Lori, let me help.

Strib reports yet another GOP unfunded mandate attempt - less gross than no child left behind, but then it's from a littler GOP'er. Here.

I did a first draft email, to help:

To: Gov. Scratch
From: AG

Re: Funding unavailability

I read in the newspaper [Strib online] that you wanted to interfere with my job.

You want my already overworked staff to get into your political dinkings.

Why not stay in-state, and do your job? We each were elected. I stay in state and work. You?

Here's my thought. You want an unfunded political football in my life. Fund it.

Molnau. Cut her paycheck unless you can tell me a single thing she's doing for her monthly dole. If not, put the money in my account and I will produce a white paper on the issue you propose.

Otherwise, take a long walk off a short pier, with your own silly little political anvil tied around YOUR neck.

Rome is burning. Put the fiddle away and work.

vty

Lori

That should prove helpful in moving along the GOP agenda.

________UPDATE_________
Strib posted the letter sent Swanson. Pawlenty is an embarrassment to the State of Minnesota. Here you can click on the thumbnail images to read the silly little Nero item.

Strib posted the Swanson response. I like my version better, but Swanson is a polite person.

The legislation in question still has to be signed by the President and reconciliation has yet to be passed by the Senate.  The individual mandate does not go into effect until 2014.  Our Office has not yet read and analyzed the 2,400 page bill that passed the House yesterday.  The Attorney General’s Office operates in the legal arena and we are not going to make any legal comments until we have had the opportunity to review the 2,400 page bill.

This in emailing from Dennis Kucinich:

Health Care is a Civil Right


Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation. And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people. I believe health care is a civil right. Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph.

I have spent my life struggling for the rights of working class people and for health care. I grew up understanding firsthand what it meant for families who did not get access to needed care. I lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including in a couple of cars. I understand the connection between poverty and poor health care, the deeper meaning of what Native Americans have called "hole in the body, hole in the spirit." I struggled with Crohn's disease much of my adult life, to discover sixteen years ago a near-cure in alternative medicine and following a plant-based diet. I have learned with difficulty the benefits of taking charge personally of my own health care. On those few occasions when I have needed it, I have had access to the best allopathic practitioners. As a result I have received the blessings of vitality and high energy. Health and health care is personal for each one of us. As a former surgical technician I know that there are many people who dedicate their lives to helping others improve theirs. I also know their struggles with an insufficient health care system.

There are some who believe that health care is a privilege based on ability to pay. This is the model President Obama is dealing with, attempting to open up health care to another 30 million people, within the context of the for-profit insurance system. There are others who believe that health care is a basic right and ought to be provided through a not-for-profit plan. This is what I have tirelessly advocated.

I have carried the banner of national health care in two presidential campaigns, in party platform meetings, and as co-author of HR676, Medicare for All. I have worked to expand the health care debate beyond the current for-profit system, to include a public option and an amendment to free the states to pursue single payer. The first version of the health care bill, while badly flawed, contained provisions which I believed made the bill worth supporting in committee. The provisions were taken out of the bill after it passed committee.

I joined with the Progressive Caucus saying that I would not support the bill unless it had a strong public option and unless it protected the right of people to pursue single payer at a state level. It did not. I kept my pledge and voted against the bill. I have continued to oppose it while trying to get the provisions back into the bill. Some have speculated I may be in a position of casting the deciding vote. The President's visit to my district on Monday underscored the urgency of this moment.

I have taken this fight farther than many in Congress cared to carry it because I know what my constituents experience on a daily basis. Come to my district in Cleveland and you will understand.

The people of Ohio's 10th district have been hard hit by an economy where wealth has accelerated upwards through plant closings, massive unemployment, small business failings, lack of access to credit, foreclosures and the high cost of health care and limited access to care. I take my responsibilities to the people of my district personally. The focus of my district office is constituent service, which more often than not involves social work to help people survive economic perils. It also involves intervening with insurance companies.

In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final health care bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care. I have seen the political pressure and the financial pressure being asserted to prevent a minimal recognition of this right, even within the context of a system dominated by private insurance companies.

I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is. My criticisms of the legislation have been well reported. I do not retract them. I incorporate them in this statement. They still stand as legitimate and cautionary. I still have doubts about the bill. I do not think it is a first step toward anything I have supported in the past. This is not the bill I wanted to support, even as I continue efforts until the last minute to modify the bill.

However after careful discussions with the President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Elizabeth my wife and close friends, I have decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation. If my vote is to be counted, let it now count for passage of the bill, hopefully in the direction of comprehensive health care reform. We must include coverage for those excluded from this bill. We must free the states. We must have control over private insurance companies and the cost their very existence imposes on American families. We must strive to provide a significant place for alternative and complementary medicine, religious health science practice, and the personal responsibility aspects of health care which include diet, nutrition, and exercise.

The health care debate has been severely hampered by fear, myths, and by hyper-partisanship. The President clearly does not advocate socialism or a government takeover of health care. The fear that this legislation has engendered has deep roots, not in foreign ideology but in a lack of confidence, a timidity, mistrust and fear which post 911 America has been unable to shake.

This fear has so infected our politics, our economics and our international relations that as a nation we are losing sight of the expanded vision, the electrifying potential we caught a glimpse of with the election of Barack Obama. The transformational potential of his presidency, and of ourselves, can still be courageously summoned in ways that will reconnect America to our hopes for expanded opportunities for jobs, housing, education, peace, and yes, health care.

I want to thank those who have supported me personally and politically as I have struggled with this decision. I ask for your continued support in our ongoing efforts to bring about meaningful change. As this bill passes I will renew my efforts to help those state organizations which are aimed at stirring a single payer movement which eliminates the predatory role of private insurers who make money not providing health care. I have taken a detour through supporting this bill, but I know the destination I will continue to lead, for as long as it takes, whatever it takes to an America where health care will be firmly established as a civil right.

Thank you.

HR676, Medicare for All, aka the Conyers Bill is the answer. Unless and until it is law, the answer for Minnesota is the Minnesota Health Plan.

Swanson should write that last paragraph back to Pawlenty. It is the bottom line truth in all the smoke and mirrors the White House, Pawlenty, Pelosi, Big Pharma, the provider-industrial complex and the insurer-industrial complex are putting out; along with the reprehensible conduct of Boehner and the rest of the GOP, Joe Lieberman and Bart Stupak and all the Blue Dogs included. They are technically not GOP, instead, they are GOP-lite. Watered down GOP.

There's a depression in the land. Pawlenty's party eight years in the White House precipitated it. Tail end of the second term they loaded the fan. It's been hard times and bad karma ever since. Rush loves it because it has hateful people listening to him. Bachmann can draw a crowd of a few thousand deluded ones every time, but no more, yet for her that's sufficient. The ego would want more but the ego grooves enough on what's available as facilitation for her self esteem trip and validation of her view of herself as having made it as an important person.

You doubt? Here, here, here, here, here and here. Tawdry? Crass? Divisive? A carnival barker? A Gingrich? A Pawlenty of the other gender?

Form your own opinion.

Vote accordingly in the general election if you live in Minnesota's Sixth District.

The photo has been smoking. Not me. Not me. Not me.

Image URL. This site. Here, for those not already spotting the headline. Is that the legislature rotunda as you've ever seen it? With help of a cactus?

That website has some images and coloration enhancement that is worth examining. I am impressed.

I risk repeating myself. But this is the community Maureen Reed comes from. They are bright and understand the issue.

New England Journal of medicine has a number of interesting open access items, posted currently online, this link:

http://content.nejm.org/

Have a look.

The Reed Campaign has more to say about the inadequacies of Michele Bachmann and the compelling need to replace her.

This was by a press release email, so I don't know if it is on the Reed website. Go there and look if you care to. I am sure Clark and her people would not disagree. I have not kept up with all the campaign mailings or checked websites. She may have said almost the same thing.

Michele Bachmann continues her campaign to stop comprehensive health care reform that will cover everyone and lower costs. Speaking at two ‘Kill the Bill’ rallies in the past week, she continues to make headlines attacking President Obama and health care reform.

Bachmann’s latest outlandish comments included comparing Obama to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez and calling Obama our first post-American President. She also claimed that if health care passes, citizens should personally declare it unconstitutional and defy the law. Shouldn’t we expect more from our public officials?

The only way to end Bachmann's extremism is to beat her in this election.

Bachmann's rhetoric is widely assailed for inducing fear and skirting the truth. From her rallies against health care to her argument that we need to "wean" people off Social Security and Medicare, these past few months have shown that she values sound bites over working hard to bring affordable health care to those who need it most.

The way Bachmann conducts herself as a Congresswoman not only obstructs meaningful debate, it is dangerous. We need leaders in Congress who will tell the truth and encourage debate, not inject fear and anger into people.

Maureen has decades of real world experience and will be a Congresswoman who listens, thinks, and speaks—in that order.

Maureen Reed has a brain. Michele Bachmann has a will to seek attention. And the item correctly points out how she is getting more outlandish day-by-day, and we, as voters, have to put a stop to it being a strident voice from Congress.

Voting Bachmann out of office likely will not end the stridency. But fewer would have to listen and cringe, as we in the Sixth District, with brains, do now.

DFL Senate District 48 - one of the last conventions.

Reed and Clark each did well. Clark probably took a delegate advantage, but I would have to see the numbers to be certain. Reed had generated a number of strong supporters. There is no hint of who the favored governor candidate will be.

There were a lot of uncommitted people going on to be delegates in Duluth.

Peter Perovich, after several ballots defeated Mike Starr, to run in Senate District 48 against Mike Jungbauer.

Laurie Olmon will run in House District 48A. Hackbarth is the incumbent.

House District 48B formed a screening committee after no conference attendees expressed a desire to run.

Jim Abeler is the incumbent.

It took multiple ballots with Perovich and Starr lacking sixty percent. It seemed uncertain about whether one would ultimately get the needed sixty percent. I went there hoping Marty would get a delegate or two. I ended up in a subcaucus that focused on Reed, and she got two delegates from the group. They split on governor, one being inclined toward Marty, the other undecided.

It is a difficult choice, and the primary will be an important event.

Bakk, Rukavina, Rybak, Thissen, Marty, Kelliher and Entenza were all there. Thissen's wife was there too, I am bad with names, but they both seemed like very good balanced people. After Marty, he would be my choice of those contesting the endorsement. I like Mark Dayton, but if Thissen were to end up a consensus compromise candidate at State Convention, if the other camps stymied one another and after several ballots there were to be a shift, I would be hard pressed in a primary between Thissen and Dayton.

Entenza took a delegate. He had a strong bloc, committed early, and staying loyal. It seems that, in general, Entenza has not had much traction in the senate district conventions.

If there is no governor endorsement, it is unclear to me which candidates would drop out and which would run in a primary. A seven candidate primary would be an interesting thing.

____________UPDATE_________
I looked at each race, SD 48, MN 6, and governor, as in an ideal world who would I trust to do the better job. Not that others were untrustworthy, not at all, but John Marty has consistently worked for campaign finance reform, consistently refused contributions from lobbyists and special interests, and consistently been progressive especially on the key healthcare for everyone issue.

Maureen Reed seems to be outside the political loop, and Clark has been in DFL legislative leadership. To me, Reed might show more independence of judgment while Clark might be more inclined to seek out and position herself with leadership objectives were either to go to DC. I think Reed would be better for Minnesota if the impression is true, that she would be more questioning of leadership, as to how an objective might be best for the nation or her district.

Clark's having strong union support makes me confident she would be cognizant of to expectations of union workers, but the majority of workers in the nation now are non-union and I have not seen union objectives as always attuned to this other more numerous bloc.

Reed has ties to the medical community, and the argument can equally be made that she might favor providers over consumers regarding medical services issues. I do not see any of that in Reed's character, as best as I can assess it, that being an inexact thing.

Laurie Olman, my first choice for SD 48 did not have strong support and it became a two-candidate choice from the first ballot onward.

I am quite happy to see Olmon now running against Hackbarth, and all the qualities she has are ones I think Hackbarth lacks. It would be joyful if she unseats him.

Two things surprised me about Rybak.

First, he has as many or more signs to put up than Jim Abeler who has a couple of warehouses full of signs, or seems to.

Second, Rybak supporters and Clark supporters formed a strong bloc of dual allegiance at the SD 48 convention. I held up my "John Marty - Maureen Reed" sign expecting it hard to get a single delegate by linking two names in separate races, and it proved true. Yet surprisingly the Clark-Rybak, (or was it Rybak-Clark), bloc had a quite strong count, gaining two delegates. Whether that was coincidence or by prior agreement and design is unknown to me, and I could only guess.

I and six or seven people, an insufficient number for a committed Marty-Reed delegate count, moved to a Reed = Electability group where one individual seeking to be a delegate liked Marty, but his commitment was to Reed alone.

After voting in the subcaucus, he will be a delegate, and once the convention starts he votes his conscience, we trust that, and he goes there liking John Marty but not committed to do any particular thing, ballot to ballot, but for expressly backing Reed in early balloting. The other delegate is uncommitted for governor but identically committed on Reed. From her civic working and education background the second delegate surely knows of Marty and his consistent record, yet remains uncommitted for governor. Both alternates were decisively uncommitted.

Interestingly, for the subcaucus one delegate-alternate pairing were spouses; the other father-daughter with the daughter being the uncommitted delegate and her father uncommitted alternate. I guess it will be less strain on Duluth hotel bookings that way.

The SD 48 convention was one of the later ones, and because no other districts were convening the same day all the candidates for governor could be there without schedule conflicts.

The DFL Congressional District 6 Convention will be March 27, in Blaine, with the State DFL convention April 23, in Duluth.

I can recall only a few delegates not committed in either race, things like "Labor and Jobs" or such as a banner for grouping, so the District 6 outcome - whether the sixty percent threshold exists entering it or if not how things work out can be handicapped in terms of likelihoods, but there is no sure bet.

Per the latest public statements I am aware of, Reed will run in a primary if not endorsed, and Clark will abide by endorsement. How that translates to actual nose counting in Blaine, and how strongly Clark might consider a change of heart if not endorsed, remain to be seen.

If the District convention hangs short of either Reed or Clark gaining sixty percent, expect a primary.

Poll results in the sidebar. The last poll, the SD 48 DFL one, closed yesterday. Results will be left up until after today's DFL SD 48 convention.

Results speak for themselves. Perovich at twice the Olmon support, Olmon at twice the Starr support. That's SD 48, and the total number of votes being substantially above votes in the other two polls suggests attention was greater, with perhaps one-time visitors sharing a role as well as regular readers. I expect the Bachmann poll numbers is closer to any core readership numbers. There the dislike for Bachmann is apparent, whereas on some GOP website the numbers might flip. The don't care votes are a surprise. With such a polarizing person, don't care is not an expected response.

For governor, it is interesting that the Marty support came in as high as it did. Had I included Rybak, would the distribution have differed? I left Rybak off because of a personal choice, he is okay, surely several notches above Sertich and, well, Emmer is Emmer and we can all complete the thought about the GOP.

Kelliher and Entenza - no surprise on Entenza. He's not shown much traction anywhere so far, and should drop out and leave the primary to Dayton, the endorsed candidate, whoever. But he's got the family wealth, and the will to spend it. Kelliher seems to be second or third, fourth choice to many, I suppose.

Again - my support at SD 48 will be strongest for John Marty.

I believe the Governor race is the big item this year, dwarfing the Congressional seat because the state has eight current reps., but only one governor, and the future will be set in large part during redistricting, especially if a seat is lost.

In that regard, census underreporting will be a negative factor, and Bachmann's anti-census spiel has done no good. That is especially true for the fact that the form this cycle is a quite short one.

Again - I favor Maureen Reed over Tarryl Clark for the House, with both candidates quality people. 


Reed knows healthcare from the inside out. She has in my view the right set of answers and shows the will to take on the issue. It most certainly will not be wrapped up by the current Congress, regardless of what the current pass-something politics produces as a signed-by-the-President reality. Fixing and cost and incentive modifications will be needed. Single payer might even ultimately prevail. Reed, and others with direct knowledge of healthcare such as Jim McDermott of Washington State, will be essential to the vast number of lawyers crafting some final solution that is not unmindful of what the market realities, and the health needs of a nation with aging baby-boomers will be and the implications attaching to that. Clark is a lawyer with legislative experience, and I am not dismissive of that, but DC has plenty with that background in the House already and Reed will bring a background that would diversify things, for the better, in my view.

For SD 48, to run against Mike Jungbauer - I back Laurie Olmon. An interesting viewpoint and approach is always welcome. Olmon does not produce a feel-good shopping list of I will do this, or that, but realistically talks on her website of her background and experiences and what that would bring to the St.Paul hilltop. Having all the answers up front with little or no experience and the reality being that if Jungbauer is unseated the DFL winner would be a junior person learning the ropes, not a leadership person from the start, and Olmon seems best oriented to that understanding.

I have exchanged an email or two with Mike Jungbauer, in the course of gaining as full a response as I could on the water availability issue, and how it might impact growth in the north metro suburbs, and his observation is that of the DFL candidates, without naming names, one has sought him out on issues and concerns, two have not, and the ability to work in a bipartisan manner, to me, is suggested by that as one favored above the others that way. Hopefully, how the three candidates have shown activity before becoming candidates this cycle will be something each will discuss to help enable SD 48 DFL convention delegates to best choose among them.

Olmon has been active on health issues, particularly epilepsy, and on growth because of how it is reaching now, at least in Comprehensive Planning, into City of Nowthen, from the south, from City of Ramsey.

Olmon has been steadfast in support of families stressed by long National Guard deployments in current situations, being spouse to a Guard member. She has shown an intent to advance her concerns in an ambient and not a confrontational or partisan manner. I see her as well equiped to take a realistic and pragmatic attitude to the job, should she win it.

Mike Jungbauer had a close race last cycle from Mike Starr, but survived the 2006 DFL and nationwide benefit in reaction to the ending years of Bush-Cheney mismanagement of the economy and the wars and all else. Whether he will have an easier time this cycle, or as difficult a reelection effort is the future that faces us all having to guess and predict, and in hindsight we can always say we knew this-and-that all along, but that's a falsehood, so why fall into it?

Housing is still a major economic issue. Things in the sector have been so bad, so long, that it's fallen in attention to credit, jobs, and healthcare worry. It is still BIG.

And the factors that put us into the housing bubble have played out, but not the surplus, nor the disruptive foreclosures. Yes, some people bought more than they realistically could afford. Yes, some uprincipled mortgage brokers and appraisers and securitizers fueled the frenzy. Yes, some people went into it with not a housing mindset but a speculative one - we buy as much or more home than we can afford, take the equity boost as larger that way, and move on with a bigger nest egg. Not so, and the speculative part of things, the greed factor, makes it hard to feel sympathy for some now in distress. Of the industry kinds, the builder-developers, the land speculators, the mortgage broker bad apples, the false appraisers, there are many to point at and shame.

However, loan arrangements and credit and community banking have been an economic plus, when not extreme or predatory, and cautioning against throwing out the baby with the bathwater is an old saying with a basis.

Editorializing aside, the latest numbers are not encouraging, on housing; Reuters, this link.