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Tuesday Talk: What policies are voters missing?
Even with an on-going presidential race, it doesn’t seem Minnesotans are discussing big picture public policy issues this election cycle, especially compared with 2010 when candidates debated fiscal policy, education, and green energy. Maybe it’s too early, or maybe it’s the absence of state constitutional offices on the ballot. Perhaps, conservatives have us distracted by constitutional amendment issues that won’t move Minnesota forward.
We’re facing at least a $2 billion deficit, property taxes are sure to rise again, and we’re struggling to pay back our schools. Why isn’t there more focus on these issues?
What other important public policy ideas are being boxed out of the debate?
Comments:
August 16, 2012 at 8:58 am
What policies are the voters missing? Where do I start? We are awash in a sea of opinion, mostly masquerading as “fact.” Then people listen to entertainment talk shows masquerading as news, to get their opinions reinforced.
Where is the conversation for the public good… that our Founding Fathers entrusted us to have?!
When I talk to many, I hear the same refrain, “I probably won’t even vote this year.” Cynicism and resignation.
What have they missed? That creating this view is what has been planned. Somebody doesn’t want you to vote. So? That by giving up your sacred right to vote, you are fulfilling somebody else’s plan, not Your Own.
It is sad to see so much cynicism and resignation… which kills anything new being possible… dressed up as “smart.”
What’s one policy voters seem to have missed? That in a “We the People” country, that it is their responsibility to insist on having a real conversation about the issues of our day. (This is not to be confused with listening to divisive entertainment shows with the underlying message “you deserve yours and you shouldn’t have to pay for them.”)
It’s your job to stay in the game, and that includes voting… and not allowing yourself to be tricked out of doing that.
Isn’t this is the most fundamental policy of all?
August 15, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Good for you Mr. Downing, but if our current job-producing system works so well, why have we had well over 150,000 officially unemployed Minnesotans for several YEARS? Let me borrow your rose-colored glasses. Big improvements don’t come from satisfied persons; that takes serious effort.
I also handed over my 5 patents to my employer - no problem. But when I developed a new (totally unrelated)product at home, on my own time and that my employer didn’t want, I discovered that I no longer had control of my creative brain! My employer had legal control of it! Your employer had full control of yours too, but you probably never discovered it. You probably never tried to start a new company with a new product that would produce jobs or you would have learned it too…
My employer confiscated my new product based the fine print in his crippling “Employee Agreement”(EA) which I had to sign as a condition of employment much earlier when I was a “green horn.” I had NO IDEA that his EA would claim unrelated inventions that I made at home, on my own time, with my own parts, tools and personal funds!
I eventually got it on the market but it took 14 years of effort to pass a Minnesota law prohibiting such blatant theft of employee property! You see, it takes GREAT effort to make improvements in citizen freedoms! Try it.
August 15, 2012 at 9:09 pm
Thanks Bill. It is an intellectually challenging video with facts that refute Paul R. Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb”. I remember going to a lecture by Ehrlich back in 1968 where about 5000 attentive & easily convinced students (me being one of them!)listened to his garbage.
I was a liberal anti-war student at that time and became a fiscal conservative when I had children and grandchildren.
August 15, 2012 at 8:59 pm
Sue B.: You have misinterpreted my comments. Liberal arts are great electives for STEM students. I thoroughly enjoyed taking college level English, Sociology, Psychology, etc. as I pursued my B.S. & M.S. in Chem. E. They all helped me succeed in 3M Health Care.
August 15, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Very good piece Mike, a reality check for the rhetoric spewers. It also challenges a lot of elitist fixed beliefs and makes puts Dr. Shirley McCune’s “Total restructuring of society” in perspective.
August 15, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Mike: Of course you are right about the importance of technology. It’s vital, and we need more highly qualified people in the math and science fields to keep up with the rest of the world. Let’s find ways to give encouragement and make it affordable for students to pursue careers in the technical fields.
But, you seem to think that the liberal arts are worthless and a waste of time. That’s where I must take issue. The world needs BOTH; why can’t you see that? Must we become a nation of automotons going to our labs every day? I like to read a good book, or go to a good movie or play or concert. Who would write the books, plays, screenplays, act in the movies, play the musical instruments in your scenario? Who would design our clothes or homes if we were all science majors? Who would counsel people, teach our kids, run for public office, study history so we don’t keep on making the same mistakes, put out fires, plow our roads, fix our cars, paint our houses, fix our leaky pipes, and so on and so on?
We need all kinds of people in a well-rounded society. We should all be able to follow our own dreams, not be forced into a field where we are miserable or unsuited for the work. Only a totalitarian form of government would force people to do that.
August 15, 2012 at 2:00 pm
95+% of MN voters are not aware of The Demographic Winter. Here’s a great video for those interested in learning:
August 15, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Tony: You are right about the 16th, 17th and perhaps the 18th centuries. However, the 21st century is a technological society that demands STEM students to maintain our technological lead and the high standard of living it produces.
You and the MN2020 website forget that we live in a world of spell check & grammar check.
August 15, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Time for a real life example Tony. Back in 1972 I took a Pulp and Paper techology course at Itasca Community College and earned 17 college credits. I also completed about half of my Electrical Engineering degree in a home study course, (couldn’t get through home study calculus). Last year I went in to see if any of my credits would count toward an engineering degree, not one credit. If I were to go into teaching, social science, or law I can get all 17 credits, most of them math and science by the way. It explains a lot about the pay discrepencies via the degree of difficulty.
August 15, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Well I see Mike is touting his science background as superior to doctors, lawyers & liberal arts degrees. My son has 4 degrees in writing & literature. He taught himself to read in 4 foreign languages to read books in their original languages to better understand the theme. Doctors take many years of education to understand the human body & yet some electrical engineering guy with a 4 year degree is superior to these. Plus getting the degree is no guarantee of a job as they are being outsourced to China & India. We need more people to get his degrees, I agree, but Mike you also need to understand your conservatives have changed the US to a service industry country. They dont need engineers, they need english majors who have the language skills to form a coherent sentence….
August 15, 2012 at 10:50 am
Robert Nepper: I transferred my 4 patents to two different companies and was handsomely rewarded for my creativity, productivity and contributions to society.
Your comments are from the perverse world of victimhood psychology. I am not a victim and will not associate with victims.
August 15, 2012 at 10:34 am
But Mike, we can compensate for that demographic by passing SF 78 (with ammendments) which will “create” thousands of good, private sector jobs at NO-COST to the taxpayers whatsoever. Just STOP the destruction of good job opportunities.
August 15, 2012 at 10:21 am
But Mr. Downing, if you choose a technical education you MUST surrender your creative freedom to get a job! This policy destroys job-creation, Big Time!
————————————————-
Hoarding and destroying good job opportunities
All politicians seem to claim to have “Jobs Jobs Jobs” at the top of their list, but I haven’t found even one that is willing to seriously tackle the ongoing destruction of countless new business and good job opportunities held in limbo by our largest employers.
These employers demand ownership of virtually all employee inventions but with no obligation to actually USE those claimed inventions. This missing obligation allows the firm to develp the few that closely fit the companiy’s existing product line and then skuttle the remaining unwanted inventions so no one can produce new products, new businesses and good manufacturing jobs with them! The intention is to force their employees to think about assigned topics ONLY! But at what terrible cost to our economy?
Following is one tremendous example of an unwanted invention “that got away.” Chester Carlson invented the Xerox copier process in his kitchen, while he worked for a company making unrelated auto parts. Sensing that his employer would never develop it, he asked for a release of ownership so he could patent it and have it developed elsewhere.The empoyer asked for a demo, which produced such terriibly poor copies from his crude apparatus that he quickly signed the release of his “worthess” invention
The tremendously valuable signature freed the invention from the normal corporate strangulation of unwanted employee inventons. It allowed this “worthless” invention to spawn a huge $50BILLION entirely new xerographic industry creating a HALF-MILLION new jobs! (WSJ May 23,1989).
We have tried to replicate this huge success over the past 20 years now by repeatedly reintroduced a NO-COST, “Use or Return” bill in the Minnesota legislature.. But this year’s (SF 78) was quickly tabled and refused even a hearing by the senate’s powerful “Jobs and Economic Growth Committee!”
The very powerful Minnesota Chamber of Commerce has refused to let this huge job-prtoducing measure see the light of day, when it should be “shouting to the rooftops” in supporting it! Go figure
Robert Nepper
August 14, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Sue B: The race to the bottom started 20-30 years ago when students chose the easy majors such as sociology, psychology, history, english, political science, law, etc and avoided science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Our standard of living will continue to erode unless we start to improve our education system to compete with the rest of the world.
August 14, 2012 at 7:27 pm
I agree completely with Bernice and Christeen’s comments. Mike, your comments are terribly condescending. Most jobs held by public employees are not meant to be ‘for profit’, but exist to perform a public service that benefits the community as a whole, as Bernice stated.
I’m sick of public employees and labor unions being blamed for all our economic woes. When a basketball or football coach is hired at ten times the university president’s pay, or when a CEO is hired at several hundred times the pay of the average worker, people say that’s the price you must pay to get the best and the brightest. Why then, is it so hard to understand why a teacher should be well paid to attract the best and the brightest in their field? Teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, and other public employees perform important services that benefit all of us. Unions help raise the compensation of all employees in a given field, whether union or non-union. As union membership decreases, so does membership in the middle class. Let’s not continue this race to the bottom.
August 14, 2012 at 4:50 pm
I found what Bernice was saying very true to what I feel is true. Yes, Mike I had a business and economic class, but that was back in the thirties,so probably wouldn’t
apply now. However, my experience in Texas where I lived for 20 years proved true then. In Texas we had an over abundance of families from Mexico, so a big labor pool
to chose from. I worked a 54 hour week and received $10 per week. I came to Minnesota following the Army and went to work for twice that much for a 42 hour week. So when my husband went overseas in World War II, do you wonder that I moved back to Minnesota? I would just like to turn back the clock to the early 90’s when we were headed to the top. I felt so proud to say I am from Minnesota.
August 14, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Hi Bernice, as I have stated many times on the 20/20 blog my problems are not with public employee’s but rather with the disproportionate amount of power their Unions have accumulated at roughly zero benifiet to the Union movement. In point of fact their arrogant greed has in many ways undermined the real blue collar Union movement. Even worse when you look at the role played by Public Employees Unions in Minnesota’s 9 to 1 arrest ratio of people of color over the use of the now proven medicinal herb marijuana, we could easily call it Minnesota’s version of ethnic cleansing. Public Employees as a group now profit directly from this blatant Racism and have done nothing to identify or stop it.
August 14, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Most voters are not aware of the impact that demographics will have on our state budget over the next 5, 10 or 15 years.
I encourage everyone to understand the reduction in state revenue which will naturally occur with the retirement of the post war baby boomers.
August 14, 2012 at 3:34 pm
Bernice, it is clear that you have never taken an economics class or a business finance class or have forgotten them.
Private enterprise has competition that set a price in the marketplace which in turn sets wages. This is especially true when we compete against other states and other countries.
Public employee wages & benefits are not benchmarked against private enterprise wages & benefits. If they were, public employee wages & benefits would be reduced.
August 14, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Looking through those that have responded
already I find many interesting points of view. Being an Advocate for the Seniors and people with disabilities I was grateful they passed the Health and Human Services bill by postponing some bills that would have had really hurt that population. I just found the hours wasted on Constitutional amendments very expensive for taxpayers, because the time wasted there could have been used to find solutions for education and many real problems. I steam at the idea tax money is being used to pay for a lawsuit of discrimination within the GOP because of a stupid decision of two of their members, Why is that our debt? I agree very much with those who pointed out we are not as high on the list as a State as we were once. So I urge people to get out and vote for those who will bring us back to the high standards we once had, that is the only way we will solve our problems.
August 14, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Hi, Bill. For a Democrat, you are sure hard on unions—especially public employee unions.
Public employees clear the streets and highways of snow in the winter, make sure our water is safe to drink and our food safe to eat, that potholes won’t swallow our cars, that our children get an education that will prepare them for life, that fight our fires and track down criminals, that staff the libraries filled with books and computers for those who otherwise can’t afford to buy them, that sell us fishing and driving licenses. The list goes on and on.
Do you mean to suggest that they should work for free? That they should not have pensions to live on after they retire? That we collect no taxes to pay for services that benefit each one of us just because Grover Norquist says taxes are bad?
It’s not that public employees get too much, but that private sector employees get too little because they are too often forbidden from joining unions that would negotiate for them a living wage and a decent old age.
August 14, 2012 at 11:08 am
I give you E for effort Joe, would the tax increases have occured without the ammendments? Yes, absolutely. With only about half the metro’s potential electorate voting, I would bet the vast majority of them have not been distracted on these taxes increases. That kind of talk comes dangerously close to insinuating that those of us without your education level are unable to comprehend what is happening to us. Be carefull with that one Joe. As for the resourse (we) are spending, the (we) is not taxpayer money unless you are willing to call public employee union money, public money. Since we are already putting out a ballot, only the small additional printing costs apply. We, the rest of us, are not responsible for what special interest groups on both sides do or how they spend their money.
August 14, 2012 at 10:16 am
It never ceases to amaze me how our electeds will run on a great campaign issue, last time around it was hard to hear much of anything over the creshendo of ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’, yet its hard to find many of those jobs that the candidates claimed were going to be thier top priority.
They got elected and immediatly, or so it seems to me anyhow, they got to work on thier far right wing pseudo religious based issues that have nothingm uch at all with ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’, and then to cap off thier 2 years of not creating ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ the did get around to creating a few by voting in favor of a tax payer funded stadium for the Vikings.
I really wish our electeds could get thier collective heads out of thier collecive asses and work toward making MN a shining beacon on the hill of humanity for how wonderful and great a place can be to live, work, play, and vote that I was lead to beleive it was. I see remnants of that all over the place, but dont see much in the way of hope MN can ever get back to that.
We’ve slid to the middle of the pack on many issues; education, colleges, streets, health care, health of the population, poverty, etc. etc. etc. For those out ther that think rising/lowering ourselves to that of Mississippi and alabama, just pack your darnd bags and move there already, and let MN get back to being number 1 at lots of stuff like it used to be.
I want to see MN residents working, and thus pauying taxes and buying stuff and enjoying thier time off in our parks. I want to see all of MN working, producively, at something. there are very few out there that cant somehow be productive, but conecting the person to the way they can be productive seems to be a problem.
Not sure how we get back to the MN i thought I was moving to so many years ago, but voter ID, marriage amendments and Viking stadiums are not the path.
August 14, 2012 at 9:01 am
1) Those who studied the voter i.d. issue found that it will cost the state and counties millions upon millions of dollars (sorry, I don’t have the exact figure this morning).
This is in addition to disenfranchising voters who can’t afford to purchase the birth certificate or other proof of citizenship in order to get the “free” state i.d. for voting. That would be low-income voters that include people of color, students and the elderly.
2) I hope journalists will dig into the philosophies and backgrounds of some perennial candidates for judgeships who want to abolish our current excellent system (commission submits list of names to governor, governor appoints, after one term judges run on their records) in exchange for one in which anyone can run for a first term. Republican and Democratic governors have, with the help of the appointing commission, identified and appointed extremely competent and wise judges over the decades.
Two candidates (that I know of)believe the above and also are right-wing Christian fundamentalists who want to “bring God into the courtroom.” Do we really want cases decided by the personal religious beliefs of any judge rather than on the state and federal constitutions, enacted law, and precedent? The two, by the way, are Dan Griffith and Tim Tingelstad.
I’d like to see this publicly and loudly discussed. One journalist is looking into it, fortunately, and I look forward to seeing what he writes.
August 14, 2012 at 7:50 am
Well Bill, I think the distraction is working. Today, MPR had a story about St. Paul raising prop taxes and cutting library hours. Some teachers I talk to are pretty confident the billions in state finance shifts will continue indefinitely. But we’re spending a lot of resources defending people’s right to vote and a marriage issue that will do nothing to improve marriage for anyone.
August 14, 2012 at 7:44 am
Just couldn’t resist could you Joe, just had to throw in that unconnected sentence about the Constitutional ammendments didn’t you. While they may do little to move the state forward as you claim, they also do nothing to increase the deficit we are facing. As for candiates not discussing the only issues you consider real here, “fiscal policy, education, and green energy”, it is unclear at the end of your inquirey weather the public is out of touch or weather you are, take care.
Bernice Vetsch says:
August 16, 2012 at 9:23 am
KJC: I hope you will share your important perspective with voters in the form of letters to the editor and/or op ed pieces. It may help break through some of the apathy that’s out there.