Al Franken's Blog, page 24

Post Bulletin: Sen. Al Franken: Remembering our veterans is a way of honoring service

Each year, my Senate office holds a poetry contest for Minnesota students so they can write about the “veteran in their lives.” Often, they write about a parent or another close friend or relative who has left home for extended periods to serve our nation in the armed forces.

As I read the winning entries, I’m always struck by the descriptions of the great sacrifice our service members and their families must make so our freedoms are protected. One winner expressed her appreciation this way: The ones who had loved/ The ones who had laughed/ The one who died/Helping you to survive/ They will never be forgotten.

In so many of these poems, you can see the admiration the students have for the people they write about, leaving little doubt about the deep impression the experience has had on their lives.

As we celebrate Veterans Day, I hope all Americans can see, as I have, the tremendous sacrifices our veterans — and also their families — have made on our behalf, and to remember that service.

As a senator, I’ve taken a number of trips to Walter Reed Medical Center near Washington, D.C., to visit wounded veterans who know, firsthand, the stark realities of war. These are the servicemembers who have returned from battle with both visible and invisible wounds, but who — despite their own sacrifices — often care more about their fellow servicemembers, especially those who didn’t make it home.

President Ronald Reagan may have said it best on Veterans Day in 1985, when he described four Marines killed while serving their country. He said, “they gave up two lives — the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember.”

Those are powerful words. With those we’ve lost, all we can do is remember. But with those who came back, we can do more. We can — and we must — act. We must do everything in our power to help them live that second life — the one they should be able to enjoy when they come home.

We have to remind ourselves that servicemembers’ battles don’t always end when they return home, and that we must keep our promises to them. That’s why we can’t stop fighting to make certain they get the care they need at our veteran health-care facilities — and as just as importantly — that it’s delivered in a timely manner. It’s also why we need to honor our promises on education, training and housing benefits so they are there when they need them.

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Huffington Post: You’re Getting Ripped Off By Forced Mandatory Arbitration — Here’s How to Stop It

Forced arbitration rigs the game in favor of big corporations and against consumers and employees. And recently, a New York Times investigation has exposed just how prevalent this damaging practice is; indeed, the story almost certainly affects you, personally.

If you’ve ever opened a credit card, rented a car, or engaged in any number of other routine interactions with big corporations, you’ve probably had to sign away your right to go to court, or band together in a class action with other customers. Instead, you have legally (if unwittingly) agreed that, if a dispute occurs, you will seek justice only through a secret, profit-driven arbitration process — one in which no comprehensive records are kept, no meaningful appeals are allowed, and the arbitrator likely has significant financial incentive to rule in favor of the corporation.

That arbitration clause was likely buried deep in the fine print in a lengthy terms-of-service agreement. Even if you had read (and correctly interpreted) the entire contract, and decided to take your business elsewhere, odds are you would have seen the same clause in every competing company’s terms-of-service agreement, too. Consumers are left with no real recourse: you sign, or you do without a cell phone, or cable TV, or Internet service.

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The post Huffington Post: You’re Getting Ripped Off By Forced Mandatory Arbitration — Here’s How to Stop It appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.

CBS: Sen. Franken To Introduce Anti-Stalking App Bill

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A crime that is sweeping the nation is targeting people in Minnesota.

Stalking apps are being used on cellphones, which allow abusers to secretly stalk their victims.

These apps are not available on the iTunes or the Android Apps store; people have to buy them through its actual website.

After they are downloaded on the phone, which only takes a few minutes, suspects can track their victim’s every move, listen to phone conversations and even take pictures with their phone.

Sen. Al Franken has been working to ban these apps after seeing so many cases in Minnesota.

“We actually had a detective from Anoka County testify,” Franken said. “That’s pretty much what he does is go around to other law enforcement and teaches them about these apps, about how to find them in phone — they’re not easy to find — and how to get them out of a phone.”

Franken will be introducing his legislation to the Senate in the next few days, which would ban these types of GPS apps.

The post CBS: Sen. Franken To Introduce Anti-Stalking App Bill appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.

MPR News: Municipal elections: Change sweeps St. Paul school board, Duluth elects first woman mayor

Minnesota voters took to the polls Tuesday for municipal elections packed with funding issues and focused on schools.

More than 50 school districts across the state filled open seats on their boards. Voters also approved the majority of school district levy requests to fund teacher salaries, utility bills, capital projects and more.

Duluth voters elected Emily Larson as the city’s first female mayor and longtime Bloomington Mayor Gene Winstead was re-elected to a fifth term.

Perhaps the most closely watched races took place in St. Paul, where a teachers union-backed slate of candidates swept the vacant seats on the school board and voters returned five incumbents to their seats on the St. Paul City Council.

Ramsey County Election Manager Joe Mansky said Tuesday evening that he wasn’t seeing any major surprises in turnout.

“As far as we can tell, it looks like we’re tracking along pretty close to our prediction, which was 13 percent of our eligible population here in St. Paul, which would be about 29,000 voters,” Mansky said.

Mansky said St. Paul’s Ward 2 — which stretches from the city’s Lowertown neighborhood and includes West 7th Street and Summit Hill — and Ward 5 — which includes the Como neighborhood as well as parts of the city’s North End and Payne-Phalen neighborhoods — were seeing the highest turnouts by early evening. Both wards played host to hotly contested races for city council seats.

The post MPR News: Municipal elections: Change sweeps St. Paul school board, Duluth elects first woman mayor appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.

Star Tribune: DFL Activist Peggy Flanagan sails to election in House District 46A

Flanagan, who ran unopposed, won the seat with 96.4 percent of the vote in a special election. The progressive activist quickly filed to run for Winkler’s seat and was endorsed by the longtime DFL Representative. The St. Louis Park resident and longtime progressive activist serves as executive director of the Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota. She previously worked at Wellstone Action and Minnesotans United for All Families, the coalition that led to the successful push for same-sex marriage. She was co-chair of the Raise the Wage coalition, which led the effort to raise the state’s wage floor to $9.50 by 2016. In 2018, it will be indexed to inflation.

Flanagan, 35, is a member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe member and is the first American Indian from the area to serve in the Legislature since Leech Lake member Harold “Skip” Finn served in the Senate in the mid-‘90s. She joins Rep. Suzan Allen, DFL-Minneapolis, as the second American Indian woman elected to the Legislature.

Flanagan is a University of Minnesota graduate with a degree in child development. She and her husband have a 2-year-old daughter.

The post Star Tribune: DFL Activist Peggy Flanagan sails to election in House District 46A appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.

Star Tribune: Franken stumps to end “forced arbitration”

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Al Franken on Monday renewed his call to limit what he calls “forced arbitration” in disputes between businesses and their customers and workers.

The Minnesota Democrat spoke to reporters in a telephone news conference reacting to new reports in the New York Times that echo Franken’s concerns with language in everything from credit card contracts to job applications to nursing home leases that make people sign away their rights to sue.

Franken has three times sought legislative relief from the practice, which he says unfairly limits consumer and employee legal options for righting corporate wrongs. Those bills made predispute arbitration agreements invalid and unenforceable in employment, consumer, antitrust and civil rights matters. Franken reintroduced the legislation this year. It has 16 cosponsors and awaits action in the Senate Judiciary Committee where Franken is a member.

“It’s about giving people the right to get to court,” Franken said.

He called forced arbitration “unbelievably unfair.” Arbitration hearings are secret, and the businesses being accused of misbehavior hire the arbitrators, whose decisions are essentially not able to be appealed.

The Supreme Court ruled mandatory arbitration legal in decisions in 2011 and 2012.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce strongly backs arbitration agreements as fair and efficient.

Bryan Quigley, vice president of the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, called the New York Times series “blatantly one-sided.” Quigley said bill’s like Franken’s will help personal injury lawyers make money on class-action suits, but those suits will not benefit consumers because most consumers have such small claims. They would be better served by arbitration, Quigley insisted.

Other business advocacy groups have also endorsed mandatory arbitration clauses.

Speaking to reporters, Franken and U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., acknowledged the difficulty of getting Republicans to sign on to arbitration reforms bills in the Senate and House. Both offered hope of a regulatory solution if a legislative solution cannot pass.

Currently, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are each working on rules that will bring more attention to forced arbitration and possibly make it more transparent.

That is important, according to Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson, one of several state officials backing Franken’s initiative.

“The public should not be stripped of their constitutional right to access the justice system through fine print buried in customer agreements,” Swanson said in a statement to the Star Tribune.

The post Star Tribune: Franken stumps to end “forced arbitration” appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.

Politico: Franken gets serious about flipping the Senate to Democrats

On a recent October afternoon, Democratic Sen. Al Franken mistakenly ambled toward the Mansfield Room, where the party in control — namely Republicans — meets weekly to hash out strategy.

“I keep thinking we’re in the majority,” the second-term Franken chuckled to a colleague as he changed course to the smaller Lyndon Baines Johnson Room.

Now the comedian turned senator, whose party lost control of the Senate to Republicans last year, is embarking on a yearlong campaign to help Democrats win it back and ensure that Senate races aren’t a forgotten undercard to the presidential contest. And after years of keeping a low profile on Capitol Hill, he’s actually happy to talk about it.

In a rare interview in his Capitol office, the Minnesotan described his most ambitious effort yet to help elect Democrats in his more than six years in Washington. Franken is using his celebrity to help raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democratic candidates, and Democrats are relying on him to play an outsize role, alongside high-profile senators like Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, to pick up the five seats the party needs to flip the Senate in 2016.

“The Republicans don’t share our basic values about where economic growth comes from,” Franken said. “I have nothing personally against my Republican colleagues other than their views on how the country works.”

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New York Times: Illinois District Violated Transgender Students Rights, U.S. Says

Federal education authorities, staking out their firmest position yet on an increasingly contentious issue, found Monday that an Illinois school district violated anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl and participates on a girls’ sports team to change and shower in the girls’ locker room without restrictions.

Education officials said the decision was the first of its kind on the rights of transgender students, which are emerging as a new cultural battleground in public schools across the country. In previous cases, federal officials had been able to reach settlements giving access to transgender students in similar situations. But in this instance, the school district in Palatine, Ill., has not yet come to an agreement, prompting the federal government to threaten sanctions. The district, northwest of Chicago, has indicated a willingness to fight for its policy in court.

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The post New York Times: Illinois District Violated Transgender Students Rights, U.S. Says appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.

Washington Blade: Franken seeks answers from DOJ on transgender murders

Amid a record number of anti-trans murders throughout the country, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is seeking answers from the Obama administration on reporting of the violence and the extent to which the federal government is working with local authorities.

In a letter dated Oct. 21, the junior senator from Minnesota calls on U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey to take action.

“I write to express serious concern about the alarming number of homicides and violent crimes targeting transgender and gender nonconforming people,” Franken writes. “I strongly urge the U.S. Department of Justice to work with state and local authorities in the investigation and prosecution of these incidents, and to redouble its efforts to ensure the accurate reporting of all bias-motivated crimes.”

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University of Minnesota: U of M’s Open Textbook Network reports students savings of $1.5 million from open textbooks

Faculty from nine colleges and universities across the United States have saved their students an estimated $1.5 million in textbook costs to date by adopting open textbooks, the University of Minnesota’s Open Textbook Network (OTN) reported this week.

The OTN, created and run by leaders at the U of M’s College of Education and Human Development, is an alliance of schools committed to improving access, affordability and academic success through use of the open textbooks.

Open textbooks are funded, published and licensed to be free for students or available in print for a low cost. The U’s Open Textbook Library lists nearly 200 open textbooks in a number of subject areas.

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The post University of Minnesota: U of M’s Open Textbook Network reports students savings of $1.5 million from open textbooks appeared first on U.S. Senator Al Franken, Minnesota -- Official Campaign Website.