Category: The Real Erik Paulsen

Federal leaders need to renew fund

On Sept. 30, a vital source of funding for Minnesota’s public lands expired. The Land and Water Conservation Fund has provided over $245 million to Minnesota’s parks and public lands, taking the burden off of Minnesota’s taxpayers. The LWCF takes revenue from offshore oil drilling and invests it in the shared spaces that help make Minnesota special.

A piece of the fund was set aside to complete a Boundary Waters land swap — that swap would provided better protection for the still-patchwork Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness while providing direct property tax relief for Minnesotans. Now that may never happen.

There is still time to revive the LWCF, though. We’re lucky to have supporters like Sen. Tina Smith helping push for LWCF, but we need Rep. Erik Paulsen’s support as well. Ask federal politicians if they know what the fund is — and whether or not they want to revive it.

Molly Muth, Minneapolis
Lakeshore Weekly News, November 23, 2018

The Fact Checker’s crash course for the 2018 elections

NOTE:  CLF, the Paul Ryan aligned super PAC has been busy with nasty ads in Minnesota, too.  With multiple ads in CD3, among other CDs. We’ve noted they’re false and provided information on this group before.  Here’s what a journalist charged with fact checking has to say about their style of ads.


A super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan produced six ads in tight house races that are littered with falsehoods. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

All 47 of our fact checks that dealt with candidates or campaign ads in 2018 are now in one place — right here.

Yes, it’s a wonder we still have time to fact-check politicians not named Donald Trump, he of the 6,420 false or misleading claims. But it’s not just the president who is flooding the airwaves with misinformation. The 2018 campaign season has featured a bunch of Trump-like TV ads, nativist rhetoric and scurrilous statistics from candidates, super PACs and other groups.

Of the 47 fact checks, 21 received Four Pinocchios. Twelve got Three Pinocchios, and seven got Two Pinocchios. We threw in two fact checks that got One Pinocchio and five with no ratings.

View the complete November 5 article by Salvador Rizzo on the Washington Post website here.

Phillips represents regular voters

The source of campaign contributions is a trustworthy indicator of who will truly represent residents of the 3rd Congressional District: incumbent Erik Paulsen or his challenger Dean Phillips.

Paulsen currently occupies the eye-popping rank of No. 4 among reps who have accepted the most PAC money. That’s right — of 435 U.S. House reps, only three take more outside money than Erik Paulsen. He’s raked in over $2.6 million from political action committees. PACs are funded primarily by corporations and billionaires outside our district, and exist for one reason only: to influence elections and legislation.

Dean Phillips? Zero PAC money. Sixty-seven thousand individual contributors, donating an average of $33 each, have provided 100 percent of his campaign funds. And that’s who Phillips will listen to before casting votes in Congress: his constituents. The lion’s share of Paulsen’s votes, on the other hand, reflect the interests of the outside parties that pour money into his campaign coffers. Continue reading “Phillips represents regular voters”

Bid farewell to a representative who’s been no help with light rail

U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen is an absentee congressman on so many critical issues — from climate change to gun-violence prevention and controlling assault weapons — that the time for change is long overdue. But after Paulsen’s complete and total inaction and rank partisanship in the face of a chance to expand not one but two light-rail lines in his district, voters should wish him well in his next endeavors.

The Third District is composed of the west metro’s largest suburbs, including Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka and Plymouth, and home to both the Southwest and Bottineau light-rail projects. Both lines have been planned for years. Each line has received multiple approvals from each of the nine cities through which they run. The only funding that remains to be received is from the Federal Transit Administration, which mysteriously refuses to allocate the money Congress has awarded specifically for the purpose.

It is clear that Paulsen has never assisted with any part of Southwest or Bottineau. Instead, he stands idly by while more than $3 billion in infrastructure remains tied up in bureaucracy. That’s $3 billion — more than three U.S. Bank Stadiums’-worth of jobs and physical infrastructure. Continue reading “Bid farewell to a representative who’s been no help with light rail”

Top 10 GOP House seats most likely to flip in a blue wave

Republicans are scrambling to minimize their losses in Tuesday’s midterm elections in an effort to deny Democrats the 23 seats they need to recapture a majority in the House.

In recent weeks, Republican groups have redirected millions of dollars to competitive districts where their prospects appear brighter. Meanwhile, President Trump has gone to bat for several vulnerable GOP incumbents.

A handful of GOP lawmakers are fighting uphill battles for survival and appear likely to lose their seats, according to party strategists, with just days left before the vote.

Here are the 10 Republican incumbents seen as most likely to lose their seats:

View the complete November 2 article by Max Greenwood on the Hill website here.

 

Paulsen is on the take, torn between constituents and PACs

To the Editor:

The serenity prayer is a popular prayer and, in the case of this upcoming election, it is more relevant than I can imagine.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can…”

I am an army veteran. I fought for my democracy in 1970 and I am doing it now as a citizen. The democracy the Republicans have painted for us now is not the democracy I fought for. Stand up for it. Others will follow. Democracy is not free.

Voting is not enough if you are uninformed. Depending on how you feel (red or blue) that day, that’s how you are going to vote. We still have time and our voices matter. Change the unacceptable! Continue reading “Paulsen is on the take, torn between constituents and PACs”

6 Ways Trump Sabotaged ACA Open Enrollment

Today is the beginning of the Affordable Care Act’s open enrollment period.  Open enrollment runs through December 15 and you can sign up at www.healthcare.gov.

Democrats want everyone to know about open enrollment so all Americans know they have the opportunity to buy insurance and remain insured. Trump doesn’t want anyone to find out about open enrollment, because he doesn’t want the ACA to succeed.

Here are 6 of the worst ways Trump has worked to sabotage ACA open enrollment

  1. The Trump administration again scheduled downtime for the healthcare.gov website weekly throughout the open enrollment period.

  1. The open enrollment period is now half as long as it used to be before the Trump administration’s sabotage.

  1. The Trump administration is promoting junk insurance plans that undermine the ACA marketplace and may not provide the level of coverage people need.

  1. The Trump administration slashed millions of dollars from outreach programs and advertising aimed at enrolling people in Obamacare plans.

  1. The Trump administration limited and even abandoned state and community partnerships that have played a key role in enrolling harder-to-reach demographics.

  1. Trump’s HHS spent taxpayer resources to produce anti-ACA videos and scrubbed its website of useful consumer guidance on the ACA.

Republicans Double Down on Lies About Their Disastrous Health Care Plan

‘If we can’t trust Paulsen, Lewis, and their Republican accomplices to tell us the truth about what they’re voting on, how can we possibly trust them to put us first?’

Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen like to claim that their votes for the American Health Care Act didn’t gut protections for pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately for the embattled Republicans, the facts tell a different story. As Lewis and Paulsen double down on their disastrous plan, Republicans like Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber are joining them in enthusiastically endorsing the bill their party forced through the House last year.

Responding to Republicans’ health care lies, the DFL released the following statement:

“Erik Paulsen, Jason Lewis, and their Congressional Republican allies have completely undermined our health care system by voting to raise costs and strip care from millions of Americans. Instead of owning up to their heartless health care plan, Republicans have resorted to lying to their constituents about the most basic facts.” Continue reading “Republicans Double Down on Lies About Their Disastrous Health Care Plan”

No, Dean Phillips was not involved in a sexual harassment case at one of his companies

A television ad in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District attempts to tie Democratic candidate Dean Phillips to a congressman accused of domestic abuse.

Phillips’ opponent, Republican congressman Erik Paulsen, aired the ad that starts off by saying “sleazy Keith Ellison and shady Dean Phillips, both caught up in another sexual harassment scandal,” making it appear as if the two men are involved in the same scandal.

Ellison is accused of domestic abuse by his former girlfriend. The congressman is currently running for Minnesota attorney general and has denied the allegations.

But the focus here is the claim that Phillps is “charged with ignoring sexual harassment and discrimination at his companies,” as the ad’s narrator goes on to say.

View the complete October 29 article by Samantha Putterman on the Politifact.com website here.

Donald Trump Again Endorses Erik Paulsen

On October 29, Donald Trump again tweeted his endorsement for Erik Paulsen: