minnesota

July 2019 will mark two years since Minnesota repealed its Prohibition-era ban on selling alcohol on Sundays.

On the heels of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Minnesota’s Governor Mark Dayton is proposing to fund at least part of his $46 billion, two-year budget proposal with about $320 million of state tax increases.

John Nothdurft and Donny Kendal present episode #108 of the In The Tank Podcast. Today’s podcast features work from the Manhattan Institute, the Tax Foundation, the American Action Network, and the Center of the American Experiment.

Yet another deadline in a congressional investigation into wrongdoing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has passed without movement.

In 2016, Minnesota became the 35th state to approve tax deductions on contributions made to 529 college savings plans. Some politicians in St. Paul can now appeal to youthful voters in time for November by using this legislative measure as political fodder. But in reality, Minnesota barely scratched the surface in helping alleviate the burden of rising college tuition costs.

North Carolina lawmakers recently backed away from a proposed bill that would have reformed the state’s occupational licensing laws. In testimony given before the state legislature’s Joint Legislative Administrative Procedure Oversight Committee, lobbyists convinced lawmakers to ditch plans to eliminate government licensing requirements for a dozen occupations and consolidate government licensing boards. The lobbyists argued removing government restrictions on occupations such as acupuncturists and athletic trainers would have endangered consumers’ health.

How affordable is the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare? One just needs to look at the state of Minnesota. The state’s health insurance marketplace illustrates some of the many pitfalls of the Affordable Care Act, which has been especially hard on millennials.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Adrian P. Wydeven, Coordinator of Timber Wolf Alliance, Northland College and a retired wildlife biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Wisconsin’s state wolf manager 1990 -2013. Wydeven joined Managing Editor H. Sterling Burnett to discuss a letter he co-authored signed by 26 wildlife management professionals and scientists sent to the Department of the Interior, urging it remove the great lakes gray wolf populations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin from the Endangered Species list.

In today’s edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast, Rep. Tara Mack, a Republican member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, representing District 57A (Apple Valley and Burnsville), joins managing editor Kenneth Artz to discuss the future of MNsure, the state’s troubled online health insurance exchange created under Obamacare.

There is a bill under consideration in the Minnesota Legislature that, unfortunately, is not likely to become law. The bill would change teacher tenure in the state and replace “last in, first out” practices regarding teacher layoffs. If passed, the legislation would effectively force school boards to judge teachers based on performance when layoffs occur, rather than seniority alone.

Publishing a study of tobacco-specific nitrosamines in American smokeless tobacco products (abstracthere), Dorothy Hatsukami and colleagues at the University of Minnesota called for the FDA to issue “regulations…to reduce levels of…NNK and NNN in smokeless tobacco products to the lowest levels possible.” The authors make illogical and unscientific claims in their article and media interviews (here).

Watch this excellent KSTP-TV story, which also mentions how The Heartland Institute (through the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) serves as a scientific counter to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Attention climate realists: You must check out the news report embedded below from Sept. 28 on KSTP-TV, the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, Minnesota.