Net Contributors

"In Minnesota’s case, we’re going to take the [stimulus] money, because we’re a major subsidizer of the federal government. For every dollar we send in, we only get 72 cents back, so we’re going to accept the money, because we’re paying the bill."

- Former Governor Tim Pawlenty, 2/19/09

When Republicans in Minnesota struggle for a way to reconcile bashing the federal government with accepting federal funding, the go-to strategy is "Minnesota is a net contributor to the federal government." Just yesterday, Rep. Jim Abeler (R - Coon Rapids) used it in the House Ways and Means Committee in parrying Rep. Buesgens' complaint that Minnesota was taking federal money financed by debt.

The "net contributor" argument has the virtue of being true, and according to the most recent statistics, it's even more extreme than Pawlenty's statistics. Minnesota received 54 cents in federal spending for every federal tax dollar sent to D.C from 2007 - 2009. That ranks us at 49th of the 50 states. Compare that to the libertarian utopias that the Minnesota GOP wants us to emulate:

North Dakota #11 - received $1.93 for every dollar paid in taxes

South Dakota #13 - received $1.82 for every dollar paid in taxes

Indiana #25 - received $1.26 for every dollar paid in taxes

But this is not about hypocrisy, well, at least not *that* hypocrisy. It's about another double standard. While it's perfectly acceptable for Republicans to make the net contributor argument when it comes to federal money, they're targeting Minnesota's net contributors for massive cuts in LGA.

Mayor R.T. Rybak points out that Minneapolis sent $2.86 billion in sales and property taxes to the State of Minnesota from 2003 - 2008. I wrote earlier of the hypocrisy of Rep. Linda Runbeck in protecting cities in her district from LGA cuts, and noted that Minneapolis sends 4 sales tax dollars to the state for every one dollar in LGA it receives. The economic engines of this state are cities, and they are the net contributors to Minnesota's tax coffers.

This shouldn't be surprising. We know in Minnesota that the metropolitan area functionally subsidizes the rest of the state. According to Minnesota House Research:

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. As Mayors Rybak, Coleman and Ness have stressed, we are one Minnesota that rises and falls together. But if the "net contributor" argument is persuasive on the federal level, it ought to be persuasive on the state level as well.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

The water is warm, and it’s tingly all over, too!

CNN reports that water pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the “stricken” – I personally think malignant is a better word – Fukushima nuclear power plant is radioactive 7.5 million times (that’s a seven and a five, followed by five zeros) times the legal limit. Obviously, the law is really asleep at the switch to let that happen.

No, belay that; the law is working. Now the radiation in the water is down to only five millions times the legal limit. Truly, a victory for the rule of law.

Since radioactive iodine has now been detected in fish caught off Japan, the Japanese government has imposed a limit on the radiation in fish and set the rule of law to work immediately.

Regrettably, of course, sometimes the laws of physics trump the rule of law.

Meanwhile, officials in the U.S. tell us not to worry; this isn’t a health risk, even for the fish!

John Till, president of the South Carolina-based Risk Assessment Corp., said he does not expect to see any permanent effects on marine life, even close to the plant. However, he added that officials should monitor radiation levels closely -- in the ocean as well as in seafood that reaches restaurants and markets.

Personally, I don’t favor getting health information from insurance executives.

Now this is just a hunch, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see radiation – in safe amounts, we will be told – start showing up in Pacific salmon as they start their spawning runs in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, if not this summer, then next. As predator fish with a large Pacific range, they’ll eat bait fish that have been exposed to the radioactive iodine in the water; radioactive isotope of iodine are associated with thyroid cancer. The iodine (or cesium)  will begin to accumulate in the larger predator species, just as mercury does. Over time, the radioactivity decays, but in one isotope of radioactive iodine, 129, a product of nuclear fission, the half life is 15.7 million years.

The fish above is from a Simpson’s episode.

Update: Here’s a little more about radioactivity accumulating in fish:

With a radioactive half-life of 30 years, cesium can build up in the meat of marine predators as they eat smaller animals, said Karen Gaines, chairwoman of the biology department at the University of Eastern Illinois in Charleston.

“If they’re going to restart fisheries and make people feel comfortable, they’ll need real-time monitoring of the catch,” said Gaines, who studies radioactive cesium in animals at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which made plutonium for U.S. nuclear weapons. (The sushi graphic in this update is from Avidor.)

Further update: Here is a challenging but very good post at A Tiny Revolution about why the simple linear dose model for radiation (“it’s much less than a chest x-ray!”) is of dubious validity:

I am actually sympathetic to the dose assumption. For one thing, I like the physics. If you’re trained in the field, then it’s sensible to think in terms of mass attenuation coefficients, linear energy transfer, cascades, and such things. But you should note that calculation of quantities such as these refer to model biological systems which are inanimate. This sounds complicated, but all it means is that dose calculations treat living beings as though they were not alive.

Health Care Math

Mark Dayton announced this morning that four major health care providers that receive state contracts would refund 2011 profits that exceed 1%. Sounds good to me, but the percentages don't mean much. What are the absolute dollar amounts?

Total amount of state contracted health care: About $3 billion

2010 profit rate on state contracts: 3.8%

2010 profit on state contracts, including investment income: About $150 million

Compared to a cap of 1% profit, about $30 million, this would be an $120 million refund assuming that 2011 profits are at the same rate. However, since 2010 was an up year for HMO's, the real savings may be smaller. Especially now that they've agreed to a cap in the next year, I'd guess. But if you were to project $120 million a year in refunds over the next biennium, this would represent over 4% of the total deficit.

UCare has already returned $30 million in profit and reserves to the state. The total amount held in reserve by Minnesota's non-profit health plans exceeds $2.5 billion, the highest it has been in years. In an environment where schools are asked to borrow against future revenue this cushion is not politically sustainable.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

The Mayor and the Draz

In the fourth clip from my interview of R.T. Rybak on the subject of local government aid (LGA), I asked the Mayor about Minnesota House member Steve Drazkowski.

The Mayor and the Draz

Here are parts One, Two, and Three of the interview. There will be one more clip.

Doug Tice’s cramped and bony fingers

Are all over the editorial in the Strib this morning. Rather than rehash the rehash of the original Strib editorial hash (if you parse that carefully, boys and girls, you will see that it does make sense), I am going to pick out a single sentence.

Research shows that next to family and home environment, effective teaching is the most important factor in helping students learn -- especially disadvantaged students.

And four out of five dentists chew Dentyne gum. It is to laugh.

In other words, after you have enough to eat, a place to sleep, parents who love and support you, have time to read to you and don’t abuse you, and you don’t live someplace in such grinding poverty that you don’t know what to do when you hear gunshots, well then, teachers are important.

So, says Doug (or whoever the author really is; my money is on Tice, however), let’s beat up the teachers to close the achievement gap. This we will do, “for the children,” but at the same time, we’ll tear and rend the already fragile social safety net that is really what these kids need.

My sidekick Rob has written on this subject many, many times, including here.

If you think that the poisonous, black-hearted knave who wrote this editorial cares a whit about minority kids, you’re more delusional than the writer of the editorial.

Meanwhile, if you have kids or grandkids in school, ask them what they’re doing this week (at least in Minnesota). Dollars to doughnuts they’ll tell you they are getting ready to take the MCAs, the annual high stakes test to determine whether a school has made “AYP.”  To do this, the current crop of, say, seventh graders will be compared to last year’s crop of same, even though they are different kids.

And while they’re drilling for the tests in reading and ‘rithmetic, they won’t be studying history, health, civics, art, or any of  the other subjects that make a curriculum rich. Then realize that in lower performing schools teaching to the test consumes huge amounts of time all year.

R.T. Rybak: “We’re all in this together”

Here is the third clip from my recent interview with Mayor Rybak on the subject  of Local Government Aid.

We’re all in this together

Conflicted woman lands on feet

Many of you remember Chas Anderson, the former Deputy Commissioner of Education in the Pawlenty Administration who was tasked, among other things, with destroying  the teaching profession. She left the Pawlenty clan abruptly and somewhat mysteriously last fall in the closing months of the Gutshot regime.

She was tasked – or tasked herself – with one last mission: hiring herself as a consultant. The state’s Management and Budget Office found that Anderson had violated conflict of interest rules, but that she had not defrauded the state. Perhaps because the contract was never performed.

I did not realize until recently, however, that Anderson has popped up in government again. She is now MIchael Brodkorb’s doppelganger in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Her title is the Executive Director of the Majority Caucus.

She is joined at the hip House by David Strom, formerly of the Minnesota Taxpayer’s League and the Minnesota Free Market Institute, a “Research Consultant” for the Republican Caucus. As is Davey’s wife, Margaret Martin, also listed as a “Research Consultant.”

All four are no doubt unalterably committed to reducing public employment.

Update: But it happens in Wisconsin, too.

Cheating is fundamental

For all the talk of "accountability" from the education deformers you'd think they'd be all over the latest scandals surrounding standardized testing and the deformer in chief Michelle Rhee. But of course accountability is for the little people - teachers - not the leaders. I defy anyone to peruse the Twitter feeds, for example, of 50Can.org's Marc Porter Magee, or Vallay Varro of MinnCan for even a mention of the scandals unearthed by USA Today. But you can save your time - you won't find any.

Mayor Rybak talks about cities of the First Class

Cities of the First Class

In the second part of my interview with Mayor Rybak, he discusses how the proposed cuts to certified LGA for 2011 affect only the cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth.  Rochester slipped the noose by choosing 1998  - even though it’s 2011 – as the year to determine which cities receive the “first class designation.” This from Minnesota House Research:

"They ruined our neighborhoods with integration"

Who would say such a thing? George Wallace, decades ago at the schoolhouse door? Haley Barbour, who doesn't think segregation was all that bad? Scott Walker, working hard as Milwaukee County Executive to stop transit that might change the most segregated city in the country?

Wrong. It was Minnesota State Senator Dan Hall, a Republican legislator from Bloomington. And he said it on the floor of the Minnesota Senate. And right before he uttered those words, he said, "I watched Minneapolis get destroyed, so I not only didn't want my kids in the school system. I took them out of Minneapolis..."

But not to worry. Senator Hall isn't the racist those remarks might suggest. Because immediately afterward he clarified everything by assuring us that (we kid you not), "My best friends are minority."

Full story at MnIndy.

Art of the day

Click here for explanation and credit.

This is the original

Financial wizardry

Remember the brouhaha about how the Wisconsin State Capitol was going to require $7.5 million after those thugs demonstrated in it in February and March? Why, Mitch was apoplectic about it. Newspapers reported about it. We heard that the damage was so bad that the Department of Administration said it could cost between $60,000 and $500,000 just to assess the building's condition, let alone repair it. GOP bloggers used it to show how disrespectful the thugs were.

The underlying calculations for that amount have now come out, and the documentation is impressive. A detailed description of the actual damages, the tasks to be undertaken to restore the beautiful building, cost breakdowns that would satisfy the most exacting of state auditors, you would assume. After all, it's taxpayer dollars we're talking about and we cannot squander them or be anything but absolutely correct in our calculations here. Accuracy and transparency above all, right? These people work for the administration charged with saving the Wisconsin budget, right? They would never base their claims on incorrect dollar amounts or shoddy estimates, would they?

Of course they would. The estimate is based on a single piece of paper. With three dollar figures on it. A better copy can be found here, but I usually require a more detailed estimate for a clogged drain.

Bonus Drinking Liberally tonight!

There's a fifth Thursday in March; you have one extra opportunity to make it to Drinking Liberally this month. Don't blow it!

We don't have a guest tonight, so there will be plenty of chance for conversations about all things politic, and probably some things impolitic, too.

We'll be at the 331 Club in Minneapolis from six to nine PM. See you there.

Mayor R.T. Rybak discusses the tragedy of dependence

Here’s part one of my interview with R.T.Rybak on the subject of Local Government Aid – LGA.

The tragedy of dependence

“Certified LGA,” incidentally, means the amounts were promised to the cities so that they could base their 2011 budgets on the amounts they were going to get. Note that only Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth are slated to have cuts to their certified LGA figures. All other cities receiving LGA, including Rochester, which only by a legislative sleight of hand was saved from a “city of the first class” designation, won’t have their 2011 LGA cut.

There will be more clips from the interview in coming days. Watch for them.

There's a hole in the bucket

At Fukushima, that is:

The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.

 But don't worry; the core will probably only come out like lava, not in a big explosion or anything.


CNN/Getty Images photo

Kurt Zellers channels Karl Rove

From a Hot Dish Politics story:

House Speaker Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, said they are offering innovative solutions that aren't easily calculated by the budget office.

When most of you read that, I suspect it made you think of this:

[W]hen we act, we create our own reality . . .  .

The quote is attributed to Karl Rove, spoken to Ron Suskind in the early, heady days of the Bush II reign.


Kurt's problem is, of course, that Governor Dayton prefers to live in the reality-based community.


Be sure and read the next post from Rob: Cheering on Minnesota's education apocalypse.

Cheering on Minnesota's education apocalypse

Is there anything more pathetically saddening than watching plutocrats take apart the Minnesota education system in one legislative session? The lies and misinformation that brought us the Teach For America Enabling Act earlier this session were bad enough when proposed by Republicans, but when they were embraced by Democrats and our "liberal" governor it signaled the beginning of the end of education as we know it Minnesota.

Now with the legislature set to pass bills that remove teacher tenure and tie teacher salaries and retention to their students' test scores the end is nigh. Good, experienced teachers will be leaving the profession in droves. Many are set to retire anyways - this will just hasten the departure of our most seasoned professionals, to be replaced by poorly trained and ill-equipped Teach For American recruits.

Education in Minnesota is being converted into a free-market paradise where instructors are no longer professionally trained careerists, but where they instead are turned into just another commodity, pushing the latest new fad, until they hustle onto real careers where they actually have a chance at making a living and being respected. Minnesota is already home to some of the worst charter school disasters in the nation, and inner city children of color have been disproportionally hurt by the movement.

Once - a long time ago - a Democratic governor called this the "Brainpower" state. That might have sounded a little goofy but it expressed our serious attitude toward education. Today's education discourse and legislation can only be described as insane, based as it is on numerous false premises, delusions, and outright lies. News stories that put the lie to the rationales given for education deform are by now routine. Everyone who cares to know has already learned that teachers are their least effective in their first few years, after which most TFA recruits leave the profession. We are literally getting the worst years of their lives.

Our best scholars have already shown that it is pure folly and statistical heresy to try and ascribe student test score gains to individual teachers, yet we are on the brink of doing just that. We're even going to be inventing all kinds of other ways to "rate" teachers whose subjects aren't amenable to standardized testing, from art to phys ed. Standardized testing, far from being a reliable way to even judge students, let alone their teachers, has become a racket, a big con.

Each day brings new stories describing inventive methods of test cheating. Whole states have made tests easier to pass, creating highly educated students out of thin air. Districts touted as demonstrating the success of intensive testing have proven to have changed answers on student tests on a massive scale. There is a reason for this: When test scores are elevated from being a diagnostic criteria for students into a policy tool they are utterly corrupted, as demonstrated by Campbell's Law.  When the pay and careers of education professionals are tied to student test scores, those scores will increase. But increases in test scores are not the same thing as increases in learning.

Amazingly policy makers - and education writers - in Minnesota seem immune to such knowledge, despite its repeated validation. There's a name for people who pretend to rely on numbers yet refuse to admit ones that don't fit their theories: hypocrites. When the outcome of their sophistry directly degrades the education of a state's students they are unforgivable.

The changes being made ensure a slow-motion destruction - it takes 13 years to educate a child - but when it hits the time will be well past to undo the damage. Meanwhile the plutocrats who birthed this destruction will be cheering it on, pretending like this is a great victory for the children, when it is the exact opposite. When did it become okay for leaders of the state's largest philanthropies, and I use that word lightly, to design and lobby for systems of education - using tax-exempt money -  that eviscerate teaching and schools? They are accountable to no one yet wield incredible power. Somewhere long ago we passed a hazy yellow line delineating the difference between what a quality education really entails and what suits the plutocrats.

Now in the public mind it is the teachers themselves holding back the students, not the grinding poverty and racial isolation experienced daily by the state's least fortunate citizens. It is insanity on a mass scale perpetrated by self-absorbed baby boomers who refuse to listen to logic, reason, and scholarly research. But what do they have to worry about? By the time the destruction is recognized they will be long gone with their golden parachutes and winter homes in Florida, and the future children will be left to pick up the pieces and try to rebuild a once-great education system in what used to be called the nation's brainpower state.

Joe Bageant, RIP

I read at A Tiny Revolution that Joe Bageant, a very funny and insightful author and social critic, died after a battle with cancer. The book that introduced me to Joe was Deer Hunting with Jesus. He wrote some great essays, too, including What the Left Behind Series Really Means. Here's the opening paragraphs:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again." 

-- From Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."

-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series

By Joe Bageant
That is the sophisticated language and appeal of America’s all-time best selling adult novels celebrating the ethnic cleansing of non-Christians at the hands of Christ. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of the last book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing, and publish it across the Middle East, Americans would go beserk. Yet tens of millions of Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower. Jesus -- who apparently has a much nastier streak than we have been led to believe -- merely speaks and "the bodies of the enemy are ripped wide open down the middle." In the book Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted corpses of men and women and horses" Even as the riders’ tongues are melting in their mouths and they are being wide open gutted by God’s own hand, the poor damned horses are getting the same treatment. Sort of a divinely inspired version of "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

 Great stuff.

Linda Runbeck: Grifter Princess II (with numbers)

Spot asked a good question: how much do the cities in Linda Runbeck's district contribute to the state tax coffers?

It's an important question to ask. Linda Runbeck is delivering an increase in Local Government Aid to her district while slashing LGA for the economic engines of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth.

Two cities in Runbeck's district are certified to receive LGA in 2011, Circle Pines and Lexington. Circle Pines is scheduled to receive $233,811 in 2011. This is a 15% increase over 2010's certified amount, and a nearly tenfold increase over what they actually received ($27,244) in 2010.

If the property tax "reforms" proposed by Runbeck pass, she'll succeed in simultaneously delivering a windfall to her district while obliterating the cities.

Lexington, another city in Runbeck's district is certified for $382,922 in 2011. The tax bill preserves the 2011 certified amounts for suburbs. This means that Lexington would see an increase in 2011 from what they received in 2010 ($296,869). This is quite a windfall for the cities in the district of the legislator who charges that LGA creates "dependency" and needs to be axed.

Last week, Mayor R.T. Rybak argued that Minneapolis contributes an enormous amount to the state tax coffers. Rybak stated that Minneapolis contributed $367.5 million more to state coffers through sales and business taxes than it received in LGA. This figure was confirmed by Poligraph.

Looking at just sales tax revenue ($380 million), before any cut Minneapolis would receive about 23 cents in LGA for every dollar contributed to the state through sales taxes. How does this compare to the cities in Runbeck's district?

According to the most recent sales tax figures from the Minnesota Department of Revenue, Circle Pines (FIPS code 11494) contributed $665,744 in 2008 Sales Tax, Lexington (FIPS code 36836) returned $1,054,128 in 2008 Sales Tax. This means that Circle Pines will get back around 35 cents in LGA for every dollar in 2008 sales tax paid. Lexington will get back 36 cents in LGA for every dollar in 2008 sales tax paid.

Of course, that's not the whole picture - Runbeck is cutting Minneapolis's LGA allocation by 25% in 2011, and eliminating it by 2015. EDIT: This cut is from the paid 2010 amount for 1st class cities. This means that with the planned cut, Minneapolis would receive $48,601,701 in 2011 LGA, compared to the certified 2011 amount of $87,540,435 - a cut of nearly $40 million in 2011 alone. In 2011, Minneapolis would receive 12.7 cents in LGA per dollar in sales tax paid, just more than 1/3rd the rate of the cities in Runbeck's district.

The two cities in Linda Runbeck's district not only get LGA at a higher rate of sales tax paid under current law, but under her changes, they will get LGA at a rate double what Minneapolis gets, as measure by LGA/Sales tax paid.

Oh, and there's a provision to approve a TIF district in Lino Lakes thrown in for good measure. Cuts for thee, but not for me, indeed.

Spot adds: You will also be interested in the first post in the Grifter Princess series, and Aaron's post that inspired it: Screw the cities.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Koch and Kiff: "cuts for thee, but not for me"

Amid all the negative things you hear about schools, and cutting school funding, and bringing those darn teachers in to line, it is really nice to see some legislators are trying to help schools. Sen. Amy Koch and Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer, specifically.

What? You can read more in the Strib story here.

Well, they are schools in Koch and Kiffmeyer's own districts. Somebody else's schools? Heaven forfend! Both bills are very short, so short they fit nicely in the space provided here. First, here's Kiffmeyer's bill.

The purpose of this bill is to allow the Elk River district to take money out of its "debt redemption" fund and put it in the operating fund.

Why is this necessary? Because the district can't make ends meet on the per pupil funding from the state, of course.

But won't that result in the district being short of money to pay the debt for capital improvements? Well, probably, but that's where Amy Koch  -- who also represents part of Elk River school district -- rides to the rescue.

According to the Strib article:

One of the bills, which has been introduced on behalf of Elk River and several other districts, would award Elk River more than $7 million a year until the building bonds are paid. That would lower the percentage of the district's property tax revenues that go to debt repayment, bringing it to the metro average. Other districts that would benefit from that bill include Farmington, St. Michael-Albertville, Eastern Carver County, and Centennial, district officials said. [Elk River Superintendent] Bezek acknowledged that the bill's chances to become law are probably slim.

Kiffmeyer's bill has a companion of sorts in the Senate, authored by Sen. David Brown, SF 475. Brown is also a coauthor of the Koch bill, reproduced above.


The practical effect of this little legislative chicanery play is to subsidize the operating budget of Elk River's schools, and a few others in Republican districts, but not other schools uniformly. And it does so in a way that permits the schools to use money initially levied for capital investments for operations. If you have it.


Operational starvation comes to Elk River schools as well as, say, Minneapolis schools, on the per pupil formula, but we'll figure out a way to help the schools in Koch and Kiffmeyer's districts - and Pat Garafalo's, too, incidentally - but certainly not in Minneapolis.


Republican legislative leaders obviously recognize the inadequacy of education funding, but seem only willing to address it in weasely ways for favored districts. Disgusting.


A thump of the tail to Two Putt Tommy for the link to the Strib story.