Author Archives: Joe Loveland

About Joe Loveland

I've worked for politicians, a PR firm, corporations, nonprofits, and state and federal government. Since 2000, I've run a PR and marketing sole proprietorship. I think politics is important, maddening, humorous and good fodder for a spirited conversation. So, I hang out here when I need a break from life.

Buffaloed By Bills

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Minnesota Republicans endorsed State Rep. Kurt Bills to challenge Democratic Senator Amy Kloubachar in November.  His nomination win was an impressive feat, fueled by support from delegates supporting Ron Paul, the libertarian presidential candidate who promises to legalize heroin, cocaine, and prostitution under the banner of “the party of traditional family values,” which makes perfect sense.

Republican Convention delegates seemed particularly smitten with Bills’ anger at the federal debt.  Anger is the coin of the realm at party conventions, and, make no mistake, Bills is hopping mad about the debt.  (Not the debt that he put on Minnesota schools as a member of the State House, a different debt.)

Fair enough.  The federal debt is a big issue.  So let’s take a look at the causes of it:

In summary, to address the causes of the skyrocketing debt, the answer is pretty clear:  Undo what Bush did.    If you do that — cut off war spending and the Bush tax cuts — the debt trend line very quickly flattens.

What are Rep. Bills’ positions on these issues?  Well, I couldn’t tell a lot from his slim website position paper or media clippings.  There looks to be a good reason why MinnPost’s Erik Black recently wrote a piece called “Guessing Where Kurt Bills Stands on The Issues.”  (Black can’t get an interview.)  So guess we must, along with a little help from his website.  From what I can tell, it doesn’t look like Rep. Bills is too keen on putting the breaks on the primary drivers of the debt increase:

  • BILLS WON’T CUT BUSH’S TAX CUTS.  It doesn’t appear Rep. Bills supports eliminating the Bush tax cuts, the largest cause of the debt increase.
  • BILLS WON’T CUT BUSH’S FOREIGN WARS.  If Rep. Bills is for immediately withdrawing from the middle east wars, another big driver of the debt increase, he doesn’t mention it in his website foreign policy section.

I imagine Rep. Bills was opposed to the Recovery Act.  But you can see the Recovery Act cost is a much smaller contributor than the Bush wars and tax cuts.  Moreover, the up to 2.4 million jobs the Recovery Act created prevented additional debt that would have been caused by an even more severe economic meltdown.  Finally, the Recovery Act is now done, so in terms of Rep. Bill’s future debt reduction plan, it is a mute point.

Instead of undoing what Bush did to create the debt, Rep. Bills seems to want to double down on Bushonomics — tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of high flying industries and aggressive use of the military.  If that’s true, “Bills” could end up being a prophetic name.

– Loveland

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Minnesota Legislature

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The one thing that Vikings Stadium proponents and opponents in the Legislature should be able to agree on:  The debate was very bad for all of their reputations.

Why?  Because there was an audience.  While the masses usually are mostly blind to what happens in legislative floor debates, a sizeable audience of casually involved Minnesotans were engaged enough in the high profile stadium issue to seek out legislative coverage on TV or the Internet.   My sense is that they were appalled.

Legislators didn’t really act much worse during the Vikings Stadium debate than they typically do at the end of any session.  It’s just that they usually behave badly in relative anonymity.  Usually, the only witnesses are jaded Capitol insiders, who can no longer be shocked.  Capitol dwellers – legislators, lobbyists, reporters and staff – take it for granted that legislators are breathtakingly rude and disrespectful to each other.  Every day, they see legislators use shallow “if she is for it, then I MUST be against it” policy logic.  To Capitol dwellers, self-serving partisan pranks are de rigueur.

But this is news to ordinary Minnesotans.  They hear about it, but they don’t often see it.

“I hardly ever watch the Legislature, but I tuned in for some of the big stadium debate…,” friends have been telling me.  Then their eyes bug out, and their mouths gape, as if they had just caught a glimpse of Lobster Boy and the Elephant Man at the carnival’s side show.  “Oh my.  I had NO idea.”

This reaction came regardless of how the individual felt about the outcome of the Vikings Stadium debate.  In a way, winners still felt like losers.

Lobster Boy indeed.  Half-baked Plan Z’s were sprung in the closing hours of a decade long debate.  The House’s top “leader” declared he was voting against the bill, but hoped it would pass.  Reckless amendment after reckless amendment were added, making the bill read like the contents of an elementary school Suggestion Box, instead of the product of a decade’s worth of expert study and analysis.

In the midst of a blinding blizzard of amendments, freshman Rep. John Kriesel plaintively held up a sign from the House floor reading “Help!”  From Baudette to Blooming Prairie, ordinary Minnesotans’ on both sides of the issue were collectively nodding at the sentiment.

A recent SurveyUSA poll found that only one of five (21%) Minnesotans approves of the job the Legislature is doing.  That number might be even smaller among those who watched a chunk of the Vikings Stadium debate.  Incidentally, Governor Dayton’s approval rating (56%) is about three times higher than the Legislature’s, despite the fact that he was in the center of the bruising stadium debate.  Demeanor probably explains some of this difference.  Dayton wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t Lobster Boy.

When Dorothy of Kansas was shocked by what she found behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, she declared “you’re a very bad man.”  After Minnesotans pulled back the curtain of public indifference that usually covers up St. Paul’s secrets, they may be feeling the same way.

But most of the legislators aren’t bad people.  It’s just that powerful special interests, partisan bullies and fatigue don’t bring out the best in them.  Sometimes good people can be bad leaders.  As the Wizard of Oz sheepishly responded in his defense, “Oh no, my dear.  I’m a very good man.  I’m just a very bad wizard.”

Loveland

 

Note:  This post was also featured as part of the “Best of the Blogs” feature in Politics in Minnesota’s Morning Report.

Three Myths About Minnesotans and Same Sex Marriage

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A recent SurveyUSA poll of Minnesotans included this question:

“President Obama says that same sex couples should be able to get married.  Do you agree with the president? Or disagree?”

The poll findings bust three popular myths about Minnesotans and same sex marriage:

Myth #1:  “Over Greater Minnesota’s Dead Body.”   The political conventional wisdom goes like this:  “The purple haired hipsters in Uptown may be for gay marriage, but traditional Main Street folks in Greater Minnesota will never stand for it.”  That conventional wisdom is wrong.  There is very little regional difference in support for gay marriage.  Support is roughly the same in the Twin Cities (53%), southern Minnesota (54%), and western Minnesota (51%).  Those three regions all fall within the 4% margin of error.  Only northeastern Minnesota (49% support) falls below the majority threshold, and is statistically different from the Twin Cities, but just barely.   Republicans need to realize that Main Street is not Narrow Street.

Myth #2:  “Only Radical Liberal Extremists Want Gay Marriage.”   This has been the conservative line for years.  But it doesn’t stand up to the data.  A pretty solid majority (55%) of self-described “moderates” and “independents” (54%) in Minnesota agree with the President on gay marriage.  If a majority of moderates support something, it can hardly be considered radical.  Support for gay marriage is now a mainstream position in Minnesota.

Myth #3:  “Marriage ban amendments pass everywhere, so it can’t be defeated in Minnesota.”  This poll found that 52% of Minnesotans support the President’s position and 42% oppose it.  There is a long way to go before the November election, but if this isn’t a dead myth, it is surely a rapidly dying one.  Literally.  The biggest source of opposition comes from people over 65 years old (only 33% support) support, and as time marches on younger generations will hold more electoral sway.  The support among Minnesota’s 18-34 year olds is running at an overwhelming 68%.

It’s very clear where this issue is headed.  In 2012, gay Minnesotans are hardly the societal aberrations they’ve been portrayed to be my whole life.  Statistically speaking, the 82% of Tea Partiers who adamantly oppose Obama on gay marriage are now the societal aberrations.

Loveland

Vikings Post Game Show

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Is the Vikings Stadium bill a political boon or bust?  A new SurveyUSA poll brings political hand wringers mixed messages.

Post-game pondering.

One the one hand, Governor Mark Dayton, who unapologetically led a bone-crushing stadium drive, still has a very respectable 56% approval rating.  In other good news for supporters, 55% of Minnesotans are fine with expanding gambling, the primary state financing mechanism used in the bill.  Most (57%) believe that the Vikings will leave without a new stadium.  Bottom line:  An impressive 70% say that if a lawmaker backed the bill, it would either make no difference in their voting (47%) or make them more likely to support that politician (23%).

So, backlash?  What backlash?

But the news in the poll isn’t all skol-worthy.   A slim majority of Minnesotans (52%) either want the Vikings to stay in the Metrodome in its current plain Jane state (16%) or renovate the Metrodome (36%).  In addition, most citizens prefer racino (26% support) and a downtown casino (36% support) over the bill’s heavy reliance on electronic pulltabs (15% support).  Overall, 58% say the Vikings Stadium should be funded entirely with public funding.  Finally, a whopping two-thirds (67%) of Minnesotans say there should be “a public vote before any taxes are raised to pay for a Vikings Stadium,” something the Vikings bill does not allow.

So, political armageddon is nigh, correct?

The fact is, polling on the Vikings Stadium is a bit of a political Rorschach Test.  Politicians can see what they want to see in today’s polling, because Minnesotans’ collective druthers are divided.  As certain as state politicians and pundits’ claim to be about what they think voters want, voters themselves don’t seem to be at all certain.

Is a vote in favor of the Vikings Stadium a political “W” or “L?”  Well, the most difficult day to be a Vikings Stadium supporter was probably last Wednesday.  The most difficult day to be an opponent of the Stadium will be the Minneapolis-hosted Super Sunday in 2016 or 2017.   To every thing, there is a season.

– Loveland

Meet “Wry Wing Politics”

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Why my own political blog? Well, it’s a little tricky writing about politics as an ensemble, as I’ve tried to do for four years with my good friends at the Same Rowdy Crowd (SRC). Politics obviously is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor, so my plan is to scratch my political itch here, in a private second home built for one, while continuing to post about communications issues at SRC.

Why “wry?”  “Wry” has several definitions. Dry humor. Twisted expressions of displeasure.  Abnormally bent to one side (left).  Perverse.

I plead guilty on all counts, so “Wry Wing Politics” it is.

What’s the mission?  Elvis Costello crooned, “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.”  That’s the mission statement here — try to see the amusing side of the world, while working to change it.

I’m a liberal in Minnesota with, as polite Minnesotans say, a “different” sense of humor. So, there will be a steady diet of liberal politics, Minnesota issues, and quirky humor. But please bear with me when I stray off-topic, and off-mission. Remember, Elvis’s Mission Statement only promises to “try,” so humorless rants and wonk-a-thons will probably also break out.

So we’re just trying to save the world, while having some fun. If you know anyone with similar interests – ranter or ponderer, conservative or liberal, gal or guy — invite them over for some politics on wry.

– Joe Loveland