Legalectric

One year ago — Bark & Ride Transport Polar Express

Here we go again!  21 dogs this time, including a nursing mother and her 8 pups, quite a van full.  Off to shelter soon to pick up crates.

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of rescue dogs, and since I’ve moved to Red Wing, I’ve adopted Katze, Kenya, Krie, Kady, Little Sadie, and Summer.   The only one left now is Little Sadie, who I hope has another decade of life.  But there are so many dogs who need help.  I’ve been on the Board of Humane Society for Goodhue County for a few years now, but that’s different than direct work for animals.  Our grrrrrrls have been either from the shelter here in Red Wing (Katze, Krie, and Little Sadie), or from rescues who got them out of difficult or horrible situations.  Kenya was in the middle of two divorces and left with no where to live twice in her five years before I got her.   Kady came up from Georgia, on an I-95 transport, up to Marcus Hook to 6th Angel German Shepherd Rescue, and then fostered on Long Island as she recovered from heartworm treatment and, though her pup was adopted, she spent a year waiting for us — we were luck she was there and she decided she wanted to come home with us.

Anyway, we started doing occasional dog transports, the first, a year ago for the 2013 Polar Express, where we met Birdo:

And an adorable pile o’ pooping puppies (they seem to let loose about half an hour after transfer into the van!):

And then last July, Nora and another van full (there’s always got to be one lap dog, that’s Alan’s favorite part of this!):

So here we go, doing dog laundry and cleaning crates, on the road again!

The silica sand rulemaking process drags on and will probably end soon.  Meetings have been going on for a year now, and what is there to show for it?  Not much.  But as of yesterday, there are some draft rules!  YES!  About time…

There was a Comment Period that ended in November, and here are the Comments:

MPCA’s rulemaking – Response to second request for comments

Very few comments were filed — only 10 (I’d attached a previous comment to this one, but it was stuck separately at the top of the pile) — why so few comments, what’s up with that?

As for rulemaking, there’s been a little bit of progress reported by Katie Himanga (THANK YOU, Katie!) after yesterday’s meeting of the “Advisory Panel.”  Word from that meeting is that “ALL AGENCIES PLAN TO GO TO PUBLIC NOTICE IN THE 1ST QUARTER OF 2015.”  And so it looks like the January 8 meeting will be the last one, January 8 is scheduled, and no others show on the Advisory Panel site (but they could always add more, as they have in the past).

The Agenda is posted, but the meeting materials weren’t there yet.  So I checked with Nathan Cooley, and he sent them right over:

20141204 10th SSRAP Agenda

20141125 Draft Silica Sand Emission Rule (Draft Proposed Rules Governing Emissions from Silica Sand Projects)

DEFINITIONS_EQB (silica sand related definitions, rule and statute)

EXHIBIT M (AMBIENT AIR MONITORING PROCEDURES for
DETERMINATION OF COMPLIANCE, 12/18/2013)

SSRAP__DRAFT EQB__12__4__2014_CLEAN (this is proposed language to insert silica sand mines/project/facilities into EAW and EIS categories)

Here’s how Cooley ended that missive, definitely a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” sort of finale:

There is no current request for public comment on silica sand rulemaking. We remain focused on seeking representative input from the SSRAP panel. Thanks for your interest and your understanding.

Well, Advisory Panel, he’s saying it’s up to you!  You’re our representatives!

I’ve been reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, and get thee to the library and reserve it.  It’s about our impact on the earth, and it’s depressing, but reality often is.  Particularly the recount of the deaths of the last Great Auk pair at Edly, a rock cropping of an island off of Iceland.

And this morning, Jeanne Warren found this:

Is that cute or what?  He’d been assembling it for a week and a half, lots of little parts, and one of the legs disappeared for a few days, but ta-da!  Here it is!

I hate it when this happens.  KAAL in Austin and Rochester, Minnesota, has presented a distorted half-truth using only a half-video clip of the car that rammed its way through the Minneapolis protesters last week, and it’s this distorted half-truth that has 5,236 comments and 17, 591 shares:

KAAL fb post – Partial KSTP video of car ramming demonstrators

This is their entire report linked to that partial video that was edited and doesn’t show the driver at the stoplight, other cars going safely around, and the driver going around the car in front of him waiting at the intersection and he drives INTO the crowd (emphasis added):

(ABC 6 News) — We’re following breaking news out of a Minneapolis where a car drove through a group of protestors.
    
One person was hit before the group of protestors jumps on the car and begins vandalizing it.  Police confirm one person was transported to the hospital with very minor injuries.
    
This protest was in response to last night’s grand jury ruling in Ferguson, MO.

Stay with ABC 6 News for the latest on this developing story tonight at 10

Very naughty — that is NOT reporting.  That’s a grossly misleading spin.  KAAL had access to the entire video just like the rest of us did, and maybe even before the rest of us did.

Meanwhile, there were over 5,200 comments to that misleading facebook post, and over 17,000 shares — sharing and commenting on an incomplete and misleading version of the video.  Read those comments, filled with hate and rage.

HERE’S KAAL’s  MORE RECENTLY POSTED VERSION WITH FULL KSTP VIDEO, CORRECTLY LABELING DRIVER AS SUSPECT.

From Alan Muller on today’s Mpls. yak-yak list, to consider when looking at some of the 5,235 comments on that KAAL post, comments like:

• “He needed a plow with knives”
• “I would have done the same…they were out to kill the driver for sure.”
• “Should get a snow plow and gas on it!!”
• “I would’ve drove straight over those idiots. White black pink don’t care, I’m not stopping for psychos in the street to get out from under me. Made their decision being out there.”
• “Good for him maybe more people should do this so these idiots will go get a job instead of standing in the street protesting free rights for hoodlums to act like gangbangers.”

What???  So back to Alan’s comment:

Every once in a while, on a list like this, a thread 
happens that seems that seems to speak about larger 
social or community problems.  This one does to me.  
Is it OK to ram a car into a crowd of people?  One 
could use answers to this as part of a test to 
diagnose sociopathic tendencies.  Do you have a moral 
compass?  Yeah, I mean "If you think the answer to this 
question is 'YES,' I would hope you don't ever get 
hired as a teacher or police officer, or reporter, or 
animal control person, or manager of people, or...."

For me, it’s the sort of thing where I long to see a societal intervention and treatment, this is embedded self-centered ignorance and hate with no regard for rights of others, or laws or basic human decency.  How ugly can we humans get?  That’s a question I do not want answered…

KAAL – though you have posted the full KSTP video, this other shorter one is so distorted that I think you should remove that post so that people won’t continue to be misinformed, and continue to pass on that misinformation.