How many lies has Tom Emmer told so far? UPDDATED

by: The Big E

Wed Sep 29, 2010 at 18:00:00 PM CDT

1. Servers make $100K+.
2. I don't want to cut wages.
3. Buesgens quit on 9/12.
4. There is no deficit, Delano Tom channels Baghdad Bob.
5. I have provided specifics on my budget plan (before he had).
6. Emmer Bros. Lumber changed owners when it actually went bankrupt and was sold off.
7. Will hold education harmless (yet proposes education budget cuts).
8. MN to receive increase in revenue.
9. Govt employees paid better than private sector employees.
10. LGA is supposed to pay for police, fire, water and sewers only.
11. State spending has doubled in the last decade.
12. Authored a bill to help drunk drivers avoid penalties, claimed it was for prosecutors.

Details of each lie after the fold...

Tom Emmer held a fundraiser at a restaurant owned by a supporter.  He claimed that servers can make in excess of $100,000 per year.

2.  I don't want to cut wages

Emmer sponsored an amendment in 2005 to abolish the minimum wage.  

Emmer repeatedly said he does not want to lower workers' wages, but (on May 2, 2005 2:15:00 into this clip ) Emmer proposed abolishing the minimum wage.

After the server wage flap, Emmer tried to clear things up by issuing a statement.  He said two contradictory things in this statement:

After reading Republican MN-GOV candidate Tom Emmer's non-apology over his servers make $100,000 gaffe, I think he may have actually thrown more fuel on the fire.  Instead of apologizing and saying he misspoke ... it happens, we're all human after all ... he tried to explain how he doesn't want to reduce anyone's wages then three paragraphs later tells workers they should accept reduced wages and be grateful they have a job.

When a reporter asked if I supported the concept of a tip credit, I answered yes. I want the wait staff at a restaurant to be successful and make as much as they can, and a recent study published in Applied Economics Letters shows that tip credits have essentially no negative impact on wages for tipped employees. So contrary to what some people are saying, I have no interest in "cutting wages."

Emmer would like everyone to believe that he's compassionate.  That he's not an out-of-touch conservative who doesn't care what his slash-n-burn economic policies would do to Minnesotans.

His problem is that in the same press release, in the same non-apology explanation intended to calm the waters, he says the following:

I am a strong believer that a paycheck is better than an unemployment check. Job losses and business closings aren't good for anybody. The United Auto Workers Union learned that lesson the hard way, as our auto industry almost collapsed at least partly due to an unwillingness to negotiate wage, benefit, and work rules that would have kept the industry afloat.

Seriously?  We all know what he's trying to say here.  Accept lower pay and benefits to keep your minimum wage job.

3.  Buesgens quit on 9/12

Emmer Campaign Chair Mark Buesgens was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving on 9/19/2010.  When the press confronted Emmer, he released a statement saying Buesgens wasn't on the campaign, but had quit to work for the state party the weekend before.  There's only one problem.  He'd been billed at events on 9/19 as Campaign Chair.

Rep. Mark Buesgens, who was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, has worked for Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, as past campaign manager and more recently as campaign chair. But while Emmer representatives told the Star Tribune Monday that Buesgens left the campaign on Sept. 12, the Minnesota Independent has learned that Buesgens spoke at a tea party event as a representative of the Emmer campaign the same day he was arrested. He then attended an event that evening sponsored by Emmer's uncle, Drew Emmer.

Buesgens was scheduled to speak at the We the People rally hosted by the Forest Lake Tea Party on Saturday, representing the Emmer campaign. The invitation for the Sept. 18 event (PDF)  lists Buesgens as "Tom Emmer's Campaign Chairman." A representative of the Forest Lake Tea Party confirmed to the Minnesota Independent that Buesgens attended and spoke at the event, and that he did so representing the Emmer campaign as campaign chairman.
(Minnesota Independent)

4.  There is no deficit, Delano Tom channels Baghdad Bob

TwoPuttTommy found an editorial in the Grand Forks Herald accusing Emmer of emulating Baghdad Bob by claiming there was no deficit.  So TwoPuttTommy made this video:

5. I have provided specifics on my budget plan

Back on the fateful day in July when Emmer claimed that servers made $100K+, he also claimed that he had been providing specifics on his plans.  He continually claimed this up until he actually provided some specifics.  He starts explaining how he has been specific at 0:45 of this video:

Emmer would actually get angry when confronted by reporters about his lack of specifics.  This video starts by dissecting his tip penalty gaffe but at 3:45 they get into his lack of specifics:

Back on September 7th, I wrote:

Yesterday (129 days after endorsement), Emmer held a press conference to announce his plan.

The proposal comes after weeks of criticism from his opponents who say Emmer hasn't outlined how he'd deal with the state's looming budget deficit of nearly $6 billion in the next two-year budget cycle.

The "jobs agenda" which Emmer released Monday still doesn't answer that question, but it outlines broad tax cuts for businesses that he said will stimulate economic growth.
(MPR)

6. Emmer Bros. Lumber changed owners when it actually went bankrupt and was sold off

The Emmer family's business, Emmer Brothers Lumber, was sold, but Emmer isn't honest about why.  He tries to spin business failure as experience.  The company went bankrupt and was sold.

As his fiscal-conservative, less-government rhetoric would suggest, Emmer is a huge proponent of the private sector as a solution to our problems (i.e., government). And he leans on his private industry bona fides to back it up. His official bio states that Tom learned "the value of hard work and the every-day pressures" from his father's lumber company. That company is a 100-year-old business founded by great-grandpa Emmer, "Emmer Brothers Lumber." What the bio conveniently glosses over about Emmer Brothers Lumber (actually Emmer Brothers Company), is that it filed for bankruptcy protection in the mid-1980s. In the few press reports that even bother to mention that the business failed, Emmer is conveniently allowed to say the company had "gone upside down" and that his dad was "struggling." "Bankruptcy protection" is a term that generally gives fiscal conservatives voting booth rictus.

Now, take note, Poli Sci 101 kids, here's how a right-wing candidate who hangs his coat on his business experiences spins it when that business is a failed one: Take the fact that Emmer Bros. Co. was bought, post bankruptcy, by Forest City Trading Group and renamed Viking Forest Products, which kept his brother Jack on as an employee, and sum it up as so: "Today it's known as Viking Forest Products, with Tom's brother Jack continuing in the business."

Presto, a failed business with a (maybe charitably employed) brother is now a continuing successful family business from which our candidate has learned "first hand the value of hard work and the every-day pressures faced by employers and the families who count on them."

Also, Marquette National Bank sued Emmer Bros. Co. for fraudulently concealing assets during the course of the bankruptcy proceedings. But whatever.
(The Awl)

7.  Will hold education harmless

Tom Emmer promised that he wouldn't reduce the education budget.

"My budget promise for public education is two-fold: First, ensure that K-12 funding is held harmless in the next biennium and second, expect improved results through broad reforms," the GOP nominee [Tom Emmer] said.
(Emmer for Governor website)

Let's have a closer look:

Emmer said the state has to live with as much money as it is due to collect over the next two years -- and no more. He laid out broad targets for where he would spend that $33 billion, but said the details of which programs would be cut and how they would be cut will have to be worked out with the Legislature next year.

Some of what Emmer proposes are real cuts. Higher education, for example would get about $300 million less in the next biennium than it gets now. Aids and credits to local governments would see an actual cut of $681 million, and state agencies would see a cut of about $550 million.
(MPR)

8.  MN to receive increase in revenue

Emmer claims that revenue will go up by 7% next year.

The seven percent growth claim is apparently based on a comparison of projected general fund "total resources available."  These "resources" are projected to grow from $31 billion in the FY 2010-11 biennium to $33.2 billion in the fiscal year (FY) 2012-13 biennium-an increase of 7.1 percent.

So why is this number misleading?  Because a comparison of general fund "total resources available" does not take into account the decline in federal recovery dollars from FY 2010-11 to FY 2012-13.  The claim of 7 percent revenue growth based on total resources available overlooks the loss of approximately $2 billion in federal dollars that was used to reduce general fund spending in the FY 2010-11 biennium.

It should also be noted that state revenue collections in FY 2010-11 were abysmally low as a consequence of the great recession.  Largely as a result of this, state general fund "total resources" fell by 9.7 percent from FY 2008-09 to FY 2010-11.  In fact, total real* (i.e., inflation-adjusted) per capita state general fund total resources during the FY 2010-11 biennium are projected to be lower than at any point during the last two decades.
(TC Daily Planet)

9.  Govt employees paid better than private sector employees

In Emmer's mind, government employees are bad because the government is the problem.  Therefore, government employees must be grossly overpaid compared to private sector workers.  This is another popular claim amongst conservatives.

"On average, a person who works in the private sector in a job similar to that of somebody who's working in the [public] sector is making on average 30 to 40 less," the Republican gubernatorial candidate said on Aug. 26, 2010.

When it comes to national averages, he's correct. But a closer look at these numbers tells a different story.
...
[H]is statement is misleading for several reasons. First, he implies that, job for job, public sector workers make 30 to 40 percent more than private sector employees. That's not necessarily true. For instance, the average state government computer programmer makes $29.70 an hour while the average computer programmer working at a private firm makes an average of $36.40 an hour. And a lawyer working for government makes, on average, 26 percent less than a lawyer working at a private firm, according to the Federal Salary Council.

In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stresses that it's dangerous to compare public sector average pay to private sector average pay because the government work force is more skilled than the private sector work force, so average hourly pay is naturally lower.
(MPR's PoliGraph)

10.  LGA is supposed to pay for police, fire, water and sewers only

Here are the details:

During an MPR-sponsored Sept. 3, 2010 debate at the Minnesota State Fair, Emmer promised to reform local government aid so it can't be used to pay to put poetry on the sidewalks.

"LGA should be applied to what it was intended for," he said. "It should pay for essential services defined as police and fire service and sewer and water infrastructure. That's should what it should be going for, not to etch poetry in sidewalks in St. Paul."

There's no truth to Emmer's claim.

The Evidence

Local government aid, which was put on the books nearly three decades ago, is meant to help Minnesota communities with smaller tax bases provide the same services as larger, more affluent cities. Aid is distributed based on city size and population, among other things, and it goes directly into a city's general fund.
(MPR)

11.  State spending has doubled in the last decade

Spending increasing astronomically is a conservative mantra.  But Emmer said it doubled in the last decade.

Gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer made a shocking statement on Thursday's Midmorning program on MPR: "Spending has almost doubled in the last decade in this state."  The statement is false.

In order for something to double, it must grow by 100%.  From FY 2000-01 to FY 2010-11, total state consolidated fund spending is projected to grow by 62.7%.  (A more common measure of state spending-general fund spending-is projected to increase by 28.7% over this period.)  By no stretch of the imagination can 62.7% be called "nearly 100%" and thus it is not "nearly double."
(MN 2020)

12.  Authored a bill to help drunk drivers avoid penalties, claimed it was for prosecutors

Emmer wrote law to protect drunk drivers, at the behest of DWI defense lawyers, but claimed they were DWI prosecutors.

The Emmer campaign identified the "local prosecutors" as Tom Weidner and Sean Stokes, and said they are based in Stillwater, Washington County.

Stokes and Weidner are attorneys specializing in DWI defense, according to the website of their law firm Eckberg, Lammers, Briggs, Wolff & Vierling.
(WCCO)