Category: Education

by Dave Mindeman

Congress passed a bill that will bring $167 million in direct education money for Minnesota. The idea is to help ailing school districts to keep education jobs and meet budget deficits.

But it will have zero effect.

As this MinnPost article by Beth Hawkins points out, school districts are so tenuous about future budgets that a lot of them plan to go with the patched together budgets they have in place and simply bank the money against future cut backs.

That's where we are. Districts can't count on state support and they are now budgeting out of fear. Fear of cutbacks, fear of the unknown.

And here is a quote that gives me pause:

As the result of more than $150 million in budget reductions and the Legislature’s ratification of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 2009 unallotment to schools, worth $1.4 billion, last spring metro area schools cut some 1,500 educators, according to estimates by the Association of Metropolitan School Districts.

I'm sure budget critics point to that as simply cutting excess. I don't. As I pointed out recently, a number of districts (using Farmington as a prime example) are having enormous class size problems and teacher ratios are out of sync.

I do NOT consider teaching just another "government job". Educators are essential to our future economic growth. They are the key ingredient to any potential "Minnesota miracle" in the future.

Losing 1500 jobs in this manner and the likely reduction of 100's of others in the coming cycle, has an additive effect in other job areas. In fact, a reduction in the quality of our education endangers all of Minnesota business.

We are a state that prides itself on our educational investments. When business looks to Minnesota, they have always been able to count on a skilled and educated workforce.

But can they count on that in the future? That is becoming an important question.

Category: Mark Dayton

by Dave Mindeman

Luke Hellier over at Minnesota Democrats Exposed got himself into a lather over the divorce records of Mark Dayton. He went into post after post about releasing these "unsealed" documents -- Republican translation: He has something embarrassing in there and we want it. He even got to ask Dayton a question about it at a press conference -- God knows how he got a pass for that -- and a local journalist even asked a follow up question. It was yet another embarrassment for the local press.

And, as usual, Hellier tries to whip up his echo chamber to draw attention to his loosely researched story. He even got PowerLine to gleefully comment on this "mystery".

But Powerline puts an addendum on this post. It goes like this:

CORRECTION: Luke Hellier has corrected his MDE post to reflect that the affidavits were removed from the court file by the attorney for Dayton's wife, not by the attorney for Dayton. That seems to me to make it more likely that the affidavits raised issues personally sensitive to Dayton's wife rather than to Dayton. I regret the error.

I regret the error?

Unfortunately, the blogger/press that masquerades as media around here should be issuing a lot more "regrets" than that.

Item #1. Hellier on Minnesota Democrats Exposed continues to post about this issue...with no "regrets" listed.

Item #2. The usually reliable Doug Grow felt compelled to add this bizarre exchange to his story about Dayton getting the Police endorsement. At present, this story has no "regrets" listed.

Item #3. Pat Kessler was the reporter who asked the follow up on this out of the blue fishing expedition, which had no reliable information whatsoever. But, again, no "regrets" forthcoming.

I'm not sure I understand what journalism is today. Have the budgets become so arbitrarily small that reporters find it difficult to budget actual research of their own? Are they compelled to follow every slashing, Hail Mary charge that political parties throw out there?

Powerline is a blog that gets a lot of attention. But the general idea of the Dayton post is left intact.

Still, it does have those four words which are supposed to exonerate any wrongdoing.....

"I regret the error."

Category: Health Care

by Dave Mindeman

There is a fine line that elected officials have to walk. It's the line between (a) doing what's best for your constituents and (b) doing what is poltically beneficial for yourself.

Governor Pawlenty has thrown (a) out the window and now his only policy test is what will get him another few votes in Iowa.

Minnesota is in massive deficit and has health care issues. When it comes to health care, the state has three choices regarding how it can alleviate that. 1) Raise taxes, 2) Accept Federal Money when offered, or 3) throw people off the programs.

We are well aware of how Pawlenty utilizes option 1 -- he doesn't. Yesterday option 2 seems to have been eliminated as well. That leaves option 3, which has already been utilized more than we are comfortable with, but it is all we have left.

Tom Emmer concurs with it all, despite his "new direction".

Here's Pawlenty's reasoning:

Pawlenty is directing all executive branch departments and agencies to not apply for grants or other funding connected to the federal law unless approved by his office or required by law. His executive order described the federal law as "a dramatic attempt to assert federal command and control" of the country's health care system. He also wrote that the law "includes unprecedented intrusions into individual liberty."

Minnesota pays a lot in Federal taxes. Like it or not, some of those taxes are involved in Federal Health Care. Even if you think it is "too much Federal control", we still have needs to meet that are immediate. Some of those taxes are meant for Medical Assistance.....they are meant to help deal with recessionary pressures on our health care system.

By refusing money that has been offered (and that we have basically funded ourselves), Pawlenty is making a personal political statement at the expense of real needs of Minnesota citizens.

The GOP has been using an attack ad on Mark Dayton claiming that he would be "Minnesota's worst governor"...(all evidence to the contrary).

Well the ad is meaningless.

We already have the gold standard of "worst governor" sitting in the executive mansion right now.