Opinions

Trump Budget Would Deeply Damage Rural America

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

As it works to shape the next five-year farm bill that Congress is supposed to approve in 2018, the Minnesota Farmers Union has been doing an extensive, ongoing survey of what the state’s farming community thinks needs to be addressed in that bill.

It conducted 14 Rural Issues Discussions around the state this past spring and into the summer. It has also been conducting what it calls Rural Voices Discussions that will continue into 2018.

From those discussions it is developing a comprehensive list of needs of farmers and rural communities that will become a part of their lobbying agenda in both St. Paul and Washington, D.C. Every state legislator will be made aware of the needs of farmers and told how the state can help. Members of Congress will get the same message, but geared at federal assistance.

Benson Needs Leaders To Step Up
 

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams
Sixth U.S. President

When voters go to the polls in Benson this coming November they will be electing a new mayor and at least one new council member.

Mayor Gary Landmark and Council Member Stephanie Heinzig have announced they will not seek reelection in November. Council Member Jack Evenson is also up for re-election and has said he will seek a second term.

If Evenson were to lose, the council could see three of its five members new to city politics, but having a deciding vote in directing the city’s future for the next two years.

Volunteers Make Kid Day, Band Festival Special

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

Successful community events don’t just happen. They take a lot of hard work and dedication. They take people willing to sacrifice their free time for their community, often with very little thanks. While everyone else is sitting back and enjoying the day, they are scurrying around to make sure all the bases are covered and handling those inevitable little problems that pop up.

‘Tipping Points’ - What Will It Take Us To Act?

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

A half a world away from each other one small ecological threat and one very large environmental disaster are playing out. Both have something in common – the actions of humans.

First, let’s look at the local threat to the environment and our quality of life. A recent study of Norway, Games and Andrew lakes, in northwest Kandiyohi County finds that the three popular lakes are reaching a “tipping point” on water quality. Norway Lake is already considered “impaired” because of pollutants.

It’s Not Always Easy To Stand By Your Principles

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

Sticking to your principles is easy when they are challenged by situations where people can easily see the reasons for your actions and agree with them. Such situations don’t test the depths of your convictions.

It is in those rare cases where standing by your principles has the crowd turn against you that you are tested. Often, in those cases, your sympathies lie with the crowd, but you still know what is right and necessary despite the anguish you feel in taking a firm stance. As a profession and organization, Minnesota newspapers faced such a test last week.

Renewable Energy Is Our Future

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

When you drive through the countryside these days you see an increasing number of solar farms popping up on the landscape – acres and acres of land covered with panels collecting power from the sun and feeding it into the electric grid. You will also see a growing number of businesses, from farm operations to big city manufacturing plants, with solar panels supplementing their power.

Wind farms have also been steadily growing in Minnesota and America, feeding power in to the electric grid. The University of Minnesota-Morris helps to power its campus with two giant windmills. A growing number of farmers have been using windmills to supplement their power.

Rural People Have To Be More Accepting of Immigrants

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

We are at a difficult juncture in the future of rural Minnesota. Who will be the future generations that fill the jobs in our factories and small businesses? Who will fill our classrooms? Who will sit next to us in church? Who will buy the groceries, hardware goods, drug prescriptions, home decorative items, and other things that keep the doors open in our retail community?

Who will keep our hospital open, both through being the patients and the medical providers?

Civic Center Presents Interesting Opportunities

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

With CNH moving out of the north end of the Civic Center in October, Benson Public Schools have an opportunity to provide its sports programs with new facilities that serve not only students, but also the community at large.

Over the past several years, the school board has looked at multiple options to expand the gymnasium space it has with little success. Voters have rejected plans that would have seen new facilities constructed and show little appetite at this time for approving the construction of new buildings.

How to Spend $20million

Payments would be Opportunity, Heavy Burden

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

Twenty million dollars.

That is an awful lot of money for a small town to be looking at for investing in economic development.  We don’t have it yet, but the odds are looking better that it might be coming our way.

While the Legislature passed the bill including the language that provides the city with four payments between 2018 and 2021 totaling $20 million, and Gov. Mark Dayton signed it, the Minnesota Pubic Utilities (PUC) still has to weigh in.

Allowing Speech We Hate Essential

by Reed Anfinson
Publisher, Swift County Monitor-News

“If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Supreme Court Associate Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1929)

It isn’t easy to listen to the ideas of those with whom we vigorously disagree. In fact, these days we tend to shelter ourselves in the houses of thought where we are sure to hear opinions that reinforce what we already believe and hold dear.