Page 4 Askov American OPINION Thursday, July 21, 2011 Plans becoming reality Hello, Pine County. As your , sheriff, Ill write a quarterly column to keep you updated on current events within the sheriff's office. Chief Deputy Steven Black- well and I have now completed our second quarter in office and are starting to see our work and planning become reality. In early April, the county beard approved a project man- agement plan for implementa- tion of the new 800 MHz radio system that will modernize the emergency radio system in our county. This is a major project that kicked off at the end of June and will be completed in the fall of 2012. Our volunteer posse was formed and 30 members re- ceived 16 hours of basic reserve police training in late May. The volunteer posse provides our community with a group of trained volunteers to assist our full-time staff at fairs, parades, and emergency events. In late June, our nine new part-time deputies completed their orientation and began field training. This is the larg- est number of new deputies hired by the sheriff's office and it was a major administrative and logistical undertaking that began in March. Although these deputies are part time, they will provide a substantial increase to our patrol force. With the addition of these new deputies, we began imple- mentation of our new schedule, which will include four new positions staffed with part-time officers. My staffing goal is to provide at least four deputies on patrol at all times, and at least 11 on patrol during high demand periods, while staying within my appropriated budget. A great deal of time was spent examining our fleet of ve- hicles. To maintain the practice of providing deputies with take- home cars would require replac- ing 14 worn out patrol cars that were purchased in 2007 at a cost of $550,000 to $600,000. This expense was not bud- geted and the county simply does not have the funds to re- place these cars. Working with Pine County Sheriff Robin Cole my staff, we are rearranging our vehicle fleet, developing a fleet management and rota- tion plan. My goal is to reduce the fleet from 40 vehicles to approximately 28 by the end of the year. I carefttlly considered the pros and cons, but in the end the cost to benefit in providing take-home cars is unbalanced; it is a great benefit to employees, with little benefit and great cost to the county. In the near future all deputies will drive their personal vehicle to their duty station where patrol cars are available. For the first half (50 percent) of 2011, overall the sheriff's of- fice has expended 47 percent of our budget, but due to lagging revenues our net expenditure is 50 percent of our yearly budget. We have spent the following percentage of each budget (net): sheriff, 53 percent; corrections, 56 percent; and dispatch, 42 percent. Overtime costs are 31 percent, and fuel and vehicle maintenance costs are 74 per- cent of the budgeted yearly total. I am often asked, "Why didn't the deputy who lives down the road respond when I called 911?" Our deputies are union employees and when off duty they have no contractual obligation to respond. We are working hard to be- come a responsive police agency that you can be proud of. This means rebuilding relationships and establishing trust with all of the communities in our coun- ty. In the last six months we've done a lot of listening. Our citi- zens must be heard in order to have improved relations. I also provide weekly updates and additional information during the Pine County sheriff's report Thursday mornings at 7:30 on WCMP radio. A war against the middle class Editor, Askov American, Phil Krinkie's "pity the poor millioniares" diatribe (July 14) was very touching, but totally out of touch with reality. Bank- rolled by millionaires, the Tax- dodgers League is forever sniv- eling about how tragic it is that people expect the obscenely rich to pay their fair share in taxes. Billionaire Warren Buffet dis- agrees; he testified in Washing- ton that it was wrong that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. While middle class wages have been stagnant or actually decreased in the past 30 years, upper income salaries have increased dramatically, largely because of a series of tax cuts, resulting in the biggest in- come redistribution in our his- tory. This is the "trickle down" theory first espoused by Ronald Reagan: the more money the rich have, the more money will trickle down to the masses. Tim Pawlenty assured us that by cutting taxes on the rich and the corporations, the economy would grow so fast that state government revenues would ac- tually increase. We've seen how well that has worked out. Prop- erty taxes up 60 percent. Cuts to education, infrastructure, environment and a host of other essential services for every year that Pawlenty was in office. We now have schools where stu- dents have to share text books, teachers are being laid off by the thousands and we all know what happened to the bridge in Minneapolis that Pawlenty re- fused to repair because it was "too expensive" to do so. If the wealthy and the corporations (60 percent of corporations pay no taxes at all) had been pay- ing their fair share for the past 30 years, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today. The trickle-down strategy is nothing but a war against the middle class by the corpora- tions. Corporate executives are no longer job creators, they are job destroyers. For decades, Wall Street has rewarded companies that outsource jobs to places like China and India by raising their stock prices, which raises executive salaries. The middle class declined, tax revenues de- clined, America declined. As for "runaway government spending," would that include repairing our infrastructure or making sure that our water and air isn't being polluted? Is it Pell grants that give non- wealthy kids a chance at a col- lege education? Perhaps health care for the poor or elderly? If it was really government spend- ing that the Republicans cared about, they would be working to put everyone in Medicare and use that clout to negotiate for lower drug prices. It's not runaway government spending that is the problem; it is the loss of good paying jobs and tax cuts for the rich that have devas- tated this state. Each job lost is less revenue that could be used for the public good. When your property taxes go up again, take comfort in knowing that you are subsidizing the top 0.3 percent, the only constituents that Roger Crawford really cares about. If the obscenely wealthy think that they are under at- tack, perhaps it's because the people realize that there is no recovery coming; the jobs that are being created are low-wage, temporary jobs. By destroying government services, especially public education, the Repub- licans cater to their corporate bosses and ensure that the mid- dle class continues to decline. No protection for the people against corporate corruption. No regulation of a totally cor- rupt financial system. No jobs for the next generation. Two classes: the rich and the poor. This is the Republican plan: corporate control of the govern- ment. There's a name for that. It's called fascism. John Dalsveen, Brook Park \\; Hot weather means buzzJng cJcadas With this extreme heat and humid- ity, I expected to hear cicadas buzzing, but their calls have been absent here in northern Minnesota. Not so in southwest- ern Ohio where I spent the last week with my daughter and her family. In this part of Ohio, 90 degree days in the summer are a regular occurrence, and with them come the sound of cicadas. We would hear them from morning almost until dusk. The buzzing included a variety of sounds that ebbed and flowed throughout the day. One morning my grandchildren found a large cicada on the sidewalk outside their house; they wanted to know what it was. I have only seen these bugs a few times in my life, but I recognized it as a cicada. It was not moving but still alive so I put my finger down and let it get a grip. I liid it up for them to look at before placing it on the trunk of a nearby tree. They were not eager to get too close, though I assured them it was not a biting bug. It did however look rather ominous with its large bulbous eyes on either side of the head. This particular cicada had mostly clear wings, with a camouflaged pattern near the body, almost exactly like the camouflage you see on army uniforms, perfectly suited to its arboreal habi- tat. But I wondered about those wings, because the insect did not try to fly and I have never seen a swarm of cicadas buzz- ing around. I clearly recall my childhood summers in Minneapolis when we knew that elec- Wingin' It Kate Crowley trical sounding buzz (I, like many others, thought it was coming from the power lines) meant it was going to be a hot day. It almost made you want to go back inside and settle in some cool shady, space. Their buzzing increases in volume as the tem- perature rises. There are more than 75 species of cica- das in the United States and most live in two- to five-year cycles, but some will take 13 or 17 years to complete the circle from larvae to adult. In some 17-year cycles, as many as 1.5 million individuals can emerge in one acre. It's no wonder that some people thought of them as locusts, since that type of eruption of insects seems almost biblical. But these bugs will not swarm over fields devouring crops. Their desire is to find a mate and then for the female to lay the eggs in young twigs of trees. The young, when they emerge from their woody nursery, are wingless and drop to the ground below the tree, then proceed to burrow into the ground where they will stay for the prescribed number of years for their species. They live on the juices of the tree roots sucked up with their mouthparts. When the time is right, they dig their way upward out of the soil and climb the nearest tree trunk, where they finally split their larval skin and emerge as adults. It is at this point that they may use those wings to fly in pursuit of a mate. The classic buzzing sound is produced by a pair of vibrating structures behind the back wings of the males. Each species has a specific time of day in which they produce this buzzy love song. Once they are adults the clock begins to tick quickly and they only have four to six weeks in which to find a mate and lay the eggs of the next generation, before their life in the open ends. Some recent research has shown that the life cycles of cicadas may be changing due to climate change. According to this study, the larvae are able to monitor the years by the ebb and flow of sap in the tree's roots. When warmer temperatures in early winter cause the trees to go through a freeze and thaw cycle and then later in the spring the same thing, they hypoth- esize that the cicadas get confused on the timeline and may emerge as much as four years earlier than scheduled. How that might change the related ecosystems is unknown. Another steamy day is upon us and I'm just as glad not to hear the cicadas. I think their incessant buzzing might just be too much for my overheated brain to bear. Federal default dwarfs state budget fiasco Never has the morning coffee shop banter in the countryside been more ac- curate. "How's it going?" one asks. "Could be worse," another responds. Minnesota's July state budget madness is about to turn much worse come August if Congress doesn't raise the federal debt ceiling to allow the federal government to keep current on its bills. The state shutdown would seem like a mere inconvenience compared to a federal failure to meet debt obligations, which would be almost certain to toss the United States and global economies back on the brink of recession. Despite magnitude differences of these two legislative failures, it seems the na- tion is more aware of Minnesota's July shutdown of government than aware of consequences looming at the federal level. It is easier for media to depict and the public to grasp the significance of free- way rest stops being closed than to heed complicated warnings from economists, political scientists and financial market analysts about what's at stake with a potential federal government default. Right now, Minnesota lawmakers beholding to special interests and unwill- ing to compromise on budgets are simply soiling our own nest. Far greater impacts wait if federal lawmakers, beholding to most of the same special tax-avoidance in- terests, follow states like Minnesota down the path of fiscal irresponsibility. Let's look at ways a federal default would affect Minnesota as well as the entire nation. Agriculture The state's farm economy is currently one of Minnesota's strengths, assuming that the delayed planting season still produces a good to great fall harvest for most crops. Not only are commodity prices high for most farm crops, interest rates on short-term farm operating loans and on land mortgages have remained at histori- cal lows from Federal Reserve efforts to stimulate the economy. But almost all market watchers are warning that interest rates will explode, • 1867 Askov American RO. Box 275 Askov, Minnesota 55704 (320) 838-3151 Fax: (320) 838-3152 Email: askovamerican@scicable.com Lee Egerstrom Economic Development Fellow MN2020 regardless of Federal Reserve policies, should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling by August 2. Interest rates are especially important to capital-intensive agriculture. The national recession of 1981-82 spilled over and became a farm depres- sion, more commonly called the Farm Financial Crisis of 1982-87. While thou- sands of Minnesota farm families lost their land and homes, hundreds of rural communities never recovered from the loss of businesses and banks that went down with the farmers. The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank has warned that skyrocketing interest rates would burst a farmland bubble just like the housing bubble that exploded almost four years ago. Economists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, mean- while, have observed that farm balance sheets are currently healthy. That might buy time before future crops and live- stock cycles become squeezed by higher debt costs. But the 1980s still offer vivid reminders that a day of reckoning will be coming for agriculture. Housing There are modest glimmers of hope that the depressed housing market here and across the country is trying to make a rebound. Federal programs are about to take effect that would help homeown- ers stay in their homes while looking for work. But such efforts, while commend- able, won't shore up the housing market against state and federal policy failures. States like Minnesota are undermin- ing the housing market now by laying off teachers and public employees and scaring mortgage lenders. Any big jump in interest rates stemming from federal default and responses in the bond market will block even more people from qualify- ing for mortgage loans. Still to be determined is whether a genuine, broad-based economic recovery can occur without recovery for the de- pressed housing market. Military spending No one offering quick fix proposals for federal debt is calling for a retreat in defense spending. Our economic problems stem largely from waging a decade of two wars on credit since the privileged class resisted sacrifice for the war effort and paying war expenses. In fact, the burden of these wars was made greater when tax breaks were expanded and extended even as public costs for wars piled up public debt. The political science lessons behind such reasoning are simple though not widely understood. Not all the billions of dollars spent on Iraq and Afghanistan end up going into those countries. Much of it is spread around military bases and with defense contractors here at home. For Minnesota, that means a transfer of our federal tax dollars to states with a heavy military presence. Historical perspective The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office notes that Congress has raised the federal debt ceiling 74 times since 1962. It was an annual practice during George W. Bush's eight years while current fis- cal conservatives were hibernating on debt issues and made the economy worse by granting greater tax concessions to wealthy and corporate interests. More frustrating, we have state law- makers falling into this well-orchestrated trap, willing to shut down state govern- ment and deny state residents equal ac- cess to public policies and services. "Could be worse" comes close to being a forecast. We, in Minnesota, are contribut- ing'to make things worse. 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