Franken, Bachmann, Walz and Ellison "Bobble Reps"

Asked at Saturday’s Netroots Minnesota conference what blogs he follows, Rep. Tim Walz pulled out his iPhone and rattled off a few sites: Talking Points Memo, Bluestem Prairie, MN Publius and others. Then he showed off his favorite iPhone app — a new one that features his likeness and that of every other member of the House and Senate as shakeable cartoon bobbleheads.

The 99-cent “Bobble Rep” app helps users find out who represents them in Congress, either through a direct search or by using the iPhone’s GPS locator. The caricatures — heads for each of 540 legislators put on one of 12 bodies — were drawn by MAD Magazine artist Tom Richmond to be fun and nonpartisan. But Apple didn’t see it that way: it rejected the application claiming “it ridicules public figures.”

Richmond wrote:

This is truly ridiculous. These caricatures aren’t mean or very exaggerated. They are simple, fun cartoon likenesses of the politicians and the purpose of the app is an informational database. There is no editorial commentary involved at all.

Indeed, related projects, while likewise tame, could probably be construed as far more “offensive,” to use Apple’s word. Sen. Franken, for instance, was rendered as a 3D vampire bobblehead, “The Count,” (along with Norm Coleman) by the St. Paul Saints baseball team in March. And earlier this month, Franken and Coleman were given the MAD Magazine treatment in a spoof ad for “Democra-cialis, ” a cure for the kind of “electile dysfunction” that plagued their 2008 Senate battle, in MAD’s list of “dumbest people, events and things” of 2009.

But last Monday, Apple reversed its decision, green-lighting the app that made its way to Walz’s cellphone.

Walz’s wielded smartphone could’ve been a good prop for another question he answered — about net neutrality. He said he’s “absolutely convinced that we must keep net neutrality,” and thanks to his resolve, “AT&T doesn’t even come to my office anymore” to lobby against it, he added. He said he’s surprised that conservatives aren’t more concerned about the freedom issues surrounding the possibility of corporations controlling what internet users can and can’t access.

“If you want to wave the patriot banner,” he said, “wave it on net neutrality.”

Here’s how each of Minnesota’s Bobble Reps look:

Coleman wrote his own fundraising letter on behalf of Bachmann in September. Franken was a listed co-host for a fundraising event for Clark, a DFL Party state senator, in Minneapolis last week. Maureen Reed is also mounting a 2010 challenge to Bachmann.

Coleman’s comments Tuesday came in response to a question from his Harvard audience about whether “death bed” rhetoric and “Nazi imagery” were hurting the Republican Party. “I don’t think that the signs you mention are part of the party or central to the discussion,” Coleman countered.

In the course of his response, Coleman brought up “the Michele Bachmanns out there.” He disputed a link between extreme rhetoric and elected officials or the Tea Party movement. “Your basic notion is mistaken,” he said. “You’re taking something way out on the fringe and you’re applying it to the legitimate anger that folks have.”

But earlier, Coleman seemed ready to harness anger himself with this line in his speech: “Pity the politician who comes between a citizen and their constitutional Second Amendment rights.”

Coleman, a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, is treading on Franken’s former stomping grounds: the Minnesota funnyman-turned-statesman was a math major at Harvard.

He has cast himself as someone who can bring young people into the Republican Party, showing off his savvy by naming things like travel agents and 8-track tapes that the students in his audience don’t use. Besides, he asserted, young people don’t deal with social issues on a day-to-day basis. “Very rarely are you going to think about what’s going to happen on Roe v. Wade today,” Coleman said.

Coleman said he looks for middle ground on social issues. He advocated “doing those things that support young women so they don’t have to have an abortion.” Gay marriage is “a pretty narrow issue,” he said, citing civil unions as a possible compromise on the more contentious issue of how to define marriage.

“The philosophy of conservatives really is more in line with your generation,” Coleman said. “I just think we haven’t done a good job of articulating it.”

Coleman articulated this reason for having lost his re-election battle to Franken last year: his yes vote on bailout bills to stave off a depression in October 2008. “But for the collapse of the economy, I don’t think the race would have been close,” he said.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. Photo: WDCpix

It happens in every recession: Medicaid enrollment leaps at precisely the same time that states are least able to afford the additional costs. The structural flaw has left state lawmakers threatening program cuts, Congress scrambling to find emergency funds to prevent a coverage crisis, and children’s health advocates urging an overhaul in the way Medicaid is funded.

Trouble is, the Democrats’ health reform proposals do nothing to address the problem.

Despite the Medicaid expansion at the center of both the House and Senate bills, neither chamber takes aim at the underlying funding flaws of the program, which is bankrolled by a combination of state and federal money. That decision, policy experts warn, leaves some of the poorest folks in the country vulnerable to losing health care coverage during economic downturns when they’re likely to need it most.

“From time to time, we’re going to have these economic downturns,” Stan Dorn, senior health policy researcher at the Urban Institute, said last week during a kids’ health forum on Capitol Hill. “Rather than react in the same panicked way every single time, is there a way we can rethink how we structure the underlying program?”

The answer is yes — and lawmakers are well aware of it — but Congress isn’t acting on it. Indeed, last November, just days after the Democrats won the White House, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) proposed to create a trigger that would automatically hike the federal share of Medicaid funding when states, which are required by law to balance their budgets, hit tough times.

“Medicaid must be strong and stable so that eligible individuals can rely on it, especially in times of economic distress,” the Baucus paper explained.

Dorn endorsed that approach, arguing that such a mechanism would “provide automatic counter-cyclical relief so that when state conditions decline, federal help is forthcoming, and when state conditions improve, federal help retracts.”

“Not only would that help states,” Dorn added, “it would mean that federal dollars, which are in short supply, … would be much more closely targeted to need.”

Yet less than a year later, when Baucus unveiled his health reform proposal — legislation featuring a Medicaid expansion up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level — the funding trigger was noticeably absent. Baucus’ office did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday, but some health policy observers say it’s likely that cost concerns kept that provision out of the final bill.

Without such a trigger, Congress has been forced to step in twice in the last decade to help states weather recessions without dumping thousands of Medicaid patients. Between 2001 and 2002, for example, Medicaid enrollment jumped 8.6 percent, while tax revenues fell 7.5 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office. The trend led Congress in 2003 to provide $20 billion in emergency funding to stabilize program enrollment.

More recently, the economic stimulus bill contained $87 billion to provide a 6.2 percent increase in federal Medicaid funds, with additional help going to those states with the highest unemployment. The money was conditional: states accepting it could not restrict their eligibility requirements. All complied — with good reason. The Kaiser Family Foundation reported last month that state Medicaid enrollment jumped by an average of 5.4 percent in the year that ended July 1.

But that extra funding expires at the end of 2010, leaving kids’ health care advocates concerned about the future — particularly in high-unemployment states like Michigan, Nevada, Rhode Island and California, where Medicaid rolls are mostly likely to swell most rapidly.

“We could fully expect major cuts in Medicaid if there isn’t some continuation of that fiscal relief,” said Jocelyn Guyer, co-executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Some lawmakers have the problem on their radar. The House health reform bill, for example, would extend the additional Medicaid funding through June of 2011 – a provision the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $23.5 billion.

Meanwhile, however, the legislative uncertainty is forcing state health officials to craft their budgets as if the funds will expire Dec. 31, 2010 — just halfway through most state budget calendars.

Nate Checketts, head of Utah’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, described the potential effect that expiration would have on the state. Before the stimulus bill became law in February, he said on Friday, state lawmakers had worked out all the details of a plan to cut adults, including medically needy folks, from the Medicaid rolls. The stimulus bill prevented that step, but with the enhanced funding set to expire, “those items are back on the table again,” Checketts said.

The current Medicaid funding scheme also creates dilemmas of moral hazard. Checketts noted that, before the stimulus bill passed, Utah had considered creating an emergency Medicaid fund, to be fed in the good years and tapped in the lean ones. “When the stimulus funds continue to come in the bad years,” Checketts said, “it sort-of undercuts that concept of needing to have a Medicaid rainy-day fund.”

“States are beginning to act as if these funds may always come,” he added. “There needs to be a decision about whether that’s really going to happen [in the future]. If not, states need to change their behaviors.”

The saga highlights the central dilemma facing Democratic leaders as they push forward with their sweeping health reform proposals: how to cover tens-of-millions of uninsured Americans while keeping new federal costs to a minimum. The expansion of Medicaid, an essential component of both the House and Senate bills, has been an attractive way to extend that coverage precisely because it’s cheaper than other alternatives. But the low cost comes at a price.

Indeed, according to a September survey conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change, only about 40 percent of physicians accept all new Medicaid patients — versus 58 percent for Medicare patients — and roughly 28 percent don’t accept any new Medicaid patients at all. For dental care, the figures are even worse. Less than 27 percent of dentists surveyed by the American Dental Association in 2007 said they treat Medicaid-insured patients, leading to severe access problems surrounding oral health. The trends have raised questions about the value of an insurance program that few providers accept.

The House bill tackles the reimbursement issue head on, increasing Medicaid rates for primary care services to 100 percent of Medicare rates by 2012. Initially, the federal government would pay for the entire rate hike, though states would assume 9 percent of the increase beginning in 2015. The reform doesn’t come cheap. That provision alone would cost taxpayers $28.7 billion over the next five years and $57 billion over the next 10, the CBO estimates.

In the eyes of many experts and advocates, even if the House reimbursement changes don’t pass as part of the final bill, the expansion of Medicaid represents a step in the right direction. “As bad as Medicaid reimbursement is, it’s better than zero,” Dorn said. “For low-income folks, it will certainly be better than being uninsured.”

Yet Checketts said that Utah health officials — like those in many states — are wary of the expansion, which they estimate could double Utah’s Medicaid population.

“I don’t think [doctors and dentists] would be able to handle that with the current reimbursement rates,” Checketts said. “Some sort of change will have to be made.”

No, it’s not the return flight-path for those errant Northwest Airlines pilots. It’s U.S. Sen. Al Franken’s hand-drawn map of Minnesota, done on spec for National Geographic. 

Franken and 10 other senators responded to the magazine’s request that they draw the outline of their home states, marking three important places. The assignment was right up Franken’s alley, since he regularly shows off his ability to draw a freehand map of the entire United States from memory.

But highlighting only three places stumped Franken, who responded in wordy fashion with “the importance of Minnesota in the region,” “the entire state” and  ”my hometown, St. Louis Park.”

In attempting to cover all conceivable bases while not playing favorites, Franken seems to have inadvertently tipped his hand, mentioning the state’s prairie land twice:

There’s natural beauty throughout Minnesota, from the Boundary Waters in the Northeast that we share with Canada to the prairies in the west back to the gorgeous bluffs of southeastern Minnesota. There’s the prairies of the west — the fertile farmland along the Red River Valley of the North and the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.

The senators’ entries appear to have been done in permanent marker, so even if Franken realized he’d let his prairie obsession show, he couldn’t fix it. Or maybe he’s trying to curry favor in areas where Democrats have to work harder for votes. In any case, here’s his whole sketch:

Under the proposed 50/50 formula, utilities that are more coal dependent will need to purchase even more allowances than they would have if all allowances were allocated based on emissions.

Well, yeah. And under the current proposed 50/50 formula, the coal burners would also have to purchase more allowances than if Congress did nothing at all. But the whole point of the bill is to discourage the use of high-emission energies like coal by making them less affordable than cleaner alternatives. Sheppard explains further why the lawmakers’ argument makes little sense in the context of the global warming debate:

Of course, this would work against the entire logic of the proposed scheme, which is to offer utilities financial incentives to switch to lower-carbon fuel sources. [...]

Right now, the climate bill needs all the votes it can get from Democrats. So enviros worry that concessions to this bloc could ultimately result in a deal in which coal plants suffer no real penalties for the carbon they pump into the atmosphere. “Dirty coal polluters know their days are numbered and are lobbying for the largest piece of the pie they can get,” said Jason Kowalski, policy coordinator at 1Sky. “It goes against the spirit of this legislation to reward the polluters that caused this problem in the first place.”

In addition to Klobuchar and Franken, other Democratic senators signing on to the letter were Carl Levin (Mich.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Herb Kohl (Wis.), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Roland Burris (Ill.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Mark Udall (Colo.) and Robert Byrd (W.Va.).

Coming in at 12th dumbest, our Senate race (dubbed “Land of a Thousand Recounts”) is illustrated by the spoof pharmaceutical ad, which asks, “When the time comes to concede, will you be ready?”

The copy continues:

If you’ve already tried futile legal challenges and angry calls for recounts, yet continue to suffer from an inadequate vote tally, Democra-cialis may be right for you. Losing candidates who have used Democra-cialis have seen a marked reduction in electile dysfunction, leaving their opponents victorious and satisfied.

Also making the list are Illinois’ Rod Blagojevich (#15), corporate bailouts (#9), and “Angry Town Hall Meetings” (#6, “Birthers, deathers and other rightwing morons stopped any intelligent discussions about healthcare reform”).

The full ad, via NBC Chicago:

It’s not the first faux pharmaceutical ad created on behalf of Coleman. In April, Tildology came up with one for Dragra, an “oral argument for electile dysfunction.”

“[T]oday, in 2009, in our country, it’s still perfectly legal to fire someone because they’re gay,” Franken told the committee. “You can be a hard worker, show up on time, and get exemplary performance reviews, but if your boss discovers that you’re gay or transgender, they can fire you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Franken noted that Minnesota was the first state in the nation to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and the sky hasn’t fallen here.

Now, most Minnesotans attend religious services every week. Minnesota is home to 19 Fortune 500 companies. Minnesotans enjoy a very high standard of living. So it might surprise some of you that the Minnesota Human Rights Act was passed in 1993. This law protects workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This law has been protecting workers from discrimination for fifteen years, and Minnesota’s sky has not fallen. Minnesota is basically the same as it was before this law was passed with only one small exception—about 20 or so people per year exercise their rights under this law after they are discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Only one person spoke against the bill. Craig Parshall, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the National Religious Broadcasters Association, said ENDA would “impose a substantial, unconstitutional burden on religious organizations.”

Despite those concerns, the bill does state that it “shall not apply to a corporation, association, educational institution or institution of learning, or society that is exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Here’s video of Franken’s remarks:

Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

U.S. Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation Thursday that would encourage states to examine untested rape kits for DNA evidence. The bill would also provide for more health workers trained to administer rape-kit exams, particularly for Native American women.

Another aspect of the bill is that women couldn’t be made to pay for all or part of their rape kit exams — an issue that came up in the 2008 presidential campaign.

“We don’t bill criminals for fingerprint processing,” Franken said in a statement.

The Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act is co-sponsored by Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as well as Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California.

The bill follows by only a month Senate passage of Franken’s amendment defunding military contractors that make employees sign away their rights to take sexual assualt allegations to court.

Rape came up during Franken’s campaign for Senate when opponents publicized instances in his comedic past that touched on the topic.

Photo: snowe.senate.gov

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine bristled at Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s litmus test for deciding whether she can call herself a Republican. “I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I haven’t changed. I don’t know what the problem is. I really don’t,” Snowe told the Politico. “Other Republicans could probably borrow more from me … in terms of being in touch with your constituents.”

Snowe gave Pawlenty an out: ”I know Gov. Pawlenty to be a thoughtful person, and I know if he could have rephrased it or re-characterized it he would.”

That statistic is part of an op-ed by Ellison and the chief sponsor of a companion bill, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, at the Huffington Post.

Another statistic they offer: The top five states for 2008 voter turnout — including Minnesota and Wisconsin — all have same-day registration.

Ellison and Feingold urge the District of Columbia’s city council to adopt reforms today that would allow voters to register at the polls.

The new federal legislation, introduced last week, has not yet attracted co-sponsors beyond its original Democratic backers. They include Minnesota Reps. Tim Walz and Jim Oberstar and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

Also quoted in the piece is Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie: “EDR [Election Day Registration] is much more secure because you have the person right in front of you — not a postcard in the mail. … We have 35 years of experience with this.”

Click here for information from Ritchie’s office on how to register to vote on Election Day in Minnesota.