Should the dollar remain the United States' form of currency?*
Should Congress cut its own pay until the budget is balanced?**
Are you angry at the federal government's policies?***
Are judges in our country too liberal, too conservative, or about right?****
What do these questions have in common? They've all been asked recently during polls by major "reputable" pollsters, and they are each useless, vacuous questions with no value whatsoever to a civil, fact-based political discourse.
Where's the responsibility statement for pollsters in today's day and age?
Last month, I put the odds of a government shutdown, in the event of a GOP majority, at over 50%. I continue to think that's a reasonable assessment. Indeed, it almost seems likely -- Republicans have decided that President Obama is not to be negotiated with, and there is no acceptable compromise between the White House's position and the GOP's.
Besides, if Republicans are rewarded in the midterms after moving sharply to the right-wing, they'll consider it a mandate for unflinching radicalism. I'd be surprised if they didn't shut down the government.
Republican Pat Anderson wants her old job back as MN State Auditor. She lost her job because she's not very good at math and her 2006 opponent, DFLer Rebecca Otto, pointed this out. Plus, she's not very detail oriented and responded rather poorly when her department lost a bunch of laptops.
So not only is Anderson poor at math, security and attention to detail, she has no problems closing libraries across the state due to budget cuts. She thinks that libraries are non-essential services. This is a video of the latest complete Auditor debate. The library discussion starts at about 17:00 ...
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is in a bit of hot water over a copyright infringement. Bachmann's latest attack ad against Tarryl Clark uses the Minnesota State Fair logo without permission.
Bachmann accuses Clark of raising taxes on the corn dogs, deep-fried bacon and beer people consume at the fair via her meat puppet, Wide Stance Jim. They use the logo twice in their ad. First at the 0:11 mark and then for the last 4 seconds of the ad.
Fair spokesperson Brienna Schuette said the Bachmann campaign "did not get our approval" to use the logo in the ad. Fair officials are looking into what steps to take to protect their intellectual property.
(MinnPost)
"It's unfortunate. We don't want the perception out there that we're endorsing her, we don't endorse anyone," [State Fair spokeswoman Brooke] Dillon said. "So of course our logo was misused and we want that taken down as soon as possible."
Dillon said the Fair hasn't decided whether to take legal action. Bachmann's campaign says it's looking into the matter.
(MPR)
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has thrown Minnesota's sick and in need of health care reform under the bus, again. The Minnesota Independent reported that this afternoon Minnesota's lousy Governor signed an Executive Order to "Keep ObamaCare Out of Minnesota."
Gov. Tim Pawleny signed an executive order Tuesday afternoon directing state agencies to refuse "all discretionary participation" in the federal healthcare reform law. The order calls the legislation, passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Obama, "a dramatic attempt to assert federal command and control over this country's health care system." According to a Pawlenty press release, the move orders all executive branch departments and agencies "not to submit applications to the federal government in connection with requests for grant funding for programs and demonstration projects deriving from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unless otherwise required by law or approved by the Governor's office."
Governor Tim Pawlenty, in an attempt to go even further right, targeted education services in Minnesota. As one of the republican's favorite punching bags, sexuality education is abysmal in Minnesota. We are being out-strapped by North Carolina! Democrats have attempted to pass comprehensive sexuality education for years, but Governor Pawlenty simply turned the veto stamp over to the Minnesota Family Council (a conservative religious organization).
The newest assault on sex ed came in the form of refusing to accept a $850,000 federal grant for Minnesota comprehensive sex education - no strings attached. Instead he chose the abstinence only grant which Minnesota (with all our excess money) has to match 75%, coming to almost 400K. So Minnesota will be spending money it doesn't have on a program that doesn't work...so much for eliminating wasteful spending in the state.
Robin Marty has an excellent post on RH Reality Check discussing how Pawlenty's drive for the White House has screwed Minnesota again.
Under our very noses, MN Governor Tim Pawlenty bounced out to Chicago yesterday for a fundraiser for the GOP candidate for Illinois governor, Bill Brady.
A spokesman for Pawlenty says Pawlenty's visit to Chicago was a "quick trip" and he was back in the state within a few hours.
Regarding TBag's literary effort, there was a contest here for providing alternate titles; game and popular winners have been selected. Here's an article comparing the cover to those of others in the genre.
With the release today of a new MPR/Humphrey poll I can once again update the GPI. Below is a list of the current polls included in the index followed by the current numbers.
Joe posted an excellent analysis of the Humphrey poll earlier today pointing out some of the issues with it. These are not the kinds of issues that disqualify a poll from being included in the index and is in fact the main reason for wanting to get a composite number from a combination of polls rather then relying on a single poll.
Here at MPP, we've been following Hal Kimball's bid to replace retiring moderate GOP State Senator Steve Dille, who served for 24 years with distinction. As Joe Bodell noted back in December:
I've said it before and I've said it again -- the DFLers cannot afford to be complacent about the State Senate, where several senior members of the caucus are getting close to retirement age. We need to keep up the pressure and elect great people like Hal to seats just like this one -- and don't be fooled about whether he actually has a shot. He does, and it's a good one. (emphasis added)
Especially with the GOP's decision to endorse Scott Newman for this open seat. Newman's running hard to the far right under the "Personal Responsibility - Individual Freedom - Less Government" banner. For instance, Newman's a guy that wants to get rid of "business subsidies" - as noted by Bluestem Prairie:
If it takes an 8-point oversample in Tom Emmer's favor to get him up to a tie, I feel pretty great about Mark Dayton's chances in a real electorate in which younger, cell-phone-only voters show up.
But aside from the weird methodology, check out the published crosstabs:
There's a lot of room for movement there, but there is virtually no way Emmer picks up significant enough ground among independent voters to make a dent in the overall results. Keep in mind that this is a mid-term election, and the non-partisan vote is generally going to be a lot lower than it is in presidential years, so given a normal partisan breakdown, or even a slightly GOP-leaning one, Emmer has a LOT of ground to make up.
2. The gender gap: MPR's writeup indicates that there's no significant gender gap -- that women are currently favoring Mark Dayton by a similar margin to men favoring Tom Emmer. However, what they fail to mention directly is that the sample includes 52% women (about normal for Minnesota) which is yet another built-in advantage for Dayton. Again, given a more reasonable partisan sample, this will go straight through to the final results of this election.
3. Age gap? MPR doesn't appear to have published the support breakdowns by age, only the sample sizes -- which look weird in and of themselves, since it's a decent bet the senior vote will be bigger than this poll indicates. If it is, it's another good bet that those voters will go with Dayton in big numbers, especially outside the city -- as we found in the DFL primary, these voters are more likely than not to go with the name they know and trust, and that is Mark Dayton.
Again, if it takes a huge GOP over-sample to get Tom Emmer up to a bare tie, I think Mark Dayton is in pretty darned good shape right now.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is in a bit of hot water over a copyright infringement. Bachmann's latest attack ad against Tarryl Clark uses the Minnesota State Fair logo without permission.
