Raising bus fares stands in the way of our larger goal to develop a transit system that ensures more people access to the mobility they need.

Barb Thoman, Transit for Livable Communities, Special to Minnesota 2020

The Twin Cities region faces budget shortfalls as far as the eye can see for urban and suburban bus operations. The primary funding source for transit is a sales tax on vehicle purchases. But vehicle sales are down, and so is the funding for transit. These shortfalls come at a time when transit ridership is at record highs and many peak-hour buses are filled to capacity.

For the region, the projected shortfall is $45 million in 2009, $42 million in 2010 and $30 million in 2011. The 2009 deficit was reduced to $15 million when $30 million from the new quarter-cent regional sales tax for transitways was allocated to bus operations. The projected shortfalls represent about 10 percent of transit agency budgets.

The Metropolitan Council is proposing fare increases for bus and rail service to close the gap - 25 cents this year and possibly 50 cents more in 2009. The council held hearings this month on the proposed hikes and will accept written comments through Friday (August 22).

If the region's transit fares go up 25 cents, we will have some of the highest peak-hour rates in the nation -- $2.25 for local service, $3 for express. Only four of the 20 largest metropolitan areas have peak hour fares of $2.25 more - and in those regions, it buys you access to much larger and more robust transit systems. In our region, the higher fares will only cover a shortfall - they won't grow the bus system.

"How a person is labeled reflects how a person is treated by a society. This is not a silly issue over politically correct terminology."--Sherry Gray

Tim Shriver, Washington Post, in Patricia E. Bauer

Ben Stiller as Simple Jack in Dreamworks Tropic Thunder

Special Olympics Chairman Timothy Shriver writes in the Washington Post that he has not yet been permitted to see “Tropic Thunder.” But on the basis of previews, excerpts and written accounts, he concludes that the film is “an unchecked assault on the humanity of people with intellectual disabilities — an affront to dignity, hope and respect.”

Shriver objects to a world in which people with intellectual disabilities routinely face discrimination, abuse, insult and institutionalization, are denied medical treatment and excluded from social movements. He cites Gallup poll data that found most Americans don’t want a person with an intellectual disability in their child’s school.

The use of language, he says, perpetuates and amplifies the public view that these people are “hopeless.”

"Sadly, they’re such an easy target that many people don’t realize whom they are making fun of when they use the word “retard.” Most people just think it’s funny. “Stupid, idiot, moron, retard.” Ha, ha, ha.

"I know: I could be too sensitive. But I was taught that mean isn’t funny.

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Nick Coleman, Star Tribune | MN

Joan Kennedy kissed her husband, Richard Steele, after they exchanged wedding vows Friday at River Valley Christian Church in Lake Elmo. “Everybody wanted to care for Dick,” said Kennedy, who used to be Steele’s caregiver. Steele was struck with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, nearly 20 years ago.

When they heard of her engagement, lots of people, including friends and family members, tried to talk Joan Kennedy out of marrying Dickie Steele.

He was in a wheelchair. Unable to speak, fed through a tube, using a machine to help him breathe. With a grim prognosis.

Joan had known it might get complicated, right from the start.

"He had this fabulous smile, and a great twinkle in his eyes," she recalls. "The first thought that went through my mind when I met him was, 'Uh-oh, stay away from that one. He's trouble.'"

They met in 1999, when Joan showed up to begin work as a caregiver for Richard Steele, a formerly vigorous construction worker who was living at a St. Paul health care facility after being stricken with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Most people with ALS, a progressive neurological disorder, die within five years. By the time Joan met him, Dickie, now 53, had already defied some long odds, surviving for a decade and keeping his sense of humor and upbeat outlook alive.

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The ethanol scam shows that corporate, market-based "solutions" to global warming and oil dependence are no solution at all.

Nicole Colson, CounterPunch

At first glance, it seems like common sense.

Unless you're delusional or in the pay of the energy industry, you know that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming and destructive climate change that is already wreaking havoc around the globe. Not to mention that fossil fuels are a limited resource, costly to extract and refine, and increasingly sought-after by competing nations.

So if a more environmentally friendly fuel could be derived from renewable plant-based sources, wouldn't it be logical to make the switch?

This is the justification for the recent boom in biofuel production in the U.S. and around the globe. Since biofuels (which can be made from corn, sugar cane, soybeans or other organic sources) are produced from "renewable resources," goes the argument, they can go a long way to helping break America from its 21-million-barrels-a-day oil habit and provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

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Tired of breathing poisoned air, immigrant workers in California's Central Valley are taking science into their own hands.

Rebecca Clarren, Orion Magazine

Teresa Avina won’t open the windows or door of her small apartment, despite a heat that plagues the soul. On the kitchen table, beside two jugs of bottled water, a small, green, electric fan pushes thick air around the room.

“What good is the wind?” she asks, glancing out the window at the breeze that flutters the trees in her front yard. “It’s all poison.”

When Aviña, sixty-four, first moved to Huron, California, from Ensenada, Mexico, eleven years ago, the planes that swooped low in the sky, close to the roof sometimes, fascinated her. She’d run outside to watch them fly to the end of her block, where they would drop pesticides like rain onto the cotton fields below.

“I would go outside and look at them without fear. I didn’t know I could get sick,” says Aviña in Spanish. “Now when I see planes, I run inside and shut the windows. Now I worry about breathing the air. I worry about the kids playing outside.”

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