Stable enrollment projections for District 112

The Eastern Carver County School District (District 112) released the results of its demographic study this week. The results show projections of essentially stable enrollment over the next decade. That doesn’t mean, however, that the District doesn’t face some challenges going forward.

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MNGOP rolls out Reform 2.0 agenda with some good ideas

Today, Minnesota Republican legislative leaders rolled out their “Reform 2.0″ agenda. Here’s a look at some of the good ideas in the plan.

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Bain or Bane: What does Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital record really mean?

Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital: the good, the bad, and should we care?

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Chaska Rex movie theater closes

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.

Dayton unveils $775 million bonding package

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:

• $111 million in projects around the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, including a combined $44 million for expansions and renovations at North Hennepin Community College, South Central College, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, and Ridgewater College
• $107 million in projects in the University of Minnesota system, most notably renovation of the Old Main Utility Building to function as a multi-utility power plant for the Twin Cities campus
• $76 million in transportation projects including repairs to 82 bridges, expansion of transit in Greater Minnesota, and expansion of four maintenance facilities
• $60 million in expansions and remodeling at civic centers in Rochester, Mankato, and St. Cloud
• $42 million in clean drinking water and wastewater infrastructure projects
• $40 million in remodeling/expansion at the St. Peter Security Hospital
• $33 million in expanded loans and financing for farmers
• $29.9 million expansion to the St. Cloud prison
• $28.5 million in maintenance and upgrades to the State Capitol and nearby office buildings
• $27 million for a new St. Paul Saints ballpark
• $26 million for a new state emergency operations center
• $25 million for the Southwest Corridor Light Rail Transit line
• $25 million for renovations of the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis

Republicans are critical of the package, although as of yet they have not released their own bonding proposals.

$374,000 is “not very much” to Mitt Romney

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.

Health Care Reform explained in three minutes

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!

Facepalm, New York Times edition

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.

 

The impact of Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan, in graphs

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.

 

Roomin’ with the Rep: You Can Journey to Ernie’s House

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.)

Iowa Caucus: Don’t forget the media’s role in all of this

Lost in all the post-Iowa hubbub about who’s up and who’s down, who’s in and who’s out is the very real discussion of how the media has taken a confab of 120,000 largely white and rural voters and blown it up into an all-consuming every four years ritual that goes a long way in determining who the next President might be.  From Brendan Nyhan at the Columbia Journalism Review:

Unfortunately, the “meaning” of the caucus results is not always clear. These rough edges are typically sanded away in post-Iowa reporting and commentary, however, which tends to emphasize the order of the finish (even when the margins between candidates are small) as well as unexpectedly weak or strong results. Media outlets then shift energy and resources toward candidates who performed well under the prevailing interpretation, while ignoring or providing negative coverage of those who were believed to have done poorly. These shifts in coverage, which themselves become part of the information party leaders are responding to, can help create massive post-Iowa swings in a candidate’s chances (PDF).

The result is a refraction effect in which journalists help make Iowa influential and then report on its “effects” without acknowledging their role in the process or the often arbitrary nature of the distinctions that are made among the candidates. This is a recurring problem—the norms of journalism demand that reporters exclude themselves from the stories they write, creating a troubling lack of self-consciousness about their own role in the process.

New York University’s Jay Rosen makes a similar point as well:

The Iowa Caucuses are presented as a news event, a mini-election with an informational outcome, a winner. But what they really are is a ritual, the gathering of a tribe, which affirms itself and its place in our political system by staging this thing every four years.

The need for the media to drive the narrative is extremely strong.  In 2012, it’s been just as much the media driving the boomlets for the many non-Romney contenders as it has been the fickle nature of the Republican voters.  After all, there’s 24-hour news channels to fill — someone has to be rising, someone has to be falling, someone has to be making a gaffe, someone needs to be daring to challenge the status quo and be admired for their spunk but consistently dismissed as a real threat.

10 Charts of the Year — Oil Profits vs. Oil Prices

Today’s (final) Chart of the Year is from the Center for American Progress, and it shows the relationship between oil prices, gasoline prices, and oil company profits.

Source: Center for American Progress via The Atlantic

What does this chart mean?

Big oil companies make larger profits when oil and gasoline prices are high.  These revenues come from the pockets of everyday Americans.  The five biggest oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell – have already made $100 billion in profits during the first three quarters of 2011 due to high oil prices. Yet they and other big oil companies have fought tooth and nail this year to retain tax breaks worth $4 billion annually. — Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow, Center for American Progress

10 Charts of the Year – GDP Gap

Today’s Chart of the Year comes from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.  It shows the gap between actual GDP and potential GDP (the historical trend).

Source: U.S. Department of Treasury via The Atlantic

What does this chart mean?

The economy suffered a severe shock during the recession, with the result that economic activity, represented by the blue line, contracted sharply. Since then, GDP has recovered at a steady pace and now stands above its pre-recession level. However, GDP growth has merely kept pace with its trend (or potential) rate, the red line, which is a function of population growth, changes in labor supply, and productivity growth.  As a result, the gap between what our economy is producing and what it could produce if it were operating at the level implied by the trend has not closed much. The green bars show this unused capacity to have equaled 7.4% – or more than $1 trillion – of potential output in Q3 2011. This unused capacity represents workers who cannot find jobs, idle machinery, and foregone opportunities for growth; in this challenging economy, this chart underscores why we must continue to focus attention on investments in the economic recovery and long-run growth.  – Treasury Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy Dr. Jan Eberly