January 26, 2012 
2 Comments
The Chaska Herald is reporting that the Chaska Rex movie theater closed yesterday. The Rex was part of the Five Star Cinemas group which also operates theaters in Chanhassen, Buffalo, and Excelsior. Per the company’s website, gift cards and rewards cards will be honored at those theaters.
This is another tough blow for the downtown business district. Hopefully, implementation work on the Downtown Master Plan and an improving economy can help the area begin to prosper.
January 20, 2012 2 Comments
The Eastern Carver County School District (District 112) released the results of its demographic study this week. The results show projections of essentially flat enrollment over the next decade. Current K-12 enrollment is 8,976 students — projections of enrollment in a decade range from 8,925 to 9,123 students. Even at the high-end of the projection, that’s only an increase of 15 students per year.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the District doesn’t face some challenges going forward. While the enrollment projections signal no new school construction is imminent, there may need to be yet another look at resetting boundaries at all levels. Let’s look at some pieces of the data that indicate that may be required.
Three of the district’s elementary schools are currently over capacity: Clover Ridge, Victoria, and East Union. The projections show no relief in sight for those schools, and continuing enrollment declines for Chanhassen Elementary and Chaska Elementary.
Data source: Eastern Carver County School District
Keeping Clover Ridge, Victoria, and East Union at 10-20% over capacity isn’t sustainable long-term, especially given the capacity available in other facilities within the district. The good news is that after several boundary changes in recent years, this change would likely be able to be in place for a long time.
At the high school level, current enrollment of 2,805 students is expected to rise to between 3,000 and 3,100 students over the next decade. That means that the district’s two high schools (each with capacity of 2,000) will be more than sufficient for that time frame.
The issue at the high school level remains the relative imbalance between the two high schools. 56% of high school students in the district now attend Chanhassen High School, and that ratio seems likely to stay about the same for the next five years and probably through the next decade, which would mean Chanhassen would consistently be 200-300 students larger. There will need to be a district-wide discussion on whether any adjustments need to be made to bring the schools into closer balance.
January 19, 2012 11 Comments
Today, Minnesota Republican legislative leaders rolled out their “Reform 2.0″ agenda. While I wouldn’t go as far as House Majority Leader Matt Dean who claims “These are noncontroversial, common sense reforms that will move Minnesota in the right direction for a growing economy supported by an efficient and effective government,” there are some good things in this agenda.
Here’s the entire document:
Some of the good ideas include:
There are also some bad ideas in the package, and many proposals where the devil will be in the details. We’ll focus on those at a later date.
(Reform 2.0 logo via MN House Republican Caucus)
January 17, 2012 3 Comments
Governor Mark Dayton today revealed his proposed bonding bill for the upcoming legislative session. Dayton proposes $903 million in state funding, $775 million of which is general obligation bonding. The total plan includes an additional $575 million in federal or local matching funds, which would result in an estimated 21,000 new jobs. Some of the proposed projects include:
Republicans are critical of the package, although as of yet they have not released their own bonding proposals.
January 17, 2012 2 Comments
After receiving criticism from Republican rivals as well as Democrats, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has agreed that he will release his 2011 tax return after it is filed in April.
Romney estimated that personal effective tax rate would be around 15 percent:
“What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Romney, a GOP presidential candidate, said. “My last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past, whether ordinary income or earned annually. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
The last part of that quote is the most interesting. How much does Mitt Romney make in speaker’s fees? Well, Romney’s financial disclosure form reveals that he made $374,327.62 in speaking fees from February 26, 2010 to February 20, 2011.
That “not very much” is over seven times the median household income ($49,445) in the United States. In fact, Romney made more than that amount — in one day — on three separate occasions over that year-long period.
Yes, I’m sure Romney meant the “not very much” in comparison to his investment income that he receives from his extensive portfolio. But it still strikes at the fundamental tone-deafness that many voters perceive from Romney.
Mitt Romney is not a person who understands how the economy works from the perspective of the middle-class person. He can’t even relate to the upper middle-class, for that matter. He can’t understand the pressures that middle-class voters feel, and he can’t comprehend the anxiety that economic conditions like our current ones create.
Unless he finds a way to articulate and demonstrate how his policies that give continued favored treatment to the wealthy will help all Americans, Romney is going to have real difficulty trying to connect with the independent and undecided voters that will decide this election.
January 17, 2012 0 Comments
MIT economist Jon Gruber, who served as an advisor to both former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama as they devised their respective health care reform plans, has created a video that explains the basic mechanisms of the Affordable Care Act in a little over three minutes:
An excellent and easy-to-follow explanation!
January 12, 2012 1 Comment
From Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times Public Editor (or “ombudsman” to those of us who aren’t East Coast elites), on his blog today:
I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.
Seriously? There’s only one reasonable response to such a ridiculous question.
January 11, 2012 9 Comments
Perhaps the primary argument that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is relying on in his run for President is that his strong private-sector leadership at Bain Capital qualifies him better than President Barack Obama or any of the other Republican challengers.
Ironically enough, however, some of Romney’s rivals for the GOP nomination and Democrats point to Romney’s background at Bain and say that it’s precisely why he shouldn’t be President. So what should we make of Romney’s record at Bain? Good?
Mitt Romney (center) and the Bain Capital team celebrating their success
Or bad?
Tom Hardy as the villain Bane from the upcoming movie "The Dark Knight Rises"
The truth, of course, lies somewhere in-between. First, let’s look at the positive aspects of Romney’s record at Bain. There is no doubt that Bain, under Romney’s leadership, was incredibly successful. As the leader of Bain Capital, Mitt Romney was responsible for growing the wealth of those who chose to invest with them. Mission accomplished: Romney more than doubled their money. How did he do this? Well, there’s two primary sorts of investments that Bain made. The first was venture capital — investments in start-up businesses. Notably during Romney’s tenure at Bain, they invested in retailers Staples and The Sports Authority and helped them get off the ground. These are the investments that Romney likes to emphasize, although they have proportionally represented a smaller and smaller portion of Bain’s portfolio over time.
The second type of investment was a private equity transaction where Bain would go in and buy a struggling company, make changes (often involving downsizing) to stabilize the firm, and then sell it for a profit.
These are the transactions that Romney’s opponents and President Obama will want you to focus on. And it’s true that these sorts of transactions — not the venture capital investments — that made Romney and Bain’s reputation during his time there. The Wall Street Journal reports that 70% of the wealth created at Bain during Romney’s time came from these sorts of transactions.
Let’s be perfectly frank about what happened in these private-equity transactions. Bain’s role in these transactions was not to “create jobs”, as Romney has been saying on the campaign trail. Bain’s role in these transactions was to create wealth for their investors. Frankly, Romney has probably made a poor decision by choosing to play up the “job creator” angle, given that he can’t really give a good number of jobs that were created on his watch.
It is true that there is a role for firms like Bain and for private-equity transactions. It is true that firms like Bain can make markets work more efficiently by making the companies they acquire work more efficient and freeing up capital that can be used for more productive and profitable uses. It’s also true that these types of investments, including ones made by Bain, don’t always work as expected and even if they do, the somewhat ruthless nature of them can have very real human costs. You’ll be hearing a lot about that between now and November.
In the end, though, I’m not sure how much you can take out of Romney’s experience at Bain and apply it to being President. Being President isn’t at all like running an investment firm. As CEO of Bain Capital, Romney had executive power he wouldn’t have as President of the United States. And the model just isn’t the same, as Ezra Klein points out:
Romney’s economic plan is not to replicate his experience at Bain Capital: he will not try and turn the economy around by issuing public debt to purchase private companies and wring out their inefficiencies. Rather, he’ll propose tax cuts and nominate a new Federal Reserve chairman and try to cut the deficit.
Romney has laid out a clear vision: cut taxes (and give a bigger cut to the wealthy), cut spending, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and fundamentally change the nature of Medicare by making it a defined-contribution program. You want to focus on his suitability to be President? I would suggest focusing on these ideas (and comparing his vision to that of President Obama) instead of nit-picking what happened at Company X or Company Y while Bain was invested in them.
January 5, 2012 16 Comments
In October, we looked at the impact of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. In December, we did the same with Newt Gingrich. Now it’s time to look at the plan offered by Mitt Romney, the Republican frontrunner.
The Romney plan would permanently extend the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and continue to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax. Romney would eliminate the tax provisions of the Affordable Care Act, and allow tax cuts from the 2009 stimulus bill (expanded higher education credits, expansion of the earned income tax credit, and expanded child credit) to expire in 2012 as scheduled.
The Tax Policy Center has released an analysis of the Romney plan. Let’s have a look at some of the effects such a plan would have.
Compared to current law, no one would see an increase in their taxes, as the only tax increases in the package are ones that are already in there due to sunsetting provisions. 78% of Americans would see a tax cut versus current law. Versus current policy (which would assume that the Bush tax cuts and 2009 stimulus tax cuts remain in place), 42% of Americans would see a tax cut, and 13% (mostly families with incomes of $50,000 or less) would see an increase in their taxes.
Next, let’s look at the effects on distribution as compared to current law.
As the plan is designed, the effective tax rate for all income levels is lower than current law. The Romney plan is more moderate than the Gingrich or Cain plans, but it still does give higher benefits (in terms of rate reduction) at the upper end of the income scale. Millionaires can expect a rate reduction of over 9%, while middle-class households will get a 2-3% rate reduction.
Let’s look at the impact the rate changes would have on after-tax income.
The above graph looks at the percent change in after-tax income. The Romney plan would provide more after-tax income to the wealthiest Americans. The average millionaire would see an increase in their after-tax income of 14.5%, while the middle quintile of taxpayers would see an increase of 3.0%.
As you can expect — with most Americans getting a tax cut, and no one getting a tax increase (when compared to current law) — the Romney plan would add significantly to the national deficit — an estimated $600 billion per year in 2015, $180 billion when compared to the current policy baseline. Significant spending cuts would be required to balance the budget under such a scenario. Additionally, Romney has pledged to cap spending at 20% of GDP. However, Romney has not detailed specific spending cuts of the amount required to bring the budget to that figure.
January 5, 2012 10 Comments
It’s not indicated if access to the Bradlee Dean video library is included, but Rep. Ernie Leidiger is renting out a room in the family farmhouse in Camden Township just south of Mayer via Craigslist. (Leidiger is apparently handling the rental himself, although the property is owned by his wife Jan and sister-in-law Linda.)
You could be the yellow one. (via Wikipedia)
For $525 a month, you get a bedroom with private bath in the 2,250 square foot residence. Utilities, internet, cable TV and washer and dryer are included as well. Cats and dogs are OK, too. Based on the pictures, it looks like a very clean and nice place.
The side benefits of renting a room from Rep. Leidiger are numerous, though, and not listed in the ad. Imagine hearing all about the GOP’s exciting plans for the next legislative session! Or getting an explanation for voting against new science and technology facilities at state colleges. Maybe he’ll tell you why he flip-flopped on K-12 funding shifts. It would be like your own personal ALEC seminar, with horse stables and a storage building included!
(For those of you wondering, since the address is not on the ad: Two sources familiar with the Leidiger farm have confirmed this is his residence. The phone number listed in the ad also matches the phone number on Leidiger’s House profile. Thanks to the tipster who alerted me to the listing.)
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