Just repugnant Party of Trump candidates, all the way down
From the superlative Developers are Crabgrass blog, about the Minnesota auditor’s race:
MinnPost recently published about the Minnesota State Auditor’s election. The upshot was that the pension fund management practices of the current auditor were exemplary.
Ryan Wilson, the GOP candidate emphasized ROI, and while return on investment is a measure in finance, risk is always a lurking factor. Pension funds are not private equity funds taking high risks to chase high ROI. The article makes that clear without mentioning the keyword, “prudent” in terms of investing other people’s future…
Blaha is the incumbent. Retirement fund management by Blaha and the Board made up of statewide office holders is of record (the present board is Blaha, Walz, Simon and Ellison). Wilson the challenger, is wanting something to focus upon in order to position himself as offering something different. So, ROI is mentioned without any “plan” how he’d get more ROI without more risk…
Blaha has her record to run on. Who is Wilson? We need to know…
A Trumpist and Koch acolyte with strong Federalist Society love is not who Crabgrass would want managing anyone else’s pensions. The background is political, extremely so, in contrast to the “Take politics out of the office” self-description he features on his campaign site. I trust the history, as sourced.
I trust Blaha to be less political when reelected, while, from circumstantial evidence, I have problems with believing Ryan Wilson has any real care to depoliticize anything. He is a lawyer looking for a government paycheck while “libertarian.” I find contradiction of value in making a value judgment.
I can’t resist a little historical note. Back in 2015, then-Auditor Rebecca Otto went public against sulfide mining in Minnesota. Then-DFL Sen. Tom Bakk, in a snit, led the way in ramming through a law allowing counties to ditch state auditor services and use private firms instead. Seven years later the auditor’s office is going strong, Bakk is leaving the lege, and sulfide mining still hasn’t happened.
My take on this election as a whole is that if young voters turn out in force, Democrats will do fine, in Minnesota and nationally. And they have turned out in force, in the last two elections.
Some have professed totally justified disgust, contempt, etc., at (overwhelmingly corporate conservative-owned and operated) corporate media’s election coverage. It should be understood that the people there don’t consider it their job, first and foremost, to get things right. That’s not what they’re paid for. They’re paid to tell corporate media’s older, conservative-leaning base audience what it wants to see/hear/read. And to do what they can to keep them voting Republican.
Given how corporate media does things in general, I regard the notion that they somehow nonetheless hold their polling sacrosanct, and wouldn’t dream of, shall we say, “tweaking” it to try to influence voter behavior, to be quite naive.
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