HOUSTON COUNTY NEWS LTE: WE CAN DO BETTER THAN GUTKNECHT
Chuck Chihak of LaCrescent thinks that people in the First deserve better:
I’m surprised Mr. Gutknecht is running for Congress again. Twelve years ago he expressed disgust with career politicians and vowed to serve no more than 12 years. Having broken his word, he also recently tried to quietly eliminate evidence of that pledge off a website carrying his biography. So we now know he’s already a career politician, he lies, breaks his word and is sneaky. He also has his fingerprints all over a $9 trillion budget deficit, a failed policy in Iraq and over 4 million American jobs shipped overseas while middle class buying power shrinks and the rich get tax breaks. He’s obviously part of the problem in Washington. Let’s help him keep that pledge of no more than 12 years in Congress. We can do a lot better than Gil Gutknecht.
Charlie Warner, the editor of the Houston county News, writes that "An avalanche of letters is healthy." We agree.
KTTC: GUTKNECHT AND WALZ DEBATE
Yet even more debating:
Nationwide focus is on a congressional on a race by both political parties
While US house candidates Gil Gutknecht and Tim Walz, they agree on what the big issues are for this election.
They differ when it comes to ways for fixing them.
With a flip of a coin, each candidate has a 50-50 chance to speak first or last in a debate and according to recent voting polls, the odds in the District 1 House race could come down to just that, a coin flip.
In the red corner, Republican candidate Representative Gil Gutknecht. In the blue corner DFL candidate Tim Walz. [read more]
NETROOTS
Craig's Sit notes that Tim Still on a Roll. Vox Verax takes A Closer Look at MN 1 and finds Big doin's in Minnesota's 1st CD. Midwest Values PAC blogs about the new veterans ad in VoteVets.org Releases Anti-Gutknecht Ad.
Finally, a couple of articles from the national press aren't directly about the Fighting First, but do relate to issues in the campaigns.
CQ POLITICS: IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID? NOT THIS TIME
An interesting discussion of why the Republicans' attempt to save themselves by campaigning on the economy isn't working. Guess it's back to Iraq for Minnesota Republicans--a move that's kinda awkward for Gutknecht. Gutknecht's reduced to distorting Walz's immigration plan.
NEW YORK TIMES ECONOMIX: RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE
Gil Gutknechts' votes against raising the minimum wage have been an issue throughout the campaign. Conservatives like to paint proposals to raise the minimum wage as job killers. But recent data suggests that position doesn't hold up:
Ten years have passed since Congress last voted to raise the minimum wage, and it has drifted down to a 50-year low in inflation-adjusted terms, about a third lower than it was at its peak in the late 1960’s. In 1968, an hour’s worth of minimum wage work bought almost five gallons of gas. Today, it buys less than three gallons.
Every time the issue has come up in Congress or in the states, opponents have raised the same specter of mass unemployment that was part of the fight over Social Security. . . .
[snip]
Yet such arguments seem to be falling flat with voters. A recent poll in Colorado shows 69 percent supporting the measure there, and only 26 percent opposed. In the other five states, the initiatives have similarly big leads, if the polls are to be believed. Already, 21 states have minimum wages higher than $5.15.
I think there are two main reasons for the enormous popularity of the proposals. By now, many people probably understand that the dire predictions about higher minimum wages don’t come true. In the 10 years since Congress raised the minimum wage, crime didn’t become an epic problem, as Mr. Brown forecast. Instead, it has fallen sharply.
In fact, modest rises in the minimum wage don’t even appear to kill many jobs. The recent state increases have created a series of natural experiments for researchers to study, and they have generally found that modest changes have only minor effects on employment levels. Some have found no net effect. Higher wages may end up lifting employee morale and reducing turnover, making business more productive and mitigating some of the higher labor costs.
As Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, says, “What’s changed in the last 10 to 15 years is an accumulation of pretty convincing evidence that the employment problem is not very significant.”
[snip]
The second big cause of the proposals’ popularity stems in all likelihood from the rise of income inequality. The American economy has done so well at creating jobs in recent decades that almost anybody who wants work can find it. The problem is that too many jobs still don’t pay a decent living. . . .
WASHINGTON POST: THE YEAR OF PLAYING DIRTIER
The Washington Post takes a look at the way in which political ads are getting "positively surreal" across the country:
On the brink of what could be a power-shifting election, it is kitchen-sink time: Desperate candidates are throwing everything. While negative campaigning is a tradition in American politics, this year's version in many races has an eccentric shade, filled with allegations of moral bankruptcy and sexual perversion.
At the same time, the growth of "independent expenditures" by national parties and other groups has allowed candidates to distance themselves from distasteful attacks on their opponents, while blogs and YouTube have provided free distribution networks for eye-catching hatchet jobs.
"When the news is bad, the ads tend to be negative," said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford professor who studies political advertising. "And the more negative the ad, the more likely it is to get free media coverage. So there's a big incentive to go to the extremes."
The result has been a carnival of ugly, especially on the GOP side, where operatives are trying to counter what polls show is a hostile political environment by casting opponents as fatally flawed characters. The National Republican Campaign Committee is spending more than 90 percent of its advertising budget on negative ads, according to GOP operatives, and the rest of the party seems to be following suit.
How much ugliness will be brought to Minnesota's Fighting First?
A busy day ahead, but we'll try to post as time permits.