Gilmore and Glahn Now on TCNT Podcast Network

John and I have moved our weekly podcast, Gilmore and Glahn, to the AM1130 Twin Cities News Talk Podcast Network.  Our shows can be found here.

Gruber’s MNsure Work

So it turns out that controversial Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber worked his well-paid magic here in the North Star State.  Gruber was hired in Minnesota in 2011 by the controversial former head of MNsure, April Todd-Malmlov.  The contract Gruber signed with the Dayton Administration totaled $329,000, and resulted in a 60-page report and a 25-page 2013 update.

The quality and quantity of the work hardly seem worth a third of a million dollars of taxpayer money.  But it’s the conclusions that he reached that seem laughable after a year of MNsure operation.  Here’s a few for your consideration:

·         “The Exchange will enroll roughly 1.3 million persons” (Update, page 3)

·         “There will be little effect on employer sponsored coverage.”   (Update, p. 25)

·         “[T]he majority of individuals in the individual market [will] see a decline in their premiums.”  (Update, page 25)

I wonder if we can still get a refund from Gruber?

The Coming Democrat State Government Shutdown

The Minnesota State Legislature will reconvene in early January, with a newly-minted Republican-majority House of Representatives.  One thing you can pencil in for 2015 is another state government “shutdown.”

Remember back to 2011, the last state budget cycle where Republicans held any power at the state legislature.  Democrat Governor Mark Dayton delayed for two weeks past the end of the fiscal year before accepting the Republican-passed budget.

As the Washington Post reported at the time,

Minnesota’s record-breaking shutdown could be coming to an end. Gov. Mark Dayton (D) has offered to accept the Republican deal put forward on June 30 in exchange for a few conditions.  [Emphasis in the original.]

In the Democrats’ calculus, any time that the government shuts down, Republicans take the blame.  Democrats are the party of government, so therefore, they always want government open.  Republicans are the party of limited government, so they must be ok with government shutting down.

In the Democrats’ mythology, the two-week partial shutdown of state government in July 2011 was the key factor in their election victories of 2012.  In their telling, Minnesota voters were furious with Republicans for denying them some of the free goodies that government benevolently bestows for those few days the previous July.

Democrats’ belief in this myth is bolstered by the sheer resources the party devoted to creating it.  In 2011, the Democrat-front-group Alliance for a Better Minnesota reports spending $777,851 on “budget battle advertising, which ABM describes as,

Increase public awareness of the implications of Minnesota’s state budget deficit.  Develop public understanding of the implications of state budget decisions at the Minnesota State Legislature.[1]

Of course, national Democrats tried this same tactic in 2014.  Despite blaming House Republicans for the partial shutdown of the national government in October 2013, Democrats suffered a historic election defeat in 2014 in both House and Senate races.

Despite the recent evidence to the contrary, I think that Democrats believe that a 2015 Minnesota government shutdown will lead to 2016 election wins.

The Minnesota State Senate is led by Democrat Tom Bakk, who must defend his majority in the 2016 election cycle.  Bakk is a past candidate for Governor, whose campaign committee continues to be active, according to records on file at the state Campaign Finance Board.

Governor Dayton is eager to regain one-party rule in St. Paul for the last two years of his final term.

Shortly after this month’s election, Mark Dayton was quoted by MinnPost as saying,

At a news conference Wednesday (November 5^th) Dayton was refreshed, relaxed, and pointed about how he intends to work with the Republicans who will have an 11-seat house majority.  

“I’m going to be as conciliatory as I can be and I’m just pointing to the past,” he said, referring to the government shutdown in 2011, the last time Republicans had control of the legislature. 

Democrats seem to believe that they have everything to gain from another shutdown.  ABM will throw resources into spinning the outcome and a compliant local media will go along with the Democrat narrative.

Circle July 1 on your political calendar.

---

[1] ABM’s 2011 IRS Form 990 filing.  Page 2, Line 4a.

The Opinion Minute: November 16th Edition

Lori Sturdevant:  Democrats lost the state House of Representatives this year.  This defeat was the fault of an unpopular Barack Obama.  Or it was the Democrats’ fault for not defending Obama more.  Or the Democrats ran a lousy campaign.  In no way can the  Democrats’ election defeat be attributed to the wonderful policies enacted by Democrats in the past two years.

D.J. Tice:  Tice is the Star Tribune’s staff “conservative.”  At the Star Tribune, this post is strictly part time.  Look for the next column to hit next month. 

The lead piece this Sunday calls for the newly-elected Republican House to implement the Democrats’ “workforce” agenda, as if the Democrats had won the election.  Mostly this agenda consists of more money for the higher ed labor unions.

Speaking of higher ed, the Editorial Board thinks that all the various Democrat appointees in the State University system need to stop squabbling among themselves.

Finally, The Economist says that the Republicans didn't really win the election this month:  things are tough all over the world.  When conservative governments win power anywhere in the world, they need to understand that this just means they should do a better job of implementing the policies that the ousted liberal parties failed to implement properly.

The Party of Yesterday

The Washington Post woke up after last week’s election and discovered that the ruling Democrats are old.  I mean really, really old.  The Post’s Dan Balz wrote,

The past two midterm elections have been cruel to Democrats, costing them control of the House and now the Senate, and producing a cumulative wipeout in the states.  The 2010 and 2014 elections saw the defeat of younger politicians—some in office, others seeking it—who might have become national leaders.

After Republican wave elections in 2010 and 2014, Democrats nationwide have been left with a thin bench to replace aging leaders.  Here in Minnesota, we see something of the same phenomenon at work.

Democrat Governor Mark Dayton is entering his final term as governor at age 67.  His Lt. Gov., Tina Smith, is 55.  Sen. Al Franken is 63.  Sen. Amy Klobuchar is 54.

The much-touted “youthful” former mayor of Minneapolis, R.T. Rybak, is turning 59 this week.  The only prominent state-level Democrats in their 40’s are incoming House Minority Leader Paul Thissen (47) and Attorney General Lori Swanson (47).

Former House Majority Leader Tony Sertich is just 38.  Former House Speaker Margaret Anderson-Kelliher is 46. 

On the other side of the aisle, state Republicans are rich in leaders a generation younger than the most-prominent Democrats.  Incoming House Speaker Kurt Daudt is 41 and the new House Majority Leader Joyce Peppin is 44.

The four most prominent Republicans running for Governor this year were all relatively young.  Nominee Jeff Johnson just turned 48.  Marty Seifert is 42, Kurt Zellers is 45 and Scott Honour is 48.  Nominee for Senate, Mike McFadden, recently turned 50.

Former House Majority Leader Matt Dean is also 48.  Big Republican vote-getters Congressman Erik Paulsen is 49, Sheriff Rich Stanek is 52, and Congressman-elect Tom Emmer is 53.

Republicans have a deep bench of office-holders in their 40’s and early 50’s, several of whom rose to prominence by way of Republicans victories in 2010 and 2014.

 

I’m sure I’m leaving out worthy names from both Democrats and Republicans in this survey.  But for once, time seems to be on the side of the Republicans.

Notes from state House races

Congratulations to Minnesota House of Representatives Minority Leader Kurt Daudt and House Republicans on recapturing control of that body in yesterday's elections.

It appears that Republicans will have 72 members in the incoming House, returning the party to the status quo ante before the 2012 election.  [MinnPost has an excellent visual of party control, see link.]

No House Republican incumbent lost this year and it appears that they will gain 11 seats.  The new contingent will be a little rural and a less suburban than the incoming class of 2010.

Nine of the 11 gained seats are in out state Minnesota.  Republicans captured seats in what are otherwise strongly Republican and conservative districts.

One measure in particular demonstrates the leanings of these seats.  In 2012, Republicans captured the top 12 seats where support of the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment was greatest.  In 2014, they captured nine of the 10 next strongest "Yes" vote districts that Republicans did not already hold.

As is stands, of the 26 House districts with the biggest Yes vote on the marriage amendment, Republicans now hold 25 of these seats.

The other two seats capture by Republicans last night include surburban 56A, where Republican Roz Peterson lost by only 170 votes last go around and 14B, the highly contested St. Cloud-area seat formerly held by King Banaian.  When all the dollars are counted, spending on that race may top $1 million.

Endorsement, Part 3

Here are the facts:  David Schultz is a professor at Hamline University.  He frequently appears on local media commenting on Minnesota politics.

In 2014 he endorsed a former student, a Democrat, for state House of Representatives district 44b.  On August 21, Schultz said he would not comment on this race in the media.

Here he is commenting on the 44b race in local media.

What should we conclude from this set of facts?

Polls, Part 2

Who knew?  It turns out that political polling companies want to get rehired for the next election.  So the polls coming out just days before the 2014 election show just about every race moving in the Republican's direction, confirming what the generic polls have been saying for months.

The latest poll on the Minnesota Governor's race shows just a five-point lead for the Democrat incumbent, Mark Dayton.  That's half the lead that poll showed just two weeks ago.  In fact, each of the last five polls at RealClearPolitics shows a lead smaller than the previous poll in this race.

No one knows what the result will be on Tuesday.  But Republicans still have about 30 hours to have an impact.  I plan to spend all day on Monday working to help Republican candidates win in Minnesota.

Professor

The Rochester Post Bulletin reports today on the hotly contested state House of Representatives seat in the Albert Lea area (district 27A).  Reports indicate that outside groups have already poured $377,000 into this contest, and Election Day isn’t until next week.

First-term Democrat Shannon Savick is running for re-election against former Albert Lea teacher-of-the-year Republican Peggy Bennett.  Reporters and readers alike are hungry this time of year for some independent, informed analysis to put all of this into its proper perspective.

In this instance, the Post Bulletin turned to University of Minnesota political scientist Kathryn Pearson.  The paper quotes Pearson,

University of Minnesota political science professor Kathryn Pearson said the sheer amount of money flowing into the House District 27A race makes it clear Republicans think they've got a good shot at picking up the seat.

"Savick is one of the most vulnerable DFL incumbents, so essentially for Republicans to gain majority party control, she and other story of similarly situated DFLers would have to lose," Pearson said.

At this point, Pearson said the battle for control of the Minnesota House is simply too close to call headed into Election Day.

If I were uncharitable, I would describe that last sentence as self-serving for Professor Pearson.  As I have documented before, Dr. Pearson serves on the board of the leftist political group womenwinning.org.  

Womenwinning, of course, has endorsed Rep. Savick in this race.  According to records on file at the state Campaign Finance Board, the group’s PAC has donated $1,000 to Savick’s campaign, the maximum allowed under state law.

Somehow, this conflict of Dr. Pearson’s did not make it into the story. 

Home is Where the Money Is

Embattled Democrat state senator Jeff Hayden was back in the news yesterday.  The former Community Action of Minneapolis board member has been insisting for weeks that he took no perks from the now closed anti-poverty agency.

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Alejandra Matos has found a Community Action receipt for airfare for Sen. Hayden and his wife to travel to New York back in 2012.  So his previous denials are, as they say, no longer operative.

An August 7, 2014 state audit of Community Action’s spending raised questions regarding the perks received by senior management and board members of the taxpayer-funded non profit.  The Star Tribune reported on the audit on September 22^nd.  On September 27^th, state regulators shut down the Minneapolis non-profit, distributing its caseload to neighboring agencies.

The scandal has proven to be an embarrassment to some Democrat state politicians, coming in the closing weeks of the 2014 election.  As it turn out, the state’s Community Action agency network has a political group of its own.

According to records on file at the state Campaign Finance Board, the Minnesota Community Action Partnership Political Action Committee was formed in 1996.  As PAC’s go, it’s a rather modest affair, raising and spending only a few thousand dollars a year.

The agencies themselves do not contribute to the PAC.  Contributors are individuals, including local agency employees and friends of the community action movement.

As you would expect from an organization with roots in LBJ’s Great Society, the PAC leans a little to the left.

The PAC’s most recent contribution was $250 to the campaign of Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton on September 16^th, in the midst of the Community Action of Minneapolis scandal.  The only other itemized candidate contribution in 2014 was $300 to Jay McNamar, a first-term Democrat state representative locked in a tough re-election battle.

The PAC is bipartisan, donating $500 to Democrat legislative caucuses and $300 to the Republicans in 2014.

In 2013, the PAC donated an even $500 to each party.  The other donations given by the PAC were too small to be itemized.

In 2012, the PAC gave $250 to Mark Dayton, $500 to the Democrats in the legislature and $600 to the Republicans (who were then in the majority).

In 2011, the PAC’s itemized contributions went exclusively to Democrats.  In 2010, the PAC’s contributions again leaned to the left, with $1,000 going to Democrats and $550 to Republicans.  In 2009, the numbers went $250 to Democrats and $200 to Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

These dollar figures are too small to hold any real meaning.  But to paraphrase the old cliché, home is where the money is.

Charter Cities: Sardinia Edition

The Charter Cities idea is not dead yet, it keeps assuming new forms.  A small group of people living on the Italian island of Sardinia have floated the idea of being annexed by the non-EU nation of Switzerland.

Donor No. 1

Wow.  Talk about you heavyweight campaign contributor.  A single individual--Rockefeller-heiress and ex-wife of Governor Mark Dayton, Alida Messinger--has contributed more than $2 million this election cycle to the Minnesota Democrat cause.

I’m not claiming that this represents all of her donations the last two years, but here is what I have documented to date:

Alida Messinger Dontions, 2014 Cycle
Date	To	Amount
3/4/2013	Mark Dayton	500
9/30/2013	Mark Dayton	3,500
7/12/2014	Rebecca Otto	2,000
8/29/2014	Steve Simon	2,000
5/13/2014	2014 Fund	50,000
9/30/2014	WIN Minnesota	5,000
10/7/2014	WIN Minnesota	620,000
10/20/2014	WIN Minnesota	175,000
6/27/2013	DFL House Caucus	100,000
3/24/2014	DFL House Caucus	150,000
10/20/2014	DFL House Caucus	80,000
12/11/2012	MN DFL State Party	50,000
2/28/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
4/19/2013	MN DFL State Party	40,000
5/14/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
7/10/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
11/4/2013	MN DFL State Party	125,000
3/10/2014	MN DFL State Party	150,000
6/30/2014	MN DFL State Party	100,000
1/23/2014	MN DFL Federal	10,000
Total		$2,038,000

To put her contributions in perspective, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported today that Gov. Mark Dayton and Jeff Johnson have each raised about $2 million this year for their respective campaigns.  Messinger is one person. 

The Wrong Kind

Education Minnesota, the state teachers’ union, is the largest campaign donor in the state.  They give almost exclusively to Democrats, and have reportedly given twice the amount of the largest Republican donor in recent years.

So far in 2014, their political action committee has spent $2.5 million on the state election, according to records on file at the Campaign Finance Board.  Their spending was made possible, in part, by their borrowing $785,000 $885,000 from a local bank.  And the election year is not over yet.

For comparison, Education Minnesota spent less than $2 million in 2012, and borrowed only $500,000.  In 2010, the group spent $2.2 million and borrowed $576,000.

It’s clear that in 2014, the union is going “all in” as never before to preserve the Democrats’ monopoly on power in St. Paul.

Speaking of monopolies, public school teachers in Minnesota must pay dues to the local union, regardless of whether they agree with the union’s politics.

The union’s bosses are highly compensated for their work.  According to the most recent Federal tax return filed by Education Minnesota (a tax-exempt charity), the union has at least a dozen employees making more than $100,000 per year.  All 12 make more than Minnesota’s governor.  Five make more than $200,000 per year.

Education Minnesota stands on the throat of the state’s politics.  So you would think this charity could afford to be a little more charitable to members of their own profession.  Think again.

The Network sent me this item:  a letter to the editor of the Albert Lea Tribune.  The letter is signed by Al Helgerson, president of the Albert Lea Education Association, the local teachers’ union.  The letter opens as follows,

I have been asked by many why we, the Albert Lea Education Association, did not support state Rep. Shannon Savick’s opponent, Peggy Bennett, who is an educator herself.  I reply that there are many reasons. Just being a teacher doesn’t automatically mean your politics will support public education.

It’s a remarkable admission.  The Republican challenger for the area’s state house seat, Peggy Bennett, has spent 33 years as an elementary school teacher and won the 2011 Albert Lea-area Teacher of the Year award.  The incumbent, Democrat Shannon Savick, is a retired businesswoman.

Checking Education Minnesota’s website, we find that the union has indeed endorsed Democrat Shannon Savick.  There are 134 state house seats up for election this year.  Adding in an additional 13 offices, statewide, the union has an opportunity to endorse in 147 races in 2014.

In those 147 races, the union endorsed a total of four Republicans, less than 3 percent of the total.  So the union could certainly take a flyer on the Teacher of the Year, without compromising their commitment to the Democrat cause.

Or, if not, there are any number of innocuous phrases the union could have used to explain away their non-teacher endorsement.  The union could have pointed to a specific vote taken by Rep. Savick, a desire to honor past endorsements, or claimed that “it was a close call” and faintly praised the Republican candidate.

Instead, Mr. Helgerson doubled down with a bizarre guilt by disassociation argument against the Teacher of the Year,

We also see that Shannon’s opponents are supporting Jeff Johnson over Mark Dayton, the same Jeff Johnson who has publicly and proudly announced at a Tea Party gathering that if he wins, he will “Go all Scott Walker” on Minnesota, which includes limiting collective bargaining, shutting down unions and shifting money away from our public schools.

Forget, for a moment, that Republican Jeff Johnson has said nothing of the sort.  (Indeed, teachers unions still exist in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin.)  Helgerson is suggesting that it won’t support a local teacher because unnamed others support a candidate for a different office.  Weird.

It keeps getting better.  Helgerson writes,

To set the record straight, I have never said anything negative about Peggy.  I have never said she is negative to public education.

Whew!  (Not sure about the grammar there, though.)  He continues,

What I have said is if the Republican Party takes the house we have seen in the past that they attack public education.  They refuse to fund it properly, and they even make cuts.  They push for vouchers, stall payments, try to remove seniority and continually have us (public educators) on the defense.  This is a sustained fact.

A sustained fact.  Again, ignoring that there have never been “cuts” to public education, what Mr. Helgerson is saying is that he will not support any teacher who runs under the Republican banner.

I think that the teachers union has made a strategic blunder.  Much of what happens at the state capitol is non-partisan.  Lobbyists are usually careful to cultivate significant support in both parties, so that their agenda can move along, unopposed, regardless of which party happens to hold power that year.

In agriculture, energy, and transportation—just to name three industries—their annual wish list of legislation usually sails through with little controversy.

But in education, the teachers union has decided to fight a pitched battle against the Republican Party.  The union has allowed ideology to trump pure business interests and will only succeed in creating the very thing they say they fear.

Heads Up

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety has formed a Minnesota political action committee.  Its first act was to give $25,000 to the anti-Republican group Public Safety Matters, according to records on file at the Campaign Finance Board.

Public Safety Matters will use the $25,000 to convince voters that Republicans are pro-criminal.  You read it here, first.

Anatomy of a Poll

In the final week of the 2014 campaign, for Jeff Johnson partisans there is much hope to be found in the final Star Tribune poll.

In the previous poll, conducted by the Star Tribune in mid-September, incumbent Democrat Gov. Mark Dayton led Republican Jeff Johnson 45 to 33 percent.

The latest poll from the Star Tribune has Dayton leading 45 to 38 percent.

You read that correctly, in the past five weeks, Mark Dayton has enjoyed nothing by favorable press from local media, a massive advantage in paid advertising, and an endless parade of national Democrat heavyweights stopping in Minnesota to plead his case.  The result?  Not one additional voter has moved in his direction.

In the meantime, Jeff Johnson, whose campaign is written off anew on a daily basis by all of the professional pundits and political scientists, has done nothing but gain on his opponent.

From September to October, Dayton’s three-point lead among independents (25 to 22) has fallen to a 14-point deficit (27 to 41).

The latest poll indicates that 10 percent of voters are still undecided, and the vast majority of these are Republicans and independents.  Fifteen percent of independents are undecided against 12 percent of Republicans and just five percent of Democrats.  Johnson is overwhelmingly favored by voters in the first two groups that have decided on a candidate.

None of these observations guarantee a Johnson victory next week.  But after a four-decade career in public office, Mark Dayton has yet to close the deal with Minnesota voters.

The Opinion Minute: October 26th Edition

In a semi-regular feature, we boil down the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune Opinion page to its basic message.

Lori Sturdevant :  In 2010, a long-serving Democrat congressman lost his bid for re-election.  That will not be allowed to happen again.

Editorial Board:  The Board endorses Democrat Al Franken for re-election to the U.S. Senate.  What?  You were expecting a different result?

For the benefit of my out-of-state readers, or those new to Minnesota, let me provide a little background.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune is the state’s largest newspaper, owned by a rabid, Tea Party extremist, conservative Republican billionaire, exactly like, in every respect, those evil Koch Brothers.  This arch-conservative partisan extremist’s hand-picked board, nevertheless, only endorses the best, most-highly qualified candidates.  Who always happen to be Democrats.

In instances where a long-time Republican incumbent is going to win anyway, by a big margin, the Board will endorse said Republican.  (See Erik Paulsen, John Kline, and Rich Stanek.)

Also, once per cycle, the Board will endorse a Republican you never heard of in a minor, local race you never heard of to demonstrate their “independence.”

D.J. Tice :  the Star Tribune’s house “conservative” pops up this week to deliver a public service announcement:  get out and vote, even you low information voters who don’t know anything.

Lead Story :  A week after the Board’s inevitable endorsement of Democrat Mark Dayton and the paper’s declaring the race for governor to be over, the Board posts their conversations with Dayton and Jeff Johnson.

Why bother?  Because this the Sunday in the election cycle that the Star Tribune publishes its this time we're not kidding poll showing that the race will be razor close next month.

MNsure Statistics

Better late than never, the Minneapolis Star Tribune limps in today with the acknowledgement that they were lied to by the Dayton administration about MNsure health insurance rates.  On the front page of today’s print edition (above the fold), the Star Tribune announces, cryptically, “MNsure prices a weighty issue.”  The subhead reads,

Republicans say premium increases are much higher than Gov. Dayton reported.

How odd.  “Republicans,” and many others, have been saying that since the new rates were first announced on October 1^st, more than three weeks ago.  The Star Tribune itself reported all of these facts, back on October 1st.

So what has changed that this nearly-month-old observation is suddenly front-page news?  The Star Tribune has finally decided that skyrocketing MNsure rates is a political story rather than a business story.  Ten days before the mid-term elections, the Star Tribune has handed off coverage of the MNsure rate cover up to a political reporter (Ricardo Lopez) from its healthcare business reporter (Christopher Snowbeck).

Earlier this week, Snowbeck reported (on the Business page) that the Dayton Administration pressured insurer Preferred One into offering below-cost rates on the MNsure exchange.  This reporting directly contradicts sweeping denials issued by Democrat Governor Mark Dayton and members of his Administration.

So all the facts that Snowbeck reported as business news at the start of the month, now have to be re-reported as political news, on the front page.

Interestingly, the re-reporting by political reporter Lopez appears online under the headline,

 

Experts question MNsure average rate increase of 4.5 percent:

Republicans say premium increases are much higher than Gov. Dayton reported.

 

The original Snowbeck headline had read,

MNsure premiums to increase in 2015:

Average increase is 4.5%, but some could see much higher premium jumps.

The facts haven’t changed, but their presentation has undergone a subtle shift, one that speaks volumes.  In the Lopez re-reporting, a photo of Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman is featured.  Is he being set up as the fall guy?

Mark Dayton and his fellow Democrats have bet their re-elections on the public seeing MNsure as a success story.  Now that MNsure looks like something less than a triumph, Dayton is literally running away from the press to avoid answering awkward questions.

Now that the Democrat narrative of modest rate increases has collapsed, a few other items could stand for additional scrutiny.  Does Minnesota really have the nation’s lowest insurance rates?  That claim has been repeated ad nauseam by the Dayton Administration and reprinted in countless Democrat campaign ads.

What is the basis of that claim?  Has anyone ever looked behind the claim and examined it?  When comparing rates across states, are deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs incorporated?

Now that the façade has started to crumble, a Pulitzer (or Peabody) awaits the reporter who figures it out.

Bait and Switch

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter (recently of the Pioneer Press) Christopher Snowbeck is performing a great public service in his reporting the on the ongoing MNsure debacle.

About this time last year, we were all suspicious of the apparent low rates being offered on Minnesota’s Obamacare exchange.  Sure, everyone loves a bargain, but the re-election campaign-ready “nation’s lowest rates” claim always looked too good to be true.

Sure enough, low-price supplier Preferred One grabbed a majority of the first-year MNsure market share.  It turns out that they were low-price, not low cost.  They have dropped out of the MNsure exchange and raised rates by 63 percent to any customers who are still interested in sticking around.

Snowbeck reports that Preferred One’s low rates were the result, in part, of pressure from state insurance regulators.  In my opinion, the situation reads less like a consumer advocate asking bidders to “sharpen their pencils” than a political deal getting done.

Was there some quid pro quo involved?  Democrat Governor Mark Dayton has previously denied putting any pressure on the insurance company.  Quoting last week’s Pioneer Press,

Dayton said he never talked to PreferredOne, and neither his commerce commissioner nor MNsure dictated rates.

As they say in the business, “that statement is longer operative.”  Dayton and his appointees need to come clean about who said what to whom and when.

In the end, consumers did not benefit from these artificially low prices.  Yes, premiums paid by some consumers looked to be a real bargain for a few months.  But now they are faced with ruinous rate hikes they did not plan for and may not be able to afford.

Bait and switch may work in politics, but in economics, not so well.

Public Safety Smears

If the pattern from the 2012 election holds again this year, Minnesota Republicans should brace themselves.  They are about to be smeared, again.

The shadowy left-wing group Public Safety Matters is gearing up to slander Republican candidates for state representative as "anti-police."

I profiled the group last year.  Today, according to records filed at the state Campaign Finance Board, the funding arm of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota (WIN Minnesota) transferred $75,000 to the Public Safety group.

WIN Minnesota is run by Adam Duininck, a board member of the Met Council regional government and married to one of the Deputy Chiefs of Staff of Democrat Governor Mark Dayton.

You have been warned.

Mass Transit for Thee, But Not for Me

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Eric Roper and his employer have performed a great public service by simply tracking the public transit use of Met Council board members.

It turns out that fewer than half (7 out of 16 members) ever use their mass transit passes.  It’s liberal hypocrisy of the worst kind.  Roper documents that 10 of the passes have not been used in the past year.

As you know, the regional government agency Met Council—among its other functions—operates the area’s largest mass transit system.  The Met Council also serves as the region’s planning agency and has declared war on the single-family home and the automobile.

The Met Council doesn’t want you to drive, but can’t be bothered to use its own product.  Roper documents that senior staff at the agency use transit more often.

Roper’s article appears in today’s Star Tribune print edition—front page, above the fold—under the headline “Cars rule for Met Council members.”  The members themselves are all Democrats, appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton.  The current membership of the Council include an even greater than usual share of timeservers and seat warmers.

Prominent among its ranks are Adam Duininck, the chief fundraiser for the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Gary Cunningham, husband of Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges, and three labor union employees.

This would all be less amusing if it weren’t for the Council’s efforts to radically remake the sprawling Twin Cities region into a smaller, densely-packed, transit-dependent metropolis.  A transition to a more European-style city requires that most citizens abandon cars for bus and rail transit.

That our political elites won’t walk the walk should not surprise anyone.

Not So Fast! Still Two Weeks to Go in Election 2014

For at least the ninth time in the last two years, the 2014 election in Minnesota has been declared over, with Democrats said to be winning a historic victory.

For this outcome to be true, Minnesota has to be the only state in America to buck the current anti-Obama trend.

Earlier this month, Gallup compared national voter sentiment in 2014 to voter sentiment in the Republican-wave year of 2010.  Gallup found that the anti-Obama vote is actually running four points higher this year than in the “Tea Party” year of 2010.  In that mid-term year, Republicans picked up 6 seats in the U.S. Senate and 63 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

This result makes sense when you look at Obama’s job approval ratings.  Gallup has Obama at 40 percent approval as of yesterday, exactly 4 points below his approval rating in October 2010.  It has gotten so bad, that in deeply Democratic Maryland yesterday, the crowd started walking out of an Obama campaign rally after only 10 minutes.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has Obama’s approval in Minnesota at—you guessed it—40 percent.  But we are to believe that while Minnesota voters may no longer support President Obama, they still support the local variety of Obamaism.

Like those “Ready for Hillary” bumper stickers that are said to exist, the narrative goes something like this:  Obama himself may have turned out to be a bust, but Minnesotans love his mix of big government spending and higher taxes.

As Star Tribune columnist Lori Sturdevant explains, Minnesota voters finally reached the correct political answer by electing all-Democrat rule in 2012.  Even if the Democrat brand has lost some appeal to national voters, Minnesotans will never abandon the utopia we’ve created in just the last two years. 

I’m not so sure.  Minnesota doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  We follow the national news and are impacted by Federal policies.

With two weeks to go, expect to see a convergence of state trends with the national direction.

The Opinion Minute: October 19th Edition

We boil down the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune Opinion page to its basic message.

Lori Sturdevant:  All of the long-serving Democrat legislators, who occupy safe seats, tell Lori that this has been a quiet election year.  Everyone is just sitting around waiting for the labor unions and lefty billionaire donors to post their new list of demands.

Editorial Board:  The Board suggests voting for Democrat Mark Dayton.  Why?  See above.

D.J. Tice:  No column from the Star Tribune’s house “conservative” again this week.  He is embargoed until after the election.

Lead story:  As a prelude to the Board’s imminent endorsement of Democrat Al Franken, the Board posts their conversations with Franken and Mike McFadden.

Finally, because Barack Obama turned out to be America’s worst ever President, Aaron Miller explains why we can’t have great Presidents anymore and wouldn’t want one anyway.  Seriously, that’s what he wrote.

Democrats Stoop Even Lower to Conquer

Local media are in full election mode:  covering the press conferences, the candidate debates, dissecting the latest opinion polls, etc.  In other words, they are busy covering any topic besides the things that will drive results on November 4^th.

To understand what’s happening in this election, you need to get down to ground level.  Take, for example, this television ad by Democrat-front-group Alliance for a Better Minnesota being run against Republican candidate for state representative Barb Sutter.

It features “Frannie Olson” from New Brighton (nowhere near the targeted Bloomington district) complaining about the Koch Brothers efforts to end Medicare.  Of course, no such effort exists or ever existed.

But the visuals suggest that Republicans want literally to cut off the oxygen supply to an elderly man.  Nothing is out of bounds when the Democrat monopoly on power is under threat.

For its effectiveness, the ad counts on the low information voter not understanding that Medicare is a Federal program:  state representatives have no say—for better or worse—in how Congress and the President run the program.  Then again, voters can be forgiven for not knowing, since the ad never mentions the office Sutter is seeking, or even the level of government involved.

All of the “sources” cited by the ad (I don’t count The Nation as a source for anything useful) pre-date Sutter’s entry into the race.  Again, the ad counts on voters not knowing that Sutter is a first-time candidate. 

In fact, the ad implies that “politician Barb Sutter” is actually an incumbent.  The ad itself never bothers to mention the name of her Democrat opponent.  There is not a single claim or assertion in the ad that is true.  (Say, isn’t the Democrat incumbent also a politician?)

Falsehoods aside, on pure politics, the ad seems off target.  Seniors are, in fact, the most loyal Republican age group, according to polling conducted by the Pew Research Center.  Pew reports that seniors (65+) favor Republicans over Democrats by a 13-point margin.  As for the Koch Brothers, polls show that most voters have never even heard of them.

The ad seems off target only if you misunderstand the target.  This ABM ad is directed at getting out the liberal base in this off-year election.  Pew reports that, for Democrat voters, health care is their number one issue.  For Republicans, health care barely makes the top 5.

References to the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers are geared at getting the left-wing base motivated to come out and vote against Republicans.  The Koch Brothers in particular have taken on an Emmanuel Goldstein role on the far left of the Democrat party.

This copycat mail piece, put out by the state Democrat party, repeats the same false claims.

For starters, no voter under age 45 will know what a literal rubber stamp is, so they will not get the visual reference.  The picture of Sutter, meant to represent the rubber on the stamp, bears no resemblance to the actual human being.  Here is what Sutter actually looks like.

Just like the “scaring seniors” TV ad, including a black-and-white, grainy photograph of your political opponent is a time-dishonored tradition in political advertising.  However, there should be an obligation to include a likeness that actually represents the candidate.  In all seriousness, when I first saw this lit piece, I thought the picture was of the late actress Estelle Getty.

Again, the sources cited in this mail piece predate Sutter’s candidacy.  In fact, the piece cites two 2011 state House votes, a time during which neither Sutter nor her opponent were in office.  Like the TV ad, it does not mention the office Sutter is seeking or the level of government involved.

The rest of it is there:  the Koch Brothers, scaring seniors with Medicare, etc.  For good measure, they toss on the fictional “budget cuts for schools,” hoping something in the piece will get their dispirited voters to the polls.

As political propaganda goes, it’s not exceptionally competent.  But in Minnesota, it doesn’t have to be.  Fueled by infinite amounts of campaign money from public employee unions (taxpayer funded, of course), ABM and the Democrats can pump out ad after ad, piece after piece libeling Republican candidates.  Republicans, having to both pay their taxes and donate to their candidates, cannot hope to compete on a money basis.

Taking a step back, the Democrats’ 2014 Minnesota campaign illustrates why our politics are so completely dysfunctional.

Not a single issue of the day is addressed in these ads.  They are designed to attack character, not to persuade.  They are meant to libel, not to inform.  On Twitter last night, we were treated to Democrat ads featuring dead dogs and dead camels.  No really, camels.

Meanwhile, local media portray an election where issues are debated and polite exchanges rule the day.  In the trenches, it’s all Democrat mud and filth, lies and slander.  And no one is held to account.

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

One recurring theme in this year’s Democrat campaign to retain control of the state House of Representatives is the undercurrent of violent fantasies.

In late summer, the liberal Citypages weekly newspaper reported that my state representative, Democrat Ron Erhardt of Edina, allegedly told a conservative activist “I'll blow your head off!”  (Direct quote, emphasis in the original.)

I previously reported on the bullet-riddled, Old West-style “wanted” poster issued by state Democrats against a Republican house candidate in the south metro.  Apparently, the bullet-riddled wanted poster is a generic template.  Here is almost the same mailer sent by Democrats in the adjacent house district.

The text is slightly different, but the threat is similar.  I’m not a campaign professional, so I don’t know how effective such scare tactics are against Republicans, in general, or perhaps, they are reserved for use against Republican women.

Here is another suburban, swing-district mailer, sent by state Democrats against former State Rep. Kirk Stensrud, running to recapture the seat he lost in 2012 by just 202 votes.

Perhaps you can tell me what the shiny metallic object is that has been drawn into the black-gloved hand.

 

Democrats swear it's supposed to be a crowbar.  No, really.  A crowbar.  On the other side, I guess Kirk is supposed to be the Hamburgler?

  

By portraying their political opponents as violent criminals, Democrats excuse themselves from having to address their arguments and the issues.  And we still have over two weeks to go until Election Day.