Tuesday evening, May 1^st, I was again endorsed by my local DFL endorsing convention. DFLHD 20B, to run for the Minnesota House.  My challenger was Mick McGuire who ran against Glen Grunhagen in 2010, but was redistricted into the same district.  Mick was a good challenger and made me work harder. As is usually the case the candidate who can muster the most delegates to attend the convention is the one who prevails.

To start us off the Veterans present were called forward to lead us in the pledge:

After the convention unanimously endorsed Kevin Dahle for the Senate seat and Ryan Wolf for the 20A House seat they moved to my endorsement. I was blessed to have 67 delegates turn out on my behalf even thought the convention was in Montgomery and the weather reports were threatening.  I sincerely want to thank all those delegates who were there for me.  I also want to thank Mick for running good and vigorous campaign against me.  I wish things had been different and we could both be running for a seat in the house.

I had five speakers on my behalf who seconded my nomination and all gave strong speeches.  Among them were Barbara Helling, one of my Ed. Psych. Professors at St. Olaf, and Cliff Martin, a Northfield student and National delegate to Dem. Convention Both pictured here. We had only ten minutes total to make our case and I wouldn’t have wanted to cut anything they said but that left me with less time to give my speech, so ended up having to cut it down on the fly.   I only gave about half the speech I wanted to.  So here it is uncut, hope you enjoy it:

Thank you all for being here on the first day of May to take this important step in taking back the Minnesota House. It is a pleasure to be here with you.

I want to thank all those who spoke on my behalf and thank them for their kind words.

On this warm spring day I am reminded of my father who passed away 44 years ago.  He was the man I have admired most in my life.  A day does not go by that I do not think of him. I do not mean to disregard my mother who some of you know as she also influenced me.  But my father was remarkable.

He was small of stature but had a huge heart. He was a scoutmaster in Northfield and occasionally one of his former scouts will stop me on the street and tell me how much he meant to him.  I owe to my father a respect for nature and the environment and a true sense of the value of relationships.

I also owe to him a foundation of wisdom shaped by suffering.  My father was sick most of his life but greeted every day with a smile.

To this day I remember some of the things he told me.  They weren’t original ideas but the way he lived them, and explained them to me continues to make sense and inspire me. Sometimes I wonder if our world has completely turned upside down since his death.

“You get what you pay for.” Was something he said to me.  He was suspicious of trying to create anything let alone a society or an economy on the cheap.  He would be surprised that we now believe the highest virtue is the cheapest price.

“If you own something you must care for it no one else will.”  That goes for the planet as well as your home, your community and your state

“Faith can guide you but it shouldn’t blind you to the needs or beliefs of others.”

“Comfort the afflicted” and it seems we do far too little of that.

“If you believe in something put your best work into it, it will not happen with out your considered effort.”

“Treasure those who walk this life with you everyone has something to offer.”  And he meant everyone, something he reminded me of when we would visit residents at the Faribault State institutions.

“Service to others is a high calling and is best done for the joy of doing it.”

And finally, “If you assume the worst of people that is what you get. Instead look for the best in each person and encourage it.”

These are some of the words that have guided me in my life, in my teaching and in my service in the legislature.  For me politics is a higher calling – as it is service to others.

You have entrusted me with this service several times in the past I hope I have earned your trust and I hope you will stand with me as we fight to take back our legislature to create jobs, protect our environment and build an economy that works for everyone.

The last day of March, Rice County  DFL delegates gathered at the Northfield Middle School to debate, deliberate and elect officers and delegates. They also listened to candidates offer speeches. Congressman Tim Walz gave a rousing speech that had delegates on their feet.  Most of the county is now represented by Rep. Walz in the First District, and it used to be that way prior to the 2002 redistricting. I for one would be proud to be represented by this veteran who also served his community as a teacher and coach. But Northfield remains in the Second Congressional District.

A fellow Northfielder, Patrick Ganey has thrown his hat in the ring for that office, hoping to win the DFL endorsement to run against Congressman John Klein.  I am seeking the endorsement of House District 20B DFLers in a convention that will happen May 1st in Montgomery.  But many of the delegates in attendance at the Rice County convention are also delegates to that convention. Following is the message I delivered to them to win their support:

Powerful forces are working against us — they’re working against you and they’re working against me. It is the powerful and not so invisible hand of corporate America. With scare tactics, they’ve weakened the power of unions. Through the courts, they established their rights as faux persons, their money as speech and finally the insistence that they can say anything they please. This enables them to seize control of state legislatures and governorships across the country.

Their goal, no matter what they say to the contrary, is to destroy our middle class economy. They learned how to seize pensions through bankruptcy and hostile buyouts.  Now they are setting their sights on the benefits and pensions
of state workers and teachers. They shut down plants and shipped jobs overseas to free themselves of regulations and responsibilities to their workers. In the 1990s for example U.S. multinational corporations shed 2.9 million employees and hired 2.7 foreign workers. Right now in Minnesota and North Dakota at Crystal sugar they lock out union workers and refuse to negotiate and won’t accept agreement on even the original terms they offered.

They push their agenda through their political arm ALEC, the American
Legislative Exchange Council. They blame government and taxes for every evil while at the same time demanding bailouts and payments at every turn of the economy. Their political and economic power increases every day.

When Pawlenty was Governor he raided every account, took money from schools, technical colleges, every licensing board, every agency so that he would not have to raise taxes on his wealthy friends or be blamed for destroying our infrastructure. He almost came to his senses when the 35w bridge fell into the Mississippi. But then, after a stiff talking to from his buddies, he insisted he would only raise transportation revenue if he got a tax cut for the wealthy. He wanted a direct transfer of public wealth into the private hands of his friends and was willing to hold our safety hostage to get it done. Only a veto over ride by the legislature changed that.

In the same way, corporate bosses like the Koch brothers want to destroy
government, undermine its power, and steal its public wealth so that it
can no longer enforce the principles of a society that has the ability to create a middle class and protect our democracy. You can’t have a democracy without a middle class!

Have you seen my little booklet “The Middle Class Amendment”?  In it, I put myself on record to return our state and our country to the principles that made us great. I believe we must invest in our people.  I believe each and every one of us deserves an opportunity to make his or her life better and contribute in the best way they can to our common good. But if we continue down the path we are going, we will lose these ideals and, worse yet, the chance to get them back.

Last week I was in Washington DC and I walked up and down the Mall visiting the various memorials to the fallen soldiers and the great leaders.  I was moved by the inspiring quotes and studied the enduring stone and bronze statues. The symbols of our democracy seem secure and long lasting but across the mall in the Capitol and on the steps of the supreme court you wonder if men and women working there have forgotten that government should serve the people.

You may remember Northwest Airlines CEO Richard Anderson resigned in
2004 to take another lucrative job, with a major health insurance company. He left a company that was headed for bankruptcy and eventual sale to Delta. In spite of Northwest’s troubles, however, Mr. Anderson, like other top executives at Northwest, was covered by three generous company pensions. Anderson cashed his in for a lump-sum payment of $3,028,700. Northwest’s workers had a much harder landing. Half of their jobs were eliminated outright. The survivors saw their traditional guaranteed pensions morph into 401(k) plans funded at what amounted to $85-a-month for every year they worked. At that rate, Anderson’s 14 years with the airline would have resulted in a contribution of $1,190 per month toward a decidedly more modest retirement.

Christine, a flight attendant I know, stayed with Delta. In the transition,
Christine lost her union, most of her pension, had her wages cut, and lost seniority standing. She supported her dwindling income with a job as a waitress at a posh country club. Approaching 65, Christine was hoping her pension would provide an acceptable retirement.  Instead, it provides her $200 a month and no health insurance. The waitress job helped for a while, but then came the recession and that income dwindled as well. Christine was at a loss for what she might do. She wonders, “What has this country come to?”

“What has this country come to?” I’m sure I’m not alone in being troubled by Christine’s question. For the past several years, I’ve been trying to come to terms with the changes we need in our political system to make sure our society and economy can work for all of us.

- This is why I carried the Minnesota Health Plan in the Minnesota House
that would make sure every citizen had access to quality affordable health care.

- It’s why I introduced legislation to promote the development of renewable energy that would create jobs and make it possible for home-owners and schools to be able to afford to make use of solar and wind energy.

- It’s why my first bill the governor signed was to reinstate funding for
early childhood and after school programs. Early childhood education,
experts tell us, brings us the greatest return on our investment

- It is why I stood up to powerful utility lobbyists to push through legislation to protect homeowners from unfair compensation for land used for power and pipelines. I worked with Sen. Dahle to get bi-partisan support and it passed with strong votes in both the House and Senate.

- It is why I introduced legislation protecting homeowners from foreclosure and why I want to go back to the legislature and make sure that government works for everyone.

-This is why I am running for endorsement for the Minnesota House — why
it is imperative for those of us who believe in democracy to once again be put in charge of it. I want to join Governor Dayton in making Minnesota better for all of us. Let no one forget: “We all do better when we all do better!

I still have a campaign committee and am well on my way to raising the funds needed to run a winning campaign.  But last year taught all of us a bitter lesson. They can spend all the money they want to elect the candidates they choose. They did it to me, no, TO US, in the last election, and they can do it again.

Only organized people can beat organized money.  Yes, let’s raise enough to fight back.  But let’s do what money can’t do.  Let’s stand up and fight back!

I would be honored to have your endorsement.  You can count on me to represent each and every one of you – every single day I am in office.  But I can only win if I can count on you. So, I ask you: if you can stand – stand with me, if you can talk – talk to your neighbors, if you can walk – walk with me, and let’s take back our state government.

In a blog post on the Levins Publishing Website by Andy Timming and Richard Levins they try to help us understand what this policy is about:

What, exactly, is Right to Work? One thing for certain: it is NOT what it sounds like. The name “right to work” is a clever scam to mislead you into supporting it. If it were called “Minority Rule,” which is what it really is, you would think twice before supporting it, wouldn’t you?

In spite of its misleading name, Right to Work does NOT grant anyone a right to work. You already have a right to work in the United States if you are a legal adult citizen or if the government has granted you the necessary papers to be legally employed. Right to Work legislation has nothing to do with that.

 So what is Right to Work? It’s a cleverly disguised special exemption to the constitutional principle of majority rule. With Right to Work the minority rules.

The Minnesota Legislature has introduced several bills to put measures on the 2012 ballot that if passed would be added to our State Constitution.  One of those measures introduced by Sen. David Thompson called “Right to Work.”  It is a measure that several state legislatures have introduced across the country and like the other potential amendments to the constitution is high on the list of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an ultra conservative think tank promoting the interests of large corporations.

“Right to Work” might sound good but just like the “Clear Skies” initiative it is very misleading.

Instead of creating a better work environment according to the EPI:

 Rigorous studies—using regression analysis to home in on the effect of RTW laws— show that RTW laws:

• reduce wages by $1,500 a year, for both union and nonunion workers, after accounting for different costs of living in the states (Gould and Shierholz 2011)

• lower the likelihood that employees get healthcare or pensions through their jobs—again, for both union and nonunion employees (Gould and Shierholz 2011)

• have no impact whatsoever on job growth (Lafer and Allegretto 2011)

and reporting on the law passed in Oklahoma:

 The facts—which come straight from the state and federal government and are now uncontested by any party, are:

• In the 10 years since the law was passed, the number of new companies coming into the state has decreased by one-third (Oklahoma Department of Commerce 2011). Indeed, the same two OCPA staff analysts who authored the most recent RTW study—Moody and Warcholik—also published a 2010 article showing that Oklahoma has suffered a net out-migration of jobs to other states.

• In the 10 years since Oklahoma adopted its right-to- work law, the number of manufacturing jobs in the state has fallen by one-third (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011).

Contrary to the claims of ALEC “Right to Work” laws are designed to create a work environment similar to what corporations might find in third world countries.  It is possible that jobs could be created but they would be jobs with low wages and very limited benefits.  Ultimately this would be bad for everyone, because it would mean that more Americans would fall in to the ranks of the working poor.  They would be able to afford less and less and overall demand for goods and services would fall and our economy continue a downward spiral as more businesses fail and ultimately more jobs are lost.

Here’s an example from the Timming Levins blog piece:

 Here’s a Dumb Idea We Made Up

Imagine a “Right to Safety” law. Here’s how it would work. Suppose the citizens of a community wanted to invest more money in their police and fire departments. They vote on a local property tax increase to raise the money and the majority votes YES. Normally, everyone would pay the additional tax and everyone would benefit from the investment in public safety.

 The Right to Safety law would change things in two important ways: (1) those who voted against the tax would not have to pay it, and (2) the improved police and fire departments would have to provide the same benefits to everyone in the community whether or not they helped pay for those benefits.

 The hypothetical Right to Safety law seems like a dumb idea, right? Right to Safety does just the opposite of what it says: it does not provide a right to safety, but it does make it harder for communities to act together for public safety programs. In short, it undermines the will of the majority. The more you think about it, the more it seems like Right to Safety was designed by people who opposed public safety, not those who favored it.

Here’s what Martin Luther King Jr. said about “Right to Work”:

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’  It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights.  Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…

 Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us. We demand this fraud be stopped. Our weapon is our vote.”    ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.speaking about so-called Right-to-Work laws in 1961.

“Right to Work” is a bad idea.  It should be stopped in the legislature but if we are unable to convince legislators to vote it down, we must defeat it at the polls. Join me in getting the word out.

The 2012 Legislative session is just around the corner, due to start on Tuesday.  Both sides seem eager to make it a historically short session so that campaign preparations can begin in earnest once the new district maps are released Feb. 21st.

On the docket for consideration and debate are the Vikings Stadium question, a slew of proposed constitutional amendments, proposed government 2.0 reforms, and a bonding bill.

Fortunately, they will not have to rebalance the budget because the budget appears to be in the black.  But rather than patting themselves on the back with avoiding a deficit they need to look at what they had to do to get there.  Borrowing money from schools and denying services to many who need them is not sustainable.  Hopefully all parties will continue to work toward crafting a budget that will help us get the economy going and come closer to providing what our citizens need. But more about that in future posts.

The Stadium question remains unsettled as a means of funding the various projects has proven difficult to settle on.  For that reason, the final result is still uncertain.  I continue to oppose using state general fund dollars to fund this kind of project and although it would meet a much-needed boost to employment I hope other ways funding it can be found.  It is difficult to justify that kind of expenditure when we have been cutting much needed services.

The amendments in number and scope represent an admission on the part of the legislature that they are unable to convince the Governor of their arguments and hope with the help of ALEC (a right wing national legislative think tank), and corporate donors to persuade voters of their issues.

We already have a marriage amendment on the ballot and Republicans hope to add voter photo ID, balanced budget (both limiting spending increases and measures to make it harder to raise taxes), and a so called, “right to work” amendment.  Other measures have been talked about but these are perhaps the most likely to come up.

Amendments in general have been added to the constitution on the state and federal level to broaden rights and opportunity.  All of these measures do the opposite they put into our constitution, which should be an expression of all of our interests, measures which take away the rights of some; make it harder to provide for the needs of others and make it harder to get a fair shake in our economy. In other words they make our government, our economy and our society less democratic.

For this reason I urge a “no” vote on all of the amendments next fall.  I will go into my reasoning in greater detail in future entries.

Many of the conservative 2.0 Reforms fall under the same delusion that somehow we will be better off by making it easier for a few to do well and harder for most of us to get the help and protection we need.

Finally, the bonding bill, it is a much-needed investment in infrastructure and a job creating measure.  As a brief aside sometimes I am surprised by how many people tell me how glad they are Mark Dayton is our Governor and how pleased they are with the job he has done – working hard to make Minnesota a better place.  This is not just the usual suspects, but a number folks who begin by saying, “I didn’t vote for him, but it’s clear he cares about Minnesota.”

In that vein, Governor Dayton is proposing a $750 million bonding bill.  This is smaller than most of the bonding bills passed in recent years.  It is a good time to invest as interest rates are low and construction costs are depressed.  We need the investment in our infrastructure and putting unemployed workers to work will improve our revenue situation without raising taxes.  Those projects will increase purchasing of supplies needed for the construction and also increase the ability of those workers to purchase goods in services that they can’t afford now.  There will be a ripple effect across the economy and continue to make much needed improvements.

It is my hope that the current legislature will be persuaded by all of these positives to get behind the governor’s proposals and move Minnesota forward.  It is clear that austerity measures across the country and in Europe are not bringing the results we need.  We can’t spend money we don’t have so bonding is one of the few ways states can make a difference in stimulating the economy.

I urge you to let your legislator now how important it is to join with the Governor to move things forward. They need to hear from you.

sen.al.dekruif@senate.mn

rep.kelby.woodard@house.mn

Over the past several months I have brought you 30 conversations dealing with our current economic situation.  I invited guests from a variety of backgrounds to come and talk with me about how our economy works, how we ended up in a deep recession and how we might get out of it.  In addition I had guests who described from their perspective what they were experiencing and what was happening at various levels of state and local government to deal with the economic slow down.

I hope you found this series of conversations interesting and useful.  I have enjoyed the opportunity to share with you some of my thoughts and to learn a long with you as my guests enlightened us.  Thanks to Jeff Johnson at KYMN radio for allowing me to purchase the time for the program and for the help of his staff in production.  Although there are many guests I would like to continue this conversation with I have decided to make this my final program in the series for now and rather than inviting another guest I thought I might use this half hour to review some of things I learned and my guests shared with us.  To serve as a kind of index should you want to go back and review.  I will keep the programs archived on my website and if you wish to revisit them or if you haven’t heard one and would like to you can do that by  locating the programs on the Economy Talk page.

I began the series with Dr. E. David Emery, Professor of economics at St. Olaf College.  I had heard a presentation by Dr. Emery explaining what had happened to our economy and what the prospects for recovery were.  He drew upon the work of Hyman Minsky, professor of economics at Washington University in St. Louis and described what has come to be known in many circles as a “Minsky moment. “

He explained that, Minsky proposed theories linking financial market fragility, in the normal life cycle of an economy, with speculative investment bubbles common to financial markets. Minsky claimed that in prosperous times, when corporate cash flow rises beyond what is needed to pay off debt, a speculative euphoria develops, and soon thereafter debts exceed what borrowers can pay off from their incoming revenues, which in turn produces a financial crisis. As a result of such speculative borrowing bubbles, banks and lenders tighten credit availability, even to companies that can afford loans, and the economy subsequently contracts. It all sounded familiar.

This slow movement of the financial system from stability to fragility, followed by crisis, which he described became as known as the “Minsky moment”.

Minsky offered very good insights in the ’60s and ’70s when linkages between the financial markets and the economy were not as well understood as they are now. He showed us that financial markets could move frequently to excess. And he underscored the importance of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort.

Disagreeing with many mainstream economists of the day, Minsky argued that these swings, and the booms and busts that can accompany them, are inevitable in a so-called free market economy – unless government steps in to control them, through regulation, central bank action and other tools. Such mechanisms Minsky pointed out did in fact come into existence in response to crises such as the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression. Minsky strongly opposed the deregulation that characterized the 1980s.

A good explanation of this can also be found in John Cassidy’s book How Markets Fail, but the short version of his theory that Dr. Emery described is that many of us operate under the assumption that markets are stable or can self stabilize if left alone.  Minsky’s idea was that markets are not stable and have a way of creating environments where investors believe they are acting rationally but because they operate in an irrational system little of what they do is rational when seen from a broader perspective.  This creates the potential for financial bubbles or what are for a period economic booms that people assume are the new reality but when the actual reality reveals that this is not so the bubble bursts with a loss of all that was gained.  Dr. Emery explained that this event was a result of years of unregulated banking fraud and wishful thinking related to the housing boom and other investment speculation (which is really money created by computer key stroke).  The result was a chain reaction across the globe of bank failures and pension and investment losses, which will take years to recover from.  The shock of these losses created a Tsunami of job losses across the private sector, which is now spreading across the public sector as lost tax revenues force governments to shrink their budgets.

Policy makers initially responded by bailing out banks and other crucial industries as well as infrastructure spending to stave of some job losses.  At the federal level this increased deficit spending that had begun in the Bush years to cover the cost of two wars and the Bush tax cuts.

In my second and third programs I talked with another St. Olaf professor Steve Soderlund who expressed concern about the knee jerk response of wanting to cut spending to reduce the debts created by the decline in tax revenue.  This means that we abandon the future for our children as we cut school budgets or the programs that support children and families in the early years.  It is very difficult after all to go back and provide what is needed to young people once they have become adults.  We may well end up leaving them not only with a mountain of debt but far fewer resources to earn the income to pay down the debt.  It seems a better plan would be to deal with the slowing economy first and concentrate on the debt once the economy is working again.

Another economist and friend of Dr. Emery’s, Tor Dahl made just that point when he talked about his idea of a growth economy and how for the last twenty to thirty years our economy had been underperforming and we would not be having conversations about taxes and debt if the economy were only growing at a rate similar to Singapore or Brazil.  He believes this has much to do with a focus on short term planning and too much emphasis on quality as opposed to productivity.  Productivity is where growth comes from and he believes you can get quality from focusing on productivity but not the other way around.  He seemed to imply that managers seemed too cautious and not bold or imaginative enough to move the economy forward. It was a fascinating conversation for me and gave me the sense that there was reason to hope for our economic future we those who have the power to move the economy could be bolder and plan more long term. I had Tor on a second time and he shared his research on what kind of political leadership had produced the best conditions for economic growth and hands down his data showed it was liberal or Democratic administrations or legislatures.

An economic summit at St. Olaf gave the chance to interview a friend from my college days Deborah Arnie Arneson who held office in the New Hampshire legislature, ran for governor there and has become a radio personality.  She had emceed the various forums on campus that week and was kind enough to share some of her insights on what was talked about at the forum.  She also shared a touching story about her elderly aunt and our health care system.

I also had the chance to visit with a couple of local businessmen Karl Vohs and Bob Ciernia who talked about their business and how they were fairing and what strategies they were using.

Local Arts Guild director Ann Mosey shared with me work that she and Dean Kjerland had been doing along with a number of others to advance the arts as vehicle for economic growth in our community.  She described the efforts that brought together local farmers and artists to create River Walk Market Fair, which just recently completed its second successful year and is now moving to a year round venue.

I talked with Regi Marroquin-Haslett who started the Mainstreet project assisting local latinos in establishing agripreneurs that is local fariming and food distribution enterprises. Creating new markets and entrepreneurs who successfully contribute to our community.

As the legislative session was in full swing and eventually moved into a government shut down and special session I interviewed several state legislators to get a read on what was happening.  Rep. Rick Hansen, Terry Morrow, Tina Liebling, and Sen.  John Marty all shared their insights on the struggles at the Capitol.

I supplemented their discussions with some floor speeches by Rep. Ann Lenchewski former tax chair and some one who truly understands tax issues at the state and local level.  I followed that up with local CPA and tax consultant Leota Goodney who gave a more local perspective on tax law and policy.

University of Minnesota Economics Prof. Richard Levins talked with me about growing income inequality over the last 30 years and the problems this created for our ability to pull out of the current recession and how it related to the problem.  The change in regulatory policies and the decline of unions were huge factors in the change from the period when it seemed our economy could spread the growth and productivity gains across our society benefiting everyone.  Our current situation has seen those at the top regain their footing and continue to do very well at the same time folks further down the income scale struggle to get by and see their wealth continue to diminish.  Continuing to ignore this growing divide will only slow the recovery and may in the end force us to become more like a banana republic with out a middle class.  I had Dr. Levins on a second time and we talked some about a recent book, “The Spirit Level“, which further described the dangers of an unequal society.  Our economy used to work for everyone what was causing it to fail?  Dr. Levins has written about it in a little book called Getting America Back to Work and mentioned my work on saving the middle class.  To help us move away from the politics we seem to have fallen into where we have a winner take all attitude among some super wealthy players in our economy, who want to regulate and restrict what access most citizens have to their government while they are completely unrestricted in what they can do and take from the system.  Things like the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United Decision“, which money into speech, essentially protecting fraud by insisting that citizens have the right to hear all sides and must be trusted to determine the truth.  Essentially allowing corporations or anyone with massive amounts of money to buy elections and politicians.

During the legislative debates about cutting spending an interview with local therapist Dan Dimick got me thinking about how and why we provide for those most vulnerable around us and some in our society seem to have lost the social contract that seemed to be a common assumption.  A belief perhaps best summed up by former Sen. Humphrey who argued that we are judged as a civilization for how we provide for those who are in the shadows of life, the poor, the sick and the elderly.  It is through government that we are able to meet their needs and provide comfort by asking those who have done very well to contribute to caring for those who through little fault of their own struggle in our society.

I did two programs dealing with how we might improve our health care system and as a result improve our economy.  In the legislature along with Sen. John Marty I introduced the Minnesota Health Plan, a single payer plan, which would reduce the costs of insurance at the same time making sure every citizen in Minnesota had access to health care.  Joan and Steve Janusz have been working with the Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition to build support for this policy.  They have become very knowledgeable about our health system and talked about how it compares to health care in France where their daughter lives and they recently returned from a visit.

I also, shared with listeners an interview with Dr. William Hsiao, a Harvard expert on the economics of health care and the primary architect of the newly passed Vermont single payer plan.  His research and plan – project great savings and improved access for the citizens of Vermont and an added bonus predicts it will bring jobs and employers to that state.

Nan Madden joined me on the program to share her research on the Minnesota budget process and the effect of spending cuts on Minnesota’s non profits who are often in a position to deliver many of the services the State of Minnesota decides are important for citizens. These services often provide vulnerable Minnesotans with care and comfort they would be unlikely to get elsewhere and is funded through grants and allocations of funds directly to these organizations that are able to deliver the services in efficient and cost effective ways.

Carleton Economist Martha Paas, a macroeconomist who teaches courses in economic history, the history of economic thought, and the economics of the arts.

Shared her thoughts on what is happening to the economy.

She attributes the Causes of our recent deficit spending to Defense spending that has doubled in the last 10 years largely due to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the Bush tax cuts; and of course The Recession.

She believes shrinking government will not solve the problem. By 2015, half of all government spending will be dedicated to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Social Security is solvent for now, and there is time to make fiscally responsible reforms. Containing health care costs is the real issue.

Prof. Paas says the U.S. is not going broke. It’s not a problem as long as the federal debt, now at $14 trillion, doesn’t grow faster than our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our debt to GDP ratio is currently 37th in the world.

The philosophy of Trickle down economics has not worked. The income inequality gap is wider than at any time in our nation’s history.  This is not simply a social justice issue. There are sound economic reasons to reverse this trend.

She does not see Inflation as a real danger. The recovery is more important at this point in time than guarding against inflationary forces. She believes investing in infrastructure and clean energy creating jobs not cutting spending will turn things around for the US. Policy decisions must be based on hard evidence and argues that much of what passes for economic thinking is ideology passing for truth and slogans for facts. We should look to the data and our economic history and the path it shows us to take to find our way out of a difficult situation.

Jennifer Labovitz grew up in Northfield and is the daughter of Carleton Economist Bob Will.  She didn’t pursue a career in economics nor in the field of criminal justice but found herself learning a lot about both subjects as chair of the Council on Crime & Justice an organization that works for social justice and to draw attention to concerns and needs of those who make there way through our criminal justice system.  She shared with me a chart that shows that the US is the worlds number one jailer.  We pride ourselves as a nation valuing individual freedom but a combination of no tolerance policies and the tendancy to seek the ultimate punishment for non-violent crimes means that we tend to lock up many of our citizens.

We talked about the economic issues this creates for our society as we spend increasing dollars on keeping non-violent criminals locked up and are forced to cut spending on education and health care.  In addition we touched briefly on the difficulty of individuals who have paid their debt to society and now must support themselves in an economy that is increasingly unfriendly to them.  The increased use of background checks and the competition for jobs with increasing numbers of unemployed workers makes their assimilation back in to society even harder.

I followed that interview with two interviews about school funding as the Northfield School district was forced to ask for additional funds from local tax payers.  Don Hill former teacher and union president has worked for many years to increase spending on k-12 education and to get the state legislature to realize that they can’t just continue to rely on local property tax payers to fund our much needed education system.

And Rep. Mindy Greiling, former chair of the MN House education finance committee shared with me her insights about the current legislative impasse and her efforts to put  in place a more equitable funding system for education.  She also cleared up some misinformation being spread across the state by the current education chair.

I have been doing a lot of reading about the economy and how we got into this mess and often made references to some of my readings in the interviews.  But I was struck by one writer who had expressed concerns about our economic and political system that really rang true to me and predicted the collapse several years before it happened.  John Ralston Saul is a Canadian whose book the Unconscious Civilizationcompelled me to call him and see if he would be willing to talk about some of his ideas and what is happening with the Occupy Wall street movement.  When I contacted him I did not realize all of Saul’s background.  He is President of the International PEN association, the organization that attempts to protect freedom of speech and writers who are harassed by oppressive governments. His wife is the former Governor General of Canada.  He has won awards for his novels and acclaim for his books commenting on current political and economic events in the world, US and Canada.

Mr. Saul shared with me his ideas about the corrosive effect of corporatism and its attack on democracy.  He sees the Citizen’s United decision by the US Supreme court establishing Corporations as citizens as part of rational extension from Mussolini who was a 20^th century advocate of corporatism.  He also linked the progression of Corporatist thinking to Globalization, which has little regard for citizens and national governments.  He said he was impressed with the efforts of the Occupy movement to try to reawaken citizen activism and indicated felt they were doing a good job of pointing out the problem of corporate influence on political and economic institutions.  Mr. Saul is able to avoid many of the right left and or Republcian Democratic arguments by bringing a very different perspective to the recent economic and political events.  He echoed some of what economist Tor Dahl had said in our current corporate system ruled by managers anxious to protect what they have in privelege and advantage are unable to provide the economic growth we truly need.  I highly recommend his series of books which also advocate for a more balanced view of how function as individuals in society. He believes strongly that government is the one way individuals can express themselves in the political sphere and they have an obligation to do so.  He also believes that protection of the public space and public institutions are crucial for preserving our democracy and corporatism and privatization are bent on destroying both.

My friends from the Minnesota Jobs Now Coalition Kris Jacobs and Kevin Ristau shared with me their most recent research on the job situation in Minnesota.  They have long advocated that an increase in the minimum wage would go along way in improving the demand side of our economic equation, an important concept when the economy is in slow down mode.  If we want to be able to get people working we have to get money into more people’s pockets.  It reminded me of what Utah banker, Mariner Eccles said before a Senate committee when trying to help them develop policies to help America find its way through the depression.   “Contrary to what you have been hearing cutting government spending would only make matters worse.  We have a situation where there is too much money in too few hands and the only way to correct the situation is for the government to step up and put people to work any way it can.”  I also asked Jacobs and Ristau about a recent proposal by Georgia Professor William Darity to revive and expand the civilian conservation corps and attempt to get us back to full employment.  They made it clear that without a clear jobs program putting people back to work it would be even harder to solve the debt problem our nation has.  We have two problems they said the debt and jobs It matters which we one we solve first because it will assist in the other.  We must create jobs and put people back to work.

Finally, I was joined by Carleton student Rebekah Frumkin who talked with me about her play “Security’ about the Enron scandal as Greek tragedy and also about her involvement with both the Occupy Chicago and Occupy Minnesota movements.  It was refreshing to get her perspective on the economy and our future.  You can listen to all of these programs archived on the KYMN Radio website on the Economy Talk page or you can visit the Economy talk page on this website to listen to interviews in an mp3 format.

This is my final program for the time being I expect to be spending time finishing up my book on how to save the middle class and will be busy promoting it.  It should be published soon as an e-book. I also will soon be hitting the campaign trail to run for the newly reapportioned Mn House district in hopes of once again representing Northfield and surrounding townships in the state legislature.  If you have questions about any of the programs in the series or my future pursuits you can contact me via e-mail at david@davidbly.com  It has been a pleasure sharing this time with you and I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.

1. New Show David Emery                                     2. Economy Talk Steve Soderlund 

3. Economy Talk Steve Soderlund2                  4. Economy Talk Tor Dahl1

5. Economy Talk Reginaldo Haslett-Maroquin   6. Economy Talk Arnie Arneson

7. Economy Talk Karl Vohs                                  8. Economy Talk Ann Mosey

9. Economy Talk Rep. Lenczewski                  10. Economy Talk Leota Goodney

11. Economy Talk Rick Hansen                         12. Economy Talk Terry Morrow

13. Economy Talk Dick Levins1                         14. Economy Talk John Marty

15. Economy Talk DanDimick                           16. Economy Talk Bob Ciernia

17.Economy Talk Joan-Steve-Janusz            18. Economy Talk Nan Madden

19. Economy Talk RepTinaLiebling                20. Economy Talk  Martha Paas

21. Economy Talk Jennifer Labovitz              22. Economy Talk DonHill

23. William Hsiao                                                    24. Economy Talk Tor Dahl2

25. Economy Talk Levins2                                   26. Economy Talk Rukavina

27. Mindy Greiling                                                   28. John Ralston Saul

29. Kris Jacobs and Kevin Ristau                   30. Rebekah Frumkin  

Program Summary

Today my father’s birthday, (Nov. 30) would find him at 87 years old if he were still alive.  Unfortunately for me and for you too if you never met him, he died in 1968 at the age of 43.  It was a couple of weeks after Martin Luther King’s assassination and I remember we talked about his admiration for King and how he had courageously faced his imminent death.  Faith and scripture guided King as it did my father.  Who I remember would sit on our front porch and sing his favorite hymns as death closed in on him.

My father was a journalist and enjoyed telling us he shared a birthday with his favorite writer Mark Twain and two other writers Jonathan Swift and Winston Churchill, although it was much easier to associate my father with the rye wit of Twain.

I got much of my appreciation for literature from my father as well as his sense of justice and service to community.  He is without doubt the person I admire most in life.  He unselfishly gave of himself and his skills until the very end of his life.  What amazes me is even though I know he suffered most of his life from pain severe illness he met every day until the very end with a smile and with an eagerness to accomplish something worth doing.  As a scoutmaster in Northfield in the early sixties my father strived to make leaders of young boys and there are still a few men my age in Northfield who remember him and tell me how much he meant to their outlook on life.

Each year, for too many to remember, I have tried to write a poem to capture his values or his love of nature or my memory of him.  Here is today’s effort:

THE ORDER OF THINGS

Waning light streams through the distant trees

Throwing ghostly shadows across the brown grass

Their dark forms seem to dance branches intertwined

 

Above them clouds blush the sky turning purple

The air goes cool and moist as if some living thing

Wakes from day long sleep – begins to stir with hunger

 

Swaying prairie grass seems to go on forever over the hills

In this still moment it’s easy to miss the multitude of ways

Life expresses itself in a thousand different grasses

 

Tiny flowers open only the bees know which are sweet or bitter

We cannot see them because we cannot name them our words

Allow us to know what is there even in the darkness

 

The chain of being is spread out all around us and we hold

Ourselves separate as if it cannot touch us – in the same way

We regard each other as strangers separate even invisible

 

Even though my existence depends on this other as her

Existence depends on me – to be, as Berkeley said, is to be

Perceived – So how are we to live in the world if we do not

 

See each other – even though the distance between us seems

Unfathomable – Even now I cannot reach you like a rich man

Who has no sense that his wealth is stitched together in a

 

A broad cloth made from lost pennies of the poor – threads of

Withered dreams and lost chances blamed on being in the wrong

Place at the wrong time or finding that all was lost when you

 

Looked the other way in that instant of sunlight and rain

The river of wealth flows toward those who have riches

And empties out the lakes of the exploited like blood

 

Drained from the veins of the carcass we will butcher and eat

Like the light fading from the distant trees that stand lonely

Against the spinning darkness as if holding up the stars