October 29-30, 2016
Oct 29 00:14 Effective ads vs. ineffective ads Oct 29 06:57 Gov. Dayton's guest column, Part I Oct 29 11:05 Clinton campaign livid Oct 29 11:38 Tipping the scales in Nevada? Oct 30 02:01 Gov. Dayton's guest column, Part II Oct 30 10:17 Mindless pro-Dorholt blather Oct 30 15:36 Dayton-DFL rebates aren't solution
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Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Effective ads vs. ineffective ads
Michael Brodkorb's MinnPost article highlights what goes into an effective mailer. Mr. Brodkorb's article highlights a mailer paid for by the Minnesota Action Network, a political action committee chaired by former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman. In his article, Mr. Brodkorb says that the mailer is effective because the "mail from Coleman's group targets numerous DFL senators, including State Sen. Lyle Koenen, who is featured in grainy images while sitting in committee hearings at the Minnesota State Capitol, squinting or with his glasses on the end of his nose. Along with the pictures of Koenen, there is also a picture of a father sitting with his daughter, presumably struggling to figure out how to pay for the rising costs of the family's health care."
Another thing playing into the effectiveness of the mailer, according to Mr. Brodkorb, is the fact that health care is the topic in Minnesota this campaign season. It's difficult to dispute that, especially considering the fact that Gov. Dayton keeps defending his indefensible statements and the fact that Minnesotans are justifiably terrified figuring out how they'll pay for their family's health insurance. Here's the front and back of the Koenen mailer:
An ad that isn't so effective is a negative mailer from the DFL against the GOP-endorsed candidate for SD-14, Jerry Relph. The picture on the front of the mailer is of a tea bag with the message saying "Meet TEA Party politician Jerry Relph." The back of the mailer says "Tax breaks for big corporations, tax hikes for us. Government shutdown. Special interests before our kids."
The reason why this mailer isn't effective is because a) it's 6 years too late. The TEA Party, for better or worse, is ancient history for apolitical voters and b) the DFL has used the same tired lies about Republican "tax cuts for big corporations" and "tax hikes for us."
The DFL thinks voters are stupid. Why else would they think people would buy into their line that they've had their taxes raised? Surely, people who work hard know whether their taxes increased. The DFL's messaging on taxes has been a series of outright lies. They've used it for years. The State House of Representatives has had a GOP majority 4 of the last 6 years. Republicans held the majority in the State Senate for 2 of the past 6 years. This year, Republicans have a strong chance of flipping it back to a GOP majority again.
The hit piece against Mr. Relph isn't likely to work. It's likely to fall short because his opponent is all about happy talk. Relph's opponent isn't capable of holding a substantive conversation on the important issues of the day. When you aren't capable of winning those types of battles, you have to resort to mudslinging. That's what's happening with the DFL in SD-14.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2016 12:14 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 29-Oct-16 10:58 AM
From Norm? Mailbox to trashcan is whose idea of effectiveness? That's the likely scenario once folks know it is Norm and his secret cadre of millionaires wanting to keep the 99% hoodwinked.
BOTTOM LINE: A mailer from an untrustworthy and ineffective source is untrustworthy and ineffective, per se.
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 29-Oct-16 11:20 AM
I think it's up to each person what they'll do with their mailer.
As for your faith in Minnesotans, it's inspiring. NOT.
Gov. Dayton's guest column, Part I
Gov. Dayton's guest column in the Albert Lea Tribune is what you'd expect from the DFL's political hack shop of propaganda.
It starts by trying to say that MNsure and the ACA aren't to blame for the rising health insurance premiums. Specifically, Gov. Dayton said "Those rate increases and enrollment caps were required by insurance companies to continue offering individual policies in Minnesota. They are not the fault of MNsure." Actually, they are MNsure's fault because the ACA has a provision in it that "prohibits insurers from denying coverage to people who are already, or likely to become, sick. Nor can insurers charge those sick people more." That virtually guaranteed that there'd be a significant imbalance in the ratio between people with pre-existing conditions and young, healthy people.
Because of that provision, insurance companies needed lots of young healthy people to sign up to pay for the benefits paid out on claims made by less healthy people. That's what MNsure brought us. Without that revenue, insurance companies were guaranteed to lose money. Lots of money. That's what's happening right now.
Next, Gov. Dayton said "And, again, the advantage for many people of buying their policies through MNsure is that the federal tax credits will lower those rate increases significantly." I'd simply direct Gov. Dayton to Mary Katherine Ham's article :
Like many other Americans, I got a letter last week. This letter is becoming an annual tradition, arriving on my doorstep in October to inform me of my Obamacare insurance premium hike.
Last year, the letter said my Bronze plan, purchased on the marketplace formed by the, ahem, Affordable Care Act, would increase by almost 60 percent.
This year, my premium is going up 96 percent. Ninety-six percent. My monthly payment, which was the amount of a decent car payment, is now the size of a moderate mortgage. The president refers to these for thousands of citizens as 'a few bugs' when to us it feels like a flameout. For this astronomical payment, I get a plan with an astronomical deductible that my healthy family of three will likely never hit except in the most catastrophic of circumstances.
The Affordable Care Act, like Gov. Dayton said earlier, simply isn't affordable. The thing Gov. Dayton hasn't talked about is the unaffordable deductibles. He hasn't talked about people getting pushed into buying silver plans when they wanted to buy bronze-level plans.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2016 6:57 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 29-Oct-16 10:52 AM
And the proper, effective approach to national healthcare needs is:
[Name your policy, or shut up. Criticism alone is easy. But wholly unhelpful. What's the Ringing Freedom Healthcare Plan - 2016, Ver. 1?]
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 29-Oct-16 11:18 AM
There isn't an effective national approach to health care. Each state has different needs & different assets at their availability.
Some basic principles do help, though, wherever they've been tried. Specifically, high-risk pools always stabilize prices. That's why they were popular until Obamacare made them illegal.
I don't want the shit-for-brains-idiots who ruined health care telling me what I should be doing with regards to health care.
This was never about health care. It was always about achieving an ideological victory. Now that it's failing, as was predicted, Democrats in Senate races have something to explain away.
Finally, don't think this won't hurt DFL candidates, too. How many it'll hurt, I don't know. Still, I don't think it's insignificant.
Clinton campaign livid
This article highlights what happens when a campaign gets caught with its pants down. Actually, it's happening because a pervert married to one of the campaign's top people got caught with his pants down. But I digress.
The truth is that there's tons of blame to go around in the aftermath of the FBI's announcement that they're re-opening their investigation into Mrs. Clinton's email scandal. One staffer was upset with Mrs. Clinton. That anonymous staffer was quoted as saying "I'm livid, actually. This has turned into malpractice. It's an unforced error at this point. I have no idea what Comey is up to but the idea this email issue is popping back up again is outrageous. It never should have occurred in the first place. Someone somewhere should have told her no . And they didn't and now we're all paying the price."
How do you say no to a mean-spirited, manipulative, corrupt bitch intent on hiding information? Good luck with that.
After the FBI news broke on Friday, the campaign seemed resigned to Trump and other Republicans campaigning on the email issue in the final days of the race. "In the short term at least, this does provide Republicans with something they can all hang their hat on, at a time when they've been fighting with each other so much - so that can have a salutary effect by shoring up the GOP base and distract from the daily drama around Trump himself," one longtime Clinton adviser said.
I don't know who's sleazier -- Wiener or Mrs. Clinton. If that question doesn't turn your stomach inside out, nothing will.
This is a good place to stop at:
It's Huma Abedin's computer. Shouldn't she know what's on her laptop? If the Clintonistas are upset, they need only look at each other.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2016 11:05 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 29-Oct-16 07:03 PM
Doug Band memo time. Distractions do one thing. Distract.
The Teneo/Foundation cash following would be more productive in finding important info, than this. Boughtness counts more than slackness; but presuming the Clintons prevail on election day; the aspect of a President Kaine needs thought.
Tipping the scales in Nevada?
The Las Vegas Review-Journal's endorsement isn't like most political endorsements. You know that when you read "Few politicians can match Rep. Heck's impressive resume. He is a medical doctor and is a brigadier general in the U.S. Army Reserve. Rep. Heck was last deployed to the Middle East in 2008 when he commanded a Baghdad-area combat hospital. He offers a moderate and sensible viewpoint on most issues and has made it a priority to improve health care in rural Nevada. His experience in the medical field and the military would be a welcome asset to the upper chamber, as would be his willingness to reach out across the aisle to find common ground."
Most candidates would be thrilled to get such an enthusiastic endorsement. The LVRJ's endorsement goes further, continuing with "Ms. Cortez Masto, meanwhile, shows no such inclination. She has long operated as a liberal partisan, even disobeying Nevada law when the governor directed her as attorney general to join a coalition of states opposed to Obamacare. During her time as the state's top law enforcement officer, her decisions too often wreaked of politics, culminating in her indictment, eventually dismissed by a judge, of a sitting Republican lieutenant governor on the flimsiest of charges."
Then comes the finishing blow:
Joe Heck is the far superior candidate.
Prior to that endorsement, Masto led Heck in the RCP average of polls 45%-44.5%. That's a tight race. Let's see if the LVRJ endorsement make a difference. If Republicans flip that seat, it isn't likely that there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate.
Posted Saturday, October 29, 2016 11:38 AM
No comments.
Gov. Dayton's guest column, Part II
Gov. Dayton's guest column in the Albert Lea Tribune contains some unsubstantiated cheap shots at Republicans and some outright lies.
For instance, Gov. Dayton said "As disturbing as the falsehoods, is the hypocrisy of some Republican politicians, who are crying crocodile tears over problems with the Affordable Care Act, which they have prevented solving. Time after time, Republicans in Congress blocked changes to the ACA, because they want to destroy the law, not improve it." First, the Republicans he talked about prior to this paragraph were in the Minnesota legislature. It isn't a stretch to think that Gov. Dayton wants to conflate Republicans in the state legislature with Republicans in DC.
Next, the only way to improve the ACA is to gut it. The ACA can't be fixed if you just tinker around the edges. The high deductibles don't disappear. Young healthy people don't buy insurance. If you don't establish a high-risk pool, premiums will continue to go through the roof. Insurance companies will continue to get out of the individual market. Networks will get narrower. Choices will get fewer. That's just reality. Then again, reality isn't something Gov. Dayton and the DFL handle properly. They're more into rose-tinted glasses reactions.
Third, saying that Republicans don't want to improve the law is BS. Sen. Rubio, for instance, got rid of the insurance company bailout. Rep. Price and Sen. Barrasso have tried multiple times to apply things they've learned as doctors to the law. Just because Democrat ideologues don't approve of these proposals doesn't mean they won't work.
Finally, saying that Republicans are shedding "crocodile tears" because they don't care is typical DFL slander. It's accusing Republicans of not caring just because Democrats don't agree with Republican fixes. Characterizing Republicans as evil just because they have different proposals is how Democrats gridlock Congress and the Minnesota legislature. This is just more of the same:
Like their Congressional counterparts, they, too, want the federal law to fail, so they can return Minnesota to 'the good old days,' when people bought their own health insurance and took their chances on its actual coverage. After all, it is the Affordable Care Act, which protects people from denials due to their previous conditions, eliminates lifetime insurance limits and covers dependents until age 26.
Actually, Minnesota Republicans are calling for a return to the good old days when MCHA allowed people with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance at a reasonable price. Minnesota was the leader in insuring people. In 2007, 3 years before the passage of the ACA, Minnesota's uninsured rate was 7.2%. The stunning fact is that half of the people who weren't insured were eligible for taxpayer-subsidized insurance policies. That means the effective uninsured rate in Minnesota in 2007 was 3.6%. We'll never see that percentage of uninsured with the ACA.
This segment highlights the DFL's arguments:
Prior to the ACA, MCHA protected "people from denials due to their previous conditions." Back in 'the good old days' of MCHA, we didn't spend $400,000,000 on a website that didn't work, either. For that matter, farmers and other small businesses weren't experiencing 50%-67% annual premium increases. Farmers and other small businesses weren't forced into policies with $13,900 deductibles, either.
Frankly, Gov. Dayton, I don't see what's so good about the ACA. You said that it wasn't affordable for increasing numbers of Minnesotans. You were right in saying that, and not just because they didn't qualify for subsidies. Farming families that had a $13,900 deductible had an insurance policy but they didn't have health care. They essentially paid for everything short of a catastrophic health event out of their own pocket.
It's time to take your partisan rose-colored glasses off and see the pain that the ACA is inflicting on people's lives. That pain is inflicted on people's lives because the DFL in Minnesota and Democrats in DC didn't make the right decisions. Instead, they gave into their ideological whims. Democrats are to fault, nobody else, for this crisis. Democrats created this crisis because they were too prideful to listen to Republicans' good ideas.
Posted Sunday, October 30, 2016 2:01 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 30-Oct-16 08:43 AM
You seem surprised that Gov. Dayton (and Obama for that matter) are not taking responsibility for another disaster and are again blaming the GOP for the mess. Neither of these idiots has ever, ever taken responsibility for their actions and always pass the buck or take to name calling when things aren't going their way. I mean we are just bugs on a windshield that need to be scraped off.
This is just another crisis the DFL will use to ram more bad legislation down our throats because they will not admit that Obamacare is a complete failure.
Who would have thought a 2000 page bill no one read (we have to pass it to find out what's in it) would be so harmful to the country?
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 30-Oct-16 09:54 AM
Why would I be surprised about that? I've been writing about them doing that since 2009. There's nothing surprising about their unwillingness to take responsibility for the crises that they've created. My point is to highlight their dishonesty and their failures and to challenge their policies when they're wrong. There's nothing complicated about that.
Comment 2 by JerryE9 at 31-Oct-16 10:41 AM
Ever notice that Democrats are ALWAYS angry, even when they get what they want? What they are angry about is that reality rarely complies with their fantasies. Sure, the "affordable care act" was INTENDED to make health care more affordable and available. It simply was not possible in the real world. Hard to have sympathy for people who get mad, when their mad schemes go awry.
Mindless pro-Dorholt blather
I've said repeatedly that the DFL's tethering to the truth is loose at best. This pro-Dorholt LTE proves that the DFL, collectively, is incapable of logic, too.
I know that because the LTE says "Zach will fight for health care that's affordable and works for all of us. He works in the mental health field. He knows and understands mental health and will fight for health care that meets the needs of those living with a mental health disorder. There is much work to be done in our current health care system, but Zach is ready for the challenge." Perhaps this person isn't in frequent touch with events in St. Paul. Perhaps this person is just dishonest. Perhaps this person isn't capable of connecting the dots.
Whatever the reason for her not reaching the right conclusion, the truth is that Dorholt voted for MNsure, which is giving farmers and other small businesses huge health insurance premium increases, narrow networks, fewer choices of insurers and unaffordable deductibles. Dorholt is the person who's given us this crisis.
What part of that suggests that Dorholt "is ready for the challenge" of fixing what he and the DFL broke?
This LTE suffers from the same disappointing detachment from reality as the first LTE. Check this paragraph out:
He has said 'I am running because I have always had a passion for those left behind, for those purposefully or unintentionally left out, for those who live in the 'shadows' of life, because ever since I was a kid I could identify with and empathize with them. I could understand them. I knew if their voice could be heard, understood and represented... we would all do better.'
Where was this compassion for people when the DFL debated the forced unionization of in-home child care providers? They lobbied the legislature for almost 24 hours, telling the DFL that they didn't want to be represented by AFSCME. These businesspeople repeatedly told DFL legislators, Dorholt included, that they opposed the bill.
Dorholt voted for the forced unionization of these businesspeople anyway. He didn't hesitate when he plunged the button and told these women that he knew better. That was the last weekend of the 2013 session. Also that session, Dorholt voted for major tax increases on farmers and warehousing operations. He did that despite their constant lobbying against the tax increases. Then he got criticized by several businesspeople after the session. The next February, Dorholt voted to repeal the tax increases he'd just voted to create.
That November, his constituents fired Dorholt for not representing them. That November, his constituents fired him because Dorholt represented the DFL leadership and the DFL's special interest puppetmasters, not them.
This November, let's remind Mr. Dorholt that we still reject his representation of the DFL leadership and their special interest allies. I'll be voting for the man with the lengthy list of bipartisan accomplishments, a man who's done the things that Dorholt only talks about. I'll be voting for Jim Knoblach.
Posted Sunday, October 30, 2016 10:17 AM
No comments.
Dayton-DFL rebates aren't solution
I don't dispute the fact that Gov. Dayton's proposed rebates for a suspected 123,000 Minnesotans will shrink the sticker shock of these Minnesotans' premium increases. I'll even give Gov. Dayton credit for his sleight-of-hand trickery that's made the ACA's other problems disappear.
This Our View editorial helped remind me of Gov. Dayton's and the DFL's deception.
What caught my attention was the paragraph that said "The proposal would provide monthly rebates - 25 percent of their insurance costs - in 2017 to people who are buying individual insurance policies and do not qualify for federal tax credits. Dayton said the state assistance would, in most cases, greatly reduce the 2017 price increases from an average 55 percent increase to a 16 percent increase." That paragraph is itself deceptive. The rebates would only reduce the size of people's health insurance premiums if they buy their insurance through the individual market. The next paragraph finishes highlighting the deception:
Meanwhile, the governor also said the Affordable Care Act and MNsure have been the targets of criticism leading up to the election. We say don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, the ACA and MNsure need to be corrected. We've got a process in place, albeit a flawed one. Why start from scratch with something new?
What baby? There's nothing but bathwater. The first fatal flaw of the ACA is that it's premised on the theory that young healthy people would purchase expensive health insurance policies with coverages they don't need at prices they can't afford. The other fatal flaw of the ACA is that it's premised on the theory that older people with pre-existing conditions wouldn't buy health insurance in the numbers that would sink the ACA.
Other than that, the ACA is built right. This paragraph is just pure DFL propaganda:
And Dayton is right to note the changes resulting from the ACA that have benefited millions of people - not just those on MNsure. Those benefits were felt by people covered by their employers' insurance, those on public programs, and those buying their individual coverage either through or outside of the health exchanges.
Minnesota's pre-ACA system already did a fantastic job of offering health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. While it's true that the nation wasn't doing a fantastic job, that isn't the Minnesota governor's responsibility. His first responsibility is to Minnesotans.
It's noteworthy that Minnesota in the ACA's direction when the ACA should've moved in Minnesota's direction. The ACA threw out a system that was working beautifully and replaced it with a system that's a total failure. That's the situation where politicians threw the baby out with the bathwater.
This video from 2+ years ago highlights how the ACA was failing Minnesotans:
It's time to throw the DFL out with the proverbial bathwater.
Posted Sunday, October 30, 2016 3:36 PM
Comment 1 by Terry Stone at 30-Oct-16 05:13 PM
The DFL threw out the baby and are now trying to nourish the bathwater to health at our expense.
