They are shutting down for 24 hrs, over a workday…to “inspect the system”.
That leaves approximately 800,000 daily workday passengers SOL.
I don’t even want to think about what the impact of putting 500,000 more cars on the road tomorrow (3/16/16) will be. The impact to traffic will be worse than the blizzard dumping 3 ft of snow on the area just two short months ago. Since 53% of the riders on Metro are government workers, it may well wind up that there is a Federal Government shutdown as well.
Photo taken inside a DC Metro car during the incident at L’Enfant Station when an electrical feed to the train shorted out
The system has been plagued with numerous problems, both self inflicted, and by the fact that much of the infrastructure is 30-40 years old. Due to the self-inflicted problems the company is not able to keep pace with the repair work necessary to renovate the system. In particular, the electrical system is ancient on the older lines is beyond it’s projected lifecycle causing about a half dozen major incidents in the last year, with a passenger fatality on a stuck train due to smoke inhalation. Just Monday this week, another electrical failure stopped traffic on the system’s busiest tunnel system, shared by 3 lines. One of the lines is still not fully operational.
BTx3 is working from home tomorrow.
This is the section of tunnel which arced and caught fire last year resulting in a passenger fatality, just outside the L’Enfant Metro Station.
The entire D.C. Metro system will shut down for 24 hours starting at midnight and lasting for the entire day Wednesday for an emergency investigation, two sources tell News4.
Metro officials are expected to announce at 4 p.m. Tuesday that they need to inspect as many as 1,200 pieces of equipment, as News4’s Tom Sherwood was first to report.
Spurred on by racist rhetoric, and calls for vicious attacks on lone protesters at Trump campaign rallies – the folks in Chicago decided to push back in what may well be the first of a series of major counter protests.
This ain’t America of the 1920’s. or 1950’s anymore where going after Minorities was a safe bet because they as a group were less than 20% of the population. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims, and other minority groups now make up 40% of the population. And I have tried to explain to some of my recalcitrant friends and associates – there is no shortage of “brass cajones” on the side of folks who oppose Trump’s racism.
• Thousands of protesters show up with tickets to rally • At least two officers, two attendees injured • Several fights, heated arguments, Nazi salutes, five arrests • Trump still insists: ‘I’m a unifier’
A Donald Trump rally that attracted thousands to the University of Illinois at Chicago was abruptly canceled Friday night amid his campaign’s security fears, sparking shouting and scuffling between the candidate’s fans and anti-Trump protesters.
Chicago police said two officers were hurt, including one who was struck on the head with a bottle. At least two other people were taken to a hospital with minor injuries, according to news reports. Five people were arrested.
The rally was called off about a half-hour after the scheduled 6 p.m. start time, after thousands of Trump fans and anti-Trump protesters packed into the free event, which required online registration. Thousands more gathered outside, surrounded by a police perimeter, and people became more vocal as the starting time approached.
Chaos broke out when the cancelation was announced, according to media reports from inside the pavilion. CBS News said reporter Sopan Deb, who covers the Trump campaign, was detained by authorities.
“I have never seen anything like it. It’s amazing,” CNN’s Jim Acosta said. The network said approximately 8,500 people were at the rally.
Violence has become a recurring theme at Trump events, with protesters beingbeaten, shoved, kicked and verbally abused. Trump has encouraged supporters to attack protesters, saying they should “hit back” more often, and has offered to pay legal fees if they do.
Clashes between protesters and Trump supporters at a St. Louis rally earlier on Friday led to at least one injury and 32 arrests. On Wednesday, a Trump supporter at a North Carolina rally sucker-punched a protester and was charged with assault and battery.
Trump said later Friday on CNN he had “no regrets” about his tough talk, including a remark that protesters, in the old days, would be “carried out on stretchers.”
“You can’t even have a rally anymore in this country,” Trump complained on MSNBC shortly after the Chicago cancelation. He added:“There’s a lot of anger in the country, and it’s very sad to see.”
In a subsequent appearance on Fox News, Trump told Greta Van Susteren it was “a good decision” to cancel the rally.
“I am a unifier,” he said, even though thousands had gathered at the event to protest him.
Fun Graphic, considering the blizzard in my area today. Yeah – we have about 30″ right now, and still coming down at my house. The neighborhood snow-bunnies rushed out this AM to shovel the walk and clean their cars…The problem being it has snowed another 12″ since then, and with the 40 MPH wind whipping – erased most of their labor.
The geography of the snow day, courtesy of Reddit user Alexandr Trubetskoy
How much snow does it take to close the schools?
Weather-related school closings are a constant source of anxiety this time of year. Sometimes the anxiety is generational: “They never canceled school in my day,” parents and grandparents complain when a new snow day gets announced. Sometimes it’s regional. D.C. isn’t as “flinty” as Chicago, President Obama sighed when schools closed during his first winter in the capital. Northernerswatched in puzzlement as two inches of snow crippled Atlanta earlier this week.
A new map from Reddit user Alexandr Trubetskoy (a.k.a. atrubetskoy) is sure to stoke this regional competition. Using data “taken from hundreds of various points from user responses…interpolated using NOAA’s average annual snowfall days map,” Trubetskoy made a map showing how much snow it typically takes to close schools in the U.S. and Canada. Notice that for much of the southern U.S., all it takes is “any snow” to shut schools down. For the Upper Midwest and Canada, two feet of snow are required for a closure.
Trubetskoy includes the following clarifications:
In much of the Midwest and Great Plains, school closing often depends more on wind chill and temperature than on snow accumulation (“cold days”). Thus, this map may be misleading in those areas.
Many jurisdictions in California and other western states have significantly varied snowfall, depending on elevation. This makes it difficult to find an “average” number, or often makes it misleading.
Urban areas like Chicago and New York have more resources to clear snow and often need more to cause closings.
Clarification: The lightest green says “any snow” but also includes merely the prediction of snow.
Clarification II: This is snow accumulation over 24 hours/overnight.
The 16-day shutdown of the federal government has finally come to an end, but many Americans are still furious about what they perceive as a GOP-sponsored gambit to defund the Affordable Care Act.
One outlet for that fury is a petition from the progressive MoveOn.org that calls for the U.S. Department of Justice to arrest and try Republican leaders, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio), for “the crime of seditious conspiracy against the United States of America.”
The petition argues that “the House GOP leadership’s use of the Hastert Rule and H. Res 368 to shut down the government and threaten the US economy with default is an attempt to extort the United States government into altering or abolishing the Affordable Care Act, and thus, is self-evidently a seditious conspiracy.” (The U.S. Codedefines “seditious conspiracy” in part as any conspiracy “to oppose by force the authority [of the U.S. government], or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”)
With more than 21,000 signatures to date, the petition reflects a wider revulsion over the government’s costly political meltdown — which, among other consequences, resulted in furloughs for 800,000 federal workers, the shuttering of some Head Start programs, the suspension of federal health and safety inspections, and the loss of $24 billion in economic activity.
At the end of the standoff, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was among those still angered by the shutdown, although not so angry as to accuse anyone of being an enemy of the state.
“I’m glad that the government shutdown has ended, and I’m relieved that we didn’t default on our debt. But I want to be clear: I am NOT celebrating tonight,” the senator wrote in an email Wednesday night. “So I’m relieved, but I’m also pretty angry.”
If you are over 55 and grew up in the Southern US – you more than likely remember segregation and Jim Crow having lived through the last parts of it. Ranger Soskin at 92 years of age has seen much of the change in this country starting before WWII. Her insights are fascinating…
The nation’s oldest full-time national park ranger, who works at the Rosie the Riveter museum in Richmond, Calif., recently joined the ranks of the furloughed because of the ongoing U.S. government shutdown.
Betty Reid Soskin, 92, is a ranger at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Northern California.
“At 92, I am very sensitive to the passage of time. We learned about the furlough gradually,” Soskin said told the Associated Press last week. “When it came at midnight (on) October 1, it seemed like a major interruption in my life because I don’t have time and these young folks were wasting my time, precious time.”
To make matters worse for Soskin, California officials refused Friday to use state money to open national parks, which means no reprieve for Soskin.
Soskin works three days a week as a tour guide and two days in the administrative office at the park that honors not only the famous Rosie but also tells the story of the home front during WWII.
Soskin became a park ranger seven years ago and leads tours at the park and museum that honors the women who worked in factories during wartime.But that all changed last week when the government shut down.
“It was like hitting a wall to come out from under my hat and back into civvies,” Soskin said.
She said she feels uncertain when she watches the developments between lawmakers in Washington, D.C., unfold on television.
“There are times when I feel like the only grown-up in the room. It’s a little disconcerting to feel like no one’s in charge. That’s the feeling I have when I watch the news,” Soskin said. “There are not enough wiser heads in Washington to determine where we should go. That uncertainty is unnerving.”
The National Park Service confirms that Soskin is the oldest full-time park ranger. At 93, Lyle Ruterbories, who works at Glacier National Park in Kintla Lake, Mont., near the U.S. and Canadian border, is the oldest seasonal ranger the park service is aware of, park service spokesman Jeff Olson told the AP this week.
Great article here with the most detailed history in one place I have seen about racial politics and how the party’s switched positions. Racism has been intertwined with policy at the Federal Level since before the Civil War. This article provides a great background on the what, who, and why…
This isn’t an article about how Republicans shut down the government because they hate that the President is black. This is an article about how racism caused the government to shut down and the U.S. to teeter on the brink of an unprecedented and catastrophic default.
I understand if you’re confused. A lot of people think the only way that racism “causes” anything is when one person intentionally discriminates against another because of their color of their skin. But that’s wrong. And understanding the history of the forces that produced the current crisis will lay plain the more subtle, but fundamental, ways in which race and racism formed the scaffolding that structures American politics — even as explicit battles over race receded from our daily politics.
The roots of the current crisis began with the New Deal — but not in the way you might think. They grew gradually, with two big bursts in the 1960s and the 1980s reflecting decades of more graduated change. And the tree that grew out of them, the Tea Party and a radically polarized Republican Party, bore the shutdown as its fruits.
How The New Deal Drove The Racists Out
In 1938, Sen. Josiah W. Bailey (D-NC) filibustered his own party’s bill. Well, part of his party — Northern Democrats, together with Northern Republicans, were pushing an federal anti-lynching bill. Bailey promised that Southern Democrats would teach “a lesson which no political party will ever again forget” to their Northern co-partisans if they “come down to North Carolina and try to impose your will upon us about the Negro:”
Just as when the Republicans in the [1860s] undertook to impose the national will upon us with respect to the Negro, we resented it and hated that party with a hatred that has outlasted generations; we hated it beyond measure; we hated it more than was right for us and more than was just; we hated it because of what it had done to us, because of the wrong it undertook to put upon us; and just as that same policy destroyed the hope of the Republican party in the South, that same policy adopted by the Democratic party will destroy the Democratic party in the South.
Bailey’s rage at the affront to white supremacy was born of surprise. Until 1932, the South had dominated the Democratic Party, which had consistently stood for the South’s key regional regional interest — keeping blacks in literal or figurative fetters — since before the Civil War.
But the Depression-caused backlash against Republican incumbents that swept New Yorker Franklin Roosevelt into the White House and a vast Democratic majority into Congress also made Southerners a minority in the party for the first time in its history. The South still controlled the most influential committee leadership votes in Congress, exercising a “Southern Veto” on race policy. The veto forced FDR to stay out of the anti-lynching fight (“If I come out for the anti-lynching bill, [the southerners] will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing,” he lamented).
The veto also injected racism into the New Deal. Social Security was “established on a racially invidious, albeit officially race-neutral, basis by excluding from coverage agricultural and domestic workers, the categories that included nearly 90 percent of black workers at the time,” University of Pennsylvania political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. wrote in The Nation. “Others, like the [Civilian Conservation Corps], operated on Jim Crow principles. Roosevelt’s housing policy put the weight of federal support behind creating and reproducing an overtly racially exclusive residential housing industry.” Read the rest of this entry »
Moved a while back, and had to seriously downsize. Amazing what you collect through the years!
One of the “victims” of that was my mega-stereo… There is just nowhere rational that a single guy is going to live that will fit refrigerator sized speakers…
Damn.
So out with the Klipshs went the Conrad Johnson amps, the backup Nakamichi Dragon…The rock-a-small-stadium subs…
It was PAINFUL!
Fortunately I figured out I could keep a few things…On my way to find a tall building to leap from.
With a collection of about 1500 albums…I kept one of the turntables. My venerable Denon 62L (Forget lugging the concrete base of the other table…Don’t ask…)
I sold the tube amp (bad move), but kept a couple of Luxmans (The ones before they got bought and trashed by crappy Alpine) and capable of powering my Infinity Kappa 8s (Don’t try this with most of your modern amps, these puppies will eat them and spit them out as they need about 200 Watts each in reserve power to be happy).The good news is Luxman (and McIntosh and NY Moscode) is back after a reverse IPO into capable hands. Unfortunately, they appear to be trying to pay for the entire IPO off the the sale price of the first two amps…I’ll keep my old babies running, Thank You.
Somehow the needle on the turntable got broken in the move. Now a needle on these things can set you back the cost of an iPod…And if you get crazy – the cost of an iPad…128G (Don’t believe me?). I thought prices had gone down, until I went on one of the Audio forums and learned about $400,000 Stereo systems! Checked on ebay…And the prices were stunning. Found a reasonable deal on a modest unit, and finally got it installed as one of my projects for the weekend.
Proud that my mechanical ability hasn’t failed me yet in a autotune world, In honor of the shutdown, I thought I’d listen to a little “Old Skool” from the Poet/Prophet…
This was the breakout album for Gil Scott Heron. And the lyrics eerily reflect today, even though the events they speak of are of yesteryear…
From “Winter in America”
…The Constitution
A noble piece of paper
With free society
Struggled but it died in vain
And now Democracy is ragtime on the corner
Hoping for some rain
Looks like it’s hoping
Hoping for some rain
And I see the robins
Perched in barren treetops
Watching last-ditch racists marching across the floor
But just like the peace sign that vanished in our dreams
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow
And now it’s winter
It’s winter in America
And all of the healers have been killed
Or betrayed
Yeah, but the people know, people know
It’s winter, Lord knows
It’s winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
Save your souls
From Winter in America
And now it’s winter
Winter in America
And all of the healers done been killed or sent away
Yeah, and the people know, people know
It’s winter
Winter in America
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows, nobody knows
And ain’t nobody fighting
Cause nobody knows what to save…
From “H20Gate Blues”
…How long will the citizens sit and wait?
It’s looking like Europe in ’38
Did they move to stop Hitler before it was too late? (no…)
How long. America before the consequences of
Keeping the school systems segregated
Allowing the press to be intimidated
Watching the price of everything soar
And hearing complaints ’cause the rich want more? (Alright!)
It seems that MacBeth, and not his lady, went mad
We’ve let him eliminate the whole middle class
The dollar’s the only thing we can’t inflate
While the poor go on without a new minimum wage…
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any crazier in DC. First we get the government shut down by right wing terrorist whackjobs, masquerading as American legislators…
Federal agents trying to stop the black Infiniti speeding between the White House and the U.S. Capitol fired seven shots at an unarmed driver with a toddler in the car as it rushed away from them, an uncommon tactic that occurred during a highly unusual chase.
A total of at least 17 shots were fired at two locations Thursday afternoon by two law enforcement agencies — the U.S. Capitol Police and the U.S. Secret Service. The final shots, near the Hart Senate Office Building, killed 34-year-old Miriam Carey of Connecticut, who police said had tried to ram through a security barrier at the White House, knocked over a uniformed Secret Service agent, hit cruisers and breached the outer security perimeter of the Capitol grounds.
And then this… A guy (with help) setting himself on fire on the National Mall.
Joggers and passerby try and extinguish flames with their shirts…
This one is somewhat reminiscent of Buddhist Monks during the Vietnam War, setting themselves afire to protest the War. To this point there doesn’t appear to be any political cause, nor have police found a motive. Unfortunately neither of the deceased appear to be from the band of terrorists holding Congress hostage. It seems that sometime after Raygun’s guns for drugs deal, treason became an un-prosecutable crime in this town for anyone above the level of first lieutenant….
Were it not so, the tarred and feathered remains of a certain Senator from Texas and his crew would be decorating the lampposts along Constitution Avenue about now.
A man was in critical condition Friday night after he poured gasoline on his body and lit himself on fire on the National Mall.
Flames and smoke from the self-immolating man near 7th Street and Jefferson Drive, SW, were visible from the Capitol, where some staffers watched the scene from west facing windows, just a day after a car chase that ended with the shooting death of a woman just outside the Hart Senate Office Building.
The incident happened at about 4:30 p.m. on Friday in between the Air and Space Museum and the National Gallery. Passing joggers rushed to the man’s aid, several ripping off their shirts to help beat out the flames that burned 80% of his body, ABC reports.
“I’m not aware of any signage or any articulation of any causes,” said Lt. Pamela Smith of the U.S. Park Police, which has teamed up with the D.C. police department.
Tommy Hess, a tourist visiting his brother, said he was on the Mall, “milling around, because everything is closed due to the shutdown.”
“I never expected to see anything like that,” Hess said. “It’s crazy.”
Katy Scheflen, a furloughed civil rights attorney in the Justice Department, said she stopped because she saw “a guy with a tripod set up.”
Scheflen said another man, who she thought the tripod with a camera was filming, then took a red can of gasoline, poured it over his head.
“At that point we didn’t know what was going, maybe it was some sort of stage protest,” Scheflen said. “And then he set himself on fire and went up in flames,” she said. “Whoosh.”
The following is a list of what will shut down tomorrow if and agreement is not reached on the debt ceiling… Something between 1.5 and 2 million people will be laid off.Only about 800,000 of that is Federal workers. The bulk of the layoffs will be in the 3 million or so federal contract workers, affecting small, medium and large companies. Estimated costs to taxpayers will be in the $50 million to $100 million a day range, not counting what happens in financial markets.
U.S. Postal Service – OPEN
Mail will continue to be delivered, as the U.S. Postal Service is an independent agency.MORE INFO
National parks – CLOSED
“Effective immediately upon a lapse in appropriations, the National Park Service will take all necessary steps to close and secure national park facilities and grounds.”MORE INFO
Passport offices – PROBABLY OPEN
“Consular operations domestically and overseas will remain 100% operational as long as there are sufficient fees to support operations. However, if a passport agency is located in a government building affected by a lapse in appropriations, the facility may become unsupported.”MORE INFO
National zoo, all Federal Facilities (National Aquarium, National Arboretum, National Archives, Smithsonian, National Gallery of Art etc) – CLOSED
The Smithsonian-run National Zoo will close, and none of its live animal cameras will be broadcast, including the popular baby panda feed.MORE INFO
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – OPEN
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and unemployment insurance — benefits considered mandatory spending — would be paid. But new applicants might not have their applications processed until the government reopened.MORE INFO
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – CLOSED
Export-Import Bank of the United States – CLOSED
Federal Communications Commission – CLOSED
FDIC Office of Inspector General – CLOSED
Federal Election Commission- CLOSED
Federal Labor Relations Authority – CLOSED
Federal Trade Commission – CLOSED
Millennium Challenge Corporation – CLOSED
National Science Foundation – CLOSED
U.S. courts – Open for 10 Days
Civilian military workers (Department of Defense) – CLOSED (About 800,000 will be furloughed)
Commodity Futures Trading Commission – CLOSED
Consumer Product Safety Commission – CLOSED
Department of Education – CLOSED
Department of Interior – CLOSED
Department of Justice – Partially CLOSED
Department of Labor – Partially CLOSED
Department of Commerce Partially CLOSED
Department of Energy – Partially CLOSED
Department of Transportation – Partially CLOSE
Department of Homeland Security – Partially CLOSED
Executive Office of the President – Partially CLOSED
General Services Administration – Partially CLOSED
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – Partially CLOSED
Treasury – Partially CLOSED
Small Business Administration – Partially CLOSED
Public schools – OPEN
While public schools will remain open, the U.S. Education Department will stop most of its operations. Among other things, payment of Pell Grants and Direct Student Loans could be delayed.MORE INFO
Government Contractors – Many Closed
Anyone with a T&M type contract will not be able to do work for the gvernment, Whether the companies decide to furlough workers is up to them. Even if a contract is fully funded, contractor employees might be in a jam if they work in a federal building that is closed or with federal workers who are furloughed because of the shutdown.MORE INFO
U.S. Capitol – CLOSED
Public tours of the U.S. Capitol will be suspended in the event of a government shutdown.MORE INFO
Federal courts – OPEN
According to Judge John D. Bates, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, federal courts could continue to operate for approximately two weeks with reserve funds.MORE INFO
Immigration procedures – PROBABLY OPEN
The Department of Homeland Security will no longer operate its E-Verify program, which means that businesses will not be able to check on the legal immigration status of prospective employees during the shutdown. Other fee-based immigration services should continue.MORE INFO
WIC program – CLOSED
The WIC program, which provides food to 8.9 million low-income women and children, would be out of money, its supporters say.MORE INFO
VA disability claims – CLOSED
All VA medical facilities would remain open for inpatient and outpatient care, but benefits programs overseen by the VA would probably be affected by a shutdown.MORE INFO
USDA said funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — formerly known as food stamps — will continue in October under authority granted by the 2009 stimulus bill.MORE INFO
Airports – OPEN
Air traffic controllers and baggage screeners are considered essential, so planes will fly.MORE INFO
IRS – PROBABLY CLOSED
Tax filers facing an Oct. 15 deadline would find the phone lines at the Internal Revenue Service dead.MORE INFO
Food inspectors – OPEN
Meat and poultry inspectors will keep working.MORE INFO
Patent and Trademark Office – OPEN
The Department of Commerce will maintain patent and trademark application processing during the shutdown.MORE INFO
Amtrak – OPEN
Amtrak officials have said trains will continue to run.MORE INFO
Another Tea Bagger effort at Union busting has led to the shutdown…
More of those Tea Bagger "principles" at Work
Dispute over FAA halts more than 250 airport projects
The partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration has halted more than 250 aviation development projects and caused thousands of construction workers to lose their jobs, the FAA and the construction industry say.
The projects, which were valued at $10.5 billion when they began, include radar systems to prevent runway and taxiway collisions at airports, installation of runway safety lights and construction of air-traffic control towers and facilities.
About 24,000 construction workers — in an industry already hit hard by the recession — have lost work or their jobs because of the projects’ suspension, says Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the Associated General Contractors of America. The trade group says the construction industry’s unemployment rate was 16% in June when jobs totaled 5.5 million — 2.2 million less than the industry’s all-time high in April 2006.
The halt of aviation development projects also jeopardizes 46,000 other jobs in businesses related to construction, the group says.
The FAA’s partial shutdown is a result of an FAA funding standoff between the House and Senate, and their inability to reach an agreement to re-authorize the agency’s operations.
The dispute has also led to furloughs of nearly 4,000 FAA employees and threatens to cost the government more than $1 billion in revenue from uncollected airline ticket taxes if Congress doesn’t solve the problem until lawmakers return to Washington in September.
President Obama urged Congress to extend the FAA’s operating authority. The standoff involves House Republicans’ efforts to change an airline labor rule to make it more difficult for employees to unionize and proposed cuts of $16.5 million in airline service subsidies to rural communities. Senate Democrats oppose both.
Hundreds of bars, restaurants and stores across Minnesota are running out of beer and alcohol and others may soon run out of cigarettes — a subtle and largely unforeseen consequence of a state government shutdown.
In the days leading up to the shutdown, thousands of outlets scrambled to renew their state-issued liquor purchasing cards. Many of them did not make it.
Now, with no end in sight to the shutdown, they face a summer of fast-dwindling alcohol supplies and a bottom line that looks increasingly bleak…
DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and GOP legislative leaders announced Thursday evening they have reached a budget deal to end a two week government shutdown.
After a three-hour meeting with GOP leaders, Dayton said the shutdown will be done “very soon, within days.”
Dayton agreed to drop his insistence on a tax hike and accept the Republican offer to borrow money to balance the budget.
But the governor said the deal must include a $500 million bonding package for new building projects around the state, withdrawal of the divisive social issue proposals now threaded through Republican spending bills, and elimination of the GOP proposal to reduce the state workforce by 15 percent.
House Speaker Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, said he will have the votes in the House to pass the agreement.
Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, R-Buffalo, agreed. “We believe the caucus will ultimately support this.”
President Obama – I have a solution for you!
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