Community Solutions Podcast

www.commsolutionsmn.com-  All over this country, we are seeing a movement rise up; angry parents are speaking out at school board meetings. Petitioning our government is a tradition that is as old as America itself. It was deemed so important to freedom, that it was recognized as a God-given right in the 1st amendment to or Bill of Rights. Now, as all power-loving governmental bodies do, they restrict and limit that right. These "public servants" call us names, change the rules, or shut us out entirely. Even the ACLU is worried about the trend to stifle free speech in these local public meetings. North Mankato is making residents sign up, and is reducing the available time to speak. More than ever, we need to speak out to those that represent us. We have a right to be heard by them. We share some of our experience in organizing and making our voice heard in our school district and city. These local politicians change the rules, insult speakers, and curse at them. They have so much disdain for the people tha

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Today we tackle the "conspiracy theory" called The Great Reset, and the brand new Executive Order by the Biden administration. On Friday afternoon, while no one was paying attention, President Biden signed Executive Order 14030, The U.S. Climate Related Financial Risk- A Road Map To Build A Climate Resilient Economy. This has huge local effects. ESG scores are starting to be assigned to both businesses and individual investors. They look at what kinds of companies you invest in, but they determine the scores of businesses by the racial makeup of their board, gender diversity, actions to combat climate change, and how they administrate this in their organization. This will affect your ability to get mortgages and car loans for certain types of vehicles. Heck, they are going to try and get rid of anything but electric cars by 2030. They talk about protecting pensions, but limit investment opportunities. You can't have both. If this is allowed to stand, it will destroy our economy and

www.commsolutionsmn.com- It's election season! Of course that doesn't mean much in an odd year, but whatever. There's one reason to have odd year elections; to control the outcome. A small portion of the city votes, so the activists control the turnout. It's important for you to see what these cities are doing, because the trends are the same everywhere. We see endorsements from the same radical activist groups, like Stonewall DFL, Women Winning, Minneapolis Area Regional Labor Federation, and Take Action MN. Cities all over the state do this: St Louis Park, Duluth, Bloomington, Minneapolis, and others. The issues all seem to be the same too. It's climate change, equity, affordable housing, social justice, and Ranked Choice Voting. As usual, Minneapolis is a complete circus. But once you step away from the big, city lights, cities and towns all around the state are losing out by having odd year elections, because the DFL is using this tactic to keep a stranglehold on our local government. We also discuss

www.commsolutionsmn.com- The Metropolitan Council keeps pushing metro cities around, incorrectly projecting growth and trying to make cities build high density housing and transit systems in the middle of a changing model. The Thrive MSP 2040 plan not only forced metro cities into unwanted development, but it also contributed to changes in Greater Minnesota, as the Minnesota Association of Development Organizations (MADO) took many of these ideas for their Develop MN Plan, help cities and towns in writing comprehensive plans, and rolling these ideals down to their ten Regional Planning Organizations. Well, it's time to begin planning for 2050! The Met Council believes that the Metro area will grow to 4 million people by 2050! Who do they source for all of this growth? Themselves, of course! Keep in mind that they are never, ever right. They also say that the white population will level off and decline. They are proposing that the majority of growth with be with the minority populations due to migration. The

www.commsolutionsmn.com- It's that time once again for school boards to come to the taxpayers of their districts with their hand out and asking for money. School funding is so complicated (and budgets so not transparent), that it makes it difficult to follow the money. All they need to do is say that "it's for the kids", and it seems to do the trick. The Unions and the districts have a huge advantage because they have the money and resources to market their "Yes" campaign. They can even market to parents while at school events! How do we ever stand a chance for a different result? The Anoka Hennepin school district is running two separate levies. They are using school money and resources to stump for their marketing. That should not be legal. Prior Lake-Savage is floating a 10 year, $3.5 million per year, technology levy that talks about equitable access to technology, classroom equipment, personal learning experiences... what does that mean? That's so vague. How do you ask for money without laying out spec

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Some of our cities are running into a huge problem. They are steadily moving left. Even in cities where we see strong Democrat majorities, those moderate Dems are being replaced with radical Dems. One huge issue is odd year elections. Only a fraction of voters show up for odd year elections, making it easy for the Democrats and Unions to turn out their base. A very small cross section of the city is actually represented on the council. This is used to keep tight control over who gets on their council. Look at this example from Golden Valley. They will have seven running for two seats. We walk through some on-air research, because so often people don't get informed on the candidates. Council member Larry Fonnest is out, and super left council member Gillian Rosenquist is running for re-election. Loretta Arradondo, Joanie Clausen, Andy Johnson, Denise La Mere-Anderson, Drew Peterson, Orville Christian Satter. Golden Valley is also setting up a PEACE commission to discuss their issues wi

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Any of us with children have watched as our teachers, seemingly, have more and more of these staff development days in the school calendar. What are they learning? When the teachers take classes on these development days or over MEA weekend, it would be nice to know what they are bringing back to the classroom with them. The bad news, is the Education Minnesota does a lot of this training. We know how radical they are, but how bad does it get? Of course there are training classes about retirement investments and insurance, but they also teach them how to support the union in a greater capacity. That's the least damaging, as they delve in to start learning how to manage student's emotions. They focus in on cultural differences, white bias, gender identity, sexual orientation, equity, community action, and checking our privilege. They want the teachers to push an agenda to make our children into activists. We need to start looking at alternatives, because our education model is broken.

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Robbinsdale Public Schools has a vacancy on it's school board, and guess what? They are going to have an appointment! Providing for the people to select their own is government is one of the most basic and fundamental functions of government. Instead, they are appointing someone. Big surprise. We went to war with Great Britain because we had taxation without representation. These government people claim that they are saving us all this money by not having a special election. Yet, they don't blink to spend millions of dollars on other things. You'll never guess who threw their lot in for that spot... ReNae J Bowman. We have a long history with Ms Bowman, and she is so qualified, that she won't even need our endorsement. She states that one of her qualifications was the number of votes she received. That's a qualification? We review a few previous articles that have her applauding a friend that mused about clotheslining children, lied to residents about the local reliever airport, and c

www.commsolutionsmn.com- What if a city government was able to find out what was being said about specific local topics on social media? Well, you're in luck! A corporation named ZenCity has made that possible. They use Artificial Intelligence to aggregate social media posts for a city (or a specific city department), so that they can gauge public sentiment and change the messaging (read: propaganda) to help sway the public into supporting whatever they want to do. That sounds cynical, but they're saying it! The Brooklyn Park PD has been using ZenCity, and the cost has come right out of the department budget, so that the city council never even had to vote on it! Other cities like Woodbury, St Paul, North Mankato, and Rochester have also been using them. In Meriden, CT, ZenCity was used to change the public perception about drones used in city parks to "encourage" social distancing. Apache Junction, AZ wanted to shape public opinion around a $245 million land sale. Scottsdale, AZ and Oak Ridge, TN both have s

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Kim Norton is the mayor of Rochester, MN. She is not a non-partisan. She is a proud Democrat that wears her party affiliation on her sleeve. As with so many in the DFL today, she is sold on accomplishing her unpopular policies through wielding dictatorial powers. After all, she just knows better than you do. She just declared a public emergency regarding COVID, and tried to implement a mask mandate. 82% in Olmstead County are vaccinated. There are 54 cases of COVID in the county. The City Council voted her down. Good for them. She also has enlisted Rochester in the 2021 Global Mayor's Champion City Challenge through Bloomberg. She also has enlisted Rochester in the Minnesota Mayoral Active Transportation Caucus of which she is a co-chair. Lisa Jacobsen won the special election for Brooklyn Park mayor by two votes. That triggers an automatic recount, per Minnesota law. If she still comes out ahead of Hollies Winston, will it really be over? Fewer elections seem to turn out that way. Al

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Last fall, the Minneapolis Charter Commission expertly tabled a resolution from the City Council to disband the Minneapolis Police Department. Now outside funding from George Soros' Open Society has given money to circulate a petition to go around the Charter Commission and get the question to change the charter on the ballot this coming November. Now all of these special interest groups like OutFront MN, ISAIAH, Our Justice, Socialist Alternative, MN Hospitality Union, Women for Political Change, Recall Mike Freeman, Take Action MN, Reclaim the Block, and more have all joined together to roll out the astroturf and get this pushed through using a group called Yes Minneapolis. If you look at the campaign finance report 78% of the donations come from people and groups outside of MN. Tides Advocacy, Black Visions Collective, and the National ACLU, have all donated tens of thousands of dollars each. Even the Minneapolis Teacher's Federation supports this measure. They are out of control!

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Can you name your county attorney? Each county has one. Too many county attorneys across the United States have decided to take on the jobs of defense attorneys and legislators. How can they just decide not to prosecute certain crimes? Our cities and counties are becoming less safe as they turn criminals back out into the streets. They will tell you that it's only low-level offenses, but that's not true. It's shoplifters, car thieves, rioters, and in some cases, even violent crimes like murder. We are seeing these county attorneys go soft on crime in Hennepin, Ramsey, and St Louis counties, among other Minnesota counties. Attorney General, Keith Ellison, has taken over prosecuting police in certain cases. Los Angeles County's George Gascon is letting almost everyone go, and the police are fighting him every step of the way. These criminals learn that crime pays, and continue to violate the law, rather than letting the justice system deter criminal acts down the line. Ultimately, this

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Hiring an Equity Coordinator is all the rage right now in cities, school districts, and counties. That would be all well and good if equity meant the same as equality, but it doesn't. Equality is the equalization of opportunity. Equity is the equalization of outcome; two very different things. This is where certain groups of people play their little word games, making you feel all warm and fuzzy, while they undermine everything you believe in. Antiracism sounds good. Most people are anti-racism. But that's not good enough... antiracism (per author Ibrahim Kindi) allows for discrimination against "the oppressors" in order to level the playing field. What? I believe very few people are in favor of that. Yet in most cities, this seems to be a solution looking for a problem. Cities like Plymouth want to look like they are up with the times. I mean, who wants to get cancelled, right? So cities like Plymouth hire these equity coordinators to come in and search out the problems that may or m

The Minnesota Legislature passed fourteen separate omnibus budget bills. It doesn't seem to matter what party the legislator is from. Almost all of them voted for this $55 billion travesty. The Republicans are bragging about Governor Walz giving up his emergency powers, but the cost to get that was huge. It should have been done a lot sooner and for less of a price. They passed the largest increase in K-12 funding in the last 15 years. 2.5% increase from the funding formula, which good luck figuring that one out. They are giving funding to specifically recruit teachers of color. The GOP caved on requiring vouchers for private schools. tax cut... of which 85% was from not taxing the Payroll Protection loans. These should never have been taxed to begin with, but are not a tax cut. Between this and added unemployment benefits, Sen Carla Nelson (R- Rochester) believes the economy has seen a great boom! What about the people that have worked hard all the way through the pandemic? There's no cuts for those people.

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Unless you've been hiding in your basement bunker, you've had to have heard about the uproar around school districts' teaching of critical theory. Parents are up in arms around the country, and fighting back against these school boards for control over the curriculum being taught to their children. Critical theory comes to us from the Frankfort school, which were communists that were at odds with the National Socialists (Nazis) in Germany, losing out to Adolph Hitler. They set up shop in our universities, and developed critical theory, because the United States would never accept classical Marxism (the financial theory) without changing the value system of our society. They believed that they could find a disaffected population that could be convinced that they were "oppressed" and turn them against "their oppressors". It's not good enough to be "not racist". You have to be trained to be antiracist, which means that you actively fight against racism, including using discrimination aga

www.commsolutionsmn.com- Our farming industry has changed so much over the last few decades, as we've moved away from the small family-owned farms to the massive corporate farms. In fact, the mega rich are buying up huge swaths of land, like Bill Gates does to grow crops in order to experiment with biofuels. Ted Turner is the largest land owner in three different states. Why? Almost all meat is processed through one of four large companies One owned by China). These are companies that are more than happy to go along with the calls to reduce the eating of meat. These ultra-rich people are getting government subsidies for their farms. They are growing or raising whatever it is the government is paying them to grow or raise. They don't even need to use their own money to operate them. Family farms are quickly becoming a thing of the past. A large percentage of farmland is farmed by people that don't own it. Also, your super conservative, Republican-led Senate is still giving the Democrats 80% of what they want.

www.commsolutionsmn.com- These days, it seems like everything is racist. Math, jail, facts, property ownership... and highways. The claim is that highways are racist, because they are used to separate black communities from white, and to keep minority communities down. Yet, these politicians think nothing about building commuter rail lines straight through the middle of communities (even minority communities). How much truth is there to this, or is this yet another attempt of politicians to keep people feeling like they are oppressed? There are already a number of cities (18) that have taken out or rerouted sections of highways. This isn't some passing fad. President Biden's infrastructure bill proposes highway removals or redesigns. The Congress for the New Urbanism has identified 10 cities that should have highways torn down. While one group asserts that these highways are racist at their core, you can also see how they connect important things like hospitals, universities, airports, etc, and are connecting

www.commsolutionsmn.com- It doesn't seem to matter what level of government we're talking about. They have more ways to tax you for your money than you are aware of. Everyone is aware of the city levy that is reflected in their property taxes, but that's just a small fraction. We like to talk about hidden taxes... ways that the city, county, school district, etc has to take your money without it showing upon your property tax statement. There are permits and licenses, Tax Increment Finance districts, bonding, sales taxes, and more. Property taxes are not directly determined by your property value. They are, rather, determined by what portion of the pie you are responsible for. There's all sorts of grants and state and federal tax dollars available to them as well. Counties also get a lot of money from state and federal sources. They are responsible for county roads, Health and Human services (including MNSURE), law enforcement, environmental work, and more. They have two or more levies (property and HRA) and

www.commsolutionsmn.com- The MN Green Step Cities program, administered by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (check out Episode 18 for the basics on the program) is continuing to seduce MN cities of all sizes to join its ranks. It's touted as a free and voluntary program, but is really just the local cap and trade club. Each step is reached with a number of actions that allegedly cut emissions and reduce energy usage. Once you reach Level 4 and Level 5, it ceases to be voluntary, as you have to benchmark the emissions, energy, and water usage from not just your public buildings, but also from certain private, commercial buildings as well. (It never really was free when you start to look at the cost of each step and the employee hours spent in implementation.) There are large cities like Bloomington with many tens of thousands of people and small cities like Hewett with 256 people. Are cities like Hewett and Hackensack really not environmentally-minded already? There are about 20 cities that have attained

www.commsolutionsmn.com- A year ago, the Minneapolis City Council was dead set on not defunding, but dismantling, the Minneapolis Police Department. To do this, they would have to change the city charter, which required a police presence, including minimums per capita. The Charter Commission wasn't having any of that. Either a "yes" or "no" vote on the proposal would put the issue back with the City Council for certain approval. Instead, they decided to table the proposal, putting it on hold for 90 days... and past the date of the election, tying the council's hands. Now there is a "citizen-led" group (with the help of the ACLU, Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, and a whole mess of other radical groups) called Yes For Minneapolis that has one goal: to finish the work that the city council couldn't get done. They circulated a petition to change the city charter, removing the police department entirely, and replacing it with the Department of Public Safety. They may or may not have to hire police at all, depe