Lately, however, Kohler has been writing a lot about the MN GOP and their unofficially associated whisper site, Minnesota Democrats Exposed. Here’s a few posts if you need to be caught up:
Luke Hellier: Minnesota Democrats Exposed Exposed
Marty Seifert Puts Taxpayer Funded Arts Ahead of Cops
Ben Golnik Tweets About Getting Out of Minneapolis – from Minneapolis
Aaron Cocking’s Twitter Echo Chamber Contributions
MinnesotaDemocratsExposed.com Dropped from Google
Some Perspective on MN GOP’s Issue with R.T. Rybak
A lot of it is great research and solid work in catching liars red-handed. I caught up with Kohler recently and he agreed for a quick interview. In full disclosure, Kohler is a neighbor of mine and is someone I have a drink with now and then.
MNpublius: Looking back, your blog hasn’t been very political. Why are you getting into politics?
Ed Kohler: My blog started as a political blog, but I lost interest in politics as a theme over time and surely will again. Lately, my inspiration actually came from Newsbobber.com. Out of curiosity, I visited every blog in the Newsbobber 100 list of top-100 Minnesota blogs which reintroduced me to some new blogs and blogs I haven’t visited in quite a while. Some right-wing blogs that were particularly over the top with misleading statements inspired me to correct the record with links to accurate data.
MNp: Some of your recent posts sound very pro-R.T. Rybak. Do you support his run for governor? Do you volunteer or donate to his campaign?
EK: I’ve been a Minneapolis resident since 2000 with the exception of one year in St. Louis Park, and wouldn’t live in the city of I didn’t think it was the right place for me. I’m proud of the city and was ticked off to see Luke Hellier at Minneapolis Democrats Exposed misrepresenting the city’s crime data in an attempt to attack Rybak. I’m more pro-Minneapolis than I am pro-Rybak, so seeing Hellier mislead people about the state of crime in the city pissed me off. I’m not very politically involved day to day, so haven’t had a chance to give each candidate a serious look yet, so I can’t say for sure whether Rybak is my candidate of choice. Perhaps I should go with Tom Emmer since we were both athletes at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks? Well, that may be one of the only things we have in common. To be clear, I have not volunteered or donated to Rybak’s campaign and my opinions are definitely my own.
MNp: Who’s paying you to do all of this research?
EK: Research, for this sort of thing, means “searching for stuff on Google and Twitter” which takes a few minutes and costs me nothing. I write about topics that interest me, and for around a week, that’s been misleading statements regarding the City of Minneapolis along with follow-up posts based on feedback I received to earlier posts. I’m not sure why, but I care about my city. One example of this can be found at a database I’m setting up at minneapoliscrime.dabbledb.com where I’m aggregating the city’s crime stats into something more usable than Excel or PDF files so I can see trends in the data. That’s something I’ve been doing over the past couple months out of curiosity. I do run ads on my website, so profit from having an audience, but none of the are tied to politics unless Google AdSense decides that they should be.
MNp: So you’re not being compensated by any campaign or a political party for any of this?
EK: No. And there is a good chance I’ll grow tired of this subject and get back to blogging about yellow pages, hotel toilet paper folding, and running the streets of Minneapolis very soon.
MNp: Do you think that sites like Minnesota Democrats Exposed should be able to continue posting the lies and untruths that you’ve exposed, even after you’ve proven they’re lying?
EK: When I look at sites like Minnesota Democrats Exposed, I have to assume that their goal is to feed dirt on their opponents to the media. However, for that to work, they need to be trusted by the media. Looking at the stuff they’re churning out lately, it’s largely reblogs of things in the media rather than breaking news, or talking points based on misleading information. The media isn’t going to bite at stuff like that and will get turned off over time. Do they have a right to post whatever they want? Of course. But they’re going to have a hard time getting anyone in a position of influence to listen if they don’t keep it credible.
MNp: With governments becoming more open and accessible with public data and records, do you think many other non-politicos will be exposing political lies of this nature? Historically in Minnesota it has been fairly limited to the mainstream press, independent political media and political bloggers.
EK: I think bloggers who have a passion for a topic and can explain the intricacies of a topic in interesting ways can have a lot of influence. That can be people who are passionate about Park Board issues, crime, transportation, etc. Much of this sort of thing can percolate up through the mainstream press to reach larger audiences if the bloggers build a solid reputation for themselves. A blogger that’s passionate about a topic will have way more subject knowledge than a reporter doing an occasional story.
MNp: Have any recommendations for the people you’ve gone after in your posts?
EK: While I don’t expect to agree with the conclusions reached by people at the far end of any political spectrum, great arguments rely upon an agreed upon set of facts. Bloggers who mislead about the data automatically lose the argument since they’re not standing on a solid foundation. Get the facts right, cite your sources, and link to those sources so people can verify for themselves whether what you’re saying makes sense or not. Play hard, but play with the facts or expect to get blog-punched by those who find lying offensive.
MNp: Thanks for your time, I hope you don’t lose interest in fact-checking political bloggers.
EK: I hope that I can.
Ed Kohler writes The Deets.
Aaron -
Ask Ed why Democrats are pushing a health care bill that according to CBO increases the deficit.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=516307
From the typical right-wing playbook of "deny, distort, deflect", the above post was a twofer.
Please provide the CBO report, or STFU. Also, LOL at your source. EVERY tab on that site is populated only by the one, unsubstantiated editorial.
Hehe, investors.com is the same outfit that stated, "If Stephen Hawking had to be serviced by universal health care in Great Britain, he would be dead right now."
They lie, and don't do their research, which just makes them Fox News. Investors Business Daily takes it one step further though because their lies and shoddy research actually prove the point they are arguing against. Super credible morons. Good one Jack.
Well, I have the director of the CBO Doug Elmendorf on my side….
A post apologizing would be nice. But go ahead…keep arguing this will reduce the deficit….
*****************************
In his letter to Sessions, Elmendorf wrote
“The key point is that the savings to the (Hospital Insurance) trust fund under the (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation or on other programs,” Elmendorf wrote.
“To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government’s fiscal position,” he wrote.
Here is a link to the letter from CBO.
http://sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressShop.NewsReleases&ContentRecord_id=bc0b74da-ec3f-de2d-e81a-6152f826c869
Jack, it looks like you linked to a GOP Senator from Alabama's opinion of what the CBO statement meant, which is not exactly where I'd expect a Minnesotan to go for opinions on healthcare, but to each his own. The opinion can indeed be found there, or you could link to it on the CBO's website rather than to a PDF: http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=448
My understanding of health care bill accounting is shaky at best, but I'm aware that Jeff Sessions receives a ton of money from health insurance companies interested in the status quo, so know to take his opinions with a ginormous grain of salt. With that in mind, I find The Atlantic's Megan McCardle's opinions of Sessions' statements enlightening:
http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009...
My interpretation of McArdle's post is that bill solves one problem rather than two. Sessions seems to be saying that if it doesn't solve two problems at once, it should be thrown out. One step forward rather than two is still progress, although not as much as may have previously been sold.
It's interesting to see that Sessions did NOT include quotes from the CBOs opinion that showed savings where they occur. To me, that's a very slanted interpretation of the CBO's statement, which explains why FOX News ate it up.
Jack, it's good to see that, with enough prodding, you'll at least make an attempt to link to the facts behind your arguments. That's what I'm hoping to see more out of from every side of political debates. If we can't agree upon a shared set of facts, it's tough to argue about where we can or should go from where we are.
You are correct Ed. I should have linked to CBO instead of the senator’s copy of the CBO letter.
Regarding the corruption of money given to politicians, I’d say there are plenty of examples of that in each party - both federally and locally. One need only look at the Indian casino’s purchasing of the local Democrat party as an example. Of course the GOP does the same for it’s groups too.
Probably a reason why more and more people think less and less of each party.
Ed, will you adopt me? Thank you for a very lucid post.
Couple problems with you analysis. The only problem being solved is providing the Democrats with a bill that appears to be beneficial to the deficit. It does this by creating a new problem, reducing the solvency for Medicare. The bill, when viewed against the budget as a whole is not deficit neutral. The CBO doesn't say how much becasue they only score the exact wording of the bills they are given and this bill was worded to provide a good report, not to reduce the deficit. You can't get credit for "solving" a problem of your own creation if you make another problem proportionally worse.
You might also want to not start you argument with an ad hominem attack when you are trying to come across as somehow enlightened and civil. Besides if you actually believed that where a politician got their donations meant that they shouldn't be trusted to regulate those areas you must believe that Obama shouldn't be trusted to deal with banks, bailouts or education, right?
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cyc...
@Kerosene Hat, thanks for the response. As I said at the start of my 2nd paragraph, my understanding of the health care bill is shaky at best. What's cool to me is that we're actually getting closer to the facts of the bill through this discussion, which is healthy. Next, we can debate whether the facts are justified or not.
Personally, I have less problems with non-debt-neutral spending on health care for uninsured Americans than I do with non-debt-neutral spending on unjustified wars. That's not to suggest that you agree or disagree with that statement. Just that it's an inconsistently used bar to justify spending.
I think the funding behind all candidates is a relevant factor worth considering when judging what someone is saying or how they're voting. Totally agreed. OpenSecrets.org is an excellent website. I do find it interesting that support for the site tends to come from left-leaning organizations. In this case, I don't believe that biases the data, but it's interesting to see who's most interested in seeing this type of truth see the light of day.
The problem here is the presentation of the bill. The bill was designed to game the CBO pure and simple. It took money out of another pot without accounting for it. On top of that there the fact that the bills associated tax increases ramp up more quickly than does the spending in order to hide the real affect on the budget. On top of that the mandates for people to purchase insurance are not accounted for as part of the cost as they should be.
It is unfortunate but not surprising that this seems to be the method used to pass all legislation. Both parties do it, GWB left the wars off the balance sheet and purposefully underestimated its total costs for instance. What is most problematic is how party supporters on both sides seem to be so willing to repeat and reinforce these willfully deceptive methods. No democracy can survive for long if the people voting can't become properly informed on the issues being decided.
EVEN the CBO letter doesn't say what you claim, you lying sack of shit.
Yes, it does actually. Are you having literacy issues? The last time you provided a link it was to an article that actually disproved the point you were making.