October 13-15, 2011
Oct 13 05:20 DFL's revolving door to bluster & corruption Oct 13 11:52 What Minnesota can learn from Florida Oct 15 08:44 TakeAction Minnesota ignores verifiable facts, defends progressive myths Oct 15 09:43 Unions still insisting on unionizing child-care providers Oct 15 10:32 Mitt's Unhealthy Wall Street Addiction Oct 15 11:07 Will Titanic-sized iceberg sink Team Mitt's ship?
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
DFL's revolving door to bluster & corruption
The DFL is on the move. They aren't gaining momentum, support or popularity. It's that their operatives are moving from one place to another :
Minnesota House DFL public affairs director Carrie Lucking is leaving that post to become the new executive director of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota.
Lucking's move to run the politically active organization is one of several shaking in Minnesota's partisan communications staffs in advance of the 2012 Legislative session and election year.
People should almost feel sorry for Ms. Lucking. In a short period of time, she's gone from being Steve Kelley's campaign manager to working on Paul Thissen's campaign to working on Tarryl Clark's campaign. That's alot of losing campaigns to deal with in a single election cycle. Here's what she said during her Tarryl stop:
While meeting liberal activists at this year's Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas, Tarryl Clark said she opposes individual health care mandates like those included in the federal health care legislation.
'I'm against individual mandates,' she told Talking Points Memo while discussing the health care bill. 'Minnesota's been a leader in health care. We've shown that you can get just about everybody covered without having mandates.'
Clark also said the bill did not do enough 'on cost containment.'
Clark spokeswoman Carrie Lucking said the state senator still would have voted for the health care bill had she been in Congress.
'Just because you have concerns about parts of the bill doesn't mean that overall you don't think it's a step in the right direction,' Lucking said, noting that Clark is particularly supportive of the provision barring discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.
Ms. Lucking is well-versed in doublespeak, which made her perfect for Tarryl's campaign. It also trained her well for working for ABM, which specializes in misinformation.
Lucking's new job allows Denise Cardinal, who has been the Alliance for a Better Minnesota executive director, will become a founding director.
Cardinal, who took a brief leave from Alliance duties last year to work for Mark Dayton's recount effort, said she will now focus her time on "the message development and research needed for 2012 and beyond."
This is a natural step for Ms. Cardinal. She's been part of the biggest smear campaign in Minnesota gubernatorial history. She's well-versed in misinformation. Why wouldn't she eventually graduate to run this corrupt organization? She recites her blustery lines about how not raising taxes on the rich raises property taxes on the middle class.
In fact, she's perfected that line. She's never at a loss for a time-tested focus group one-liner.
Unfortunately for the DFL, it'll take alot more than reshuffling the deck chairs to be popular again. It'll take real ideas that don't include raising taxes as their first, last and preferred option. It'll require a pro-growth economic agenda, too.
Posted Thursday, October 13, 2011 5:20 AM
Comment 1 by eric z. at 13-Oct-11 07:25 PM
Rod Grams.
Comment 2 by MplsSteve at 13-Oct-11 10:36 PM
The smear campaign that resulted was due, IMHO, to the Emmer' campaign inability or unwillingness to address the problem.
Through the summer and early fall, the DFL and their sleazy cronies took pot-shot after pot-shot at Emmer.
And there was silence from the Emmer campaign and the state GOP.
Trust me when I tell you this because I have worked on many political campaigns for several decades now.
Not responding to an opponent's accusations doesn't always mean you're the better person. It is often interpreted by voters to mean "Hmmm, this guy hasn't responded to the accusations levelled against him. They must be true".
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 14-Oct-11 03:40 AM
The smear campaign started the day after Emmer got the GOP endorsement.
It's true that the Emmer campaign didn't respond but that was because they didn't have the money they needed to respond with a media buy.
What Minnesota can learn from Florida
This article in The Ticker is something that Minnesota could learn from Florida on education. No longer is Minnesota the gold standard in education. This might be why:
Gov. Rick Scott of Florida is beginning to lay out his agenda for higher-education reform, including putting more state money into degrees that he says are likely to produce more jobs, but in an interview with The Herald-Tribune, a newspaper in Sarasota, Fla., the most notable thing he said concerned anthropology.
Under the Republican governor's agenda, the winners would include programs in mathematics and science, but at the cost of supporting the humanities, the newspaper reports. 'If I'm going to take money from a citizen to put into education, then I'm going to take that money to create jobs,' Mr. Scott told the paper. 'So I want that money to go to degrees where people can get jobs in this state. Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists? I don't think so.'
The American Anthropological Association issued a prompt reply to the governor's remarks, calling them 'shortsighted' and 'unfortunate' and noting that thousands of anthropologists are 'making groundbreaking discoveries' in a range of related fields. A more-pointed rebuttal to Governor Scott was posted at Mother Jones, under the headline: 'Rick Scott to Liberal-Arts Majors: Drop Dead.'
It's apparent that people are learning that higher education. That money isn't being spent on hard degrees. Unfortunately, the debts students incur is exceptionally real. All too often, the debt lasts longer than the degree lasts.
Minnesota's DFL lawmakers whine that we're starving higher education . These lawmakers apparently haven't figured it out that they're wasting the taxpayers' money on 'higher education'. Instead, they should spend it on universities that teach students that get high-paying jobs.
Gov. Scott is moving Florida in the right direction. Let's hope Minnesota's legislators can push Gov. Dayton in the right direction, too.
Posted Thursday, October 13, 2011 11:52 AM
Comment 1 by Joseph at 13-Oct-11 01:19 PM
Sounds like a great idea. As long as it doesn't ban soft degrees, just doesn't subsidize them.
I have thought for a long time that the state should do something similar K-12 education. The state should only pay for math, science, English, and foreign languages. Any other classes should be financed by the local district. Then if a school wants to offer photography as a class, the local school district needs to pay for it.
Comment 2 by J. Ewing at 13-Oct-11 02:59 PM
Florida is already way ahead in K-12 education, according to a session at the Midwest Leadership Conference (and national tests). For college educations, have you ever noticed that every time we increase subsidies for state colleges, tuition goes UP? What do you suppose would happen to the ivy-covered and gold-plated sinecures if "customers" were exposed to the full cost, in open competition? Modern Universities are a lot more spa than spartan.
Comment 3 by Alan at 13-Oct-11 03:46 PM
Perhaps "breast casting" and other types of activities funded in part by the taxpayers could be cut back, too. Gov. Scott is on the right track in Florida.
Comment 4 by Eric Austin at 13-Oct-11 05:21 PM
That Jeff Johnson must really be paying you well to be so fiercely fighting for him. We are throwing out anthropology? From the comments it sounds like we are also throwing out history, sociology, psychology (well, unless Leo Pusateri needs a job I guess), art, music, and anything else that you deem unnecessary. Conservative society must be really freaking boring.
Comment 5 by Seed at 13-Oct-11 05:39 PM
There goes big government, picking winners and losers again.
Comment 6 by eric z. at 13-Oct-11 07:22 PM
That guy you worked for electing Gary, what again is his field?
They say if you put four economists into a room, in about a day and a half you'd get three out of four agreeing they are in a room and the fourth doing a linear regression of the probability of being in a room.
Econ is for softies. It is not a hard science. Is that your point?
Comment 7 by eric z. at 13-Oct-11 07:24 PM
An ARMA analysis of evolving opinions about being in a room; with some concern over a sample size of four?
Comment 8 by Chad Q at 13-Oct-11 08:08 PM
Conservative society isn't boring because we have money to spend doing the things we enjoy rather than being forced to support the useless degrees and the worthless people who get those useless degrees. Of course those people then can't make a living and have to sponge off of those of us who went to school to get useful degrees.
Comment 9 by J. Ewing at 13-Oct-11 10:29 PM
I don't care what you want to study, or what you want to do to earn a living after you do the studying. Just don't ask me to subsidize your studies or support you afterward when you can't find somebody willing to pay you to do it.
TakeAction Minnesota ignores verifiable facts, defends progressive myths
A progressive organization, TakeAction Minnesota, has taken a set of verifiable facts, then turned them into "myths ." That's what happened in this instance:
Minnesota Majority claims credit for getting those felons prosecuted. It sent a list of thousands of names to county attorneys in order to get the 113 convictions.
'While this number may seem a small percentage of the 2,803 suspected ineligible voters originally submitted to county prosecutors for investigation, there is a wide gap between voting while ineligible and voting while knowingly ineligible,' the group's report said.
Because Minnesota law says that a felon can't be charged with voter fraud if they didn't know they were committing a crime when they voted. And at least one progressive group is asking Minnesota Majority to abandon its efforts to restrict voting through voter ID and an end to same-day registration, instead asking them to support legislation that would educate felons about their voter status.
'Based on this report, Minnesota Majority should be at the head of the line advocating for passage of Rep. Bobby Champion's felon notification bill when the 2012 legislative session convenes,' Take Action Minnesota said in a statement. 'Had Governor Pawlenty not vetoed this bill, which passed with strong bi-partisan support in 2010, this would not be a problem.'
The group continued, 'The reality is that Minnesota Majority's report was issued as a vehicle for making sure their myth of voter fraud remains alive, when in reality Minnesota has the best elections system in the country. The only thing this report shows, is that many felons don't know the status of their voting rights. And this is best corrected by passing the felon notification bill next session, not blowing up Minnesota's excellent elections system.'
Get that? TakeAction Minnesota turned 113 voter fraud convictions into "their myth that voter fraud" exists.
TakeAction apparently didn't notice this:
Minnesota law says that a felon can't be charged with voter fraud if they didn't know they were committing a crime when they voted.
First, let's understand this: Mark Ritchie isn't interested in stopping voter fraud. It simply isn't a priority to him.
Ritchie once used the dodge that he didn't have the authority to remove felons' names from the voter list. That isn't true. In fact, the federal HAVA of 2003 gives the top election official in each state the affirmative responsibility to update the SVRS whenever necessary.
Mr. Ritchie's disinterest in detecting voter fraud is what caused Minnesota Majority to launch their investigation.
The fact that there were 113 convictions indicates that these felons knew that they were breaking the law. What's appalling, and predictable, is that TakeAction Minnesota is attempting to rationalize away the 113 convictions.
Let's remember, too, that TakeAction Minnesota is the parent organization for much of the DFL's special interest army. Member organizations include militant environmental organizations, public employee unions and the poverty industry.
They're also part of DTL-Minnesota, the group that wants safe DFL districts in the Twin Cities held harmless but wants central Minnesota districts to be competitive wherever possible.
Winning elections, whether through voter fraud , manipulating vulnerable adults or through redistricting, is important to these corrupt organizations. The more government-loving liberals they elect, the better it is for their interests.
The reality is that limited government conservatism will put people to work in good-paying jobs that a) take people off the poverty industry's dependance list, b) prove that workers don't need unions' protections and c) make people self-reliant.
TakeAction Minnesota is a thoroughly corrupt organization. That's apparent through their defending progressive myths and their insistance on corrupting the redistricting process.
Posted Saturday, October 15, 2011 8:44 AM
No comments.
Unions still insisting on unionizing child-care providers
After reading this article , thoughtful people can only reach the conclusion that the public employee unions are pushing hard for the unionization of in-home child care providers:
'A provider posted on [a union] website that she went to a baseball game with Gov. Dayton and had an opportunity to talk about unionizing providers in Minnesota,' said Heather Falk, a Cloquet in-home childcare provider and the vice president of Carlton County's chapter of the Minnesota Licensed Family Child Care Association (MLFCCA). 'But we can't get a face-to-face meeting with him, even though we've been asking since the end of the legislative session. Do we have to pay for a box at a football game to meet with him?'
The unions own Gov. Dayton after paying for his election victory. That explains why Gov. Dayton won't represent all of Minnesota. He's only interested in the special interests' issues.
Here's another thing that's especially disgusting about the unionization movement:
While no one could be forced to join, because of Minnesota's Fair Share law, licensed in-home childcare providers would likely have to pay, whether they chose to join the union or not.
What's fair about Fair Share? I don't see anything fair about it. Forcing people to pay union dues for something they don't want or need isn't fair. It's a payoff to the unions. It's rewarding the union's bullying tactics.
What's worse about Fair Share is that the unions collect money that get recycled into election campaigns even though these in-home child care providers disagree with the unions.
Opponents say a union of private business owners whose employee-employer relationship is with individual parents wouldn't be legal. They also say many of the benefits union supporters are promising are already available in the state, such as training for providers, a statewide organization, MLFCCA, and input on legislation and laws affecting in-home providers.
In-home child care providers already have a voice in St. Paul, thanks to MLFCCA. Why would they need a union to be their voice?
Since the providers opposed to unionization made their cause public, they have made progress, Falk said. Representatives met with members of Gov. Dayton's staff Aug. 17 as part of his research of the issue. Both pro- and anti-union providers also addressed a joint hearing of the Minnesota House of Representatives Innovation and Health and Human Services committees Sept. 22.
Dayton called the hearings 'political ploy.'
'The day we had the hearing, the governor called it 'grandstanding' and said the issue could wait for the next legislative session to be in order,' Falk said. 'But then he tells MPR that he could sign something in the next two weeks?'
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that union organizers were visiting providers in the Iron Range over the weekend, asking them to sign a form stating they would 'vote yes for Child Care Providers Together Union.'
'Why is the union sending people door-to-door unless they have some assurance from the state?' Falk said.
The unions keep pushing and pushing despite these child care providers' repeatedly saying no to them. This indicates that this is a union muscle job bent on increasing their political clout. With all these child care providers paying dues, AFSCME's and SEIU's ability to influence elections would theoretically increase.
Unfortunately, Gov. Dayton doesn't have the inclination to stop AFSCME's and SEIU's political power play. That's what happens when someone is bought by fringe special interest organizations.
Posted Saturday, October 15, 2011 9:43 AM
No comments.
Mitt's Unhealthy Wall Street Addiction
If ever a candidate suffered from a legal addiction, it's Mitt's campaign :
The records show Romney continues to rely heavily on the Wall Street and banking sector for financial support, led by U.S. employees of firms such as Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley. Donors who gave less than $200, by contrast, accounted for only about 14 percent of his total.
Hillary employed a similar strategy in 2007. She had impressive fundraising totals then. What hurt her, though, was that then-Sen. Obama was raising money from fat cats and small donations alike. Though Hillary raised more money, more people had contributed to Obama's campaign.
Mitt's reliance on Wall Street is helping him put together nice fundraising totals but it isn't translating into a broad base of support, something that's needed to win a nomination. The last I looked, there weren't many voters aligned with Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley in Iowa, Florida, Michigan or Nevada.
There might be a small smattering in New Hampshire but that's even questionable.
This statistic is troublesome, too:
The former Massachusetts governor brought in $14.2 million in contributions from July to September while spending more than $12 million, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday.
The costs include nearly $3 million for direct-mail services, $3 million for various consultants and $1.2 million for salaries topping out at $160,000 for senior aides, records show. Rent and utilities on his Boston headquarters added up to more than $80,000 a month.
Mitt's spokester said that the money was spent building a nationwide organization. That might be true but these figures suggest that the money wasn't spent on building a nationwide organization. It sounds to me like Mitt's spokester is putting the best spin possible on these figures.
It's possible that Mitt is building a nationwide team. It's just that these figures don't suggest that's what's happening.
Couple that with Newt's impressive debate performances and Rick Perry's impressive energy plan and it suggests that Mitt isn't in the greatest shape heading into the final push before the start of the nomination process.
These figures suggests that Mitt's aura of inevitability is more illusion than fact. Rest assured, Newt and Rick Perry are noticing Mitt's vulnerabilities.
Posted Saturday, October 15, 2011 10:32 AM
No comments.
Will Titanic-sized iceberg sink Team Mitt's ship?
While the national media, with ample help from Team Mitt, keeps pushing Mitt as the inevitable GOP nominee, things like this keep popping up that suggest the next couple months could be rocky months for Team Mitt:
Governor Mitt Romney today announced that Massachusetts will take another major step in meeting its commitment to protecting air quality when strict state limitations on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants take effect on January 1, 2006. :
Massachusetts is the first and only state to set CO2 emissions limits on power plants. The limits, which target the six largest and oldest power plants in the state, are the toughest in the nation:
In addition to reaffirming existing stringent CO2 limits, the draft regulations announced today, which will be filed next week, contain protections against excessive price increases for businesses and consumers. They allow power generation companies to implement CO2 reductions at their own facilities or fund other reduction projects off-site through a greenhouse gas offset and credits program.
That's just the tip of a Titanic-class iceberg totally capable of sinking Team Mitt's ship. Here's another Titanic-class iceberg Team Mitt will have to deal with:
In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts. These include John Holden [sic], professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy and Billy Pizer, and economist at Resources for the Future, an environmental policy think-tank based in Washington DC.
Ed nails it with this analysis:
In other words, the Romney administration in 2005 essentially did what Barack Obama's EPA wants to do now. He imposed CO2 emission caps, the 'toughest in the nation', in an effort to curtail traditional energy production. Not only did Romney impose these costly new regulations, he then imposed price caps to keep power companies from passing the cost along to the consumer. As we have seen in RomneyCare, regulation and price controls eventually drive businesses into bankruptcy or relocation.
This isn't what free market capitalists do.
Since this happened late in his single term in office, what assurance do voters have that Mitt is interested in reforming the EPA? Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry are interested in stripping the EPA of much of its ability to meddle with U.S. energy production. Their records are clear on this.
Mitt's actions and statements don't fit together. They're more a contrast in opposites. Mitt's said in his 59-point, 160 page economic plan that he'd " amend the Clean Water Act to prohibit the regulation of carbon ."
I'm betting that alot of GOP primary voters are interested in hearing when Mitt's regulatory epiphany happened. In fact, I'm betting they're skeptical that he's had a regulatory epiphany.
This Titanic-class iceberg is heading right for Mitt's ship. It's exposing Mitt's true colors. The worst news for Mitt isn't that his colors are yellow. It's that they're green.
Posted Saturday, October 15, 2011 11:07 AM
Comment 1 by Janeway at 16-Oct-11 07:43 AM
Back 2006 almost everyone bought the AGW theory because we and Romney did not know it had become a way to get grant money and we did not know they had been tweeking the data. So going back to 2006 when Bush, and many Republicans believed in the scientist is really silly.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 16-Oct-11 08:00 AM
Forgive me for not agreeing that "back in 2006, almost everyone bought the AGW theory." There were tons of critics of AGW theory. Admittedly, there weren't as many then as there are today but they were substantial in numbers.
Besides, Mitt's fondness for AGW theory isn't contained to 2005-06. It manifested itself in 2011. June to be precise:
Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change.
'I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that,' he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire.
'It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.'
In addressing climate change and energy policy, Romney called on the United States to break its dependence on foreign oil, and expand alternative energies including solar, wind, nuclear and clean coal.It's getting more difficult to argue that Mitt's fascination with AGW was confined to 2005-06. Wouldn't you?
