OccupyMN Day One Photos

If you weren't able to be there yesterday, here are some photos of the first day of OccupyMN. Spot was there too with the videocamera and interviewed lots of interesting folks. Watch for more video coming soon, but here's something to whet your appetite.

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The tragedy of sexual addiction in the evangelical community

Horniness is next to Godliness

That, at least, is the finding of Ted Roberts, who has conducted in depth, um, research on the subject, which is reported in the Minnesota Christian Examiner. Here's a little about what Ted has been up to:

For the last three years, he has been leading Pure Desire full time. Roberts and his wife, Diane, are coming back to Woodland Hills [an evangelical church in St. Paul] in October to facilitate a two-day seminar called PDMI-University.

That gave you a start, didn't it? Ted's mission (almost wrote missionary!) position, though, is to root out sexual addiction wherever it may be found. Based on his research, he's got a lot of rooting to do. According to Ted:

“I do clinical counseling with church leaders and found that 58 percent of pastors are sexually addicted,” Roberts continued. “Teenagers just 17 years of age are the primary users of pornography, and their first exposure on the Internet is at 10 years of age. Statistics show that 75 percent of high school seniors have had intercourse. To address this, we have worked closely with a teen group and developed material that they relate to and that they found helpful. It is called ‘Top Gun.’”

That teenage boys "use" pornography as opposed to just "look" at will come as shattering news to most evangelicals, I suppose.

You can also bet that preachers are going start getting some hard-eyed stares from their evangelical congregants. If you have a church with two pastors, according to Ted, chances are . . . .

Anyway, hat's off to Ted for his important work. Godspeed, Ted.

Update: Fixed the name reference.

Joel Adkins, come on out!

Joel's Galileo moment

For a debate on the marriage discrimination amendment referendum. Adkins is good at bombast in the newspaper, all right, but I doubt he can defend his side in a genuine debate; he says he's all about the public square. Let's see if he really is.

I'll bet there are any number of cable television public affairs producers in the Twin Cities who would give Adkins and a theologian who opposes marriage discrimination an entire hour. Heck, I'd even do it. Frankly, it's not that hard.

You can only maintain Biblical fiction for so long, and then even the clerics have to recognize, well, the truth.

So, what do you say, Joel? Give it a shot?

Going the Star Chamber one better

MNO called my attention to a post by law professor Jonathan Turley on the assassination -- let's call it what it is -- of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. Apparently, the hit list is made by a committee of unnamed "senior officials." The successful hit on al-Awlaki was, of course, greeted by cheers and clapping by the public, about which Turley says this:

The fear is that this is how the rule of law dies — to the cheers and thunderous applause of citizens.

It made me think of the old English institution, the Star Chamber, the camera stellata. You should go to the link and see a list of the luminaries who thought the camera stellata was a swell idea. Here's a little more about it:

The jurisdiction of the Star Chamber was as vague as its constitution. Hudson says it is impossible to define it without offending the supporters of the prerogative by a limitation of its powers, or the lawyers by attributing to it an excessive latitude. In practice its jurisdiction was almost unlimited. It took notice of riots, murder, forgery, felony, perjury, fraud, libel and slander, duels and acts tending to treason, as well as of some civil matters, such as disputes about land between great men and corporations, disputes between English and foreign merchants, and testamentary cases; in fact, as Hudson says, "all offences may be here examined and punished if the King will." Its procedure was not according to the Common Law. It dispensed with the encumbrance of a jury; it could proceed on rumour alone; it could apply torture; it could inflict any penalty but death. It was thus admirably calculated to be the support of order against anarchy, or of despotism against individual and national liberty.

But we've gone the camera stellata one better; our's can inflict the penalty of death. Neat!

Update: Here's how you get a seat in the Star Chamber.

What's one more ugly scar?

As Karl Bremer writes in Ripple in Stillwater, maybe this:

Once Klobuchar and Bachmann get their way [on the proposed new freeway bridge across the St. Croix River], river advocates everywhere should be on their guard. Despite the authors’ claims to have written a tightly drafted bill that will trash only the St. Croix River, the next time developers on any protected river want to change the rules of the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, they’ll merely have to point to the Klobuchar-Bachmann Boondoggle Bridge exemption and say “I want mine now.”

Bremer reports that Klobuchar defends the bridge because of the King power plant is in the vicinity, anyway, so what's one more scar? Karl notes the irony in the fact that the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was adopted in part to keep more festering cankers like the King plant off of, well, wild and scenic rivers.

Klobuchar is said to have decided to support the bridge in part to "inoculate" herself against claims of being a tree and fish hugger if Bachmann decided to run against her. If that's true, it surely reinforces her reputation for timidity and her title as the Queen of Small Ball.

Just as Catholic as I wanna be

Every so often, the Strib will print a piece by a Catholic mouthpiece about how the gubmint doesn't allow people to be as Catholic as they wanna be, or conversely, that it doesn't want to make people Catholic enough. Sometimes, as in the case of the two linked op-ed pieces here, they will be published almost simultaneously.

In the first link, John Garvey, the president of Catholic University of America, whines about federal mandates for women's health care to be included in health insurance plans:

In a section of the Affordable Care Act that didn't get much public attention during the debates last year, Congress asked HHS to prescribe a list of "preventive services for women" that health-care plans across the country would have to provide to subscribers at no additional cost.

The regulations that HHS unveiled in August will require Catholic University, if it wanted to continue to make insurance available to its students, to offer coverage of sterilization procedures and prescription contraceptives, including pills that act after fertilization to induce abortions.

I won't tarry to quibble with Garvey about whether the morning after pill induces abortions -- it doesn't -- but Garvey's protest that the Catholic church isn't trying to impose its morality on others is just -- I'm trying to think of a nice term -- hogwash. Forcing women to carry an unwanted pregnancy is about as big as they come in the imposition department.

Perhaps President Garvey will move out of the rectory or whatever presidential palace he inhabits and turn it into an orphanage. Then he might have a little more moral standing to make his argument. In fact, President Garvey, get a hold of me after you do that, and we'll talk.

And you do have to laugh a little because Garvey apparently has so little faith in his church's moral teaching that he is afraid that students would take advantage of the offered services.

By comparison, Joel Adkins' bombast about the Catholic church's desire to control the definition of marriage is refreshingly direct. Adkins is the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Catholic church in Minnesota. In other words, he's the Catholic church's chief lobbyist.

In a piece that sounds remarkably like Katherine Kersten (she's the wind bag beneath his wings!), Adkins argues for "traditional marriage" using words like timeless, false secularism, moral witness, and defense of truth. Adkins says his side is "true," but you will look in vain in the piece for why it is true.

And we won't be silenced, says Adkins. People are saying mean things about us. But do you have any idea how hard it is to get a Catholic clergyman to come out and debate this with you? I've tried (on any grounds, including religious doctrine); so have a lot of other people. Adkins bellows about the Catholic church's place in the public square, but all it seems to be able to do is lob vaporous letters over the fence.

Come out and debate, Joel Adkins, with someone like Episcopal priest Neil Elliot, the author of another -- and altogether better -- op-ed in the Strib addressing the same subject, but taking the other side. Until you -- or John Nienstedt -- are willing to do that, don't come crying about the public square.

When you come right down to it, the Catholic church's position rests on two things. The Books of Moses, which have all kinds of zany abominations and directives that churches have been picking and choosing since the church began, and the Apostle Paul, who was a great evangelist, but kind of a cranky misanthrope. Go read the second chapter of Titus, just by way of a simple example, if you don't believe me.

Finally though, like Garvey, Adkins falls back on the argument that the Catholic church isn't trying to tell other people what to do:

This is not a debate the church has chosen, nor is it an intramural conversation about church doctrine. The church is not telling anyone who they can and cannot love. After all, we are commanded to love everybody.

As I said: hogwawsh.

Cravaack wants wolf control after he voted to cut it

Isle Royale wolf print (next to size 11 boot)

Six months ago, Rep. Chip Cravaack voted to zero out the U.S. Department of Agriculture's wolf control program. Yesterday, Cravaack commended the Department of Agriculture for continuing to fund the wolf control program.

The wolf control program is part of the tricky balance in managing interactions between a top predator and humans. In the absence of the program, unless the timber wolf is delisted as a federally protected species, the State of Minnesota is unable to do anything to control wolves that harass or kill livestock. The timber wolf is scheduled to be delisted at the end of the year, which would allow Minnesota to create a similar program. But there's always a possibility that legal action will delay it, as it has before.

Unlike western states like Montana and Idaho where hostile state government officials are itching to declare war on wolves as soon as delisting occurs, there's hope for a more reasonable approach in Minnesota. Minnesota has more wolves, but more contiguous publicly-owned wilderness and less livestock in the area where the wolves live. The wolf control program and a state program that compensates people for wolf losses strike a balance between protecting wolves and protecting property.

This episode is particularly emblematic of how Cravaack operates. He loves to talk a tough game about how he is a spending hawk, but as soon as one of his cuts impacts the 8th district, he starts to whistle a different tune. Sen. Amy Klobuchar also voted for the continuing resolution that cut the wolf control program. But to her credit, she worked hard to pressure the USDA to continue the program.

This is the second time in a matter of weeks that Rep. Cravaack has seemingly forgotten that he voted to cut a program that he's expressing support for. Whether it's wildland fire fighting, cutting subsidies to small airports that serve his district, or a wolf control program, Cravaack cuts first and explains that he didn't mean to later.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

The Madness of Michele Bachmann: the book

Here's the promo video for the book that Avidor and I have been working on.



It will be released in December - it'll make a great gift.

Lee Camp: The cotton will pick itself!

Last Thursday, DL founder Justin Krebs and Laughing Liberally comedian Lee Camp were in town for the AFL - CIO Young Workers' Summit. They dropped by the 331 Club and Lee did some stand up for us. He's very funny, and here's a memory if you were there, and what you missed, if you weren't. It's about our own Tea Party Madonna (my term, not Lee's), Michele Bachmann.



I will probably put up another moment or two of Lee in coming days.

Bachmann's bloodthirst

This letter to the editor in the Strib would be a Spotty (tm) winner -- it's certainly good enough -- but it is not one that I wish I had written (a major Spotty (tm) criterion). It is regrettable than anyone had to write it. But here's Melissa Castino Reid's letter in the Strib, directed to Michele Bachmann:

I caught it on the news that you visited a meatpacking plant in Iowa last week and promised to reduce restrictions that ensure food safety, so that small businesses could create more jobs.

I am adamantly opposed to this idea.

According to CNN, the [recent] European outbreak of E. coli has killed 16 people; the New York Times reports an even higher number. To loosen rules for the meatpacking industry invites danger to innocent victims -- like my 4-year-old daughter, Rachel.

Thanks to E. coli, my daughter has lived in a hospital since June 11. Thanks to E. coli, she experienced acute kidney failure.

Thanks to E. coli, she has also suffered a stroke, resulting in a brain injury on both hemispheres. She has lost her ability to walk, talk and move in a normal way.

Before E. coli, she was a perfectly healthy, active little girl.

Thanks to E. coli, my husband and I have lived in the hospital, only leaving her side to work or to renovate our home for her return. (Thanks to E. coli, she's in a wheelchair.)

Our journey began at Children's Hospital in St. Paul early this summer. Because her kidneys failed, she endured 24/7 dialysis in her stomach for three full weeks. At that point, she could still speak.

One night, I noticed her tummy was so distended from dialysis, it pushed up into her lung cavity. She turned to me and said, "Mommy, I can't breathe."

No parent should hear such chilling words from their child.

Shortly after the dialysis ended, the nephrologists happily proclaimed that her kidneys had healed. Within days, both her brain injuries hit. Her EEG revealed lines as flat as notebook paper.

Thoughts of heading home to resume any normal summer activity vanished. By July 21, Rachel entered Gillette Hospital to undergo full rehabilitation.

Thanks to E. coli, Rachel has to relearn how to walk, talk, move her body, eat food and suck from a straw.

Rep. Bachmann: We must do the right thing. We have to hold companies accountable for the foods they produce.

From one mother to another, I'm asking you to reverse your campaign promise and err on the side of safety. For my child. For your children. For everyone's children. It's just that simple.

Melissa, please know that all of us are pulling for Rachel -- and a lot of us are praying for her, too. The brain is a marvelous instrument, especially at age four; it is capable of astonishing things; have hope, Melissa.

And as for you, Michele Bachmann, you poisonous acolyte for E. coli and the HPV, it's just a damn good thing that Dante didn't know you, or there would certainly be a new circle of hell with your name at the entrance.

Bachmann blames Obama for "Arab Spring"

You might think the title of this post is wrong; that it should be "Bachmann credits Obama for 'Arab Spring.'" Nope, she's aginnit. Kevin Diaz of the Strib reports that NBC cameras captured a true crowning moment in Bachmann foot in mouth disease. At a barbeque restaurant in the cradle of the American Revolution, Concord, North Carolina, Bachmann said:

“You want to know why we have an Arab Spring? Barack Obama has laid the table for an Arab Spring by demonstrating weakness from the United States of America. The Number One duty of the president is to be the commander in chief.”

Bachmann's saying that we should have had Moammar Gahdafi's back and defended his murderous, terrorist-sponsoring regime instead of organizing NATO airstrikes to prevent a massacre of civilians.

Bachmann is saying we ought to back the Bashar Al-Assad regime against the Syrian civilian uprising against oppression.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

For Bachmann the most apt analogy for the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, etc. is the collapse of the regime of Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1978. In her view of history we "didn't have the Shah's back," which then led to the rise of "radical jihad."

Of course, the rise of Al-Qaida doesn't trace back to Shiite Iran, but rather to Sunni Saudi Arabia. And if we're going to pick a President to tar with the rise of "radical jihad," we might as well pick Ronald Reagan for his support of the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. After all, that's where Osama bin Laden learned his trade.

You can't make this stuff up, and it would be precious if it came out of an eighth-grader's history report. But from a serious candidate for President, it's just insanity.

Perhaps most ironically, Bachmann's saying that our foreign policy toward the Middle East ought to look like Don Rumsfeld chummily assuring Saddam Hussein that his dispute with Kuwait is an internal affair. After all, anything to keep the dictators in power, right? Without dictators to keep the rabble in line, we'll have chaos!

By the time this is over, Michele Bachmann may not be electable as a candidate for the Lake Elmo City Council, let alone for the Presidency of the United States.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

King David with pom poms

The Bachmann campaign: a study in self-aggrandizement

Dump Michele Bachmann, your complete source for all your Bachamann-mania needs, has the text of a recent plea for -- what else? -- money by Michele hubby Marcus. Here's just the opening grafs:

Michele is the real deal.

Not only does she continue to inspire me every day with her strength, but she is the same woman of character as when I first met her 35 years ago. Michele is not your typical politician. She is not about climbing the political ladder for her personal benefit, or a popularity contest- Michele is a leader because she knows and believes Americans deserve better.

Let's take Marcus at his word that Michele has the same character she did thirty five years ago -- she probably does. Michele and Marcus met when Michele was fresh off her experience as a high school cheerleader.

No popularity contests involved there, nosiree. Let's face it, so to speak, her entire campaign is about the cult of personality, carefully, um, groomed. Bachmann is a witless Bible thumper whose claim to know what is best for the United States is theocratic and insane.

She's even got staffers comparing her to King David? Who's next? Moses? Jesus?

Drinking Liberally TONIGHT: September 29th

We'll meet at the 331 Club from six to nine PM as usual tomorrow night, September 29th. The 331 Club is at the corner of 13th and University Avenues N.E. in Minneapolis.

There will be some special guests arriving around eight: Justin Krebs, one of the founders of Drinking Liberally, and Lee Camp, a standup comedian who some of you know from his Moments of Clarity. I am not sure if the stage will be available for Lee to entertain us, but I'm trying to arrange that now.

Justin and Lee are in town for the AFL-CIO Young Workers Summit. You can read about the goals of the summit at the link.

Update: Here are three short video clips about collective bargaining brought to you by the AFL - CIO and Laughing Liberally. You might actually see both of Thursday's guests in one of them.

Further update: We do expect Justin and Lee to be part of an abbreviated program that will begin later than usual, around 8:30. Come earlier, though, and chat with the assembled.

ALEC's Lackeys: Who's the boss? edition

Previous installments of ALEC's Lackeys here on the Cucking Stool have focused on the legislators who are carrying the water for corporations. This edition turns its attention to the Minnesota-connected corporations who are members of ALEC or have been in the past.

ALEC is the embodiment of crony capitalism. Every state's delegation is co-chaired by a corporate member and a legislative member. The Minnesota State Chair of ALEC is currently Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer (R - Big Lake), "appoint[s] a Private Sector State Chairman to serve concurrently with the State Chairman. . . . State Chairmen duties shall include recruiting new members, working to ensure introduction of model legislation, suggesting task force membership, establishing state steering committees, planning issue events, and working with the Private Enterprise State Chairman to raise and oversee expenditures of legislative scholarship funds." Those legislative scholarship funds are corporate money raised to send legislators to the annual ALEC conference. Since they are "educational," they don't run afoul of state ethics laws that prohibit gifts.

Minnesota's corporate co-chair is Bloomington resident John Gibbs, Vice President of State Government Affairs for Comcast. He's well acquainted with Minnesota Republicans, having donated $18,000 to Republican PACs and federal candidates (including Erik Paulsen and Tim Pawlenty) over the last three election cycles.

But the area that has gotten the most attention recently is the connection between ALEC's corporate sponsors and model legislation that serves their interests. For example, I detailed the connection between ALEC, Altria/US Tobacco, and proposed changes to Minnesota's moist snuff taxation in August. In an August Twin Cities Daily Planet article, Rep. Kiffmeyer brushes off the connection between corporate members and influence on legislation:

Kiffmeyer bristles at questions about corporate influence on model bills at ALEC. She said it’s her constitutional right to associate with whomever she wants, and said it would be “anti-American” to exclude any one party. “You mean I actually talk to people in other states who are legislators. Oh my gosh, what a shock,” she said. “How terrible that I’m serving my district by getting more educated and informed, using my time to do so, and having it portrayed as somehow that’s abnormal.”

And, continuing the "I'm just talking to people in other states" theme:

Kiffmeyer said that hasn’t been her experience at ALEC. She said the conference included many more nonprofits than companies, and said she hasn’t seen any Minnesota companies present.

I'm sure it will come as a shock to Rep. Kiffmeyer how many large Minnesota companies have been involved over the last decade.

Present Members
UnitedHealth Group: Minnesota's largest publicly-traded corporation is a significant supporter of ALEC. It was Chairman level ($50,000) sponsor of the 2011 ALEC Conference and led a presentation titled "Medicaid Crisis in the States: Private Sector Solutions You Can Use" at the 2011 ALEC Conference. I'm sure that Sen. Hann got the notes from somebody.
Xcel Energy: Minnesota-based Xcel is one of many energy companies that support ALEC. 2011 Wisconsin Delegation co-chair Amy Boyer is a Wisconsin-based lobbyist for Xcel and Koch Enterprises.
Vogel Law Firm: Vogel is a law firm with offices in North Dakota, Moorhead, and the Twin Cities. Bismarck based partner Joel Gilbertson is the 2011 North Dakota Delegation Corporate Co-Chair.

Past Members
3M
Cargill
Hutchinson Technology
Schwan's
West Publishing

Rep. Kiffmeyer hasn't seen any Minnesota companies? C'mon.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Separated at Birth?

From the heralded "Separated at Birth?" series here at the Stool. Well, okay, I haven't done one for a while, and the best one is still the first one featuring Katherine Harris and Michele Bachmann, back in 2006. Two thousand and six? It seems like yesterday.

But this one is pretty good, I think.

That's Adam Sandler as Billy Madison.

And that's Rick Perry, fresh off his debate performance last week.

I heard this comparison floated somewhere on the 'net today, but I cannot even recall where. So my muse will remain, well, unheralded.

Somewhere out there

...Bradlee Dean is torn between his ego-driven joy at being profiled in the New York Times and his frustration that it's above the fold in the freakin' STYLE section.

Michele Bachmann's crony capitalism

This is what true opposition to crony capitalism looks like

Suddenly, cries of "crony capitalism!" are all the rage in the Republican primary field. While the provenance is a bit murky, Michele Bachmann's use of the term to pillory Rick Perry's association with Merck Pharmaceuticals seems to have started a Republican embrace of the term. Since then, Sarah Palin, John Boehner, David Vitter, and others have joined the bandwagon.

Crony capitalism has a long history in America, and Republicans are skilled practitioners of it. Bachmann's embrace of the term stings, and not just because of the obvious hypocrisy. Republican presidential candidates accusations of crony capitalism has gotten more media attention than the thousands who have gathered on Wall Street this week to truly protest crony capitalism.

The anti-corporate left has been vigorously opposing the increasing entwined political and business class for a very long time. Corporate media and corporate politicians have fastidiously avoided covering their protests and have consistently expanded their agenda of deregulation and corporate welfare. And now, after all this time, it's Michele Bachmann who grabs headlines with it? It burns, it burns!

Bachmann's latest j'accuse, branding President Obama a crony capitalist because a large investor in wireless startup LightSquared bundled contributions for Obama in 2008, is quite a case study. Philip Falcone, billionaire investor and hedge fund manager, is the investor in question. LightSquared is a 4G wireless startup that's had some trouble with the FCC because of possible interference between their network and GPS devices. Bachmann accuses Obama of leaning on the FCC to approve LightSquared's application, the FCC, the White House, and LightSquared all deny it. But the affair is much more than an "investor buys influence by donating to one party" story. It's a twisted narrative that starts and ends in Minnesota.

Philip Falcone's roots in Minnesota run deep. He grew up in Chisholm and became a star hockey player in high school who parlayed that into a scholarship at Harvard. He grew up poor, but has acquired  immense wealth through investing and his hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. He's a minority owner in the Minnesota Wild hockey team, and continues to donate to Minnesota political interests, including the Republican Party of Minnesota and Senator Norm Coleman. He made a big chunk of his money by shorting subprime mortgage bonds in 2007. And he's had a few run-ins with regulators. The SEC investigated Falcone over accusations a $113 million loan he received from Harbinger wasn't properly reported, and that Harbinger gave preferential treatment to some investors who wanted to withdraw funds during the financial meltdown. He sounds like just the kind of job creator that Republicans would want to protect from the grasping hands of financial regulators.

Falcone, like most Wall Street folks, has hedged his bets by spreading campaign donations widely among politicians of both major parties, though he is a "registered Republican." The recipient of his largesse? Everybody from President Obama to George W. Bush, from Norm Coleman to the Pro-Growth Action Team PAC. That's how crony capitalism works, it is a bipartisan enterprise where those who do business with the government seek to influence it.

Back to Minnesota, if there's one industry where Michele Bachmann should know about crony capitalism, it's the financial industry. She's carried more water for them on the Hill than Gunga Din, for God sake. A centerpiece of her "pro-growth" agenda is the repeal of the very tepid Dodd-Frank financial regulations. Not surprisingly, the financial industry is lining up to support Bachmann's presidential bid, an extension of their long-standing patronage of Bachmann's House campaigns.

It is the epitome of crony capitalism to deregulate very industry that's responsible for plunging us into a deep recession. It's even more jarring when you consider that of all the parts of this economy, it has been Wall Street that's received the most public assistance and is raking in record profits while Main Street suffers. Why do you think thousands have camped out on Wall Street this week to protest?

While it's offensive and ridiculous that Bachmann has gotten media traction with her "crony capitalism" charges, it's also an opportunity that progressives should seize. Cronyism is indeed rife in D.C., and that's a big reason for the American public's distrust of government. If we can't do a better job of articulating how the system is broken than a corporate shill like Bachmann, we're doomed to be ruled by people like her.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz


(Photo courtesy of Flickr user David Shankbone)

Garofalo appears in court on child neglect charge

Garafalo confers with counsel
Strib photo

It's the court of public opinion, of course, but that's still a court. The charge was laid, inter alia, in the Strib in an editorial on Sunday: The pass-along pain from school cuts.

Garofalo is a Republican member of the Minnesota House and served last term as the chair of the K-12 finance committee. He mounts his whining defense, Un-huh, don't look at me, in the Strib today.

First, the indictment:

In November, voters in just more than a third of Minnesota's 340 school districts will have school levies on their ballots. They'll be asked either to extend a previously approved tax or to raise property taxes to help local schools.

Traditionally, districts have used referendums to seek funds for buildings, special projects or other educational "extras.'' That's no longer the case.

A majority of the levies on ballots this fall would fund basics such as materials, books, technology and even teachers -- in other words, essential educational assets whose costs used to be covered by the state.

The growing dependence of schools on voter-approved dollars for basics demonstrates an ongoing problem in Minnesota.

The problem, quite simply, is Governor Gutshot and his merry band of Republican ideologues who have kicked the can of school finance -- and damn near everything else, too -- down the road for a decade.

And this absolutely takes the cake, also as recounted in the Strib editorial:

It's even more galling that some GOP lawmakers -- including Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, the chairman of the House Education Finance Committee -- have pledged to campaign against referendums, according to Minnesota Public Radio.

Here's Garofalo's stirring defense:

I am simply asking for accountability in this process. Even though districts are receiving $400, $500 and even $600 in per-pupil funding, some DFLers and district officials have falsely claimed that there were cuts, or that failing to pass a second increase in spending would result in cuts.

Accountability is a Republican synonym for "cut."

It isn't accountability you're after Pat. Two things of prime importance to Minnesotans: good schools and an affordable property tax burden. The Republicans took an extra shot at each this year, and Garofalo is justfiably worried about being fingered for the crime of damaging schools and raising property taxes.

Beth Hawkins at MinnPost also explains that Garofalo is being a bit of a manure spreader (the other post title under consideration) with his numbers. As with so many things with these can kickers, there is some accounting trickery involved. Particularly when inflation is factored in, it's no increase at all. (Please read Hawkins' article; it's too lengthy and too good to try to summarize.)

The other sweating defendant in the dock is the Republican Senate tax chair, Julianne Ortman, who was also out with her mea nota culpa in the Strib on Sunday. The thing that she doesn't want you to blame the Republicans for is the increase in local property taxes. Blame your local officials; we had nothing to do with it, squeaks Julianne! We're not cutting LGA! Except that the Republicans did cut LGA several years running, especially for cities "of the first class." Chanhassen, the site of Casa Ortman, is not a city of the first class.

Ortman is another of the bright lights in the Republican party who never heard of inflation.

Of course, there's also the little thing about getting rid of the homestead tax exemption. But I guess that's not the Republicans' fault, either.

With the delivery of property tax statements and the flurry of school district levies for operating funds, the not me act of Pat and Julianne won't play so well, except perhaps in the fat exurban districts where they live.

Swanson joins lawsuit against for-profit colleges

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson announced Thursday that Minnesota would join a lawsuit against Education Management Corporation, owner of local for-profit colleges Art Institutes International Minnesota and Argosy College. The lawsuit alleges that EMC illegally paid recruiters bonuses for the number of students they recruited and seeks repayment of over $11 billion in federal financial aid received between 2003 and 2011. Since the False Claims Act, which is the basis of the federal lawsuit, allows for triple damages, this is potentially a $33 billion lawsuit.

While Minnesota's portion of the lawsuit only adds a measly $1.3 million in claims to the suit, the role of state aid in the financial structure of the for-profit college industry is vital. Federal regulations state that no more than 90% of a for-profit college's revenue can come from Title IV federal financial aid or it can lose financial aid eligibility. The 90/10 rule, as it is called, is meant to prevent for-profit colleges from existing solely as financial aid mills, but the rule is riddled with loopholes. Rep. John Kline has spearheaded efforts to modify or repeal the rule from his perch as Chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee. 

For example, Minnesota State Grant funds aren't federal aid, so they don't count toward the 90% cap. That means that every state aid dollar that goes to a for-profit school allows them to take another 9 dollars in federal financial aid. Therefore, the $1.3 million that EMC received in Minnesota State Grant funds allowed them to receive another $11.7 million in federal aid funds without violating the 90% cap. That's particularly relevant, since Argosy (one of the colleges named in the lawsuit) reports all of their campuses together for the 90/10 rule. As of 2008, Argosy got over 82% of its revenue from Title IV. The Minnesota State Grant money comes in handy as Argosy approaches the 90% cap.

Also, some forms of federal student aid don't count toward the calculation. The biggest one is college aid for military veterans. Not surprisingly, this has meant an aggressive push by for-profit colleges to recruit veterans, since every dollar in college assistance means they can take 9 more Title IV dollars without violating the 90/10 rule. The Star Tribune reports that EMC's most recent securities filing showed that they received 90.3% of their revenue from federal aid. 

Swanson's choice to join the suit is especially important since Minnesota is one of the most generous states in subsidizing for-profit colleges with state aid programs. Hopefully it will shine a light on their dubious recruitment practices and the outsized debt burdens their students bear. And maybe, just maybe, it will lead Minnesota to reinvest in the public higher education system that's seen its funding slashed over the last decade.

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Senators like this, please

It's all over the place today, but if you hadn't seen Elizabeth Warren's very direct take on taxes and job creators, you needed to see it.

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