I’m on my second sick day here, with my little bro’s lilt in my brain, “I feel shitty, oh so shitty, I feel shitty and witty and gaaaaaaaay!” and hope I get better soon so I can change my tape loop. Anyway, the Times today has a report on the Massachusetts legislation on health care.

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Massachusetts sets health care plan for nearly all

A few snippets:


The Massachusetts bill creates a sliding scale of affordability ranging from people who can afford insurance outright to those who cannot afford it at all. About 215,000 people will be covered by allowing individuals and businesses with 50 or fewer employees to buy insurance with pretax dollars, and by giving insurance companies incentives to offer stripped-down plans at lower cost. Lower-cost basic plans will be available to people ages 19 to 26.

Subsidies for other private plans will be available for people with incomes at or below 300 percent of the poverty level. Children in those families will be eligible for free coverage through Medicaid, an expansion of the current system.

Mr. Romney pushed the idea of the “individual mandate,” requiring people who can afford insurance to buy it. The bill makes it possible for employers to enable many of those people to use pretax dollars, saving them 25 percent or more. Individuals who fail to get health insurance by July 2007 will first lose their personal exemption on their state taxes. In subsequent years, they would have to pay a penalty that could be as high as half of what an affordable health care premium would cost.Eric Fehrnstrom, the governor’s communications director, said that for those people with incomes above 300 percent of poverty, “our assumption was that these would be mostly single mothers who just did not have the wherewithal to get insurance. It turned out it was mostly young males. In some cases they are making very attractive salaries. These are people who just don’t imagine themselves needing care, but of course when they break a leg when they’re out bungee jumping they go to the hospital and we end up paying for their care anyway.”

Now color me skeptical, because the state’s motivation was that the federal government had threatened to cut Medicaid funding unless more of its people had health insurance. So the focus here is not in providing health care, but in getting people to buy health insurance, which I object to! I struggle with our societal expectations about health care — working at Hennepin County Medical Center taught me more about our health care system than I want to know — the up side of it was that I observed medical training at all levels and I have a lot of confidence in the process, another up side is that if I were really sick or injured, that’s where I’d want to go. But our notion of private health care, the necessity of having “our” doctor, isn’t something I ascribe to because anyone can treat a sinus problem or pull a tooth, and too many plans do not cover the types of things where that is important, i.e., midwifery, mental-health — it’s been too long since Wellstone was trying to achieve mental-health coverage parity, and we’re no closer and so many physical chronic ailments are “all in your head.”

Anyway, what is heartening is that they provide coverage subsidies for those up to 300% of poverty. What’s that? Here are the 2006 Federal Poverty Guidelines.

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It’s a start…

And meanwhile here in MN, there’s this, though I find the headline odd:

Insurance crisis imperils busy community clinic

And the tape loop changed and is stuck again, now it’s “M-A-double S-A-C-H-U-S-E-double T-S” …oh my…

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I spent some time a couple weeks ago looking at how transmission comes into and out of Prairie Island, and finally got some pictures today — taking a sick day and have to justify my existence, and a good thing to finally check out this route given we’ve got three lines planned in the area, in order of likely appearance:

1) SW MN to Prairie Island (but maybe Hampton)

2) Prairie Island to Rochester to LaCrosse

3) Chisago County sub to Red Rock to Prairie Island

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This is that house on the bluff, beautiful house and beautiful view, as long as you don’t look to the immediate west and see the 345kV line that is just on the other side of a tree line. And of course that’s the Prairie Island – Byron line, the one that the PI-Roch-LaX will probably share a corridor with up and over the bluffs. And what are they doing up there? Well, that homeowner is selling the house! And they’re putting in the “Westwood” subdivision up there, right next to the transmission line. The lots they’re selling are in the right, under the transmission and to the right. Half of the homes have driveways under the line. Here’s a plat of the project, and I was standing for this photo at the bulbous blip down near the bottom. See how the line goes through all the lots on the right side?

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If they run another line with this one, where is it going to go? There’s nowhere else but on the right hand side, closer to the houses on that side…

I’ve left messages for the two realtors/developers up there, and the City Planner, no response yet.

Here is the link to the 2005 Transmission Plan that lists the PI lines on p. 36-38. The Prairie Island-Roch-LaX line application is expected 1st quarter 2006 (these things are usually delayed a bit),
Here is the site for the Minnesota Transmission Owners

And here is the section of the report with p. 36-38

Attached is a Download file“>Sept. 6, 2005, letter from CapX2020 giving a quick rundown of these projects, again, this is the Prairie Island-Roch-LaX line that goes over your development up on the bluff right by 61. It’s listed on the bottom of p. 2 in a chart, and on p. 6 is the map.

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Look close to the house on the right-hand side for the 345kV line.

In MN, there’s the PEER “non-proliferation” theory, and usually new transmission follows existing transmission corridors, and so this will probably follow the PI-Byron line (the existing one up there). However, to build it, it would require additional easement alongside that line. I’d guess that’s a problem!

Here’s their plat with my “artiste’s conception” of transmission route:

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There was meeting about this held in Rochester, at Rochester Public Utilities, info on that meeting is on the www.minnelectrans.com site. They must under the rules provide notification to the affected cities, counties and townships, but no city, county, or township officials ever show up at the meetings and probably haven’t a clue this is coming up. …sigh… and they’re building new, very expensive homes up there…

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Scenic Hwy. 7 near Excelsior’s Mesaba site

Check out Shawn Conrad’s letter in the Grand Rapids paper:

Proposed Taconite Excelsior project is not the one approved by the 2003 Legislature

Editor:

I am writing about the Excelsior Energy Mesaba project proposed for the Scenic Highway 7 area near Taconite. Youâ??ve heard about the jobs this may create, but the number of potential jobs has dropped significantly over time, and other projects of this type have failed in other states. What you havenâ??t heard much about are the costs to our community.

According to the original bill passed by the Minnesota Legislature, Excelsior Energy would be able to access the power of eminent domain to force landowners to forfeit their property to this private interest, or worse, have the county act for them if the county goes forward with bonding for the infrastructure for this private corporation. Excelsior is exempt from a certificate of need for all facilities associated with the projectâ??including transmission lines â?? and any upgrades they want. This means Excelsior need only name the property it wants and they can take it. There are people in the Scenic Highway 7 area who will lose their homes against their will. A lot of land will be needed for the Scenic Highway 7 rerouting for Excelsior, a water pipeline large enough to handle 6,500 gpm, a natural gas pipeline, transmission lines and railroad tracks. Those who do not lose their homes will lose their quality of life. The community will see a significant decline in the value of property and their ability to enjoy the property, living next to a huge industry. The precedent set by this abuse of eminent domain could affect anyone who owns land some day, and it should not go forward.

It is just wrong for private industries to access the threat of eminent domain to take property from individuals. We should be progressive in looking at energy conservation rather than developing forestland and evicting residents from their property to increase supply.

Other problems with this project can be found in Senate File SF 2570, which Senator Saxhaug and Representative Solberg have authored and introduced.

First, the project was originally proposed for a brown field with infrastructure in place. SF 2570 and HF 3020 struck down that requirement so that Excelsior could choose undeveloped forestland and make Itasca County taxpayers foot the bill for infrastructure.

How much will we pay for infrastructure? The best estimate is $54 millionâ??thatâ??s over a half million per potential job! Do we, as taxpayers, think spending a half million per job is the best possible investment? What if Excelsior would be exempt from paying personal property taxes at all? Should they get that kind of tax break when local residents are struggling with tax bills?

Yes, we want jobs up here, but in this case the human and monetary costs of these jobs far exceed the potential benefits. I have not begun to address the many environmental concerns of proceeding with this project. Please oppose the Excelsior Energy Mesaba project at its current proposed site near Taconite. This is not the project the Legislature approved in 2003.

Shawn Conrad
Bovey

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Speaking of Resolutions, just got word that Itasca County passed one opposing Excelsior’s Mesaba project — now that’s a big step!!

Resolutions for Goodhue County DFL Convention

It’s been a “Resolutions” kind of weekend, and it takes so much time… I’m going to submit the Goodhue way of handling Resolutions for inclusion in the DFL’s “How-To” section so that others don’t have to reinvent the wheel, or worse, have Resolutions that aren’t considered — not one peace resolution made it through the fracas of the Rice County Convention to become one of the 28 that went forward — they were all in the “debatable” pile that just sat there unaddressed — eeeeeeeeuw, that’s not conducive to “Peace in the Precincts.”

The Goodhue County DFL Convention is next Saturday at SE MN Technical College. So we’re preparing the Resolutions… all 134 of them. Kudos to Steve Jystad of Zumbrota for doing the heavy lifting — he’s gotten this Resolution business off to a managable start by spending a lot of tedious time entering them into a database so we could sort. The following day, I put in a few hours consolidating and drafting proposed language. Then five of us waded through it all, and got the job done. I was impressed by the breadth of issues raised, everything from my eminent domain and personal property tax issues to specific education issues and single payer health care to apprenticeship rules to the “Personal Protection Act.” This is democracy in action.

It’s simple to do:

1) Put them all into a pile and number them (making sure the forms are filled out right and everything’s there

2) Enter them into the database zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Res.No. Name Precinct Category Resolution

3) Consolidate like ones

4) Synthesize and draft language to be presented for Convention

So that was yesterday, and at the Convention we’re going to use a simple system of giving each delegate 20 stickers (we only get 20 resolutions) and so all they have to do is put the stickers by the number of their 20 Resolutions, which makes for easy tallying. We’ll just count each person’s 20 and the top 20 go forward.

This stuff isn’t rocket science, but it requires a solid day or two of prep to make it managable, otherwise, it’s the chaos of Rice County all over again — you just can’t go into Convention without having done this work.

And did I mention that the Jystad family has the most wonderful pup… an 8 year old Bull Mastiff. He’s “shrinking a bit with age,” down from over 130, but because he’s sleek, he doesn’t look that much bigger than my girls. When his head’s at my knee, his tail was wagging out from under the other side of the big dining room table. Now that’s a big galoot, calm and constantly smiling, he looks like this but bigger:

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Rice County – Where’s that party at???

Victor Summa’s letter in Northfield News:

Where is the DFL Party?

To the editor:
The impressive array of candidates deserves more than the disarray in the party.

As the local political climate heats up … I’m wondering, where’s the Northfield DFL … and, where’s the press coverage of this spring’s related political events?

The national and statewide contests notwithstanding, two races this fall that are crucial to Northfield’s future would be the state House races, Districts 25A and 25B, and the state Senate race, District 25. Both of these party struggles are contested. Who will be the DFL candidates facing Republican incumbents? And, why?

The well-known, homegrown candidate, David Bly versus Belle Plain’s Tim Lies vie for House seat 25B. That party struggle will be determined on April 11 in Montgomery.

And, no less than three candidates have tossed their hats into the DFL ring for the Senate District 25 seat, currently held by the Republican incumbent. The DFL opposition includes Jessica Peterson, Ted Ludwig and Tim Siebsen, each hoping to make their mark at the April 11 DFL confab in Montgomery.

Where’s the public discourse, the insightful analysis? Where’s the press coverage? Where’s the local DFL candidate forums?

Are we expected to flip a coin to gain insight into the political strengths of each. Strikes me that this issue … all these candidates present a provocative mix. Isn’t it provocation that sells newspapers? Isn’t “provocative” what grabs voters attention?

A relative “handful” of proclaimed DFL hangers-on, surviving the tedium of the Rice County convention last weekend will or may go to Montgomery on April 11. Until then, there evidently is no plan for the DFL in Northfield, Belle Plain or Montgomery to bring these candidates to the voter’s eyes or ears for appraisal.

The newspaper gets blamed for a lot, but I guess you can’t blame the newspaper for not covering an event that never happened.

The frustrating question for all the Democratic faithful is: How do you hope to take back the White House, when you can’t even organize a fight for the strongest candidates to vie for seats in St. Paul?

I suggest a DFL forum at some conveniently located neutral site — Lonsdale? — where at least the press and the delegates can have a chance to hear from, and more importantly ask biting questions of, these five who might frame our future. Not just an opportunity to hear political pap, but to ask the insightful questions that will separate the candidate. Or perhaps, prove all to be worthy … maybe then, a coin flip’s okay!

Or maybe, the district’s a throwaway … given up to stay “red!” Ya gotta wonder?

Victor Summa
Northfield