Young children in the Motley and Staples area deserve the best that we can give them. Week of the Young Child, April 10-16, is a time to recognize the needs of young children and thank the adults involved in their education and care.  Because 90 percent of a child’s brain development occurs i...

During the Clinton administration de-regulation continued under Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Harvard economics professor Larry Summers. In 1998 Citicorp merged with Travelers to form City Group, making them the largest financial service industry in the world.&nbs...

From the U.S. Department of Justice website. US Attorney General Eric Holder decided to do away with the Red White and Blue and replace it with a black banner.  Atop that banner are the words:” The common law is the will of mankind, issuing from the life of the people.”  That quote is ...

Tea Partiers are criticizing Obama's military move on Gaddafi which now puts Tea Partiers in an unintended alliance with Chavez and Putin who are defending Gaddafi.  If Obama had not moved to stop Gaddafi, the Tea Party's militants would have called Obama a coward. They loved Donald "Shock and ...

From age 17 to 31 I was incarcerated at least a dozen times for illegal behavior directly related to my alcoholism illness. I can safely say at least 90 percent of my fellow convicts were in the same boat.  I was guilt ridden, consumed by shame, extremely depressed, angry to the point of rage, ...

There is an easy way to solve the problem of litter in any downtown area. If there isn’t an ordinance regarding littering, create one. Define littering as throwing anything on the ground. Attach a fine of $100 and either hire a new officer to enforce it or stress to the existing officers the need ...

Steve Shellum retired on Thursday. I don’t know exactly what Steve’s official title was, but he was the guy in charge of taking care of the Brainerd High School athletic fields. Anyone who has ever attended a Brainerd High School outdoor athletic event could see the value of Steve’s work. Our ...

Brainerd again has the distinction of hosting the Minnesota Orchestra at Tornstrom Auditorium this Wednesday, April 7 at 7:30 p.m. It is a rare opportunity for a community our size to welcome a musical organization widely compared with other orchestras from New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, and ...

Imagine 20 hungry people in a group. Each person represents 5 percent of the group. One of them, Bill, gets an idea how they can feed themselves by combining their efforts. An agriculture project is organized, and work is divided up more or less evenly among the other 19. Some till the soil, some ge...

“Inside Job” — A Sony Documentary. The following is about how the global financial crisis started and why tens of millions of people globally lost their savings, jobs and homes. For decades the American financial market was stable and safe, then financial institutions, insurance giants and Wal...