December 20-28, 2012
Dec 20 02:03 Behind the Times again Dec 28 03:20 Doing what's right vs. the strong political hand
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Behind the Times again
One of the nicknames that the St. Cloud Times has acquired throughout the years is the St. Cloud SomeTimes. After reading this Our View op-ed in the SC Times, it appears they need a new nickname. I propose that new nickname be the 'Behind the Times' for obvious reasons. Here's part of the Times' hatchet piece:
St. Cloud-area Rep. Steve Gottwalt is under some scrutiny in the wake of a Minnesota Public Radio news report last week that highlighted the reasonable public perception of a potential conflict of interest involving his private business dealings and his powerful legislative role in reforming health care coverage.
The Dec. 10 report stated shortly after Gottwalt, chairman of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee, championed reforms to a state-run health care program, he became a licensed insurance broker, allowing for the possibility of selling products to those purged from that program.
The District 14A Republican also entered into a business partnership with another broker who had lobbied for Gottwalt's reforms. And to further compound matters, Gottwalt hasn't done a thorough job of explaining all this to constituents.
This is ancient news. Long before he was elected to represent HD-15A, Steve Gottwalt worked in the health insurance industry, though not as an insurance agent. As a freshman legislator in 2007, Steve became one of the experts in the House GOP Caucus on HHS issues because of Steve's experience in the health insurance industry.
As for the Times' cheapshot that Rep. Gottwalt "hasn't done a thorough job of explaining all this to constituents", that's BS. The vast majority of the people that contributed to Steve's campaign knew about Steve's history within the health insurance industry.
After leaving his job with a local company, Steve opted to get his license to sell health insurance. That was well after Gov. Dayton signed Steve's HHS reform plan into law. That's a natural thing for him to do.
The Times admits that "Gottwalt's actions don't merit an ethics probe", which is like admitting that they didn't have much for the editorial page so they created this non-story.
With all their resources, you'd think the Times could find time to write something about the SCSU administration doctoring students' transcripts . That's something worthy of an editorial. This garbage isn't. The question now is why the Times isn't devoting any ink on a real scandal. Is it that they're protecting this administration?
It's time for the Times to come clean if that's what they're doing.
Tags: Media Bias , Hit Piece , St. Cloud Times , Transparency , SCSU , Transcripts , Scandal , Steve Gottwalt , HHS , Health Insurance , GOP
Posted Thursday, December 20, 2012 2:03 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 20-Dec-12 08:02 AM
Hann is with Boys and Tyler too. What a crew.
Comment 2 by Jethro at 22-Dec-12 12:20 PM
Early this year, John Bodette said the Times was going to commit to more investigative reporting. When will he begin? Does grade integrity not rise to the level of an investigation?
Doing what's right vs. the strong political hand
One thing that's been bothering me in the debt ceiling discussion is the total absence of consideration of what's the best path forward for the nation. Altogether too often, the discussion has focused on President Obama's re-election, not the fact that he didn't win a mandate from the American people.
The message the nation sent wasn't that they approved of President Obama's mishandling of the economy. Rather, the nation sent the message that they elected the lesser of two evils. (That isn't my perspective but it's the message the voters apparently sent.)
They definitely blamed President Bush for the economy without giving President Obama high marks on the economy.
The reality is that the nation re-elected Republicans to run the House of Representatives despite President Obama's victory. The point is that neither Democrats or Republicans have a mandate. That means doing what's right on the federal budget and what's right for creating jobs.
Despite his victory, President Obama hasn't proposed policies that create enough jobs. Month after month, job creation lags farther behind population growth. Month after month, family incomes drop. Despite the Democrats' insistence that the economy has turned the corner, the reality is that the Democrats' policies haven't created the robust job growth that's needed.
There isn't an economist out there that'll argue that President Obama's policies will start creating jobs in the numbers we need to lift ourselves from this recession.
Speaker Boehner shouldn't buy into the media's myths about the Democrats winning the fiscal cliff debate. If we go over the cliff, historians won't call this Speaker Boehner's recession. That's because presidents, not speakers, get the fault for the recessions just like they get the credit for when the economy soars.
President Obama's legacy won't be filled with stories of how the stimulus revived the US economy. The ACA won't be recorded as a success, either. It's a failure. President Obama's strict adherence to his failed ideology will be his legacy.
There's never been a time when this many taxes have been raised and this much money spent this recklessly and the economy recovered. That's before talking about President Obama's exponential growth in regulations, which are exploding while ruining the US economy.
It's time for Republicans to start promoting their plan as the only plan from either party that addresses the problems confronting the nation. That isn't because it's the greatest plan ever devised. It's partly because Democrats haven't offered a serious economic plan.
Tags: Fiscal Cliff , President Obama , Recession , Unemployment , Tax Hikes , ACA , Stimulus , Fiscal Restraint , GOP
Posted Friday, December 28, 2012 3:20 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 28-Dec-12 07:57 AM
A radio host yesterday was absolutely insistent that Obama didn't give a hoot about the economy OR the country, and that he was content with the legacy of having radically reshaped the country to his socialist likings. That doesn't seem a nice thing to say about Obama, but no other conclusion seems to fit the facts as well. It doesn't speak well of the voters for letting themselves be bamboozled like that. What concerns me is not that Obama wants to change the country or that he might succeed, but that he might alter it so badly that we can never recover.
Comment 2 by Patrick-M at 28-Dec-12 09:42 AM
Didn't FDR reshape America and it took about 25 years to get back to our roots? As you say J. Ewing, I fear that we may never recover given that we have just one party running the country now - DemoRepub or RepubCrat.
Comment 3 by J. Ewing at 28-Dec-12 12:13 PM
At some point the voters have to take responsibility for what they voted for. Even if they were misinformed, they should have been more discerning. Republicans are running scared when they should be standing tall and using a 2x4.
Comment 4 by walter hanson at 30-Dec-12 12:07 PM
J:
The problem is that Obama will keep the money being spent until 2017 and let it be his legacy that he didn't cut the spending.
In the meantime we have that Weimar Republic day when massive inflation will break out, that the national debt becomes 150% or more of GNP, and we have permanently lost the windows to reform Social Security and medicare.
He doesn't care because he is living an eight year party. Nothing gets to him at all like when the Secret Service allowed somebody who was on a reality show crash a state dinner.
The sad thing is that he managed to convince enough blacks, enough hispanics, enough single women who care about birth control, enough young people, enough members of an union, enough gays, and who else I'm missing that a vote for him was a good idea.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 5 by eric z. at 31-Dec-12 11:30 PM
Obama will sell the nation out by "compromising" with the dark forces of McConnell/Boehner. It will be an insult to everyone who voted for his reelection. But he knew he had that power. Because Ryan-Romney was too egregious to bear, he could count on people grudgingly falling in line with the lesser evil. That's what happened and he is a Republican in Dem clothing.
Comment 6 by eric z at 01-Jan-13 08:22 AM
Happy "We Got Sold Out" New Year. What did I tell you.
Republicans did have it right, in Eisenhower times, Eisenhower taxation rates.
