Thinking Minnesota: Fall 2010
Fall 2010
Printer-friendly versionCONTENTS
A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT
Two Sets of Words Actually
ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS
American Experiment Releases Natural Resources Recommendations for New Governor And Legislature
FEATURED COMMENTARY
A Growing Community of Conservative Voices
by Peter J. Nelson
HEALTH CARE FOCUS
Creating the Ideal Health Insurance Exchange for Minnesota
VINTAGE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
Like the four governors who preceded him, Jesse Ventura has learned the value of providing real school choice
by Mitch Pearlstein
A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT
Two Sets of Words Actually
One of the most astute things that I’ve heard said this year about the American electorate—which itself had more than a few vigorous things to say on November 2—was at an American Experiment Luncheon Forum last June by Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. In talking about fundamental differences between the United States and Europe, he cited who was then “protesting in the streets.”
In Greece, they’re bureaucrats and union members, throwing Molotov cocktails and burning down their own buildings. And they’ve been demanding lavish government pensions, early retirement, and salaries paid by their fellow citizens at the time of the worst, most threatening economic crisis of the last five decades.
What are Americans protesting against? Exactly the things the Greeks are demanding. Tea Party and town hall protesters are calling for less government intervention in the economy and their lives. They want fewer subsidies and bailouts. They don’t want to mortgage their futures, or those of their fellow citizens or their own children, simply to get more stuff today. This is ethical populism in America—American exceptionalism at its best.
My colleagues and I are thinking hard about how American Experiment can best contribute during this remarkable moment in Minnesota and U.S. political life. Suggestions, as always, are more than welcomed.
As for a second set of words, might I draw your attention to a quite important report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, having to do with entrepreneurial innovation, among other key things, recently released by the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute for Medicine. In one anecdote, a presumably American businessman talked about how he was returning from China, where he had “just spent a week working out the details to build a major manufacturing facility at a booming Chinese industrial park.” Local officials, there, he reported, could not have been more accommodating, expediting everything along.
To which another businessman talked about how radically more difficult it had been to expand an existing factory in the United States. He wanted to double the size of the facility, but was told he needed a new environmental impact study before he could even approach zoning authorities. He also sought to meet with federal officials, who were managing “stimulus” funds, which he hoped would help finance the expansion. Now, whatever one thinks about such federal dollars (my American Experiment colleagues and I don’t t like ‘em at all), it would seem that drawing on them to underwrite construction on the cusp of shovel-readiness might not have been their worst use. Nevertheless, he was told he couldn’t meet with the pertinent assistant secretary as that “would possibly suggest a ‘conflict of interest.’” So much for those potential jobs.
For closer to home flavor, sour though it may be, compare these two episodes with a predicament faced by manufacturing friends of mine in an unnamed Minnesota city. They had solid reason to believe that if they opted to build a new factory in China, everything needed to start construction could have been handled real fast. That was the expected case, in contrast to their earlier and aborted attempt build a new plant in this state. On that occasion, matters came down to irreconcilable disagreements with local agencies and officials (just about needless to say) over zoning, but also over curbs, gutters, and what kind of drought-resistant wildflowers ought to be planted on the property’s backside. “You finally just throw up your hands,” one of my friends said, “and say this is crazy.”
Without encouraging too much of a leap, do you think stories like these might have played a role in steaming off more than a few recent voters all across the country? ■
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ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS
American Experiment Releases Natural Resources Recommendations for New Governor And Legislature
Center of the American Experiment recently released a new report offering 24 policy recommendations on the operations of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and on forestry, mining, and fish and game resource management in the state. Natural Resources: Recommendations to the New Governor and Legislature is the most recent installment in the Center’s now twelve-year-old Minnesota Policy Blueprint series in which state agencies and activities are examined through conservative and free market lenses.
Authored by Kent Kaiser, a Northwestern College faculty member, the study draws on the views of a wide array of natural resources stakeholders from within Minnesota and across the nation, including environmental interests, industry representatives, fish and game enthusiasts, legislators, and former and current employees of the DNR. Dr. Kaiser also serves as an American Experiment Senior Fellow.
“The beginning of a new administration presents an opportunity for re-evaluation and change in many policy areas,” said Dr. Pearlstein. “Because natural resources are such an important topic to so many Minnesotans, this is an excellent time to review the state’s objectives and practices in this very wide field and to make recommendations for improvement. Our recommendations,” he continued, “are guided by commonsense conservation principles of sustainability, stewardship, sharing, equity, and globalization.”
This is the second time that hunting, angling, mining, and the good stewardship of timberlands, among other related activities have been vetted by the Center, the first being at the time of Jesse Ventura’s election as governor in 1998.
In the coming weeks and months, the Center will be releasing further installments in the Minnesota Policy Blueprint series on such topics as Education and Energy. “With so many newly elected lawmakers, there is a critical need for these sound, commonsense recommendations,” explained Pearlstein. He concluded by saying that “we hope this series of reports will help the incoming legislature and the future governor, from whatever party he hails.”
Electronic copies of the Center’s natural resources recommendations and all future recommendations can be found at AmericanExperiment.org. ■
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FEATURED COMMENTARY
A Growing Community of Conservative Voices
by Peter J. Nelson
On past election days, I have enjoyed watching local television commentary by Guy-Uriel Charles, one of my esteemed law professors. Prof. Charles plays ball at Duke Law School these days. Despite his absence, this election cycle still roused some old memories from his election law class.
Mostly, I think back to the day that we discussed whether corporations deserve any protection under the First Amendment for speech and spending aimed at influencing elections. While I can appreciate opposing views on this topic, the answer seemed straightforward to me. Yes, of course, the First Amendment protects corporate speech just at it protects individual speech. After all, corporations are associations of people.
What seemed straightforward to me was not so to the rest of the class. I didn’t mind that they didn’t agree with me. As a conservative, I was quite used to being the odd man out in class. What stuck out was that they seemed unable to appreciate or even to grasp my side of the argument. In fact, some seemed offended by my position. Only one classmate backed me up (or maybe it was me backing him up). His name was Anthony Sanders. More on him later.
This memory was roused by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Citizens United, the Court held that corporate independent political expenditures are indeed protected by the First Amendment. As a result, for the first time in my voting life, corporations in Minnesota were free to run ads supporting and opposing candidates for state office.
We all know what happened next. Target made a controversial contribution to Minnesota Forward, a Tom Emmer supporter, which escalated an already lively Minnesota debate into a national orbit.
Fortunately, the debate over Citizens United is not taking place in the politically and intellectually lopsided confines of an ivory tower, or, in my case, the 1970s-era brick and concrete dungeon that is the University of Minnesota Law School. Yes, opponents in the current debate are far less civil than my classmates—MoveOn.org’s Target boycott comes to mind. These days, however, there are plenty of voices defending our rights to speak out during the campaign season, the time when our right to speak matters most.
Locally, four of those voices united to hold a dinner forum on the issue featuring Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. The self-dubbed “fearless foursome” included Center of the American Experiment, the Federalist Society-Minneapolis Lawyers Chapter, the Institute for Justice Minnesota Chapter, and the Minnesota Free Market Institute. This is our third year working together to publicize a critical legal issue.
But we aren’t the only local voices. As the Target fiasco unfolded mid-summer, Jonathan Blake with the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota penned an incisive column in the Star Tribune that exposed the double standard over all the media attention paid to corporate contributions in comparison to the more generous and “largely unreported” union contributions. (Since then, I’m pleased to report that at least one news outlet picked up on his point. In early October, MinnPost reported that Education Minnesota had so far spent $1.29 million in 2010 to influence elections compared to $187,000 by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.)
Remember my classmate Anthony Sanders? He now works at the Institute for Justice Minnesota Chapter. IJ recently launched their Citizen Speech Campaign, with Anthony a key part of that effort in Minnesota. He recently explained in a commentary for Minnesota Public Radio how Minnesota law stifles speech through “a host of complex and burdensome regulations.” Anthony also blogs on this topic at MakeNoLaw.org, IJ’s free speech blog.
Finally, the Taxpayer’s League of Minnesota and Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life are now bringing their voices to a federal court. They’re suing to overturn a new and burdensome Minnesota law—passed in response to Citizens United—which places excessive disclosure requirements on corporate political expenditures. Of course, IJ covers the case at their free speech blog.
Now imagine if the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United twenty years ago. Would Minnesota have heard a chorus of conservative voices on the issue? I suspect not.
Public discourse in Minnesota is substantially different today. If you’re wondering why, it’s no coincidence that Center of the American Experiment is now celebrating our twentieth year. Indeed, as the Minnesota Monthly once reported, “It would be hard to overstate the role [American Experiment] played in bringing conservative ideas into the mainstream in the traditionally liberal bastion of Minnesota.
To our relief and to Minnesota’s great benefit, we are now joined by a growing community of conservative voices. ■
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HEALTH CARE FOCUS
Creating the Ideal Health Insurance Exchange for Minnesota
What to do about the federal health care law? “Repeal and replace” certainly has a nice ring to it. However, President Obama’s veto pen puts a damper on that idea for at least the next two years. Scott Gottlieb and Tom Miller, Resident Fellows at the American Enterprise Institute, made this exact point in a recent column for the Wall Street Journal. They’re not the only ones to point out the obvious, but they are one of the few to propose a solution. Their recommendation: “Look to the states.”
Specifically, Gottlieb and Miller recommend that governors should create “market-friendly versions of exchanges.” Under the law, exchanges are supposed to be new and more consumer-friendly marketplaces for health plans. Importantly, the new federal law essentially puts states in charge of creating their own respective exchanges. Gottlieb and Miller claim that these exchanges are the “core of ObamaCare.” Whether exchanges are the core of ObamaCare or not is debatable. What’s clear is that creating an exchange is the core issue for the states. Getting the exchange right will make the difference between a consumer-driven market or a government-controlled market.
If all this sounds a bit familiar, then maybe you read our last newsletter in which Peter Nelson identified exchanges as one of the most pressing issues in state health care policy.
Nelson further explained how American Experiment is poised to make a significant contribution to the development of an exchange in Minnesota. Our goal is to assure that an exchange is created in Minnesota to serve consumer preferences, not political preferences.
To that end, Nelson is currently serving on the exchange working group of the Legislative Commission on Health Care Access. The working group is charged with making recommendations on a wide range of exchange-related issues to the incoming legislature. Through this process and through additional research, Nelson is busy developing the outlines of a market-driven and patient-focused exchange for Minnesota.
The importance of all this work cannot be overstated. The federal health care law grants states broad flexibility in creating their respective exchanges. This latitude gives states the freedom to follow very different paths. One path can lead to a better functioning insurance market for individuals and small businesses. Another path, however, can quickly steer a state toward a largely government-run health care system.
Ideally, an exchange will improve insurance markets by giving individuals more power to choose a health plan that’s right for them. Remember, most people now rely on their employer to choose their health plan. This ideal exchange would also simplify the enrollment process, provide more consumer information, and administer federal subsidies.
On the far-from-ideal end of the spectrum, an exchange might be created that gives the government the power to choose your health plan for you. That’s exactly the sort of exchange that California lawmakers recently enacted. According to the Wall Street Journal, the California exchange “will be given robust authority, including the power to selectively contract with insurers to offer plans within the exchange.” The power to selectively contract is effectively the power to pick and choose the health plans that will be available to consumers in the exchange.
We hope and expect that Minnesota lawmakers will have more commonsense than their California counterparts when it comes time to create an exchange in Minnesota. ■
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VINTAGE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT
This 2002 column by Founder and President Mitch Pearlstein talked about how every Minnesota governor going back to Wendell Anderson in the early 1970s wound up having lousy relations with the two teacher unions (now combined into one) no matter how fine and cordial their ties might have been when first elected. Is it fair to say the pattern will continue, no matter who our next governor officially turns out to be? That’s exactly what we’re predicting.
Like the four governors who preceded him, Jesse Ventura has learned the value of providing real school choice
by Mitch Pearlstein | Pioneer Press | February 12, 2002
There seems to be a pattern here. In talking about Minnesota public schools in the Pioneer Press last week, Gov. Jesse Ventura charged they had become a “classic government monopoly.”
The current setup “worked pretty good for a long time,” he said. “But as in all government monopolies, eventually they consume themselves in their own way, and that’s the way I’m starting to feel about the public school system.”
A few days earlier, in Duluth, he said, “I’m shocked to hear myself say this today, but I think perhaps competition is what’s needed. We need to make our public schools more competitive.” This, he said, didn’t “necessarily” mean he was considering vouchers. But “if I don’t get some answers,” he concluded, “I’d look at opening doors.”
What pattern do Jesse’s comments keep on track? A perfect trend—stretching from Wendell Anderson in the early 1970s, to Arne Carlson in the late 1990s—in which every Minnesota governor, regardless of party, either entered office, or left it, as a strong supporter of school choice.
Anderson, a DFLer, began his first term by pushing for, and then signing, legislation that gave parents tax credits (not mere deductions) for tuition payments to private, including religious, schools. Judicial rulings in Washington and then St. Paul ended what was, in fact, an inadequately designed program before it got rolling. But the remarkable fact remains that not only did it become law (however briefly), but it would have provided more help, to more children, than almost anything currently on the books anywhere in the country.
Al Quie, a Republican, was preoccupied with other issues during his four years in office, most notably navigating Minnesota through the worst national recession since the Great Depression. Yet while he did not have the chance to go to the Legislature with a school choice plan of his own, he did invite one of the country’s most important choice advocates to speak to a large public meeting in St. Paul. Yes, it drove some of his critics nuts.
Then there was the late Rudy Perpich, a DFLer, whose legacy includes the nation’s first open-enrollment law. If Rudy had lived, there isn’t the smallest doubt that he would be one of the most important voices in the United States today on behalf of giving parents wide-reaching freedom in picking the very best educational opportunity for their children, be it a public, private or parochial school.
That’s exactly the kind of freedom Carlson, a Republican, sought in a brave campaign during the 1997 legislative session. Thanks to his leadership, Minnesota became the first state (in the current “school choice” era) to provide families with education tax credits for certain non-tuition expenses. If Carlson had had his way, the law would have afforded credits for tuition as well, but on this point, the Minnesota Senate (run by folks in the other party) wouldn’t budge.
Why has each Minnesota governor over the last 30 years become a fan of school choice of one kind or another? Each has had his own reasons.
Carlson’s passion, for example, when it comes to the subject is poor kids. I’ve never heard him give a speech about choice in which he hasn’t talked about how the only firewall standing between large numbers of children and “ash heaps” is better and more fitting schools.
He also has spoken (very much in keeping with Ventura’s current frustrations) about the system’s “built-in growth factor.” It’s not uncommon, he has said, for “school boards petrified by teacher strikes to agree to salary settlements they cannot afford and then to go to the Legislature and say, “Either you give us X number of additional dollars or we’re going to have to cut kindergarten, sports and so on.”
At the risk of presumption, I’ve argued ever since Ventura was elected in 1998 that it was only a matter of time before his strong appreciation of competition, accountability and freedom—reinforced by the inherent aggravations of managing public education in Minnesota—would lead him to where every one of his last four predecessors landed for one reason or the other.
Frankly, he has proven more long-suffering—more willing to give education leaders the benefit of multiple doubts—than I thought he would. But it’s good to see that even a laid-back and patient man like him is not without limits when it comes to the best interests of children and their taxpaying parents, and that he may be reconsidering his earlier opposition to real school choice.
Thank you, sir. ■
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