March 30-31, 2014
Mar 30 00:58 Dorholt parrots DFL's spin
Mar 30 01:02 Mike Hatch: Gov. Dayton's defense attorney?
Mar 31 14:53 Mission Accomplished failed
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Dorholt parrots DFL's spin
It was quite a downer when Zach Dorholt defeated King Banaian, especially from a policy standpoint. We traded a respected economist for a politician with no particular policy skills. Apparently, though, Dorholt is a skilled spinmeister:
Tax Cuts for Minnesotans
The House got an early start this year by passing a repeal bill to end unnecessary warehousing and business-to-business sales taxes during the first week of session. As part-owner and a small business, I worked with members of both parties to make sure that warehousing taxes, telecommunications equipment taxes, and machinery repair sales taxes were repealed this session. I was a co-author of many of these business tax repeal bills in the House.
We also passed federal conformity as part of that tax repeal bill. Conforming Minnesota's tax code to federal tax law makes tax filing easier for Minnesotans and qualified over 1 million residents of our state for $230 million in increased tax relief. Last Friday, we were finally able to act on the complete amended tax cut package that was sent to us by the Senate. We passed the bill the same day with bipartisan support to cut taxes by $430 million and sent it to Governor Dayton for signing.
Here's the truth of what happened:
As part-owner and a small business, I worked with members of both parties to make sure that warehousing taxes, telecommunications equipment taxes, and machinery repair sales taxes that I voted for were repealed this session. I was a co-author of many of these business tax repeal bills in the House. I co-authored many of these tax repeal bills because not repealing them would've been political suicide. I supported terrible tax increase policies because that's what loyal Democrats reflexively do.
Seriously, Dorholt voted for the biggest tax increases in Minnesota history last year. Then he saw the political firestorm erupt the minute Gov. Dayton signed the bill that Dorholt and the DFL voted for.
Now Dorholt wants to pretend that those tax increases just appeared out of thin air, that he didn't have a thing to do with them. Dorholt wants people to think that giving some of the Democrats' tax increase back should count as a tax cut. That's the same logic as saying that the burglar who stole a flat screen TV, several brand new iPads and some kitchen appliances last week, then returned the kitchen appliances this week is a man of charity.
Restoring part of the things that the DFL legislature stole last year isn't the same as cutting taxes. Outside of a Democratic politicians' world, that's considered as righting a wrong.
Finally, talking about tax conformity as tax relief is a joke. It isn't tax relief. I don't recall the DFL legislature passing tax conformity last year but if they did, they certainly didn't talk about it as tax relief. When tax conformity was passed in previous sessions, the legislature just treated it like the right thing to do, a ho-hum type of thing.
I'm betting that the reason the DFL is trumpeting tax conformity as tax relief is because the DFL wants some political cover from the charges that a) the DFL passed the biggest tax increase in Minnesota history and b) the DFL's tax increase hit plenty of middle class families.
The DFL and their allies like ABM and TakeAction Minnesota aren't tethered to the truth. They're more closely affiliated with spin that says reducing the size of last year's tax increase is a tax cut. There's a simple thing to remember. The next time that the DFL cuts taxes...will be the first time the DFL cuts taxes.
Posted Sunday, March 30, 2014 12:58 AM
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Mike Hatch: Gov. Dayton's defense attorney?
Friday night, Mike Hatch enlisted himself as Gov. Dayton's defense attorney. First, here's a little background on the conversation. The first subject discussed during the Almanac Roundtable was medical marijuana.
When Cathy Wurzer brought up the subject of Gov. Dayton's alleged statement to a parent to buy marijuana from a street dealer, Brian McClung jumped all over that, saying that it's disgraceful that Gov. Dayton would tell someone to break the law. Then McClung said that it wasn't just the mother who is making that accusation, that others attending that impromptu meeting had verified the fact that Gov. Dayton had said that.
That's when Mr. Hatch came to Gov. Dayton's defense, saying that "nobody knows what was said. Nobody here was in that meeting." Then he said that since nobody on the panel was there, they shouldn't state their opinion on what happened.
First, that's exceptionally rich coming from someone who made a career as Minnesota's Attorney General by avoiding trials by trying the cases in the court of public opinion. Hatch's habit was to hold splashy press conferences where he'd say that another evil corporation had shafted John Q. Public. Most of Hatch's lawsuits didn't make it to trial because the defendant settled before trial.
But I digress.
Hatch's argument is flimsy at best. Crime aren't committed in front of a room full of upstanding citizens as witnesses. Despite that, juries frequently deliver guilty verdicts without eyewitness testimony to a shooting or robbery.
In this instance, however, there were a bunch of parents/activists who stepped forward and said that they'd heard Gov. Dayton make this statement. If they're telling the truth, then Gov. Dayton told a distraught mother to commit a crime. This video shows at least 2 women, including Jessica Hauser, making the statement that Gov. Dayton told Ms. Hauser to buy marijuana from a street dealer:
If Mr. Hatch wants to argue that these women aren't telling the truth, then he'd better bring a lunch because he's in for a long day. There were at least a half dozen people standing with Ms. Hauser at Ms. Hauser's press conference. If that's the case, then Mr. Hatch's job as Gov. Dayton's defense attorney is to discredit each of these eyewitnesses' testimony. I won't say that's impossible but I'd say accomplishing that is as likely as me hitting the Powerball jackpot...twice.
If I were Gov. Dayton, I'd either hire a better attorney or I'd throw myself on the mercy of the court because, right now, he doesn't have a chance of winning this fight.
Posted Sunday, March 30, 2014 7:55 AM
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Mission Accomplished failed
I wrote this post to highlight with statistics just how badly MNsure, aka Obamacare in Minnesota, is failing. Here are some of the things I highlighted in that post:
For individuals, MNsure has an open enrollment goal of 69,904 but so far only has 35,610. For small businesses, MNsure wants 8,925 people signed up by March 31 but right now only has 790 people enrolled.
These aren't my statistics. They're statistics included in KSTP's article on MNsure. KSTP got their numbers from MNsure itself. It's worth noting that the 69,904 figure is trimmed way down from the legislature's initial projection, which I wrote about in this article :
According to [the fistcal note for HF5], their low-end enrollment in QHPs was supposed to hit 164,000, their mid-range enrollment in QHPs was supposed to hit 217,000 and their high-end enrollment in QHPs was supposed to hit 270,000.
Based on those projections, MNsure is only 13% of the way to hitting the high-end projection, 16.4% of the way to hitting the mid-range projection and only 21.7% of the way to hitting the lowest projection.
This graphic from the Minnesota Jobs Coalition ties the tale together nicely:
A few minutes ago, the Strib published this article with this headline:
MNsure call center bogs down as midnight deadline looms for enrolling in health coverage
Here's the text of the article:
ST. PAUL, Minn. - The call center for Minnesota's health insurance marketplace is reaching capacity and some callers aren't getting through to agents as the midnight open enrollment deadline approaches.
MNsure officials say the call center logged more than 9,600 calls by noon Monday. MNsure says that's putting a strain on the phone system. The average wait time as of about 1 p.m. was 18 minutes, and the time on hold is expected to increase throughout the day.
Exchange officials say people who can't get through or have difficulty enrolling online should fill out an enrollment attempt form on MNsure's home page. MNsure will contact them later to complete the enrollment process.
Those who miss the deadline but make a good-faith effort to enroll will get more time and escape a financial penalty.
There's one inescapable truth to these statistics. People have stayed away from the policies offered through MNsure because the policies suck. If MNsure was selling appealing policies from the start, we would've read stories months ago that complained about how MNsure didn't have enough servers to handle the volume of people signing up in huge numbers.
Those articles didn't happen because people found out that the policies offered through MNsure were expensive, had high deductibles or were totally unaffordable.
That's what failure looks like.
Posted Monday, March 31, 2014 2:53 PM
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