Katojoe blog has moved!

If you're wondering why my blogs haven't been posted to this site lately, it's because I've moved to The Free Press website. You can now find my regularly updated blogs at www.mankatofreepress.com/mankatojoe

Hey middle class. They've got your back

We heard a lot about the middle class this election.

Seems everyone was on our side.

They were going to protect us from the government, the IRS, the EPA, global warming, bad rap music and of course, their opponents, who were definitely going to raise our taxes.

I'll just add in cable TV as another threat to the middle class. There's really a hit when they change the stations without asking you, charge you more and take away high definition Vikings games.Now that really hurts. It's all in the name of competition.

That's strange. Last time I checked, the consumer usually benefits when competition increases.

Well, the election is over and I haven't heard much talk about the middle class, at least not as much as I used to.

That's odd, because, best I can tell, all the threats are still in existence -- the EPA,IRS, the government, the ice is still melting in the Arctic and there's still no high def Vikings.

Aside from the Vikings high-definition cable oppression mentioned a few times earlier, my reading shows me there are several threats to the middle class still in existence.

The fiscal cliff, for example. It's so important it's getting very close to being capitalized like a formal name similar to the Great Depression and the Teapot Dome Scandal.

It's so important, it's on Congress' waiting list.

Republicans and Democrats are vowing to fix the Fiscal Cliff (might as well be a trendsetter here on the capitalization) and they might even get to it before Christmas. That would be a fine "reverse" Christmas present of which Charles Dickens would be proud: Our gift is that they "won't" raise our taxes.

That means we get nothing for Christmas, worse than a lump of coal.

I guess we better take what we can get.

There are other threats. A report in the Wall Street Journal this week suggested that the Federal Housing Administration  will run out of reserves because of all the bad mortgages it has and may likely need a bailout like FANNIE and FREDDIE (words that are so important they get all caps).

FANNIE and FREDDIE still owe us $140 billion.

I'll take my share if they just fix my cable and give me back the high definition Vikings game.

The politics and economics of Bruce Springsteen

People smarter than me will be better at explaining why the legendary Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have achieved their success over nearly 40 years of making music, producing albums and perfecting the genre of the live rock and roll show.

I cannot easily describe their success in words, but I know it when I see it and feel it.

That opportunity came Monday evening at the Xcel Center in St. Paul. It was the third time I had seen Springsteen and his band perform, the last time being 2002, right after his album "The Rising" had come out and when 911 was still fresh on America's consciousness.

The easy analysis: This may possibly be the best E Street Band there has ever been. Springsteen has added a handful of horn players, backup singers, and extra percussion, and oh yeah, a rockin' violinist.

He orchestrates these 17 musicians to make blue-collar, grind-it-out, on-the-road music and lyrics sound like a symphony  - a rock symphony.

A full three hour show produces not one piece of evidence that Springsteen or any of the band is going less than full throttle. The fans wear out before this band does.

 Their current "Wrecking Ball" tour is getting rave reviews.

But in the end, Spring understands "customers" as he referred to them Monday night. He asked how many people in the audience were there the night before. Thousands of hands went up. "That's great," he says, "we like repeat customers and we've got a different show for you every night."

The other piece of the easy analysis is that Springsteen knows how to connect with those "customers" in a genuine, emotional kind of way. Maybe it's just his knack for writing really good songs that can conjure up an image, a memory or one of life's truths that just resonate with everyone who has a sense of what America is about.

And if we paid attention at all in school or listening to records of all the great American musicians, we all should have some clue about that.

Some don't like Springsteen's politics. I heard former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty - a big Springsteen fan - once say he was disappointed when Springsteen came out for John Kerry and other Democrats in the 2004 election. He made campaign appearances for Obama this year.

For a guy who writes so many songs from the gut and the heart, it would be hard to avoid giving his opinion once in a while on the direction he thinks our leaders are going on this whole American story.

I, for one, will be listening.

Election analyses make leaps of logic

By now, you've probably read through myriad election analyses that mostly attempt to guess the motivation of voters without every really asking them.

Ah, the life of a pundit.

Some, of course, have numbers associated with them and start out as solid pieces of research but then often venture into guessing games.

The analysis, for example, that Obama won 70 percent of the Latino vote and that helped push him over the top is pretty spot on. The numbers can be shown to reveal that. But why Latinos voted for Obama may be a little less certain.

Some of it makes sense. Romney had to start so far right in the primaries on immigration that he couldn't recover to a moderate position even after that. Several national columnists have made that case. At the same time Obama offered the reduction in immigration enforcement plan a few months before the election that also may have looked good to Latino voters.

The biggest stretches in election analysis usually come from winners of elections who claim a "mandate" from the voters are based on just about anything they've ever said in their political careers.

These winners assume a variety of crazy things that would drive your average empiricist over the edge of their regression equation.

Just two years ago, Minnesota Republicans claimed all kinds of mandates from the voters -- one being their win was a mandate to not raise taxes. So how can one explain that they didn't raise taxes and they still lost. The voters must have pulled back their no-tax mandate.

In reality, voters cast their ballot for any number of wide ranging reasons, some, maybe many, may have very little to do with any policy. Maybe they just don't like how one party talked, or that one politician seemed too arrogant.

Democrats who defeated Republicans would do well not to draw any similar mandates -- for example, that voters cast their ballots because they wanted taxes raised on the wealthy.

Voting motivation can be much more complicated or much more simple than political leaders may think.

The most accurate conclusion on cause and effect in voting: You will never be able to prove one.

Election Day news coverage changes

We've implemented a few changes for our Election Day news coverage, many for the better.

In the past, we've spent a good deal of staff time sitting at courthouses waiting for results or more recently sitting at our computers waiting for online results to be available.

This year we will again be giving you real-time results as they come in but also providing you with links to check on the results yourself in a user-friendly way.

We've set up 33 links to local election results through the secretary of state's website. Simply go to our website and follow the links to the results for the Legislature, federal offices, schools, cities, counties and the hotly contested constitutional amendments.

We'll also be using instant news messaging through Twitter on our website to provide the latest results and hopefully get you the final results before you go to bed, depending on what time you go to bed, of course.

Most of us in The Free Press newsroom will be here to 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. and we have staff coming in at 5 a.m. Wednesday to catch you up on all the latest if need be.

Two or three of our reporters and a photographer will be providing live coverage from the campaigns, again through the Twitter feed on our website. It's at twitter.com/mankatonews.

The Secretary of State's Office tells us they will update their site every 15 minutes and experience tells us that sometimes it's even more frequent. We of course, will rely on county websites as backups to the Secretary of State.

If, by chance the state's system gets slow and experiences glitches, we will be ready to revert to our backup sites.

Officials from the SOS office told me they've upgraded their system this year and have backups in place. From the media review I was able to take of the site, it looks much easier to track election results this year than in years past.

For example, on school levy questions, you don't have to jump around to each county a school district might be in. You can simply get all the results under that question.

And with any luck, we'll get that good ol' print edition out with most, if not all, of the results. We push our press start back about two hours on election night, holding the presses until the last minute to bring you all the lastest results.

Why we don't comment on crime stories

Crime stories can be the most controversial and some say most intriguing of all the stories we publish.

Readers will often wonder why we don't take a stand on some of the cases on our opinion pages and even more importantly, why we don't generally allow online comments or letters to the editor on pending criminal cases.

The main reason: We're trying to balance the people's right to know and the people's right to free speech with the fair trial rights of the accused.

The question has been raised again by many readers given the high profile nature of Minnesota State University football coach Todd Hoffner's case involving charges of child pornography.

Our competitors in Minneapolis at the Star Tribune have ventured into the waters of commentary on the case. Columnist Gail Rosenblum wrote an column on the case the same Sunday Star Tribune Editor Nancy Barnes explained the newspaper's reporting of the case.

A few weeks later, the Star Tribune took the unusual step of publishing on its opinion pages an editorial essentially holding the Blue Earth County Attorney's Office feet to the fire to justify their handling of charges. The editorial challenged the county attorneys office to provide more definitive information that justify the continuation of the charges.

Blue Earth County Attorney Ross Arneson responded by deferring comment, saying the county attorneys office was not going to try the case in the newspaper.

Certainly, the case has people talking. Some question the validity of the charges. We're withholding judgment mainly because we'd like to see the justice system run its course. We'd like to understand the case and the law more fully.

It's always dangerous venturing an opinion on the case without knowledge of all the facts. We don't have access to interviews that may have been conducted. We haven't even been able to see the tapes in question.

Laws prevent public disclosure of much evidence before it is submitted at trial. There's always more to the story when you see the entire case file. Unfortunately, that usually isn't public available until the case goes to trial or is settled.

We certainly don't agree with everything the Blue Earth County attorneys office does. We've even challenged it in at least two or three formal legal battles. But we've generally waited for criminal trials to play out, unless we feel there is some egregious violation of a public records law.

We've also rejected letters to the editor on the case and generally most online comments for the same reasons we defer.

And while there is sometimes not much public sympathy for those accused of crime, our laws require a fair trial. There's no law the media has to be abide by that, but we feel compelled by our ethics and sense of fairness.

There will be plenty of time for commentary, criticism and discussion once justice has taken its course.

Will the fed action create jobs?

Big news today: the Federal Reserve is buying some $40 billion in mortgage backed securities a month to stimulate the economy.

From the Associated Press story:


The Fed said it will spend $40 billion a month to buy mortgage bonds for as long as it deems necessary to make home buying more affordable. It plans to keep short-term interest rates at record lows through mid-2015 — six months longer than previously planned. And it's ready to try other stimulative measures if hiring doesn't pick up.

"The idea is to quicken the recovery," Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a news conference. But Bernanke made clear that he thinks the economy will need the Fed's help even after the recovery strengthens.

The good news is that this activity will likely keep home mortgage rates at their historic low, keep interest rates on other things low and hopefully bolster the stock market, which is back to its pre-2008 recession highs but still off its all time high of 14,000 by about 700 points.

If interest rates are low, it's easier to buy a home, which we know is key to household formation of consumer units (families) who spend a bunch of money on things like refrigerators, furniture and other durable goods, demand for which creates a lot of good jobs.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said part of the aim is to boost the stock market because people feel richer, more likely to spend. And I suppose that is partly true for SOME of the people.

But I was thinking of the Fed action while reading another story on why lots of baby boomers have put off retirement: their retirement earnings have been hammered by stock market but also low interest rates.

So they remain in the workforce.

Here's a telling fact from a good story in the Kansas City Star:


"In 1991, just one in 10 workers told the Employee Benefit Research Institute that they planned to wait to retire until they were older than 65. By 2007, three in 10 said that.
This year? More than four in 10."

And another:

"The number of older workers has grown more rapidly than any other age group in the last few years. This year, 18.6 percent of those 65 and older were participating in the labor force, compared with 13 percent in 2002."

And when you think of our main economic problem right now - too many people are unemployed - you can see how this is impacting those job numbers.

If seniors stay working past 65, we don't have the normal fill in from younger workers. The jobs from retirees are no longer opening up at the rate they once did.

This is helping in part to create higher unemployment and for a longer period of time.

The bigger question then is: Will any jobs program short of getting those 65 year olds to retire going to work?

We'd be better to work on incentives to get them to retire. Maybe a one-time exemption from taxes that go with lump sum withdrawals of retirement money. Maybe make medicare eligibility at 62 instead of 65.

Our job problem may be more related to demographics than structural issues in the private sector.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/18/3768575/for-many-boomers-retirement-age.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/18/3768575/for-many-boomers-retirement-age.html#storylink=cpy

Voter ID: two views of fraud

A presentation by the League of Women Voters St. Peter Chapter on problems with Minnesota's Voter ID amendment drew cheers from the downtown Kiwanis Club at its Monday meeting.

Mostly because of the argument that there is very little voter impersonation fraud that has ever been uncovered and the amendment therefore is an unnecessary infringement on voting rights.

North Mankato City Council candidate and budget watchdog Kim Spears brings this story to my attention: "Maryland democratic congressional candidate drops out of race after allegations she voted in two states."
Officials of the Maryland Democratic party asked candidate Wendy Rosen to withdraw from the race after they investigated themselves the allegations of voting fraud and were confident they were true.

So we find ourselves with two points of view on the idea of the Voter ID amendment.

The St. Peter LWV outlined in a leaflet that it opposes the Photo ID/Elections Amendment.

Spokeswomen Lynn Solo and Helen Baumgartner made the case, and they emphasized their presentation was intended to be factual not political.

They lay out in a kind of flow chart the amendment language, then the language in the statute and then raise questions about the questions left unanswered by the language.

Essentially, the league's position is that the change in voting laws sought by the amendment will be "extreme and unnecessary changes" that it will "create hurdles" to voting for absentee and military voters, that it will be "harder for seniors  to vote," and end "election day registration as we know it."

They say it's another "unfunded government mandate" and will create a new system of provisional balloting that increases property taxes and other vital services as a result will be cut.

Spears says the Maryland case is "an interesting situation bearing on the upcoming ballot initiative."

Certainly, the Maryland case will be a high profile kind of media-attention getting case that will focus on the issue of voter fraud and impersonation, though the Washington Post said it was unclear if state Voter ID laws would prevent this kind of multi-state voter fraud.

I also don't consider the Downtown Kiwanis Club a bastion of liberalism, so the applause for the LWV was a bit surprising.

The Free Press has written two editorials on the Voter ID amendment, basically arguing there are a lot of questions and how they are answered could very well cost taxpayers more money to solve a problem that may not be as big as we think.

It all comes down to how one wants to solve problems in an imperfect voting system. Budget hawks should of course be willing to apply a strict cost/benefit analysis, the cost being the expenses associated with photo IDs and the benefits being the prevention of fraud. But there also may be a cost in preventing legitimate people from voting.

I will say this: If the amendment passes and it becomes law eventually, there will be plenty of stories on how legitimate citizens were denied their right to vote through some government snafu.

Those stories will be rampant because almost every news organization in the country is going to find one or two cases - easily - with the way this will be set up.

Medicare costs need to be controlled

Both Obama and Romney campaigns don't want to tell seniors the ugly truth: Medicare costs have to be reined in. They're not sustainable. And we either need to cut benefits or raise taxes to pay for it or change pretty significantly the way Medicare services are delivered.

We might have to do a little of each.

There's a great explanation on the claims of each campaign and how they're deceptive on Medicare at FactCheck.org. They also give great background on the history of Medicare.

It's not surprising that Congress and the president have raised Medicare payroll taxes several times over the years to help keep the health care benefits flowing to in important voting constituency.

But after reading it, you can't come to any other conclusion that we either need to rein in benefits or raise taxes to pay for care that's costly and inefficient and will eventually consume a greater share of GDP.

But the good news is we know how to cut Medicare costs. We only have to have the courage to do it.

Obama's plan was to reduce payments to health care providers and make them share the pain of cost reductions. Critics argue it might not be enough, and some providers might stop taking Medicare patients. He also planned to cut subsidies to private insurance plans offering Medicare.

Romney and Ryan want to allow more private insurance into serving Medicare patients as well as leaving traditional Medicare in place, figuring competition will drive down costs. But that only works if we have a lot of medical providers competing. And more and more, the health care market is consolidating and getting fewer competitors. Some worry that the private insurers will pick the healthiest seniors and leave the really sick ones for the government to serve through traditional Medicare.

Seniors today and those of the near future, Baby Boomers, have to get realistic about all of this and realize they are not going to be able to go to the doctor for every little ailment and have the government mostly pay for it.

They're going to have to go to a more managed care system, where they learn prevention, where they learn they can see a nurse instead of a doctor.

This is not Medicare as we know it. It has to change.

I took a call from a guy today who said he didn't rape his daughter

I took a call from a guy today who said he didn't rape his daughter.

Now you know the kind of calls newspaper editors get.

Not always pretty. Not always pleasant. Hard to say if they're real.

This man wanted to know if we wanted to do a story about a wrongly accused person who was going to prison and whose life and reputation would be basically ended because prosecutors were charging him with said crime.

I told him we follow these kinds of stories through official court actions. If there's a trial, we would report the defense's case.

We don't however, sit down with those accused and try to do what it takes investigators, prosecutors and defense lawyers hundreds of hours to do: determine a verdict.

We wouldn't have the resources nor the desire, nor is it our purpose, to be judge, jury and jailer.

Still, for some reason he must have thought the newspaper could help.

It's not unheard of that people are falsely charged with a crime. For all I know, he may be innocent.

And if he is, the news will be: He was charged with a crime. A heinous crime perhaps. And he was acquitted.

We always report the verdict. An if he's innocent, that gets in the newspaper.

In the end, we'd be willing to tell his side of it, but we we're going to do the justice system's job. He didn't seem satisfied with this answer.

He said never mind and hung up.

Naked bean bagger escaped identification

Many people I talk to say they would rather not admit to some of the things they did in college or when they were young.

I suspect that will be the case with the "Naked bean bagger" we wrote a story about a few weeks ago.

Police were called by neighbors who reported the young gent was playing a game of outdoor bean bag, or "corn hole" by some, in his birthday suit.

The original story is better than I can tell it, so if you hadn't seen it, here it is.

Suffice it to say, the gent attempted to hide from police, leaving his clothes, and importantly his I.D., behind. The police showed up but couldn't get him to answer the door. They thus secured his clothes and I.D. as "evidence."

In the news business, the story of the "Naked bean bagger" is what we call a bona fide "talker." It's a story that is not terribly important in the scheme of things. It's certainly not a public safety hazard or crime spree, but it is nonetheless, something we know from all our Google web analytics will drive traffic at our website through the roof.

It will bury the needle on our "Chartbeat," a service we subscribe to that measures activity on our website in real time.

We were not disappointed. With a little help from the nationally known weird news website Fark.com, that story generated about 70,000 page views. Fark seeks weird news from websites and then creates a link from their website to the news website.

Fark also provides a bit of commentary on just how funny a story might be.

Of our story, the website said "Headline about police responding to naked bean bag game is okay, but could have been true Fark gold if they'd used the other name the article gives for the game"

Our headline: "Naked bean bag game turns into hide and seek with suspect."
Fark's suggested head for "gold status" "Naked corn hole game turns into hide and seek with suspect"
 
Fark has thousands of followers to catch all the weird news from around the country and so when you are "farked" you get a lot of traffic to your website.

The story and all the details were part of the public record. That means name of person, address is included.

However, we chose not to name the young man in a good-hearted attempt to protect him from embarrassment. He's not really a criminal the public needs to fear, at least in our minds. In the news business, there's not a compelling reason to name him.

We suspect there may have been some alcohol involved here and it was an awfully hot day, in the young man's defense.

We know people know who this young man and is and it's probably all over someone's Twitter account, but we try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

We here at The Free Press were all young once too.

Violence, white supremacy and the American mindset

Another day, another shooting.

Random acts of violence seem to be occurring on a regular basis recently, and once again, the country asks itself what are people thinking in the wake of the murder of six Sikh church goers in Milwaukee, by  a white supremacist.

Well, these perpetrators are obviously not thinking very much, and if they are, they've somehow logically concluded that hate is a legitimate mindset and violence is a legitimate solution.

I always ask myself: "How did they get this way."

You can go through the list of usual suspects. Bad parents, bad neighborhoods, bad friends, bad education, society in general, genetics.

But it's worth considering given that most babies don't start out violent. Most kids don't start out violent. Somewhere along the way, something happened that helped reinforce the idea that violence worked as a coping mechanism.

And there's not much one can do about any of the above in any kind systematic way.

Small things can be done along the way. Kids can be taught tolerance at school. They can be taught to settle conflict without violence, without bullying.

But at some point, and this is the scary part, the volume of at-risk kids overwhelms the system. More fall through the cracks. They end up in groups like the white supremacists.

At the growth in at-risk kids to a society that seems to be less willing to deal with them year after year, only building more penitentiaries.

We won't stop crazy incidents like those in Milwaukee or Aurora, Colo., with any program. But we've got to have solutions in place that at least reduce the risk of more and more people falling through the cracks.

The odds will only get worse if we don't.

Would you like some ethanol with your meal?

I covered farming when crop prices were never above cost and always too low.

As years went on, ethanol, of course, was heralded as the savior for low corn prices. In the ensuring decade or so, it worked like a charm. Market prices for corn were solid, and the government subsidies went down.

Now, apparently, we think ethanol is the culprit for corn prices being too high. And we want the government to fix that too.

Where are we? 1984. George Orwell would be proud of how good has become bad and bad has become good. Unispeak reins.

Livestock groups have corralled some lawmakers into asking the EPA to grant an exception to the ethanol mandate in fuel, meaning less ethanol would be made and less corn used, thereby lowering the prices for livestock producers who buy corn for feed.

Some say high corn prices are killing the livestock industry and companies that make and sell meat.

Of course, the corn industry and ethanol promotion groups argue the waiver should not be granted and the market should be allowed to work.

The first government policy on ethanol worked. It became an industry that consumed millions of bushels of corn, now almost 40 percent of U.S. domestic production.

Why is this a problem?

The proposed new government policy aims to turn back the one that actually worked.

The livestock industry should like, uh, buck up, and pay higher prices or reduce their consumption, kind of like the rest of us have to do when prices get high.

It's called the free market system.

Views on news: tax breaks and jobs

For years now it seems, the left and the right have diametrically opposed views on if tax cuts to the wealthy or business help create jobs.

It's an argument about 32 years old, and one on which Ronald Reagan was elected. Of course, Reagan endorsed the idea of tax cuts to create jobs and won over Jimmy Carter with the country hoping he was right. His Republican primary opponent, George H.W. Bush famously called it voodoo economics.

The debate tends to evolve into a social argument versus an economic one. The social one, of course, gets much more media play because it's simple to understand and easy to sell with buzz phrases, like tax the rich, class warfare, the 99 percent talk as well as job killing talk.

My old master program economic professors would be amused at the ability of politicians to abscond with reason and replace it with vitriol.

Even today, there's a little bit of pseudo economics running around. The left or even center left tends to point to the record of how we cut taxes with the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and we actually lost jobs the next five or six years in the aggregate, across the country.

While that looks like the tax cuts didn't work, it may be only partially true. It's true that employment went down, but that doesn't mean SOME employers didn't hire because they got a tax cut.

The real point here is that if we pronounced our policy will create jobs, we should expect people will measure that across the board, throughout the country. But even my most liberal professors would admit that there are many factors that influence job creation including wages, demand for products, imports, exports, the interest rate and the value of the dollar.

Unforunately as we've come to learn, bizarre, unregulated things like credit default swaps also influence job creation.

And anecdotally, we can find stories that prove both points. I know a high-earning hedge fund manager who pays the low 15 percent rate on the vast majority of their capital gain income. This person told me if they got a tax break, they would not likely buy a new car (they already have one) a new house (already got a nice one of those) or really would expend too much more income, except may go out for dinner a little more.

Of course, they would have more money to invest, which shouldn't be discounted, but it doesn't give the same bang for the buck as consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the U.S. economy.

At the same time, I know a small business person who said if they got a $3000 tax break on their property tax bill, they probably would hire a new employee.

Both have circumstances that direct their decision. And we should know that if we think a general policy will affect everyone the same, we are simply kidding ourselves.

The key, (if you've hung with me this long, congratulations for caring about this stuff , and you're among the top 10 percent at least) is we have to understand how a policy might affect the "aggregate." In other words, how will it affect most people or a large enough share to make a difference in job creation.

And we should ask our politicians who are espousing these economic theories this crucial question: Tell us of a study, an example or data that suggest at the most your theory about the policy is true? And if they can't give a good answer to that, we ask: So are we just supposed to take your statement on faith, just believe you that it will happen?

So do tax cuts create jobs? The answer is basically, "It depends.'

And if they end up concluding we should just believe them. Buyer beware!

Colorado shootings and the local sentiment on guns

The view of the world from Mankato, Minn., got pretty crazy this past week.

From the Aurora, Colo., theater shootings from the weekend to the biggest penalties ever imposed on a college football program, the wires were burning with breaking news and the locals weighed in too.

I'm always amazed how quickly gun rights supporters e-mail me when these shootings occur. I don't know if they're attempting a pre-emptive strike against newspaper editorials condemning gun laws, but there's nothing like a mass shooting to get gun defenders motivated.

The Free Press editorial board has not taken a firm stand on gun laws for some time. We'll likely discuss a response next week, but it will likely be centrist as our editorial board has a diverse political mix of thinking on most issues.

The prevailing pundit buzz is that both political parties are afraid to change gun laws, make them tougher and take on the National Rifle Association. It's a sentiment I tend to agree with.

The irony is that the assault rifle ban that was in place for about 10 years came from the shooting of the staff member - James Brady - of Republican President Ronald Reagan. It's equally interesting that Democrats and Republicans voted to end the ban or let it expire.

But even hunting and gun enthusiasts I know still can't see a need to sell multiple-shot, semi-automatic assault rifles.

Talks at a lunch this week centered around how its tougher to get a driver's license, or sign up for cable or cell phones than it is to buy assault rifles and order 6,000 rounds of ammunition online.

Of course, there are many hardcores who claim the Colorado shooter would have gotten an assault rifle even if they were illegal. That may be true, but one cannot argue it would be JUST AS EASY to get an assault rifle if they were illegal versus them being at the counter at the local gunshop.

Maybe if we made buying an assault rifle as tough as we're trying to make voting, we'd be dangerous, or, I mean, more safe.

Latest political moves offers some surprises

It’s no surprise that the House Republicans voted Thursday for the 33^rd time to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or the health care reform.

Even the right-leaning media declared it a symbolic act and I guess it was to re-affirm House GOP opposition to the law after the Supreme Court and one of their own, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, was the deciding vote upholding the law.

There were some surprises though in other political arenas.

It was somewhat surprising the Gov. Mark Dayton decided he would make the final decisions on which of some 90 projects would get a piece of the $47.5 million in bonding money the Legislature allocated as a kind of open-ended, competition for the funds.

In a conference call with DEED Commissioner Mark Phillips, we learned he was not all that excited about having the final decision, as was to be the initial plan.

He told The Free Press “It defies logic” that the Legislature left it up to DEED.

A day later, Dayton announced he would be making the final decision after reviewing DEED's recommendations.

It's in a way new unprecedented power given to a governor, and especially surprising since it was the opposite party that gave him that power.

That Dayton will decide may or may not be good for Mankato’s request for $14 million in bonding for the Verizon Wireless Center expansion.

It may be good because Dayton is well aware of how many times we’ve asked for the money and been denied while other very similar projects around the state have been granted funds.

There was no subtly among Democrats in asserting our projects were long denied by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty through line item vetoes simply because Mankato was represented by Democrats and other areas were represented by Republicans.

Democrats voiced the same criticism even stronger this past year when Mankato was left out of the bonding bills while projects in Rochester and St. Cloud, represented by Republicans, were left in.

So it seems Dayton would be sympathetic to the nature of that battle and how Mankato has been on the losing end for no good reason.

On the other hand, the governor could see the recent Highway 14 project he helped approve as one that gives us our “share” of state dollars.

Stay tuned.

Health care ruling poses huge risk for Republicans in election

The conventional wisdom that the U.S. Supreme Court's upholding the Affordable Care Act will provide election ammo for Republicans that will be armor piercing shells against the Obama campaign shows again the over-reading and over reaching on the part of Republican strategists.

They're not over-reading because people will embrace the act now that the Supreme Court said it's constitutional, but because they have not accurately assessed the risk of people misunderstanding the ruling. And, most importantly, they have not really assessed how well their complicated message of opposing the ruling on health care will be received.

First, let's talk about who's in play here. As always, it's the independents, who both parties desperately need. The Supreme Court ruling will hold sway with some of those people. After all, until recently, the Supreme Court was the most respected institution in the land. Political rhetoric from justices like Anton Scalia is changing that rather quickly.

Still, that the Supreme Court approved the constitutionality of ACA is pretty big. That, alone, will sway some independents to at least give it another look.

If Obama people are smart, they will capitalize on the "another look" and do a media blitz explaining the benefits of the ACA, such as people earning $50,000 a year can probably get cheaper health insurance.

Second, think about what Republicans have to sell. They have to convince independents that the benefits some are already receiving -- keeping your kids on your health insurance until they're 26 and the pre-existing conditions issue -- will be good to do away with.

Then, they have to convince those independents that they're be able to restore those benefits (many Republicans have endorsed them) by passing a new law, with some new, unknown revenue source.

Even if they have a good plan, it's a very complicated message. And complicated message will not sell in a general election. You've got to be able to explain policies to people in a few sentences.

As a media expert, here's my best shot at how you would sell the Republican idea in a few simple sentences. As a salesman, you have to answer objections before they come up.

Objection number 1: "How do you explain the Supreme Court rules this constitutional?"

Republican candidate: "The Supreme Court isn't always right."

Questioner "Isn't the majority considered conservative and mostly appointed by Republicans?"

Republican candidate; "Well yes, sort of."

It's really tough to answer that question. You could say. "The Supreme Court was right. They called the penalty a tax."

Ok, that may work

Questioner: "So how would you repeal it all, give me the good parts and pay for it?"

Republican candidate: "We'd let the private sector set prices based on all these new benefits. That's the way the world works."

Honestly, I can't figure out how else they would sell their position. And with angst between employees and employers at a record high with high unemployment, I'm guessing a lot of folks, even independents, are not really going to buy the private sector thing.

Their recent experience with the private sector is mostly negative. Even if the private sector could do this well, people, because of their RECENT experience, will be hard pressed to buy that argument. (What has the private sector done for me lately?)

A recent poll by Politico sorts of backs up my reasoning here.

Independents, and Americans in general, are split 50-50 bascially on the Supreme Court ruling. That's in very sharp contrast with general polls that say only 30- 40 percent of Americans agree with the ACA.

So how can 50 percent agree with the ruling while 60 to 70 percent oppose the act? Wouldn't those who oppose the ruling parallel the number who oppose the law?

I've always felt the poll numbers on people supporting the ACA were distorted because number one, people don't really know yet the benefits they will get, and two, it's a very complicated issue.

Republicans should look to their colleague governor in Michigan, who was one of the few who said he was going to set up health care exchanges in his state per the federal law so the feds don't do it for his citizens.

Data is starting to come out on benefits of the act -- how many young people are on their insurance and importantly, a rebate expected to be given to millions of Americans on their health premium via the provisions of ACA very soon.

Those will be difficult objections to answer for Republicans and more importantly the messages will be complicated, meaning they won't reach as many people.

When an economic system has too much "Greece"

I don't consider myself short of education with six-years of post-secondary, but I was until recently just kind of confounded and befuddled on how a small country like Greece could essentially pull down the world economy.

A very fine piece by the Associated Press that can be found here at The Free Press website is the best explanation yet that I have seen.

I will try to give you the Reader's Digest version to pique your interest and then you can read the detailed stuff that some journalist -- not blogger -- has taken time to learn, understand and report in a credible and digestible way.

Essentially, Greece's economy is a mess. They've got too much debt, and don't spend their money wisely. People work but don't get paid by the private sector, and some people don't work and still get paid by the government.

But there are a lot of bigger countries that hold a lot of that Greek debt. So if Greece doesn't or can't pay, those countries and the big banks associated with those countries don't necessarily fail, but they face a big time hurt.

And when they hurt, they lend less money. The bank examiners are on them and they generally pull in lending at a time when the economy needs money.

Secondly, this whole Euro currency issue ties the world together in ways not readily apparent. If Greece goes back to the drachma, a less stable currency than the unified Euro, people in Greece will lose confidence the currency will be worth anything (why would it) and they would begin to buy stuff, hoard stuff and pull their money as quickly as possible out of the banks.

And because most countries like Greece and the U.S. have what is called "fractional reserve systems" people can't pull their money all at once because the banks don't have it. They lent it out knowing that not everyone usually needs their money all at the same time.

Of course, a bank run in Greece could cause bank runs in other countries that hold Greek debt. It's not logical, but then we're living in a crazy world.

And another problem on the Euro front. If Greece dumps the Euro (it appears now given the recent election it WILL NOT dump the Euro), those who hold Greek debt in Euros are all of a sudden worried because they fear the drachma will not be worth as much as Euros. (They're probably right).

So they sell like crazy the Euro on the futures exchanges. Others sell other stuff including international stocks based on Euros. It's a downward spiral.

Eventually, this debt and fears of Greece debt being worthless goes back to multi-national banks that do business in America. They actually built complicated investment products called "credit default swaps" (remember 2008 crisis?), which are like insurance against something like Greek debt being worthless.

Hence, if Greek debt is worthless, the credit default swap insurance kicks in at a higher rate than anyone expected, and more people have to pay, and pay, and pay. Banks or investment houses paying out credit insurance again, have less money to lend.

There. How's that for Reader's Digest. Again, read the whole story here. It's long, but it's very informative.

Conversations on bullying

Bullying has been a so called "trending" topic in the news lately, and it's got our attention here at The Free Press.

Recent news stories that two students in southeastern Minnesota committed suicide in part because of how they were bullied at school created a lot of public interest in the issue.

The news stories motivated people to go to town-hall meetings. A meeting in Mankato a few weeks ago was packed with nearly a hundred people as the statewide bullying task force came to town. The task force had planned to be here before the suicides happened, but those events seemed to draw more people to the meeting.

The Rochester Post-Bulletin held a town-hall meeting Tuesday on the subject prompted by the suicides.

Myself and other Free Press editors and reporters recently met with MSU professor Walter Roberts who was selected by Gov. Dayton to be on the statewide bullying task force because of his expertise in counseling and education and the issue of bullying.

We wanted to get his input on what the newspaper could do to address the issue of bullying in the community.

Several interesting takeaways talking to Roberts, who noted he was not speaking as a spokesman for the task force but simply as an education professional:

Bullying has always been around: It is now exacerbated by a number of societal changes including the expansion of the Internet and social media. Whereas kids could once escape bullying by going home, now it's almost 24/7 as they spend a lot of time on Facebook and other sites.

When you're bullying someone or being mean to someone on Facebook, we can't see their reaction like we might in person. So it's easier to bully online. It's lower risk to the perpetrator.

Roberts looks at bullying as a symptom of a larger societal issue of civility. Kids learn how to treat each other by family influences but also by media influences, newspaper stories, talk radio and any other exposure they have to how people interact.

There's more incivility today all around us and that likely breeds more copying behaviors among kids that result in bullying.

Bullying isn't a school problem, it's a societal problem. Kids just happen to congregate at schools.

More and more the message kids get from society and media is: "someone has to be dominant." That's not good.

Roberts surmises Mankato might be doing better to help prevent bullying, but he isn't sure what is working. It could be a number of things. The goal would be to find what is working and report on that.

Roberts suggests newspapers can 1) Make people aware of the issue, sensitize them to it 2) Get people to accept information for combating it. 3) Get communities to talk about it. 4) Report on what the community is or isn't doing.

Lots of good ideas. We'll be formulating a plan soon to develop some stories and possibly a series of stories and public events.

Stay tuned.

Election framing already happening with Dayton, GOP

One of the last acts of the 2012 Legislature will likely be one of the first themes bandied about in the 2012 elections between DFLers and Gov. Mark Dayton and the Minnesota GOP that controls the Legislature.

Dayton vetoed the GOP business and property tax relief bill in a move that many Republicans called everything from outrageous to underhanded. They claimed they met Dayton "half way" on his spending limits for the bill and he still vetoed it.

They claimed there was an understanding that if GOP helped passed the Vikings stadium bill, Dayton would help them with one of their main priorities in business tax relief.

Dayton vetoed the bill saying they should have known better and that he made clear he was not going to sign any bill that increased the state deficit.

It's always hard to decipher who is more truthful in these deals because it often relies on what someone meant when they said such and such.

But, from a strictly political perspective, Dayton would seem to have the upper hand in the narrative. I'm not saying he's right. In fact, the tax bill he vetoed didn't sound very far off from a bill a Democrat Rudy Perpich - one of Dayton's mentors - would have signed a few years ago. And there certainly were provisions in there that would help many small businesses in outstate Minnesota.

But this is where the narrative comes into play. Most typical voters don't really want to invest a lot of time in understanding detailed nuances of legislation. Who can blame them? It's time consuming and well, sometimes, mind-boggling.

So for those folks who just vote based on more simple explanations of things, here's how it will play out.

Dayton: "I vetoed that bill because it increased the deficit." Done, end of story.

Republicans: "Dayton is a job-killing governor for vetoing our tax bill that would have given business property tax relief."

Most people can see with clarity that the bill would have increased the deficit. The Republicans are not denying that.

But it's more complicated to know if a bill would have created jobs or not. Besides, most folks see that jobs are on the rise, so what's the big deal if a few more are "not created."

I'm no political pundit or prognosticator, I just know from 25 years in the newspaper business, how people read things and how they hear and understand things.

Bottom line: My view is that Dayton has an easier sell through a less complicated message. It doesn't make it right. But if one thinks about it, he has framed himself as the "fiscal conservative" and put Republicans in the bad spot of proving him wrong.

When have Republicans ever put on the defensive to claim a Democrat's fiscal conservatism is not right? Not often. And, again, it's going to be tough to prove. The bill would've increased the deficit. No one on the other side is denying that.

Again, I would not be qualified to be hired as an advisor to the Republican Party, but I would have figured out a way to cut spending to pay for the business tax cut. Then, at least, they can say, they weren't going to increase the deficit.