November 22-24, 2013
Nov 22 08:04 St. Cloud Times runs negative SCSU article Nov 23 00:52 Troubled Times means trouble at SCSU Nov 23 06:47 Franken open to the inevitable Nov 23 09:06 Stopping the Senate Office Building Nov 23 10:57 Higher taxes = better services? Nov 24 03:36 Steve Israel -- Introducing the DCCC's whiny leader Nov 24 04:38 Republicans credited for exposing ACA's faults Nov 24 10:03 President Obama's political priorities
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
St. Cloud Times runs negative SCSU article
Take a close look at this because it might be the last article of its kind. This refers to the rarest of rare creatures: a St. Cloud Times article about St. Cloud State that isn't full of propaganda. That isn't to say that it's particularly hard-hitting. It certainly isn't critical of President Potter. Here's a representative sample of the article:
St. Cloud State President Earl Potter said the budget reductions will probably be made without layoffs. The university is using reserves to help close the deficit. 'We are able to make those reductions largely without negative impact,' Potter said.
What isn't said is what's important. The reckless spending that President Potter signed contracts on would almost totally eliminate the need for budget cuts. The contract President Potter signed with the J.A. Wedum Foundation has been in effect for 3 years now. During the first 2 years, St. Cloud State paid the Foundation all the rent that was collected plus $2,250,000. The third year is in the books but the financial figures haven't come out yet. Rumor has it that the University will have to write a check worth between $950,000 and $980,000.
That's before talking about the debt service on the National Hockey Center renovations. That's before talking about the money SCSU is paying to the City of St. Cloud for 3 police officers. That's another $20,000 a month. Then there's this from Dave Aeikens' article:
St. Cloud State University is in the process of reducing its 2013-2014 budget by about 1.7 percent. The reductions amount to about $2.9 million. The university has a budget of about $150 million. The reduction is tied to a 5 percent decline in enrollment.
That's quite an admission, especially considering the fact that Mr. Aeikens wrote an article in early October that Silence Dogood highlighted in this post :
At 6:19 p.m. last Friday evening, Dave Aeikens published an article in the online version of the St. Cloud Times stating that SCSU announced that fall semester enrollment is down only 1.3%! This is amazing news since only two days earlier on Wednesday, at Meet and Confer between the Faculty Association and the SCSU Administration; the administration distributed a budget document planning for a 5% decrease in enrollment and a budget reduction of over $2,800,000.
The Potter administration published a statement that talked about headcount numbers. Dave Aeikens quoted those statistics in his article. As Silence highlighted, the Potter administration didn't talk about FYE enrollment because they were a problem for his administration.
In last night's article, Aeikens quoted the FYE numbers, something that I've consistently published here on LFR. Gone from last night's article is the head count enrollment, which aren't telling in terms of budgets. Another thing missing from Dave Aeikens' article is the fact that FYE enrollment is almost certain to be down more than 5%. The more SCSU's FYE enrollment is down, the bigger the budget cuts will have to be. The only other option for the Potter administration is to take more from their reserves.
Neither option is appealing. Unfortunately for the University, it isn't about what's appealing. It's about doing what one has to do.
Posted Friday, November 22, 2013 8:04 AM
Comment 1 by Terry Stone at 22-Nov-13 09:15 AM
Potter has made yet another poor choice. Bleeding the SCSU reserve fund instead of making tough choices that "right-sizes" the institution will exacerbate the job of the next university president. May he arrive soon.
Comment 2 by Yeager at 23-Nov-13 06:03 PM
Interesting...Potter is savaged on this blog for making choices that preserved (and actually increased) the reserve, and now that it is possible that the University might use it to save jobs, he'll get blasted for doing so.
Response 2.1 by Gary Gross at 24-Nov-13 07:01 AM
Yeager, that's a nice try at defending the indefensible. Apparently, you're hoping we don't talk about President Potter presiding over a lengthy, substantial enrollment decline. President Potter fired Dr. Saffari because he didn't put together an enrollment retention plan. More than 2 years later, Potter's admininstration hasn't put a plan together.
Instead, enrollments have steadily declined under President Potter's watch, which has led to SCSU missing out literally on millions of dollars of tuition revenues. If the Potter regime had done a better job at turning the enrollment slide around, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
That's before talking about the foolish spending decisions President Potter's made. If he hadn't signed the Wedum Foundation contract, SCSU wouldn't have written them over $3,000,000 in checks. In fact, they might've gotten some of those students in dorms that make the University money. That's literally a difference of millions of dollars.
I haven't seen Yeager argue that President Potter's signing the Wedum Foundation contract was wise. I've just seen him argue that LFR hasn't given President Potter kid glove treatment. If President Potter wants kid glove treatment, he can ask the SC Times to coddle him. At LFR, we believe in asking tough questions and reporting important information. I'm not trying to be the next generation of the Times.
Comment 3 by Crimson Trace at 23-Nov-13 08:22 PM
Yeager: Potter is savaged, huh? Feel free to provide us the data from MnSCU or other credible sources to provide a strong opposing argument. It is quite apparent that Silence Dogood's MnSCU data driven argument versus your one sentence data free observation are light years apart in credibility. Please, do your best to convince us with data.
Troubled Times means trouble at SCSU
More Spin from the Potter Organization
by Silence Dogood
On Thursday evening the online St. Cloud Times had an article about SCSU cutting its budget by 1.7%. This is hardly new news because the administration presented this data at Meet and Confer on September 5, 2013. It's really nice to see that the St. Cloud Times is on top of things happening on the SCSU campus with such a timely report! I'm not really sure if the Times reported about it but in case they missed it, the St. Cloud State football team defeated Southwest Minnesota State University 49-35 on September 7, 2013.
The reductions to the FY14 budget (which is the current academic year) result from a projected 5% drop in enrollment, as listed in a document presented at the same Meet and Confer, equals $3,140,326 in lost tuition revenue. In the Times article, President Potter is quoted as saying that the "Reductions for 2014-15 might be more significant," and that "The size of the reductions will be based on enrollment next year." This might be the first indication of a further decline in enrollment in FY15 and that the reduction due to lost tuition revenue will need to be more than $3,140,326.
Using enrollment data from the MnSCU website, the following Figure shows the FYE enrollment for SCSU from FY07 to FY13.
If the enrollment for FY14 declines by 5% as the administration has predicted AND the enrollment declines by the same 5% for FY15, enrollment will have dropped from its peak in FY09 of 15,096 to 11,780, which corresponds to a drop of 3,316 FYE a decline of 22.0% over the five year period. The plot of FYE enrollment including estimated enrollments for FY14 and FY15 is shown in the following figure.
The trend is clearly disturbing! It is important to note that some have predicted that the decline for FY14 will be bigger than the administration's prediction of a 5% decline. Using data from the MnSCU website, FYE data for Summer 2012 (1,069) and Fall 2012 (6,366) can be compared with Summer 2013 (1,012) and Fall 2013 (6,017), this comparison shows enrollment dropped 406 FYE which is a decrease of 5.46%. The latest Spring 2014 Weekly Admit Report shows that New Entering Freshman (NEF) and New Entering Transfers (NEF) are down -61 which corresponds to a decrease of -11.0% compared to last year.
In order to have an overall decline of 5% for the year, the Spring 2014 enrollment will have to reverse the current trend and be down by only 4.7%. Some people with knowledge about enrollments think a decline of only 4.7% is just a fantasy of someone in the administration. About the only thing that is certain is that if enrollment does not meet the administration's projections, additional cuts in expenditures or draw downs of reserves will need to occur.
The size of expenditure cuts, assuming a 5% decline in enrollment, was presented at Meet and Confer on September 5, 2013. The total projected cuts equal $2,861,117. However, no information was presented as to where the cuts would be made nor was a complete summary of the expenditure and revenue budgets for FY 2014 presented.
A document detailing the major units where the cuts will be made was presented at the Budget Advisory Committee Meeting on October 30, 2013.
This document was not presented at Meet and Confer and the FA was not given the opportunity to provide input regarding the relative distribution of the budget cuts and which areas of the budget would be held harmless. Furthermore, five months into the fiscal year, this represents more than 42% of the fiscal year has gone by; no details of the specific cuts to be made or a timeline for implementation of the reductions have been presented. Without knowing details of proposed cuts, the required opportunity for consultation either will not occur or the cuts will be delayed. Delay means the impact of the cuts will be magnified since a 1.72% annual reduction that occurs in six months is a 3.44% reduction.
The SCTimes article quotes President Potter: "We are able to make those reductions largely without negative impact." It's nice to believe what your leadership is telling you but before I take his word for it, I'd like to see where the cuts are going to occur and then I'll decide if there is a negative impact. It's really hard to believe that with the $14,000,000 in budget cuts from FY10 to FY 11 and the decline in tuition revenue in FY 11, 12 and 13 that there really is $2,861,117 in discretionary expenditures just sitting around waiting to be cut. Taking $2,861,117 out an already lean budget will have significant negative impacts.
It is clear from the Figure that enrollment is, in fact, not down at all seven state except Minnesota State-Mankato, which has stable enrollment as cited by the Times. Metro clearly shows a 1.3 percent increase! Bemidji and Mankato are both down 0.3%, which means their enrollment is essentially unchanged. Without a doubt, Moorhead, Southwest, Winona and SCSU are all down by significant amounts. Moorhead is down 2.7% and their administration has already indicated that retrenchment will occur if not enough faculty members take advantage of early retirement incentives. Moorhead is attempting to reduce their faculty by 10% and their enrollment is down less than half of that for SCSU. The Figure demonstrates that SCSU is down much more significantly than the others and the universities in MnSCU are not facing "similar budget issues."
Using percentages can sometimes confuse the data when the items being compared are not of similar size. The following Figure shows the FYE declines at each of the seven MnSCU universities.
This figure clearly shows the decline in FYE at SCSU is MUCH larger than at the other sister MnSCU universities. In fact, the decline in FYE at SCSU (-350 FYE) is larger than the sum of the declines at the five other universities experiencing declines (-265)! In light of this data, the statement reported by the SCTimes that "universities in the system are going through similar budget issues" is inaccurate and potentially bordering on irresponsible.
In an email to the faculty on September 19, 2013, Provost Malhotra stated: "When we completed our budget planning for FY14 in April, we planned for an FYE reduction of approximately 4.0%. We are taking the necessary steps to adjust our current FY14 budget for the additional 1.0% enrollment shift, which equals about $620,000. With a total operating budget of more than $210 million, this represents a reduction of about 0.3%."
The statement that SCSU has an operating budget of $210 million directly contradicts the SCTimes article which states: "The university has a budget of about $150 million." The difference between $150 million and $210 million is more than a trivial amount. Further the Malhotra memo mentions the need for an unplanned budget reduction of $620,000 when the SCTimes reports SCSU will need to cut $2,861,117. Which is it $620,000 or $2,861,117 in cuts? That is quite a difference. A good reporter might question the difference between the numbers.
In Provost Malhotra's September email, he also stated "Our organization is healthy, our reserves are stable, and we are confident we can deal with the budget impact in FY14 without any staff cuts or retrenchment." Provost Malhotra's assertion has not and can not be independently verified since there are no publicly available financial reports on the status of the FY14 SCSU budget.
The SCTimes article quotes St. Cloud State President Earl Potter that "the budget reductions will probably be made without layoffs. The university is using reserves to help close the deficit." This is supposed to be reassuring news to the employees at SCSU even though it is currently impossible to make an independent judgment about the financial health of SCSU for the same reason that Provost Malhotra's assertions can not be verified.
Equally troubling is what appears to be a violation of the Master Agreement if the SCTimes reporter properly quoted President Potter. If the quote is accurate, President Potter has violated Article 23 Retrenchment in the Master Agreement between the IFO and the Board of Trustees, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.
Article 23 states: "The President shall meet and confer with the Association, in accordance with the provisions of Article 6, at the time the President first considers retrenchment." At the September 5, 2013 Meet and Confer, President Potter responded, when asked if he was considering retrenchment, that he was not considering retrenchment.
At the Meet and Confer on October 9, 2013, Provost Malhotra (in the absence of President Potter), was asked the same question, he responded that he was not considering retrenchment. The problem is that the SCTimes article quotes President Potter saying "the budget reductions will probably be made without layoffs," which means that layoffs were, in fact, considered. It is simply not possible to make the qualifying statement "probably" without at least having considered layoffs. This may seem like a small issue but for employees potentially losing their jobs, it is a very big deal.
It is a shame that the SCTimes seems unwilling to investigate issues at SCSU and seems more like a spin doctor for the Potter organization. The SCTimes needs to do better.
Posted Saturday, November 23, 2013 6:04 AM
Comment 1 by Jethro at 23-Nov-13 06:11 AM
Why would the Times want to cover serious investigative reporting including the transcript scandal, massive enrollment decreases, million dollar losses at Coborn apartments, the empty science building, administrators gone wild traveling around the world when there are more important issues to cover like mustache November comes to campus?
http://www.sctimes.com/article/20131123/LIFE/311230004/-Movember-mustache-movement-reaches-students-SCSU?nclick_check=1
Comment 2 by Patrick-M at 23-Nov-13 07:22 AM
Perhaps the SC Times employees went to the "Colonel Nathan R. Jessep" school of truth telling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j2F4VcBmeo
Franken open to the inevitable
In his attempt to sound reasonable, Sen. Franken is willing to consider the possibility of what's inevitable. According to this Washington Post article , Sen. Franken is "willing to consider" delaying the individual mandate if HealthCare.gov isn't running soon:
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) says he would be open to a brief delay in the individual mandate if the problems with HealthCare.gov aren't fixed by the end of the month, according to Minnesota Public Radio.
"I think then we have to consider extending the deadline for the mandate, but let's hope that doesn't happen," Franken told MPR .
If Sen. Franken thinks that's being reasonable, he'd better pay attention. HealthCare.gov won't be operational anytime soon. Tech experts have said that it'd be easier to hire a crew of real experts build a new website from scratch rather than attempt to patch HealthCare.gov up. Couple that with this week's testimony that the billing part of the portal isn't built and you've got a full-fledged disaster on your hands.
Sen. Franken's biggest 'sin' is that he had the opportunity to delay the individual mandate. During the shutdown, Republicans offered that in a bill. Sen. Franken voted in lock-step with Harry Reid, meaning he voted against it. Sen. Franken also voted against repealing the medical device manufacturing tax.
Sen. Franken voted with Sen. Reid 100% of the time during the government shutdown. That isn't being a leader. Minnesotans shouldn't have to pay for a puppet. Sen. Franken was Sen. Reid's puppet on every major vote this year. It isn't difficult to make a case that Sen. Reid or Sen. Schumer does Sen. Franken's thinking for him. The truth is that precious little of what Sen. Franken says isn't part of the Democrats' chanting points.
The biggest point to remember is that Sen. Franken voted for this disaster back on Christmas Eve Day of 2009. This disaster wouldn't have happened had Sen. Franken done what's best for Minnesotans instead of doing what Sen. Reid told him to do.
Posted Saturday, November 23, 2013 6:47 AM
No comments.
Stopping the Senate Office Building
Perhaps, I'm a bit sensitive about the Senate Office Building lawsuit because Jim Knoblach is a friend of mine. Still, it's puzzling to me as to why conservative activists and organizations haven't jumped on the Stop the SOB bandwagon.
Jim's lawsuit has something in it for all different stripes of conservatives. For the liberty movement, Jim's lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of a Tax Bill that does more than address tax policy. In other words, the lawsuit accuses Sen. Tom Bakk of violating the Single-Subject Clause in Minnesota's Constitution. (Building pork palaces for politicians doesn't fit with setting tax rates and policies.)
For fiscal conservatives, Jim's lawsuit highlights the DFL's propensity for proposing pork projects. Simply put, the proposed Senate Office Building is pure pork. The notion that a new office building is needed is foolish. Taxpayers need to fund politicians' palaces like Minnesota needs a $4/hr. increase in the minimum wage .
For political candidates, Jim's lawsuit offers a great opportunity to highlight the fact that Democrats love pork projects, especially pork for pompous politicians. I'd be surprised if 80% of Minnesota's taxpayers didn't agree that politicians don't need to spend $90,000,000 on a building that's occupied 140 days during each biennium. Further, taxpayers don't need a palace that includes "a reflecting pool, skylights and a fitness center."
For GOP political strategists, it's a fantastic opportunity to prove the DFL is the party of pompous politicians, not the party of the people. Think of the opportunity to paint Sen. Bakk and the DFL legislators who voted for the Tax Bill as pork-loving, tax-raising politicians who are out of touch with Main Street Minnesotans. Frankly, this is a gift that might keep giving, at least until judges rule that Sen. Bakk's pork project is unconstitutional.
It's a great opportunity for GOP legislators to push a defunding bill when the session re-opens in February, 2014. If Sen. Bakk bottles up the GOP repeal bill, they can use that against Democrats in their campaigns. If their legislation repeals funding for Sen. Bakk's pork palace, it will be a stinging defeat for Sen. Bakk.
I understand why the GOP leadership in the Senate hasn't expressed outrage thus far. Now that Gov. Dayton has criticized the bill he signed , he's essentially given Senate GOP leadership 'permission' to criticize Sen. Bakk on this issue.
Finally, organizations like the Taxpayers League and Minnesota Majority should have a field day with this. It's right in their wheel house. The great news is that there's tons of potential political upside. The fantastic news is that there's virtually no political downside to criticizing Sen. Bakk's pork palace.
After all, how often do conservsatives get the opportunity to criticize a powerful Democrat for punishing taxpayers twice within a single bill? It's important to remember that this year's Tax Bill raised taxes on "the rich", the middle class and working poor while spending money on palaces for politicians.
Posted Saturday, November 23, 2013 9:06 AM
No comments.
Higher taxes = better services?
Don Davis's article is this weekend's must reading.
Overall, much of the $2.1 billion, two-year tax increase comes from the state's highest earners and smokers. Dayton made the point that if property taxes rise 2 percent statewide, that would far less than the 83 percent they have gone up in the past decade. 'I think that we did the job of delivering property tax relief,' House Speaker Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said.
Democrats say that higher taxes usually mean better services.
That's fantasy. Higher taxes usually means mayors feel less inhibited to spend significantly more money on things their cities don't need. Considering the fact that the same Tax Bill that raised every Minnesotan's tax bill was used to appropriate money for a pork palace for politicians . I'd love hearing Sen. Bakk or Speaker Thissen explain how higher taxes and shiny new office buildings mean more and better services for Minnesotans.
I'd also highlight the fact that higher taxes didn't make MnSure more taxpayer-friendly . Despite the multi-billion dollar tax increase, MnSure still gets weekends and holidays off while Minnesotans scramble franticly to get insured.
'Any tax increase in inherently unpopular,' Gov. Mark Dayton said in a Forum News Service interview. 'But it will be a message battle. Republicans will try to say 'largest tax increase in history' and we will say 'the people who have the most are paying it, and smokers.'
The DFL, aka Democrats, will argue that they 'taxed the rich'. Republicans will highlight the fact that the DFL also raised taxes on farmers, small businesses and chased a major part of Cargill's operations to Colorado :
Why Denver? Dan Dye, Horizon's president and Ardent's CEO-to-be, said in a statement that the decision 'will allow us to offer great quality of life for employees, provide excellent service to our customers and position the business for long-term growth.'
The Democrats' policies are hurting Minnesota's economy while piling additional tax burdens on farmers, blue collar workers and small businesses. Couple that with the DFL's intent to dramatically increase the minimum wage, via constitutional amendment if necessary , and you've got the recipe for economic calamity.
Based on what we've seen thus far, the DFL's claim that higher taxes equals better services is spin, not fact. Higher taxes just mean people have less money to spend.
Posted Saturday, November 23, 2013 10:57 AM
Comment 1 by Rex Newman at 25-Nov-13 07:43 AM
In this holiday season, would it be gauche to quietly observe that DFL'ers are lousy shoppers? They overpay for things we do need (transportation, education), and spend still more on things we don't need (trains, ethanol, green roofs, windmills, Senate Office Building). And whenever the checkbook runs dry, the call is always to tax still more. Their motto is "we can buy better, but we can't pay more!"
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 25-Nov-13 08:09 AM
It might be inconvenient to the DFL to say that but it isn't gauche. Then again, I don't mind people hurting the DFL's feelings when they deserve it.
The DFL is like the person who gets an overdraft notice and says "I can't be overdrawn. I've still got checks left."
Steve Israel -- Introducing the DCCC's whiny leader
Rep. Steve Israel's op-ed is long on whining. The message that comes through clearly is that he doesn't like it that Republicans put together a strategy for highlighting the ACA's multitude of shortcomings:
New Yorkers have two ways of looking at a problem. You can ask, "What went wrong, and who do we blame?" or you can roll up your sleeves and ask, "What went wrong, and how do we fix it?"
If anyone in America had any question about which question congressional Republicans would ask, we now have an answer: House Republicans engineered a 17-page playbook detailing how to sabotage and repeal the Affordable Care Act so they can score political points. In this lengthy manual, however, Republicans didn't offer a single idea for solutions, for helping constituents enroll in health care or understand their benefits. Rather, the entire handbook is a tactical guide to tearing down the law.
I'm impressed with the GOP's playbook. What's clear is that they're effectively attacking the Democrats and the Affordable Care Act with statistics, personal anecdotes and op-eds.
Additionally, this isn't a policy document on how to fix the Affordable Care Act's multitude of shortcomings. It's a playbook for attacking the Democrats while they're especially vulnerable.
No DCCC op-ed is complete without a healthy dose of Democratic demagoguery. This blast of BS satisfies that 'requirement':
Republicans have no playbook to create jobs, they have no playbook to build infrastructure, they have no playbook to pass immigration reform, they have no playbook to pass a budget and they have no playbook to propose a better health care system.
Their only playbook is to take us back to a system that didn't work, that led hardworking people into bankruptcy and gave insurance companies unchecked power to deny care and drop coverage. Democrats, on the other hand, are going to relentlessly remind Americans that one party is willing to fix the Affordable Care Act and that one party, the Republican Party, wants to repeal the law and put insurance companies back in charge.
To quote a friend of mine, those paragraphs are more full of BS than a Christmas goose. The DCCC, like President Obama and the DNC, can't talk without piling on the BS. That's why people don't trust President Obama anymore. He's repeatedly lied to the American people about keeping their plan if they liked it. Now that he's been caught lying, President Obama's apologists have started rationalizing those promises away, saying that you can't reform the health care system without significant changes.
That's indisputably true but that isn't the point. What's equally true is that the ACA couldn't have passed had President Obama told the American people that they could keep their plan if they liked it and if his HHS secretary approved of people's plans.
Next, the GOP plan for creating jobs is equal parts repealing the ACA, expanding oil, coal and natural gas exploration and cutting EPA regulations that are killing industries.
Third, there's one party, the Democratic Party, that's trying its best to paint the Affordable Care Act as fixable, which it isn't, while the other party, the GOP, predicted about the cancellation notices, the crashed website, the rising premium prices. Democrats call that being mean-spirited. Truth-seeking people call that getting it right.
If Democrats don't want to get tagged over the Affordable Care Act every few minutes, they should worry first about doing right by the American people, not about how news affects them politically. No op-ed would be complete without them lying. Here's Israel's lie-infested trash:
Because when Americans see Republicans in Congress sharing an anecdote or holding a hearing, they can know it is designed to do one thing: Take the country back to the dark days when our health care system didn't work.
The "dark days when our health care system didn't work" is now. It isn't that the system worked perfectly before the Democrats shoved the ACA down Americans' throats. It's that that system worked significantly better than it's working under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have offered their own plans, which Democrats have refused to consider. It isn't Republicans' fault that Democrats, starting with Harry Reid and President Obama, are the obstructionists in DC.
Rep. Israel's statements are misleading, incomplete or verifiably false. In other words, they're what's expected from Democratic leadership.
Posted Sunday, November 24, 2013 3:36 AM
No comments.
Republicans credited for exposing ACA's faults
This SC Times editorial says that Republicans share in the blame for the Affordable Care Act's rollout fiasco:
The problems with the federal government's health website would not have arisen if Republicans in 36 states had not refused to build their own sites.
First, it's arrogant to think that the ACA is the right solution to America's health care problems. With ACA-approved health insurance policies charging significantly more than people's cancelled policies, with smaller networks included in those policies and with deductibles doubling and sometimes tripling, it isn't difficult to argue that the Affordable Care Act, aka the ACA, is the wrong perscription for fixing America's health care system.
Next, it isn't the Republicans' fault that President Obama picked incompetent and corrupt tech support companies to build HealthCare.gov. Similarly, it isn't the Republicans' fault that President Obama, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Henry Chao, CMS's deputy chief information officer, failed to properly supervise the implementation of the HealthCare.gov portal. I can picture an email exchange between Sebelius and Chao looking like this:
Sebelius: Henry, how's the building of HealthCare.gov going?
Chao: It's going well. We're right on schedule.
Sebelius: Thanks Henry. Now get back to working round the clock on HealthCare.gov.
It's pretty apparent that Secretary Sebelius didn't ask detailed follow-up questions. It's apparent that President Obama either didn't ask questions of the people building HealthCare.gov or he didn't ask the right questions of the tech specialists installing the website.
Republicans are receiving campaign funds from the health care industry, and they do not care about millions of minorities and elderly people who do not have insurance.
That's right. Republicans hate everyone who isn't a rich entrepreneur. They want air so filthy that it's unbreathable and air so filthy that it's undrinkable. According to deceitful Democrats, Republicans a) want black churches burned to the ground and b) want to return America to the Jim Crow era. (Forget the fact that Democrats implemented the Jim Crow laws.) Republicans want to push Granny off a cliff rather than care for her.
In the minds of dishonest progressives, anyone who doesn't agree with the Affordable Care Act's provisions hates minorities and the elderly. In these people's minds, honest policy disagreements don't exist because Republicans are evil.
Republicans won't admit that the 14 states that built their own websites are doing fine.
There's a reason why Republicans won't agree that the state-run health insurance exchange websites are doing fine. It's because they aren't working fine. Like HealthCare.gov, state-run exchanges don't have a way for people to pay their premiums. Here in Minnesota, MnSure gets weekends and holidays off .
Other than that, the Affordable Care Act is working beautifully.
The reality is that Republicans predicted almost all of the things that've gone wrong. They predicted the cancellation notices. They predicted that the exchanges wouldn't be operational on Oct. 1. They predicted higher premiums for middle class families. They even predicted that young healthies wouldn't sign up for insurance.
Republicans didn't predict these things because they hate people. They predicted these things because they recognized the inherent flaws in the Affordable Care Act.
Posted Sunday, November 24, 2013 4:38 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 24-Nov-13 11:51 AM
Gary:
Lets not forget that the Republicans in the senate in 2010 had read the bill and tried to pass a law that will give stronger language to "If you like your plan you can keep it" was rejected with every democrat voting no.
And if you want to bring it up there were countless hearings earlier this year where Republicans were asking is everything okay? And were told we're on schedule and there is nothing to worry about. How is that Republicans fault since they weren't asked for anything in advance to fix it.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
President Obama's political priorities
President Obama is a political captive of his own political identity. That's the emphasis of Salena Zito's column :
The crowd expected the president to deliver a speech filled with reassurances about the problems associated with ObamaCare. Instead, he offered biting partisan rhetoric that tried to blame Republicans for the failures of his signature health-care bill.
In politics there is always an exit door. But policy is a much different room: Exits are hard to find because you can't escape law, especially a law on which you have based your entire legacy.
Obama's staff also appears in need of a fire escape.
That same day was the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, which the president chose not to honor by attending a ceremony marking it. White House senior aide Dan Pfeiffer gave a prickly response to National Journal columnist Ron Fournier's Twitter question about what on the president's schedule was more important than the Gettysburg anniversary.
'Oh, I don't know, there's this whole website thing that someone suggested might destroy the Dem Party,' Pfeiffer tweeted from his official White House account.
Pfeiffer unwittingly revealed what everything is about with this administration: salvaging Obama's political legacy and his relationship to Democrats. In short, politics.
When Candidate Obama delivered the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in 2004 , he talked about bipartisanship:
The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
That's the type of soaring rhetoric that fueled President Obama's meteoric rise. As we've seen over the past 5 years, it's rhetoric that isn't matched by reality.
Obama cannot move (nor can his advisers successfully advise) because, so far, he has never convincingly projected himself as a president for everyone, because he is at odds with half of the country's values and traditions.
For all his talk about the need for red states and blue states to unite into the United States, President Obama's actions have portrayed a man isn't interested in the red states. If he had his way, he'd rather just have blue states.
When President Obama was inaugurated, the nation wished him nothing but success. Had he chosen to be a statesman, he could've been the man that ignited the next great Democratic era. Instead, during one of his first opportunities to be a statesman, he famously told Eric Cantor that "We won." As a result, the Democratic Party wrote a totally partisan stimulus bill. Because Democrats didn't choose statesmanship, all but 3 Republicans voted against the stimulus bill.
Rather than doing what's best for the nation, President Obama's administration chose to ram through a highly ideologically divisive agenda. In 2010, America rejected the Obama administration's divisive agenda and swept Republicans into the majority in the House, with Republicans gaining 63 seats.
Telling Americans that you cannot honor Lincoln's words 150 years later because you have to fix a website that you botched and a Democratic Party that you unraveled - but you can honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech - is disturbing.
First, without the former, you would not have had the latter. And, second, what you are telling Americans with such a decision is that politics is everything to your presidency.
President Obama's sense of history is limited. While he sees himself as an historic figure, he hasn't understood that it isn't about him. Great, transformative presidents understand that it's about something bigger than themselves. Thanks to President Obama's arrogance, Democrats will experience 2 major thrashings in the midterm elections.
Posted Sunday, November 24, 2013 10:03 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 24-Nov-13 11:42 AM
Gary:
I think the point you're missing is how everybody is talking about how the Democrats have built a great thing for being to elect the President every four years really isn't there. What helped Obama and the democrats in 2012 to survive in the House and Senate races was that Obama had built up a large base of voters (blacks, Hispanics, and single women) who showed up to carry him to victory. I think at least five senate seats remained in Democrat hands (Ohio, WI, ND, MT, and VA) because of that.
Come 2016 that coalition I predict won't be there in part because a whole lot of those voters won't be excited to come out and vote or even worse will vote Republican because they would've finally seen the light the Democrats policies don't work.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 24-Nov-13 11:44 AM
Gary:
Lets not forget that the decision not to go to Gettysburg was a snub to Lincoln the man who helped get blacks their freedom. If I were a winning Republican advisor I will have my candidates talking about that and how all Democrats don't want to respect Lincoln and the people who helped free blacks.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
