October 6, 2014
Oct 06 11:17 Environmentalists hurt farmers, miners Oct 06 03:26 Misleading insurance rate report Oct 06 03:38 US DOE closes SCSU investigation Oct 06 03:24 FYE Enrollment vs. FYE Enrollment Oct 06 12:42 Walker's tournout advantage? Oct 06 21:13 Hickenlooper's problem
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Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Environmentalists hurt farmers, miners
While this article doesn't directly blame environmental activists for the construction delay of the Sandpiper pipeline, it certainly hints that direction:
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is taking longer than expected to approve possible routes for the pipeline that need to be thoroughly studied for environmental and social impacts. The company hoped to limit those possible routes to two options.
On Sept. 11, the PUC opened up the possibility that other routes might have to be included for study.
Several groups have organized to propose additional routes, or oppose the line altogether, saying Minnesota shouldn't have to bear the risk for oil that will mostly go to other states. They cite the possibility of pipeline spills into northern Minnesota lakes, rivers, and wetlands, and some groups have proposed new routes that would take the line south, through more farmland and urban areas.
First, pipelines are the safest way of transporting oil from Point A to Point B. Nothing else comes close. Second, if we don't build the pipelines in a timely fashion, the railcar shortage will get worse.
That's terrible news for farmers who need to get their crops to market. It's terrible news for mining companies who need to get their iron ore to the steel mills in the Rust Belt before the Great Lakes freeze over for the winter.
This article highlights what's at stake:
The delay also will affect North Dakota oil producers, though it shouldn't have an immediate impact on production, according to North Dakota Pipeline Authority Director Justin Kringstad. "Projects like this are vital to move our crude safely to markets throughout the U.S.," Kringstad said.
North Dakota, the nation's second-leading producer of oil behind Texas, has more than doubled its oil production in the last two years, to more than 1 million barrels a day. A barrel is equivalent to 42 gallons. But due to the lack of pipeline capacity, about 70 percent of the state's daily oil production is being shipped by rail.
These environmental activists convinced the PUC, aka the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, to delay construction in the hopes of eventually causing Enbridge to abandon building the pipeline altogether. Therein lies these activists' evil intentions.
These environmental activists care only about stopping the pipeline from getting built. They don't care that farmers and miners are getting hurt by the railcar shortage. I haven't seen proof that these activists give a minute's consideration to what's helpful to farmers and miners.
That's because these environmental activists have tunnel vision. All they want is to reject anything to do with fossil fuels. I was stunned when I learned that the Sierra Club opposes natural gas :
Natural gas drillers exploit government loopholes, ignore decades-old environmental protections, and disregard the health of entire communities. "Fracking," a violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations, is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes. If drillers can't extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas.
We can't trust these organizations of so-called environmental activists. In their words, these ill-informed or dishonest environmental activists argue that natural gas contaminates drinking water, pollutes the air and causes earthquakes.
Why should I trust activists that are that dishonest with their public statements? Why shouldn't I think that they're attempting to make life worse, not better, for the average Minnesotan?
Posted Monday, October 6, 2014 11:17 AM
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Misleading insurance rate report
According to this KSTP article , the DFL's health insurance rate increase report isn't accurate:
Minnesota Republicans are again accusing Gov. Mark Dayton's administration of using shoddy math to show a lower increase in policy costs through the state's health care exchange. State officials this week said plans on MNsure would rise by 4.5 percent on average for 2015. They got the figure by averaging each provider's average increase or decrease.Thankfully, Minnesotans don't have to accept the Dayton administration's fiction. Thankfully, Senate Republicans have put together some graphics that accurately depict the rate changes. Here's their chart for the various plan levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum) for 25-year-olds in Minneapolis and St. Paul:
Senate Minority Leader David Hann says the calculation should have weighed how much of MNsure's market each plan had. And he said it should have included the largest and cheapest provider, PreferredOne, which is dropping out next year. Hann says the true increase is more than 15 percent.
The Commerce Department says it couldn't include rates from the departing plan. And it says a weighted average wouldn't have been accurate due to PreferredOne's absence .
That looks like 25-year-olds in Minneapolis-St. Paul will see their health insurance premiums increase by 18% to 37%. Another source of information worth looking at is this interactive map .
For instance, the interactive map says that "Aitkin County's least expensive health insurance premiums will increase by 20%" for 2015 over 2014's insurance premiums. Ottertail County's least expensive health insurance premiums will increase by 25%. Yellow Medicine County's least expensive health insurance premiums will increase by 43%. Dakota County's least expensive health insurance premiums will increase by 22%. Koochiching County's least expensive health insurance premiums will increase by 33%.
There's nothing from that interactive map that says insurance premiums are increasing by 4.5%.
Posted Monday, October 6, 2014 3:26 AM
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US DOE closes SCSU investigation
If there's any message that President Potter wants to get spread far and wide, it's that the US Department of Education just closed its investigation into the SCSU transcript scandal :
The department was investigating whether St. Cloud State failed to return federal financial aid money it was required to return if the students whose grades were changed became ineligible to keep that financial aid.
Federal officials were on campus in the summer of 2013, asking questions of current and former employees. Officials were investigating allegations that school administrators had changed poor or failing grades to drops or withdrawals on the transcripts of mostly minority students, affecting their ability to remain enrolled as full-time students.
The original allegation was that many of the students whose grades were altered were receiving some form of federal assistance through grants or loans and that money was not returned to the Department of Education as it should have been.
According to the Meet and Confer minutes from the Oct. 18, 2012 meeting, the FA, aka the Faculty Association, didn't mention anything about federal grants or loans. Here's what they did mention :
So officially what we would like to do is have data for FY07 through 12 of each semester and summer session the number of late withdrawals that are signed off after and the number of late withdrawals that faculty were not involved in. I saw three in one day in my department where the faculty were not consulted last spring and so I know its happening. Perhaps an even more concerning issue of the faculty is the number of transcript, and I don't know a way to describe it but I am going to use alterations where students are removed from being listed as having been enrolled.
Though it's legitimate to worry if federal financial aid money was handled properly, it's clear that that wasn't the FA's initial concern. The FA's worry was that grades were being deleted from the students' transcripts and that those deletions weren't justified.
At least according to Meet and Confer minutes, it didn't have anything to do with breaking federal laws.
What's important is what the US Department of Education didn't say. The US DoE didn't say that transcripts weren't deleted. The US DoE didn't say that the grades that were deleted were justifiable. The US DoE didn't investigate whether SCSU followed long-standing policy or whether SCSU improperly deleted records of a student's participation in a class.
Tamara Leenay knows about that :
ST. CLOUD, Minn. - Last spring, Tamara Leenay, a chemistry professor at St. Cloud State University, was reviewing grades when she came across the transcript of a student who failed an organic chemistry class she taught a couple of years earlier.
'I noticed the course was not even on his transcript,' Leenay said. 'There was no 'F.' There was no course number: It was completely gone. And I have [a] record that he was in my class and that I gave him a grade: and I was never notified of any of these changes.'
That's the heart of the SCSU transcript scandal in a nutshell. A student took a class, did all the work for it and still failed. Then the student's participation in the class was deleted from SCSU's official transcripts.
The thing that President Potter doesn't want to talk about is whether a student who simply fails a class should be able to get that F permanently deleted as though it never happened. Certainly, there are justifications for late drops and withdrawals. There isn't a justification for deleting a student's failing a class.
Posted Monday, October 6, 2014 3:38 AM
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FYE Enrollment vs. FYE Enrollment
HuskyData 2: Are All FYEs the Same?
by Silence Dogood
The Analytics and Institutional Data Research Team just released their second HuskyData newsletter. The focus of the HuskyData newsletter is "a regular newsletter dedicated to sharing data and information about SCSU and our students." Sharing data is clearly important if the goal is transparency.
The second installment of HuskyData focuses on explaining what is meant by the term FYE.
For those who may not know about enrollment numbers, the newsletter does a very good job of explaining just what is meant by FYE. Unfortunately, while it does a good job of explaining FYE, it completely fails to discuss the incredibly important fact that FYE enrollment has declined at SCSU from 15,096 in FY10 to 12,381 in FY14 - the four-year drop corresponds to the loss of 2,715 FYE or 18.0%. If the projection of 11,805 FYE for FY15 is included, the drop is 3,291 FYE and corresponds to a five-year drop of 21.8%! In some ways, it's kind of like focusing on the acting and character development in the performance of Our American Cousin in Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865 while completely overlooking the important event that took place - the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln!
A second major issue that is overlooked in the HuskyData newsletter is in the figure "All Students Are Not The Same." While the figure shows a breakdown of three types of enrollment: Undergraduate (non-S2S), Senior to Sophomore, and Graduate, nothing is mentioned about the fact that each type of FYE provides significantly different amounts of tuition.
If your goal is to make accurate budget projections, you need to account for the fact that there are several enrollment categories with each having it's own unique financial impact on the amount of revenue produced. For instance, in the category of Post Secondary Education Option (PSEO), there are two different cases. The first is where high school students attend classes at SCSU and receive credit both at SCSU and the high school. The tuition charged to these students is approximately 70% of the tuition paid by regular students. The second is the Senior to Sophomore Program (S2S), where schools typically pay $3,000 for up to 30 students in a course. As a result, for a three-credit course taught via S2S, SCSU only collects $33 per credit in 'tuition.' For a four credit course, it is even less at $25 per credit! For three-credit courses, at $33 per credit, 1 FYE brings in $990. For four-credit courses, at $25 per credit, 1 FYE brings in a whopping $750! S2S students also don't pay any student fees. Regular undergraduate tuition is $219.45 per credit so if SCSU collects $25 per credit for the S2S program, SCSU only collects approximately 1/10 of what it does for regular students. Given these types of economic parameters, it is very hard to believe that SCSU even breaks even on the S2S program.
The figure in the HuskyData newsletter "All Students Are Not The Same" shows that for FY14 there were 580 FYE from the Senior to Sophomore program. For nearly 5% of the nominal FYE enrollment, the university took in tuition equal to only 58 FYE full tuition students. Similarly, the nominal FYE from the traditional PSEO should be discounted by approximately 30% to reflect the reduced revenue per credit when budgets are being planned.
Further complicating the calculation of revenue from tuition is the fact that SCSU has 12 different tuition categories for regular undergraduate students - not counting different tuition for online courses! From the SCSU website, the various undergraduate tuitions based on different categories are given in the table.
From the table, it shows that out-of-state students, depending on the state, pay tuition, which ranges from $219.45-474.20 per credit. Tuition for 1 FYE at $219.45 is $6,583.50, while 1 FYE at $474.420 is $14,226.00, which is more than double! In times of financial crisis resulting from declining enrollment, clearly, from a financial standpoint more out of state students need to be recruited! As a result, lumping all of the undergraduate students into one category "Undergraduate (non-S2S)" may not give an accurate budget picture.
Graduate courses have pricing ranging from $355.08 to $780.00 per credit depending on whether or not it is in a Masters Program or a Doctoral Program and whether or not the course is offered on-campus, off-campus or online. As shown in the following table, the SCSU website lists 21 different categories of programs each with their own tuition.
For budgeting purposes, it is clearly important to know at a fairly detailed level the types of FYE. Unfortunately, no detailed breakdown of enrollment by tuition category has ever been presented by the administration. Given SCSU's current economic situation, from an economic standpoint, clearly the strategy should be to increase the numbers of students paying the highest tuition and decrease the numbers of students paying the lowest tuition. However, over the past five years, the only category with any growth is the S2S program where SCSU makes little, if any, revenue from tuition.
The following plot shows the fall enrollment of PSEO students at SCSU from Fall 2005 through Fall 2013.
As illustrated in the figure, the enrollment growth since the Fall of 2005 has been amazing! From Fall'05 to Fall'13 headcount enrollment has risen 265%. Unfortunately, if the university makes little or no money on PSEO students, then the growth in headcount enrollment from the PSEO program can mask the decline in enrollment of regular students. Essentially trading one PSEO student paying 1/10 the tuition for a student paying the full rate does not make much economic sense. However, unless you account for this difference in your budget projections, you may find yourself in a financial hole just exactly like SCSU now finds itself.
Lastly, the graph "All Students Are Not The Same" focuses on the different number of credits each average student takes for each category again overlooking the most important fact that the cost of tuition for each category is significantly different. Any budget projection that does not take these differences into account is bound to be seriously in error. Unfortunately, no budget analysis has ever been presented by the administration which takes into account the numbers of students in each of the various classifications. In fact, it's even worse than that because over three months into the fiscal year, no budget has ever been presented. I wonder if anyone knows of another university who hasn't presented a budget document three months into the fiscal year. Clearly having a budget is no panacea but three months into the fiscal year not having a budget is a bit embarrassing.
Posted Monday, October 6, 2014 3:24 AM
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Walker's tournout advantage?
This article highlights one of the difficulties Mary Burke faces that isn't related to her plagiarism fiasco. This difficulty is of a totally different nature:
Burke's challenge against Walker: closing the turnout gap: Craig Gilbert of the Journal Sentinel writes : "Midterm elections are as much about which people vote as they are about how people vote. And Wisconsin's race for governor is a perfect case in point. In recent weeks, Gov. Scott Walker has carved out a narrow lead over challenger Mary Burke among the most likely voters, even though the race hasn't changed, and remains deadlocked, among registered voters overall. The central challenge for Democrats in this race has always been turning out as many of their 'drop-off voters' as possible, those who are drawn to the polls in presidential years but frequently drop out in other elections. In the last presidential race in the state, almost 3.1 million people voted. In the last midterm, just under 2.2 million people voted. Presidential-only voters are disproportionately nonwhite, lower-income and younger. When they do vote, they expand the electorate, and Democratic candidates tend to do better."
One of the least talked about things in this race, and I'm definitely guilty of this, is the fact that Gov. Walker has built a great ground game. That's partially due to an energized Republican Party, partially due to organizing for the Democrats' ill-fated recall election and partially due to Americans for Prosperity's work in putting together an independent GOTV operation.
Couple that with the fact that poll after poll shows that Wisconsin voters are generally satisfied with the direction Wisconsin's heading and you realize that Ms. Burke is facing an uphill climb. That being said, she's probably happy that she isn't facing the steep uphill climb that Alison Lundergan-Grimes is facing .
That race was heading in Mitch McConnell's direction heading into this weekend. Now it's heading full steam ahead in Sen. McConnell's direction. This weekend, Project Veritas published a video that caught Ms. Lundergan-Grimes' campaign staffers saying that Ms. Lundergan-Grimes doesn't really support coal mining but she has to say that to get elected. That's like Ms. Burke telling a rally in Green Bay that she isn't a Packers fan.
Ms. Lundergan-Grimes must have a good security detail. Let's hope she doesn't have Julia Pierson heading her security detail.
Posted Monday, October 6, 2014 12:42 PM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 06-Oct-14 10:56 PM
Gary:
How can the democrats not have the turnout advantage? After all according to the Democrats Walker has destroyed the state and it's obvious. Not only should the democrats be rushing to vote, but so should independents and some Republicans.
Oh wait a minute I forgot the Democrats can't prove that Walker has destroyed the state and wore out their support for that lie!
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 06-Oct-14 11:03 PM
Poll after poll shows Wisconsin voters being generally satisfied with the direction of the state.
It's difficult to get a protest vote when people are satisfied.
Hickenlooper's problem
This article in the National Journal examines why Gov. John Hickenlooper, (D-CO), is in political trouble. The article is 4,654 words long, which is more than a little excessive. They could've skipped the first 3,073 words. They should've started with this:
Still, no single issue altered Hickenlooper's fortunes more than gun control. He grew up in a gun-loving family - he often tells a story about accidentally shooting himself in the shoe as a kid - and in the days after the 2012 movie-theater massacre in Aurora, the governor told reporters he was skeptical that any regulation could have stopped the killer. But by the following winter, Hickenlooper had changed his mind. He settled on universal background checks as his top priority. He was convinced, he says, by the evidence that they worked. Plus, as he told the sheriffs in June, it struck him as the most likely measure to achieve consensus. "After the shootings in Aurora, as I went around the state," he said, "I kept hearing Republicans, Democrats, everyone, saying, you know, we should not take guns away from anyone, but keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. I didn't think - this is how bright I am - I didn't think it was going to be that controversial."
After championing background checks, Hickenlooper signaled he would not support the many other gun reforms that Democratic lawmakers were floating. When he learned that 30 to 40 percent of fatal shootings of police officers involved high-capacity magazines, however, he got behind a bill to limit them. Gun-rights supporters were so incensed that they recalled two Democratic state senators and forced the resignation of a third. "There was a feeling in urban areas that magazines were associated with Aurora," says Christine Scanlan, Hickenlooper's director of legislative affairs at the time. But rural voters, by contrast, associated magazines with hunting. "The governor thought he could reconcile those two views," Scanlan says, "but it didn't happen that way."
More than anything else, Gov. Hickenlooper's signing of gun control legislation is what's got him in political hot water. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez is capitalizing:
THE GOVERNOR OF COLORADO - or, rather, an actor who bears some resemblance to him from behind - sits in a director's chair, back to the camera, as two women comb his hair and apply makeup. "John Hickenlooper loves making campaign ads, but he despises making tough decisions," the voice-over intones. "Being funny on TV is nice, but unfortunately for Hick, governing is serious business." Released in September, this is the first Republican Governors Association ad of the season in Colorado. On screen, the faux Hick hands a stein of beer to a lackey. "It's time for a leader," the spot concludes. "It's time for Bob Beauprez."
Beauprez has built his surprisingly strong bid around the growing perception that Hickenlooper is wishy-washy and weak. "A successful campaign against Hickenlooper is, 'This guy is a good guy, but he's kind of a joke, and the challenges we face in this state are not a joke,' " says Republican operative and former state legislator Josh Penry. Sure enough, Republicans are working this fall to take all the items in the governor's "pro" column - his agile centrism, his genial frankness, even his beer - and turn them into "cons."
Simply put, this race is too close to call. It's trending towards Hickenlooper in the sense that 3 of the 4 latest polls have Hickenlooper leading .
The bad news for Gov. Hickenlooper is that his lead in each of those 3 polls is thin, with 4 points being his biggest lead. People don't like the Hickenlooper gun grab laws. Policies matter. This time, Gov. Hickenlooper chose partisanship over doing what's right. That led to this uncomfortable exchange:
"You made a comment about, sometimes to get somebody who disagrees with you to come over to your side, you just have to sit there and listen more, and you find that's a way to get them to turn to your side," said Sheriff John Cooke of conservative Weld County, referring to one of the governor's favorite talking points. "My question is, though, when these gun laws came up, why wouldn't you listen to the sheriffs? Why wouldn't, when a couple of sheriffs wanted to meet with you, you wouldn't listen to them and hear our side of the story?"
Your average politician would have had a well-rehearsed answer to that question; after all, signing the gun-control legislation 15 months earlier had been the most politically unpopular move of Hickenlooper's career. But Hickenlooper's stock-in-trade has always been that he's not your average politician - nothing of the kind - and so, characteristically, he winged it. "You know, I would say in, in the gun stuff that we, uh, certainly could've done a better job," he began, one hand jammed deep into his pocket as he gesticulated limply with the other. "And this is - I'm not defending this - there's no - I didn't find out that the sheriffs were trying to talk to me until a week afterwards - 10 days afterwards. By that time, all the - whatever was gonna hit the fan had hit it." He scratched the back of his head. "I think we screwed that up completely, and I think we did a disservice to you and a disservice to ourselves."
That's what a politician sounds like when he's been caught with his hands in the proverbial political cookie jar. That's why he deserves to lose.
Posted Monday, October 6, 2014 9:13 PM
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