The rumors are getting pretty fierce about Tarryl Clark running for Governor Congress in 2010 - one might even say she’s close to making an announcement. She has been contacting key supporters and activists, and I doubt it’s to chat about that cold spell we had in June.
It would be great to see a strong voice out of CD 6 (you know, the place where fun and sanity go to die), and of course, Tarryl would also have the advantage of a strong base there.
I’ll post when I hear more…
UPDATE: Rumors are in fact so fierce that it’s like playing a game of “telephone”. Tarryl has been contacting folks about a run for Congress, and it is believed that, while we do think she was once eyeing the Gov seat, she is now angling for the US House. Sorry for the confusion and the misspeak.
Tomorrow — Wednesday, July 1 at 12:00 p.m. — A victory rally with Senator-elect Al Franken and supporters will be held on the upper mall of the Minnesota State Capitol. Minnesota DFL Chair Brian Melendez, Senator-elect Al Franken and Franni Franken will address the rally.
WHAT: Victory Rally with Senator-elect Al Franken
WHO: Minnesota DFL Chair Brian Melendez, United States Senator-elect Al Franken, Franni Franken, US Senator Amy Klobuchar
This video has been around for some time, but it’s timely right now. It illustrates that, because of feedback loops in our climate system, we are nearing the tipping point on climate change. So far, it may seem like we’ve caused little damage, but once we’re passed the tipping point, it will be too late.
Boy Wonder Ryan Flynn over at Minnesota Democrats Exposed is prone to fits of wild speculation that are embarrassing even by the lax standards that are the hallmark of MDE. MDE founder Michael Brodkorb has always relied on spotty research combined with conclusions that strain all bounds of logic; Flynn has since streamlined the Brodkorb model by eliminating the research part.
In his latest, Flynn asks whether Collin Peterson’s compromise on cap and trade means global apocalypse:
Does his flip-flop at the expense of Ag, Sportsmen and Industry make him vulnerable?
Is this the end of the Blue Dogs?
He seems unaware that legislators often make compromises — that’s how business gets done in Congress. This was a silly topic to begin with, but I just love Flynn’s final thought. MDE is going to seriously miss Brodkorb.
Is this the end of the Minnesota Republican Party?
A little shameless promotion is good for you, trust me. This weekend is the 37th annual Twin Cities Pride Celebration, and, as always, it’s going to be great. (This year also marks the 40th anniversary of Stonewall.) We have the third largest Pride celebration in the country, after New York and San Francisco. There will be concerts, food, enumerable booths, fireworks, free stuff, and of course a huge parade on Sunday. Hope to see you there!
Liberals and conservatives talk past each other on taxes all the time, for one simple reason: We have a fundamental disconnect about who the rich and the poor are. Liberals are more likely to see a person’s wealth or poverty as something s/he was born into, while conservatives are more likely to assume that person is responsible for his or her success or failure.
Both are true, but not all the time. There are plenty of rich people who are self-made, but there are also plenty of trust-fund babies. There are many poor people who have made bad choices, and there are many poor people who are victims of their circumstances. It’s never as simple as black and white, left and right.
A great example comes by way of King Banaian at SCSU Scholars. Banaian takes a look at data from a recent Pew study on generational income mobility and concludes that while many of the children of poor parents have their income improve relative to their parents’, it’s no more than we’d expect from random chance. For the wealthy, however, more of their children see increases in income than we could expect from a purely random result. He writes:
Here’s an interesting analysis of the Iranian election from two PhD candidates at Columbia University. Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco looked at the numbers and concluded that they looked non-random:
The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to appear at the end of 10 percent of the vote counts. But in Iran’s provincial results, the digit 7 appears 17 percent of the time, and only 4 percent of the results end in the number 5. Two such departures from the average — a spike of 17 percent or more in one digit and a drop to 4 percent or less in another — are extremely unlikely. Fewer than four in a hundred non-fraudulent elections would produce such numbers.
…But that’s not all. Psychologists have also found that humans have trouble generating non-adjacent digits (such as 64 or 17, as opposed to 23) as frequently as one would expect in a sequence of random numbers. To check for deviations of this type, we examined the pairs of last and second-to-last digits in Iran’s vote counts. On average, if the results had not been manipulated, 70 percent of these pairs should consist of distinct, non-adjacent digits.
Not so in the data from Iran: Only 62 percent of the pairs contain non-adjacent digits. This may not sound so different from 70 percent, but the probability that a fair election would produce a difference this large is less than 4.2 percent.
It turns out that the chance of both of these irregularities happening in a single election is less than one percent.
According to a Brookings Institution study of the 100 largest metropolitan regions, we’re amongst the 2nd-weakest 20 metros. We’ve always prided ourselves in Minnesota for staying ahead of the rest of the country, but not this time.
More specific data — and more maps — after the break.
Why are the Republicans doing this to themselves? Are they really that ineffective and short on ideas?
House Republicans presented a four-page outline of their health care reform plan Wednesday but said they didn’t know yet how much it would cost, how they would pay for it and how many of the nearly 50 million Americans without insurance would be covered by it.
Amazing. With weeks to plan their opposition, this is all they came up with? Are they going to submit a tiny, shamefully substanceless “alternative” on every issue the grownups in Congress address? And just who is the political mastermind who insists that, even when the Republicans have absolutely no plan, they hold a big press conference to announce their non-plan?
After the jump Statements as I get them. First from Paul Thissen, then the DFL and MAPE, Rt Rybak and Barb Johnson of Minneapolis, and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner.
Gov said most are going to be in second year, goes on to lecture cities on LGA.
County aid down to 1.19% of aid+levy for 2010, and 2.4% for 2011. City aid down to 3.3.% (aid+levy) 7.64% of aid +levy for 2011. Twnshps, 1.74 and 3.66. (304M dollars in LGA says gov in follow up)
Smallest counties and towns exempt.
Refunds and other payments
PCR program unallotted 10.4M.
Renters refund unallotted to level of taxes paid (15%)
HHS
Inpatient Hospital services not reduced at all.
No additional cuts to nursing homes
Higher ed, Unallotted 100M dollars.
MNSCU 50M
U of M 50M
State agencies unallotted 2.25% extra off of the 5% cut already existing. 7.25% Includes Govs office but not Leg or Constitutional offices.
k-12 temporary reductions and deferrals, not going to be 90-10, now 73-27( K-12 funding is split over two years)
Wants payment from Wisconsin in year of loss for reciprocity.
Hanson up talking now.
Biggest cuts are in LGA (I think, I can’t figure out the exact number but I’m sure that’ll get out soon enough).
My Uptake feed is breaking up, and I have to run for class, keep checking for follow up and analysis from MNPublius.
Amy Klobuchar has authored a small, simple proposal which will eventually save millions of dollars. I think it’s the sort of common-sense, attention-to-details legislation we need to see more of. It’s also a great example of spending a bit of money upfront to save money and hassle in the future.
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced legislation that would require the installation of underground broadband conduit in any federally-funded transportation project.
The Minnesota Democrat says the conduit would house fiber optic cables that carry high-speed communications.
During a news conference today in St. Louis Park, Klobuchar said 90 percent of the current cost of broadband installation comes from digging up and repairing roads.
Once again, incredible simple. Yes, it will add a couple of days to construction project, and it will add a bit to costs. But think of all the money and frustration it will save when we don’t have to dig up those roads a few years from now.
This isn’t an earth-shattering proposal, and that’s not such a bad thing. I wish more of our legislators were focused on making these small “tweaks” that save money and make government operate more efficiently.
People Are Shouting
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