As of June 26th, 32 bars have qualified.

However, many bar owners are not excited about paying the $2500 fee – is anyone surprised?

The St. Paul City Council on Wednesday voted 6 to 1 to approve an ordinance that will allow bars that meet certain conditions and pay $2,500 to stay open late during the four nights of the event, to be held Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center.

About 32 bars, maybe more if they can find a way to add more seats, are eligible. There are 257 places that sell liquor, wine and beer in the city. About 90 currently have licenses to stay open until 2 a.m.

Bars must already have a 2 a.m. closing license to be eligible, and they must have at least 291 seats or be in downtown or commercial development districts, such as Selby-Dale.

If a bar without a 4 a.m. license is caught serving after 2 a.m., it faces a $2,000 fine per incident.

Don’t forget – that the crowds will not be homogeneous. In addition to the 35,000 RNC attendees, there will also be upwards of 100,000 protesters here during the convention. It sounds like it will be an exciting event! Even Minnetonka is donating a couple police officers to help keep the peace in St. Paul.

Minnehaha Creek is a small tributary of the Mississippi River that runs from Lake Minnetonka, about 10 miles west of downtown, through the southwest suburbs of Minneapolis and ends just after the falls at the Mississippi River. Minnehaha Creek is a popular canoe route in the summer months.

Minnehaha Falls

There is also a Minnehaha Falls in Georgia.

Nevertheless, the Twin Cities Daily Planet investigates all the hurdles and red tape one must go through in order to own a wind farm these days.  They find it’s not as easy for John Doe as it is for big utilities.  Most Americans don’t qualify for the wind farm tax credits that large utilities do.

The ideas the author promotes sound a lot like the Distributism (or distributionism) economic philosophy formulated by G. K. Chesterton.

According to distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of a few state bureaucrats (some forms of socialism) or wealthy private individuals (capitalism). A summary of distributism is found in Chesterton’s statement: “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

Pioneer Press: The substance is about 200 times as sweet as sugar, contains no calories and has some advantages to the food industry because it doesn’t degrade when heated or when mixed with other foods. Stevia is commonly used in Japan and parts of South America, but it’s rare in this country outside of health-food circles.

Cargill, based in Wayzata, MN, is the nation’s second largest private company, employs 158,000 employees worldwide and is involved in all sorts of agricultural operations: including grain, cotton, sugar, petroleum and financial trading; food processing; futures brokering; health and pharmaceutical products; agricultural services such as animal feed and crop protection; and industrial products including biofuels, oils and lubricants, starches, and salt.

The Wikipedia profile includes this note about Cargill’s political end economic views:

Cargill is an active proponent of free trade policies. It lobbied for China’s membership in WTO, as well as for increased trade with Cuba and Brazil. Cargill’s position is based on its strong support of neo-liberal economic principles. First, lesser trade barriers in countries where Cargill does business will lower prices on Cargill’s products, and likely increase their volume of business. Second, the decreases in the cost of food in developing countries theoretically result indirectly in higher income per capita but lower income for local farmers. Cargill benefits from increases in consumer income, because better-paid consumers become inclined to eat a diet higher in wheat, protein, vegetable oil, and processed foods. This improves opportunities for Cargill to sell its products. Cargill’s economists have reasoned that this is true of the lower income countries in particular. As a developing country grows from $1,000 to $6,000 in mean income per capita, Cargill expects the greatest profit growth from its businesses in that country.

Cargill has maintained a 100% rating on the Corporate Equality Index (CEI) released by the Human Rights Campaign since 2003.

Other random facts:

- It is responsible for 25 percent of all United States grain exports.
- It supplies approximately 22 percent of the United States domestic meat market.
- The company exports more product from Argentina than any other company.
- It is the largest poultry producer in Thailand.
- All of the eggs used in McDonald’s restaurants in the United States pass through Cargill’s plants.

This is not ‘Nam. There are rules.

Chillin’

Driving on a huge lake gives you that same feeling you get on a huge roller coaster. You think in the back of your head that you might fall through a crack in the ice and freeze to death while at the same time you reassure yourself that there is the chance of that happening is practically zero and besides, there are so many other people doing it, so don’t worry!

State law says that all ice fishing houses have to be off the lake by April 1st, so if you want to come see one, you had better hurry!

Besides the ice fishing there was snowmobiling, four-wheeling, motorcycle racing end even one person para-gliding.

More pictures here:

Ice Fishing and other Snow Sports on Lake Minnetonka, 2008-01-27