TC Morning Roundup: When Target struggles, Gita struggles

It’s a story she must have shed a tear or two in writing: Pi Press reporter Gita Sitaramiah files a sad, terse little dispatch to say that local retail hero Target posted a below-forecast 1.1 percent sales increase in November. But over at her On Target blog (previous Mole item), Sitaramiah bravely them cheers them on. Couple of excerpts from the past week:

“Not that anyone needs another excuse to Christmas shop at Target, but now you can feel better about loading up that red shopping cart.”

“Another effort has been the addition of TargetLists… Move over brides and parents-to-be, now anyone can start adding to a list of potentially welcome gifts from Target.”

Yes. How true! Writing like this makes you miss the Sears catalog.

Jean Hopfensperger of the Strib tagged along on a “listening tour” of suburban poverty by the state’s Legislative Commission to End Poverty, and here’s the heart of the matter: “Another feature of suburban poverty is that it is less concentrated than in the central cities, advocates said, and the poor often look no different than well-to-do neighbors. Kristen Ruschmeyer, for example, looks like any working professional in her tasteful wool jacket and tweed pants–except they were purchased at a thrift store. She has a college degree in education, but she’s earning about $1,300 a month working in a group home because she’s not an accredited teacher in Minnesota.”

Another national distinction for the Twin Cities: Local health care billionaire Bill McGuire, forced to relinquish his money-tree job as CEO of United Health over a back-dated stock options scandal, is surrendering another $420 million in options and paying a measly $7 million SEC fine to dispose of the government’s case against him. Drum roll: The $600 million-plus tab in the case makes it the biggest stock-options scandal in America so far!

Tom Scheck at Polinaut has a list of the Minnesotans on Rudy Giuliani’s campaign team here, and on the fundraising side it includes such local forces as Wheelock Whitney, Denny Hecker, George Pillsbury, and Stanley Hubbard... Andy Birkey at Minnesota Minnesota Monitor writes that, like Hillary Clinton before them, Senator Amy Klobuchar and Representative Betty McCollum are making distressed sounds about sex and violence in video games.

Amy Carlson Gustafson talks to six Minnesota writers with Hollywood ties who are caught up in the Writer’s Guild strike…

Learning from the mistakes of others:

When selecting a vehicle to hijack, do not choose one with a top speed of 10-15 mph.

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