The Metropolitan Airports Commission told staff Tuesday to renegotiate a draft deal that would ease a repayment requirement of $245 million bond debt under promises Northwest made to keep its headquarters here, the Pioneer Press reports. Now that Delta owns Northwest and intends to break that promise, the MAC wants to exact new pledges on money and jobs — but how much and for how long is at issue.

Meanwhile, in the legislative session that started Tuesday, elected representatives will take up schemes to make money through airport privatization inspired by a lucrative, 99-year deal at Chicago’s Midway Airport. But, writes Conrad deFiebre at Minnesota 2020 (via), there’s a more local lesson for legislators in the sad tale of the Twin Cities’ once-public transit system that private owners (including the just-deceased Carl Pohlad) drove into the ground four decades ago, necessitating a new public bailout.

But today’s double-dipping at the wire-service trough is also an ominous and ironic way to begin January — a month in which editors will try merging sections of the newspaper to cut costs and when Strib death-watchers say the paper’s owners could finally file for bankruptcy. The headline over the AP story on page A11 reads like a Strib warning to itself: “New year is shaping up as ‘very, very ugly’ for some well-known brands.”

Tom Vilsack Photo: Wikipedia

Our colleagues at the Iowa Independent hail Gov. Tom Vilsack, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for agriculture secretary, as a “consummate pragmatist” who has “endeared himself to both the left and the right.” But one group that’s not so fond of Obama’s selection is the Finland, Minn.–based Organic Consumers’ Association. It reacted to today’s announcement with a petition calling for organic producers and consumers to urge Obama to block the nomination, highlighting Vilsack’s support for factory farming and biotechnology.

Last month the OCA outlined six reasons they oppose Vilsack for the job, including his support for genetically modified plants and animals, Vilsack’s apparently cozy relationship with Monsanto (the OCA says he’s been known to use the company’s jet), and his advocacy of plant-derived biofuels, “which use as much or more fossil energy to produce them as they generate, while driving up world food prices and literally starving the poor.” (The Iowa Independent’s Chase Martyn reports that Vilsack has “subtly tempered his enthusiasm for corn-based ethanol over the course of his candidacy, shifting to a more tenable position in favor of all forms of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels, using corn ethanol merely as a ‘transitional fuel.’”)

Obama’s words at this morning’s press conference might suggest that the OCA’s petition drive won’t sway his opinion about Vilsack. He hailed the Iowan for, among other things, “promoting biotech to strengthen our farmers and fostering an agricultural economy of the future that not only grows the food we eat but the energy that we use.”

Meanwhile, Minneapolis’ Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy expressed its reservations about Vilsack as well, echoing several of the points made in Martyn’s piece — namely, that Vilsack’s conservative track record doesn’t suggest he’ll bring real change to the office.

“As Iowa’s Governor, Vilsack has shown a fairly conventional perspective on agriculture — particularly related to biotechnology and the siting of factory farms — that seems to indicate a status quo approach,” said IATP President Jim Harkness in a statement. “But these are unconventional times, and with his charge to implement the national vision for agriculture of President-elect Obama, he has an opportunity to address the concerns of farmers — big and small, organic and conventional — and consumers, as well as environmental challenges facing the country.”

The organization, founded by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, sees volatility in commodity pricing as a big problem the ag secretary must face, but listed other areas it hopes Vilsack pays attention to:

· The bioeconomy is trying to rapidly transition from corn-based ethanol toward more sustainable feedstocks. But what was once a primarily farmer-owned industry is increasingly being dominated by absentee corporate owners, providing fewer community benefits.

· Consumers want more organic, locally produced and healthier food, but government programs still offer relatively little support and multiple obstacles to meet this market demand.

· As the number of farmers declines and the average farmers’ age rises, significant barriers prevent much-needed new farmers from entering the sector.

· Along with adapting to climate change, agriculture is being identified as both a contributor and possible mitigator of climate change. The USDA will have to lead a shift toward a climate-friendly agriculture.

· A rising number of major food recalls and internal government audits have exposed serious weaknesses in the USDA’s food safety oversight.

Text of the Organic Consumers Association petition:

Despite a massive public outcry, including over 20,000 emails from the Organic Consumers Association, President-Elect Obama has chosen former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to be the next Secretary of Agriculture.

While Vilsack has promoted respectable policies with respect to restraining livestock monopolies, his overall record is one of aiding and abetting Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or factory farms and promoting genetically engineered crops and animal cloning. Equally troubling is Vilsack’s support for unsustainable industrial ethanol production, which has already caused global corn and grain prices to skyrocket, literally taking food off the table for a billion people in the developing world.

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on organic consumers and all concerned citizens to join our call to action and block Vilsack’s confirmation as the next Secretary of Agriculture. Please help us reach our goal of 100,000 petition signatures against Vilsack’ nomination. Sign today!

More: The environmental site Grist on why Vilsack’s a “big-ag man,” and Bluestem Prairie looks at other responses in Minnesota.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar Photo: Nancy B. Olsen

In July, the Minnesota Independent reported on a hearing sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar that demonstrated significant price gouging by the pharmaceutical industry and that it was causing Minnesotans to suffer. On Tuesday, Klobuchar announced that the Federal Trade Commission and the Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson are filing suit in U.S. District Court against Ovation Pharmaceuticals as a result of the July hearing.

At issue in the suit is a drug called Indocin I.V. which is used to save the lives of newborns with heart defects. In 2005, it jumped in price from $108 to $1,500 in a matter of months when it was purchased by the Illinois-based Ovation Pharmaceuticals from multi-national pharma giant Merck.

“Indocin is an old drug,” Dr. Alan L. Goldbloom said in July. He is the president of Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. “It has been on the market for more than three decades, so this dramatic price increase cannot be attributed to the high cost of research and development. As purchasers, the children’s hospitals have had no other options. There have been no other manufacturers of Indocin.”

Goldbloom continued, “Effectively, one company has a monopoly and can use it to price-gouge.”

Ovation is being charged with violating federal anti-trust laws by the FTC and is attempting to force Ovation to give up the profits that were allegedly gained illegally. The FTC is also attempting to force Ovation to divest itself of one of two similar drugs for which Ovation is the only manufacturer.

“A company like Ovation knows that when it comes to saving a baby’s life, price is no object,” Klobuchar said at a news conference on Tuesday. “They literally banked on it. But the FTC is now knocking on their door and demanding that they return the money they gained illegally.”

Now MSNBC presents a GOP memo, reportedly circulated to Senate Republicans Wednesday morning, that shows there might be a political motive behind the votes: Entitled “Action Alert - Auto Bailout,” it characterized the defeat of the industry bailout — which is what the sub-60-vote Senate tally delivered — the “first shot against organized labor.” The memo went out to GOP senators, but perhaps Rep. Bachmann got a copy too. The same day the email was sent, she released a statement on her opposition to the bailout: “Unfortunately,  the Democrat-led Congress has chosen to blindly oblige Big Labor at every  turn, regardless of whether it’s in the best interest of taxpayers.”

From the Michigan Messenger: Big Three bailout spotlight reveals Detroit’s decay

No date has been set for the work stoppage. Employees are required by law to give the medical facility 10 days notice before walking off the job. Last month the workers, who are represented by Service Employees International Union Healthcare Minnesota, held a two-day strike.

The primary dispute is over pension benefits. Regina Medical Center insists that it needs to cut back on retirement costs to remain competitive. The workers believe the proposed changes would amount to gutting their retirement savings.

That’s how much money the convention’s host committee ultimately raised to produce the lavish four-day gala at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Nearly 90 percent of the GOP money came from donors who contributed at least $250,000, with more than 40 percent tapped from just 15 contributors who chipped in over $1 million.

The Democratic festivities in Denver were just as lavishly financed by corporations, unions and individuals. The Mile High City’s host committee raked in $61 million for the cause, with 72 percent of the funds coming from contributors who gave upward of $250,000.

The final contribution tallies are included in financial disclosure forms that the host committees are required to file 60 days after the close of the conventions and analyzed in a new report by the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI). Because such organizations are set up as nonprofit groups, contributors can make unlimited, tax-exempt contributions — constituting a major loophole in campaign finance laws. The party conventions provide a unique opportunity for special interests to buy access to influential people while receiving little public scrutiny. In Minnesota the fundraising drive was spearheaded by the state’s two most prominent Republican politicians, Sen. Norm Coleman and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“These conventions were floated by huge donors giving much more than they’re ever allowed to give normally to support political parties and presidential candidates,” says Steve Weissman, associate director for policy at CFI.

The $118 million total for both parties fell short of the $142 million raised in 2004 (when conventions were held in the pricier cities of Boston and New York), but is more than double the haul ($56 million) in 2000. The 2008 fundraising figures dwarf the $16 million in public funds provided to each party to produce their conventions.

Not surprisingly many of the major contributors to the festivities in St. Paul and Denver are also big-time influence peddlers in Washington. These organizations have spent $1.6 billion on lobbying expenses in just the last four years, while chipping in $273 million to federal candidates and parties, according to the CFI analysis. Verizon, for instance, which has a serious financial stake in telecommunications policy and has fought against “net neutrality” legislation, contributed roughly $800,000 to the two host committees. Meanwhile in the previous two election cycles it spent $76 million on lobbying and gave $5.7 million to federal campaigns and political parties.

While the bulk of the donations disclosed by the host committees prior to the conventions came from corporations (see MnIndy’s coverage of this here and here), a significant chunk of change was also contributed by wealthy individuals or the foundations they control. Such donors were responsible for $4.3 million of the GOP haul, most notably a $2 million contribution from hedge fund manager Raymond Dalio. The founder of Bridgewater Associates is also a major Republican campaign contributor, providing $152,000 in federal contributions since 2005.

Most of the Republican donations from wealthy individuals were raised in the latter stages of the fundraising drive, particularly after Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson, IV was added as the host committee’s national finance chair in July. “They had Woody Johnson going after all his rich friends,” notes Weissman.

Many of the corporations currently receiving taxpayer funds from the various federal bailout plans gave lavishly to the two host committees. American International Group, for instance, one of the country’s largest insurance companies and the recipient so far of roughly $150 billion in bailout funds, contributed $1.5 million to the two host committees. Beleagured housing finance company Freddie Mac, which was taken over by the federal government in September, also chipped in $500,000. In total, according to the CFI analysis, key actors in the ongoing financial crisis contributed $14 million to the conventions.

Under campaign finance laws, corporations are prohibited from contributing money to sway federal elections. For many years, special interests thwarted the intent of this prohibition by funneling so-called soft money donations to the two major parties. These contributions were supposedly for nonpartisan efforts such as voter-registration drives, but in reality they served as a primary means by which companies could purchase influence with politicians.

Passage of the 2002 McCain-Feingold act largely closed this loophole, barring such soft-money donations to the parties. But fund-raising to support political conventions, which is regulated by both the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Elections Commission, falls outside the purview of this legislation.

CFI and other watchdog organizations have called on Congress to overhaul campaign-finance laws so that unlimited contributions can no longer be made to convention host committees. Under a proposal put forth by the bi-partisan Presidential Task Force on Financing Presidential Nominations, all convention expenses would be financed by the national party committees. Under such a scenario, corporations and unions would no longer be permitted to make contributions to the conventions, while individuals would be required to follow restrictions already in place for such donations ($28,500 to a party committee per year).

Sen. Barack Obama indicated during the campaign that he supports removing unlimited, soft-money contributions from the funding of political conventions — although no specific proposal was outlined. Weissman says the president-elect now has the opportunity to act on that principal. “I think if he raised it, he would be putting Congress in a position where they would have to do it,” he says.

But by Bloomberg News’ account, the deal helped Wal-Mart avoid a potentially much bigger price tag of $2 billion which could have followed from an order Judge Robert King Jr. issued in the case last summer.

In other grim economic news: manufacturing contracted at the sharpest rate in 26 years las month, chicken processor Pilgrim’s Pride has filed for bankruptcy, and the Dow is currently off more than 500 680 points. Happy holiday shopping season!

Rail transit will pass through Northeast Minneapolis but won’t deliver the kind of urban neighborhood redevelopment that’s already seen along the Hiawatha Light Rail line and that has been ballyhooed for other planned light rail lines that will connect downtown Minneapolis with St. Paul and with the southwest metro suburbs. That’s because the Northstar Commuter Rail, which is set to connect downtown Minneapolis to the northern exurbs one year from now, will have no stops in Northeast as it travels between downtown and the Fridley station that the Star Tribune profiles today.

Fridley saved its Northstar station from federal cuts, but Minneapolis’s plans for a station outside of downtown never got far enough to get cut by the feds. Even so, the Northstar commuter line, which travels on heavy rails otherwised used by freight trains, has largely supplanted in planners’ minds a proposed Northeast Corridor light rail line that would have served, instead of merely cutting through, Minneapolis’s Northeast neighborhoods.

There’s irony in rail transit passing Northeast by. It’s a part of the city that traditionally has held a disproportionate share of Minneapolis’s factories, bars and working class immigrants, and while that economic and demographic profile has evolved somewhat, Northeast’s abundant railroad trackage has stayed put. Yet as rail-rich as Northeast is, a busway seems the most it can hope for, and other areas are ahead in line for even that level of transit.