Legalectric

Contract on America (1994), been there, done that, but here we go again.  Trump’s announced another:

Trump’s Contract with the American voter — the First 100 Days

Here’s what he says he’ll do:

Six measures to clean up the corruption and special interest

collusion in Washington, DC:

★ FIRST, propose a constitutional amendment to
impose term limits on all members of Congress.
★ SECOND, a hiring freeze on all federal employees
to reduce the federal workforce through attrition
(exempting military, public safety, and public health).
★ THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.
★ FOURTH, a five-year ban on White House and
Congressional officials becoming lobbyists after they
leave government service.
★ FIFTH, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
★ SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising
money for American elections.

Seven actions to protect American workers:

★ FIRST, I will announce my intention to renegotiate
NAFTA or withdraw from the deal under Article 2205.

★ SECOND, I will announce our withdrawal from the
Trans-Pacific Partnership.

★ THIRD, I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator.

★ FOURTH, I will direct the Secretary of
Commerce and U.S. Trade Representative to
identify all foreign trading abuses that unfairly
impact American workers and direct them to
use every tool under American and international
law to end those abuses immediately.

★ FIFTH, I will lift the restrictions on the
production of $50 trillion dollars’ worth of
job-producing American energy reserves,
including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.

★ SIXTH, lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks and allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward.

★ SEVENTH, cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.

Five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

★ FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama.

★ SECOND, begin the process of selecting a replacement for Justice Scalia from one of the 20 judges on my list, who will uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.

★ THIRD, cancel all federal funding to sanctuary cities.

★ FOURTH, begin removing the more than two million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.

★ FIFTH, suspend immigration from terror-prone regions where vetting cannot safely occur. All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.”

Middle Class Tax Relief and Simplification Act
An economic plan designed to grow the economy 4% per year and create at least 25 million new jobs through massive tax reduction and simplification, in combination with trade reform, regulatory relief and lifting the restrictions on American energy. The largest tax reductions are for the middle class. A middle-class family with two children will get a 35% tax cut. The current number of brackets will be reduced from seven to three, and tax forms will likewise be greatly
simplified. The business rate will be lowered from 35%
to 15%, and the trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate.

End the Offshoring Act
Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers in order to relocate in other countries and ship their products back to the U.S. tax-free.

American Energy and Infrastructure Act
Leverages public-private partnerships, and private
investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in
infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.

School Choice and Education Opportunity Act
Redirects education dollars to give parents the right to send their kid to the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school of their choice. Ends Common Core and brings education supervision to local communities. It expands vocational and technical education, and makes two- and four year
college more affordable.

Repeal and Replace Obamacare Act
Fully repeals Obamacare and replaces it with Health Savings Accounts, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines and lets states manage Medicaid funds. Reforms will also include cutting the red tape at the FDA: there are over 4,000 drugs awaiting approval, and we especially want
to speed the approval of life-saving medications.

Affordable Childcare and Eldercare Act
Allows Americans to deduct childcare and eldercare
from their taxes, incentivizes employers to provide on-site childcare services and creates tax-free dependent care savings accounts for both young and elderly dependents, with matching contributions for low-income families.

End Illegal Immigration Act
Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern
border with the full understanding that the country of
Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor convictions
or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to American workers first.

Restoring Community Safety Act
Reduces surging crime, drugs and violence by creating
a task force on violent crime and increasing funding for
programs that train and assist local police; increases
resources for federal law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors to dismantle criminal gangs and put violent offenders behind bars.

Restoring National Security Act
Rebuilds our military by eliminating the defense sequester
and expanding military investment; provides veterans
with the ability to receive public VA treatment or attend
the private doctor of their choice; protects our vital
infrastructure from cyber-attack; establishes new screening
procedures for immigration to ensure those who are
admitted to our country support our people and our values.

Clean Up Corruption in Washington Act
Enacts new ethics reforms to drain the swamp and reduce the corrupting influence of special interests on our politics.

Voting in Red Wing, and everywhere in the U.S. today.  I was number 362 to check in, and number 352 to check out (some were taking a while to vote), and was told it was a high turn out.  While waiting for results to come in, I was thinking about how this election might compare to the last Presidential election.

From the Minnesota Secretary of State site, HERE are the 2012 voting results.

So here are some numbers for Red Wing, taken from the above spreadsheet.  First the numbers of voters in each Red Wing precinct (click for larger view), by the time the polls closed, 8,748 voters, and in Minnesota we don’t register by party:

For the 2012 Presidential race, it’s 4:3 for Democrat/Obama v. Romney, with very few voting 3rd party, and for those few, mostly Green Party.   This distribution is significant when we get down ballot, where there’s quite a bit of crossing over and people voting for an R here and a DFLer there, back and forth.

For the US Senate race, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (incumbent) v.  State Rep. Kurt Bills (? know nothing about him?), it’s more than 2:1 DFL over Republican!  A very heavy win for Klobuchar.  And then for our Representative, Rep. John Kline (incumbent) v.  Rep. Mike Obermueller (or former Rep.), it’s favoring Kline the Republican, but nearly tied!

Looking at the Minnesota Legislature in the 2012 election:

In 2012, for the state, it was very much like the U.S. races, for Minnesota Senate, first term Sen. John Howe (R) v. unknown Matt Schmit, which went by a wide margin to the DFL, though not as much as the US Senate contest.  Conversely, as with the Congressional race, the House race between Rep. Tim Kelly (R) v. unknown John Bacon (DFL) went Republican in an almost mirror image of the lopsided MN Senate race!  ???

It’s been a split ticket forever down here.  For way too long, we were “represented” in the Minnesota Senate by Steve Murphy (DINO and corporate toadie), the Senator from Xcel, literally an Xcel/Northern States Power employee until he resigned/retired(?) in his last term.  And in the state House, forever it was Rep. Jerry Dempsey (R), and I mean FOREVER, well, maybe it just seemed it, from 1993 to 2006, replaced by Rep. Sandy Wollschlager (DFL) for one term, then Rep. Tim Kelly (R) for three terms.  Now it’s an open seat, with Haley (R) v. Bayley (DFL), hotly contested and lots of outside money on this race — my guess is it’ll flip back to DFL this time.

And then there’s Goodhue County, the Senate District 21, it’s a swing district…

Wednesday there are two public hearings scheduled for the MERC Rochester Natural Gas Pipeline, PUC Docket number G-011/GP-15-858.  You can look up the filings on this PUC docket — GO HERE — and search for 15-858 (15 is the year, 858 is the docket number).

Show up!  Very few people commented on the environmental review, and this is the routing case, where comments are needed — the environmental review scoping and CEA comments will not necessarily be taken into account.  Everyone needs to bring them to the judge’s attention!

This project is a high pressure natural gas connector line around the south, southwest and western edge of Rochester, with the purpose of providing natural gas to a new natural gas generating plant at the Westside Energy Station.  This would involve routing a pipeline near existing homes and planned developments.  This is an existing problem in Kasson and Byron, where that huge line paralleling Hwy. 14 runs right through people’s yards — communities platted over it, homes were built, and for new homes, there’s no disclosure requirement!  That is obscene, and should be crminal.  Rochester and Olmsted Counties should not put themselves in a similar situation.

Those supporting Trump, do consider the words and advice of Republican Ohio Gov. Kasich and the Pope, links below.

The Republicans could have had a viable candidate in Ohio Gov. Kasich, but noooooooo.  The good news is that Drumpf doesn’t have the votes to win tomorrow. Yesterday, he showed his hateful rejection of refugees, his plan to stop immigration, and it elicited cheers from the crowd — what would those supporters’ grandparents think of his vitrolic statements. I listened to the entire speech, if you could call it that — he used such disjointed, repetitive hook-laden inflammatory words, started with a bashing of the organizers of the event, outright lies saying Clinton wants to cut Social Security and Medicare — where does he get these ideas? It was also painful to listen to because he cannot speak, it was stream of (un)consciousness where he’d jump on one topic and just throw words out, and suddenly jump to another. I wish there were transcripts of his “speeches” to analyze, because I’d think, I’d hope, that supporters would try to make sense of what he says, because it can’t be done. There’s no substance. Only incendiary jumbled rhetoric of code words repeated over and over.

The Pope had a few things to say about this candidate recently:

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel,” the Pope told journalists who asked his opinion on Trump’s proposals to halt illegal immigration.

“I say only that this man is not a Christian if he thinks like that.”

Trump’s responded, of course, he is unable to restrain himself, and he responded lashing out, not an ounce of reflection.

From Time on yesterday’s Trump visit:

Kasich has for a while been alerting voters about Trump’s failings, his shortcomings, and how unqualified and dangerous Trump is — that he is not fit or qualified to be President. A former POW says it well in this new Kasich ad about Drumpf: