec. 22. The final tax levy for 2015 is about $11.7 million, an increase of $223,319, or 1.94 percent, over 2014. This is the same amount that was set as the preliminary levy in August.

The above headline is from opening paragraphs, this link.

And the ill-motivated, wishing for a nation of sheep, will early on want a way to segregate out any goats, and while it might affect future goat career paths, it is all aimed for the common good.

Jeb with his Big Brother.
WaPo photo credit, read the item

And when cyber-teaching, the equivalent of robotics on the auto assembly line, is entrenched, who may be watching the directions of evolution of the practice? Those in charge. And what with centralized data collection and data mining capability, expect the best video gamers to be recruited into the Drone Pilot Corps.

Pure paranoid science fiction, or possible whether or not a likelihood?

Would you want one of your children designated "goat" in somebody's centralized database run out of NSA computers in Utah? If not, where do you take your first stand?

But they are our corporate benefactors, leaders in pushing the envelope. MinnPost interestingly reports on a designated goat, from one of our winter-frigid-too but prosperous TC 'burbs. This link, this excerpting:

Right before the holidays, a Twin Cities teen by the name of Nathan Ringo authored a first-person account of an ongoing digital privacy tussle with his school that was published in the popular online magazine BoingBoing.

Co-edited by writer and prominent copyright reform advocate Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing is a pretty big deal. In a very few minutes, Ringo went viral in a particular international community.

The school district administrators he left in the hot seat? It’s not hard to imagine that it’s something of a relief that student privacy laws prevent them from discussing Ringo’s claims. The young man has quite clearly received an excellent education.

Ringo’s story neatly illustrates a raging national debate about the implications — ranging from commercial retention and use of student data to overreach in censorship — of increased use of technology in the classroom.

Ringo’s BoingBoing commentary was especially pertinent because of a case in the news at the time concerning tablets distributed by a Pennsylvania school district. The cameras in the devices were turned on remotely, capturing female students undressing.

In the fall, Ringo reported to Wayzata High School to start his junior year. Eleventh-graders showed up on the third of four “back-to-business days” to have their photos taken for IDs and to pick up their schedules and — new this year — an iPad.

Only one actually reading the contract

[...] “I was the only person reading it and I just realized, Hey, we’re supposed to have the right to privacy,” Ringo recalls. “Under the [U.S.] Supreme Court case Katz vs. United States, which we actually learned about in school, in civics and government — we just call it civics.”

In the 1967 decision, the jurists held that the government could not use evidence obtained from the warrantless wiretapping of a public phone booth.

“That court case gave citizens the right to privacy,” Ringo explains. “And then the school is asking us like two years after we are learning about this in class and being tested on it to give away that right.”

[...] Not only would students have to agree to waive rights in school, they would have to agree to an impenetrable series of conditions and licensing arrangements imposed by Apple.

At the same time, Los Angeles schools’ 2-year-old, $1.3 billion plan to provide all of its students with iPads loaded with software from the testing concern Pearson has unleashed a tsunami of controversy, including an FBI investigation into the underlying dealings.

Few people understand the thorny web as well as Ringo, and fewer still have crafted solutions. Minnesota was not among the 22 states to attempt to legislate the issues last year. Congress has made even less progress and appears on the verge of accepting a controversial proposal that the industry police itself.

[...] A couple of days later, Ringo says he got an e-mail from the district’s tech department revoking his Internet privileges for “hacker talk.” His school account was closed.

Which was no trivial matter, given that the school’s curriculum was structured so that without access to a tablet and the Internet a student would be shut out of a lot of in-class activities, homework and other things necessary to keep up academically.

To Ringo’s way of thinking, this made the supposedly voluntary privacy waiver in the iPad contract coercive. [...]

Digital limbo for months

[...]

[links in original, red highlight added]

Read it all at MinnPost. Franz Kafka is alive and well and living in Wayzata.

In harsh sunshine terms - this ain't science fiction; it's Wayazeta. Where Skull and Bones ritual and commitment is a distant thing. Yet if you fret about the intrusiveness of "the Chinese," or "North Korea," save some fret juice for the Boners. They are real. They are close-knit cohesive. They are secretive. They have money. They have agendas.

Like ALEC.

And -- If that young Ringo individual does not score high on fast twitch v-game coordination he's not going to be let into Drone Pilot Corps, where because of attitude he might wash out anyway. Our nation and our future. Or one possible scenario of many.

In closing, readers should in their minds answer:

Sheep?

Goat?

Once having a minds-eye pair of answers; with implications - what's next? Where and how do you go from now to a future? How can you bend the direction your nation takes in its future in ways you think better than other possibilities?

DNR news with Ramsey overtones.

Not being skilled enough to navigate the DNR contorted website to find news/press releases, but having heard the news, I will link to the ammoland.com Jan. 8, 2015, report as disclosed to me by Google:

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Landwehr announced two high-level appointments today.

Sarah Strommen, acting deputy director at the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR), was appointed DNR assistant commissioner. Luke Skinner, deputy director for the DNR’s Parks and Trails Division, was promoted to director of the Ecological and Water Resources Division, replacing Steve Hirsch who retired.

“I am delighted Sarah and Luke have agreed to take these positions,” Landwehr said. “We have developed a very strong senior management team, and the combination of experience and skills Sarah and Luke bring will serve Minnesotans very well.”

As assistant commissioner, Strommen will oversee two divisions for the commissioner’s office, Parks and Trails and Fish and Wildlife, and the agency’s strategic direction with land management and the Legacy amendment. She fills the position vacated by Assistant Commissioner Mike Carroll, who retires Jan. 13.

Strommen brings 20 years of experience integrating the field of biological science with citizen education and engagement and with public policy-making. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, where she majored in biology and Latin American studies, and a master’s degree in environmental management from Duke University.

She previously served as policy director for Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and as associate director of the Minnesota Land Trust. She joined the state of Minnesota in 2012 as an assistant director at BWSR before becoming acting deputy director.

After serving several terms on the Ramsey City Council, Strommen was elected mayor in 2012.

Habitat preservation and planning is important to sport hunting, and that is a part of the land management responsibilities the assistant commissioner position entails. It is good to see a sporting website covering the Strommen appointment. The NRA, for all its bellicose politicking should be as attentive to sports habitat and game preservation considerations as they are to handgun sales volumes, conceal/carry, and stand-your-ground issues. It would be a credibility boost for that organization were it to do so.

Days ago the Campaign Finance Board held MFC not at fault for its Sheila Kihne stuff.

This link. It speaks for itself. No excerping. No commentary.

Well --- No commentary, beyond noting:

MFC surely did pick the slower horse in the race.

Education? An issue? What are Daudt's companions up to?

JEBBERWOCK Image credit: Wikipedia

MinnPost's Briana Bierschbach reports:

Education, education, education
The 2015 session is already shaping up to be an education year — if the two parties can bridge major differences in how they think Minnesota should improve its schools. House Republican’s second bill was all about education policy, including provisions that would alter teacher retention policies to focus on merit instead of seniority, and new licensure standards that could open the door to out-of-state teachers. A major point of contention with the state’s teachers union, Education Minnesota, will be a proposal to allow the state’s new teacher evaluation system, launched last fall, to be used as a criteria when cutting back on staff. In the Senate, DFL senators want to fund voluntary pre-kindergarten programs for all four-year-olds in the state to better prepare children for the classroom.

[italics added]. Criteria is a plural noun. The singular form is, criterion. Perhaps even the best schooled ...

As to education-related mischief, HF 2 "as introduced" bill text is online, here. Initial bill log, online here. The HF 2 database entry, here. Loon is chief author.

____________UPDATE____________
Daudt and Loon are close in a belief akin to Emmer's ranting about $100,000 per year restaurant workers. She and Daudt want to implicate food service worker tips into a minimum wage calculation, even at the horribly low $7.25/hr level. (Do read the detail, a less onerous but still very low $12/hr is in play as a part of their aim.)

Talk about kicking folks that are down ...

Here and here.

Let us hope each has outgrown such mean-spiritedness toward low-paid wage earners working what is a harder job than sitting in the legislature acting as if important.

___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Andy at Residual forces, this post, argues the opposite, (i.e., arguably favoring low wages for hard workers). Andy specifically argues that restaurant tips should be in any accounting/formula regarding minimal compensation for labor. That, after all, is the formal Republican position, and formally, Andy is one of them; inner party.

Sorensen publishes an image that looks as if Emmer could have been greenscreened in Norm Coleman advertisement fashion, to fit into any backdrop du jour.

This image:

It is from Sorensen's post, this link, and please read the item.

Now, let's talk metamorphosis. In the insect world, a butterfly can emerge from a cocoon it entered as a grub.

Sorensen publishes of the grub phase of our CD6 Rep. Emmer, prior to his entering into the cocoon Stanley Hubbard and GOP strategist and present Emmer Chief of Staff Fitzsimmons put Emmer into for the duration of the CD6 2014 campaign.

My guess? Seemingly like Sorensen's. Same old grub.

Which leads to the main point of this post.

Could our local politician du jour of yesterday, Branden Petersen, be greenscreened to somehow fit into this report and image? And, hopefully it's a guys thing, so our latest du jour, Ms. Whelan, would not fit in and more importantly, would not want to. We can hope she proves to be more than a dump on the teachers union, like BP.

One Jebberwock's chirping Jubjub bird from north metro is enough. Indeed, one is one too many.

Please email Andy A. at Residual Forces, and tell him it is raining in Anoka County, where he lives and breathes.

What with Andy's County Board raising property and Northstar taxation, get him the message he seems to be overlooking, for whatever motives he has, in having one blind eye, his right one. UPDATE: Don't feel it? Right leg?