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MINNESOTA From WESTERN VALUES PROJECT: A Report on Possible Instances of Corruption at Ryan Zinke’s Interior Department

September 1, 2018

ppjg Minnesota, The PPJ Gazette , , , , , , 3 Comments

MINNESOTA
From WESTERN VALUES PROJECT

A Report on Possible Instances of Corruption at Ryan Zinke’s Interior Department

pages 3 and 4

Ivanka Trump/ Jared Kushner and Twin Metals Principal Deputy Solicitor of the Interior Department Daniel Jorjani issued a legal decision allowing Twin Metals Minnesota to renew mining leases for their copper and nickel mining operation near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Twin Metals is a subsidiary of Antofagasta PLC, a Chilean mining company that coincidentally is owned by the family of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s landlord.

In December 2016, the Obama administration decided not to renew leases “for a copper and nickel mining operation on the border of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness,” “while federal officials launched a formal review of the operation’s environmental Page 4 of 23 impact.” Obama administration “Interior officials expressed concern that any potential spill from nearby mining could cause ‘serious and irreplaceable harm’” to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which is “the only large lake-land wilderness in the National Wilderness Preservation System.” [Juliet Eilperin, “Trump administration renews mining leases near Minnesota wilderness, reversing Obama,” Washington Post, 12/23/17]

The company applying to renew the leases was Twin Metals Minnesota, a “a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC.” Antofagasta belongs “to the family of billionaire Andrónico Luksic, who rents a home to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, in Washington.” [Juliet Eilperin, “Trump administration renews mining leases near Minnesota wilderness, reversing Obama,” Washington Post, 12/23/17]

Daniel Jorjani, on December 22, 2017, issued a legal decision allowing Twin Metals Minnesota to renew the leases. “Jorjani’s decision came after a concerted lobbying effort by Twin Metals and its parent company.” In 2017, Jorjani met with Antofagasta and the lobbying firm that represents Twin Metals. [Jimmy Tobias, “Meet the Former Koch Adviser Slashing Conservation Safeguards at the Department of the Interior,” Pacific Standard, 01/10/18]

http://westernvaluesproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Report-on-Possible-Instances-of-Corruption-in-Zinkes-Interior-Department-1-Year-Anniversary.pdf

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TSA: The Stanford Experiment Goes Live

August 26, 2018

ppjg Constitution, Marti Oakley, Police State, The PPJ Gazette , , , , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Marti Oakley

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I find it more than strange that the government knows exactly who I am if I owe taxes, if I get a ticket, when I apply for a drivers license, or in a myriad of other settings….but suddenly has amnesia when I attempt to board a plane. Now, by October 1, 2018, thanks to the failure of the Minnesota legislature, who, in pursuit of Federal largesse, failed to act to protect Minnesota residents from federal encroachment and over-reach, I must have a biometric marked ID or passport to board a plane. And TSA is now installed in many train stations and bus stations.

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You need to biometrically brand me? I need a passport to travel in my own country? You’ve been tracking me since the day I was born and suddenly you can’t be sure who I am? This after admitting that allegedly 20 million or more people have entered the US illegally, many working under assumed names, fake ID’s and millions who have simply disappeared into the country?

A recent trip that included destinations in five states, resulted in me and thousands of other individuals, being subjected to invasive assaults from TSA officers under the guise of “keeping us all safe”. The question that comes to mind immediately after these assaults is: Who is going to keep us safe from the TSA?

By far, the worst experience was at the Lindbergh terminal in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This airport is a study in chaos, mismanagement and particularly venomous TSA agents. Of course, if you are one of those individuals convinced that even after passing through the scanners that for some reason you must now be groped, patted, grabbed, mashed, and verbally assaulted by these otherwise unemployable individuals who are now sporting a uniform and a badge, I assume this physical assault is just fine.

After all, almost 20 years ago they blew up buildings with planes in New York. I was reminded of this at the Lindbergh terminal after having my hands swabbed with a strip used to detect dangerous chemicals. Having had this done numerous times on numerous trips, when the agent swabbed my hands and told me to move on….I did. I did not realize that a new step in this process had been added and that included yet another agent located to my right about 12 feet away, in a small cubicle with a scanner for analysis of the strip. (In other airports this scanner is right there by the agent who swabs you) As I moved to the left to retrieve my purse from the bin, I heard a woman screaming: “Don’t you dare! You get yourself over here! Don’t even think about it! You get yourself over here right now!”

I, of course, looked around to see not only who was screaming, but whom was she screaming at? You guessed it! It was me! As I walked towards her I asked her why she was screaming. She went on a diatribe about how I had to stand there until the analysis was finished, and I better not move until it was complete. Being me, I of course expressed my disgust with this type of behavior, knowing it to be an intimidation tactic and also totally unnecessary. Then comes MR.TSA!! He ran over to where I was and immediately went into a soliloquy about how buildings were blown up in this country and it could happen again and their job was to make sure it didn’t. He ended with saying he thought about this every day. Doubtful Mr. TSA, very doubtful. (PS: I didn’t blow up any buildings in New York or anywhere else for that matter, but you already knew that) More

The Elder Abuse Crisis in Minnesota

August 11, 2018

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Finally! News you can use for seniors!

The Silver Standard

 

 

 

 

By David Holmberg

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I’m from Minnesota, and you might call me a loyalist. All my life, I’ve taken pride in the state’s reputation as a citadel of progressivism. It’s produced an impressive roster of socially conscious politicians—Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Orville Freeman—and ranks at or near the top among the fifty states in social services, education, and cultural advantages.

But these days in Minnesota, there lingers the stigmatizing taint of elder abuse—the shocking (especially to a Minnesotan) revelation by the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis that “each year, hundreds of Minnesotans are beaten, sexually assaulted, or robbed in senior care homes. Their cases are seldom investigated, leaving families in the dark.”

A 2010 study showed a six-fold increase in reported incidents in the state’s senior care facilities, which may have been a catalyst for a 2017 investigation by the Star-Tribune that uncovered another disturbing statistic: in 2015, “the Minnesota Department of Health received 25, 226 allegations of neglect, physical abuse, unexplained serious injuries, and thefts in state-licensed homes for the elderly.”

Said a board member of the Minnesota Elder Justice Center, Iris Freeman: “We should all be appalled at this picture. Minnesota used to be at the top of the heap when it came to elder-abuse enforcement, and now we’re becoming known for being non-responsive.”

But the state did mobilize its legislative, law enforcement, and senior care resources in response to the Star-Tribune’s investigation. It was a response you’d expect in a state with a strong collective instinct for change when change is demanded. It improved compliance standards, developed better programs for training and monitoring employees, and opened communications between law enforcement and other agencies. More

Inconvenient Truths About This Year’s Duluth Air Show: Squandering the Planet’s Increasingly Scarce Fossil Fuels for our Amusement

July 9, 2018

ppjg Dr Gary Kohls, ENERGY/OIL, environmental pollution, The PPJ Gazette , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

 

Duty to Warn

By Gary G. Kohls, MD – July 7, 2018

 

“Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day’s dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations.” — George Eliot, from the author’s last novel, Daniel Deronda

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The Big Oil cartels have, for decades, been poisoning the air, the aquifers, the rivers, the lakes the air, the soil and the Gulf of Mexico, the Persian Gulf and every ocean and ocean floor on the planet with uncounted millions of gallons of toxic crude oil via their risky – and very leaky – deep water oil wells. It wasn’t just the crime against the planet that British Petroleum and Dick Cheney’s Halliburton perpetrated in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. There are many other entities that have contributed to the mortal wounding of the Gulf, and one of the big ones is the US military.

A prime example of the damage done to the Gulf by corporate entities includes the Mississippi River delta’s massive dead zone that has been enlarging rapidly for decades, thanks to the many corporate polluters that have been dumping industrial waste, herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers, prescription drugs and other toxins into surface water streams and rivers (and aquifers also) to flow downstream from such professedly “environmentally friendly” states like Minnesota and its multitude of Big Oil, Big Chemical and Big Agribusiness-co-opted (or duped) farmers. Big Businesses like those meet the definition of sociopaths and therefore must be recognized as conscienceless.

There are hundreds of enlarging dead zones at the mouths of all of the world’s major rivers, but much of the pollution that caused the huge dead zone at the Mississippi River’s mouth started in the Upper Midwest’s farmlands. Especially guilty were the corporate-controlled mega-farms that routinely over-used synthetic herbicides, fertilizers and pesticides on the crops and soil. (See www.geoengineeringwatch.org for more details.)

As I was growing up, I often fished in the upper Minnesota River. Just during my adolescent years, I witnessed the beginnings of the pollution of that river because of farm chemical runoff. I saw the river go from swimmable and fishable to muddy, smelly, toxic and relatively fishless. More

Over 1,200 Minnesota Parents Are Suing to Shut Down Child Protective Services

June 9, 2018

ppjg Child endangerment, Constitution, Corrupt courts, families, The PPJ Gazette , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

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(CW) — A group of parents in Minnesota called Stop CPS From Legally Kidnapping Children has filed a request in federal court to “shut down the state’s child protection services, stop serial abuse of families and overturn the unconstitutional laws by which the agency operates,” according to a press release published Tuesday.

The group, led by Dwight Mitchell, a father who says his son was illegally taken from him for 22 months, first filed a civil rights complaint in April, and this week they vocally publicized their call to shut down the child services agency, which they claim engages in systemic lying, withholding information, and fabricating evidence. They are asking the federal court to suspend the state’s agency from enforcing child protection laws, and according to a petition signed by almost 5,000 people, are also demanding changes to the laws themselves.

Back in April, Mitchell said: “Someone reported I spanked my child on his bottom. I was put in jail. My three children were taken away from me,”citing other states that have enacted laws to protect a parent’s “ordinary corporal punishment” rights. Though the practice of spanking is increasingly recognized as harmful to children’s well-being, it is highly questionable as to whether confiscating kids and placing them in foster homes is any better for their mental and emotional health.

According to the petition, which Mitchell started:

“I am fully aware there are children who do need to be removed from wretched situations and need protection, but their protection must be balanced with the constitutional rights of the mothers and fathers.

“Child Protection Services (CPS) chooses to ignore those laws the legislature, made. Even when notified of those laws, they fabricated evidence, lie and go about their illegal activities with a brazen arrogance totally without fear of reprimand, reprisal or the consequences of their illegal actions.”

Among the changes to the law Mitchell and the group are calling for are making lying, fabricating evidence, and withholding information a felony, requiring more publicly available information so parents know their rights, eliminating total immunity for state agents, and requiring all parental termination cases to be jury trials.

More

Corporate Sociopaths Out of NE Minnesota! And that includes Canada’s PolyMet, Canada’s Twin Metals, Switzerland’s Glencore and Chile’s Antofagasta

June 2, 2018

ppjg Dr Gary Kohls, environmental pollution, The PPJ Gazette , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Duty to Warn

By Gary G. Kohls, MD – 5-29-2018

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“Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.” — Anonymous

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In 2010 the pro-corporate 5/4 United States Supreme Court decided, in the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling that favored multi-billionaire corporate elites and their trans-national corporations by making it easier for them to steal US elections by allowing unlimited, anonymous monetary “contributions”/bribes to both major US political parties, political action groups and the many politicians who were then beholden to their newest corporate paymasters.

The Citizen’s United ruling, which should go down in the history books as the “worst Supreme Court decision of the past century”, has emboldened the already powerful, corruptible and endlessly greedy corporations – that already own or somehow have dominion over the economy, the government and the media – to now also be able to have intimate access to any number of campaign fund-needy politicians to do their will whenever their desired legislation comes up for a vote.

Money Doesn’t Just Talk, It Screams

It is impossible for progressive voters to match the influence that comes from the huge amounts of anonymous campaign money from corporations such as is coming from foreign mining companies. And the monetary influence is aimed at politicians from all the political parties who take corporate money namely Democrats and Republicans. 

This reality explains why progressive northeast Minnesota voters are always having to swallow hard when going to the polls to vote for the latest DFL candidate who is in the process of betraying voters on environmental issues such as the most recent copper mining issue that will eventually spell environmental disaster for everybody, including pro-business, climate change denying conservatives who live downstream from the proposed mines and their massive polluted tailings lagoons.. More

Minnesota Codifies Isolation of the Elderly by Predators Gaming the System

May 19, 2018

ppjg abolishing probate, families, financial exploitation, Guardianship Abuse, homicidal guardianships, Marti Oakley, Minnesota, The PPJ Gazette , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Marti Oakley

May 19, 2018

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Numerous bills have been presented recently here in Minnesota as a result of the nursing home scandals that rocked the state. It quickly became apparent that the only people who were unaware of this looming crisis, were our state legislators. But reading through these bills, which are legislative monstrosities that are comprised of some of the most tortured and unintelligible language imaginable, it becomes readily apparent that the bills were not written by the legislators, but rather, by interested stakeholders who profit daily from the human trafficking of the elderly.

A recent change to the Minnesota Health Care Bill of Rights, looks on the surface to be a positive change for advancing the rights of those subjected to institutional health care while the estate is robbed. At first glance, it would appear that the legislature is securing the right of patients to be free from forced isolation by professional predatory guardians and conservators. But a closer examination reveals language that allows the very predators in the system, those who prey on the elderly with the intent to profit, to continue their trafficking, unimpeded

“Pending the outcome of an enforcement proceeding the health care facility may, in good faith, comply with the instructions of a guardian or conservator.”

An enforcement proceeding? Gosh, I wonder how that will turn out? I would like to see an explanation of why a conservator (this person only controls the finances of the victim) would have any excuse whatsoever, for isolating the conserved individual. Guardians on the other hand, control everything and once the individual is guardianized they become chattel property. Meaning they become moveable property and goods. More

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