Left Side of Minnesota

MinnPost - So you think you know teachers

2011-04-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

MinnPost - So you think you know teachers

"Lets Have At It" Column from Brian Wojtalewicz

2011-04-26T17:36:00.000-07:00

Big Pharma Fraud - - Give Them More $?

Our legal team just finished helping our client, pharmacist whistleblower Stephani LeFlore of Minnesota, force her employer, CVS, the largest drug retailer in the country, to pay $17.5 Million of settlement on a Medicaid fraud False Claims Act lawsuit. Ten states and the federal government will be collecting $14,905,000.00 and the rest will be an award to Stephani and her attorneys for leading the government investigators to the fraud and helping them with the case.

This settlement is actually rather small compared to some of the settlements that the big pharmaceutical corporations have been paying. The largest so far has been $2.3 Billion paid by Pfizer for Medicaid and Medicare fraud. The year that Pfizer paid that settlement to the governments, it still showed a profit. In fact, its CEO took home a $15 Million paycheck for his excellent work. Do you get the picture, citizens?

A few years back when Congress added Medicare Part D to pay for prescription drugs on our seniors and disabled citizens, a key part of that law specifically prevented the government from bargaining against the drug corporations to get reduced prices on the drugs. Think about that - - the federal government is the largest single purchaser of drugs in the world, yet the Republican controlled Congress and President Bush, with the help of some Democrats, outlawed our government from bargaining for better prices!

It may get a lot worse. The latest push by the Republican leadership in Congress is to change the Medicare system to have Medicare provide vouchers to beneficiaries that must be used to purchase private health insurance, instead of Medicare simply paying directly for doctor or hospital charges. Medicare currently has an overhead rate of about 4%, while the private health insurers are usually over 30%. That 30% includes the obscene “salaries and bonuses” to CEO’s like Mr. Hemsley of United Health, who recently pulled in $47 Million for 2010. You still don’t get the picture?

Arsonists vs. Firefighters: Competing Narratives By: Carson Starkey

2011-04-24T18:30:00.001-07:00

I realize that I'm not the first person to ever express grudging respect for adversaries, political or otherwise. I also realize that I'm not breaking new rhetorical ground when I express grudging respect and simultaneously launch attacks on adversaries, political or otherwise. I just feel compelled to offer a metaphorical tip of the hat to America's conservatives based on the collective events of the past 2-plus years before I find myself doing ideological battle with those same Fox News viewers during the presidential campaign season of 2012. American conservatives are exceptionally successful and resilient large-scale public policy arsonists, and they deserve credit for their fanatical dedication to ideological goals. No matter what the short-term electoral outcomes are, no matter how disastrous conservative governance has proven throughout American history, red state voters control the national political and policy discourse in this country and they are far and away more successful at advancing their policy goals than liberals. This has been no trivial accomplishment, but rather a grueling, long-term magnum opus based on uncelebrated efforts of conservative activists for the past 30-40 years. Conservatives have made long-term investments that are now producing dividends. Conservatives have done and are doing what I believe is the most important work of any political/ideological movement. They are selling a successful narrative.

I make this admission as one of the more disheartened firefighters, and as such, I believe that makes the backhanded compliment all the more worthy of celebration for Republican Party voters, though I am more than willing to acknowledge that this blog will probably not attract any right-of-center readers. I can't compete with O'Reilly and Hannity, what with Fox News having a near monopoly on unvarnished lunacy.

As I was saying, America's red state voters should feel immense pride regarding their accomplishments since January 20th, 2009. Following the election of a Democratic president and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, conservatives have managed to control the national political and economic discourse, render health care reform, financial reform, and fiscal stimulus measures practically ineffective as matters of political weaponry (this despite the fact that such public policy achievements should have been used as Democratic campaign rhetorical weapons and occasions for significant liberal celebrations), bring the functions of government to a standstill whenever and wherever they choose, and win enormous majorities in state legislatures and governors' mansions in the 2010 midterms (crucial victories that will favorably influence redistricting, which will ensure structural Republican congressional/state legislature majorities across the country for decades to come). These accomplishments, combined with the conservative monopoly on the daily news cycle (Fox News and the Wall Street Journal are unmatched in their ability to disseminate high-quality, fear-based, shrill propaganda with megaphones that cannot be ignored.) and substantial conservative majorities within the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court built over the course of the past 30-40 years have made American conservatism stronger than Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan could have ever envisioned. The answer is no by the way, I won't stop there, no matter how uncomfortable I am with praising the disciples of Nixon and Reagan.

What's more impressive is the fact that conservatives have dominated the national political scene for the past 30-40 years despite the repeated and catastrophic failure of conservative public policies. Whenever conservatives govern, they govern badly, implementing public policies that create widespread human suffering, (astronomical deficits, unwinnable/unaffordable/unpopular wars, cartoonish law-breaking and corruption, economic and banking meltdowns that routinely demolish the American economy) and they do so without apology for their self-inflicted disasters.

Seriously...as a meaningful side note, when was the last time you heard a Fox News commentator or Republican elected official use the words "I'm sorry" in reference to their personal shortcomings? You'd have a better chance of locating a unicorn-leprechaun hybrid. Conversely, congressional Democrats and Barack Obama apologize like fat kids lose at dodgeball (often and badly).

At first glance, this sort of disregard for public opinion and fact-based reality should guarantee electoral defeat and public marginalization for the political offenders (Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, congressional Republicans). Quite the contrary. No matter how many times conservatives get caught by the voting public with buckets of gasoline and Zippo lighters, they consistently avoid harsh consequences (losing elections and control of the national political discourse) for their unrepentant sociopathic behavior. Knowing this, the current political landscape may appear bizarre and deeply counterintuitive, but make no mistake about how we got here. American conservatives owe their current success to effective narrative salesmanship.

An analogous counterpart for the contemporary American conservative movement is that of Toby Keith, by coincidence a devout conservative (professional buffoon) himself. Both are loud, shrill, socially worthless, profoundly bigoted, destructive when taken seriously, and extremely popular among significant portions of the American population. Both have found ways to marginalize more talented opposition (the Dixie Chicks really do write and produce better songs and liberal governance really does produce better economic results) through shameless, unrestrained self-promotion that consists of repeating easily disprovable nonsense and outright lies ad nauseam ("legendary talent of country music" and "fiscally conservative Real Americans" come to mind). Toby Keith and the conservative movement are shining examples of advertising triumphing over facts because both have worked harder at selling their narratives than their opposition

In all seriousness, Toby Keith is just awful, but that doesn't change the fact that conservatives control the direction of the national political narrative, regardless of electoral outcomes. Even when liberals win elections, they can't capitalize on short-term victories (2006, 2008), which means that they and their ideas remain outside of the national spotlight. Political victories and defeats in any representative democracy are fleeting, and those victories and defeats are and will forever be the products of successful or unsuccessful narratives that are sold to voters. Any public policy is the product of successful or unsuccessful narratives. Politicians and activists are eternally locked in ideological battles, selling their narratives and attempting to discredit the opposing narratives. The success or failure of various narratives, not the isolated and alternating outcomes of elections, determines the long-term trajectory of public policy in a given society. Those public policies in turn create and define broad socioeconomic realities. Elections, politicians, and personalities have a relatively short life-cylce in any given society, but the life-span of successful narratives can (and I would argue should) be exponentially longer and have greater social impact than any one person's time on this planet. I genuinely believe that a bumper sticker is needed at this point. "Candidates come and go. Narratives are forever." I would ask that the good people of De Beers and Ian Fleming's estate not attempt to file a lawsuit against me. There's nothing to take and the publicity would only encourage me.

Liberals have been slow to acknowledge these realities for the majority of the post-Reagan Era. That's why we, the firefighters, have been losing so many public policy battles to the arsonists, for so long. That's what makes this sort of analysis so painful and embarrassing. While we've been busy taking baby steps (MoveOn.org, parts of HuffingtonPost, DailyKos, Firedoglake) and reading the NY Times, Fox News enthusiasts have swamped Congress and dozens of state legislatures with merciless attacks against Medicaid, unemployment insurance, collective bargaining rights, public education, infrastructure, and progressive taxation. Along with their overwhelming majority advantages in state legislatures, conservatives have created national propaganda behemoths in talk radio, the Wall Street Journal, and the official communications outlet of the Republican Party, Fox News. That's how the arsonists made George W. Bush fire captain. What do we have to show on the opposite side of the aisle? If you answered "MSNBC," hand in your uniform and don't come back on Monday. You failed. Badly. What we need is a competing vision, our own, more compelling narrative if we're going to win and eventually control the national political discourse. I say that because I've grown weary of talking about how large the tax cuts for millionaires should be, how large the next Department of Defense supplemental spending bill should be, and how much money should be cut from Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Once again, I know that I'm not breaking any new ground with those last two sentences, but liberals have an overwhelming responsibility to take that message seriously and deliver that message with intensity if we're ever going to have a meaningful social safety net in America, a balanced budget, or a decade without multiple military invasions/occupations. There's a fundamental difference between Jonathan Cohn telling us to find a liberal analogue to Paul Ryan for the sake of a proper debate (http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/86527/ryan-medicare-deficit-schakowsky-liberal-alternative) and actually providing the necessary material for that debate. Glenn Greenwald couldn't be more right. Liberals have to inspire fear in their elected officials in the same way that conservative elected officials fear their base (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/05/democrats) if we're ever going to see future policy victories AND defend those victories against inevitable, sustained conservative attacks. As I hinted at earlier, Huffington Post isn't doing enough on a regular basis to satisfy my fix for sound public policy, but RJ Eskow is part of the solution in this instance (http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011041409/why-progressives-keep-losing-and-right-keeps-winning). Our alternative and far more popular, more effective, more compelling narrative has to become conventional wisdom if America is ever going to see prosperity in the 21st century. This is a problem for the obvious reason that conservatives seem hell-bent on keeping us mired in the 19th century.

Before you run out the door to campaign for (insert generic Democrat's name here) over the course of the next 18 months, remember that the message you spread should consist of something more than just candidate name-dropping and meaningless platitudes about Social Security and local government aid. Your narrative should be our narrative. That narrative matters a great deal more than any single individual candidate or any single, short-term election. That narrative should advance your goals (our goals) long after 2012 and Barack Obama's time in the White House. In the spirit of meaningless platitudes, victory often goes to the side that works the hardest. Think about that the next time you see Harry Reid and Barack Obama apologizing for some unexplained reason at a press conference while simultaneously agreeing to tax cuts for millionaires. Then think about what a successful press conference should look like before you turn the channel to Fox News to see the answer. Yeah, I know, right...kind of makes me want to write an angry letter to (insert generic Democrat's name here) and campaign as well.

There are not two equally compelling narratives. Liberals have a dream. Conservatives have a nightmare. Go forth and make the sale.

Related video: Bill Maher has my back on the importance of forming and standing by ideological narratives. "Republicans stand by their convictions...stupid, ignorant, world-destroying convictions based on disproven economic fantasies and ancient books full of primitive morality and magic people, but convictions nonetheless."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/video/item/bill-mahers-new-rule

Brian Wojtalewicz with this weeks Lets Have At It.

2011-04-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

4-19-11

Pay, Shut-Up and Take It

Did you enjoy paying your taxes? You’ll be comforted to know that by conservative estimates the Wall Street mega-banks and hedge funds are using tax loopholes to evade over $100 Billion in taxes via off-shore accounts. This is just one part of the tax avoidance and evasion schemes that too many large corporations enjoy.

The right-wing’s leading financier and cheerleader, Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, the Fox Network and the Wall Street Journal, recently enjoyed a tax rate of 6%. Investigations have revealed that he has at least 152 off-shore accounts in his empire. The result? Ordinary citizens like you have been paying more taxes to keep basic government services solvent.

Democratic senators in Washington, D.C., led by Levin and Obama (when he was a senator) introduced a new law to try to close these off-shore tax loopholes for the mega-corps. They have gotten nowhere so far.

Instead, Republican Congressmen Boehner, and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, cheered on by Fox News mouthpieces Limbaugh, Hannity and O’Reilly, believe the solution is to cut even more funding for our nursing homes, hospitals and medical coverage for the working poor. Their latest effort is to cut Medicare by handing our Medicare dollars to the private insurance industry, on the theory that they’ll run it so much more efficiently! The last I checked, the Medicare system’s overhead is about 4%, while the private health insurance industry’s is over 30%. Sound like a good move to you?

It is certainly a move that a guy named Steve Hemsley, the CEO of United Health has been lobbying for. United Health is the largest private health insurer in the nation, and Hemsley’s income for 2010 was a measly $48.8 Million. This news recently came with a private industry spokesman advising us chumps that Hemsley was actually underpaid compared to other execs in his industry! But hold on, Bubba, don’t get into “class warfare” and start demanding a tax rate on these greedmongers that would be equal to the tax rate their ilk paid back when Eisenhower, Johnson, Kennedy and Nixon were president. Just be a good little propagandized boy and girl -- shut up and take it.

Brian Wojtalewicz With this weeks Lets Have at it Column: Stupid Politics

2011-04-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

Several people who are very close to me have strongly suggested that I should avoid the “S” word in my columns, but stupid is the truth. “Ignorant” isn’t appropriate; ignorant people do dumb things because they don’t know any better. A good number of American voters fall into this category. However, many of those with their hands on the power levers in St. Paul and Washington, D.C. right now are acting just plain stupid.

By the time you read this, those in Washington, D.C. hopefully would have come to their senses and not shut down the federal government for the sake of denying a very tiny part of the federal budget to Planned Parenthood. Shutting down hundreds of thousands of federal jobs, and stopping paychecks for those families, is not only a crisis for citizens, it is also extremely dumb. You climb out of depressions or deep recessions by creating new jobs, not ending jobs.

The best possible way to create jobs is spending on infrastructure: repairing or replacing the deficient bridges, roads, school buildings, sewer and water systems that have been neglected for too long. The American Society of Civil Engineers has pointed out that 72,000 bridges in this country are too old or “structurally deficient.” The Association of State Dam Safety Officials reports that there are 4,400 dams in this country that are susceptible to failure. The Washington Post recently reported that, “It’s cheaper to strengthen a bridge that’s standing than repair one that’s fallen down.” As my kids were so fond of saying to me: “Dah!”

I keep hearing: “The government has to learn to live within its means.” What “means” are you talking about? The income tax rates, particularly for the wealthiest in our society, were at much higher rates during the presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Carter. We had huge expansion of the middle class and our economies in those years. If we had those rates back again now, the current crises would be extremely more manageable. We wouldn’t be talking about closing small nursing homes and hospitals in Minnesota, slashing medical care for the poor, jacking up property taxes, and continuing with the Pawlenty-style ignoring of our crumbling infrastructure. And consider that borrowing now for infrastructure is a good deal because interest rates are so low. Where were the right-wing complaints when we borrowed at higher rates for billions to start a war against a country that never attacked us - Iraq?

This is a needless crisis brought on by needless greed. If the right-wing is successful in their mission, this will shred our American society even worse than it is now.

Brian Wojtalewicz

They Read It On the Internet

2011-04-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Its pretty frustrating what some people believe. No scratch that. What a lot of people believe. The other day while walking in the local Wal-Mart, I was approached by a man that I used to work with. He greeted me. We made small talk and after he saw my DFL sweatshirt he told me he was an independent. It was at that point he launched into his "Obama wasnt born in America, and is a socialist," rant. I tried to bring the conversation to a higher level like you know, actual policy debate to no avail. He assured me he does a lot of research, and reads a lot. On the Internet.

Another friend recently posted on his facebook that Pres Obama wanted to freeze the pay of the military in his budget. It was a blatantly false accusation that has been widely proven wrong. I used my trusty Snopes to debunk his claims. I had no idea until my friend pointed out that Snopes has a liberal bias. (this is because they point out 2+2=4 when conservatives say 2+2=5) Sure enough I googled it and several sites told me that Snopes was indeed a left wing shill. Of course it was all very right wing sites that pointed this out, and several of them bloggers that no doubt have really studied this...on the internet.

The right for years has made a cottage industry out of making false accusations and perpetuating lies. They have been masterful to discredit anyone that factually corrects them. A college professor teaches economics or public policy and it doesnt square with conservative ideology, well then naturally Universities are a haven of socialism. Not only that they continue to make fun of anyone holding an advanced degree and continue a war on education at all levels. The media reports stories and conducts journalism that flies in the face of their ideology and naturally the media has a liberal bias. This started decades ago but was brought to a new level with shout radio. With the advent of FAUX "news" they reached even more people. But now they have surpassed their wildest dreams through chain emails on the internet.

The large D Democrat in me says go ahead, keep talking about the Pres. being born in Kenya and socialism and we will kick your ass in 2012. Go ahead nominate Bachman or Palin, we'd love it. But the small d democrat in me is disgusted by all of this. Dont tell me that Obama care is socialism, tell me why you think its a bad idea to insure more people and how creating health insurance buying pools (once a Republican idea until Obama liked it) is a bad idea. As a liberal we are constantly trying to raise the level of debate. We are the policy wonks that want to discuss in depth the economic history of America in relationship to tax rates. We want to talk about the science that over 97% of earth scientists are in agreement over. But we find ourselves only debating with ourselves. The other side doesnt believe in science, history or economics. They know better because after all they read it on the internet.

Paul Schwarz

Public Launch of Left Side of Minnesota

2011-04-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here we go folks we are going public! Brian Wojotalewicz is an attorney and DFL District 20 chair. Carson Starkey is an activist, Iraq war vet, and Law Student. We are also looking for more contributors and suggestions on improvement. Thanks and we hope to start bringing progressive thinking back to Western Minnesota.

Paul Schwarz
Editor Left Side of Minnesota

Living In A Post-Factual World (The Post-Factual Zone)

2011-04-05T06:51:00.001-07:00

For the past two years, I have been encouraging friends and acquaintances in general to turn off all forms of passive entertainment (television, radio, Interweb Google machine, iPod) and to sit down in a noise and interruption-free, serene environment, so that they might consider for several minutes the contemporary state of American socio-economic/political discourse. More accurately, I have been encouraging friends and acquaintances to consider the absurdity of the above-mentioned discourse and how such absurdity has come to be accepted as normal now that we all live in a post-factual, Fox News-created bizarro universe.

For the past 3 years, (since December 2007 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research) America has been mired in a savage recession that has destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, tens of millions of jobs, and pushed the world economy to the brink of annihilation. That recession, which shows no signs of ending anytime soon, is the product of 30 years worth of financial deregulation (conservative governance pet project), a toothless and cartoonishly inept federal regulatory structure (conservative governance pet project), voluntary ignorance on the part of conservative elected officials who chose to spend the better part of a decade illegally wiretapping American phones and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of brown people in Iraq and Afghanistan in a not-so-thinly veiled effort to appropriate fossil fuels, and obscene white collar crimes committed by ultra-conservative investment bankers and hedge fund managers (inevitable outcomes when conservatives are allowed to advance their pet projects in the course of governing).

The initial response to the conservative-manufactured economic catastrophe was to elect a slightly left-of-center African-American named Barack Obama to the White House and a slightly left-of-center Congress in 2008. This was entirely understandable given the fact that conservative governance had been exposed as a disgraceful failure for the umpteenth time in the past century. George W. Bush had scarred the Republican Party's brand in a way that only Herbert Hoover could understand over the course of 8 years. Americans had seen enough of deficit-exploding tax cuts for millionaires, endless, unwinnable, unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unapologetic law-breaking by incompetent Fox News enthusiasts in the Justice and Defense Departments.

The initial collective response made perfect sense. Surely conservatives, humbled by electoral defeats and nightmarish incompetence, would stand aside so that reasonable policy solutions could be crafted and used to solve the economic ailments that plagued the American body politic. Or at least that's what would have happened in a fact-based reality universe. Instead, Americans have spent the past 2 years watching a poorly-written John Milius movie unfold on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the airwaves of corporate talk radio, and (most significant) in the studios of Fox News. Conservative governance and public policy did not leave the room after they received a gentle nudge towards the door. Instead, red state America engineered a pathologically mendacious return to center stage and snatched the microphone away from their far more timid NPR-loving opposition.

Conservatives have worked with fanatical zeal to make governing impossible in the Obama presidency. They have turned the Senate filibuster into a weapon of mass obstruction, placing anonymous holds on all manner of presidential nominations. They have opposed ideas that they once supported (individual mandates in health insurance, cap and trade, immigration reform) prior to Barack Obama's arrival in the White House. They masterminded overwhelming electoral victories in 2010, seizing a majority of governors' mansions and state legislatures, by employing naked class warfare and appealing to hysterical, shrill white racism in ways that would have made George Wallace blush. And most of all, conservatives have used the perpetual bigotry and ignorance factory of Fox News to blanket American televisions with unending policy myths and head-scratching lies (death panels, ACORN conspiracies, Black Panther conspiracies, George Soros conspiracies, birth certificate conspiracies, Muslim Brotherhood conspiracies) that have made reasonable policy discussions unthinkable.

To summarize, conservatives have turned America into a place in which objective facts do not and cannot exist, because such facts would be evidence of liberal bias. The current state of affairs is the product of more than 40 years worth of conservative ideological machinations, with interns at the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Chamber of Commerce, and the American Enterprise Institute doing the heavy lifting. Long before George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck were spewing outlandish, easily-disprovable assertions on national television, speechwriters and media consultants for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were hard at work, attempting to put a friendly veneer on otherwise wildly unpopular policy ideas. Unaccountable presidential authority, bigoted attacks directed at non-whites, women, and homosexuals, and tax cuts for millionaires designed to undermine vital social insurance institutions have been normal conservative ideological cuisine long before Barack Obama's name was mentioned on the national scene. The fact that conservatives have taken a long view of electoral politics is obviously important in understanding how and why America ended up in its current state of economic pain. What's more important is the matter of how America will untangle itself from the web of conservative-produced lunacy in the future.

As we speak, conservative governance is still holding the microphone and is standing center stage, blasting audiences with high volume crack pottery. Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by pseudo-intellectual and faux deficit-hawk Paul Ryan, are promising to release 2012 budget proposals that privatize Social Security, eliminate Medicaid, and eliminate Medicare in the name of balancing the federal budget. There are problematic realities to confront in that Paul Ryan's proposals won't balance the federal budget (http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/03/paul-ryans-budget-doesnt-balance-the-budget/), result in increased taxes for almost all Americans with the exception of the wealthiest 10%, (http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/03/paul-ryans-budget-doesnt-balance-the-budget/), and will be laughably unpopular with the overwhelming majority of the American electorate (because nobody, not Republican or Democratic voters, are protesting government by burning their Social Security and Medicare cards). The mere fact that conservatives feel comfortable in putting forward such proposals should be alarming evidence of how disconnected from reality the American electorate has become in the past 30-40 years. Our post-factual society has allowed crazy to flourish, which means that there is a reasonable possibility that Americans will have to pay a heavy economic price for their poor electoral oversight if a President Romney, Palin or Huckabee finds his/her way into the White House in 2013.

So again, think about what that would mean. Consider the state of the American political discourse after the past 3 years. Conservatives destroyed the American economy, created two catastrophically unpopular, trillion dollar wars, and are now in the process of refusing to apologize for any of their prior mistakes. Their electoral platform has not changed at all, and they are promising to implement each and every single failed policy of the past 30-40 years. You would be hard-pressed to find a more confusing state of affairs anywhere in the world, short of Rod Serling rising from his grave and creating a spin-off of his earlier work. I tend to think that The Post-Factual Zone would not do well in head-to-head matchups with American Idol and Dancing With The Stars. Sigh...

Carson Starkey

Lets Have At It

2011-03-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

Adoring the Obscenely Rich

I’ve been fascinated for years about the fawning so many fellow Americans devote to the super rich. Regardless of why they are like that, I suspect it is at the root of much of our American decay. How else to explain how having the super rich pay a little higher percent in income taxes is “off the table” for one spectrum of our society. The idea that they will cut jobs, or refuse to hire further, if they kick in a little more to the community is ridiculous. Businesses small and large hire or cut based on how busy they are. I know, I’ve run one for over 30 years.

The super rich won’t fire or fail to hire if we force them to throw into the community a little more. They won’t cut their vacations or buy less either, they’ll just invest less. So the Wall Street firms will receive a little less. Go ahead, cry for them.

Robert Reich gave us a good angle to view part of the Wall Street greed machine recently. The top 15 hedge fund managers averaged $1 Billion for income last year (yes, with a B, and you used to whine about what the pro jocks pull down?). Reich points out that their fed tax rate is a measly 15%, the capital gains rate, much lower than the rate paid by yours truly and millions of middle and upper middle class Americans every year. Why? Because they paid enough politicians. If we forced these overpaid paper shufflers to pay the income tax rate applicable to the rest of us, the added revenue into our national community could finance 300,000 teachers per year.

Class war? There is no class war. The greedmongers among the mega-rich (not all of them are), with their right wing politicians and Fox media bootlickers, have already won. They’re just wiping out the stragglers by trying to kill the remaining unions. Keep tuned in America, and wonder in 10 years where your nation went.

Brian Wojtalewicz

(Editors note. Brian Wojtalewicz is an attorney and District 20 DFL District Chair. His column, "Lets Have At It," appears weekly in the Appleton Press)

Appleton, Minn.

Wisconsin and the larger picture

2011-02-21T21:11:00.000-08:00

Ok so a good topic to start back in the saddle of blogging is that of the protest in Wisconsin. I really see this as the front line on the assault on the middle class in this country. It might be a stretch and there is no direct correlation but I cant help but think about who the people are that support the Governor and his tea party cronies. These are the same people who don't want billionaires to pay their fair share in taxes, but want middle class workers to give up salary and pensions. In one case an EMT will now make $250 dollars less per month. To someone that makes 3 thousand a month, that's a lot of money. But yet the same people that think its ok to take the $250 a month away from that EMT felt it was wrong for us to ask someone making 300k a year to pay a 109 dollars a year more in income taxes...roughly the same rate they paid a few years ago. Yes we arent even talking about the same state here, or the same situation, but it goes to their state of mind. It really speaks volumes to me about what is really important to Republicans.

Getting Back to Blogging

2011-01-09T07:43:00.000-08:00

In the coming days, this blog spot will become a lot more active. I have several excuses, such as the election of 2010 getting in the way, as I was working for the DFL out here in the left side of Minnesota. In the coming weeks, I will introduce colleagues and friends from the political world that will share their thoughts on this blog. There will be content and design changes and hopefully this will grow into a blog for politics in the L. That area on the whole left side of Minnesota, and the southern quarter that make up the seventh and first congressional district, that forms the L and decides elections here in Minnesota.

Economy, Prison And The Blame game.

2009-09-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

Here in Appleton, the privately run Prison is loosing it’s inmates. Most are from the state of Minnesota, and the prison population is about one fourth of what it used to be. Understandably the staff at the facility are concerned, as there already have been lay offs. However, the puzzling thing to me is why so many are blaming our State Representative Andrew Falk.

I worked at the facility my self from 1993 until 2001. I first worked for PCF, and then of course I believe it was late 1996 when CCA took over. I became a sergeant, then assistant training manager, and then a vocational instructor. I also was the facility spokesperson responsible for dealing with the news media. I should also mention that since my time at the facility I have attended the University of Minnesota Morris for political science, and have worked for the DFL. Last summer, and the campaign of 2008, I had the privilege of working along side Andrew Falk. Enough time, (about 50 hours a week for months) to have lots of conversations and an ability to identify the kind of man he is. Let me put it this way. Taking into account all my experience as noted above, I believe Andrew Falk.

It was last winter, When Falk, and State Senator Gary Kubly had their Governors budget town hall meeting. The one here in Appleton turned into a prison meeting. Out of 150 or so there about 90% were prison employees. Some were angry at the two gentlemen hosting the meeting. That they were not able to wave their magic wand and make inmates from Minnesota stay at the Appleton Facility. The whole meeting had an eerie familiarity to one held in about 1995-1996. Then the subject was that of State Representative Chuck Brown’s bill, for the state to purchase the facility. (Even though it was only a ploy to get Minnesota to sign a contract with us) Prison management whipped employees into a frenzy and they were angry. They were angry at Chuck and ready to run him out of town. (He was not in attendance to defend himself) I could go into long detail about that whole deal, but that is the past. Suffice to say, the way everything shook out, it was discovered that Prison management lied to us, and Brown told us the truth. The real irony in this, right now, is there are those I have heard say around town, that if Chuck were still alive, and our Representative, we wouldn’t be loosing our inmates. As much as I dearly loved Chuck, and was an avid supporter of a man I thought of as friend and mentor, not even he could prevent this from happening right now.
After the meeting last winter, Andrew called me, and we talked at length about what next steps should be taken. He said that he already had a call into the Commissioner of Corrections office, and wanted a meeting. A meeting between him, the DOC, and CCA. It was later that we found out, that CCA was not in attendance. However I am not ready to put the blame there. I believe that even then CCA knew it was futile. Lets look at the real culprit.

To paraphrase James Carville and Paul Bagalla….”it’s the economy stupid!” In case folks don’t know, our state is facing the biggest economic challenge of its time. What is prevalent in any government budget crisis, is that of department heads circling the wagons, and putting on their best spin on numbers to hold their department as harmless as possible. In this case, the DOC is doing exactly that. We can argue until we are blue in the face that CCA can do it cheaper, but the DOC has presented its case that they can. It doesn’t really matter if it is true or not. However, when you think about it, it is true when they leave fixed costs out, and CCA includes them. The theory being of course, whether a state facility has inmates in it or not the state still owns it, so why figure that in. I know, I know, I am not saying I agree with it, its just that, that is what they are doing.
Another economic piece to it, is that with the current budget deficit, there are early releases into half way houses, and home monitoring, thus bringing inmate numbers down.
But here is the real thing that is going to sound cold. Its going to sound like I don’t care, but really I do. Here it goes. Why should Appleton be any different? I mean so our state Representative goes down to St. Paul, (remember budget is already set, and they are not even in session) and says to the 133 other state Reps, “hey we have to send inmates to Appleton so they don’t loose jobs.” At that point the Rep from where Medtronic resides tells of that companies layoffs. Then the Rep from N.W. Minnesota tells of the layoffs at Caterpillar, and another tells of the layoffs at Arctic Cat. The bottom line is this. Every single state Rep in Minnesota has at least one company that is laying off workers, as well as schools, units of government, and non profits that are also loosing and laying off workers. Every single state rep and Senator, Republican or Democrat are racking their brains, and fighting tooth and nail to hold their district as harmless as possible.

For those of you that believe this has to do with Union, I should remind you that the Commissioner of Corrections was appointed by the most anti-union Governor this state has ever had. Speaking of which, the scenario in 05-06 I talked of above? It was when I was a union Steward. That’s right before CCA came into the picture we were union. As Stewards we helped Chuck Brown develop language in his bill that guaranteed we kept our jobs. Even though the bill was never introduced, and Brown was insulted and degraded by prison management, it dawns on me now, that had he introduced the bill, and we trusted his instincts rather than managements, we wouldn’t be having a problem with loosing inmates today.

Grandma Marian and Gov. Pawlenty's budget.

2009-05-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I had the honor of speaking at my Grandmothers funeral. I told of how she had become my hero, after I became a parent. It was than I gained an appreciation for the fact that she was a single working mom of 4, and did such a marvelous job raising my mom, two aunts, and my uncle.

Grandma was 97, and only had to spend the last several weeks of her life in a Nursing Home in Montevideo. The tiny little Norwegian woman was one of the strongest women I knew. She and her husband had just bought a farm, when my grandfather passed away, leaving her with 4 kids ranging in age of 2 to 11. They had yet to make the first payment on the farm near Hanley Falls, but my Grandmother, with help farming from her little brother, made the last payment on it, and passed it on to Uncle Arlen who still owns it today. Grandma, put the kids to work, out in the field, in the barn, before school, and after. She realized the value of a good education and was able to scrape enough together to send her three girls to college. (one didn't finish, she met my dad instead, kinda glad for that)

You might be asking what does this have to do with the Governor's budget? Well, whenever these tough cuts to the budget arise, I think of grandma, and the hardship it would put on her and people like her. She didn't have a lot. She lived on a fixed income when she retired. When she moved away from the trailer she shared with her little brother, after he passed, she moved into senior apartments in Granite Falls. Apartments she had to pay rent for, like a lot of seniors that lived on fixed incomes. After a few years there, she had to spend the last couple months of her hard, but wonderful life, in that nursing home. Staffed by wonderful people, that are way too under paid for that which they do. It was when Rep. Rukevina, and Rep. Marquardt gave their eloquent speeches on the floor, earlier today, that it made me think of Grandma, those apartments, and that nursing home. You see Governor Pawlenty's budget, would call for a 20% decrease in the renters credit, taking money away from and effectively taxing seniors in this state that rent, apartments such as my Grandmothers to the tune of $126.00 a year, all the while he has made it clear, that it is unacceptable to him to raise the taxes on someone making 300k a year, by $109.00 per year. Governor Pawlenty's water carriers seem to want to tell us that that this raise in taxes, is a "job killer." Meanwhile they don't want to talk about the 20-30 thousand jobs that will be lost in their budget. Many of them health care workers. Workers like those that take care of our grandmothers, and grandfathers. Fathers and mothers. People like my Grandma, who downright deserved it! People that made this state one of the finest in quality of life. People like Gandma Marian, that even though odds were against her, she managed to raise crops, and 4 kids that turned out to be very wonderful and productive assets to their state. With the work I do now, I realize that Grandma's story, isn't unique. It is the story of Minnesota, and America, of the day to day heroism, that made this state what it is today. Don't let Governor Pawlenty get away with this. Stand up to him, and tell him, "we are better that this." Stop him from dismantling this state, the way he has the last 6 plus years.