Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced early Wednesday morning that she will not seek a fifth term in office.

The decision was announced in a YouTube video on the congresswoman's website and on her Facebook page.

Although Bachmann didn't give a specific reason for her departure, she explained that an 8-year term in the House was enough.

Is that the understatement of the year, or what?

"The law limits anyone from serving as president of the United States for more than eight years, and in my opinion, well, eight years is also long enough for an individual to serve as a representative for a specific Congressional district," Bachmann said.

Uh oh. I agree with something Michele Bachmann said...

Bachmann also made it clear that her decision not to seek re-election had nothing to do with the ongoing ethics investigation about alleged misconduct during her failed presidential campaign in 2012.

"It was clearly understood that compliance with all rules and regulations was an absolute necessity for my presidential campaign," Bachmann said. "And I have no reason to believe that that was not the case."

Bachmann -- who has served in the House of Representatives since 2007 -- is the first Republican woman to represent Minnesota in Congress. She sits on both the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Financial Services.

She is also the founder of the House Tea Party Caucus.

Twelve down, 38 to go. Minnesota’s Senate voted 37–30 to allow same-sex couples to wed on Monday. It will become the 12th state to do so once Gov. Mark Dayton signs the bill, which he’s expected to do on Tuesday. “God made gays. And God made gays capable of loving other people of the same gender. Who are we to quibble with God’s intentions?” Judiciary Committee Chair Ron Latz said to the opposition.

Buzzfeed:

"The state’s sole out gay senator, Sen. Scott Dibble, spoke in support of the bill he had backed.

Of the legislature’s prior decision to push forward the vote on a constitutional amendment banning gay couples from marriage, “I felt excluded,” he says of that decision. He added, though, “In an odd way, I’m kind of grateful, because we had an amazing conversations, Minnesotans,” that he said led to Monday’s vote for marriage equality.

“Today, we have the power, the awesome, humbling power, to make dreams come true, he said. “We will be removing barriers to the full joy life has to offer.” Of himself and his husband, Richard, whom he married in California in 2008, he says, “I’ve met the person I can’t live without.”

Referencing past leaders on the issue, including the late out gay Sen. Allan Spear, Dibble said, “We have an awesome responsibility, and it’s humbling to be in this chamber right now.”

The lead Republican supporter of the bill, Sen. Branden Petersen, spoke during the closing arguments about his reasons for working with Dibble on the bill.

“I stand here, quite honestly, more uncertain of my future in this place than I ever have, but when I walk out of this chamber today … I will be on the side of liberty,” Petersen said."

The bill was passed by the House last week and will go into effect on August 1.

Watch the video to see how We Love Our Land came up with their idea on how to fight the Enbridge pipeline. It's quite clever, and the native American Indian music is beautiful.

#RLblockade Nizhawendaamin Inaakiminaan (We Love Our Land) is a group of Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, joined by blockaders and solidarity activists. The encampment is located in Northern Minnesota near the town of Leonard. Tom Poorbear, vice president of the Ogalala Sioux Nation declared, "We fully support the Red Lake Nation and its members who are opposing the Enbridge pipeline to stop the flow and remove the illegal pipeline from their land." The occupation of the Red Lake Ceded Land began Thursday, February 28. Similar action camps around the United States have been fighting the fossil fuel industry to stop the destruction of sacred lands. Red Lake tribal members demand the immediate shutdown of the flow through the pipes and intend to remain on the land until their demand is met. "I imagine everyone involved in the planetwide resistance to fossil fuel is watching them with thanks," said Bill McKibben founder of 350.org and leader of the recent Forward on Climate Rally. Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene First Nation stated, "We fully support and are inspired by the Red Lake members and their resistance as it is stated in the Mother Earth Accord; affirming our responsibility to protect and preserve for our descendents, the inherent sovereign rights of our indigenous nations, the rights of property owners, and all inherent human rights." Most band members were unaware of Enbridge's illegal activity until the encampment started. "When I was informed about the illegal trespassing of the company Enbridge on my homeland, I knew there was something I could do. I started calling as many Red Lakers as I could to try and make them aware," said Angie Palacio who initiated the encampment with the support of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

By Lois Beckett, ProPublica

In Minnesota, Democratic volunteers scour their local newspapers each morning for letters to the editor with a political slant. They pay attention to the names of callers on radio shows. They drive through their neighborhoods and jot down the addresses of campaign lawn signs.

Then they feed the information into a state Democratic Party database that includes nearly every voter in Minnesota.

Some of the states' few dozen data volunteers are so devoted that they log into the party database daily from their home computers. Deb Pitzrick, 61, of Eden Prairie, convinced a group of her friends to form the "Grandma Brigade." These women, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, no longer want to knock on doors for the Democrats. Instead, they support the party by gathering public information about other voters.

Much of the data the Grandma Brigade collects is prosaic: records of campaign donations or voters who have recently died. But a few volunteers see free information everywhere. They browse the listings of names on Tea Party websites. They might add a record of what was said around the family Thanksgiving table — Uncle Mitch voted for Bachmann, cousin Alice supports gay marriage.

One data volunteer even joked about holding "rat out your neighbor parties," where friends would be encouraged to add notes about the political views of other people on their block.

Once information about individual people is entered into the state party's database, it doesn't stay in Minnesota. Almost all the information collected by local volunteers like the Grandma Brigade also ends up in the party's central database in Washington.

Few places have data volunteers as dedicated as the ones in Minnesota, which has been held up as a model for other state Democratic parties. Both Democrats and Republicans have centralized databases that, among other things, track opinions you share with local campaign volunteers.

Continue reading »

Minnesota's attorney general chalks up a big win for emergency room patients, particularly those needing medical treatment and cannot afford it. The NYT reports:

Accretive Health, one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debt, has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the Minnesota state attorney general’s office to settle accusations that it violated a federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency care, even if patients cannot afford to pay.

The company has not admitted wrongdoing.

As part of Monday’s settlement, Accretive Health is also barred from contracting with hospitals within the state for at least two years, effectively ending its business at three Minnesota hospitals. For four years after that, the company will have to obtain permission from the attorney general before resuming business in the state.

In April, Lori Swanson, the Minnesota attorney general, disclosed hundreds of Accretive’s internal documents that outlined aggressive collection tactics, including embedding debt collectors in emergency rooms and pressuring patients to pay before receiving treatment.

Lori Swanson, the Minnesota attorney general, said during an interview on Monday “a hospital emergency room should be a sanctuary for the sick and wounded, not a hunting ground for collectors.”

Many kudos to Ms. Swanson, as this was no easy task, and her statement on emergency rooms should be applauded. But, there are problems with this settlement, huge problems that will come along with Accretive Health in every other state that still allows it to contract with hospitals.

Starting with the only line in the second paragraph of the article, "The company has not admitted wrongdoing." Such companies really need to admit their wrongdoing, to the court, and publicly. It's the least they can do for the patients who suffered undue stress thanks to their 'Money Above All Else' business practices.

Not being forced to admit wrongdoing allowed Accretive's CEO to issue the following statement after the court's ruling:

“Even though we believe the claims against us were either baseless or exaggerated, we have used this opportunity to carefully examine our own practices in order to ensure we are setting the very highest standards for our own performance and achieving the best possible outcomes for hospitals, patients and communities.”

This is a big 'middle finger' to the courts, and to low-income, uninsured and financially struggling people everywhere. Accretive, and debt collectors like it will continue to place the value of satisfying stockholders above human life until they are forced to admit wrongdoing, and change these cruel practices. And let's not forget the emergency rooms, they need to leave the billing to the billing department, keep the vultures out and focus on patient care.

"On Tuesday, June 19, the sheriff posted a 24-hour eviction notice on the front door I have come home to for the last 17 years. I have nowhere to go. I am standing up for myself, my family and community. Although American Indians make up 1% of the population in Minnesota, 11% of homeless adults are American Indian. I can afford to pay for my house."

"All that I am asking is for Woodlands National Bank to sit down and negotiate with me, so I can stay in my community. They are an Indian bank that serves Native people, and right now homelessness is revenging our community. With the support of my neighbors and community, I know Woodlands bank will negotiate witth me, and become part of the solution to the housing crisis we face."

So begins yet another foreclosure story in post-Occupy America. Anita Reyes is working with her neighbors, community, and Occupy Homes MN to stop her foreclosure. Here she tells some stories about the home she has owned for seventeen years, shares thoughts about her personal feelings related to her foreclosure and places a demand on the bank to keep her in her home.

"I'm not moving," she says in the film. "I'm 52 years old - too old to start over."

Please sign Anita's Petition to stay in her home.

Hospitals in Minnesota, and possibly elsewhere in the country have sunk to a new low in their debt-collection practices by employing collectors in emergency rooms, as well as labor and delivery rooms to pressure patients into paying up. The Minnesota attorney general revealed that Accretive Health, one of the nation's largest collectors of medical debt, regularly embedded debt collectors among hospital employees. The collectors, who looked like regular employees and sometimes had access to patients’ medical files, would demand payment before patients received treatment and sometimes discouraged them from getting emergency care at all.

Via:

Employees at Accretive’s client hospitals ask patients to make “point of service” payments before they receive treatment. Until she went to Fairview for her son Maxx’s ear tube surgery in November, Marcia Newton, a stay-at-home mother in Corcoran, Minn., said she had never been asked to pay for care before receiving it. “They were really aggressive about getting that money upfront,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Newton was shocked to learn that the employees were debt collectors. “You really feel hoodwinked,” she said.

While hospital collections at Fairview increased, patient care suffered, the employees said. “Patients are harassed mercilessly,” a hospital employee told Ms. Swanson.

Patients with outstanding balances were closely tracked by Accretive staff members, who listed them on “stop lists,” internal documents show. In March 2011, doctors at Fairview complained that such strong-arm tactics were discouraging patients from seeking lifesaving treatments, but Accretive officials dismissed the complaints as “country club talk,” the documents show.

The attorney general, Lori Swanson, cited two federal laws that are violated by Accretive's practices, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, a federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency health care regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay, and that by giving its collectors access to health records, Accretive violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Swanson further cited a state law that is broken when Accretive employees fail to identify themselves as debt collectors when accosting patients.

And don't assume that you need not worry about being confronted by debt collectors if you visit not-for-profit hospitals. The New York Times reports that just this week "Accretive announced it won a contract to provide “revenue cycle operations” for Catholic Health East, which has hospitals in 11 states."