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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Poverty Commission Narrowing Focus on Long-Term Strategy

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Monday, August 4, 2008   

Moorhead, MN - When it comes to ending poverty in Minnesota by the year 2020, a state commission is hard at work - and, according to one of its members, making some headway. State Representative Morrie Lanning is among 20 people on the state's Commission to End Poverty, a group that has five months left to work on its formidable goal.

As Lanning puts it, the panel has decided it will be most effective by reaching broad agreement on a few goals and strategies, rather than compiling a huge "wish list."

"In order for our report to produce results, we're going to have to work towards a bipartisan consensus on those things that we think would make the biggest difference towards eliminating poverty. And so far, we have a very good spirit of bipartisan cooperation with regard to our task."

The Commission also realizes that government is only part of the solution, adds Lanning.

"We're also going to have to get the private sector involved. We need the business community, and the philanthropic community. Our final recommendations will not only be directed to government, but to other sectors of our society."

The group has narrowed its focus to three areas: improving access to education and jobs to increase chances for economic self-sufficiency; making it easier for people to acquire such assets as housing; and removing barriers to participation in the marketplace, including racism.

Recommendations from the bipartisan panel to the Minnesota Legislature are due by the end of the year, a deadline Lanning believes they are on track to meet. Read about the Commission's findings to date, at www.commissions.leg.state.mn.us.



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