Politics, Weather, and Why I’m Not Crazy

Oak Grove St., Minneapolis, MN

First…you’d have to be crazy to not love living in Minnesota.  Not perfect, not quite yet, and we do have some really messed up politics and politicians here in Minnesota (whatever happened?!), but it is perfectly perfect enough.  A real Minnesotan might say things are pretty good.

I woke up this morning and my bedroom was a comfortable 55 degrees, perfect sleeping temperature.  I had to leave a window partially open to get to that nice temperature, but that was worth it.  Throughout the night I could hear the occassional nighttime stirrings outside that people with closed windows miss.  I always sleep best this time of the year.

And now I have pajamas, wool robe, and extra thick wool socks keeping me comfortable.  It is late fall and severe winter weather is yet to come.  Sadly, Minnesota doesn’t get the classic Minnesota winters anymore.  Wimpy stuff now.  But it still is winter. 

Speaking of wimpy, Minneapolis declared a Snow Emergency.  For any of my two readers who are not from Minnesota, a Snow Emergency is a series of a parking restrictions meant to keep the streets clear of parked cars so snow plows can work.  This time I think they pulled the trigger a little prematurely.  By the time the Snow Emergency was set to start half of the snow that fell had already melted with more melting to come.  (Note to city officials:  Snow melts above 32 degrees.)

 Weather is great in Minnesota.  There’s something for everyone.  But politics?  I just listed to our state senates new majority leader.  (What was her name?  It is not important.  Koch or something.)  She’s a Republican and in today’s politics that’s all you need to know.  She’s about as creative and engaging as a mound of mud. 

For example, State Senator Koch — or whatever her name is…it doesn’t matter — says “we have to live within our means” and uses the American family analogy.  Snore.  It is hard to be polite with people like this.  There is nothing incorrect about what she is saying, but the context is all wrong.  Why can’t government live within its means?  Because politicians — Republicans in particular — have deliberately underfunded government (cf. Grover Norquist et al.)  They created a problem so they can manipulate a problem.

Minnesota is a great state, but it was a much better state.  Better people with practical and progressive ideas built a thriving state.  Economics, education, environment…civil rights, health care, politics…arts, recreation, business…Minnesota was a leader.  People looked to Minnesota as an example of what could be accomplished when practical people worked together as a community and focused on the common good. 

What happened?

A lot of things happened.  Nationally the mood changed.  Ronald Reagan kicked up the anti-government blame game a notch or two and communicated it effectively to a vulnerable public.  I believe the Minnesota Miracle fell to rhetoric and complaints occurring on the national level.    What has been bad for the United States has been bad for Minnesota. 

Take our governor, Tim Pawlenty.  Here we have a guy who benefited directly from the Minnesota Miracle.  He was raised in an era unafraid to support public goods and services and all of the rest.  Since he has been in politics, Pawlenty has used his petulant leadership style to undo all the advantages that his generation inherited from better Minnesotans.    The Republican legislators following him are no better.

So why aren’t I crazy?  Well…I have facts and reason on my side.  I like good food.  And I love all the crazy weather we get in this state.  How’s that?   The 2010 election was a couple more steps backward, but eventually we will reach a point when the pendulum will reach the peak of its current swing and a new period will begin.  Trust me…eveuntally we will have to act like adults again and act with responsibility and integrity. 

I will write more about that later.  I think my posts are starting to ramble.  Get me some readers to keep me on my toes! 

Related Articles

• Snowstorm in Midwest Causes 400 Auto Crashes (foxnews.com)
• Snow buries Twin Cities; 2 dead in Wisconsin (msnbc.msn.com)
• MN-Gov: Are Emmer, GOP trying to pull fast one on Minnesota voters? (dailykos.com)

Later on Wednesday

All right…I will return to posts about sales and walks in the woods soon.  (My three readers seem to be cold on the political posts.)  I do stand behind my basic observation that politicians succeeded in this recent election because they fostered and then took advantage of misinformation and ignorance.   And I will forever insist that it was NOT a good thing.  I do not think we used our most informed votes in this election.  But you can look at previous posts for my thoughts on that.  Let’s move on to something else.  Kind of.

If You Can't Read This Sign Chances Are You're Offended.

I want to point out a new friend…a fellow traveller, of sorts…and someone even crazier than me.  I nearly got mowed down by a truck taking a U-turn to get back to her.  It was worth it.  She’s still putting up a good fight in, Stillwater, MN, Michele Bachmann’s, Bachmann’s adopted home town.  (Or is Michele in Lake Elmo now?)

Holding an anti-Michele Bachmann sign on a busy intersection isn’t something I am likely to do, so the opportunity to spend a little time on the corner with this protester was fun. 

Signs seem to piss off people!  I’m  not sure who was offended.  Let’s be honest, Bachmann supporters would need the sign read to them and I’m not sure who’s doing that at 40 mph.  But people did raise a fuss.  (Such language!)  My friend — I didn’t get her name — wore ear plugs…likely an experienced protester. 

The ear plugs might also explain why I could not get away.  She kept talking and talking.  I kept nodding and nodding, slipping in a “Hey, I gotta go” whenever I could.  Eventually I wished her well and sprinted off. 

I’ll start a different blog for politics soon and get back to a focus on sales…and walks in the woods… here.  No worries about having enough material.  I have a lot of sales to make in the next few weeks.  A lot.  Like it or not, I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Related Articles

• Michele Bachmann: Will you investigate Democrats? [Greg Laden's Blog] (scienceblogs.com)
• Chris Matthews Asks Michele Bachmann: ‘Are You Hypnotized?’ (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)

Nothing to be Proud Of

Obama Inauguration. Real Change, But Squandered?

Tonight is a pretty low night in American politics.  The worst of us are ruining this country. 

I am challenging anyone to give concrete examples of what Republicans have done in recent years to deserve an opportunity to steer policy in the United States again.  For my part, I cannot think of anything.   What they have accomplished is hardly anything to be proud of.  They have fostered confusion and frustration, characteristics they are very skilled at capitalizing on, and tonight they appear to be garnering results from their deceptive efforts. 

If people are not going to learn economics, history, science, and other basic subjects, perhaps it would be a good idea to defer to people who have studied these topics.  Learning your lessons from politicians is poor substitute, especially politicians who celebrate anti-intellectual populism over facts.  We have come off of decades of progressively worse government mismanagement which ultimately resulted in out of control wars, a disappearing middle class, loss of global competitive advantages, and ultimately economic collapse.  The anti-government supply-siders have not done much for us, I would argue.

Facts should trump opinions, but they do not.  Since the Obama inauguration the Dow has risen over 45% and the NASDAQ is up over 70%.  The federal deficit has actually decreased.  And we have gone from losing hundreds of thousands of jobs per month to actually showing job growth.

Business — especially big business — has recovered.  The Fortune 500 is at or above pre-recession revenues with many companies posting record profits.  The financial industry has recovered quickly enough and well enough to justify again huge bonuses.  And productivity is at record levels.  Jobs, of  course, are the problem for Americans and our economy, but with business already sitting on piles of cash, it is hard to understand how the Republican argument that tax cuts are needed to create jobs is valid, but that has been all they’ve offered to poorly informed voters, and the voters seem to have taken it all hook, line, and sinker.

Of course we could talk about uncertainty in monetary policy as a factor keeping sophisticated business from stepping into large scale investment, but that hardly washes in a global economy where investment isn’t happening in the United States anyway.  Moreover, the average small business owner — the hair salon owner or the veterinarian — is not assessing Federal policy to determine if they should keep the lights on or move operations to Shanghai.  Finally, the free market principles that created the global economy are the principles promoted by the GOP and their even more misguided cousins in the Tea Party.

Since the Obama inauguration the United States passed modest, but needed, health care legislation that brings us closer to our economic peers in advanced social services.  An important first step in reworking a for-profit health care system that inherently depends on economically rationed access to health care — people must die — to protect profits.  We saw important consumer finance reform laws passed, including an office to again monitor a horribly neglected mortgage industry.

Look…large government, high taxes, and lost freedoms — whatever those are has never been defined — did not cause the economic collapse.  Unregulated and reckless investment and reinvestment in overly leveraged exotic financial products caused the collapse.  It is a disgrace when politicians will scapegoat American families with the blame for this crisis by blaming them for reckless borrowing.  Sorry, it has been reckless investing that was unsustainable.  The average American, whether struggling with a mortgage or unable to find a job, is paying for the losses these investments caused.  They will continue to pay for it through subsidies for costly and unaffordable tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the same people and institutions that hauled down the economy.  Again…a lesson in economics would be useful.  Taxes are not killing jobs.  Lack of demand is hurting jobs.

Which brings up the final accomplishment enjoyed since the Obama Inauguration.  The federal stimulus was, like health care reform, inadequate, but helpful.  Almost universally economists agree that short term deficits are acceptable and would be beneficial if government spending were set directly to funding immediate works projects.   Instead we are stuck with lending locked up and frozen.  Money is not moving in the economy, especially the local economy.  Frankly…Americans do not understand the economics of this solution.  They are confused and misinformed.  But without stimulus legislation, we would be in a much, much more dire situation today than we would be otherwise and now we are about to put the very people who would have put us in otherwise back in power.

We will get what we deserve.  Unfortunately not all of us voted for these mistakes.  Better Americans have been fighting for change, but the GOP has steadfastly stood in the way.  That is their real accomplishment and ultimately will be their legacy.

Michael Kinsley has a point.  Time to be exceptional again.  Tonight is not getting us there.

Related Articles

• How the Party of No Became the Party of Yes (cbsnews.com)
• Robert Reich: Why Obama Should Learn the Lesson of 1936, not 1996 (capitolhillblue.com)
• Daniel Berger: The 2010 Elections: What Went Wrong? (huffingtonpost.com)
• We’er on the fast track to economic inequality (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Poll Shows Americans Don’t Know Economy Expanded with Tax Cuts (eon.businesswire.com)
• GOP victories would mean policy shifts or gridlock (sfgate.com)

Qualifications for Suffrage

Bear with me for a few more days.  Important elections are only a week away and I cannot help but comment on them…or on the process of conducting elections.  Plus I still have not figured out how to post to separate pages on this blog.  If any of my three or four readers cares to explain how this is

1915 American Flag.

done, please do so.  But for now…allow me to comment on Qualifications for Suffrage.

I picked up a copy of the 1915 St. Paul Dispatch and St. Paul Pioneer Press Year Book and Almanac tonight.  (Get a copy of an old year book and almanac.  Chock full of great stuff.)  I found particularly interesting a table describing the state-by-state qualifications — and restrictions — for voting back in 1915.  Oh, what an uneven path we have taken toward progress.  In some ways we as a society were much more enlightened nearly 100 years ago.  In other ways…not so much. 

Consider, for example, restrictions on voting.  Scanning the table I see that 20 of the 48 states banned “idiots” from voting and I am left wondering, where did we go wrong?  I am all for keeping idiots out of the voting booth!  In fact I would very much prefer we kept them off the ballot, too, but there is no list of qualifications for who could or could not be on a ballot.  (I presume that was a more rigorously interpreted Constitutional issue, perhaps.)  I’m not sure, however, that keeping idiots away from our elections as the rules are described in 1915 would have done much to help our country today.  Excluding exceptions like Utah, Texas, and Wyoming, most of the states prohibiting idiots from voting in 1915 still seem to be doing a better job today keeping idiots away than states that did not have that restriction in 1915.  With these few exceptions, there does seem to be a clear “red state/blue state” distinction here.  I wonder…maybe idiots can vote again in Utah, Texas, and Wyoming.  Texas for sure.

It is fun to see that some states had issues with sailors and untaxed Indians voting.  Lunatics, felons, and Chinese get a bad rap, too.  Bribers are not wanted at the polls in West Virginia back in 1915 and duelists and their abettors can stay away on election day in Michigan 95 years ago.  (No restrictions on drunks…perhaps because per capita alcohol consumption in 1913 was up to 21.09 gallons, more than double the amount just 25 years prior.  Banning drunks might have put an end to the serious business of democratic elections.)

Interestingly, while Alaska was not a state in 1915, Alaska is included in this table.  You need to be 18 (and presumably male — the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution recognizing the right of women to vote was not ratified until 1920) and a resident for one year and 30 days.  That’s it.  No restrictions.  Apparently nothing has changed there.  Clearly idiots still vote in large numbers.  Maybe even a lunatic or two.  Sailors?  Probably.  Chinamen?  Hmmm…reluctantly, I suppose, right after nontaxed Indians.

Oh!  I am just kidding!  But it is hard to imagine how some people who have in the past and currently are now on the ballot in Alaska got there AND manage to win elections.  Big families, maybe.  It is a state with a small population.  Get enough kissing cousins to the booth and you might get the deciding vote cast in your favor. 

Ok, all right…I will stop with the silly late night slap happy not-so-funny fun.  But am I all wrong?  I don’t think so, even if I am  being a bit ahistorical and flippant…maybe cynical, too…but really, we do have some idiots out there and they have the right to vote.  Which makes it all the more important that informed voters don’t stay home next Tuesday. 

Get out and vote! 

Related Articles

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Get Out and Vote!

Bill or Rights. It is Worth Looking at Again.

Especially if you’re a Democrat.

Did I say I was going to keep politics out of this blog?  If I did, I reserve the right to an exception. 

I just finished scanning the online version of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and took in as much of the Readers’ Comments as I could stand.  I am hopeful that the comments from the right represent a minority fringe, but I have my doubts.  I come from a state that elects Michele Bachmann, after all, and has an entire cast of like-minded bit players behind her.  We even have a knuckle head governor, Tim Pawlenty, who is who he is today because of the progressive policies of better government all of us — rich and poor alike — enjoyed thirty years ago.   Timmy has grown up, however, and moved from his roots in South St. Paul both in a real physical way, but in an even more profound and real ideological way.

And I fear that the country has done the same.  I might have been getting at that idea when I wrote about the Sock Market a few posts earlier.  Things are changing and it is hard to see how they are changing for the better.

Optimistic Public Servants. We Need More of These.

By most indices, the United States is worst off today than it was 30 years ago.  Reading the New York Times today was depressing.  We have an out of control mercenary war in Iraq and Afghanistan that is costly beyond its economic impact.  There are people running for major political offices — Senate and House of Representative seats — that don’t know enough about our government to cite any Supreme Court rulings or understand the implications of the Bill of Rights.  Our economy is in shambles due to overly-leveraged derivatives and speculative investing, but recovery has been framed in terms of government spending and taxes.  And we have a growing number of Americans willing to accept anti-tax, anti-government rhetoric as gospel even as it has no foundation or substance.

In short…I think we are becoming a nation of quitters.  The GOP has become the petulant schoolyard bully who causes trouble and blames everyone else.  No…perhaps Eddie Haskell is a better model describing today’s GOP.  All smiles and sweetness while taking credit for undeserved praise and a mischievous troublemaker when no one is paying attention.  I tell you what, it is time for people to pay attention.

Government is not inherently bad, but bad government is.  (It is called a tautology.)  We have bad government almost by design.  Grover Norquist and others, riding on Reagan’s coat tails, took the “government is the problem” deception and rallied behind that to “starve the beast,” i.e., deliberate underfunding of government.  If we cannot pay for it (because we underfund it by design), then we must cut it.  A brilliant and obvious trick that most people don’t understand, not even now. 

Government has become a problem because it has been vilified for thirty years and disemboweled because of it.  We have become a modern banana republic, an almost state-less government for the wealthy elite who have as a result siphoned off increasingly more billions and billions for private accounts and foreign investors.  Today, more than any other time since 1928 if not beyond, the wealthiest one percent hold more earnings and savings than ever before.  Meanwhile incomes for both working and middle class Americans has been flat or declining in real dollars.  We are witnessing the decline of the middle class.

So what has all of the supply-side, trickle down small government approach gotten us?  Where is the benefit that the political right wants to protect and seemingly so many people are willing to support with their votes?

We have struggling schools and bridges that literally collapse into rivers.  Issues like water quality and worker safety are getting worse, not better.  We rank somewhere around 15th globally for college graduation rates and in no indice such as science or math do U S Students rank at the top.  More and more people are facing financial hardship and people literally die because private for-profit health care rations care for the sake of earnings.  (We are willing to squander billions to kill foreigners in misguided wars, but raise a fit if we want to spend the same to save lives of our own citizens.  Something is amiss there.)

All you need is a little objective history, an understanding of economics, and some common sense to see how far we have strayed from smart governance.  Government is our collective investment in what we value today and what we want for the future.  It isn’t some black hole that steals freedom and plays Robin Hood with earnings and wealth.  Does anyone really think that kind of negative approach built the strong government institutions that enabled so much success in our past? 

And if government were such a bad thing, why do we thrive when government is strong?  We have been demonizing government for three decades now and look at where we are today compared with thirty years ago.  It isn’t good.  Not by any measure.

We had eight years of George W. Bush and two years of Barak Obama.  Impatience will kill us.  We need to support the different policies that were so enthusiastically embraced by voters two years ago.  We have, in fact, more than just George Bush’s faults to recover from.  We have an entire era of limited non-progressive thinking to respond to.  We also have a stubborn and destructive Republican Party set on nothing but failure.  Since when has it been patriotic to plot failure for our country?

Nevertheless, in two years good things have happened.  Not good enough, but better things can happen.  It is hard to see, however, how better thing can happen if we allow ourselves a return to the failed policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

Related Articles

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• Opinion: Voters should fire Bachmann, Grayson (cnn.com)
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• Dayton Still Leads for Minnesota Governor (politicalwire.com)