TC Morning Roundup: Old people’s money is a terrible thing to waste

Two alarming stories about the treatment of Minnesota’s senior citizens this morning: In the Pi Press, Julie Forster writes that Attorney General Lori Swanson is suing yet another insurance company that allegedly sold elderly Minnesotans annuities on a fraudulent basis. Swanson says Midland National Life Insurance charged clients fees of up to 25 percent to withdraw their money. Midland is the third insurance company Swanson has sued this year, following Allianz (settled) and American Equity Investment Life Insurance (pending).

In the Star Tribune, Warren Wolfe reports that two Minnesota nursing homes, including the metro-area Golden Valley Rehabilitation and Care Center, are on a federal list of the US’s 54 worst-performing nursing facilities. The Golden Valley home was cited for 31 inspections violations this year; another local business, the Crystal Care Center, turned up on a longer list of 128 “special focus facilities” that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are watching.

Another transportation SNAFU: KSTP reports that Minnesota could lose up to $22 million in federal highway funds if it doesn’t start complying with federal rules on how the state polices commercial truck driving licenses…. A district court judge has ruled that the Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben law firm, which represents numerous plaintiffs in the 35W bridge collapse, cannot have access to state investigators’ records about the collapse, or to the pieces of the bridge that investigators are in the process of reconstructing…

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who is being investigated for a campaign-related impropriety (earlier Mole post here), will not step aside and let someone else administer a January 3 special election to replace Tom Neuville, a state senator who was recently appointed to a judgeship, as a couple of Republican state senators had suggested… The AFL-CIO has endorsed former MnDOT commissioner Elwyn Tinklenberg, who’s running for the Sixth District Congressional seat currently held by Michele Bachmann…

Jenny Jones, a local film historian who works at Walker Art Center, has written The Annotated Godfather: The Complete Screenplay, a book produced with the cooperation of Paramount and Francis Ford Coppola…

The Pioneer Press’s one-man Minneapolis bureau, David Hanners, has some first-rate advice for local drunk drivers, so we’ll cede the “learning from the mistakes of others” department to him today:

“If you’ve crashed your car into a pole, it doesn’t look good if the cops find you walking back to the car with a 12-pack of ale in your arms.”

“If you’re driving down the street in a car without a left front tire and don’t realize the tire is missing, it might be best to pull over.”