Secrets of the City

Maybe the DFL will finally shut up with the whole sky is falling thing.

LOL, am I on drugs or what?

Let’s make everything a political issue!

I farted, did the republicans do it? was it George Clooney and the Liberals?

Give it a rest!

No kidding. I’ve recently taken to deleting some comments that are ridiculously political.

After living in Minnesota for the last few years, I can safely say that Minnesota may have good physical health, but the mental health level is dangerously poor.

LOL, I’m gonna start all my MNSpeak comments with “LOL” from now on.

Kevin’s already got the lock on ‘LOL’. You should go for ‘OMG’ or ‘BTW’.

OMG, totes.

IMHO (is that one taken?)

The number to be proud of is our per capita health expenditure as a state.

However, and this is a big however, as any health worker with any honesty will tell you, the disparity in both expenditures and outcome among race in Minnesota is disconcerting.

The infant mortality rate among white caucasians in Minnesota is among the lowest in the nation, but the same rate among blacks is double or nearly triple. The expenditure amounts by race would be just as stark.

And it wouldn’t be so political if the state would agree to quit playing political football with MNCARE caps and borrowing from it sometimes without repayment to cover deficits.

There was a story I was just reading the other day about how many local municipalities in Minnesota, I think Duluth was the case in point, have promised complete 100% health care pension benefits to city workers in low supply such as nurses, teachers and fire workers without budgetting for the future expenses. Is kind of scary how indebted some of our cities are going to be in the next decade.

OMD!

Not2Sure’s mnspeakin it up tonight … great comments all over the place

And not a single one (so far today) that starts off with a random ad hominem dig at me.

I don’t think my post was ridiculously political at all. This report almost completely debunks the focus behind their political argument of the last three years and that should be at least mentioned.

“I’ve recently taken to deleting some comments that are ridiculously political.”

Yeah, like mine.

Someone chose to post this bit of news. At what type of level or angle, if not political, should we be steering this discussion, in your estimation?

kevin, it seemed a little out of the blue, and at risk of turning this into dKos, i’d say that, if anything, it proves that being a “high tax state” means having high returns in our quality of life … but how about those wolves?!?!

political blogs for partisanship, mnspeak for mn boosterism, furniture porn for furniture porn.

as in regular media, u gotta think about ur audience, dude

I think the MN Speak audience is bright enough to have real conversations about everything. We could debate whether or not these results are indeed the result of a high tax state, but let’s not. It’s not any fun.

Basically my attitude is that there are 300+ political blogs in town, so there’s no shortage of places to illustrate how every current event can be blamed on “the goddamn democrats|republicans.” That’s so tiring. People have heard me say it before, but I absolutely resent the way “blog” and “partisan” have become synonymous. In some ways, I started MNspeak to prove that there can be more nuance, more inclusiveness, more fun. And lately, a couple (just a couple) of the canned “debates” here have left me frustrated.

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want MNspeak to shy away from political issues, and to have the occasional knock-out, drag-down political fisticuffs. Exciting new issues to debate come up all the time — but the ones I want to stay away from are the calcified conversations where everyone says the tediously predictable thing. And so I’m sorry, but twisting a post about us being a healthy state into a one-off blast of partisan rancor just seemed over the top. Maybe I was right about that estimation, maybe I was wrong, maybe I was just watching too much cable news punditry at that moment… I’m not sure… I’m making this up in real time, and sometimes decisions happen at the click of a mouse.

And finally, I apologize for sounding like a snob about all this, since this is more your site than mine. I really just want this site to be different from the other prattle that passes for debate out there, and most of the time it does (in spite of my silly rants about the suburbs!).

(This is the moment where you say “that’s precious and cute,” and blast into me for voting for Clinton.)

I see what you’re saying.

As for the healthy-state debate, I’d say there is a certain attitude here about health care that I haven’t seen in other places that I have lived. In Miami, I lived in fear of having to one day go to the hospital. Fliers for health insurance — of a dubious nature — were passed out to people waiting at traffic lights because many employers felt little obligation to provide the benefit.

I don’t think a world class facility in Rochester ended up in Minnesota by happenstance. There had to be some fertile ground for it to be planted and grown.

It also wasn’t that long ago that some tough people settled this area. I’m forturnate to be of the stock who broke the sod in Minnesota.

That, and a lot of other reasons, probably led to the designation for Minnesota.

My two cents: If we’re the best in health, then it has to be really bad elsewhere. Something seriously needs to be done in Washington to save health care. I mean the costs are going to just lower the percentage of those covered. Higher costs also make it harder for doctors to practice.

I say take this study with a grain of salt and make our health care even better in Minnesota. It’s not like we’re without problems. Example A: When Health Partners doctors are enraged over their health care, we have problems.

If I blast you for anything it will be working for Microsoft. j/k

This may be a long shot here but….I find it interesting that the bottom 10 on the list (aside from Georgia) are also found at the bottom of the educational institutions list. I know the only reason a dirt poor college student such as myself has health insurance is because the university requires it for my attendence.