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Single Payer needs somebody in high places with vision and talent. Tina? Amy? Bet on a waffle to have stronger beliefs and feelings.
Dayton's choice, where others might have chosen better.
From Timmer:
It didn’t take Tina Smith very long to go native in Washington.
But you can hear dollars clapping in some places, the PolyMet corporate offices for one. Three PolyMet executives, President Jon Cherry, Vice President Brad Moore, and Vice President Bruce Richardson have each contributed to Tina Smith’s campaign.
You will never guess who they contributed to last cycle. (And apparently their only contributions.) Oh, of course, you can guess: Rick Nolan. Rick has offered the same legislation as the Smith Amendment in the House.
You might compare all of this to the position of Senate candidate Richard Painter. He is unalterably opposed to sulfide mining in Minnesota. He has said so in many places, including Drinking Liberally last week.
Update: For a more complete, and frankly better, exposition of this issue I recommend Marshall Helmberger’s terrific piece in the Timberjay.
Further update and correction: There is an article about Tina Smith’s response to questions about the land exchange deal in the Saturday edition of the Strib. “Oh, the exchange seems fair,” opines Tina, “And besides, it’s done all the time.”
Perhaps she can point to a deal to sell or exchange land for use in strip mining after the Weeks Act was passed in 1911. We’re waiting.
[links in original, italics added]
Pope of the North Tom Bakk gets his ring kissed. Jeez. Fraser and Vento put it all on the line for the BWCA Wilderness; Smith puts it all, decades of work by a host of good people, behind her like a thoughtless fart on the way to November.
Vento must be spinning in his grave.
People should be telling Smith she's being a damned fool and should stop. Or is it too late? She might between now and November redeem something, but while not being hard of hearing, I have not heard it attributed to her or said by her: Single Payer, Student Debt Relief, Fixing Income Inequality, Ending the Drug War Against Cannabis; none of it. All Smith has to run on at this point in time is selling out the BWCA Wilderness. Beyond disappointed, I am disgusted.
The process fails when politicians with extreme short-term personal and party agendas subvert procedures for sensible tempered decision making to have a chance to work to a judgment and resolution fitting the time frame environmental havoc entails, centuries, i.e., well beyond a tack-on ploy to a wholly unrelated Act done because an election is months away. That latter kind of thing unprincipled Republicans do. Tricky Dick earned his name.
Tricky Tina?
While suitably cautious about a candidate who held a job in the Bush administration with a Republican background as possibly being a stalking horse much as John Anderson was in the Carter-Reagan days, presenting links regarding Painter remains fair in allowing readers to follow the links and decide for themselves; e.g., here, here, here, here (with an embed of Painter's first campaign video, same embed here); with readers skilled in how to do their own web searching.
Giving links is not passing judgment for or against Painter, which would be premature. He is a moderate as is Smith in many ways, but on mining, single payer, Painter says he is there with an issue stance, while Smith is MIA and quiet beyond the recent surprise Nolan-like BWCA bomb throw.
If you really want a protest vote candidate, check out:
http://www.legalcannabisnow.org/
A protest vote that way would show dissatisfaction with two-party agonies and aloofness and mediocrity on key issues, as well as showing support for a sane cause as we move further into our Twenty-first Century milieu. Thinking out of the box may help the people against being boxed up and delivered, yet again, to the malefactors of great greed and wealth. Which is better than stoically taking it, saying, "I love Big Brother."
______________UPDATE______________
Vento relates back to a time when a career school teacher like Jeff Erdmann had a chance to reach Congress. Which multimillionaire lights your fire? This one? Or the other?
Pick your Tweedle. Dum or De. Dayton, or Alida and Dayton, picked theirs.
But I'm O.K. I love Big Brother.
_____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Spouse Archie:
Archie Smith
Independent investor specializing in medical device stocks. Previously: a partner with Rothschild Capital Partners with a focus on publicly traded medical device stocks, a Venture Partner with SightLine Partners, a venture capital firm focused on investments in later stage private medical device companies and Piper Jaffray as a Senior Healthcare Analyst and Managing Director in Equity Research.
Then, does this portfolio disclosure give any hint as to Tina Smith's reticence in backing Single Payer; and can a snowball survive long in Hell?
_______________FURTHER UPDATE______________
1:09 PM 6/19/2018: Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Single Payer would depress share price and dividends from private sector FOR-PROFIT money sucking med-industrial complex operators. I.e., trimming the fat would trim Archie and the Senate appointee's portfolio, given how it's being kept med-heavy and not cashed out elsewhere to quell potential conflicts.
Winnowing out possible problems is what primaries are for. That said, the caveat is Richard Painter is reported to have a net worth at least twice that of the Smith spouses; and it appears he has yet to disclose detail of where the cash is parked. His holdings in med-related adventures might dwarf that of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, or it might not.
Ethics hotshot: The man staking his claim upon Bushco public service and upon a tout of strong ethical motivations should have feet put to the fire to disclose the equivalent of incumbent fiscal disclosure to the public, which could easily be done via a press release and posting on the Painter campaign website.
Else, how can one follow the money? For all I know and the public knows, the Painter portfolio could be real top-heavy in United Healthcare and Big Pharma to where a likelihood of foot-dragging on Single Payer may be inferred.
As to well positioned intermediaries in today's world siphoning off money that could be going to actual, factual, physician-patient provision of health services, Strib published:
Health care sector, led by UnitedHealth Group, has outsized presence on Top 50 list
UnitedHealth Group maintained its status as Minnesota's largest public company in 2017 as the Minnetonka-based health care giant for the first time surpassed the $200 billion mark in annual revenue.
By Christopher Snowbeck Star Tribune
June 16, 2018
[...] UnitedHealth Group accounts for more than one-third of the revenue among all companies in the Star Tribune 50. It’s the primary reason that the six health care companies on the list account for an outsized portion of both revenue and income.
At the start of this month, the market capitalization of UnitedHealth Group was $232 billion, up by one-third from the same time last year.
Investors have been less excited about Medtronic, the medical device manufacturer with operational headquarters in Fridley. It’s the second-largest health care company in the Star Tribune 50, yet Medtronic’s market capitalization at the start of June was down slightly compared to the same period a year ago.
[...] UnitedHealth Group last year had more than nine times the revenue of Medtronic, but the companies were much more comparable in terms of overall earnings [...] since health insurers typically see profits in the range of 3 percent to 6 percent before taxes. Among medical device manufacturers, pretax margins often exceed 20 percent.
Plus senior management extracts an obscene cut from gross earnings well in front of regular public company shareholders; e.g., this link showing Omar Ishrak of Medtronics and Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group sucked out eighty-two million compensation between them in 2016, Ishrak gaining 5/8th of non-healthcare-delivery cash flow, each from their respective firms.
If the right oxen get gored by Single Payer, would that be less fair than the status quo?
Candidates should not be in cahoots with a status quo that could be characterized as a bond between profiteers in the top 1%. Conscious parallelism in favoring political outcomes akin to parallelism in income sources is an ever-present danger. Likewise, distance from any interest in defeat of Single Payer to keep personal oxen from being gored would be welcome sunshine upon a murky, swampy, "as is, like it or love it."
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In closing, earlier two millionaires were juxtaposed, Smith and Housley. Now, Painter joins himself into the picture, making it at least three millionaires seeking the same political office. So what's grassroots to think?
DCCC/DSCC: We know priorities there - feed the consultancies slushing around the DCCC/DSCC's part of the DC swamp or go suck eggs. Just do not rock the yacht. In such a world we must presume millionaires are corporatists all or most of the time unless irrefutable contrary proof exists. DCCC/DSCC playing favorites complicates the analysis, but really does not CHANGE or cause HOPE of it.
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Follow the money, unless you've a better idea. Questions exist and in good faith they should be answered with full and suitable disclosure. Especially from a self-proclaimed ethics hotshot.
The press should be all over that. Painter could be holding a seven-figure stake in shares of Chilean copper mining giant Antofagasta, which would be of interest to environmental activists and to the public wondering about Twin Metals' prospects adjacent to the Boundary Waters.
Saying you oppose sulfide mining is a fine first step. Backing that with the credibility of disclosing a high seven figure portfolio devoid of mining holdings would be a fine second step, for one with nothing to hide.
Why not? If wanting my vote, move in a way to earn it.