27 Apr 2024

Joe Soucheray: New bike lanes won’t solve St. Paul’s problems

by | posted in: Society | 0

Just a few days ago, the least diverse city council in America unanimously passed a plan to add 163 miles of new protected bike lanes in St. Paul over the next 15 years. There currently are 65 miles of bikeways. The new 163 miles does not mean all new pavement, for that would be injurious to the Earth they are trying to save, but many of the new miles will be off-street, while other miles will be protected by concrete barriers.

Long-range plans call for the demolition of the Cathedral of St. Paul for a centralized “meet your neighbor bicycle staging and storage facility” for those without a lockable location, the closing of all north-south streets between Kellogg Boulevard and Interstate 94, the elimination of all parking lots inside the city limits, city-operated electric “chase” vehicles to patrol all 228 miles of bicycle-exclusive lanes for repairs and breakdowns, new district councils to be known as “wheel-ins” and tax subsidies for families purchasing more than two bicycles.

Summit Avenue, once thought to be historic and mindful of more halcyon days and worth saving, will become bicycle only. Bicycle bridges will be built over Lexington, Hamline, Fairview and Cleveland avenues, with Mississippi River Boulevard becoming “wheel free” by 2039. Walking only.

All of this is happening despite there being no evidence of a hue and cry whatsoever. We apparently are governed by a powerful unelected bicycle coalition who have found on the council willing partners. Anika Bowie, who did not live where she said she did when she filed to run last August and who now represents Ward 1, is particularly enthusiastic about the new plans. By switching to bicycle-only, she won’t be faced with the parking and traffic tickets she has accrued since 2021.

Curiously, it feels like many of us are not represented by this ambitious vision. For example, Cheniqua Johnson, who won the Ward 7 seat, where Jane Prince prevailed until her retirement, said she was “taken aback” by the number of responses she got from her constituents after more than a year of outreach by city staff on the St. Paul Bicycle Plan.

Three.

Johnson represents the Dayton’s Bluff, Battle Creek, Mounds Park, Highwood, Conway and Eastview neighborhoods, multiple thousands of people. And three people weighed in?

I emailed Johnson asking her to please call me. I had one question. I got a return email from “team Cheniqua” offering to connect me with Jimmy Shoemaker, St. Paul’s staff go-to for the bicycle plan. I didn’t necessarily want his answer.

Simple question. Doesn’t it seem likely, council member Johnson, that three responses after a year of proselytizing indicates that 163 miles of new bike lanes is the least of your constituents’ problems?

Might it be the least of the city’s problems? Of course, it is. We have pillaged streetlights, vacant tall buildings, shuttered small businesses, unsafe public transportation, car thefts, shootings, high prices for groceries and gas, unsustainable property taxes, jobs, baby needs a new pair of shoes.

Johnson said she was likely to vote for the bicycle plan because many low-income residents don’t have cars.

Apparently, it didn’t occur to her and her sisters on the council that three responses didn’t mean anything in the way of upending the grandiose plans. Didn’t even give them pause. Nor that not having a car or a family’s economic health wasn’t going to be fixed by a new bike lane.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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27 Apr 2024

Working Strategies: Résumé formatting tips

by | posted in: News | 0

Amy Lindgren

If you’ve written a résumé lately, you’ve undoubtedly struggled over the wording and content. Creating impact while summarizing years of experience is no easy task.

While these are important challenges to address, there’s another that might matter more: Formatting. That’s because formatting is the key to navigation and readability – and if your résumé isn’t readable, what’s the point of exquisite grammar and powerful content?

Last week’s column addressed the value of longer résumés, and the importance of not cramming your content to fit the one-page “ideal.” This week, it’s time to look at the do’s and don’ts of formatting your résumé, whatever its length.

Basic formatting guidelines

— Keep 1-inch margins when possible, to create a consistent look while leaving room for note-taking.

— Choose one font only. Times, Helvetica and Calibri are all good choices that are easily read by online systems and humans alike.

— Use two type sizes – one for the section headings and one for the content. A standard combination would be 10 or 11 point for the content and 11 or 12 point for the headings, with the headings being slightly larger than the content.

— Don’t over-emphasize headings. There are multiple ways to highlight section headings – bold or italic print, all caps, underlining, larger type, etc. To avoid visual cacophony, choose no more than two and apply the choice consistently to all section headings.

— Use consistent spacing. A good rule is to add one space between each entry in a section. That is, if you have two jobs in your Experience section, there should be one extra space between them. Then, add two spaces between each section. For example, if your Education section follows your Experience section, there should be two extra spaces between them.

— Use bullets sparingly. Or dashes, or whatever symbol you’ve chosen. These are meant for emphasis, so they lose their effectiveness if every line or entry is preceded with a bullet. If your bullet list is longer than five or six entries, it’s time to create subsections.

Advanced tips

— Don’t overuse lines or other graphic elements. Besides confusing some online systems, too much graphic input can distract the reader. Stick with one solid dark line near the top to separate your name and contact information from the résumé itself, to help the reader focus on the main content.

— Speaking of graphics – resist the temptation to add little telephones and other symbols to indicate the obvious. Trust that the reader can identify your email without a tiny envelope to point the way.

— Avoid tables and probably columns as well. These are excellent tools in the right hands but generally that’s not the case. Unfortunate results can include truncated information cramped into small boxes or unbalanced tables with one extra-long entry creating awkward spacing for the rest. Instead, use hand-set tabs and margin indents to create the horizontal spacing you’re seeking.

— Balance your white space. For example, one-word lists that run vertically will result in large pools of white space on the right side of the page. This can make the résumé feel disjointed. In these cases, try running the list horizontally, with items separated by bullets or extra spaces.

— Use color sparingly. One color, used as an accent, can be quite appealing – particularly when your résumé is read on a phone or computer screen. In this case, you might use color for the section headings, or for your name at the top of each page. But avoid using color for the content, as that can become tedious to read. Also, be sure the color you choose is dark enough to be easily visible if the résumé is printed.

— Photos? Probably not. Although readers already get clues about gender or race from a candidate’s name, photos can remove all doubt, opening the door for unconscious bias. Photos can also be space and data hogs, and sometimes gum up the works for electronic systems.

If this feels like a lot of rules, you might think the solution is to drop your information into a template and be done with it. Be careful! That can work, but it usually results in even more problems as you fight with the template’s pre-set formats.

Instead, just open a fresh page on your word processing software and type out each section without worrying about format. Then you (or a skilled friend) can go back and apply these guidelines to each section or to the entire document, as the case may be. It’s worth the trouble: Once you’ve created a clean, clear format, you’ll be surprised at how well your content stands out.

Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

27 Apr 2024

Jamelle Bouie: Is the president above the law? The answer is no.

by | posted in: Politics | 0

Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.

More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) — but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former president’s reckoning with the criminal legal system of the United States.

In delaying the trial, the Supreme Court may well have denied the public its right to know whether a former president, now vying to be the next president, is guilty of trying to subvert the sacred process of presidential succession: the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another that is the essence of representative democracy. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.

Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.

In other words, however the Supreme Court rules, it has egregiously abused its power.

It is difficult to overstate the radical contempt for republican government embodied in the former president’s notion that he can break the law without consequence or sanction on the grounds that he must have that right as chief executive. As Trump sees it, the president is sovereign, not the people. In his grotesque vision of executive power, the president is a king, unbound by law, chained only to the limits of his will.

This is nonsense. In a detailed amicus brief submitted in support of the government in Trump v. United States, 15 leading historians of the early American republic show the extent to which the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution rejected the idea of presidential immunity for crimes committed in office.

“Although the framers debated a variety of designs for the executive branch — ranging from a comparatively strong, unitary president to a comparatively weaker executive council — they all approached the issues with a deep-seated, anti-monarchical sentiment,” the brief states. “There is no evidence in the extensive historical record that any of the framers believed a former president should be immune from criminal prosecution. Such a concept would be inimical to the basic intentions, understandings, and experiences of the founding generation.”

The historians gather a bushel of quotes and examples from a who’s who of the revolutionary generation to prove the point. “In America the law is king,” Thomas Paine wrote in his landmark pamphlet, “Common Sense.” “For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

James Madison thought it “indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief magistrate.” The presidency was designed with accountability in mind.

Years later, speaking on the Senate floor, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina — a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia — said outright that he and his colleagues did not intend for the president to have any privileges or immunities: “No privilege of this kind was intended for your executive, nor any except that which I have mentioned for your legislature.”

What’s more, as the brief explains, ratification of the Constitution rested on the “express” promise that “the new president would be subject to criminal conviction.”

“His person is not so much protected as that of a member of the House of Representatives,” Tench Coxe wrote in one of the first published essays urging ratification of the Constitution, “for he may be proceeded against like any other man in the ordinary course of law.”

James Iredell, one of the first justices of the Supreme Court, told the North Carolina ratifying convention that if the president “commits any misdemeanor in office, he is impeachable, removable from office, and incapacitated to hold any office of honor, trust or profit.” And if he commits any crime, “he is punishable by the laws of his country, and in capital cases may be deprived of his life.”

Yes, you read that correctly. In his argument for the Constitution, one of the earliest appointees to the Supreme Court specified that in a capital case, the president could be tried, convicted and put to death.

If there were ever a subject on which to defer to the founding generation, it is on this question regarding the nature of the presidency. Is the president above the law? The answer is no. Is the president immune from criminal prosecution? Again, the answer is no. Any other conclusion represents a fundamental challenge to constitutional government.

I wish I had faith that the Supreme Court would rule unanimously against Trump. But having heard the arguments — having listened to Justice Brett Kavanaugh worry that prosecution could hamper the president and having heard Justice Samuel Alito suggest that we would face a destabilizing future of politically motivated prosecutions if Trump were to find himself on the receiving end of the full force of the law — my sense is that the Republican-appointed majority will try to make some distinction between official and unofficial acts and remand the case back to the trial court for further review, delaying a trial even further.

Rather than grapple with the situation at hand — a defeated president worked with his allies to try to overturn the results of an election he lost, eventually summoning a mob to try to subvert the peaceful transfer of power — the Republican-appointed majority worried about hypothetical prosecutions against hypothetical presidents who might try to stay in office against the will of the people if they aren’t placed above the law.

It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it.

Jamelle Bouie writes a column for the New York Times.

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27 Apr 2024

Common sense prevails in Feds’ lake sturgeon ruling

by | posted in: Adventure | 0

Common sense doesn’t always prevail, but it sure is nice when it does.

Such was the case Monday morning, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a news release saying it would not consider lake sturgeon for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Lake sturgeon such as this 60-inch specimen, caught Saturday, April 17, 2021, on the Rainy River, have become relatively common on Lake of the Woods and Rainy River, along with fish even larger. (Brad Dokken / Forum News Service)

The Center for Biological Diversity had pressured the FWS to list lake sturgeon for federal protection, citing drastic population declines in parts of the species’ range over the past century.

The FWS faced a court-ordered deadline of June 30 to decide, but announced its ruling April 22.

Hats off to the agency for its ruling, a 12-month finding showing that management efforts, among them fish stocking and removal of barriers such as low-head dams to fish passage, have contributed to “the conservation and resiliency of the species.”

Nowhere, perhaps, is that more apparent than in Minnesota – and especially on Lake of the Woods and Rainy River – where lake sturgeon have met short-term recovery goals set by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. The abundance of lake sturgeon larger than 40 inches in the Rainy River and portions of U.S. and Ontario waters of Lake of the Woods has increased from an estimated 16,910 in the late 1980s to about 92,000 in 2014.

That’s a nearly six-fold increase.

Similar success stories are playing out in the Red River Basin, where dozens upon dozens of lake sturgeon in May 2022 were observed spawning in the Upper Otter Tail River, the first documented sighting in a century of such an occurrence.

The DNR, along with the White Earth and Red Lake nations, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department and the FWS, among others, have partnered on stocking efforts in the Red River Basin for the past two decades, and the efforts are paying dividends.

Scott Gangl, fisheries management section leader for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department in Bismarck, might have said it best in a story I wrote in March, just weeks before Monday’s FWS ruling.

“As far as our perspective, it seems like (lake sturgeon) are in much better shape than they were 20 to 25 years ago, and I don’t know what could be done any better if they were listed,” Gangl said.

He’s right.

In more than two decades of writing about the outdoors, the recovery of lake sturgeon in our part of the world ranks among the most rewarding issues I’ve covered.

Time was, it was a big deal when someone caught a 50-inch sturgeon on the Rainy River, for example. These days, it takes a sturgeon pushing 70 inches or more to warrant mention.

I hadn’t even started my first cup of coffee Monday morning when the news release came out, and it was fun to hear the reaction from Kevin Hinrichs – aka “The Dutchman” – of Baudette, Minnesota. Hinrichs and his wife, Jenn, purchased Royal Dutchman Resort on the Rainy River in 2020 amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, and sturgeon anglers are a major part of their client base.

A ban on sturgeon fishing, had the FWS ruled that Endangered Species status was necessary, wouldn’t have been beyond the realm of possibility. Ontario doesn’t allow sturgeon fishing on its portion of Lake of the Woods and Rainy River, even though the species is recovering well.

The reason for that ban, as I reported in 2012, results from Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, which classifies lake sturgeon in three broad geographical regions. Lake sturgeon may be doing well in Lake of the Woods and Rainy River, but that’s not the case elsewhere in northwestern Ontario, the region in which the fishery falls.

Anglers haven’t been able to fish sturgeon on the Ontario side of Lake of the Woods and the Rainy River – just yards across the river from the Hinrichs’ resort – since 2009.

A similar ban would have been devastating to their business, Kevin Hinrichs said. The fear of such a ban, and the months of uncertainty that preceded Monday’s ruling, made for some tense times, he admits.

Hinrichs aggressively worked to spread the word on social media about the potential listing and the impact it would have, and lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Minn., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., both weighed in urging the FWS to side with science.

“I was holding my breath because in this world that we live in right now, nothing is set in stone and nothing is guaranteed,” Hinrichs said. “It seems like we’re going one direction one second and another the next.”

Now that the uncertainty is past, it’s time to focus on sturgeon fishing; springtime is prime time.

“It’s a big booster for our economy this time of year,” Hinrichs said. “I couldn’t be more happy with the outcome.”

Chalk one up for common sense.

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