Minnesota Law Enforcement Lobbyists Move To Criminalize Abused Prescription Pain Drugs

Posted on by

prescription_pain_killer_bustSaint Paul, Minn. —  A coalition of Minnesota law enforcement officials announced today that it will push to ban Minnesota patients from using a long list of dangerous prescription pain killers being sold on the streets by criminals.

At a news conference at the State Capitol today, the  Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition (MLEC) called for legislation to ban codeine, morphine, methadone, fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, bitartrate, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, meperidine, and propoxyphene.  Law enforcement officials stressed that these prescription pain medicines all are dangerous when not used as prescribed, and are currently being sold by criminals on the streets, often to young people.

MLEC has taken the same stand against legislation to make marijuana available to Minnesota patients.  Because many seriously ill patients find that marijuana relieves pain and nausea, it has been legalized for medical use in 20 states.  But MLEC opposes making marijuana available to Minnesota patients, since it  can be harmful when abused, and is being sold illegally on the streets.

“We must do whatever we can to eliminate the abuse and criminal activity associated with these dangerous prescription pain killers,” said Wayne Krupke, Executive Director of MLEC.  “For the same reasons marijuana shouldn’t be given to patients, these prescription pain killers shouldn’t be given to patients.”

The advocacy organization Patients for Effective Pain Management (PEPM) maintains that drugs like marijuana, morphine and oxycodone relieve the pain of seriously ill patients, and the good that comes from that outweighs the harm caused by abusers of those drugs.

morphine_pump“It’s inhumane to deny a proven pain reliever to suffering patients, simply because abuse is possible,” said Mary Ann Wakefield, PEPM’s Executive Director.  “Many of the most effective pain meds can be abused or sold on the black market, but that doesn’t mean that we should turn our backs on patients helped by those drugs.”

However, Krupke maintains that the medical community has many other pain killers at their disposal, such as aspirin, acupuncture and meditation.  At the same time, he points out that the National Institute on Drug Abuse has found that approximately 16 million Americans reported using a prescription drug for nonmedical reasons in 2010.

“As with marijuana, no one can guarantee that drugs like morphine and oxycodone won’t be sold by drug dealers and abused by kids,” said Krupke.  “Until and unless they can provide such a guarantee, those pain killers must be outlawed for all, including patients.”

Meanwhile, Governor Mark Dayton pledged to support whatever the law enforcement lobby recommends.

“I will not compromise on this issue unless someone can convince the law enforcement lobby to compromise on it,” said Dayton.  “When it comes to what is best for patients in pain, I put my full confidence in the law enforcement lobby.”

Note:  This post is satire, and not an actual news story.  It was featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

Dayton Needs To Reclaim Veto Power From Lobbyists

Posted on by

Governor Dayton says he will veto any medical marijuana proposal unless legislators can reach a compromise with law enforcement group lobbyists.  The Associated Press reports:

Dayton repeatedly cites law enforcement concerns for his own opposition to medical marijuana. But in an interview today with the Associated Press, the Democratic governor says he’d probably sign a bill to legalize it if sheriffs, prosecutors and other law enforcement groups get behind it.

I support and admire this Governor, so let me say this as politely as I can:  Sir, may I please inquire as to WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING?

Governor Dayton, with all due respect, lobbyists were not on our election ballots.  You were.  Minnesota citizens didn’t give any lobbyists the most powerful tool in a democracy, the veto.  We collectively gave it to you, because we can hold you democratically accountable when we disagree with you.  We can’t do that with unelected, unaccountable lobbyists.

veto_stampWe voted for duly elected lawmakers to compromise with other duly elected lawmakers.  The Governor and legislators should certainly be informed by lobbyists on all sides of the issue, but the veto power shouldn’t effectively be handed to lobbyists, as Governor Dayton is doing on the medical marijuana issue.

Unfortunately, this is not all that uncommon in Minnesota State government.  From the left, education reforms too often don’t  get a fair debate if the teacher’s union lobbyists turn their mighty thumbs downward.   From the right, tax reform has become the impossible dream because a bevy of business lobbyists are effectively given a collective veto.

Too often, legislators aren’t crafting legislative compromises inside legislative hearing rooms and chambers.  Instead the compromises are being formulated by the most politically powerful lobbyists in hallways and bars, and are then rubber stamped by legislators eager to please the lobbyists who decide which legislative candidates’ campaign war chests get filled.

I’m not a simplistic lobbyist basher.  Lobbyists are here to stay, and that’s actually a very good thing. Though campaign finance laws should limit their influence on the electoral process and less powerful interests need to have better access to lobbyists of their own, I know lobbyists can improve the legislative decision-making process with the specialized information that they bring.

Moreover, I’m not convinced the law enforcement position is all that unreasonable.  My understanding is that they could accept a proposal in which the active ingredient in marijuana (THC, Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol) is delivered to patients through pills, oils and vapor.  Their concern apparently is with allowing patients to smoke unprocessed leaves, either home grown or commercially grown, because they think having more legal leaves floating around Minnesota would make it more difficult to enforce criminal marijuana laws.  Though I support decriminalizing recreational use of marijuana, I am encouraged that law enforcement isn’t saying “never” to these patients.  And they certainly have a right to their position.

But they don’t have a right to veto.

So, Governor, please do what we elected you to do.  Do the hard work of listening to all sides of the medical marijuana issue, and negotiating with them.  At the end of those negotiations, let us know whether YOU believe there is a reasonable policy position, and explain YOUR reasoning for YOUR decisions.

Governor Dayton’s Medical Marijuana Blindspot

Posted on by

Imagine a man so obsessed with eliminating useless, harmless clutter from his attic that he fails to hear the cry of a suffering relative just a few feet away from him.

Recent news coverage conjures that image for me.

In one part of the news, we have ever-earnest Governor Mark Dayton sorting through the cluttered statutory attic to find useless laws.  Downsizin’ Dayton is finding lots of regulatory rubbish, such as a law requiring the capture of wild boars in the Twin Cities.  (Don’t worry, legislators, that’s “boars” with an “a.”)

medical_marijuana_patient_Photo_by_Raw_Story-2Elsewhere in the news, we have Minnesotans in severe pain pleading Governor Dayton and legislators for a law to allow them to use medicinal marijuana to relieve severe pain and nausea, as 20 other states already do.  To be clear, we’re not talking Cheech or Spicoli here.  We’re talking about people suffering and dying.

The Governor is no stranger to pain, and has proven throughout his career to be a very compassionate guy.  But for whatever reason, he doesn’t seem to be hearing the cries of these victims. Instead, he’s fixated on getting Boar Laws to the dumpster, and blindly following law enforcement officials who are so obsessed with chasing potheads that they can’t think straight about this very different issue.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Boar Law sympathizer.  Like the Governor, I stand steadfastly against the Boar Law, and other forms of legislative hoarding.  Moreover, I recognize that some of Dayton’s “Unsession” proposals are very meaty, such as speeding up the environmental permitting process.  That’s extremely worthwhile reform work, and I hope the Legislature follows the lead of Governor Dayton and his Un-Lieutenant Tony Sertich.

But let’s face it, much of Dayton’s initiative to eliminate 1,000 laws falls firmly into the category of “nice to have,” rather than “must have.”  He is cleaning harmless clutter, and most of us function just fine with harmless clutter in our midst.

Practically speaking, no Minnesotan violating the Boar Law, or similar antiquated laws, is  in danger of being busted and imprisoned.   But a Minnesotan trying to buy marijuana to ease the pain of a loved one is in very real danger of being busted and imprisoned.  That’s bananas.

To the Minnesotans suffering from deadly illnesses, and their loved ones frantic to help them, medical marijuana is much more than a “nice to have.”   Former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders explains the type of relief that Minnesota lawmakers are denying suffering citizens:

“The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS — or by the harsh drugs sometimes used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day.”

“Huh, Surgeon General Elders, did you say something?  I can’t hear so well up here in the statutory attic.”

– Loveland

Note:  The photo is from Raw Story.

A Liberal’s Perspective On Minnesota’s Winter From Hell

Posted on by

Cloud_silver_pencil-2I like to complain as much as the next guy.  Well okay, I probably like to complain a whole lot more than the next guy.   But in a year with something like three feet of snow on the ground, 44 days with sub-zero temperatures, and six-ish weeks of winter wonderland still on the horizon, even I am searching for silver linings in our ubiquitous cumulonimbuses.

So, as I was out carving a canyon out of the house this morning, I asked myself this question:

“Self, why do you stay in icy Minnesota instead of moving to one of those toasty sunbelt states?”

I suspect I wasn’t the only one asking that question today.

Upon snow blown reflection, I decided that there actually are darn good reasons to stay here, at least if you’re a wacked out liberal like me.

silver_lining_cloud-2While we have long, hard winters, I am supremely grateful that we don’t have the sunbelt’s  conservative governors leading us on a race to the bottom.  With every scoop of snow I hurled this morning, I spewed out their names to remind myself of my good fortune.   “No Rick Scott here, grunt.   No, Jan Brewer either, groan.  No Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley, and Rick Perry, wheez.”

While Minnesota doesn’t rank anywhere near the top of the climate rankings, this is a good time of year to remind ourselves that it does rank in the top 10 for some pretty meaningful things.  Math and reading scores.  Percentage of high school graduates.  Crime .  Home ownership.  Liife expectancy.  Health coverage.  Unemployment.  Poverty rates.  Health.  Reported well-being.

Overall, a composite score of quality-of-life scores put together by Politico ranked Minnesota second best in the nation.  On the same measure, every one of the sunbelt states led by conservative governors ranked in the lower half of the 50 states.

So while I reserve my right to whine about the weather, I’d much rather have an icy winter and warm community values than a warm winter and icy community values.

– Loveland

 

Note:  This post was republished in Minnpost.

Franken and Dayton Approval Ratings: A Tale of Two Headlines

Posted on by

Two recent Star Tribune headlines brought good news and bad news  to Minnesota DFLers about their top-of-the-ticket candidates, Governor Mark Dayton and U.S. Senator Al Franken.

Dayton approval rating at its highest

Franken remains a divisive figure

Franken_poll_headline_PDF__1_page_Wow, that must mean that Dayton’s poll numbers are dwarfing poor Al Franken’s, right?

Nope.   The actual Minnesota Poll findings told a completely different story than the Star Tribune’s headlines.

A similar number of Minnesotans approved of the jobs Dayton and Franken are doing, 58% and 55% respectively.  About the same number of Minnesotans have a favorable attitude of Dayton and Franken, 36% and 38% respectively.

Both DFL candidates are looking relatively strong at this very early stage of the campaign season.  Both candidates’ approval ratings are above the 50% mark, which is often considered a key benchmark for incumbents.

Franken’s 55% approval rating would be the envy of many other Democratic Senate incumbents around the nation, such as Alaska Senator Mark Begich (41% approve), Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (40% approve), North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan (36% approve), and Arkansas Senator Mark Prior (37% approve).  Likewise, Dayton’s 58% approval rating is higher than 19 other gubernatorial incumbents facing races in 2014.

It’s true that Senator Franken has extremely high approval ratings among DFLers (97% approve) and extremely low approval ratings among Republicans(15% approve), hence the “divisive figure” headline.  Dayton’s DFL approvers outnumbered his Republican approvers by a massive 4-to-1 margin, but the partisan gap for Dayton was not as large as the partisan gap for Franken.

That kind of large partisan divide is something you see in most political surveys these days.  It is a relevant subplot, but its hardly the most important finding to feature in the front page headline.

In the age of information overload, headlines matter, more than ever.  Headlines are the only thing that many busy news browsers see.  Browsers assume that headlines about a survey feature the most important “bottom line” finding of the survey. The Star Tribune is a very good newspaper, but this was not the Star Tribune at it’s finest.

– Loveland

SD Senate Challenger Shows How Obama Should Have Led On Health Care Reform

Posted on by

rick_weiland_head_shot-2President Obama and his supporters have struggled mightily to market the byzantine Affordable Care Act (ACA) reforms to the public.  But by uttering three simple words – “Medicare for all” –  U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland in neighboring South Dakota is showing President Obama how it should have been done way back in 2008.

The “Medicare For All” approach that Weiland proposed last week is much easier to sell than the ACA.  The Associated Press reports:

Weiland has proposed that citizens of any age be allowed to buy into Medicare, which now is generally open only to people 65 and older, as an alternative to private health insurance plans.

“People understand Medicare,” Weiland told The Argus Leader. “It works, it’s efficient, and all this other stuff that they’re having now to focus on is extremely complicated, and they don’t understand it.”

Clear.  Concise.  Compelling.  The same can’t be said about most ACA-related rhetoric.

Obama Framed Up The Wrong Comparison

In the book Predictably Irrational,  Dan Ariely, a psychology and behavioral economics professor, examines how we make choices.  One of the phenomena Ariely describes is research showing that humans tend to judge their environment in relation to things that are comparable.

For instance, let’s say you give newlyweds the choice of three honeymoon options – Paris with free breakfast included, Rome with free breakfast included, and Rome with no breakfast included.  Because the two Rome options are comparable, most will gravitate away from the single Paris option.  We are attracted to comparability.

The Comparability Obama Offered.  With that research in mind, consider what President Obama and congressional Democrats did on health reform in 2008.  He believed that Americans needed to have a system that was comparable with what they were familiar with, our American system of private insurers and private health care providers.  So, from 2008 to 2010, Obama framed the health care reform debate as the choice of two comparable things:

Private-centered status quo model.  The pre-2010 status quo system of private insurers and private health care providers.

vs.

Private-centered model, coupled with reforms..  The status quo system of private insurers and health care providers coupled with complicated reforms.

Affordable_Care_Act_infographic-2The ACA reforms were enormously complex, mostly because the underlying pre-2010 status quo health care system was so decentralized and entangled.  Obama’s reforms were narrowly enacted in 2010, primarily because the status quo was so overwhelmingly unpopular.

The Comparability Obama Should Have Offered.  But what if Obama had framed up  a different kind of comparable choice for the American people?  While it’s true that Americans are familiar with private health insurance, they are also familiar with Medicare.  So why didn’t Obama frame the debate up as a choice between these two comparable things:

Medicare for some.  A status quo system where Medicare is available only to seniors.

vs.

Medicare for all.  A new system where Medicare is available to everyone who wants it.

The Political Advantages of Medicare for All

Obama didn’t go with Medicare For All, presumably because he was afraid that Republicans would castigate it as “government run health care” and “socialism.”

As it turned out, the Republican spin machine was determined to characterize anything Obama proposed as “government run health care” and “socialism.” After all, it uses those terms to describe the ACA, which is  absurd, because the ACA relies on private insurers and private caregivers without permitting a single government-run option in the mix.

President Obama was never going to avoid this “government run health care” political attack , so there was no good reason to allow it to shape the proposal.

Moreover, Medicare happens to be “government run health care” that Americans really like.  About 56 percent of Medicare recipients give it a rating of 9 or 10 on a 0-10 scale, while only about 40 percent of Americans enrolled in private health insurance gave their plans such a high rating. An amazing 70% of Medicare recipients say they always get access to needed health care, while only 51% of people with private insurance say that.

A 2007 Associated Press/Yahoo survey showed that about two-thirds of Americans (65%) agreed that “the United States should adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.”

So demonizing the specific (“Medicare”) would have been much more politically difficult for Republicans than demonizing the abstract (“government run health care” or “socialism”).

Could Obama have passed a “Medicare For All” bill?  Expanding the nation’s most popular health plan was certainly possible.   After all, knowing that two-thirds of Americans support Medicare for All, what politician of either party would want to take to the stump arguing:

“For your parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends, Medicare is terrific.   I’ll fight to the death to protect it for them.  But for the rest of you,  I am blocking you from accessing  Medicare.  Medicare for YOU would be radical socialism that would lead to horrific health problems.”

Huh?  That would be a head-spinning political argument to sell.

Still, because the insurance lobby is so strong, maybe Congress would have rejected Medicare for All, against the wishes of two-thirds of their constituents.  But if Obama had made  Medicare for All the starting point for the debate, the compromise at the end of the process may have been more progressive, such as a private-dominated marketplace with a Medicare-like public option impacting market competition.

Incumbents who voted for the ACA in 2010 need to defend that confusing law in the 2014 mid-term elections, and the ACA is certainly a vast improvement over the pre-ACA status quo that Republicans have effectively embraced by not offering alternatives for reducing the rate of uninsurance and outlawing preexisting condition bans.  The ACA, for all its warts, is the most significant health care reform since the creation of Medicare.

But even in a neon red state like South Dakota, challengers like Mr. Weiland are wise to adopt the clear, concise and compelling “Medicare for All” rallying call, just as Obama and congressional Democrats should have done back in  2008.

Loveland

Note:  This post was featured in MinnPost’s Blog Cabin.

Long Live The Same Rowdy Crowd

Posted on by

In 2007 at the Keys Cafe in downtown Minneapolis, my pal Jon Austin asked Bruce Benidt and me to contribute to an ensemble blog Jon was calling The Same Rowdy Crowd.  I was reluctant.  The opening harumph of my inaugural post captures my sunny mood at the time.

I hate blogs. Self-centered., self-righteous, self-reinforcing, and self-promotional. self-gratification. Seldom right, but never in doubt. I’ve never posted on one, and only read when forced by a friend or client.

So why did I agreed to do this? They bought me beer. Lots of it.

I guess I do need a primal scream about the state of the world, and this is cheaper than a therapist. Anyway, it’s not like anyone is actually going to read it.

So, there. Now I officially blog. But I’m not a blogger. Those guys are freaks.

But over 1,700 posts later, I must admit ich bin ein blogger.  I am proud to have been a small part of the Crowd’s long-running rowdiness.

house_party_aftermath-2Just as not every cocktail party conversation is enlightening, not every SRC conversation was a thing of beauty.  But to my surprise, many kinda were.  Many made me refine or better support my shallow opinions.  Lots of them made me laugh out loud to myself.  A few even made me think about the world differently.  I appreciated every one of those gifts.

Maintaining a reasonably fresh blog is one hell of a slog, and the Same Rowdy Crowd party hosts finally ran out of steam.  Like other parties of my misspent youth, the SRC’s 7-year rager left me with dead brain cells, new friends and foggy but fond memories that I will always cherish.

Twenty-four thousand comments later, the Crowd is dead.  Long live the Crowd.

– Loveland

GOP Senators Offer Compromise Design For New Senate Office Building

Posted on by

Saint Paul, MN — Minnesota Republicans today revealed an alternative design for a new office building to serve as home to state senators and their staffs.

Minnesota_Senate_Office_Building-2Republicans have been critical of a $63 million building design backed by Senate DFLers and Goverrnor Dayton.  They say the design is too lavish, such as plans for a reflecting pool and more space than senators currently occupy in the State Capitol Building.

Today Senate Republicans put forward a compromise design.   Senator Michelle Fischbach (R-Paynesville) said she was aware that some citizens have come to believe that GOP legislators only criticize others’ proposals, without offering constructive alternatives of their own.

“This is a great example of Republicans being reasonable, constructive, and innovative,” said Fischbach.

Fischbach said she and her colleagues retained King Oscar Designs, an architectural firm in Monterey, California that is known worldwide for making efficient use of space.  An artist’s rendering of the alternative office building was released today by Senate Republicans at a State Capitol news conference.

Strom_Senate_Office_Building_rendering-2“We removed the elitist elements from the DFL-backed design, such as windows, space not being occupied by bodies, and ventilation systems,” said Oscar Pilchards, Chief Architectural Officer at King Oscar.  “It’s a classic design that is much more streamlined, sustainable and efficient than the previous design.”

Fischbach stressed that the alternative plan represented a sincere effort to meet Senate DFLers half way.

“In the spirit of compromise, we did include a modified version of the skylight that our Democrat friends wanted, and are heating the structure with 100% body heat, a renewable energy source,” said Fischbach.

The Republican caucus proposed to name the building after David Strom, a former Taxpayer’s League of Minnesota lobbyist who has been named by City Pages as Minnesota’s “Best Villain” for his stanch conservative advocacy.  However, several members of the Senate Republican caucus were said to be outraged by that decision, noting that they believed Strom was too liberal for such an honor.

For their part, DFL Senate leaders were not impressed with King Oscar’s alternative plans.

“Frankly, it stinks,” concluded Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk (DFL-Duluth).

Note:   This post is absurdist satire, I think.

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

Would Vikings Have Doubled Down On Priefer If Accused Of Racial Slurs?

Posted on by

Al_Campanis_Nightline-2When Los Angles Dodgers General Manager Al Campanis said black players “may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager,” he was quickly fired.

When Minnesota Vikings punting coach Mike Priefer was accused of saying something much more violent and radical about gay people, the Vikings gave him a vote of confidence before the issue was properly investigated.

That’s messed up.

Imagine if a Minnesota Twins pitcher accused pitching coach Rick Anderson of saying the things Priefer is accused of saying:

“Coach Anderson would ask me if I had been defending the black people recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that a mixed race couple would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance.

Another time, Coach Anderson made a joking remark about me leading the Martin Luther King Day parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Coach Anderson, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: “We should round up all the black people, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.”

Would the Minnesota Twins shrug off such an accusation?  Would they announce him as their guy for next year before an investigation was completed?  Not a chance.

Watching this, you have to conclude that there is an ugly double standard at work here.  It is  much more acceptable to use gay hate speech in the professional sports world than racial hate speech.

To be clear, I’m not concluding that Coach Priefer is guilty.  The matter needs to be fairly investigated.  But giving the accused a professional vote of confidence in the midst of the investigation is a boneheaded PR move. Worse than that, it is an act of its own form of institutional bigotry.

Here is what I keep asking myself:  If Mr. Kluwe made up this story, why wouldn’t he fabricate a story where there are no witnesses and evidence involved, so he wouldn’t be forced to produce witnesses and evidence?  Because there are claims of witnesses and text messages, at this stage Kluwe’s charge can’t be prematurely dismissed as obviously groundless.

Again, there is a double standard at play here.  If Coach Priefer had allegedly castigated Kluwe for marching in a Martin Luther King parade, the Vikings would have taken this much more seriously.   If Priefer were accused of saying that  people with black skin should be murdered en masse, the Vikings would not have announced yesterday that they were doubling down on him.

There was a time when spewing racial hate speech was much more acceptable among professional sports coaches.  No more.  But with gay speech, we clearly have a ways to go.

– Loveland

A New Nickname For Minnesota’s New Stadium

Posted on by

The_Dome_Deflated-3The stadium formerly known as Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome” (MOAF@HHHM) obviously screamed out for shorthand, or a nickname.  So most of us just called it “The Dome,” much to the chagrin of the MOAF@HHHM brand managers.

“The Dome” was a bite-sized and descriptive label, so it worked better for ordinary people. “Metrodome,” “Thunderdome,” or “Homerdome” were occasionally in the mix, but usually it was simply “The Dome.”

But now that “The Dome” has been popped in spectacularly anticlimactic fashion, stadium officials are focusing on naming the replacement.   The corporate auction over naming rights probably will lead to a name that will be a mouthful, and therefore probably will be replaced by the masses with a new nickname.

Vikings_Stadium-2So what will we use as a shorthand reference for our new sports palace?  I’m hoping the nickname will be derived from the nature of the structure itself, as “The Dome” was.  When the shorthand is derived from the corporate name –  see “the bank” and “TCF Bank Stadium” – that strikes me as selling out to The Man.  Taxpayers paid significantly more to finance the stadium than the corporate sponsor, so I hate for the nickname to give the suits all the credit.

Like “The Dome,” the new nickname should be 1) concise and simple and 2) descriptive of a differentiating feature of the building.  Here are few options to spark  community brainstorming:

  • The Ship.  We’re told the architects were going for a Viking ship look with their design.  Therefore, calling the stadium “The Ship” could help architecturally challenged citizens like me appreciate the method behind the madness.  The park to the west then could be the Ship Yard, The Dock, or something corny like that.  To get more authentic, we could call it the Knarr, Karve, or Faerring.  But that’s probably too Scandi-geeky, even for Minnesota.
  • The Hipsterdome.  Minneapolis hipsters can’t like anything that the masses like, such as pro football stadia.  If they sided with the masses, they wouldn’t be hipsters.  However, if the non-hipster masses express disapproval for the controversial modernist design,  hipster contrarians would feel compelled to embrace it to show that they alone can see the genius in the design.  In that case, “Hipsterdome” would give Minneapolis hipsters ownership, or blame, depending on your opinion of the design.
  • The Oops.  I kind of like the unusual design, but I’m not sure it’s beautiful.  It’s asymmetrical form is reminiscent of everyone’s first “oops” pottery project.   It’s misshapen and lopsided, but, doggone it, it’s our misshapen and lopsided.  For some, dubbing it “The Oops” would represent a celebration of the beauty of bold non-conformity.  For others, “The Oops” would serve as a populist critique of the fancy pants architect, who clearly is “not from here.”
  • The Cheeseball.  Get it?  You know, because it looks like a cheeseball after the  guests have hacked it up?   You seriously don’t see that??!
  • The Sunporch.  Our new stadium will have the largest transparent roof in the world, and the largest casement windows in the world.  In other words, the Wilfs are constructing  the world’s largest sunporch.  You know, one of those pre-fab transparent porches that are always tempting pale, Vitamin D-deprived Minnesotans at the Home Shows?  In the middle of a brutal winter, what midwesterner doesn’t want to spend time battling Seasonal Affective Disorder in “The Sunporch?”
  • The Artless Museum.  The Vikings stadium design seems derivative of the Weisman Art Musem and Walker Art Museum, so “The Artless Museum” would help people understand the differentiation among those three buildings. That is, this is the chunky building that contains no art.   “The Artless Museum” also would serve as commentary on the quality of the home team on permanent display.
  • The Rohrschach.  If you asked 100 Minnesotans what this amorphous new stadium  looks like, you might get 100 more different answers.  So rather than having a nickname that forces a single interpretation on everyone, maybe we should nickname it after the psychological inkblot test that allows for an unlimited number of interpretations.
  • The AntiDome.   It’s the AntiDome because the jagged, asymmetrical shape is the polar opposite of the smooth, symmetrical Dome.  It’s the AntiDome because it overcomes the things we hated about the Dome – the drabness, the frumpyness, and the shabby amenities.   The Dome is dead, long live the AntiDome.

Ok, maybe I’m not entirely serious about all of these options.  If you think you can do better, add your voice.  Like it or not, with a community project as prominent and distinctive as this one, nicknaming will happen.  So how about we give it some collective thought?

– Loveland

 

Note:  This post also was featured in streets.mn, Twin Cities Daily Planet, and Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

MNsure Ads: 10,000 Reasons We Already Know About

Posted on by

paul_bunyan_mnsure_tree-2For about five months now, MNsure ads have repeatedly told us:  “Minnesota is the land of 10,000 reasons to get health insurance.”  To educate us of this fact, the ads have portrayed a variety of health calamidies befalling Minnesota icon Paul Bunyan.  Incidents involving crushed private parts are particularly popular.

MNsure’s ad agency seems convinced that as soon as Minnesotans understand that they could face Bunyan-esque health problems without health insurance, they will surf on over to mnsure.com.  But at this stage of the game, that message isn’t sufficient.  Repeatedly telling Minnesotans that  coverage brings treatments is like telling us that parkas bring warmth.  We get that.  If Minnesotans somehow didn’t know that self-evident fact before the MNsure ads, they darn sure do five months into the multi-million dollar campaign.

So how about we share some motivating information that many DON’T know?

Sharing New News About MNsure

For example, the ads could tell Minnesotans that if they don’t get coverage by March 31st, they have to pay a large government penalty.   That would seem to be a pretty motivating piece of information, and research shows that about a third of the population doesn’t know about the penalty, and 8 out of 10 don’t know about the deadline.

Or the ads could explain how health coverage has never been more affordable for thousands of Minnesotans.  That also would seem to be a pretty motivating fact, yet research shows that a whopping 69% of Americans don’t know about new premium tax credits and other financial assistance.  Among the young  people who are so key to making the Obamacare risk pools stable, awareness about financial assistance is even lower.

Minnesota has a particularly good story to tell on the affordability front, because MNsure is offering the lowest premiums in the nation.  So, why isn’t MNsure telling that story?

“Newly affordable” and “mandatory a few weeks from now” are messages that are motivating and new news.  And as far as I can tell, they are missing from MNsure’s current ads.

Bye Bye Bunyan

So it’s time to retire the sophomoric Paul Bunyan hilarity.  As MNsure enters the home stretch toward the March 31st deadline, it should switch to  a much more utilitarian message.  Rough example:

Young adult:

Why did I use MnSURE to get health coverage?   Not because I think buying insurance is fun.  It’s no more fun than buying car insurance, which I also have to do.

No, I did it to avoid  a double hit.

First I did it to avoid a looming government penalty.  If you haven’t heard, there is a big penalty that kicks in March 31 for anyone who isn’t covered.  And it gets bigger over time.

Second, I did it to avoid the crippling medical bills that can come from being uninsured.

And the good news is, getting coverage on MNsure was more affordable than I expected.   Minnesota’s MNsure site offers the lowest average premiums of any state, and over two-thirds of the uninsured are eligible for help to make coverage more affordable.

So, no missed deadline.  No penalty.  No medical bankruptcy.  And more affordable than I expected. www.mnsure.com

I’m not an ad copy writer, so someone can write a much better ad than this.  But you get the general idea.

When the MNsure ads launched in September 2013, the light approach maybe made sense.  Five months later, WE GET THE JOKE ALREADY.  Now it’s time for MNsure to tell Minnesotans some things they don’t already know.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

Why Minnesota Might Be Planning TOO MUCH Road Expansion

Posted on by

MnSHIP_cover-2The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) released a new 20-year plan in December 2013 – the Minnesota State Highway Investment Plan (MnSHIP).  Spoiler alert:  MnSHIP says we need more money to build more road capacity.

MnSHIP says much more than that, but adding road capacity is a central theme, as has been the case for many years with such long-range plans.  At first blush,  the call for increased road capacity seems like the most unassailable part of the plan.  After all, Minnesota’s population is expected to increase over the next 20 years.

But the call for additional road capacity could ultimately turn out to be the most flawed part of the plan.   Here’s why:  One term you won’t see in MnSHIP is “driverless car.”

Are Driverless Cars Feasible?

When I was a lad, the science fiction cartoon The Jetsons offered  the dream of flying personal vehicles, which, alas, have not materialized.  That has made many of us skeptical about subsequent predictions about revolutionary transportation technology, such as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) and driverless vehicles.

Google_driverless_care_on_street-2But driverless cars are far less speculative that flying cars.  Google, one of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, has been investing heavily in a driverless car.  Their test vehicle has logged over half a million miles, and it has never had an accident while the computer was driving.

Based on their tests to date, Google founder Sergey Brin predicts that Google will have autonomous cars available for the general public by 2017.   Again, this isn’t some penniless, garage-based tinkerer expressing his utopian pipe dream.  This is the founder of a company bringing in almost $15 billion in revenue per year.  This is someone who has already produced a prototype that is successfully operating on the streets and has been legalized for use in California, Florida and Nevada.

Beyond Google, just about every major auto manufacturer is engaged in developing this technology.  If Google doesn’t nail the driverless car assignment, one of their well-resourced and experienced competitors might.

Model_T_bad_roads-2Ignoring driverless cars in a 20-year transportation plan beginning in 2013 plan may turn out to be akin to ignoring horseless carriages in a 20-year transportation plan written in 1903.  Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903, and by 1923 Ford was flooding 2,000,000 Model T cars per year onto an overwhelmed infrastructure.

Consumer Buy-In?

But will consumers really surrender control of their vehicles to a computer?  In 2017, the first year Google predicts that driverless cars will be available to consumers, we won’t see mass consumer buy-in.  It will take time for the skeptical masses to observe the early adaptors.  But within the 20-year sweep of the MnSHIP era, broader consumer buy-in is certainly a distinct possibility.

Google_driverless_car-2Safety Advantages.   Driverless vehicles could offer consumers significant advantages.  Any life insurance underwriter can tell you that driving is one of the most dangerous tasks any of us regularly undertake, and driverless vehicles offer the hope of vastly improved safety.    Though human egos makes us skeptical of this truth, computer drivers have the capacity to be much more attentive, reliable and quick to react to danger than even the most skilled human drivers.  In this way, the computers have the potential to keep us safer than human drivers can.

Time-Saving Advantages.  Driverless cars also can offer us more of life’s most precious and limited commodity — time.  Distance sensors and computers allow computer-driven vehicles to safely follow each other at much closer distances and higher speeds than human-driven cars, making for shorter, less congested and less stressful trips.

If driverless cars can supply Americans with more time, less stress, lower insurance rates, and less death and suffering, consumers will demand it.  If policymakers further stimulate such consumer demand with incentives, such as tax breaks or dedicated lanes that offer faster and safer service, the revolution could happen even more quickly.

“Game Changer”

At first blush, the dawn of the driverless car era doesn’t seem to have implications for a transportation plan like MnSHIP.  After all, we would still need roads for those driverless vehicles, right?

While we would still need roads in the era of driverless cars, we might need much less road capacity, and different kinds of road capacity.

Both because of fewer crashes and  vehicles that can follow each other more closely at higher speeds, we might need much less road capacity to serve travel demand.   How much less?  Patcharinee Tientrakool of Columbia University estimates that autonomous vehicles could improve capacity by 43%.  Driverless vehicles that can coordinate with other driverless vehicles would increase capacity by 273%.

Adeel Lari, a transportation expert and former MnDOT leader who is now at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, points out that in the 1960s traffic engineers were taught that highway capacity maxed out at around 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour.  With improved traffic management methods and technology, Lari and his MnDOT colleagues later found they could briefly push capacity as high as 2,600 vehicles per lane per hour.

Temporarily moving from 2,000 to 2,600 vehicles per lane per hour was a huge improvement.  But driverless cars could push capacity to a jaw-dropping 6,000 vehicles per lane per hour or higher, which Lari calls a “game changer.”

Transportation Planning Implications

For MnDOT, here’s how “the game” could rapidly change:

  • Less Road Capacity?  Minnesotans might need much less road capacity at a much lower taxpayer cost.
  • Narrower Lanes?  We also might be able to use narrower lanes, since driverless cars could reliably navigate tight spaces, and squeeze more vehicles through choke points in the process.
  • Dedicated Lanes?   In the interim period when both human drivers and computer drivers are sharing the roads, it might make sense to have dedicated lanes for driverless vehicles, to keep them safe from more erratic and less skilled human drivers.
  • More sprawl?  If driverless cars allow for shorter and less stressful trips,  people may  feel free to move further away from their jobs and other destinations.  If they do, the increased sprawl would impact infrastructure needs.
  • Gas Tax Alternative?  Safer driverless vehicles might be able to be much lighter, and therefore be more fuel efficient.  Additionally, less stop-and-go traffic would also save fuel.  While these changes would be good for the environment and energy security, they also would mean less gas tax revenue available for maintaining and retrofitting the transportation infrastructure.

These are just a few of the kinds of issues transportation leaders should be analyzing. Land use planners have their own set of issues to analyze.

MnDOT, and its MnSHIP collaborators at the Met Council, are wise not to construct MnSHIP on an assumption that mass use of driverless vehicles is imminent.  I’m not naive about all the variables that could delay or stop the successful development and deployment of this technology, or the public acceptance of it.

But in a 20-year plan, it is an oversight to ignore the potential implications of an issue as distinctly possible as driverless vehicles.  MnSHIP should call on MnDOT and Met Council leaders to closely monitor and analyze the pace of driverless vehicle development, and consumer buy-in, so they could, if necessary, swiftly adjust their plans to fit a newly emerging reality.   After all, the transition to driverless cars will be no time for vision-less planning.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also republished in MinnPost and streets.mn.

Vikings Should Investigate Priefer Bigotry Charges Before Making Him Head Coach

Posted on by

Chris_KleweLast year I wrote a blog post asking the question “Is Chris Klewe Getting A Same Sex Divorce?”  I asked whether the Vikings punter, who had the best punting statistics in Vikings history according to KFAN Vikings analyst Paul Allen, was replaced by a Vikings coach who opposes same sex marriage because of his vocal support for same-sex marriage.

But whatever the real reason(s) for Mr. Klewe’s firing, new information shared by Klewe may need to be factored into the Vikings’ pending decision about its next Head Coach.

In a lengthy Huffington Post piece released today, Klewe shared several stories of allegedly disgusting encounters with his Special Teams Coach Mike Priefer, who is reportedly the leading internal candidate to replace Leslie Frazier as Vikings Head Coach.  Klewe claimed Priefer’s tone changed after Klewe starting speaking out for gay rights:

Throughout the months of September, October, and November, Minnesota Vikings special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer would use homophobic language in my presence. He had not done so during minicamps or fall camp that year, nor had he done so during the 2011 season. He would ask me if I had written any letters defending “the gays” recently and denounce as disgusting the idea that two men would kiss, and he would constantly belittle or demean any idea of acceptance or tolerance. I tried to laugh these off while also responding with the notion that perhaps they were human beings who deserved to be treated as human beings. Mike Priefer also said on multiple occasions that I would wind up burning in hell with the gays, and that the only truth was Jesus Christ and the Bible. He said all this in a semi-joking tone, and I responded in kind, as I felt a yelling match with my coach over human rights would greatly diminish my chances of remaining employed. I felt uncomfortable each time Mike Priefer said these things. After all, he was directly responsible for reviewing my job performance, but I hoped that after the vote concluded in Minnesota his behavior would taper off and eventually stop.

According to Klewe, all pretenses of joking went away as time went on:

Near the end of November, several teammates and I were walking into a specialist meeting with Coach Priefer. We were laughing over one of the recent articles I had written supporting same-sex marriage rights, and one of my teammates made a joking remark about me leading the Pride parade. As we sat down in our chairs, Mike Priefer, in one of the meanest voices I can ever recall hearing, said: “We should round up all the gays, send them to an island, and then nuke it until it glows.” The room grew intensely quiet, and none of the players said a word for the rest of the meeting. The atmosphere was decidedly tense. I had never had an interaction that hostile with any of my teammates on this issue—some didn’t agree with me, but our conversations were always civil and respectful. Afterward, several told me that what Mike Priefer had said was “messed up.”

Messed up indeed.  If this account is accurate, Priefer has proven that he can’t separate his personal bigotry from his coaching job.  That’s a huge problem.

It will be very difficult to get players to publicly corroborate Klewe’s version of the stories, because current players obviously have every reason to avoid offending coaches who hold their multi-million dollar careers in their hands.  Special teams players especially tend to be “on the bubble” between being on and off the team.  Therefore, they will be particularly careful about what they say about the people who make decisions about final cuts.

But this is why I’m inclined to believe Mr. Klewe:  If Klewe were making this whole thing up, why he would be citing rants that happened in front of large groups of other players?  Love him or hate him, Klewe is a bright guy, and he could surely fabricate more bulletproof lies, such as tirades that he alone witnessed.

Reasonable football fans can disagree about whether Mr. Klewe should have been replaced as the Vikings punter.  In his piece, Klewe himself acknowledged that his high veteran salary and his age were likely contributory factors, in combination with his outspokenness.

But reasonable people should be able to agree that anyone who rants about killing an entire class of humans because of who they love should not be representing the State of Minnesota as the head coach of our most popular professional sports team, a team that is now being heavily subsidized by Minnesota taxpayers.

Vikings owner Zygi Wilf should be able to learn whether Klewe’s accounts are true.  Confidential one-on-one inquiries with other other special players who were at the meetings Klewe references should reveal the truth.  If Wilf finds that Klewe’s accounts about Priefer are true, or even half true, Priefer’s name should be immediately removed from the Vikings’ list of Head Coach candidates.

– Loveland

Now Is The Winter of Our MNbamacare Discontent

Posted on by

So much political analysis is focused on the short-term:  “Which side won yesterday’s news cycle.” But unless it’s the day before an election, such short-term analyses aren’t particularly meaningful.

Hand_of_cards-2The more useful question to ask is this: “On the next Election Day, would I rather be playing the proponents’ or opponents’ hand?”     Applying that question to the issue of MNsure and Obamacare, I’d  much rather be playing the supporters’ hand.

Public relations-wise, MNsure has definitely “lost” many a news cycle over the last several months.  Security breaches, website crashes, protracted customer service waits, and data transfer blunders.  And as we all know, when the going got tough, the tough got going, to a Costa Rican beach, a particularly damaging episode.

These things all hurt, and I don’t mean to diminish them.  MNsure and Obamacare supporters have been dealt bad cards in recent days.  If you’re only focused on the short-term history, it looks like reform supporters might have a very bad political hand to play in the 2014 elections.

But forget about December 2013 for a moment, and consider how things will look like on November 4, 2014.

What GOP Will Be Proposing To Eliminate In 2014

By Election Day 2014, eliminating the reforms will be a more difficult sell, because by that time the reforms will have touched millions of lives in pretty significant ways.  Republican candidates will need to make the case “I will eliminate something that has…”

PAID MILLIONS IN REBATES.  Produced millions of dollars in rebates paid by insurance companies to thousands of Minnesotans and millions of Americans, thanks to an Obamacare provision authored by Minnesota’s U.S. Senator Al Franken.  The provision limits the proportion of premium dollars insurers can use for non-health care expenses, and requires that the difference be paid back in customer rebates.

HELPED THE MOST VULNERABLE MINNESOTANS.  Got 95,000 of Minnesota’s most vulnerable citizens efficiently covered in Medicaid, including about 12,000 uninsured Minnesotans whose medical expenses were being shifted to insured Minnesotans.

COVERED UNINSURED YOUNG ADULTS.  Covered 35,000 Minnesota young adults, who otherwise would have been uninsured and now are able to stay on their parents health policy until age 26.

MADE PRIVATE COVERAGE MORE FEASIBLE.  Offered lower costs in the marketplace to 382,595 Minnesotans who are uninsured or otherwise eligible for subsidies.

HELPED CONTROL HEALTH EXPENDITURES.  Contributed, along with state and health plan-driven reforms, to the slowest growth of health care expenditures since the state began tracking expenses in the mid 1990s, which will immensely help Minnesota’s future fiscal and economic outlook.

ELIMINATED CO-PAYS FOR PREVENTATIVE HEALTH SERVICES.  More than 1.4 million Minnesotans no longer have to shell out co-pays for preventative health care, because of an Obamacare requirement.  This includes things like flu shots, colonoscopies, mammograms and well-child check-ups.

DELIVERED LOWEST PREMIUMS IN THE NATION.  Created a simple-to-understand — though still not simple to use — apples-to-apples insurance marketplace that has prompted competitors to offer Minnesota consumers the lowest insurance premiums in the nation.

ENDED PRE-EXISTING CONDITION BANS.  Made it illegal for private insurance companies to deny coverage due to pre-existing health conditions, something that impacts many of the 2.3 million Minnesotans who have some type of pre-existing condition.

Presentation1Again, I don’t intend to sugar coat the current situation.  It’s been a rough few months for Obamacare and MNsure supporters.  The exchange website, call center, and management problems need to be improved as soon as possible.  Now most definitely is the winter of MNbamacare supporters’ discontent.

But come next fall,  Republican candidates, who offer no viable health care reform plan of their own, will have a very difficult time making the case for elimination of reforms that have been producing strong benefits for millions of Minnesotans.  “Elect me, to increase our rate of uninsurance again!”  “Elect me, to eliminate what you want to work better.”  “Elect me, to bring back pre-existing condition bans for your family!”

MNsure and Obamacare’s 2013 frailties aside, trying to take away those widespread benefits will be a very difficult political hand for the GOP to play in the 2014 elections.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also republished in MinnPost, and featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

About That Anti-MNsure Poster Child

Posted on by

Emily_Litella_Never_Mind-2After writing a letter-to-the-editor to a weekly newspaper complaining about MNSure rates, Jennifer Slater of Mabel, Minnesota was used by Republican operatives as a national poster child in their anti-Affordable Care Act crusade.

In late November, the following Slafter accusation was all the rage in the national media and conservative blogosphere.

“All we ever heard about Obamacare is that it would lower our deductibles and premiums,” said Jennifer Slafter, 40 of Mabel, Minn. “That’s just not what’s happened.”

The exchange’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan was $1,087 a month with a $6,000 deductible, while a Medica plan was $877 a month with a $12,700 deductible. Both are steeper than their current plan.

Conservatives ate this up.  Type the first few words of that quote into Google, and you’ll see it appearing about 10,400 times in news publications such as CNNMoney and conservative blogs. Slafter was everywhere.

But it turns out that Slafter was a premature poster child.  In paragraph 14 of a 16-paragraph Associated Press follow-up article, we recently learned something new about Slafter’s experience:

Since first going public, (Slafter) said the Fillmore County family found out it is likely eligible for more federal subsidies to help pay for coverage than initially thought. She now doesn’t anticipate the family losing money in the conversion next year.

If you search the first few words of that correction, you see that the article containing the correction appeared three times, buried at the end of a very long article.   As far as I can tell, the correction article does not appear in any of the publications that ran the original article reporting the false claim.

Slafter doesn’t seem to have political motives.  She just was confused by a confusing system and she was sincerely concerned.  It can happen to anyone, and it’s not her fault that she was used as a political pawn by cynical operatives.

Though Slafter’s much publicized assertion that she would be paying more now seems to be  false, she still finds the system too complex and worries about being able to pay the deductibles. I feel her pain on both fronts, though it should be noted that nothing her conservative promoters are offering would help on those two fronts, because they are offering nothing other than the badly broken status quo system.   The best way to reduce complexity for consumers and  remove deductibles would be a single payer payer system, which Slafter’s conservative promoters vehemently oppose.

Again, the false assertion gets over 10,000 placements in the conservative echo chamber, while the correction gets 3 hits in the 14th paragraph of the follow-up article.  As Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also republished on MinnPost.

The Daytonomics-Walkernomics Border Battle, MNsure and Our Addiction To Instant Analysis

Posted on by

Because journalists believe their audiences won’t tolerate nuance and ambiguity, they recruit  political analysts who are certain, clear and decisive over those who are unsure, equivocal and astraddle.  As a result, a kind of Punditry Darwinism plays out, where only the cocksure survive to deliver a steady stream of provocative instant analysis informed by little to no evidence.

MNsure’s Premature Death Proclamation

Take MNsure, Minnesota’s fledgling online tool for comparing and buying health insurance. When MNsure enrollment started slowly in its first month, Minnesota’s conservative talk radio pundits immediately declared it a train wreck, and this instant analysis has dominated the coverage to date.

MNsure may ultimately be a train wreck.  After all, covering uninsured Americans has always been a very difficult task.  But the immediate post-launch period is not a sensible time to make that judgment.

Romneycare_enrollment_chart-2Historical data shows that consumers don’t tend to purchase health insurance the way they purchase Xbox 360s, lined up outside the store on launch day.  Quite the opposite, most consumers purchase insurance at the very last moment possible.  Purchasing an expensive service that you hope to never use is just not very satisfying, so most of us procrastinate.

I’m not pulling this assertion out of my pundit posterior.   In Massachusetts, just 123 early adapters stepped forward during their first month, and it didn’t get much better the second month.  Instead, the big rush came just prior to the open enrollment deadline, when people face the prospect of a missed deadline and financial penalty.

It turns out that pulling the plug on the Massachusetts exchange when it only had 123 customers would not have been a wise decision for Commonwealth citizens, because  Romneycare ultimately was worth the wait.  After a few years of growing pains, Massachusetts’ Obamacare-like reforms increased the ranks of the insured to 97%.  This puts states like Minnesota (91% insured) to shame, not to mention Chris Christie’s New Jersey (84% insured) or Ted Cruz’s Texas (76% insured).

Declaring a trainwreck just as a new train is lurching out of the depot is ludicrous.  As much as it pains the cognoscenti, at this stage they need to be saying the four little words that might  get them deleted out of reporters’ speed dials – “I don’t know yet.”

Daytonomics The Winner Already?

Then there is the Minnesota-Wiscoonsin border battle over state fiscal policy.  In a New York Times commentary piece that has been widely shared via social media, a University of Minnesota professor and pundit recently declared that Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton’s Keynesian approach to state fiscal policy has been more successful than Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s austerity approach.  His conclusion:

“The lesson from the upper Midwest is that rigid anti-tax dogma fails to deliver a convincing optimistic vision that widens economic opportunity and security.”

To his credit, the University of Minnesota professor does include  caveats, such as “firm answers will require more time and more data.”  But in the rush to be a clear and certain pundit who can get past the New York Times gatekeepers, the professor ultimately declared Daytononomics triumphant.

Here’s the problem with that:  Daytonomics is very much in its infancy.  Most of Governor Dayton’s most progressive policies are only now being put into effect, so the state of Minnesota’s economy can’t yet be attributed to the Daytonomics.

It’s true that Dayton has been in office for three years now.  But, with the exception of Dayton’s expansion of Medicaid to 95,000 uninsured Minnesotans, the lion’s share of his progressive agenda — the improvements to education and other government services funded by tax increases on the wealthy — passed just a few months ago, after the 2011-2012 GOP-controlled Legislature was vanquished and could no longer block Dayton’s progressive policies.

Just as President Obama could not be fairly blamed for the 2008-2009 economic meltdown that played out before he could put his policies into place, Governor Dayton cannot be fairly celebrated for a better-than-average state economy when most of his progressive policies are only now being put into place.  As a liberal, I hope Daytonomics bests Walkernomics, and expect it will.  But it’s much too early to declare a winner.

As a public relations guy, I understand why the media wants  commentators who give their audience instant gratification through instant analysis.  But as a citizen, I worry about what all of this instant gratification does to us.

Psychologists find that children who can’t learn to delay gratification at an early age are much less likely to succeed in later life.  The research indicates that the ability to delay gratification is absolutely key for success in school, marriages, friendships, health and jobs.  The young kids who can’t learn to stop themselves from consuming marshmallows become the adults who can’t stop themselves from consuming the adult versions of marshmallows.

Given that research, what kind of democracy will we become if journalists, pundits and voters can’t learn to wait to make policy judgements until evidence is available to inform our debates?

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in MinnPost and Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.

CliffsNotes On Minnesota’s ACA Implementation Debate

Posted on by

Cliff_s_Notes_ACA_Debate_Implementation-2For those who haven’t been closely following the debate in Minnesota over implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”), here are  CliffsNotes to get you up-to-speed.

Minnesota conservatives, whose presidential standard bearer’s greatest policy achievement was successfully pioneering the use of insurance exchanges in Massachusetts, desperately tried to stop the Minnesota liberals from implementing the federal Affordable Care Act’s Massachusetts-like insurance exchange, until they later criticized liberals for not making the exchanges effective enough, though they still wanted to eliminate them, even after Minnesota’s exchange produced the lowest premiums in the nation, are now criticizing the liberals for being, well, you know,” flip-floppers.”

Minnesota conservatives are outraged that liberals first wanted to require better health coverage for individuals imperiled by junk policies that don’t cover the type of preventative care services needed to avert expensive and lethal health problems, but then supported restoration of the old junk policies when the junk plan ban was criticized, but later decided to ban the junk policies after all, because they learned that banning them was unpopular with the insurance industry.

Make sense now?

– Loveland

Context Matters in Minimum Wage Debate

Posted on by

Real_value_of_minimum_wage_since_1968-2In 2014, the Minnesota Legislature will enact a long overdue minimum wage adjustment.  A large majority of Minnesotans support an increase and the DFL controls the House, Senate and Governor’s office, so the stars are finally aligned for 357,000 of Minnesota’s workers and 137,000 of their children.  If self-defeating bi-cameral bickering can be put aside, the only real suspense should be about the amount of the minimum wage adjustment.

This year, the House passed legislation to set Minnesota’s minimum wage at $9.50 per hour, but it was rejected due to howls of outrage from the business lobby and Senate DFLers.  They maintained that $9.50 per hour was extravagant.

Compared to What?

At first blush, I understand why a jump from as low as $4.90 per hour to $9.50 per hour could seem excessive.  But Minnesota’s minimum wage hasn’t been adjusted in a very long time, and plenty of successful economies are operating very successfully with a much higher minimum wage.  Here is some context for this debate:

  • $5.15:  Georgia minimum wage (lowest in the U.S.)
  • $4.90-$5.25-$6.15:   Minnesota minimum wage for trainees, small businesses, and large businesses respectively.
  • $7.25: Federal minimum wage.
  • $7.25:  Minimum wage in ND, NE, SD, TX, WV, WI and many other states.
  • $7.75:  2013 Minnesota Senate-passed minimum wage (not enacted).
  • $9.00:  National Democrats’ recommendation:  The federal minimum wage increase endorsed by President Obama in 2013 (accompanied with an automatic annual adjustment for inflation).
  • $9.19:  Washington state’s minimum wage (highest among the states).
  • $9.50:  2013 Minnesota House-passed minimum wage (not enacted).
  • $9.95:  Canadian minimum wage.
  • $10.70:  What the U.S. minimum wage in 1968 would be today if it had kept pace with cost-of-living increases.
  • $10.93:  Dutch minimum wage.
  • $11.09:  Irish minimum wage.
  • $12.09:  French minimum wage.
  • $16.88:  Australian minimum wage.

So, the House-recommended level does look generous compared to the Minnesota’s embarrassingly stingy status quo.  But the 2013 House-enacted minimum wage looks downright miserly compared to what Americans were paid in the Nixon era, what many peer nation employers are paying, and what it actually takes Americans to cover the costs of basic needs.

The Floor for Negotiations

Minnesota’s cost-of-living is 105% of the national cost-of-living, a bit higher than average.  Therefore, Minnesota’s minimum wage should be a bit higher than federal minimum wage to have the same purchasing power.  One hundred and five percent of the $9.00 per hour recommended by President Obama would be $9.45 per hour, almost exactly what the Minnesota House enacted in 2013.

A minimum wage of $9.45 per hour is nowhere near what American workers were paid when in the Nixon era, or what contemporary Americans actually need to make ends meet, but it would represents modest progress.

Given that progressives saw minimum wage adjustments vetoed by Minnesota Republican Governor’s five times over a 14-year span, they also need to push, as President Obama is, for an annual inflation adjustment to prevent effective annual wage cuts in the future.   It makes no sense to fight for a decade and a half to win an adjustment only to watch workers’ wages effectively shrivel year-after-year.

Moving from $4.90 per hour to $9.45 per hour sounds exorbitant to leaders who haven’t done their homework.  In 2014, Minnesota’s working poor need those leaders to do their homework.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured in Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs and MinnPost.

Jerry-in-the-Box Should Be Gophers’ Permanent Model

Posted on by

claeys_sidelines_yelling_-_Google_SearchOn September 16, 2013, I proposed that Minnesota Golden Gophers head football coach Jerry Kill manage his epilepsy, and his program’s reputation, by delegating stressful game management duties to a trusted assistant, while Head Coach Kill manages big picture issues from a less stressful, climate controlled sky box.

At that time, I don’t remember anyone else taking that position. While others were having a spirited “status quo v. let Kill go” argument, I proposed the non-traditional  Jerry-in-the-box model compromise:

The University has every right to ask Coach Kill to do everything he can to manage his disease, and accepting a revised role like this would be one important thing he can do to manage his disease.

It’s too simplistic for Kill supporters to say “epilepsy is a disease, therefore it’s discriminatory to judge him based on the implications of his disease.”  It’s equally simplistic to say “there’s no role for epileptics in big time college football.”

There’s a role for a talented epileptic coach like Jerry Kill, but it may not be the exact role played by other Head Coaches.  There’s a happy medium here, and I hope (Gophers Athletic Director Norwood) Teague and Kill can find it.

The Jerry-in-the-box model was adopted by Kill four games ago, and the team is on an unlikely four-game Big 10 winning streak.

As I said earlier, this approach is the best way to put Kill’s health first, avoid losing him, and show potential recruits that the Gophers situation is stable. I’m quite sure Kill only agreed to temporarily move to the box, while he recovers and learns how to better manage his seizures.  But really, why not make it the Gophers’ permanent model?

– Loveland

5 Crucial DFL To-Dos For The 2014 Session

Posted on by

Minnesota_Legislature_To_Do_List-2The Minnesota DFL is in serious danger of losing ground in the 2014 elections.  A primary reason is turnout – too many DFLers traditionally tend to stay home in years when there isn’t a high profile presidential race.  But there are policy steps that the DFL can take during the 2014 to  improve their chance of bucking the historic trend of Democratic setbacks in off-year elections.

INCREASE  MINIMUM WAGE. Minnesota’s minimum wage is lower than the federal minimum wage, despite the fact that our overall per capita income is the 11th highest in the nation.  Shameful.   Six decades of data show the claims that increasing the minimum wage will increase unemployment are unfounded. Only one-quarter of Minnesotans support keeping the minimum wage this low.  The DFL needs to show its electoral base, and moderate swing voters, that it is helping the most vulnerable workers make ends meet in a shaky economy.  Petty DFL-on-DFL infighting killed a minimum wage increase last year, which was an embarrassment to a party that needs to show that it is mature enough to lead the state.  That can’t happen again.

PASS A MODEST BONDING BILL.  It’s a bonding year at the Legislature, so much of the session’s news coverage will be focused on the bonding bill.    The DFL needs to show that it is a) making job-creating infrastructure investments but b) not breaking the bank, as Republicans will reflexively claim.  Passing a smart bonding bill that costs about as much as average bonding bills in the Pawlenty and Carlson eras will show moderate voters that the DFL can get things done, and be trusted to control the purse strings another couple of years.

SPOTLIGHT GOP SUPPORT OF SHUTDOWNS.  The federal government shutdown in 2013 and the Minnesota government shutdown in 2011 have left Republicans’ approval ratings at historic lows.  Government shutdowns are a very toxic political issue for Republicans right now.   But in politics, time heals all wounds.  Therefore, the DFL needs to find new ways remind moderate voters that GOP legislators still are stubbornly refusing to swear off of their reckless government shutdown fetish.  Maybe that means holding votes on legislation to require a supermajority vote for the enactment of shutdowns.  Maybe that means requiring votes on legislation to dock the future pay for legislators who support shutdowns.   Those votes can be used in the 2014 election to breathe new life into the Republicans most damaging political baggage from the 2011 and 2013 shutdown debacles.

GIVE THE REPUBLICANS THE MICROPHONE.  The DFL legislators’ best electoral weapon remains Republican legislators.  When it comes to appealing to swing voters, there are a group of Tea Party-supported GOP legislators who tend to be their own worst enemies.  For instance, they compare food stamps to feeding wild animals and use the floor to drive their anti-gay obsessions.  For a party that tends to keep digging their hole deeper, my advice to the DFL is to refrain from taking their shovel away.  In fact, give them a backhoe.   Don’t unnecessarily limit debates.  Don’t interrupt.  Give their radical bills hearings.  All the while, keep the video recorder on, and share their extremeness via social media and the news media.

GET WORK DONE ON TIME.  Voters don’t pay attention to 99% of the legislative machinations during sessions, but they do notice when legislative gridlock causes missed end-of-session deadlines.   For swing voters, a missed deadline is an easy-to-understand symbol of immaturity, irresponsibility and incompetence.  The father of the modern Democratic party, Franklin D. Roosevelt, advised “be sincere, be brief, be seated.”  Modern DFLers should take FDR’s advice to heart.  Imagine how pleasantly surprised swing voters would be to read a spring 2014 headline reading “DFL Leaders Quietly Finish Legislative Business A Day Early.”  Easier said than done, I know, but it should not be underestimated how symbolically important making that deadline is to middle-of-the-road swing voters.  An early adjournment should be a top priority for DFL leaders.

Most of the moderate swing voters who will determine the 2014 elections don’t pay close attention to legislative minutiae.  They simply want state leaders who are passing a few constructive and popular bills, avoiding embarrassments, and  keeping the government  running on budget and on time.  In the 2014 legislative session, that’s what DFL leaders should strive to deliver.

– Loveland

Note:  This post was also featured by MinnPost’s Blog Cabin and Politics in Minnesota’s Best of the Blogs.