Sunday, February 28, 2010

Latest look at Tarryl Clark and Maureen Reed campaign home pages. Clark has light stuff and Twitter stuff. Reed posts a substantial item linked to from the homepage.

Tarryl Clark, home page, this link.

Maureen Reed, home page, this link.

Clark has this issues page. And this news page.

Reed's home page links to dated items, the most recent being at the top, at this link.

That item presents substantive argument about what it would take to defeat Michele Bachmann. If the Clark site has equally accessible analysis and argument of that quality, I missed finding it.

My preference is clear. I like the Reed item as being informative and less a burden on my time in wanting to quickly find substantial content. Form your own opinions.

One thing I point out. The Franken voting performance in the district is presented via a map on the Reed site, this image.

In 2006, another Democratic landslide year as 2008 was, the Klobuchar voting in MN 6 is presented by a map from the Secretary of State's office that I cannot now locate there, but, see this image.

The suggestion from the two voting maps is that each candidate should look to be able to suggest she is more like Klobuchar in general character and appeal, than like Franken, given the patterns.

How you decide that question is a personal thing, more impression than logic. I am leaning toward Reed for now, after starting solidly favoring Clark. I cannot say it is a logical shift, rather than one more of feeling - feeling that healthcare will not be solved soon and the new replacement for Bachmann should be independent of party ties to insider networks in the DFL, and that feeling suggests Reed has the medical administrative experience to see through smokescreen and partisan positioning, to get to ways to solve things.

I would love to see each candidate proclaim, "I am favoring single payer, no matter what the cost." I do not see that happening.

What I have seen is this past ABC Newspaper item in the paper about the 2010 budget for City of Ramsey, stating midway through the item:

Among the financial challenges the council had to wrestle with while setting the budget was an 18 percent increase in health insurance costs, building permit revenues that decreased more than $377,000 and elimination of Market Value Homestead Credit.

“The city will lose $442,290 in MVHC in 2010,” said Lund.

Although the city had the option to levy for the lost MVHC and could have levied up to $8,617,097 plus the special levies, the council decided only to levy $7,485,899 plus special levies, she said.

The city also held the line on its EDA levy.


I do not know what MVHC stands for, but it was the first paragraph in the quote that grabbed my attention. I do not know if City of Ramsey provides a "Cadillac plan" for its employees, but in email from the City Administrator it was noted that the bargaining agreement prevents any substantial lessening of coverage, so that as has been reported for other providers and locales, costs of coverage are skyrocketing. Eighteen percent is not chump change. I had intended a post on the actual numbers the city provided me, I have kept the emails, and may post on it sometime.

But the 18% jump, one year to the next, carries the gist of things.

Ya betcha.

In Ramsey, it is taxpayer money that covers the city employees. So, absent single payer, it seems the taxpayers are being hit pretty hard. Others can debate other detail, but that is my factoid of the day.

In closing, the standard caveat, either Clark or Reed would be a vast improvement in replacing the incompetent incumbent, and each is a very sound and attractive candidate for the job.

With the governor race leading into the redistricting effort and with enactment of the Minnesota Health Plan for universal coverage into law in the State a possibility if there is strong executive leadership for it, I regard the governor race as more critical than the MN 6 race where, unfortunately, Bachmann has a vocal and numerous core constituency in the district - thus suggesting it more likely that a progressive governor might emerge for our future, and less likely that a moderate such as Clark or Reed, will unseat the ultra-right-wing Michele Bachmann. How she ever got elected to anything is a mystery to me. I would not even vote for her as dog catcher, although she's probably more fit for that than Congress.