Only one of the four incumbents filed to run for reelection.
There will be new faces for the one at large seat, mayor, and ward 2. David Jeffrey will seek reelection in ward 4, the only incumbent running this cycle.
That leaves him, possibly, and David Elvig (not up for reelection until next cycle) as remnants of the council who moved at great cost the city hall from the Highway 5 location to the over-lavish present Norman castle on Sunwood - a deed done to voters by the Council without a referendum.
That was done before Dehen and Look, the other two members whose seats are not up this cycle, took office.
So, Jeffrey and Elvig. Carryovers.
Elvig chaired the Town Center Task Force, and sat on council from Jan 2003 to present. Hence, he voted on all the major mischief Ramsey has suffered - a massive shift in the percentage of shared wall housing and its great densities, running sewer and water to the Jerry Bauer gun club [with adjustments between Bauer and Peterson so that Elvig could feel comfortable ceasing to recuse himself and cast the tie-braker vote for that counterproductive sewer-water expansion], and also approval of the Nedegaard LLC's purchase of Kurak land for Town Center, approval of the Development Agreement for Town Center, approval of a most generous award to the Kuraks on the Highway 116 condemnation instead of taking it to litigation, and, indeed, on council when the entire thing could have been stopped, stymied, scaled back or otherwise adjusted instead of advancing full speed into a major ongoing failure.
I cannot recall a single instance when, during his tenure, Jeffrey voted differently from Elvig on any matter of importance. Any reader who can think of something that way is invited to post a comment.
Perhaps the thing should be called the Elvig Town Center, since he will also carry over into the major mop-up phase of its lifetime. Or name the sewer extension after him, since he was its main proponent, on council. Then name the sop to the developers the Haas-Steffen Town Center, giving Natalie her due, and give Elvig recognition of the "services" extension to the gun club as his prime legacy.
In light of the general quality of decision making by outgoing council members, they should have the good grace and good judgment now, at least, to leave the entire community center situation for the new people to resolve.
I expect a new mood of sensible fiscal responsibility will sweep in and govern starting at the beginning of next year.
There may be changes in consultancies and other arrangements. In general, excesses of the past likely will be reined in.
Hence, the new people should be viewed by those leaving office as entitled to a clean slate, and not have a community center lame duck thing presented them for possible undoing upon taking office.
I would hope they are granted that courtesy. The voters also deserve such a show of decency to the new people they will be voting in to straighten things out, whoever they may turn out to be after the general election.
Finally, this information: Unless things change substantially during the three day period where candidates can withdraw, each seat will be contested and mayor and the at large seat will need a primary to narrow those races to two candidates.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
More Keillor, on the Norm Coleman career.
There was a previous Crabgrass post of Garrison Keillor's published views of Norm Coleman, Cheney's man, his mentor's apprentice, here. The following photo and extended excerpt, Salon, online here.
And, Norman Coleman, when you use Iraq, and denounce Wellstone over Iraq, you should have to face Iraq six sorry years later.
You do not walk away for a remake. You do not redefine it out of your repitoire. You climbed that Bush-Cheney-Big Oil cross so vocally, with such fervor, will and exploitation, now hang on it.
You were the President's man. You still are the Cheney apprentice if you willingly raised your hand when the apprenticeship was offered. Goes around, comes around, in the Coleman world means as it goes you go with that flow. As it comes you adapt.
If that brand sells again in Minnesota the shame will not be Coleman's alone. It will be shared with every ballot-writer signing onto the neoNorm, whoever it will be presented as, over the next few months.
Al, please be very careful about not flying to Eveleth out of that airport in Blaine. And please, please, mock the daylights out of whatever neoNorm it is that emerges from the lair, this go-round. Set things straight. Let him walk K-Street in his fashion of next year's neoNorm. Private citizen makeover. Out of office. On the make.
Minnesota's shame
Republicans don't like my criticism? Too bad. They have to answer for Norm Coleman's campaign, which exploited 9/11 in a way that was truly evil.
By Garrison KeillorNov 13, 2002 | The hoots and cackles of Republicans reacting to my screed against Norman Coleman, the ex-radical, former Democratic, now compassionate conservative senator-elect from Minnesota, was all to be expected, given the state of the Republican Party today. Its entire ideology, top to bottom, is We-are-not-Democrats, We-are-the-unClinton, and if it can elect an empty suit like Coleman, on a campaign as cheap and cynical and unpatriotic as what he waged right up to the moment Paul Wellstone's plane hit the ground, then Republicans are perfectly content. They are Republicans first and Americans second.
Thus the use of Iraq as an election ploy, openly, brazenly, from the president and Karl Rove all the way down to Norman Coleman, who came within an inch of accusing Wellstone of being an agent of al-Qaida. To do that one day and then, two days later, to feign grief and claim the dead Wellstone's mantle and carry on his "passion and commitment" is simply too much for a decent person to stomach. To accept it and grin and shake the son of a bitch's hand is to ignore what cannot be ignored if you want your grandchildren to grow up in a country like the one that nurtured and inspired you.
I'm ashamed of Minnesota for electing this cheap fraud, and I'm ashamed of myself for sitting on my hands, tending to my hoop-stitching, confident that Wellstone would win and that Coleman would wind up with an undersecretaryship in the Commerce Department. Instead, he will sit in the highest council in the land, and move in powerful circles, and enjoy the perks of his office, which includes all the sycophancy and bootlicking a person could ever hope for.
Ordinarily, there should be a period of good feeling after an election, of relief, or relaxation, when we join hands and become one people again, but Norman Coleman doesn't deserve any Democrat's hand. We had come together as one people already -- the precious gift of 9/11 -- and he used that as a campaign ploy against us, suggesting that Democrats are unpatriotic, and he is not to be forgiven for it. I personally don't believe he had anything to do with the crash of Paul's plane. Plenty of people suspect he did. I don't.
Paul Wellstone identified passionately with people at the bottom, people in trouble, people in the rough. He was an old-fashioned Democrat who felt more at home with the rank and file than with the rich and famous. (Bill Clinton, examine your conscience.) He loved stories and of course people on the edge tend to have better stories than the rich, whose stories are mostly about décor and amenities.
Paul walked the walk. He was a wonder. Everyone who ever met him knew that he lived a whole life and that he and Sheila were crazy about each other. To be in love with one person for 38 years is nothing you can fake: Even the casual passerby can see it.
And, Norman Coleman, when you use Iraq, and denounce Wellstone over Iraq, you should have to face Iraq six sorry years later.
You do not walk away for a remake. You do not redefine it out of your repitoire. You climbed that Bush-Cheney-Big Oil cross so vocally, with such fervor, will and exploitation, now hang on it.
You were the President's man. You still are the Cheney apprentice if you willingly raised your hand when the apprenticeship was offered. Goes around, comes around, in the Coleman world means as it goes you go with that flow. As it comes you adapt.
If that brand sells again in Minnesota the shame will not be Coleman's alone. It will be shared with every ballot-writer signing onto the neoNorm, whoever it will be presented as, over the next few months.
Al, please be very careful about not flying to Eveleth out of that airport in Blaine. And please, please, mock the daylights out of whatever neoNorm it is that emerges from the lair, this go-round. Set things straight. Let him walk K-Street in his fashion of next year's neoNorm. Private citizen makeover. Out of office. On the make.
Strib report on biodiesel from algae, R&D in Anoka, but was there a race to the Courthouse?
The Strib report is here.
The article is comprehensive. I will not excerpt.
What is interesting, SarTec is not alone, see the Google Patents search, here.
There are SarTec patents, here.
While not a perfect patent search engine, Google Patents does not show any pending application for a search = SarTec, biodiesel, algae; nor for a search = SarTec, algae.
As an example, one pending application was filed by the Faegre firm in Minneapolis, Aug. 2006, for an inventor "James T. Sears," see, here. It could be legit, it could be a patent troll.
In any event, if SarTec is not well capitalized it can end up pushed around by a deep pocket, with SarTec working capital diverted into litigation costs; or with pressure to cross-license, etc. It is one way the little guy with a fine idea can end up dragged over the rocks and left empty, while a fat cat gets away with the goods.
Having the great idea, and defending it and getting it to market usually means alliances need to be struck and there's the King and I showtune, "If allies are strong with power to protect me, might they not protect me out of what I own?"
Good luck, SarTec folks. I hope it gets you each to comfortable wealth without mishap.
________UPDATE________
I reread the Paul Levy July 14 article, and two paragraphs stood out starkly:
That's a small part of things, please read the entire item.
However, $2 per gallon is what the Michele Bachmann hype has focused upon, and the discredited Newt Gingrich only says "Pay Less" without a shred of detail of the how, why and amounts and time frame over which he says his "thinking" will make things better.
Algal biodiesel would not take food crop off the market as does corn distillation and it can be focused on using largely vertical [small footprint] bioreactors as well as ponding in rural areas where capital intensiveness vs. space trade-offs would favor use of ponds. What I have seen as most interesting is work on combining sewage treatment and algae for biodiesel and clean wastewater as paired desirable output streams with the algal nutrient input from the wastewater (see, e.g., here and here).
I envision smaller municipal STP sites or feedlot STP processing with algal bioreactors as part of the processing machinery and on a scale differing greatly from the very costly centralized wastewater planning approach of Metropolitan Council, so that we might also achieve collateral benefit, getting them out of planning abuses as they've in the past produced [e.g. their abusive but successful "Lake Elmo" litigation] and lessening their heavy handedness regarding their current statutory wastewater and sewage treatment hegemony. Best outcome imaginable, let them focus on running buses on time and frequently, and advancing commuter light rail and NorthStar types of trains. Shrink the beast, that way. To the part that is best.
In closing, three final thoughts, first any work would be subject to the precautionary principle [which should apply to taconite tailings use in pavement] namely that where full cause and effect understanding is lacking the scaling up and deployment should be done with precaution, and with the burden on the advocates of the process to definitively prove the procedures are without distant but real downside risks or social costs. We can recall the algal problems with earlier widespread phosphate use, both from agricultural overuse and detergent phosphate additives, and as with feedlot and other animal agriculture, odor and other neighborhood nuisance worry would have to be addressed.
Second, the patent activity and ability of deep pocketing of new venturers with little capital should be legislatively forestalled to avoid the existing energy oligopoly from tying up and then shelving promising green technologies to keep their bottom lines most prosperous. Otherwise, if they can, they will, as they have tied up drilling leases at present, without any drilling nor any indications of intent to drill any time soon.
Finally, some government work on algae was done as far back as 1998, see here, which might explain the range of work being done now, catalyzed by that earlier inquiry.
That final point needs some expansion: Government funding of research is crucial, and that would include basic research. While an undergraduate after high school graduation in 1962, nuclear magnetic resonance research was leading edge physical chemistry, commercial-size units were becoming available for organic chemistry analytical spectra work; but the medical scanners presently making medicine more expensive but reliable were not even envisioned while the basic science behind them was being done, in large part via government funding. Such funding is absolutely critical to the future national economy and while undergraduate tuition shock is under debate and relief is sought, we should not lose sight of facts such as the outstanding excellence of the Twin Cities U. of Minn. as a leading-edge research and technology institution at the postgraduate level, and how such status is easily lost by penny-wise pound-foolish short-term budget mongering, whereas it takes much later time and effort to rebuild excellence.
The article is comprehensive. I will not excerpt.
What is interesting, SarTec is not alone, see the Google Patents search, here.
There are SarTec patents, here.
While not a perfect patent search engine, Google Patents does not show any pending application for a search = SarTec, biodiesel, algae; nor for a search = SarTec, algae.
As an example, one pending application was filed by the Faegre firm in Minneapolis, Aug. 2006, for an inventor "James T. Sears," see, here. It could be legit, it could be a patent troll.
In any event, if SarTec is not well capitalized it can end up pushed around by a deep pocket, with SarTec working capital diverted into litigation costs; or with pressure to cross-license, etc. It is one way the little guy with a fine idea can end up dragged over the rocks and left empty, while a fat cat gets away with the goods.
Having the great idea, and defending it and getting it to market usually means alliances need to be struck and there's the King and I showtune, "If allies are strong with power to protect me, might they not protect me out of what I own?"
Good luck, SarTec folks. I hope it gets you each to comfortable wealth without mishap.
________UPDATE________
I reread the Paul Levy July 14 article, and two paragraphs stood out starkly:
Scientist Clayton McNeff says algae-based biodiesel fuel can be sold for $2 a gallon. Mark Rasmussen, a microbiologist who works for McNeff's SarTec Corp. in Anoka, says algae's potential is vast. Using just 3 percent of our current crop land, algae could be used to produce 63 billion gallons of the diesel fuel currently used annually in the United States, he said.
Because it isn't a food-producing crop, algae generally wins high praise, particularly from critics of corn- and soy-based fuels. And while an acre of soybeans will produce only 70 gallons of biodiesel fuel, an acre of algae can produce up to 1,200 gallons, said McNeff. Other reports say as many as 9,000 gallons can be produced.
That's a small part of things, please read the entire item.
However, $2 per gallon is what the Michele Bachmann hype has focused upon, and the discredited Newt Gingrich only says "Pay Less" without a shred of detail of the how, why and amounts and time frame over which he says his "thinking" will make things better.
Algal biodiesel would not take food crop off the market as does corn distillation and it can be focused on using largely vertical [small footprint] bioreactors as well as ponding in rural areas where capital intensiveness vs. space trade-offs would favor use of ponds. What I have seen as most interesting is work on combining sewage treatment and algae for biodiesel and clean wastewater as paired desirable output streams with the algal nutrient input from the wastewater (see, e.g., here and here).
I envision smaller municipal STP sites or feedlot STP processing with algal bioreactors as part of the processing machinery and on a scale differing greatly from the very costly centralized wastewater planning approach of Metropolitan Council, so that we might also achieve collateral benefit, getting them out of planning abuses as they've in the past produced [e.g. their abusive but successful "Lake Elmo" litigation] and lessening their heavy handedness regarding their current statutory wastewater and sewage treatment hegemony. Best outcome imaginable, let them focus on running buses on time and frequently, and advancing commuter light rail and NorthStar types of trains. Shrink the beast, that way. To the part that is best.
In closing, three final thoughts, first any work would be subject to the precautionary principle [which should apply to taconite tailings use in pavement] namely that where full cause and effect understanding is lacking the scaling up and deployment should be done with precaution, and with the burden on the advocates of the process to definitively prove the procedures are without distant but real downside risks or social costs. We can recall the algal problems with earlier widespread phosphate use, both from agricultural overuse and detergent phosphate additives, and as with feedlot and other animal agriculture, odor and other neighborhood nuisance worry would have to be addressed.
Second, the patent activity and ability of deep pocketing of new venturers with little capital should be legislatively forestalled to avoid the existing energy oligopoly from tying up and then shelving promising green technologies to keep their bottom lines most prosperous. Otherwise, if they can, they will, as they have tied up drilling leases at present, without any drilling nor any indications of intent to drill any time soon.
Finally, some government work on algae was done as far back as 1998, see here, which might explain the range of work being done now, catalyzed by that earlier inquiry.
That final point needs some expansion: Government funding of research is crucial, and that would include basic research. While an undergraduate after high school graduation in 1962, nuclear magnetic resonance research was leading edge physical chemistry, commercial-size units were becoming available for organic chemistry analytical spectra work; but the medical scanners presently making medicine more expensive but reliable were not even envisioned while the basic science behind them was being done, in large part via government funding. Such funding is absolutely critical to the future national economy and while undergraduate tuition shock is under debate and relief is sought, we should not lose sight of facts such as the outstanding excellence of the Twin Cities U. of Minn. as a leading-edge research and technology institution at the postgraduate level, and how such status is easily lost by penny-wise pound-foolish short-term budget mongering, whereas it takes much later time and effort to rebuild excellence.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
While Newt and Bachmann and Coleman are bellowing about Drill Here, etc., what's truth, elsewhere?
Certainly the US energy sector is concentrated and has a stranglehold on refinery capacity, and has become more concentrated at the retail level. This includes the Koch family operating the one Twin Cities refinery. And do you think they'd warm to the idea of there being a second Twin Cities refinery?
Yes, pump prices are high, but what gets to the pumps comes from the refineries, and they price, and the retail outlets price based on that and on all the profit above it they think and hope they can make.
So, the Drill Here trash is only to deregulate things so the oligopolists can tie up the remaining domestic sources of energy along with the existing ones they have tied up and are not showing any intent or activity aimed at exploiting in any way that might put cheaper gas into the the retail pumps they dominate and manage.
Pay attention, I will republish [they can sue me if they like] two entire recent articles from Asia Times Online, and keep in mind - the truth is a buck a barrel to pump oil from the ground in Iraq. Then figure who's being untruthful about things.
Plese, please, please read the entirety of the articles. And please understand that beyond what they say, the globe is finite, the atmosphere is what we breathe, and changing habits toward, say tele-commuting is a liberating thing and no burden.
The articles came from here and here.
They show we are being lied to, big time, and incessantly propagandized with that lie.
Jul 9, 2008
Now, again that does not mean having the 8-mile-per-gallon Dodge Ram with the compound four-tire rear axle and whining about price per gallon is justified. It is not, and those people deserve to have a profligacy tax imposed, as should be the case with recreational snowmobiles and ATV's, with the latter in particular hammered hard with special taxes to discourage idiotic tearing up of sensitive wilderness or woodland areas by those turkeys who deserve turnovers more frequently than they achieve.
What the Peak Oil people are saying ultimately is correct. Timing of the point where the reserves start to look too depleted might be now, it might be ten or more years from now. But in terms of geological time and resources, the oil is finite and took millions and millions of years to be formed. Ultimately, if you think about it, animal and mainly plant matter covered, compressed, etc., it is all "solar energy." Plants run on solar input, that is what photosynthesis is, and the entire food chain runs on plants. And the oil is a product of food chain events a long time ago. So why not use solar as much as we directly can, now, and that includes wind, because we all know what makes the winds blow. Bypass the millions of years of change to preserve the petroleum for petrochemical and resins and such. Trucking, trains and ships to move cargo, that's needed, and they and aircraft use metals and composites and we do not get those, or recycle them, without consuming energy. Some things we cannot eliminate or even scale back on drastically. But a lot of slack is in the lifestyles that we are used to, and we can improve, we can change.
We need sensible public transit, and it will be used if it is as in Europe, more convenient than driving. But that means having the foresight and will to pay the price for it, and to free up the roads for movement of essentials, movement of goods and services, not rush hour tie-ups nor mid-day Mall of America diddling by people who live north of Fridley and Coon Rapids but drive there because "the shops are niceer." Live with what's to be bought near home, or move to where the "nicer shops" are nearby.
Some habits can and should change. But the pump price, that is an artificial and minipulated thing. There is long-term elasticity in petroleum product demand, other energy resources can be substituted, which is why the price gouging is alternated with periods of cheap oil and gas energy to prevent widespread long-term hard thinking and planning on alternative energy sources and ways and means.
Short-term the elasticity is rigid, there is no substitute for the stuff the big Dodge Ram sucks up rapaciously, in order to move. That's the nature of cycling in a concerntrated seller market situation where, at retail, the long and short term elasticities are as they are. Gouge for a period, slack back to prevent long term alternatives taking hold, then gouge again, etc.
And we all join hands and sing Kumbiya when the pump price gauge atop the gasoline pump display again turns more slowly relative to the gallons pumped display. For now it hops by tens of dollars while the gallons ring up far, far too slowly, right?
Next article, about current truths that debunk current lies:
I do not suggest any reader should agree 100% with every word of every sentence of both articles. I do strongly suggest having differing versions of how to read things beyond what US mainstream media provide, beyond Fox News and CNN, is worthwhile.
It at least elevates discourse above simplistic propagandistic sloganeering, such as "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less," when in all honesty that "Pay Less" part of the Newt Gingrich new times mantra for the stupid, is change I cannot believe in.
Bottom line: A buck a barrel to pump it, at the wellhead, in Iraq. That is truth. Not Newt, Michele, Norm telling you something different.
A buck a barrel.
Why the occupation is not having that translate into something besides the current and expected near-term pump prices we see and anticipate is, well, the puppets we have installed there in Iraq are not pulling their own strings. So go figure.
Who is managing what, and telling us things having little to do with the truth of what they are doing to keep the oligopoly fat and sassy? Follow the money.
Think about it and see what answer you get.
Yes, pump prices are high, but what gets to the pumps comes from the refineries, and they price, and the retail outlets price based on that and on all the profit above it they think and hope they can make.
So, the Drill Here trash is only to deregulate things so the oligopolists can tie up the remaining domestic sources of energy along with the existing ones they have tied up and are not showing any intent or activity aimed at exploiting in any way that might put cheaper gas into the the retail pumps they dominate and manage.
Pay attention, I will republish [they can sue me if they like] two entire recent articles from Asia Times Online, and keep in mind - the truth is a buck a barrel to pump oil from the ground in Iraq. Then figure who's being untruthful about things.
Plese, please, please read the entirety of the articles. And please understand that beyond what they say, the globe is finite, the atmosphere is what we breathe, and changing habits toward, say tele-commuting is a liberating thing and no burden.
The articles came from here and here.
They show we are being lied to, big time, and incessantly propagandized with that lie.
Jul 9, 2008
DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
All the oil news that's fit to print
By Nick Turse
On June 19, the New York Times broke the story in an article under the headlines "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back: Rare No-Bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards". Finally, after a long five years-plus, there was proof that the occupation of Iraq really did have something or other to do with oil. Quoting unnamed Iraqi Oil Ministry bureaucrats, oil company officials and an anonymous American diplomat, Andrew Kramer of the Times wrote: "Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP ... along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq's largest fields."
The news caused a minor stir, as other newspapers picked up and advanced the story and the mainstream media, only a few years late, began to seriously consider the significance of oil to the occupation of Iraq.
As always happens when, for whatever reason, you come late to a major story and find yourself playing catch-up on the run, there are a few corrections and blind spots in the current coverage that might be worth addressing before another five years pass. In the spirit of collegiality, I offer the following leads for the mainstream media to consider as they change gears from no comment to hot pursuit when it comes to the story of Iraq's most sought after commodity. I'm talking, of course, about that "sea of oil" on which, as deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz pointed out in May 2003, the month after Baghdad fell, Iraq "floats".
All the news that's fit to print department
In a June 30 follow-up piece, the Times' Kramer cited US officials (again unnamed) as acknowledging the following, "A group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies ..."
In addition, he asserted, this "disclosure ... is the first confirmation of direct involvement by the [George W] Bush administration in deals to open Iraq's oil to commercial development and is likely to stoke criticism". This scoop, however, reflected none of the evidence - long available - of the direct involvement of Bush administration and US occupation officials in Iraq's oil industry. In fact, since the taking of Baghdad in April 2003, the name of the game has been facilitating relationships between Iraq and US-based and allied Western energy firms when it came to what Bush used to delicately call Iraq's "patrimony" of "natural resources".
For instance, almost a year ago, the Washington Post's Walter Pincus drew attention to a call by Bush's Commerce Department for "an international legal adviser who is fluent in Arabic 'to provide expert input, when requested' to 'US government agencies or to Iraqi authorities as they draft the laws and regulations that will govern Iraq's oil and gas sector'." The document went on to state, "As part of a US government inter-agency process, the US Department of Commerce" would be "providing technical assistance to Iraq to create a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraq's key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector."
This was no aberration. In March 2006, for instance, the US Army issued a solicitation for a two-year contract "to allow any organization or entity to support IRMO [Iraq Reconstruction Management Office] (US Embassy Baghdad) to deliver an effective capacity development program utilizing predominantly US and European firms, universities, institutes and professional organizations for personnel within the Iraqi Ministry of Oil ..." This was to include participation in "development programs" offered by "private companies", long-term development through "commercial training entities in the United States and Europe for oil and gas specialists from the Ministry of Oil", and the implementation of "joint government-industry activities". Translated out of bureaucratic contract-ese, this meant that the US would pay for programs to, among other things, enhance relationships between the Iraq Oil Ministry and ... you guessed it ... foreign firms.
In October 2006, the Department of Commerce (DOC) put out a call for experts that was nearly identical to the later solicitation discovered by Pincus. They were to aid a program facilitating "the creation of a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraqs [sic] key economic sectors, starting with the mineral resources sector" and provide "expertise to DOC, to other [US government] agencies, or to Iraqi authorities on creating a legal and tax environment conducive to domestic and foreign investment in Iraqs [sic] oil and gas sector". Such an individual would, in fact, act "as a liaison between [the DOC's technical assistance arm] and key stakeholders in Iraq (such as Iraq's Ministry of Oil, or the oil authorities in Kurdistan)".
In fact, the US Trade and Development Agency notes that, in 2006 and 2007, it funded a "$2.5 million multifaceted training program for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil" to "provide critical knowledge transfer and establish long-term relationships between the US and Iraqi oil and gas industry public and private sector representatives".
It's worth recalling that Iraq's oil bureaucrats, about to receive such "critical knowledge" and "expertise", were not exactly neophytes in the world of oil management. They had effectively managed the Iraqi oil industry from the time the five oil majors now slated to receive those "service contracts" were tossed out of Iraq, when its industry was nationalized in 1972, until the invasion of 2003. They had kept the country's oil infrastructure going even after the disaster of the First Gulf War of 1990-1991, even through all the desperate final years of sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime.
The Pentagon-petroleum partnership
Another connection, long ignored in the mainstream, that reporters like Kramer might consider pursuing when it comes to the complex ties among Iraqi officials, the Bush administration, the Department of Defense (DoD), and Big Oil is the overt Pentagon connection. The DoD is, as national security expert Noah Shachtman notes, "the world's largest energy consumer". And, when it comes to Pentagon gas-guzzling, its post-9/11 wars and occupations, especially in Iraq, have been a boon. While the Bush administration has been working overtime to clear the path for Big Oil's return to Iraq, the Pentagon has been paying out staggering amounts of US taxpayer dollars to the very oil majors now negotiating with Iraq's Ministry of Oil.
According to recent reports, the proposed Iraqi service contracts, which may be paid off in cash or crude oil, will be worth $500 million each. That is roughly what the Pentagon paid out on June 18 alone - the day before the Times broke its story about Big Oil's return to Iraq - for natural gas and aviation fuel. Over half the total amount, in excess of $268 million, was handed over to one of the oil giants set to benefit from the Iraq deal: BP (formerly British Petroleum). Only days earlier, two of the other majors from the coterie of potential no-bid contractors, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, nabbed contracts from the DoD - in Exxon Mobil's case, a $73 million deal for gasoline and fuel oil; in Chevron's, a $16 million contract for aviation fuel.
Keep in mind, however, that - although you won't learn this in your daily paper - this has long been standard operating procedure. Each of the oil giants named in the original New York Times piece - Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP, and Chevron - regularly show up on the Pentagon's payroll. In fact, last year, Iraq's new fave five took home more than $4.1 billion from the DoD - with Shell leading the way with $2.1 billion.
It's no secret that the Pentagon relies on vast quantities of oil to power the ships, planes, helicopters, heavy armor, and other ground vehicles essential to its occupation of Iraq, nor that it regularly pays out vast sums of taxpayer dollars to the very companies that US advisors have aided in working out oil deals with the Iraq Oil Ministry. Despite ample evidence of the Pentagon connection, this circular and mutually-reinforcing relationship has been almost totally ignored in the mainstream media. But think of it this way: Your tax dollars have given the Pentagon the opportunity to use up oil - bought from the oil majors, in prodigious quantities - in order to create a situation in Iraq in which those same majors will soon receive no-bid contracts to make money off the Iraqi oil industry and, if all goes well, get far better, longer term deals in the near future.
One big, happy, oily family
It turns out that, despite that story the Times broke as if something totally new were on the horizon, the Bush administration has been facilitating ties between the Iraqi government and foreign oil companies for years, and the same companies now likely to nab a no-bid toehold in Iraq's oilfields are intimately tied in to the Pentagon to the tune of billions of dollars annually. It's worth noting that most of these firms have also been closely connected to Vice President Dick Cheney from the early days of the Bush administration. In fact, executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell, and BP met behind closed doors with Cheney's energy task force in 2001, when the administration was pounding out its energy policies, according to a White House document obtained by the Washington Post. The Government Accountability Office also found that Chevron was just one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force.
It's almost impossible to tease out all the interconnections between Big Oil, the White House, the Pentagon, and the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, since they are tied together in a web of contracts and mutually supporting relationships built up over many years. However, just in case the Times wants to set its staff loose on the recent past, there is no mistaking the many ties that exist. (A small tip for Times researchers: skip the Times archives, they will be of little help.)
Should further evidence be necessary, when it comes to those US advisors at work in Iraq, mainstream reporters need look no further than the solicitations sent out by the Iraqi Ministry of Oil itself. Consider, for instance, a recent "tender" for a contractor to drill "two deep exploration wells" in the South Rumaila and Luhais oil fields in the Basra District of southern Iraq. Not only does the solicitation (the deadline for which is July 27, 2008) contain special instructions for "companies outside Iraq", but it asks potential contractors to send their bids to the Ministry of Oil not in Arabic, but "in the English language".
Now, again that does not mean having the 8-mile-per-gallon Dodge Ram with the compound four-tire rear axle and whining about price per gallon is justified. It is not, and those people deserve to have a profligacy tax imposed, as should be the case with recreational snowmobiles and ATV's, with the latter in particular hammered hard with special taxes to discourage idiotic tearing up of sensitive wilderness or woodland areas by those turkeys who deserve turnovers more frequently than they achieve.
What the Peak Oil people are saying ultimately is correct. Timing of the point where the reserves start to look too depleted might be now, it might be ten or more years from now. But in terms of geological time and resources, the oil is finite and took millions and millions of years to be formed. Ultimately, if you think about it, animal and mainly plant matter covered, compressed, etc., it is all "solar energy." Plants run on solar input, that is what photosynthesis is, and the entire food chain runs on plants. And the oil is a product of food chain events a long time ago. So why not use solar as much as we directly can, now, and that includes wind, because we all know what makes the winds blow. Bypass the millions of years of change to preserve the petroleum for petrochemical and resins and such. Trucking, trains and ships to move cargo, that's needed, and they and aircraft use metals and composites and we do not get those, or recycle them, without consuming energy. Some things we cannot eliminate or even scale back on drastically. But a lot of slack is in the lifestyles that we are used to, and we can improve, we can change.
We need sensible public transit, and it will be used if it is as in Europe, more convenient than driving. But that means having the foresight and will to pay the price for it, and to free up the roads for movement of essentials, movement of goods and services, not rush hour tie-ups nor mid-day Mall of America diddling by people who live north of Fridley and Coon Rapids but drive there because "the shops are niceer." Live with what's to be bought near home, or move to where the "nicer shops" are nearby.
Some habits can and should change. But the pump price, that is an artificial and minipulated thing. There is long-term elasticity in petroleum product demand, other energy resources can be substituted, which is why the price gouging is alternated with periods of cheap oil and gas energy to prevent widespread long-term hard thinking and planning on alternative energy sources and ways and means.
Short-term the elasticity is rigid, there is no substitute for the stuff the big Dodge Ram sucks up rapaciously, in order to move. That's the nature of cycling in a concerntrated seller market situation where, at retail, the long and short term elasticities are as they are. Gouge for a period, slack back to prevent long term alternatives taking hold, then gouge again, etc.
And we all join hands and sing Kumbiya when the pump price gauge atop the gasoline pump display again turns more slowly relative to the gallons pumped display. For now it hops by tens of dollars while the gallons ring up far, far too slowly, right?
Next article, about current truths that debunk current lies:
Jul 4, 2008
THE ROVING EYE
Big Oil's 'secret' out of Iraq's closet
By Pepe Escobar
NEW YORK - It is not about the "war on terror". It is not about weapons of mass destruction. It is not about "freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people", or to the "Afghan people". It is not about "Islamofascism". It is not about a Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Middle East to Central Asia. New evidence shows once again both George W Bush administration wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq - above all are about oil and gas.
Those were the days - up to a few days ago, actually - when the fateful words "war" and "oil" would never have been aligned in the same sentence anywhere in US corporate media; the days when former defense secretary and Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld insisted Iraq had "literally nothing to do with oil".
But now the US and European Big Oil majors that controlled the Iraqi oil industry up to the 1972 nationalization - today represented by Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Total and Chevron - seem to be back with a vengeance. Thus the New York Times, for instance, can redeem itself from printing Ahmad Chalabi-fed weapons-of-mass-destruction nonsense on its front page for months and actually engage in news that's fit to print.
This past Monday, the paper reported that "a group of American advisers led by a small State Department team played an integral part in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and five major Western oil companies to develop some of the largest fields in Iraq".
The bland language may be misleading. This is no less than the first step in the de facto de-nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry - Vice President Dick Cheney's wet dream.
As James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum, has summarized it, this is all about:... a new round of immensely profitable oil deals ... announced by Iraqi Oil Minister Sharistani, in which giants like Exxon Mobil can nail down long-term contracts and take away a large share of the oil from several key operating fields, like the massive Rumaila and West Qurna, some of the world's largest.
Oil can be produced in these fields for about one dollar a barrel, while its value on world markets is now around US$140. With hundreds of millions of dollars of profits at stake - and while the US occupation remains in full force - the oil giants are making their move, seeking to bypass opposition in the Iraqi parliament and ignoring suspicion and anger among the Iraqi public. With world oil supplies visibly running short and oil prices skyrocketing, this is a desperate gamble to control some of the world's largest and most lucrative fields, at huge human and environmental cost.
Meanwhile in Washington, no collective breath is being held, as it's extremely unlikely the supine US Congress will be looking closer at whether the Bush administration is bypassing the Biden amendment, which prohibits the use of US funds to "exercise United States control over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq". There's too much money to be made.
Big Oil hardball
Hussein al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, has always been a huge cheerleader of Big Oil taking over the Iraq oil industry. He dreams of Iraq as the world's second - or at least third-biggest - oil producer, competing with Saudi Arabia and Russia. To get there he is frantically selling out, trying to get voracious, predatory production sharing agreements (PSAs) over the heads of the Iraqi parliament and even harassing Iraqi oil unions.
At this early stage it's still about TSAs (technical support agreements); these are simple consultancy contracts to help Iraq raise its oil production by 500,000 barrels a day, not long-term contracts to develop juicy oil and gas fields.
But oops! Iraqis have not been fooled by the smoke and mirrors - nor by Big Oil hardball. At a press conference in Baghdad on Monday, Shahristani had to admit, "We did not finalize any agreement ... because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees, as they wanted a share of the oil." Big Oil, of course, wants the "Big Prize" (copyright Cheney).
What Cheney and Big Oil really want is to wallow in the extra-profitable 30-year PSAs once the new, International Monetary Fund-redacted Iraqi oil law is forced through the gorges of the Iraqi parliament, sealing a major US-European takeover - the whole thing, of course, protected by a Status of Forces Agreement with its 58 US military bases, total control of Iraqi airspace, total legal immunity for US soldiers and the right for the Pentagon to turn Iraq upside down without even asking the hosts.
And make no mistake, that's what the US power elite always wanted.
Greg Muttit, co-director of the London-based oil industry research group Platform, explains that what's at stake at the current stage are "nine-year risk service contracts for six oilfields"; these are "halfway between TSAs and PSAs". Bids are due by March 2009, with signing in June 2009. As for the technical service contracts for five of the same oilfields, these are "no-bid contracts whose terms were dictated by the oil companies themselves". In other words: Big Oil is telling the Iraqi government what it wants.
And here's the catch. Muttit says, "The tendering of these fields is a big policy change, as producing fields were supposed to be developed by the Iraq National Oil Company [INOC], with only new fields allocated to foreign oil companies." Big Oil, though, wants the whole cake. INOC gets only a shabby 25% stake. Muttit makes an enlightening comparison with Libya, "where the national oil company gets around 80%, which is much more normal for fields of this size".
Meanwhile, in Central Asia ...
Bush/Cheney, unfazed by their own regime's death throes - and following what was already official policy under former present Bill Clinton - now are also poised to have one more crack at the New Great Game in Central Asia, trying to thwart regional energy supremacy by both Russia and Iran.
Last April, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and India signed a Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement, deciding - not for the first time - to build the $7.6 billion TAP (now TAPI) pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and probably India, cutting right through the heart of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, where the neo-Taliban are merrily running rings around the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Construction should start in 2010, with gas being supplied by 2015. The project is backed by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which cannot even provide security for a few streets in central Kabul, has engaged in Hollywood-style suspension of disbelief by assuring unsuspecting customers it will not only get rid of millions of land mines blocking TAPI's route, it will get rid of the Taliban themselves.
Inevitably, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher weighed in, saying the US has a "fundamental strategic interest" in Afghanistan, without making a single reference to the words "oil" or "gas". In real life, with this move Bush/Cheney believe they can block the $7.5 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline. Fat chance. The three countries are all on board and the pipeline, delivering Iranian gas to South Asia, is a go.
This new US adventure has also sent a frantic red alert right to the core of the Canadian government, which is now contemplating the geopolitical nightmare of having its troops, alongside NATO's, protecting a fragile pipeline in a war zone. The conservatives in power in Canada have committed to keep troops in Afghanistan at least until 2011.
The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives released a report, A Pipeline Through a Troubled Land: Afghanistan, Canada and the New Great Energy Game, written by John Foster, energy economist and former lead economist of PetroCanada, depicting TAPI as turning Afghanistan into "an energy bridge" between Central and South Asia. But Foster is very worried "the quest for 'energy security' risks drawing Canada unwittingly into a new Great Energy Game".
Were investors, perhaps nursed by Afghan opium, to be delirious enough to build such a pipeline - and that's a monumental if - Afghanistan would collect a mere $160 million a year in transit fees. Well, that's maybe not so grim considering it's the equivalent of 50% of Karzai's current annual revenue. The Taliban would love to get a piece of the action.
Forget about all that old 2001 "bringing freedom to Afghan women" rhetoric. TAP's roller-coaster history goes back to the mid-1990s Clinton era, when the Taliban were wined and dined by California-based Unocal - and the Clinton machine. Unocal beat the competition, led by Argentina's Bridas. The negotiations broke down because of money - those pesky transit fees. At the Group of Eight summit in Naples in July 2001 it was decided the US would take out the Taliban by October; September 11, 2001, accelerated the schedule by a fraction.
One of the first actual fruits of the US bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 was that in December, Karzai, Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Turkmenistan's wacky Nyazov (now dead) signed an agreement committing themselves to build TAP (by then known as the Trans-Afghan Pipeline). The Russians decided to wait for their counterpunch, and delivered it in style in September 2006.
Gazprom accepted a 40% price increase demanded by Nyazov for his gas. In return, the Russians got priceless gifts: control of all of Turkmenistan's gas surplus up to 2009; a preference for Russia to tap the new Yolotan gas fields; and Turkmenistan bowing out of any Trans-Caspian pipeline project. Nyazov pledged to supply all his country's gas to Russia.
Thus, dead on arrival, lay TAP, the (invisible) star of the "good" Afghan war, as Democratic senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama now sees it. Washington's plan has always been to seduce Nyazov to provide Turkmenistan gas to the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, and then to TAP. This was part of a US grand strategy of a "Greater Central Asia" centered on Afghanistan and India.
Bush/Cheney will never give up. But India will go ahead with the Iranian pipeline. And Turkmenistan is selling all its surplus gas to Russia. Who needs a $7.6 billion, 1,600-kilometer steel serpent in a war zone?
It ain't over till the fat (oil) lady sings. But if the Bush administration "vision" of a perpetual Iraqi puppet regime, with its oil wealth confiscated and under the imperial boot, takes hold, alongside the Taliban having a long pipeline to play with in Afghanistan, the least one can expect is a lot more blood on the tracks.
I do not suggest any reader should agree 100% with every word of every sentence of both articles. I do strongly suggest having differing versions of how to read things beyond what US mainstream media provide, beyond Fox News and CNN, is worthwhile.
It at least elevates discourse above simplistic propagandistic sloganeering, such as "Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less," when in all honesty that "Pay Less" part of the Newt Gingrich new times mantra for the stupid, is change I cannot believe in.
Bottom line: A buck a barrel to pump it, at the wellhead, in Iraq. That is truth. Not Newt, Michele, Norm telling you something different.
A buck a barrel.
Why the occupation is not having that translate into something besides the current and expected near-term pump prices we see and anticipate is, well, the puppets we have installed there in Iraq are not pulling their own strings. So go figure.
Who is managing what, and telling us things having little to do with the truth of what they are doing to keep the oligopoly fat and sassy? Follow the money.
Think about it and see what answer you get.
Al Franken has nailed the truth. Dead center. Politician-lobbyists are a cancer on the body politic.
Franken's strong stance to shut down the corrosive effects of revolving door operatives deserves everyone's respect; see any of the several reports, here.
Franken is elevating his appeal toward the individual who has been a beacon of sound ethics and policing out sleaze. Feingold.
The GOP is the party of Gingrich, DeLay, Abramhof.
But the Dems, to show a difference, need to dump William Jefferson and other inadequate sorts.
Franken is elevating his appeal toward the individual who has been a beacon of sound ethics and policing out sleaze. Feingold.
The GOP is the party of Gingrich, DeLay, Abramhof.
But the Dems, to show a difference, need to dump William Jefferson and other inadequate sorts.
Why not fly a plane for the next five years over Eveleth full of money and throw cash out the window?
Prior post - pork processing per Pawlenty (and others) and their Hall of Shame.
Instead, esteemed legislators and our veep-chasing Guv allow $80,000 per year over the next five years to be squandered where it would make more sense to fly a plane there once a year and simply pitch the money out the window.
There would be less bookkeeping that way. The money would go to a more deserving cause. People in the streets, gathering it up for personal gain or need.
Instead, our luminaries want to showcase their crass capacity for pure taxpayer abuse, with a come-and-look-and-pay-to-enter local wasteful little dog and pony on ice memorabilia show. This, from here (click on image to enlarge):
And blame Pawlenty. There are no two ways there. He holds the line item veto pen. The intent in giving it to him is for him to use it to curb any combination of pure stupidity and biased local pork loving avarice.
Blame Pawlenty since he, ostensibly, represents all of us and is the one who promised his drumbeaters to not do shameful things, tax-wise.
The two locals, well, they socialize with the other locals, and have that as a feeble excuse for the absolute shamefulness of what was done while the economy in the state is on the ropes and people everywhere around the state are suffering, some without a home, some without healthcare. And for what was the money diverted from such meritorious uses? For this:
Put the pictures in a scrapbook on some closet shelf, they deserve that memorial for what they are, and then reallocate the cash for true Minnesota need. And remember-
The locals have that lame excuse. Pawlenty has none.
Instead, esteemed legislators and our veep-chasing Guv allow $80,000 per year over the next five years to be squandered where it would make more sense to fly a plane there once a year and simply pitch the money out the window.
There would be less bookkeeping that way. The money would go to a more deserving cause. People in the streets, gathering it up for personal gain or need.
Instead, our luminaries want to showcase their crass capacity for pure taxpayer abuse, with a come-and-look-and-pay-to-enter local wasteful little dog and pony on ice memorabilia show. This, from here (click on image to enlarge):
And blame Pawlenty. There are no two ways there. He holds the line item veto pen. The intent in giving it to him is for him to use it to curb any combination of pure stupidity and biased local pork loving avarice.
Blame Pawlenty since he, ostensibly, represents all of us and is the one who promised his drumbeaters to not do shameful things, tax-wise.
The two locals, well, they socialize with the other locals, and have that as a feeble excuse for the absolute shamefulness of what was done while the economy in the state is on the ropes and people everywhere around the state are suffering, some without a home, some without healthcare. And for what was the money diverted from such meritorious uses? For this:
Put the pictures in a scrapbook on some closet shelf, they deserve that memorial for what they are, and then reallocate the cash for true Minnesota need. And remember-
The locals have that lame excuse. Pawlenty has none.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Jim Abeler's opponent.
The only reason the GOP is dumping on Abeler is because he voted to override Pawlenty's veto. They had to find someone with the soundness of judgment to oppose Abeler in a GOP primary, for that reason. They did. Don Huizenga, not a used car salesman. A roofer.
I say that with a roofing contractor as a neighbor, LaFrance, the contractor that did the house across the street. The owners are not merely satisfied but a step beyond, happy with that job. So I am not a roofing contractor hater. Nothing like that.
Yet there is one contractor who has failed to close over 90 - 95 percent of the permits he pulls in Ramsey, I saw a court affidavit about that, and that firm and its qualifying person for the contractor's license have been in litigation over quality of work done for a former Ramsey council member, but again apples in a bushel taste different.
Huizenga's firm, American Building Contractors, Inc., of Burnsville, Minn. does not have a website. A screenshot of Huizenga's campaign website is next, and at least he is honest about all he cares to tell you about his candidacy.
Not caring to put his name onscreen, on the homepage, he nonetheless has a message. He, however, does put his name on the donation page, presumably not wanting the checks misspelled.
Since there's no business webpage, start with watchdog, a conservative website in the north metro - the Anoka County Watchdog, homepage, here; column by column comparison between the GOP candidates, here.
Not being GOP, I see slim pickings either way, the name Elvig in things troubles me but that is a personal thing, not about either candidate, and you can read the watchdog reporting if you care.
Next, the online litigation of Huizenga's firm, not with a link because going through multiple search windows gives a link failure message. The screen shot, if you click to enlarge, gives the names, etc., but the hotlinks will not work from the image. (The court system navigation can be frustrating. It takes a bit of navigation to see, for example, the local politician who has three DUIs in his history when you thought there only were two, etc.). But if you care to try, the court page the screenshot was taken from can be reached from here, via a couple of intermediate screens from the "Access to Trial Court Records" link at the top.
Screehshot #2.
I could not find any candidacy webpage for Abeler, despite googles, here and here.
One of the hits under Abeler was not about Abeler, but Huizenga, and it is insightful, here.
Huizenga appears to not be an astute or politically correct individual from that, but that's how I read it, have a look, form your opinion.
I wonder if Huizenga checks citizenship of the roofing workers he hires, but it might be politically incorrect of me to speculate that way and thought police might jump me. It is an area in flux, see here, and I do know that in one Anoka County Court dispute it went to settlement quite quickly when the homeowner's will to discover identities of the actual workers he claimed did negligent work appeared close to being granted by Judge Gibbs. I saw the hearing and later looked at the online docket for that case, involving the former Ramsey council member, and it had been one of those three inch thick things where it looked like a deep pocket had been pushing a lot and hard, then it suddenly settled.
Enjoy. The GOP primary race should be interesting. It is the Grand Old Party. I hope they give us a grand old show. With good old boys.
I do not know if a donkey is running at all; good, bad or indifferent. We will see after the filing deadline, July 15.
_______UPDATE________
A clarification - when I write of navigating the court site pages, and the three vs. two DUI example, you can regard it as real or as a hypothetical, but not reflecting directly on either Abeler or Huizenga. To my knowledge, neither of them has ever had a single DUI, nor even a stop leading to a lesser charge or a warning. However, if you want as an exercise to navigate the pages and look at the criminal law litigation, district court docket level, you are welcome to use any politician's name to do a search. But, really, it is best to set such things aside and instead take a long skeptical look at the individual, that person's record and how it reflects good or bad judgment, good or bad temperament and attitude, conflicting personal or family interests or lack of that in facing public spending and community land use decisions, etc., and then to go by the gut level feeling - would I or do I want this individual making decisions for me, or in public office and impacting me and my community or my locale. It is how I decided twice to run for local office.
A second clarification - in writing of the roofing contractor not getting inspections as the law requires in Ramsey [and with a comparable indifference to lawful compliance in Elk River] it is NOT Huizenga's firm. Whether that roofing contracting firm does or does not close permits properly by getting intermediate and final inspections as the law requires is something YOU, if it makes a difference to you, can check with the two city hall staffs. I have not checked it, and have no knowledge either way.
______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Via the comments, to make any sense beyond "contribute" from Huizenga's website homepage, one comment indicated Flash Player needs to be installed.
Second, the homepage for Abeler is jimabeler.com
There Abeler says:
It appears he is not backing down on his anti-veto vote, and standing instead on his view of the soundness of his position, that transportation needs exist and need funding.
Comments like that are helpful and appreciated.
I say that with a roofing contractor as a neighbor, LaFrance, the contractor that did the house across the street. The owners are not merely satisfied but a step beyond, happy with that job. So I am not a roofing contractor hater. Nothing like that.
Yet there is one contractor who has failed to close over 90 - 95 percent of the permits he pulls in Ramsey, I saw a court affidavit about that, and that firm and its qualifying person for the contractor's license have been in litigation over quality of work done for a former Ramsey council member, but again apples in a bushel taste different.
Huizenga's firm, American Building Contractors, Inc., of Burnsville, Minn. does not have a website. A screenshot of Huizenga's campaign website is next, and at least he is honest about all he cares to tell you about his candidacy.
Not caring to put his name onscreen, on the homepage, he nonetheless has a message. He, however, does put his name on the donation page, presumably not wanting the checks misspelled.
Since there's no business webpage, start with watchdog, a conservative website in the north metro - the Anoka County Watchdog, homepage, here; column by column comparison between the GOP candidates, here.
Not being GOP, I see slim pickings either way, the name Elvig in things troubles me but that is a personal thing, not about either candidate, and you can read the watchdog reporting if you care.
Next, the online litigation of Huizenga's firm, not with a link because going through multiple search windows gives a link failure message. The screen shot, if you click to enlarge, gives the names, etc., but the hotlinks will not work from the image. (The court system navigation can be frustrating. It takes a bit of navigation to see, for example, the local politician who has three DUIs in his history when you thought there only were two, etc.). But if you care to try, the court page the screenshot was taken from can be reached from here, via a couple of intermediate screens from the "Access to Trial Court Records" link at the top.
Screehshot #2.
I could not find any candidacy webpage for Abeler, despite googles, here and here.
One of the hits under Abeler was not about Abeler, but Huizenga, and it is insightful, here.
Huizenga appears to not be an astute or politically correct individual from that, but that's how I read it, have a look, form your opinion.
I wonder if Huizenga checks citizenship of the roofing workers he hires, but it might be politically incorrect of me to speculate that way and thought police might jump me. It is an area in flux, see here, and I do know that in one Anoka County Court dispute it went to settlement quite quickly when the homeowner's will to discover identities of the actual workers he claimed did negligent work appeared close to being granted by Judge Gibbs. I saw the hearing and later looked at the online docket for that case, involving the former Ramsey council member, and it had been one of those three inch thick things where it looked like a deep pocket had been pushing a lot and hard, then it suddenly settled.
Enjoy. The GOP primary race should be interesting. It is the Grand Old Party. I hope they give us a grand old show. With good old boys.
I do not know if a donkey is running at all; good, bad or indifferent. We will see after the filing deadline, July 15.
_______UPDATE________
A clarification - when I write of navigating the court site pages, and the three vs. two DUI example, you can regard it as real or as a hypothetical, but not reflecting directly on either Abeler or Huizenga. To my knowledge, neither of them has ever had a single DUI, nor even a stop leading to a lesser charge or a warning. However, if you want as an exercise to navigate the pages and look at the criminal law litigation, district court docket level, you are welcome to use any politician's name to do a search. But, really, it is best to set such things aside and instead take a long skeptical look at the individual, that person's record and how it reflects good or bad judgment, good or bad temperament and attitude, conflicting personal or family interests or lack of that in facing public spending and community land use decisions, etc., and then to go by the gut level feeling - would I or do I want this individual making decisions for me, or in public office and impacting me and my community or my locale. It is how I decided twice to run for local office.
A second clarification - in writing of the roofing contractor not getting inspections as the law requires in Ramsey [and with a comparable indifference to lawful compliance in Elk River] it is NOT Huizenga's firm. Whether that roofing contracting firm does or does not close permits properly by getting intermediate and final inspections as the law requires is something YOU, if it makes a difference to you, can check with the two city hall staffs. I have not checked it, and have no knowledge either way.
______FURTHER UPDATE_______
Via the comments, to make any sense beyond "contribute" from Huizenga's website homepage, one comment indicated Flash Player needs to be installed.
Second, the homepage for Abeler is jimabeler.com
There Abeler says:
Since 1998, I have fought hard for the needs of the people of Anoka County. Some issues, like the Northstar Commuter Rail and transportation problems, are not resolved and will continue to be at the top of my agenda for the coming legislative session. Others, like education and health care, require ongoing effort even though I have had marked successes. Overall, as your local legislator, I have kept your priorities and values as my guide in making wise, "common sense" decisions for our district.
It appears he is not backing down on his anti-veto vote, and standing instead on his view of the soundness of his position, that transportation needs exist and need funding.
Comments like that are helpful and appreciated.
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