Category: State Issues

Speaker Daudt Cannot be Trusted

08.21.15.daudtleftThis week Minnesotans learned that Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt lobbied for $2 million in furniture for the Minnesota Capitol, including $10,000 for a door for his new “Speaker’s suite.”

“Daudt couldn’t find $30,000 to help Minnesota’s deaf children, but he wants to turn our Capitol restoration into his personal version of HGTV’s ‘Property Brothers’ using taxpayer dollars,” said DFL Chairman Ken Martin.

Once again Daudt has shown he cannot be trusted, Martin said. Daudt promised to rein in government spending, but in addition to his $10,000 door voted for the largest budget in state history. Daudt promised to make rural communities a priority, and then zeroed out funding to expand broadband. Daudt promised to fix our roads and bridges but did nothing to make this a reality.

“Minnesotans deserve a leader who will be responsible with state resources and take the steps to grow Minnesota’s economy and open the doors of success to everyone.”

House GOP Upped Budget for Capitol Furniture $2 Million

Ornate DoorThe Democrats are the party of spending taxpayers money according to the Republicans, right?  Not really.  Especially if you think you’re keeping the spending on the down low, it seems.

In this year’s legislative session, the House Republicans “quietly pushed to bump up the furnishings allocation by $2 million, or 45 percent.” the Associated Press reports.  In addition to more “historically compatible furniture in spaces, higher-end upholstery, refinished hardwood flooring rather than carpet in leadership offices” there’s that $10,000 for a door on House Speaker Daudt’s office suite. (That must be some door.)

Speaker Daudt’s position is this is “to take it back as close to 1905 as we could.” If that’s the case, why did they bury the increase in a borrowing plan that “emerged just days before it was voted on in a June special session”?

As WCCO reported:

“Emails and other agency documents obtained under a government records request the AP made in late June reflect how top aides for Daudt approached state officials about going beyond the original scope. In response, the officials prepared estimates: $1 million to go from mid-range to high-end seating in committee rooms and other parts of the Capitol; $20,312 to refinish oak floors in four leadership offices rather than laying down carpet; and $10,033 for the door and custom hardware.

While the estimates were discussed internally, agency officials spoke in broader terms about $1.3 million in extra costs for upgraded features. Daudt said the GOP opted to set aside $2 million in case bids come in higher. “If we don’t need it, we don’t need it,” he said.

By comparison, the construction budget for the new Senate Office Building — a major priority of Bakk’s — projects about $4.6 million will be spent on desks, tables, chairs and other furniture and fixtures. Senators will move in early next year.”

The Phony, Unprincipled War On Planned Parenthood

The following appears on the NationalMemo.com website and is by Mary Sanchez. You can find a link to the original article below.

Planned Parenthood LogoWith one careless comment, Jeb Bush revealed a fundamentally indifferent attitude toward half the U.S. electorate.

“I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues,” he said in a speech at the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

It was a throwaway aside in a longer blather about defunding Planned Parenthood, and one imagines that no sooner were the words out of his mouth than his cringing consultants were drafting a clarification.

The inevitable statement soon followed, admitting he “misspoke” and adding that “there are countless community health centers, rural clinics and other women’s health organizations that need to be fully funded.”

Too late. The game was on. Hillary Clinton blasted back, “When you attack women’s health, you attack America’s health.”

I don’t believe Bush misspoke. There’s something about abortion he wishes to ignore: Abortion is a women’s health issue. You cannot separate abortion from this context.

Oppose it or not — and I do — abortion is a medical procedure that ends an unwanted or health-threatening pregnancy. If we want to encourage the trend toward decreasing numbers of abortions in this country — and no one in their right mind wants to see more of them — we need to bolster women’s reproductive health services. That means Continue reading “The Phony, Unprincipled War On Planned Parenthood”

How Planned Parenthood actually uses its federal funding

Planned Parenthood LogoThere’s been a lot of coverage of Planned Parenthood recently.  (And, once again, operatives on the Right have been caught editing video to skew what someone says.  So much for any kind of values.)  Below is an article by Janell Ross from the Washington Post published August 4, 2015, that talks about how federal funds are used by this organization:

The long-running calls for the federal government to cease all funding directed toward Planned Parenthood have once again come to the fore. This time, a congressional vote and debate took shape after an anti-abortion group secretly recorded a series of videos with the organization’s medical officers and staff speaking dispassionately — some would say dismissively — about the work of extracting fetal tissue from aborted fetuses and and transferring it to research facilities.

And even though the defund Planned Parenthood fight on the Senate floor didn’t move the needle — in terms of actual impacts on funding — it did bring to the fore some important facts about how much federal money goes to the group, and what it’s used for.

Those federal dollars were the single largest source of money coming into the organization and its local affiliates, by far. Another $305.3 million came from nongovernment sources, about $257.4 million reached the organization after private donors and foundations made contributions and bequests. The organization also raised another $54.7 million in fees charged for its services. So, government funding — with federal dollars comprising the biggest portion of this part of the organization’s budget — are absolutely critical to Planned Parenthood’s total operation.

Planned Parenthood Graph 1

But, it’s important to note that federal dollars are not used to provide the service at the center of the political debate around Planned Parenthood: abortions. That’s been banned by law in almost all cases since 1976. (The details of the ban have shifted over time.) Instead, the organization uses money from other sources — private donors and foundations as well as fees — to fund its abortion services. Continue reading “How Planned Parenthood actually uses its federal funding”

Doug Loon Nonpartisan? Not So Much

The spouse of HD48B representative, Jenifer Loon, has a new position per Adam Belz in the June 30, 2015, StarTribune. Please take the time to read the full article.  See if your head spins, too.

We’ve included some numbers to link you to those “what the what” statements that jumped out at us.

  1. The Chamber cites the issues of importance that are strong Democratic issues:  transportation and immigration
  2. Loon gives no credit to what the DFL legislature and Gov. Dayton have done to strengthen the economy, gives lip service to “improvement” with no details (improvement like in Wisconsin?)
  3. The Chamber and Loon worked to move the House to GOP controlled and he says the next step is changing the Minnesota Senate to GOP control
  4. Before working for the U.S. Chamber, he was a GOP Congressional staffer
  5. He calls the Chamber non-partisan.

“The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce announced Monday that its new president will be Douglas Loon, a longtime Midwest regional executive for the U.S. Chamber.

He will fill the vacancy left by the death last July of David Olson, who led the state’s largest business lobby for nearly a quarter century.

“A perfect choice. He’s smart. He has a good reputation with both sides of the aisle. He knows Minnesota well,” said Charlie Weaver, executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. “He’ll be well received at the Capitol.”

Loon, 50, grew up in South Dakota, worked in Washington for a Pennsylvania senator and has been based in Minnesota since 1998. His wife, Jenifer Loon, is a Republican state representative from Eden Prairie.

Douglas Loon will take the post in September and spend the fall months touring the state and preparing for next year’s legislative session.

The Chamber and its mostly Republican allies are coming off a strong year in which the GOP took the Minnesota House and logged a solid performance in the 2015 legislative session.

(1) Taxes and transportation were left unresolved and will be a battleground in 2016. The chamber also lists immigration reform and education as key issues, as the state struggles to deal with an aging workforce and the shifting demographics of its younger population.

Chamber members and leaders seethed over a 2013 tax hike on the wealthiest Minnesotans and a rise in the minimum wage. But the state’s economy has remained among the nation’s healthiest and unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 2006.

“We know that Minnesota is a great place to start, build and grow a business,” Loon said. “It is not strictly the government that has built that. That is built by the private marketplace and their resiliency and ability to compete.”

Last week, the annual ranking by CNBC of the business environment in states — which named Minnesota the best state for business — provided a new moment for Democrats and Republicans to square off over what they believe is driving the state’s success.

(2) In an interview, Loon said CNBC’s accolade doesn’t mean the state can’t improve and pointed to the TV network’s finding of high taxes as a disadvantage for Minnesota businesses.

(3) The Minnesota Chamber, which represents more than 2,300 companies across the state, helped Republicans take control of the Minnesota House in 2014, and Loon said the next step is to win the Senate.

‘If you look at just the political landscape, that’s going to be a place where everybody’s going to put focus,’ he said. ‘I would describe it as protect and advance, protect the working pro-business majority that they enjoy and continue to expand it. We’re going to be looking for friends where we can find them, and on each issue you build coalitions of the willing.’

(5) But he also called the chamber a “nonpartisan organization” and said “pro-business” is not code for Republican. He rejected the notion that his appointment gives fuel to critics who say the chamber is just a fundraising and lobbying arm of the state GOP.

‘They may try to paint me with that broad brush, but the reality is I work for a nonpartisan organization now, and I expect to operate in a nonpartisan way at the chamber,” Loon said.

(4) After serving as legislative director for Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, early in his career, Loon has been at the U.S. Chamber since 1995 and based in – Minnesota since 1998.

He manages the national chamber’s seven regional offices that handle political and grass roots outreach. He also manages the U.S. Chamber’s Midwest region, which includes Minnesota.

One of Loon’s strengths is his experience working with local chambers and trade groups and the businesses that make up their backbone.

“I think he can relate well to small businesses that are the chamber’s bread-and-butter,” Weaver said.

Bill Blazar, who served as interim president and did not apply for the chamber’s president position, will guide Loon through the transition while returning to his previous role as senior vice president of public affairs and business development.”

You can read the full post here.