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Kline authors bill to increase student loans costs

by The Big E on May 22, 2013

johnklineRep. John Kline (R-MN) authored a student loan bill that increases college loan costs for students. Instead of Stafford loans capped at 3.4%, students will pay 8.5%. His bill could force students into taking variable rate loans that could balloon.
 
In other words, this bill would be bad for students and good for his buddies in the student loan shark sector.
 
Obama and the Democrats want to tie loan rates to a student’s income. Furthermore, they want to guarantee low loan rates.
 

First, the bill would not guarantee low rates for today’s students. A rate that continues to vary after the loan has already been taken out would create uncertainty and lessen transparency for students and their families who are making decisions about borrowing for college. Second, the bill’s changes would impose the largest interest rate increases on low- and middle-income students and families who struggle most to afford a college education. Third, the bill does not include the President’s proposal to extend repayment options to borrowers who have already left school and often face the same debt burdens as current and future students. Finally, the Administration believes that student loan interest rates should not be raised to reduce the deficit.
(Daily Kos)

More details below the fold …
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Minimum wage and gun control at the legislature

by The Big E on May 22, 2013

and repaying the school robbery shift and bullying
 
Yesterday, I reviewed Minnesota’s 2013 legislative session from a rosy, more positive perspective. Today I’ll look at what we didn’t achieve and should have.
 
So as you read this, remember that the marriage equality win was epic. Also remember that we’ve stopped the government in crisis bull**** that the Republicans got us into while investing in moving our state forward.
 
WAGE-color-3-col-1024x852Minimum Wage
 
At one point it looked like the Legislature might raise their own pay before dealing with the minimum wage. That would have been a huge mistake. Instead, they passed a constitutional amendment on the 2014 ballot to create a citizen panel to review legislator pay.
 
In the end, the DFL Senate couldn’t agree with the DFL House on what MN’s minimum wage should be. The House thought $9 per hour, the Senate $7.75. Neither is really all that great. $10 per hour would have been decent.
 
Why did the Senate fail? Did the fraidy-Dems bring forward fears about reelection? Or repackaged bull**** Republican talking points?
 
…READ MORE

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We finally have confirmation that Michele Bachmann is crazy

by The Big E on May 22, 2013

bachmannpraysHas embattled Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) finally jumped the shark? Has she finally done something or said something so crazy, so unhinged that even serious journalists in Minnesota’s media might even notice?
 
Possibly.
 
Bachmann claimed that a miracle will occur and that this time (the 37th time) repealing Obamacare will work!
 

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

She appeared on James Dobson’s right wing radio show. Dobson founded Focus on the Family and is one of the old white men who call the shots in the evangelical christianist movement in America. Dobson fed her a softball question to get her talking about how the IRS would start denying conservatives healthcare.
 

Bachmann replied that concerns such as this were exactly why it is so important to repeal Obamacare, which will miraculously happen before the end of Obama’s term when he is compelled to sign and “repudiate own signature piece of legislation” through an act of God:
 

 

That’s why you saw the House of Representatives pass my bill, the full repeal of Obamacare last week, and that’s why I have renewed confidence that we can see this bill pass in the Senate and I think the President will ultimately be forced to repudiate his own signature piece of legislation because the American people will demand it.
 
And I think before his second term is over, we’re going to see a miracle before our eyes, I believe God is going to answer our prayers and we’ll be freed from the yoke of Obamacare. I believe that’s going to happen and we saw step one last week with the repeal of Obamacare in the House. We have two more steps. We serve a mighty God and I believe it can happen.

…READ MORE

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michele bachmann: romance novel

by Bill Prendergast on May 22, 2013

FOSfinalwhen this landed in my mailbox this morning, my immediate response was — “it’s gotta be satire…”
 

Michele Bachmann was the muse for a new romance novel called Fires of Siberia, to be published June 1, about a fiery presidential candidate who tries to bone up on her foreign policy credentials only to get stuck in the wilderness with a sexy stranger. “Inspired by the life of Tea Party leader and Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Fires of Siberia (by author Trey Sager) is an old-fashioned bodice ripper romance that brings the heat for the 2013 summer beach reading season,” touts publisher Badlands Unlimited.

 
gotta be satire… but the source for the story is the Atlantic Wire — and they wouldn’t steer us wrong, would they?
 
At first I thought the author’s name (“Trey Sager”) was a pun in french. (‘tres sage’ is a french expression signifying ‘very wise’ or ‘very well-behaved.’) but a friend sent a photo of mr. sager. and the atlantic’s reporter pointed to other works by the same author, and suggested that his publisher is legit…
 
…and at the same time told us that this bachmann romance novel “might not be so much a sexy romance inspired by a plucky congresswoman as a political book in a funny format.” i don’t think the atlantic can have it both ways: if they make all the proper phone calls to check it out and look at all the facts–they should print their conclusion (sincere attempt at a bodice ripper or political satire?) and share that conclusion with the public. the atlantic is supposed to function as ‘a global village explainer.’ if they want to fudge their explanations, there’s no reason to read them.
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What the deal is with anti-science conservatives

by Dan Burns on May 22, 2013

opo0210hI’m a little behind the curve on this, but I do have to weigh in.
 

Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas really does not understand science. Not scientific method, not scientific theories or laws, none of it. Which is why he submitted a bill draft titled the “High Quality Research Act” which would in effect add a politician into scientific studies.
 
The bill says that any research done using federal funds (which is the majority of research done in the United States) must have its results and finding approved by the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives. If the findings are not agreed to, the research is taken from the researchers and disposed of by Congress as it sees fit.
 
(Addicting Info)

We can talk about how many people are frightened of new knowledge that might challenge their emotionally pleasing, if unlearned, belief systems. Or about honest, if entirely irrational, suspicion of what they perceive to be deep, dark forces at work, targeting much that they hold dear. But I’m done politely avoiding the fundamental issue, here. The bottom line with these anti-science righties is that they’re just plain stupid. And it’s their own fault. The world is full of resources from which they could learn, but they choose not to use them. They’re idiots, and absolutely unfit to govern. We don’t put little kids in charge, and in many respects, “childlike” is where too many purportedly adult heads are at.
 
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Progress after a decade of regression

by The Big E on May 21, 2013

mn_capitolAfter ten years of Republican destruction, budget slashing and poor management and after the epic Marriage Restriction Amendment fight, the 2013 legislative session felt like a new, fresh start for Minnesota.
 
We progressives have built many, many coalitions over the years. Many didn’t succeed, some partially blocked something bad the conservatives wanted to do. The MN United campaign and the 2012 election was the culmination, the coming together of so many different parts of the activist left. From the religious to labor to peace to … suffice to say that it’s a mighty long list.
 
Overall, how did the legislature do considering the unity we all basked in after the 2012 landslide?
 
I say pretty well.
 
Marriage equality was epic.
 
Passing a budget that fully funds education and eliminates our structural deficit by making the richest 2% pay a share closer to what the rest of us pay was huge.
 
Here a few more successes …
 
…READ MORE

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Democrats Move Minnesota Closer to Fair Taxation

by Grace Kelly on May 21, 2013

Even Republicans and Libertarians agree that a flat rate income tax would be fair. Because we want out-of-state contributions (3.4%) and other goals, there will be a diversity of taxes. So Minnesota has added up all the local and state taxes and calculated the equivalent income tax for different income ranges. This study has been done for years. When Republicans were in power, the equivalent income tax went down for the richest and up for the poorest. Now the Democrats are bringing the the rate closer to a fair income tax rate. Click here for a larger image.

From the Governors Office:

The budget passed by the Governor and the majorities in the legislature creates a new 4 tier income tax bracket at 9.85% that will be paid only by the wealthiest 2% of Minnesotans. This new tax bracket will apply only to taxable income over $250,000 for married joint filers and taxable income over $150,000 for single filers.

 

$1.1 billion in New Revenue. This new tax bracket will help solve our budget deficit and invest in property tax relief for all Minnesotans,a better education system, and crucial economic development, measures to strengthen Minnesota’s middle class.

 

98% of Minnesotans Will See No Income Tax Increase.

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Climate Change, Tornadoes, and Politics

by gregladen on May 21, 2013

bachmann-screamI have a few miscellaneous but related items for you. First and I’m sure of great importance to every one on this list … the OFA has produced a database of climate science deniers in the US Congress. The following might be familiar to you:

 

“Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.”

 

Yeah, that’s Michele Bachmann and she’s on the list.

 

You can see the entire list HERE and drill down by state.

 

A lot of people want to know if tornadoes are going to become more common with global warming. The short answer is this: Severe storms have already become more common with global warming and this will continue to get worse, but individual categories of storms are very variable and hard to understand. For example, consider this:

 

I remember when I first moved to Minnesota. That summer we had numerous straight line wind events of the sort never seen before. Maplewood, a community near where I lived famous for it’s tree lined streets lost almost all of its trees in one storm. That same storm also took out most of the stock of most of the new car companies in that town, famous for its numerous car lots. The cars were pitted with hail stones. Every single home for about three miles along a street right near where I lived had it’s vinyl or aluminum siding drilled with hundreds of holes and dents from large hail stones being driven by a 60–100 mile per hour wind. It was one of the worst weather years in Minnesota, with insurance companies practically going bankrupt.

 

There were only a few tornadoes in the area that year.

 

The next year there were hardly any straight line wind storms of the magnitude just described. But that is the year of the Saint Peter tornado. It was one of the largest tornado events ever; It was a twister that lifted and dropped a couple of times, so ‘nato-pedants divide it into multiple events, but that’s absurd. It was an F3 and F4 event, and it tracked for 67 miles and was up to one and a half mile wide.

 

There were a lot of tornadoes that year.

 

As you can see, it is complicated. That quote is form something I just wrote on my science blog that you may be interested in: Understanding Storms and Global Warming: A Quaint Parable. That kind of goes along with two other posts, here and here.

 

I don’t mean to make this post a link farm but I thought many MnPP readers would be interested. Since Minnesotans are all about the weather and stuff.

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Record profits are because of workers getting screwed

by Dan Burns on May 21, 2013

523366_637975359561312_1313347915_nHere are a few economy-related items. First of all:
 

Profits of American corporations have become decoupled from the other indices of American economic well-being with which they’ve historically been linked. They currently comprise the largest share of the nation’s economy that they have since World War II. Yet the increase in consumer spending in the 15 quarters since the recession’s official end is lower than its increase 15 quarters after the recessions of 1982, 1991, and 2001 ended. Similarly, 15 quarters after the recession ended, the increase in GDP is lower than it was in those three preceding recessions. So spending and growth are lagging while profits soar. What gives?
 
…The answer is that profits are increasing because corporations are getting by with fewer workers than they employed before the crash of 2008, and they’re paying those workers less. Wages and compensation (that is, wages plus benefits) now make up the smallest shares of GDP that they have in 50 years, and their decline has proceeded without interruption since 2001. According to a report from JP Morgan Chase’s Chief Investment Office, two-thirds of the increase in corporate profits between the end of the dot-com bust and the collapse of 2008 is directly attributable to the decline in the wages they paid their employees. As the share going to profits has continued to increase since that report appeared, and the share going to wages has kept on decreasing, the centrality of wage suppression to profit maximization has continued to grow.
 
(American Prospect)

You might think that a lot more people would be upset about this, and change their voting preferences accordingly. Being uninformed is part of the problem, and another is that old habits, especially bad ones, are hard to break. And then there’s system justification. Few people want to face up to how they’ve been played, with their more or less unwitting aquiescence, for much of their lives.
 
…READ MORE

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Graves leading Bachmann in latest poll

by The Big E on May 20, 2013

JimGraves bachmann06

DFL challenger Jim Graves is leading embattled Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) in the latest Public Policy Polling (PPP) poll. Graves leads 47-45% with a 4.4% margin of error. This is huge for a challenger to be close let alone have a lead this early.
 
Many entities are investigating Bachmann’s failed 2012 presidential bid. The FBI, Federal Election Commission (FEC), Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) are investigating Bachmann paying senior presidential campaign staffers from her PAC, MichelePAC. A independent investigation ordered by the Iowa Supreme Court is investigating her Iowa Campaign Chair Kurt Sorensen for accepting pay when this is barred. The Iowa Senate Ethic’s panel is also investigating this. Furthermore, police in Iowa are investigating the theft of a evangelical home school organization’s email list and the woman from whom Bachmann obtained this list is suing her.
 
This is all piling up in the minds of MN06 voters:
 

The latest survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling showed Democratic hotel magnate Jim Graves edging Bachmann among voters in Minnesota’ Sixth Congressional District 47 percent to 45 percent. Graves announced recently that he will challenge Bachmann once again next year after falling to the tea party champion in a close race last year.

Facing a campaign finance investigation, Bachmann has been pegged as one of the leading Democratic targets in 2014. The poll, which was reported on by Politico, was conducted May 15 using automated phone interviews with 500 voters. It has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

And now that the FBI is investigating Bachmann, her polling numbers will continue to worsen.
 

June 2012 48% – 43% 7% w/ 4.4% MoE
September 2012 48% – 46% 2% w/ unknown MoE
October 3-4, 2012 47% – 45% 2% w/ unknown MoE
October 15, 2012 50% – 41% 9% w/ 4.1% MoE
November 2012 50.47% – 49.25% election
May 2013 46% – 48% -2 w 4.4% MoE

 
graves-Bachmann-2013-05-chart

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