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Legislative hangups

Legislative members attending the New Ulm Farm-City Hub Club Farm Show Saturday gave generously of their time to answer questions in a legislative forum devoted to farm issues. No doubt it took them that long to try to explain why the Minnesota Legislature still hasn’t passed legislation providing drought relief for farmers affected by last year’s dry season. Practically everyone in the Legislature, Republicans and Democrats alike, are agreed that livestock and specialty crop farmers who didn’t qualify for crop insurance last year need help, and there is a plan for $10 million ...

Ugly attitude

Ugliness — it’s about the only way to describe the events that happened in games between the New Ulm and St. Peter high school basketball teams this year. According to a report in the Star Tribune Saturday, reprinted on today’s front page, a St. Peter player was subjected to anti-gay slurs and was physically attacked, in the form of pinching from a New Ulm player that left bruises. Alex Bosacker, a senior center on the St. Peter team, had come out as gay to his teammates this winter. He also came out on social media. According to the reports, Bosacker heard taunts from the New ...

Thumbs Up/Down

Space hostage THUMBS DOWN: Some people have been complaining over the past several years about the American space program’s lack of access to space. Since the space shuttle program shut down in 2011, U.S. astronauts have been dependent on hitching a ride from other nations like Russia to get into orbit, while NASA has waited for private space flight developers to become a reliable alternative. They are still working on it, and our dependence on Russian space flights is suddenly turning nasty. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the U.S. sanctions against Russia in retaliation, ...

War on civilians

The Russian strategy in Ukraine has been thwarted since its invasion began by stiffer than expected military resistance and an armed and motivated civilian population that have turned targets like the capital city of Kyiv into fortresses. So the Russians have adopted a new strategy, apparently — attack those who can’t fight back. In the city of Mariupol, Russians have been bombing and shelling the city’s civilian population. When people try to flee the fighting, they are shot down. Corridors for evacuees have become killing fields. Those inside the city are bombed out of their ...

Fuel tax holiday?

With gasoline prices at the pump rising like a SpaceX celebrity rocket launch, governors and state lawmakers around the country are looking for ways to ease the impact for their citizens. One idea being pushed is to call a holiday on state or even federal gasoline taxes. These are the per-gallon taxes collected at the pump with every gasoline purchase. The money collected usually goes into the state or federal transportation fund to build or maintain roads and bridges. Governors from several states, including Minnesota, are writing to congress members asking them to support a gas ...

Our gas price pain nothing like Ukraine’s

Every once in a while we get a letter to the editor from someone complaining about the high price of gas in New Ulm, relative to the price in Mankato or Hutchinson or some other nearby town. Gas prices depend are set by a number of factors, from who the individual station buys it from, how much they pay, demand and how competitive the local market is. It also depends on supply, and right now the international supply is being disrupted by Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the world’s economic sanctions against Russia. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced a ban on all Russian ...