July 10-12, 2010
Jul 10 09:51 Harry Reid vs. Sharron Angle: A Mismatch, Part II Jul 10 21:07 Obama Spreads Economic Misinformation At KC Fundraiser Jul 11 04:30 Mark Ritchie's noncompliance with HAVA Act Exposed Jul 11 10:05 President Obama, the economy & picking winners and losers Jul 11 11:20 Bachmann Gives As Good As She Gets Jul 12 08:16 Entenza, Green Energy & Minnesota's Deficits Jul 12 13:41 HHS Hearing Notes
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009
Harry Reid vs. Sharron Angle: A Mismatch, Part II
There are just some races where you can toss out the measurables. Harry Reid has enough money to bury Sharron Angle with a different negative ad every day between now and Election Day. He's got 100 percent name recognition. And he's gonna lose. This video is all that Sharron Angle needs to retire Harry Reid:
NARRATION: They dealt bailouts, handouts and takeovers, giving us a $1.5 trillion deficit, a $13 trillion national debt, 14 percent unemployment for Nevada.The people that the announcer is talking about are Harry Reid and President Obama. Their policies didn't put this economy into a recession. Their policies just helped extend it by a 12-15 months.
The tax increases hidden inside the health care bill are already having negative effects. The potential for passing Cap and Tax is still looming, as is the possibility of this congress passing Card Check. Then President Obama wonders why opportunity-makers and job creators aren't hiring in any great numbers? And Harry Reid is confused why Nevada just overtook Michigan for the highest state unemployment rate in the nation?
Last night on Greta, Newt Gingrich was asked which race in the United States would be the biggest upset this November. I don't recall Newt's answer but I remember Greta picking Harry Reid to win in Nevada as her upset. Newt's reply was essentially what I've been saying for months: that Reid's warchest couldn't save him.
Newt said that each year, there are some incumbents that have a huge advantage in cash for advertising, they have the privileges that come with incumbency and yet "the people just tell them 'We don't want you.'" Newt then said that that's what happened in 6 races in 2006 with 6 Republicans. They were summarily rejected.
In his best years, Harry Reid had to fight to win. Winning with 60 percent of the vote in 2006, a very good year for Democrats, is struggling. Now he's up for re-election after shoving Obamacare and the failed stimulus down the Senate's throat. This is the worst possible year to run for re-election if you're Harry Reid.
UPDATE: Here's what Newt told Greta regarding Sen. Reid:
There are times in a politician's career, and this happened to 6 Republican senators in 2006, there are moments where the voter goes 'not you' and you can pile every attack ad, you can hire the most clever consultants on the planet, and the voters will say 'Nope, not you.' And if you go back and look in the 06 campaign, every single Republican senator who lost outspent their opponent. They all had clever attack ads. They all had clever consultants. And the voters in 6 different states, this was a pattern, this wasn't a fluke, and they said "Not you."It won't help Sen. Reid to be tasked with the responsibility of telling Nevada that the stimulus has worked while the unemployment rate is skyrocketing. It's to the point that Reid's only shot at winning is to drive up the none of the above vote (Yes, that's a voting option on Nevada ballots.) and pray that there's enough of those votes pulled from Sharron Angle's totals.
The Angle campaign knows that's the Reid campaign's strategy, making this an uphill challenge for the Reid campaign. The last 2 weeks of their campaign, the Angle campaign will tell people that a vote for none of the above is actually a vote to re-elect Harry Reid. In many respects, it's like polling for a third party candidate. They look positive for awhile before turning south 2 weeks before the election.
I think this is Harry Reid's 'Not you' year. I would be surprised if he lost by 8+ points. He's been ordinary and not terribly well-liked for a long time. Now he's given Nevadans the substantive reason of pushing Obamacare through to vote against him.
Good bye Harry.
Posted Saturday, July 10, 2010 9:53 AM
No comments.
Obama Spreads Economic Misinformation At KC Fundraiser
When President Obama visited Kansas City recently , he accused Republicans of not being worthy of driving the United States' economic care. During his speech, he pretended like people still trusted his administration and the Democratic Congress's handling of the economy, which they don't.
This November, voters will rip the controls from Speaker Pelosi fingers while defeating Harry Reid outright. They'll do that because the American people understand that the Obama economic policies that Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid have enacted have failed. They know that the only thing they've accomplished is the rapid increase in the national debt, the exponential growth in the size of the annual deficits and skyrocketing unemployment and hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers quitting looking for work.
Here's a partial transcript from President Obama's speech:
"This is a choice between the policies that got us into this mess in the first place and the policies that are getting us out of this mess, and the other side is banking on people not having a good memory," said Mr. Obama. "They're trying to bamboozle you."Actually, that's a major problem for President Obama. President Bush's policies looked bad at the time. Now, though, with unemployment skyrocketing and the deficits and debt at unprecedented levels, President Bush's policies don't look as bad as they did on Election Day, 2008.
People aren't buying into the notion that President Obama's policies are "getting us out of this mess." With unemployment rising and the deficits still well above $1,000,000,000,000 annually, people have noticed that President Obama's elixirs haven't worked. More people think he doesn't have the right solutions than think he does.
His oversized ego won't let him admit that, though.
I hope President Obama keeps making these fundraising trips. Thus far, he's had a fairly worthless record 'helping' Democratic candidates.
Posted Saturday, July 10, 2010 9:10 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 11-Jul-10 08:23 AM
Gary:
I seemed to remember that President Obama said give us the stimulus package so we can stop unemployment from going over 8%. We did exactly what he said and unemployment is only at 9.5% when you don't count people who are so discouraged that they aren't looking for working.
And he has the nerve to say, "The policies that are getting us out of this mess"
And the worse part is one of those policies to get us out of the mess is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts since the Democrats won't extend them. The economy is bad now it's going to be worse in 2011.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Mark Ritchie's noncompliance with HAVA Act Exposed
Conservatives have frequently criticized Mark Rtichie for being corrupt. Thanks to Ed Morrissey's post of J. Christian Adams' interview with Chris Baker and Minnesota Majority's investigation into election irregularities , we're now getting a clearer picture of Mr. Ritchie's corruption. Here's a portion of Minnesota Majority's report on its investigation:
Minnesota Majority has experienced the DOJ's refusal to investigate these kind of cases first-hand. On November 17th of 2008 (immediately following the 2008 General Election and while the Coleman-Franken recount battle was getting underway), Minnesota Majority president Jeff Davis sent a certified letter to then Voting Section chief of the Civil Rights Division at the DOJ , Christopher Coates, requesting an investigation into apparent failures to comply with HAVA by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie. No response was forthcoming .The fact that the DOJ didn't respond to Minnesota Majority's investigation into voting irregularities is troubling enough. What's more troubling to me is the fact that someone must've intervened with the FBI's investigation. Special Agent Kinney said that what he found was "more than enough evidence to initiate an internal complaint." I'm betting that it isn't often that the FBI finds "more than enough evidence to initiate an internal complaint" before walking away.
Since the DOJ in Washington DC failed to follow up on Davis' complaint, Minnesota Majority contacted the local FBI office and lodged the same complaint. Special Agent Brian Kinney responded and visited the Minnesota Majority office to examine Minnesota Majority's findings. At that time, he said, "based on what I see here there is more than enough evidence to initiate an internal complaint." He gave his assurances that he would bring the matter to the attention of his supervisors. There was no further follow-up.
Most troubling of all is the fact that there isn't proof that Mr. Ritchie attempted to comply with HAVA's anti-fraud provisions. Nor is there proof that the DFL legislature attempted to investigate these alleged violations as is their right to conduct oversight. In the Minnesota House, the chairman responsible for initiating investigations into election irregularities and all things elections is Rep. Gene Pelowski .
This report by Minnesota Majority's Dan McGrath outlines Minnesota Majority's findings.
In the course of researching irregularities in Minnesota's 2008 General Election, Minnesota Majority obtained records from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension listing all persons under the supervision of the Minnesota Department of Corrections. From these records, we extracted a list of individuals charged with felony crimes at the time of the 2008 election. We then compared this list of felons to voter history records from the Secretary of State's statewide voter registration system (SVRS).The DFL has criticized Minnesota Majority for being a partisan, conservative-leaning organization in the hopes of deligitimizing their work. Those criticisms should be forever vanquished because former DFL gubernatorial candidate Susan Gaertner acted on a number of people discovered by Minnesota Majority's investigation.
From this comparison, we compiled a list of 2,803 felons who potentially voted in the 2008 General Election . The highest concentration of the suspected fraudulent votes was found in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties , so additional research was focused in these areas. We verified sample matches with court documents. We also examined polling place roster signatures and voter registration cards. After completing these verifications, we had a high degree of confidence that we had detected hundreds of fraudulent votes cast by ineligible felons in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties.
On October 14th of 2009, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner announced that 23 individual felons had been charged with election crimes in connection with the 2008 election, characterizing the number as "a handful." Most were only charged with registering illegally, not actually voting. This left the public with the impression that voter fraud issues from the 2008 election were settled and insignificant. News
stories about these prosecutions were very different from the information Minnesota Majority had been compiling on felon voters.
What's astonishing to me is that an organization like Minnesota Majority appears to be the only organization interested in protecting election integrity. It's stunning, in my opinion, that Mark Ritchie, supposedly the highest ranking elections officer in the state, did nothing to comply with HAVA's anti-fraud provisions. Similarly, it's stunning that Mr. Pelowski's committee didn't launch an investigation into Minnesota Majority's findings. They certainly could've called a hearing while the legislature wasn't in session.
When Dan Severson won the MNGOP endorsement to be their candidate for Secretary of State, DFL chairman Brian Melendez issued a statement, which I wrote about here . Here's Chairman Melendez's statement:
"The Secretary of State's most important duty is protecting the citizens' right to vote, that crown jewel of liberty that safeguards all other rights. But Dan Severson would toss up barriers to citizens voting. His rhetoric is disrespectful to the hard-working election officials who, county by county, community by community, shepherd our democratic processes. Severson is a radical partisan who is unsuited to the office of Secretary of State.Chairman Melendez accused Dan Severson of throwing up "barriers to citizens voting." I said then what I'll repeat now: what Chairman Melendez calls barriers, most people call safeguards . Based on Minnesota Majority's findings, it isn't a stretch to think that some of the things Chairman Melendez calls barriers might be anti-fraud provisions in HAVA.
"Minnesotans deserve a Secretary of State who cares about maintaining our fair and secure election system and who will work to make sure that all eligible voters can cast their ballots. Dan Severson is not that person. Severson evidently cares a great deal about flinging baseless accusations in a vain quest to rewrite the history of the 2008 recount, but cares very little about maintaining the fair and transparent processes that made that recount a success."
The fact that the DFL didn't put a priority on investigating these allegations, many of which have been substantiated, is disturbing though not particularly surprising. These are the same people that refused, twice, to investigate potential union-busting activities by Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson.
This information is most disturbing:
On October 16th of 2009, Minnesota Majority's submitted affidavits attesting to our findings on felon voters to Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner. In all, 1,359 names of suspected ineligible felon voters were forwarded to these county attorneys for investigation, with supporting evidence. Eight months after Minnesota Majority provided evidence ofLet's review this because it's that important: of the 1,359 suspected ineligible felon voters that Minnesota Majority submitted to the Hennepin and Ramsey County attorneys, 9 people have been charged with fraudulent voting by felons.
felon voters to the county attorneys, Hennepin County has charged 3 individuals with fraudulent voting by felons and Ramsey County has quietly charged an additional 6 persons.
Since the Minnesota statute of limitations on election crimes is two years, the County Attorney's ability to prosecute election crimes from the 2008 General Election will expire in November 2010. In many instances, the statute of limitations for registration fraud in 2008 has already passed. In addition, since Minnesota law only requires election records to be retained for 22 months, county election officials will begin destroying election records containing evidence of election crimes in September of 2010.
What's more disturbing is that it will be legal for these records to be thrown out, never to be seen again. The only hope that those records won't be discarded is if there's a requirement in federal law requiring their retention.
From a legislative standpoint, it should be a high priority for the next legislature to mandate a longer retention of election records and establish a longer statute of limitations for prosecuting voter fraud.
Let's also do away with the myth that Minnesota's election system is run efficiently. First, I'll stipulate that Minnesota's election laws are among the most straightforward and clearly written laws in the nation. In my estimation, they are the nation's gold standard.
This information tells me, though, that Minnesota's elections are anything but well-run:
On November 3rd of 2008, the day before the General Election, KMSP TV aired a story about convicted felons on the voter registration rolls. Tom Lyden reported that he had found about 100 felons newly registered to vote. One of them was inexplicably registered while still in prison. Lyden brought his findings to Secretary Ritchie, who said he was aware of 26 ineligible felons who had registered to vote and he offered his assurances that the felons problem would be addressed.This isn't acceptable. SecState Ritchie's lackadaisical attitude towards eliminating felons who weren't eligible to vote from the final 2008 voter registration list is disturbing at minimum.
Following the 2008 election, Minnesota Majority began to investigate whether any felons who were illegally registered managed to actually vote. What we found surprised us, because the data suggested that 20 times more felons than had been identified by KMSP-TV may have actually voted in the 2008 General Election.
This information should startle Minnesotans, too:
First and foremost, we discovered that the number of voters accounted for having cast a ballot in the secretary of state's voter files did not match the number of ballots certified by the election canvassing board. There were approximately 40,000 more ballots counted than voter histories to account for them.I'd like to hear SecState Ritchie's explanation for how that could happen, especially on that widespread of a basis. It's impossible for me to say that Minnesota's elections are well run when there are 40,000 more ballots counted in 2008's final vote totals than there are names on voter registration lists. Having voted a couple dozen times, I know that my polling place requires me to sign the registration sheet before I'm given a ballot. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.
How is it possible that 40,000 people were handed ballots without the voters signing the registration sheet? That's approximately 10 times in each of Minnesota's 4,131 precincts.
Using a standard deceased matching service commonly utilized by mailing houses, we discovered thousands of individuals flagged as deceased who are still on the active voter rolls.This is insane. We're talking about Minnesota. This isn't Chicago or Philadelphia, where elections are occasionally lost based on the 'dead relatives vote turnout'.
If people can read this post and still say that they're confident that Minnesota's elections are (a) well run and (b) corruption free, then they've gotta be lying through their teeth.
Similarly, if people can read this post and say that Minnesota is complying with HAVA's anti-fraud provisions, then those people shouldn't be trusted.
It's time that Minnesota revamped its election operations. The first step in that process is to elect someone who takes election integrity seriously. That immediately eliminates Mark Ritchie from serious voters' consideration. He's had 4 years to run Minnesota's elections into the ground. That's 4 years too many.
Similarly, it's important that Minnesota lengthened the statute of limitations for voter fraud and voter registration fraud and all other election-related crimes. Finally, it's important that election records be retained longer, too.
Only then can we be certain that Minnesota's elections are being run properly.
Posted Sunday, July 11, 2010 4:30 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 11-Jul-10 08:20 AM
Gary:
I'm surprised you wrote surprised. You are talking about a DFL Secretary of State, a DFL committee chair, and two DFL county attorneys. They all know that these are illegal votes who will vote Democrat.
They don't want to take away their Democrat votes. That's the bottom line.
Now as for the FBI does Crowley work for the FBI so she can get on the cover of Time again by exposing this scandal. Oh I forgot Time won't think that's a story either.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 11-Jul-10 08:59 AM
I didn't say surprised. I said stunning, which isn't the same thing.
Comment 3 by J. Ewing at 11-Jul-10 09:36 AM
Don't be stunned. Not to dismiss the great work of MM, but when thousands of dead people vote, and 40,000 non-existent people cast ballots, when felons vote, when ballots turn up in car trunks, when thousands of absentee ballots are selectively discarded or accepted, and when tens of thousands of people vote twice, you do not have your "right to vote" preserved. Your vote was stolen just as surely as if it had been discarded. Which it might have been. What we have here is an ongoing criminal enterprise called the DFL, and we need a new broom in November to sweep it clean. Come to think of it, maybe a mop would be more apropos.
President Obama, the economy & picking winners and losers
If there's anything that I can't stand about President Obama's jobs plan, it's that he thinks he knows best which industries will succeed and which ones aren't worthy of special treatment. The man whose stimulus plan failed miserably while adding hundreds of billions to the debt now thinks he's an expert at picking economic winners and losers. This article is testimony to President Obama's narcissism & economic ineptitude:
"Maybe you found yourself underwater on your mortgage and faced the terrible prospect of losing your home. Maybe you're out of work and worried about how you're going to provide for your family. Or maybe you're a student at UNLV and you're wondering if you're going to be able to find a job when you graduate, or if you're going to be able to pay off your student loans, or if you're going to be able to start your career off on the right foot."What President Obamna isn't talking about are all the businesses that won't get into the clean energy industry. What happens with them? We know that he's letting the Bush tax cuts expire on the top income tax bracket. Now he's telling all of those companies that don't comply with his wishes for a green economy will get his exceptionally hard.
One path Obama said he is pursuing is to insist that Congress increase clean energy manufacturing tax credits by $5 billion, more than doubling the credits available last year. That alone would add 40,000 jobs, but he predicted it would also trigger $12 billion in private-sector investment and an additional 90,000 jobs. Essentially, a business venture that agrees to put up 70 percent of the financing would get a 30 percent match from the government.
Nevada potentially could benefit from the increased tax credits as it attempts to position itself as a world leader in clean energy production from solar, wind and geothermal sources.
That's his idea of a jobs program? God help us.
As for efforts undertaken by his administration to increase employment, he said:I can't argue with that. This administration has fought to expand government employment and government spending. Conversely, the Obama administration can't credibly claim that they've implemented plans that spurred robust economic growth. In fact, it wouldn't take much doing to prove that this administration's policies have mired the economy in a semi-lethargic semi-recovery.
"We fought to keep Nevada teachers and firefighters and police officers on the job, and to extend unemployment insurance and COBRA so folks have health insurance while they're looking for work."
President Obama campaigned on delivering on big things that would positively change people's lives. Instead, his policies have made people's lives worse. We've accumulated more debt in President Obama's first 17 1/2 months in office than President Bush accumulated in 8 years. He jammed a job-killing health care bill, filled with $670,000,000,000 worth of tax increases , down people's throats even though they prefer the plan they had over the plans they're getting shoved into.
This November, people will remember President Obama's predictions about the stimulus creating jobs and the health care bill reducing deficits. They'll compare that with reality, then they'll boot Democrats out by the dozens.
Posted Sunday, July 11, 2010 10:12 AM
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Bachmann Gives As Good As She Gets
Tarryl Clark has been trying to hit Michele Bachmann on 'the BP issue' seemingly forever. It's never gotten traction because Michele's own interviews have made it clear that she's supported BP paying for every penny of damage, both economic and environmental, that they've caused. I wrote about that in this post :
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R), MINNESOTA: Well first of all, I'm not here to shill (ph) for BP. That's not the goal. BP clearly is at fault here. They need to pay every last dime of damage and that's what needs to be done. But at the same time, we don't want these payouts to become political. We don't think it's a good idea for the federal government to see private industry as essentially a piggy bank for the federal government. So every claim needs to be paid out. And we actually had a process set up through the court system.This morning, Michele was on WCCO for an interview by Esme Murphy. Saying that Michele hit it out of the park is understatement. One of the things that Michele talked about was having courts monitor the disbursement of funds according to the rule of law. Michele said that courts have rules of evidence that make it difficult, though not impossible, to scam.
That's why this was kind of an unusual process. We already had a system set up to deal with claims in the case of oil spills where a court independently without any political implications would pay out legitimate claims. Now we don't have that situation. This is an appointee from the Obama administration who will be doing the payouts. And it's the pay czar dealing with the administration. So this is very different from what we've done in the past. And while it's important that all the claims get paid, let's just make sure that this isn't a permanent ATM card.
The clear inference was that an impartial court system applying the rule of law was better than letting President Obama's politcal appointee make the disbursements because without the courts monitoring these disbursements, a political appointee can ship some of the money to political cronies.
Esme Murphy also asked Michele about Tarryl Clark's claims that Michele isn't home in her district enough. Michele said that, while she often travels out of state on weekends, she's never gone the entire weekend. Michele then said that the Sixth District is where her family is, where her home is and where her church is. She then mentioned that she's always meeting with constituents at least one day during the weekend somewhere in the district.
Frankly, I've thought that this was a foolish line of attack by Tarryl. People won't walk into a polling booth and say "I can't vote for her. She isn't home often enough on the weekends." They will vote for Michele, though, because she's steadfastly advocated lower taxes, helping small businesses compete and standing against insane spending and deficits.
Michele didn't mince words in saying that Tarryl's characterizations of her aren't accurate. I've seen her give several interviews recently, each of which she did a great job in. That said, this was easily her strongest performance. Then, to add the finishing touches onto the interview, she said that she was wearing her denim jacket because she was heading immediately after the interview to the Monticello parade.
Michele also mentioned that she had a great time at the Andover parade.
Posted Sunday, July 11, 2010 11:20 AM
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Entenza, Green Energy & Minnesota's Deficits
Matt Entenza's Strib op-ed illustrates perfectly the DFL's distrust of people. The opening to his op-ed is also typical DFL whining:
We face a huge budget deficit. We have schools so broke they're shifting to four-day weeks. We need to find $50 billion we don't have to cover the next 20 years of urgent transportation needs. We're leaving our most vulnerable citizens hurting, and we're firing police and firefighters across the state.First, cities that are "firing police and firefighters" aren't very bright in terms of budgeting. Public safety is the primary responsibility of each level of government. Why would public safety be the first cuts made to city budgets? Why shouldn't other parts of the city budget get cut first?
Some on the left think we can solve all this by just raising taxes. Some on the right think we just need more cuts. I say we cannot tax or cut our way to greatness; we must grow our way there. The emerging clean-energy economy is the right strategy at the right time.
While Entenza whines about LGA cuts, nothing in his economic policy speeches speaks to growing Minnesota's economy. It's true that Mr. Entenza talks incessantly about building a green economy. That leads to this question: Why doesn't Mr. Entenza talk about other types of businesses?
Here's another question for Mr. Entenza: Why do green energy companies deserve preferential treatment? Giving green energy companies preferential treatment is an implicit admission that Minnesota's tax system hurts businesses. If Minnesota's tax system helped businesses, green energy companies wouldn't need preferential treatment.
This paragraph is laughably absurd:
While I have called for an immediate budget-balancing approach, a third through revenue enhancements (targeted at the wealthiest Minnesotans), a third in deferments and a third in cuts, I have not promised billions in new spending. To win the trust of voters, Democrats must avoid the trap of overpromising things that are undeliverable. That is why it is so critical that we embrace clean energy and get our economy going again.In 2007, the DFL promised that they wouldn't raise taxes. During the first week of session, Speaker Kelliher promised that she'd run a fiscally moderate caucus . Less than 3 months later, she'd help get some of the biggest spending increases in state history passed.
Now we're supposed to trust Matt Entenza to not overspend? That's laughable.
It's worth noting that the Class of 2006 didn't initially promise billions in new spending either. Then their special interest allies prevailed upon them. The spending increases, coupled with the DFL's tax increases, were entirely predictable. In fact, I wrote about Cy Thao's now infamous quote back then:
"When you guys win, you get to keep your money. When we win, we take your money."The DFL is genetically predisposed to raising taxes, which they use to increase spending for their special interest allies.
I recall watching with my brother a debate during the Carlson years. The state had its biggest surplus in state history at the time. The debate I watched was of 3 DFL legislators arguing over a new tax increase. One DFL legislator said that the new revenue should go towards education. Another said it should go for transportation. The third legislator said it should go towards a combination of health care, transportation and education.
When I looked at my brother, he was just shaking his head in disbelief. The first thing we said was that we've got a $4 billion surplus. Why do these politicians need to raise taxes to spend even more money?
This pattern has repeated itself frequently over the years. Unfortunately, two things that haven't become patterns with the DFL is the habit of setting smart priorities and saying no to their special interest allies. I'm not betting on that happening anytime soon, which is why I've never given the DFL a serious thought of supporting.
Posted Monday, July 12, 2010 8:16 AM
Comment 1 by R-Five at 12-Jul-10 08:48 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only cities that talk of and often do lay off police are cities like Minneapolis where police is only about 10 percent of the budget. And which party has run these cities for decades?
In my suburb, we determine what we need for police and set the tax levy accordingly. One thing the GOP should do however, is drop these convoluted, ineffective levy limits. Let us decide.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 12-Jul-10 11:06 PM
Rex, I can't correct you because you're right in your observations. Sane cities thnk that public safety is their highest priority & budget accordingly. Smart budgeters don't subject their highest priority items to the wild fluctuations of Minnesota's revenues. They pay for their public safety budget items with the most stable city revenues.
HHS Hearing Notes
This morning, I attended a hearing at the Stearns County Office Building on the subject of implementing the GAMC reform that was negotiated by Matt Dean and Erin Murphy .
The hearing was chaired by Tom Huntley and was hosted by CentraCare Clinic, with Dave Borgert acting as the host.
A substantial portion of the first part of the hearing was taking testimony from an attorney, first name Yolanda, who deals with patients needing GAMC coverage. She described a number of places where she thought there needed to be better coordination between the county, city and state governments.
Another substantial portion of the first hour was devoted to representatives of a clinic here in Central Minnesota that said they chose to not opt into the CCDS system because they could produce better health outcomes by treating patients on the primary care side rather than on the, for lack of a better term, the ER side.
The second hour started with Chairman Huntley criticizing Gov. Pawlenty for not opting into the Obamacare Early MA program. He said that "that problem goes away for us in 2014", referring to the start of Obamacare. Chairman Huntley said that "we're leaving $1.4 billion on the table" by not accepting the early opt-in.
What Chairman Huntley didn't say is that that money is coming from our wallets in the form of the $670,000,000,000 of tax increases included in the Obamacare bill. He also failed to mention that there isn't a guarantee of that money continuing after 2014. Chairman Huntley said that it remains to be seen "what the next governor will do."
After a constituent at the meeting talked about the need for uniformity in applying these health care dollars, Rep. Erin Murphy went through the process by which they arrived at this situation. Immediately after that, Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer said that an option that would've delievered uniformity of coverage, lower costs and a better set of coverages was Steve Gottwalt's Healthy Minnesota Plan, which I've written about frequently on this blog.
Rep. Kiffmeyer talked about how the Department of Human Services put the financial note together, that it's saving Minnesota taxpayers $110,000,000 a year, that Rep. Gottwalt's plan offers a higher hospital limit, which is currently at $10,000 under MinnesotaCare. Rep. Kiffmeyer said that the key to the plan is using an HRA, or Health Reimbursement Account, rather than using the current MinnesotaCare plan that essentially is prepaid health care rather than health insurance.
Based on what was said at the hearing, MinnesotaCare essentially sends money out to the health insurance companies each month. Rep. Hosch said that he wasn't sure but he thought that the insurance companies made alot of money under this plan. That's when Rep. Kiffmeyer jumped in and said that that's why Rep. Gottwalt's plan would change that procedure, thereby saving taxpayers money.
What became increasingly clear during the hearing is that the federal government top-down, government-knows-best plan will help people fall through some awfully big cracks. It's obvious that states have a difficult time implementing changes made at the state level. It isn't a stretch to think that the problems will grow in size and complexity if they're from the result of horsetrading and votebuying at the federal level.
UPDATE: Steve Gottwalt issued this statement after today's meeting:
Interestingly, the essential challenges we heard today were there even before the GAMC wranglings of the last year: Providing access to specialty care for low income people in rural areas has been a challenge for as long as I can remember. Providers not getting paid adequately for people on government programs (MA, PMAP, GAMC) has also been an issue since before Linda Berglin won her first election.
Metro-centric solutions are always a burden on Greater Minnesota. In that sense, little has changed! Yet Rep. Murphy and Rep. Huntley suggest these are new problems created by Gov. Pawlenty and the end-of-session "negotiated" GAMC changes. GAMC has suffered from all these problems for years, and has been costing Minnesota taxpayers $1 billion per biennium, set to grow another 36% in the next biennium if we had not done something to change things!
Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer is absolutely correct: It is the Republicans in the House, particularly Rep. Matt Dean, who brought forward sustainable GAMC reforms that provide care and save dollars. It is the Dems who have been the party of "no"; no leadership, no reforms; no savings.
Posted Monday, July 12, 2010 11:01 PM
Comment 1 by Eric Austin at 12-Jul-10 03:07 PM
It sort of seems like you left out the part where Erin Murphy offered to accept the "Gottwalt Plan" in exchange for opting in and Steve Gottwalt refused.
Comment 2 by Stonewall Jackson at 12-Jul-10 03:54 PM
The "Yolanda" who monopolized the hearing probably was Rolanda Mason, who is an attorney for Legal Aid up there in Saint Cloud.
Legal Aid sees the taxpayers as an ATM for Legal Aid's clients. It is not suprising, then, that Huntley gave her so much time to testify at the hearing.
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 12-Jul-10 05:07 PM
First off, that swap wasn't talked about at the hearing. You can't forget to include what wasn't said.
Second, why would anyone accept that type of disastrous trade? Obamacare is a disaster that should've been rejected & that should be repealed.
Comment 4 by Aaron Klemz at 13-Jul-10 08:57 AM
I just can't let Gottwalt's mention of Rep. Dean pass. Matt Dean did amazing bipartisan work with DFL'rs to craft and pass a decent GAMC fix that passed by a wide bipartisan margin. Then he had the rug pulled out from underneath him by Pawlenty's veto of that bill. ANd now we're left with a GAMC "system" of only 4 metro CCDS' when before there were greater Minnesota participants.
So, no, this is not the "same problem," this is a new problem. And there was a better bipartisan compromise that Pawlenty vetoed.
Response 4.1 by Gary Gross at 13-Jul-10 10:44 AM
Actually, Mr. Klemz, I followed this extremely closely. The only reason why the first bill got wide bipartisan support was because the DFL said that they'd get the objectionable parts worked out in conference. Then the Senate accepted the House bill without amendment, thereby avoiding a conference committee.
You're right that Rep. Dean did great work but his best work came after Gov. Pawlenty's veto.
This all would've been moot had the DFL accepted the House GOP's reform that would've saved hundreds of millions of $$$ per year. Instead, they chose to play political hardball raher than do the right thing.
Comment 5 by Aaron Klemz at 13-Jul-10 11:47 AM
What were "the objectionable parts" that were to be removed by CC? I know that you can repeat the line that the GOP leadership used to explain the seemingly inexplicable reversal of tone and vote from the passage vote to the override vote. No one has ever explained what these parts are that the CC was to remove, or why an overwhelming number of House GOP'er would simply take the word of DFL leadership that they'd take these parts out. Especially when there was a parade of GOP'ers in front of the cameras after the first vote talking 'bout bipartsanship and all that.
