The K Street Shuffle: Tool shows how Minnesota companies influence political process

The Sunlight Foundation just launched a new tool called the Influence Explorer that breaks down public data on how companies try to influence the political process.

The data includes campaign donations, PAC donations and lobbyist bundling.

Here are some local examples:

Target Corporation has lobbied against labor, food standards and credit card fees. The corporation gave over $6.3 million in political donations between 1989-2012 (click image to enlarge).

Source: Income Explorer, Sunlight Foundation

3M has given $4.2 million to political campaigns between 1989-2012, most of it, 67 percent to Republicans.

Source: Influence Explorer, Sunlight Foundation

Best Buy has also given $1.8 million between 1989-2012, much of it in later years. That company too has given disproportionately to Republicans, with 65 percent going to the GOP and only 12 to Democrats (the rest are identified as other). The company lobbied on issues like the Wall Street Transparency and Accountability Act of 2010 and the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

Source: Influence Explorer, Sunlight Foundation

At the current site of Minnehaha Liquor...

I just realized that I'm the sort of person who carries their Historical Society library card at all times.

Minneapolis-Moline, Lake Street and Minnehaha, Minneapolis.

Photograph Collection ca. 1895 (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Do I want to make tea at the BBC? Yes.

(Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

On Wednesday I received a call from executives at the American Independent News Network, which owned the longrunning news site I briefly ran, the Minnesota Independent.

Following a little media furor in which I played the uncomfortable role of being one of the subjects of a story, I find myself among the ranks of unemployed journalists again.

As I joked to a former boss: It's not that bad, I live very close to a county food stamp office.

I'm not interested in trashing my former employer, although I might not be happy that they chose to close down the sites, or the way they went about it.

But a question from a reporter made me want to articulate why we do this journalism thing. That's the sort of question that gets lost in the day-to-day of trying to rework blocks of words into something that is, at the least, comprehensible. Before someone else points it out, I should: it's naive, I know.

Although the Independent was widely described as lefty, I always thought of it as a throwback to the great American tradition of muckraking (although I realize not all MnIndy writers throughout the years thought of it similarly). Maybe I just feel this way because higher-ups mostly left me alone to work on the projects I was interested in, both as a freelancer and staff writer.

Like all Twin Cities media venues, we posted short pieces on controversial comments from Michele Bachmann. But we also posted in-depth (sometimes so deep it was confusing) stories about organizations or corporations that were trying to influence public policy from the shadows. No one has yet been able to adequately explain to me why the local legacy media, with all their reporters and money, rarely cover stories like that (although there are a few very fine examples to the contrary).

Why did not one "respectable" big local news venue pick up stories about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Minnesota? It wasn't because I reported everything there was on the issue; my access and resources are way more limited than any of the big three media around here. It's not that ALEC doesn't influence the political system, all would agree that it has. It's at least partly because the complex, controversial topic gets lost amidst soap operas about stuff like the new Vikings Stadium.

But if we look at the holy Bible of our profession (according to me), that's the sort of thing we're supposed to report, whether it seems like a left-wing or right-wing issue. Like doctors have an overarching mission, we do too, at least in theory.

"Recognize a special obligation to ensure that the public's business is conducted in the open and that government records are open to inspection," our SPJ Code of Ethics says, distinguishing representing the public's interests from advocacy.

Sure, there were imperfections with MnIndy, and there was the schlock and UV-bait that comes with almost all political and online reporting these days. But what's most upsetting to me (or as much as the loss of a steady paycheck)is the loss of this venue where so many of the local journalists I most respect spent some time and pushed the political dial more towards openness. It's that we have one less news organization shamelessly doing some of that good, solid work that's supposed to be one of the core responsibilities of our profession.

Naive. I know.

City Pages Missed One Well-Manicured House in Powderhorn

I've lived in South Minneapolis for a long time. Reading food writer Rachel Hutton's City Pages piece on the (wonderful) Modern Times, I felt ill (and their food is great).

I'm not a neighborhood booster, but as a journalist, I wish desperately we could cover neighborhoods that don't have money without making that the hook of the story, without using the fact that much of the country is in dire fucking economic straits to elicit sympathy, respect or revulsion.

Here's an example: "The paper is called the Southside Pride, and Powderhorn often feels like it could use a little more of it. Everywhere there are signs that its residents aren't quite keeping up: gutters sag, concrete crumbles, paint flakes, and lawns go to seed. Dead vines and rusty bicycles seem to predominate as home decor."

I lived in Phillips right across Lake Street for seven years. I live in Powderhorn Park now. Everywhere, people are decent, people are irritating (especially my Phillips neighbor who'd play shitty guitar in his living room for all the block to hear). But only in Powderhorn, while working with my sainted mother in my front yard garden, have I had teenagers say politely, "Hello," as they walked by to cause who-knows-what trouble.

Not everything is positive, but the neighborhood routinely makes the best it can of bad situations, 1 ,2. And crime rates here in Powderhorn Park, and most areas of the Powderhorn community, are lower than crime rates in most areas known as Uptown. Seriously.

I'm sure Hutton is a good, decent person. She and her motives and her grammar aren't worth quibbling about. What is worth thinking about is the serious deficit in the journalism world (from the Star Tribune to the City Pages) of people who can represent the experiences of have-nots—the people whose lawns aren't promptly mowed during storm season. Chino Latino is one thing; Mercado Central is another.

The Powderhorn (and overall southside) community is one of the most diverse Minneapolis communities, not in the way that some liberals use "diversity" as code for de-facto segregation, but in the way that whites, American Indians, blacks and Latinos live here, mostly without squabbling. Check the census.

Yes, the Modern Times is awesome. But so is the community it sprouted from: rusty bikers, concrete crumblers, gutter saggers and dirty-hairs.

What does South Minneapolis mean to you? Please leave your comments (or send them to me)!

Chokecherry: In the Wine Press (Human Grapes Sing Not Nor Dance)

I'm trying to figure out the best way to make an oral history project I'm doing on Minnesota journalists available digitally. So I uploaded the final Chokecherry album.

It's called "In the Wine Press (Human Grapes Sing Not Nor Dance)."

The player below has all 16 tracks (although they're not all visible). If you follow the link, you can download the entire album. If you want a hard copy, email me and I'll give you one free (it has artwork that's well-worth it).