Think the Koch Brothers have the only conservative companies working to impact our elections?  Not the case according to Dylan Stableford with Yahoo News. On May 8, 2014, he posted an article detailing information from the New York Times. 

Here’s what was found:

• Flowers Foods, the makers of Wonder Bread and Tastykakes, has given 99.5% of its political contributions since 1979 to Republicans
• Illinois Tool Works gave 95.9%
• Cooper Industries gave 93.6%
• Devon Energy gave 93%
• Bloomin’ Brands (formerly Outback Steakhouse) gave 93%
• Eaton (right here in Eden Prairie) gave 92.7%
• Timken gave 91.7%
• Marathon Petroleum gave 91.7%
• ExxonMobile gave 90.2%
• Halliburton gave 90.2%
• Anadarko Petroleum gave 90%

And, according to OpenSecrets.org, those Koch Brothers (not their PACs and other political organizations they fund) gave $1.4 million so far this year — $816,000 to Republican congressional candidates, $12,000 to Democrats.

Koch Brothers · political contributions · Republican contributions

On May 1, 2014, John Van Hecke, Publisher at Minnesota 2020, wrote about the legislation enacted this session on online voter registration.

While the House version of the bill did pass with only 2 no votes, the Senate bill passed with 24 State Senators voting against it — all of them conservative and including our State Senator, David Hann.

He then talks about how this is an ongoing battle. “Progressives want to make it easier for people to register and vote. Conservatives seek greater restrictions, effectively disenfranchising voters by making it harder for people of modest and limited economic means to case a vote.” All of this while they are looking for any opportunity to “condemn government for not streamlining business service online.”

You can read the full post here.

Minnesota 2020 · MN2020 · online voter registration · voter registration · voter suppression

On May 6, 2014, Lulu Chang reported in the National Memo on a report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which shows how Massachusetts’ 2006 health care reform law (called Romneycare) “has been linked to a ‘significant decrease in all-cause mortality.’”

What does that mean? It shows that when individuals with similar demographic and economic backgrounds living in Massachusetts are compared with those in other New England states, the study found an “absolute decrease of 8.2 deaths per 100,000 adults”.  And, “deaths from causes amenable to health care decreased by an even wider margin of 4.5%”.

The group with the sharpest decrease in deaths?  The poor and previously uninsured.

You can read the full post here, which included links to the studies cited.

ACA · Affordable Care Act · Obamacare · Romneycare