https://www.madgettformn.com/blog Sourced research and positions on Minnesota law and policy by David J.S. Madgett: the "Minnesota by the Numbers" series, "Where Dave Stands" position pieces, and the arbitration and consumer-protection desk. Every claim sourced or omitted. en-us Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0500 campaign@madgettformn.com (David J.S. Madgett) https://www.madgettformn.com/og-image.pnghttps://www.madgettformn.com/ https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-name-is-the-only-condition https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-name-is-the-only-condition Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Minnesota's Legislature writes organizations' names directly into its budget laws, 1,122 times from 2021 to 2026, and the lines in this piece carry no condition that would stop the money. I screened 502 organizations. I didn't find a hidden fraud ring. I found a Legislature that kept restating lines after the state's own watchdogs had put a problem on paper, and agencies that paid because the law said to. Here's the record, the other side's case, and the sentence that fixes it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-forest-for-the-trees https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-forest-for-the-trees Fri, 09 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers On October 1 the Attorney General's office sued Refocus Recovery, a peer-recovery nonprofit that stopped operating in September 2024, for passing nearly all its Medicaid money to its founder's for-profit company. The allegations are serious and unproven. But the structure isn't the scandal. Kaiser Permanente's nonprofit health plan paid one medical group $16.2 billion in 2024. The forest is a Minnesota rule that only lets a nonprofit bill Medicaid as a recovery community organization, so a for-profit that wanted in had to build one. The complaint leans on Refocus's tax return for its numbers and never mentions what that return says about recusal. Here's the record, the other side's case, and a fix. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-paid-for-the-trip https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-paid-for-the-trip Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers A CNN clip of Attorney General Keith Ellison cutting off a question about sponsored travel is circulating again. The reporting is from March 2025. CNN asked why he goes on trips sponsored by corporate lobbyists. The records it reported raise the questions that matter more, who paid, who was there and what was discussed, and I can't find that his office has ever answered them. Minnesota's statement of economic interest never asks about travel by name; the honorarium line is the one place it might reach. Wisconsin's form asks. The U.S. House makes members file within 15 days. Here's the record, the other side's best case, and a fix that costs nothing. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-best-deal-in-minnesota-law https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-best-deal-in-minnesota-law Sat, 19 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Every Minnesota county is required to run a conciliation court. The jurisdictional limit is $20,000 — raised from $15,000 in 2024 — the court administrator has to help you fill out the form, and a lawyer is optional. In 2025, 61,393 conciliation cases were filed, up 63 percent since 2021. There is a second, much lower limit that only binds the creditor suing you. There are four numbers the state does not publish. And there is one thing this forum cannot do for you at all. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-product-that-is-not-insurance https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-product-that-is-not-insurance Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Chapter 59B exempts service-contract sellers from state licensing and from every provision of the insurance code but one. Its definition of a protected buyer is keyed to tangible personal property — which a furnace bolted into a house is not, and which Congress fixed in 1975 with a 25-word parenthetical Minnesota never copied. Whether a home warranty is inside the chapter at all is unresolved on the face of the statute. Here is what the text says, and what it withholds. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-assessment-nobody-budgeted-for https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-assessment-nobody-budgeted-for Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Two separate 2026 acts rewrote the Minnesota Common Interest Ownership Act. One of them amended the insurance section itself — and did not touch the sentence that decides who pays a deductible. The other added a loss-assessment warning to the annual report and the resale certificate. Here is the mechanism, what changed, what did not, and why no public Minnesota dataset can tell you how much money moves through it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-one-price-list-nobody-reads https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-one-price-list-nobody-reads Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers The FTC Funeral Rule took effect in 1984 and was last revised in 1994, and the Commission itself says it reaches only in-person visitors — no website, no posting, nothing you can look up in advance. Minnesota's chapter 149A goes further than the federal rule in at least nine specific ways, including covering cemeteries and headstones, which the FTC declined to reach. Who enforces what, and what the numbers can and cannot tell you. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-other-deepfake-law https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-other-deepfake-law Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Everyone has heard about Minnesota's criminal election-deepfake law, because the tech companies sued over it. Almost nobody has heard about section 604.32, the civil claim the same 2023 bill created for a person whose face is put on a fabricated sex image. I read all nine subdivisions, and then I went looking for who has used it — which turns out to be a harder question than it sounds, because Minnesota does not publish an answer. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-same-formula-different-outcome https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-same-formula-different-outcome Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts Across 273 Minnesota school systems in school year 2017-18 — the most recent year both federal files can be joined — the correlation between revenue per pupil and reading proficiency is negative, −0.45. That is not a finding about money. It is an artifact of a formula that sends dollars toward measured need: economic disadvantage alone explains 62 percent of the district-level variation in reading, and adding revenue to the model moves the explained share from 0.645 to 0.649. What the public files can and cannot answer, which dataset would answer it, and who would have to publish it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-protections-and-who-they-miss https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-protections-and-who-they-miss Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts The charity-care statute sets no income line — the hospital's own policy does. The one income number in Minnesota's charity-care law, 275 percent of the federal poverty guideline, is a reporting category in an administrative rule, not a right. The screening duty reaches uninsured patients and hospitals, not insured patients and not clinics. And the state's own hospital file shows $202.8 million written off as bad debt in 2024 rather than as charity care. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-county-with-no-nursing-home https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-county-with-no-nursing-home Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts Red Lake County has zero certified nursing homes. Seventeen more counties have one building each, at a median of 46 beds, and nine of those seventeen have already lost one since 2012. But the closures do not track population loss — in all 40 counties that lost a nursing home, the 65-and-over population was larger in 2024 than in 2020. What separates the counties is not who closed. It is who got replaced. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-loses-the-car https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-loses-the-car Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts One adjustment formula governs the homestead, the car, the tools, and the wildcard. On July 1, 2026 it moved the homestead cap 5.9 percent and the ordinary motor-vehicle cap 2.0 percent, because each raise is a slice of a base amount and the car's base is still $2,000. Two exemptions are excluded from the formula by name and have sat at $13,000 since 1989 — down 62.7 percent in purchasing power. And the state's own notice of the new figures was wrong twice before it was right. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-where-the-cameras-went https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-where-the-cameras-went Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts Minn. Stat. § 13.824 requires the BCA to post the locations of fixed automated license plate readers on its website, and it does: as of September 10, 2026, 116 agencies, 747 named locations, 17 more withheld as security information. Statewide, camera density tracks city size, not race. Inside Minneapolis, the 28 mappable readers sit in tracts that are 39.0 percent non-Hispanic white against 58.0 percent citywide — and once you hold the arterial and the reported crime rate constant, that gap disappears. The disclosure law works. The published list is still a text file with no coordinates, no counts, and no dates. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-held-before-anyone-proved-anything https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-held-before-anyone-proved-anything Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts Minnesota's pretrial share of the jail population climbed from 50 percent in 2010 to 68 percent in 2019. The Rules of Criminal Procedure require a judge to set a cash figure that buys release with no conditions at all, which means the same defendant walks or stays depending on what is in the bank. Jail rates per 100,000: 107 white, 685 Black, 1,255 Native American. And a rule already on the books that nobody enforces. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-a-flat-fee-is-not-a-flat-burden https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-a-flat-fee-is-not-a-flat-burden Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts A flat fee is a percentage that shrinks as income rises. Minnesota's $75 conviction surcharge is identical for a felony and a petty misdemeanor, the minimum fine underneath it is fixed at 30 percent of the statutory maximum and by law cannot be waived, and getting a revoked license back can cost $680. Minnesota already fixed the worst piece of this. Here is what is left, and the fix the state has already written into another statute. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-lease-is-not-the-whole-law https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-lease-is-not-the-whole-law Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Minnesota's landlord-tenant chapter runs to nearly a hundred sections, and a long list of them cannot be waived by anything a tenant signs. A landlord must send a specific 14-day letter with six specific things in it before filing for nonpayment. An eviction record comes off the public file by operation of statute in five situations, no motion required. And on August 1, 2026, the rent-payment rules changed. This is what the statutes say, not advice about anyone's situation. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-middlemen-in-your-prescription https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-middlemen-in-your-prescription Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Chapter 62W makes pharmacy benefit managers hold a state license, disclose the spread, and stop clawing back money from pharmacies and from you. It does not ban spread pricing. And the annual transparency report Commerce publishes is unaudited and anonymous — twelve of the thirty reports filed for 2024 say the company kept nothing. Here is how the money actually moves, what Minnesota law reaches, and where federal law stops it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-is-in-the-building-at-two-in-the-morning https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-is-in-the-building-at-two-in-the-morning Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers State law requires two hours of nursing personnel per resident per 24 hours and a nurse on site eight hours a day. It does not say who is on the floor at 2 a.m. Minnesota's answer to that question is not a staffing ratio — it is a nine-member wage board, and on September 10 its floors finally reach a paycheck. Four in ten Minnesota nursing home workers still leave within a year, and raising the floor bills a state that has already capped what it will pay. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-water-under-the-karst https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-water-under-the-karst Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Chapter 103H says groundwater should be kept free from degradation caused by human activities, and it builds a ladder from voluntary practices to enforceable orders. The Groundwater Protection Rule wired the top of that ladder to public wells. In eight southeast counties, the people at risk are on private wells. Eleven organizations petitioned EPA in 2023 to force the issue. Here is exactly what EPA did, what it did not do, and what the state's own quarterly numbers show through March 31, 2026. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-price-is-the-price https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-price-is-the-price Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Since January 1, 2025, advertising a price that leaves out a mandatory fee has been a deceptive trade practice in Minnesota. The prohibition is one sentence. The qualifications run nine paragraphs and three industry exemptions. I read all of it, because the carve-outs are where the money is — and because nothing in this law makes anything cheaper. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-two-grocery-chains-and-one-attorney-general https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-two-grocery-chains-and-one-attorney-general Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers A $24.6 billion grocery merger was blocked in Portland in December 2024 by the FTC and nine state and district plaintiffs. Minnesota was not one of them. Minnesota's own antitrust law has been on the books for fifty-five years, it awards treble damages to shoppers who never bought a thing from the defendant, and it hands the Attorney General discovery power before a complaint is ever filed. This is an argument about the tool, not about the man holding it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-go-buy-gift-cards-and-read-me-the-numbers https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-go-buy-gift-cards-and-read-me-the-numbers Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers The gift-card scam runs on a script, and the script is the most useful thing anyone can hand you. Minnesota's gift-certificate law regulates fees and expiration dates — it says nothing about fraud. The financial-exploitation crime is real, but 'vulnerable adult' is a defined term, and most independently living retirees do not meet it. Here is what the statutes actually do, what reaches the caller, and why the money is almost never coming back. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-what-minnesota-owes-the-wrongly-convicted https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-what-minnesota-owes-the-wrongly-convicted Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Minnesota is one of the states that compensates people it wrongly imprisoned. The Incarceration and Exoneration Remedies Act sets a floor of $50,000 per year of incarceration, a figure the Legislature wrote in 2014 and has never adjusted. In twelve years the state has appropriated money to pay seventeen people a total of $9,214,999.36. And the statute still routes a won award back to the Legislature 'for consideration as an appropriation,' which means winning and getting paid are two different events. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-two-gun-laws-minnesota-actually-passed https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-two-gun-laws-minnesota-actually-passed Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Minnesota's red-flag law and its private-transfer background check have been argued about for three years by people quoting each other instead of the text. I pulled both statutes raw and read every subdivision. The red-flag law is not seizure on an anonymous tip — the list of who may petition is closed and short. The transfer law is not a registry — the record stays in your hands, not the state's. And there is a real due-process problem in the emergency order that neither side is being honest about. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-hair-on-your-head-is-not-a-dress-code https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-hair-on-your-head-is-not-a-dress-code Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers In 2023 Minnesota added twenty-four words to the definitions section of the Human Rights Act. It did not write a grooming statute. It put hair texture and hair styles inside the word 'race,' which runs through the Act's employment, public-accommodations, education, housing, and public-services provisions. That changes what a worker sent home over her hair is holding. It does not change what she still has to prove, and Minnesota does not publish a single number telling us whether anyone has used it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-gets-sentenced-in-minnesota https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-who-gets-sentenced-in-minnesota Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Who the Law Helps, Who It Hurts The Sentencing Guidelines Commission's own 2024 tables: 1,243 Black adults sentenced per 100,000, against 201 white; American Indians at 1,809. Yet at the sentencing hearing, judges cut prison time below the guideline more often for Black defendants than white ones. The disparity is built upstream, in who gets charged and in the guideline grid itself. What the numbers show, what they can't, and what to change. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-research-engine-we-already-paid-for https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-research-engine-we-already-paid-for Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota, the Ethical-AI Capital Minnesotans repeat a flattering line about the U that does not survive ten minutes with a federal spreadsheet. Here is the real number — $1.41 billion, twenty-first in the country — and why the real number is still the argument. The asset almost nobody counts is the other one: a 54-campus state college system that reaches the parts of Minnesota no data center ever will. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-poisoned-well-of-open-ai-models https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-poisoned-well-of-open-ai-models Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota, the Ethical-AI Capital The AI inside the software your hospital, your bank, and your school district buy was mostly downloaded free from a public library of models. That library has had at least five separate security incidents in three years — leaked keys, malicious files, an evaded scanner, a breached platform, and a backdoor hidden in the math itself. The defenses that followed were fast and real, and there is now a scanner that looks for the last of the five. A scanner is not a proof. That gap is a market, and Minnesota should own it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-what-a-minnesota-ai-standard-would-say https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-what-a-minnesota-ai-standard-would-say Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota, the Ethical-AI Capital Minnesota gives you the right to demand why an automated system turned you down, see the data behind it, and have the decision run again on corrected facts. Then the same statute exempts the banks, the insurers, and the employment file — most of the industries that do the turning down. Here is what a Minnesota AI standard would say, built out of the law we already have and the gap we already left, and what our Legislature's near-miss got right and got wrong. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-funding-it-without-building-a-slush-fund https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-funding-it-without-building-a-slush-fund Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota, the Ethical-AI Capital Minnesota won a federal Tech Hub designation in 2023 and got none of the $504 million that followed. The state runs an AI governance subcommittee and has announced an AI fraud-detection pilot, and neither one funds research. I am not going to name an appropriation — that number belongs in a bill drafted by people who cost it. What I will argue is the structure that has to come attached to it before the number matters at all. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-what-austin-bought-and-what-it-lost https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-what-austin-bought-and-what-it-lost Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota, the Ethical-AI Capital Austin landed MCC in 1983 and SEMATECH five years later, and people have been citing it as the model for regional tech development ever since. I've cited it myself. Both of those wins ended: MCC's board voted to dissolve it in 2000, and SEMATECH moved its headquarters to Albany in 2007 after New York offered more than Texas matched. What left was the part that had been bought. What stayed was the part that had been built into people. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-why-ethics-has-to-be-in-the-code https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-why-ethics-has-to-be-in-the-code Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota, the Ethical-AI Capital The famous paperclip story is twenty-three years old, usually misquoted, and has taken serious published criticism I give here in full. What survives it is the part a state should care about: nobody can currently prove that a large AI system does what its builders intended and nothing else. That is an engineering problem with real results and real limits — and Minnesota buys these systems. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-minnesota-the-ethical-ai-capital https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-minnesota-the-ethical-ai-capital Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Artificial intelligence is the biggest economic and safety question of the next decade, and Minnesota is sitting on the assets to lead it: one of the largest research universities in the country and a statewide network of state colleges. Austin built a tech capital around a university. We can build the North's — around the thing the industry is most desperate for and least able to supply on its own: trust. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-child-care-is-infrastructure https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-child-care-is-infrastructure Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Subsidize demand' versus 'government shouldn't be in it' both miss the problem: in much of Minnesota there is no child care to buy at any price. Treat it as the workforce infrastructure it is — right-size the rules that make a small provider impossible, back shared-services networks so a home provider isn't also a lone accountant, and bring employers in. Same logic as the rent piece: fix supply. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-even-trump-says-credit-cards-are-a-scam https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-even-trump-says-credit-cards-are-a-scam Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers When a Democrat consumer lawyer and Donald Trump agree that the credit card industry is fleecing people, it's not a left-or-right issue — it's an everyone-versus-the-industry issue. Sky-high rates, junk fees, and an arbitration clause that hides it all and blocks you from fighting back. Here's the whole machine, and what a state can actually do about it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-fix-the-traffic-stop-not-the-statute https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-fix-the-traffic-stop-not-the-statute Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands The cannabis debate is 'legalize more, faster' versus 'the rollout is a mess, crack down.' Both miss the scandal this series already surfaced: thousands of racially lopsided charges for cannabis in a vehicle under a traffic statute that survived legalization. Close that gap, unstick the social-equity and tribal licenses, and make the legal market actually work. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-let-the-money-follow-the-reader https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-let-the-money-follow-the-reader Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands More school funding' versus 'vouchers' is the wrong fight. Reading is the one outcome that predicts everything else, and Minnesota already passed the law requiring evidence-based instruction. My position: enforce it, publish every school's results plainly, supercharge public open enrollment so a family can leave a failing school, and tie a slice of funding to actual reading gains. Accountability inside the public system — not an exit from it. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-a-distributed-grid-is-national-security https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-a-distributed-grid-is-national-security Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Keep the clean-energy goal, but tie the pace to a public reliability-and-affordability dashboard. And make the case conservatives should already be making: a grid built around a few giant plants and substations is a single point of failure — one attack, one storm, one cyber-intrusion from the dark. Rooftop solar, batteries, and microgrids aren't a climate program. They're resilience. That's a security argument, and it's one everyone can sign. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-weapon-turned https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-weapon-turned Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers The same clause that locks you out of court can be turned into a weapon against the companies that wrote it. Mass arbitration, the 2022 sexual-harassment carve-out, and a debt-collection hypocrisy that Minnesota can attack head-on. The hopeful chapter of the arbitration story — and the agenda a state attorney general can actually run. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-right-to-earn-a-living https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-right-to-earn-a-living Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Occupational licensing is sold as consumer protection, and sometimes it is. Too often it's a guild — a wall that keeps out the immigrant, the military spouse, the person leaving prison, and the worker who learned the trade in another state. Recognize legitimate licenses by default, sunset the ones that guard insiders, and keep the ones that actually guard safety. It's progressive and deregulatory at the same time. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-fund-results-not-the-nonprofit-industrial-complex https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-fund-results-not-the-nonprofit-industrial-complex Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands The homelessness debate is 'unconditional housing forever' versus 'sweep the camps,' and neither is a plan. Mine: rapid shelter and housing paired with real engagement — treatment, case management — and every dollar tied to one outcome, cost per person housed and kept housed. Turn the money toward what works and off the contracts that just perpetuate themselves. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-clause-that-deleted-your-jury https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-clause-that-deleted-your-jury Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Forced arbitration is the fine-print clause that quietly cancels your Seventh Amendment right to sue in court and hands your case to a private judge the company picks. More than 85 million American workers and hundreds of millions of consumers are bound by it. Here is how a 1925 law for merchants became the most powerful shield corporations have — drawn from my book, The Rigged Court. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-a-duty-of-loyalty-to-the-twelve-year-old https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-a-duty-of-loyalty-to-the-twelve-year-old Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands The kids-and-screens debate bounces between 'ban the app' panic and 'that's the parents' problem.' Here's a lawyer's fix instead: platforms serving Minnesota minors owe them a duty of loyalty — designed for the child's interest, not maximum engagement — enforceable by the Attorney General. We already impose that duty on everyone else entrusted with something precious. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-buy-health-care-like-the-giant-customer-we-are https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-buy-health-care-like-the-giant-customer-we-are Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Skip the single-payer-versus-free-market fight. The state already buys an enormous share of Minnesota's health care — Medicaid, MinnesotaCare, public employees. Use that leverage: demand real all-payer price transparency, pay reference prices, and refuse to keep signing secret contracts. That's not ideology. It's what any large customer does. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-where-corporate-wrongdoing-goes-to-hide https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-where-corporate-wrongdoing-goes-to-hide Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Forced arbitration's cruelest feature isn't that you usually lose. It's that it's secret. No public record, no precedent, no pattern exposed — so the same fraud runs on the next person, and the next. This is how arbitration hides what banks and credit card companies do to people, told partly through my own case. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-bodies-that-move-your-packages https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-bodies-that-move-your-packages Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers Warehouse, meatpacking, and hospital work destroys bodies — repetitive-motion injuries, wrecked backs, torn shoulders. Minnesota's 2023 ergonomics law makes large employers in those three industries build real injury-prevention programs. It's a quiet, physical kind of worker protection, and it targets exactly the jobs that are booming. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-impunity-is-the-real-crime-crisis https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-impunity-is-the-real-crime-crisis Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Defund' versus 'lock everyone up' is an argument about punishment. The real scandal is clearance rates: most crimes, including serious ones, never result in anyone being identified, let alone charged. A crime with no consequence isn't reform and isn't toughness — it's impunity. Fund investigation, measure cases solved, and the rest of the debate gets a lot smaller. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-floor-under-the-rideshare-driver https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-the-floor-under-the-rideshare-driver Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Minnesota by the Numbers For the first time, Minnesota rideshare drivers have a legally guaranteed minimum: a per-mile and per-minute rate, a $5 floor per trip, tips on top, and pay owed even when the app fails to collect the fare. The companies said the state couldn't do this without driving them out. It could, it did, and they're still here. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-make-it-affordable-to-say-yes-to-a-child https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-make-it-affordable-to-say-yes-to-a-child Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Minnesota settled the legal question by statute in 2023, and I defend that right without qualification. Then I want to change the subject to the thing that actually reduces abortions — and that both sides can work on: making it possible to afford a child. Contraception, prenatal and postpartum support, child care, and a humane adoption path. https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-catch-the-fraud-cut-the-check https://www.madgettformn.com/blog-catch-the-fraud-cut-the-check Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0500 David J.S. Madgett Where Dave Stands Every dollar Minnesota claws back from fraud, overpayment, and waste should go straight back to Minnesotans as a visible, universal rebate. It turns anti-fraud enforcement into something that pays you directly, gives government efficiency a constituency instead of a slogan, and ends the tired raise-taxes-versus-cut-taxes loop.