The best map of Minneapolis I’ve seen yet:
As Good As I’ve Seen
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The Mulligan Session, Part II
The same DFL employees who gave us “E-Pulltabs” as a means of supplying “the state’s share” of an extorted payoff to an out-of-state billionaire for his real-estate upgrade (which fell 95% short of predictions, as predicted by certain right-wing bloggers) are going to try to take a mulligan and get it right on the second try, says this piece from the MinnPost’s James Nord:
The governor’s proposal would increase the cigarette tax from $1.23 per pack to $2.52 per pack – a larger jump than the 94-cent target he’d earlier proposed — and would require retailers and wholesalers to make a one-time payment on existing inventory that would funnel $24.5 million into the stadium reserve account, solving the shortfall there.
Where have we seen this before?
Oh, yeah – cigarette taxes never, ever raise the money they’re supposed to. They rarely get 2/3 of the way to their goals. Ever.
And a “one-time tax on existing inventory?” Look for a fire sale on smokes the week before the tax goes into effect, and for chain convenience stores to shuffle inventory out of state pronto.
Then, if electronic pulltabs or linked bingo games fail to produce the revenue necessary to fund the state’s appropriation bonds for the stadium ["if" - heh. Ed], the commissioner of Minnesota Management and Budget would have the authority to direct revenue from a closed corporate income tax loophole toward the stadium.
Frans said that closing the “tax avoidance loophole” would prohibit the current legal practice of some Minnesota companies that avoid paying full corporate income taxes on sales they make by shielding themselves through a subsidiary in a different state. He said more than 20 states have similar regulations in effect.
Dear Mr. Nord: Not that I’m going to tell you how to do your job, but did you happen to ask Mr. Frans what states those were? And how they’re doing in terms of business climate? How well “closing” that particular “loophole” worked?
Remember – these are the same people who said “E-Pulltabs” would…y’know…work.
That measure is projected to bring in $26 million in the first year and roughly $20 million annually after that, although those totals could change as the conference committee works out the specifics of their compromise.
Frans said with the new contingency plan, which would also be backed up by current taxes on suites and memorabilia if for some reason it doesn’t perform, officials are ready to close the book on the shaky stadium funding issue.
“We believe it’s reliable, it’s consistent,” he said.
The Messinger Dayton Administration ”believed” a lot of things that didn’t turn out to be true.
If only we had an institution, with printing presses and transmitters and websites, staffed by people who see themselves as part of a truth-seeking monastic order, whose job it was to tell the public about these things.
Restatement Of Principles
I’ve opposed the death penalty for a long time.
I actually support it, for every reason but one – the inevitability of executing the wrong person (and it appears all but inevitable that there’s been at least one and possibly two erroneous executions in recent years). Executing the wrong person is a double crime; society kills an innocent person, and a guilty party goes free, leaving a terrible crime unpaid-for.
So I oppose the death penalty for one reason, and one only.
But there are cases were, I gotta confess, I’m really just going through the motions.
(The suspect is innocent until proven guilty)
I Heard It On The NARN
Here’s the link for Childcare Freedom. They need your help today more than ever.
If you’re not reading John Rouleau on Twitter, you should be. He’s with the Minnesota Majority.
And here’s the Center of the American Experiment study that Bill Glahn and Christina Pierson talked about. You can also call Governor Dayton to have him – hopefully – veto all or parts of this stupid bill: 800-657-3717 201-3400
NARN: The “State Without Boundaries” Edition
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!
- I’ll be in from 1-3PM. It’ll be a big show: First: Hollee Saville joins us live from the protest vigil against daycare unionization, down at the Capitol. Then John Rouleau will talk about the hoops Minnesota Majority had to jump through with the IRS, in relation to the IRS scandal. Finally, Christina Pierson and Bill Glahn will discuss the new solar energy mandate, which will cause one of the more bizarre middle class price increases of this session.
- Brad Carlson is on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!
(All times Central)
So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:
- AM1280 in the Metro
- Streaming at AM1280’s Website
- Streaming on IHeartRadio
- On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
- Via UStream video and chat
- Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
- Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
- Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
- And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!
Join us!
The Way The Racket Works
Joe Doakes notes the MNGOP’s big problem. I’ll add emphasis:
The DFL Governor and DFL Legislators have cut a deal to give more money to children and unions and have it all done by Tuesday. If only those pesky Republicans would agree.
Which they won’t of course, since this is the same pie-in-the-sky nonsense the DFL has been spouting all along, when not devoting the session to social issues such as gun control, gay marriage and bullying in schools.
And when Republicans don’t blindly sign on to the DFL program, why then the shut-down and special session and laying-off-of-cops will all be Republicans fault. Because Democrats had it all worked out, you see, and the Republicans ruined it.
We need better PR people, so WE can get ahead of the news cycle, for once.
Joe Doakes
I wonder if the MNGOP and the caucuses will ever figure that out. The way they’re doing it just isn’t working.
Failure To Launch
Senator Dave Osmek (R, SD33) emailed (with emphasis added):
You will note some GOP opposition to[this past week's] Latz gun bill. While I asked some pointed questions in debate of the bill, I came to the same conclusion as many GOP senators: Even though it’s a bill we can support, we do not feel any need for a gun bill this year, particularly in light of the fact that we do NOT have even ONE omnibus budget bill to keep the State running. We need priorities, not distractions.
The bill didn’t pass. And we still have no actual budget.
Just a bunch of crib notes the DFL is claiming are close enough for government work.
Confirmation Bias
The Strib has a new publisher, Mike Klingensmith.
David Brauer at the MinnPost checked up on the guy’s financial donations, as well as the new board chair Mike Sweeney’s - which ranged from “moderate Republicans” to “very liberal Democrats” over the course of the past decade and change. Brauer’s summary:
All in all, bipartisan, big-business-like, skewed toward the D.C. Establishment, with a whiff of fashionable Democratic insurgency late. (Obama was not yet a favorite when Klingensmith started giving.)
But here’s the part that caught my attention; Brauer says the previous publisher, Chris Harte, “pushed the page in a conservative direction” – defined by chair Sweeney and quoted by Brauer, as “My understanding of Chris’s view was that he wanted to be fair to both sides”, which media people seem to think is a radical departure, since they don’t tend to think the current media has any bias.
I mean, in his piece Brauer says the Strib is ever so slightly conservative these days.
But I’m putting words in Brauer’s mouth. I’ll let him speak for himself – here, writing about the new guard’s rap sheet:
I don’t expect conservatives to be pleased with this record, but many seem happiest ripping the Strib as the Red Star. Harte’s push toward the middle, or further, yielded few dividends with that crowd.
So let’s run down a summary of what conservatives would make of a sober look at what the Strib has done over Harte’s term:
- Hired a single, solitary conservative columnist, Katherine Kersten
- Promptly caved in to the whinging of a staff that believed that adding a single conservative to a stable that included DFL stenographers Lori Sturdevant, Nick Coleman and his replacement Jon Tevlin made the paper “too conservative”
- Made the “Minnesota Poll” arguably less comically biased, with the dumping of the internal pollsters, the firing of Princeton, and the hiring of Mason Dixon (we’ll know in a cycle or two)
“More conservative?” I’d run with “marginally less North Korean”. It was a start, and a very slow one at that – one fought at every turn by people who think the Strib is juuuuust fine the way it’s always been.
I’d love to know from David Brauer – on precisely what grounds was he expecting “dividends” from the right?
While the Strib has some capable reporters (who have historically had an amazing and I’m sure coincidental propensity to go to work for liberal PACs, PR firms or the DFL after leaving the paper), at the editorial board level the paper has been since the Cowles era nothing but a glorified DFL PR firm.
Like Lidocaine For The Cerebral Cortex
After Nanny Pelosi says the calls to investigate Attorney General Eric “Let’s send guns to the narcotraficantes and bug the AP” Holder is about “Voter Suppression”, Rep. Trey Gowdy, bless his heart, did something politicians almost never manage.
He told the truth (emphasis added):
“It’s really beneath the office of a member of Congress to say something that outrageous, and the fact that she was once the speaker is mind-numbing,” Rep. Gowdy told Fox News’ Greta van Susteren.
“I have heard a lot in my 16 years as a prosecutor. I couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth,” he added.
Gowdy calls Pelosi mind-numbingly stupid
“I don’t know what was wrong with her when she said that. But I would schedule an appointment with my doctor if she thinks that we are doing this to suppress votes this fall. That is mind-numbingly stupid,” Gowdy said.
He wasn’t the only one:
Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit reminded readers that “Pelosi also said Democrats brought down the deficit after they increased it by a trillion dollars.”
“She’s either mind-numbingly stupid or a chronic liar, or both,” Hoft wrote.
I beg to differ.
What she said – almost always says, in fact - is mind-numbingly stupid.
But she’s speaking to the new Democrat base – the people who think a seven-second, Alinskyite sound bite is, in fact, fact. People whose idea of “checking facts” has devolved into “checking to see what my favorite left-leaning source says they are”, which is two steps up from Duckspeak.
A State Without Limits
This one’s important, and needs some action on your part to prevent a corrosive overreach of government power.
I also got this one from GOCRA yesterday; it’s not a “gun rights” thing, but it’s an important civil liberty issue, and it needs your attention:
Minneapolis Police (as well as many other departments) use automated license plate readers to log millions of times, dates, and locations of cars every month. They know where you were, and they keep this data as long as they want.
A proposed law, House File 474 (and Senate companion SF385), would force police departments to immediately delete data on non-suspect cars (like yours).
This bill is scheduled for a vote [today] in the House. If you think that the police shouldn’t track the every move of innocent citizens, ask your state senator representative to support HF474/SF385.
Please get on the horn and contact your Senator and Representative, and ask them – politely – to vote “Yes” on SF 385 and HF 474.
The police have no need to be able to track everyone, everywhere, all the time.
None.
Accept No Substitutes
Gun rights people, listen up and pass the word.
There’s an email going around from a “gun rights” group from out of state, soliciting donations and stirring the pot against legislators, including several who were invaluable in the session’s real big news - no gun control bills passed the legislature this session.
Here are some excerpts from the email:
After House Speaker Paul Thissen (DFL – Minneapolis) declared that there would be no gun bill a couple weeks ago, suddenly one anti-gun bill was rushed through the Senate Finance Committee…this anti-gun bill passed the State Senate with the blessing of key Senate REPUBLICANS.
It’s SF-235 by anti-gun State Senator Ron Latz (DFL – St. Louis Park)…some supposedly “pro-gun” Minnesota lawmakers, including State Senator Julianne Ortman (R – Chanhassen) have already called for much more draconian anti-gun laws.
Ortman, herself was even an original co-author of this DFL led bill until mid-February…Now, we’re hearing cries for “fixing” this bill in Conference Committee. That’s code for tacking on as much gun control as they can get away with in the waning days of session.
And thanks to a few compromise-loving Senate Republicans, they have every reason to believe they can do it…worse yet, Ortman, along with other committed “moderates” like Sen. Julie Rosen (R – Fairmont) led A STAMPEDE of RINOS in the Senate who voted for this anti-gun bill yesterday…if the gun-grabbers have already corrupted even supposedly “pro-gun” Republican Senators into PROPOSING and VOTING for this nonsense, mark my words, virtually no Minnesota House member’s vote is off the table.
For Freedom,
Dudley Brown
Executive Vice President
National Association of Gun Rights
If you’ve never heard of the NAGR – join the club. I’m not aware that they have any actual membership, had anyone at the Capitol, or mobilized any of the avalanche of Real Americans’ phone calls that stalled the orcs’ gun-grabs this session.
And it’s for sure that “Dudley Brown” hasn’t a clue what actually happened; the attacks on Representative Hilstrom and Senator Ortman alone show you they don’t know what they’re talking about.
The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – who actually did put boots in the Capitol, organize cataracts of public feedback, and negotiated with real legislators for real policy improvements – sent out this email in response, listed below in its entirety:
There is an inflammatory email being sent to Minnesotans by an out-of-state individual who has never actually accomplished anything for Minnesota gun rights (or those of any other state that we can see).
The real purpose of this email is the same as all the rest of the emails this individual sends: to solicit donations.
GOCRA and its friends in both the House and the Senate, including long-time gun rights champions Sen. Warren Limmer and Rep. Tony Cornish, as well as gun rights bill sponsors Sen. Julianne Ortman and Rep. Debra Hilstrom, spent hours in good faith negotiations with SF235′s author, Sen. Ron Latz.
The result was a delete-all amendment that completely replaced the original bill, substituting a very different bill that was deserving of GOCRA support.
SF235 has no gun control. It does not send “mental health” data or gun owner fingerprints to the Feds. To say that it does, one must be dangerously ignorant, or a liar.
GOCRA, the group that brought Shall-Issue carry to Minnesota, has been protecting and extending gun rights in Minnesota for a quarter century.
We were at the Capitol for the whole session, and our lawyers (with a combined 70+ years of proven gun rights advocacy in MInnesota) carefully scrutinized every word of this legislation, as well as the more than a dozen bills we sent to defeat this session.
These Second Amendment supporters — DFLers Hilstrom and Saxhaug, as well as Republicans Ortman, Limmer, and Cornish — deserve your support. They’ve earned it with their actions.
Who you gonna believe? The real thing, or a donation-sucking carpetbagger?
Too Far
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
The White House wants us to believe that dozens of IRS career bureaucrats spontaneously and simultaneously lost their minds and decided to start breaking the law to persecute Conservatives, with no direction from above, no warning to anyone in authority and no way to stop them.
That’s ridiculous. It wasn’t sudden at all, it’s been going on for ages.
Why wouldn’t this lie work? The same standard of BS has worked for years with the complicity of the liberal main stream media. Until the AP email story broke, it was working.
Joe Doakes
Until the media finds itself under attack, there’s really no crime the AP and the rest of the Praetorian Guard won’t sweep under the rug.
In a related matter: is this circumstantial evidence of administration knowledge? (Empasis is added)
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.
Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.
Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.
From administrator of a bureaucratic unit that took care of tax-exempt applications to head of the biggest and most politically-linked part of the IRS, a part slated for massive expansion…
…a coincidence?
Hey, could be.
You Know How Much Agenda-Flogging “Science” Bugs Me
For instance, when the lefties start tittering about some self-serving study that claims to show liberals are smarter – another round of which we’re no doubt due for.
It’s good for a giggle – or, if you’re not so bright, as a keystone of your worldview.
So it’s with that subtext in mind that I submit this without additional comment.
A Tale Of Two Bills
The MNDFL, as part of their languid dawdling in social issues this past session, introduced two deeply controversial sets of bills.
One was the raft of gun grab legislation that came out at the top of the session – everything from magazine restrictions and confiscations to background checks. As we chronicled in this space, the bills spawned an epic turnout of opponents, and the re-mobilization of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance. Notwithstanding this, and overwhelming disapproval in public feedback, the DFL kept on pressing to try to squeedge one form of stupid, crime-non-affecting gun grab or another through the legislature, until the effort finally petered out (with a bill that expanded the state’s data reporting, which the NRA and GOCRA favored all along, and which may actually have a useful effect on crime, and which the local leftymedia is treating as a non-event, since they wanted confiscations, dammit).
Another? The daycare/Personal Care Assistant (PCA) union jamdown. Even though opposition among the public and especially among the subjects of the forced unionization opposed the bill by cataclysmic margins, the DFL jammed the bills through, and the jamdown looks likely to become law – raising daycare costs and crimping availability in a market that’s already among the tightest and most expensive in the country.
Both of the bills were deeply stupid. Both encountered massive public resistance.
One ended in a humiliating defeat for the Metro DFL. The other was an embarassment, but looks likely, barring a miracle, to become law.
What’s the difference?
No major DFL donors are going to be getting millions and millions of dollars from gun grabs.
The New Enemies List
It’s becoming clear that the Obama Administration is using government agencies as political cudgels.
Although the Sorosphere has been strenuously chanting that the IRS scandal is no big thing, the “acting director” became the first scapegoat of the “non-scandal” yesterday. And it looks like there just might be a gap in the “two rogue employees” dodge; according to a Cincinnati TV station, it may be four employees. And (with emphasis added)…:
One of FOX19′s two sources went on say that these four IRS workers claim “they simply did what their bosses ordered.” FOX19 reported on Tuesday that the report by the Office of Inspector General states that senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011.
In fact, according to that report, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax exempt organizations, was told on June 29, 2011 that groups with ‘Tea Party’, ‘Patriot’ or ’9/12 Project’ in their names were being flagged for additional, and often burdensome, scrutiny.
At least one local group, the Minnesota Majority, is reporting that it’s received the same treatment that other Tea Party related groups complained about .
More on that hopefully this weekend.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the the main legacy of the Obama Administration was the turning of the Federal Government into a racket to put some meat into the Democrats’ Alinskiite campaign to destroy the right?
OK, “Irony” isn’t the world I’m looking for.
How about “No Surprise At All?”
Docked
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Reasons Why the Legislature Does Not Deserve a Raise, Continued:
Wasting time on a school bullying bill when we can’t even figure out how to fund the schools at all.
Joe Doakes
Teenage slackers called and left a message to the DFL; stop being so dissipated and unfocused.
We Can Call It The “Pony Bottle Express”
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In response to the legislature’s anticipated 600% tax increase on beer, I’m starting an express delivery service running between Hudson, Wisconsin and St. Paul. Please post this Want Ad on Shot In The Dark:
“Wanted, young, daring fellows, must be over 18 and expert driver, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Might just solve that teenage unemployment problem.
After The Honeymoon Is Over
Congrats, same sex marriage supporters. After five months of noodling non-stop with social policy – gun grabs, forcing daycares into the union racket and so on – Governor Dayton took a few minutes from his grueling day of sitting in his office to come out and sign same-sex marriage into law.
Well, there you go!
Now, when all that wedding excitement wears off, take a moment to think about a few things if you would:
- Where are the jobs? Minnesota’s big businesses are doing…OK, provided they’re not in the medical device business. But while you all were busy campaigning for same sex marriage, Minnesota small-business startups slowed to the worst rate in the entire country. Which means the small-business jobs of tomorrow, and the mid-sized business jobs a few years down the road, all the coffee shops and repair garages and interior design firms and web design firms we’ll need to run the day to day economy will be…gone. Nothing. Bupkes. They’ll have never existed. And this is a reversal from recently; it’s a result of policies the DFL has been pushing while y’all were busy watching the same sex marriage debate.
- Why is daycare so freaking expensive? Many of you two-income same-sex adoptive couples will be needing daycare (presuming that’s the route you choose at some point or another). Minnesota’s child care costs are already among the highest in the nation – even higher compared to per capita income. And yet the DFL majority has been working tirelessly to force childcare providers (and personal care assistants) into a union that six out of seven of them don’t want, that makes no sense (unionizing small business owners? Hello?) and that will do nothing but increase the cost of child or adult care (presuming the providers don’t just eat the cost of the union dues or “fair share” costs).
- Again – where are the jobs? The DFL is fixated on raising taxes. Yeah, yeah, “fair share”, the rich, bla bla bla, but their real plan, the plan to make the actual money, involves raising taxes on business to business purchases and services. Which means somewhere between 5.5 and 7% of every business’ revenue is going to - poof! – vanish (presuming, again, the businesses don’t pass on the costs, which is a stupid thing to do in a crappy economy). Do you want a 5-7% pay cut? How would that work for you right now?
I know – same sex marriage was a big thing for you. But just as weddings and honeymoons give way to the push and pull of actual married life, the euphoria you feel over getting a legislative milestone passed (I had my moment on my issue ten years ago, so I know how you feel) eventually passes, and you get to dwell on other things.
Like what an unholy has the DFL is making of this state’s economy. The one we all live in, gay or straight.
This Is What Democracy Looks Like
The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance sent out a press release yesterday:
Senator Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) announced last night that he intended to resurrect a gun bill this morning, after the leadership had announced that there would be no gun bills heard this year..
We were able to mobilize a quick reaction from our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/gocra), and we worked this morning with Latz and other legislators to ensure that only good language got through the House finance committee.
We are at the Capitol this afternoon, keeping an eye on things and making sure nothing bad gets added in conference committee.
I’m going to interrupt here.
Know how all those idiot liberals say “You gunneez don’t want ANNY gun laws?” Of course, you know it’s BS; we support laws that punish criminals, or prevent them from getting guns. I’m at a loss to think of a single “gun law” anywhere in the country that works (defined as “reduces violent crime”) that wasn’t supported the the Second Amendment movement.
No exception here:
The streamlined bill contains some genuinely positive improvements to the NICS system, which should help ensure that prohibited people are actually entered into the national system — and removed when their prohibitions are over.
The fact that the Sen. Latz and the committee voted only for a bill that met with GOCRA approval is a testament to the influence that YOU have at the legislature. Your voices, emails, calls (and maroon shirts!) reminded our civil servants who they work for!
I want to give this extreme emphasis:
In a session where the DFL has complete control, and the Metro DFL had the power to steamroll anything they want if people just stayed asleep, the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance was among very few groups to stop the orcs cold.
As a result, Minnesota’s gun laws improved in spite of the efforts of the Metro DFL, the astroturf “gun safety” lobby, and Rep. Heather Martens. (Presuming, of course, the Latz bill is passed and signed). All of the “gun safety” lobby’s stupid, fascist gun-grab noodling was defeated. Humiliated.
This is what grassroots politics is all about; regular schnooks beating back the plutocrats, the Kenwood condo pinks, the Washington special interests.
It was done with a staggering amount of work, and a whole lot of commitment by a whole lot of people. And they need more. If you can, join the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.
Because while the earth opened up to swallow the orcs in Lord of the Rings, here we’ve gotta beat them the old fashioned way.
Rear Guard Action
The GOP minority in the Senate managed to filibuster the daycare union jamdown last night – as in “up until 7AM”.
It wasn’t a “filibuster”, per se – the GOP added over 80 amendments to the jamdown, and debated them vigorously. As of sixish AM, they’d gotten through a couple dozen, with dozens to go, and Tom Bakk tabled the bill. There are other things to get done.
Like maybe a budget.
The jamdown may come back. But so will the amendments.
Cross your fingers, and stay tuned. The good guys may pull this one off.
Berg’s Seventh Law Is Universal
I got this via email yesterday; it’s on Facebook:
A friend of mine was a Sovietologist with an almost prescient ability to predict what the Soviets were doing internally. When asked by her doctoral advisor how she did it, she said ‘I listen to what they are saying about us.’ I realized a long time ago that that is a way to decrypt liberal statements. Whenever they say something… odd, simply reverse it. ‘The right wing is engaged in the politics of self-destruction’ thus becomes ‘The left wing is engaged in the politics of self destruction.’ ‘There is a vast right-wing conspiracy’ becomes ‘We are part of a vast left wing conspiracy’. ‘We will have the most transparent administration’ becomes ‘we will have the most opaque administration.’ Seriously, try it. You’ll find that more and more things make sense.
If you read this blog, you’ve known this for years.
But it’s good to see it spreading.
Bleeding Slower
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Fewer people are applying for unemployment. So there must more jobs, right? Yes, the article says: “The job market has also improved over the past six months. Net job gains have averaged of 208,000 a month from November through April. That’s up from only 138,000 a month in the previous six months.” No wonder I keep seeing so many Help Wanted signs.
But then the writer follows up with this: “Still, much of the job growth has come from fewer layoffs—not increased hiring.”
Screeech. Hold on, what’s that? How can Growth come from Layoffs instead of Hiring? You didn’t get laid off, so that’s the same as being hired?
Turns out employers are still laying off people and aren’t hiring full time because of Obamacare and tax increases, but they are hiring part-time workers who don’t get Obamacare. Those McJobs are the heros of this story. People taking McJobs don’t apply for unemployment. That’s your hopeful sign?
And the article doesn’t even mention discouraged workers. Instead it says: “Applications are a proxy for layoffs. Weekly applications have fallen about 9 percent since November and are now at a level consistent with a healthy economy.” Okay, I can buy that applications are a proxy for layoffs. When you get laid off, you go apply for unemployment. Makes sense. And I can believe there aren’t many layoffs coming anymore, most of the fat was wrung out of the system years ago. So yes, very few layoffs after five years of lean is the same rate as very few layoffs when times are booming. All that adds up to “we’re bottoming out” not “prosperity is right around the corner.”
And then, this howler: “Wages rose 3.6 percent in April. That’s comfortably ahead of the 1.5% inflation rate.” My wages sure as Hell didn’t go up, but my grocery bill did and gas is back up to $3.77 today.
I’m actually impressed the Associated Press has managed to stuff so many ridiculous claims into one article and pass it off as good news.
Joe doakes
The U6 number – counting the percentage of unemployed and underemployed – is up, even as the number of unemployed dropped a bit. The average amount of time worked in a week dropped. That means the job creation is all part-time.
This isn’t a recovery. This is blood clotting and an infection forming.
Like Mental Cocaine
I love this stuff.
Strib: “2+2=38 Billion, Winston!”
The Star Tribune Editorial board, in a piece that reads like Lori Sturdevant, holds forth on the DFL budget proposal, such as it is - and illustrates the Strib’s deep institutional hypocrisy along the way.
The editorial is stupid, hypocritical, and awash in institutional self-interest disguised – like all of Sturdevant’s work – as populist dooo-goodism:
No sales tax on clothing or haircuts. No alcohol tax hike. No income tax increase for 98 percent of filers. On Sunday, after four months of launching a flotilla of tax ideas, the Legislature’s DFL majorities and Gov. Mark Dayton unveiled a final 2014-15 state budget outline that, on the revenue side of the ledger, is more notable for its omissions than its contents.
Well, no. It’s notable for about two billion of its contents. Nowhere in the Strib’s editorial does the number “$38,000,000,000″ occur.
The Strib doesn’t want to give its few readers who actually follow numbers a nasty sticker shock.
There’s plenty to like on the spending side of their balance sheet. The DFL plan pumps an additional $725 million into public education from preschool through graduate school. That’s enough to reverse the deep higher-education cuts of the past two years; ease the squeeze that has some of the state’s public schools operating only four days a week; pay for all-day kindergarten, and offer preschool scholarships to low-income families.
Read: It’s a big kickback to Education Minnesota; they paid good money for that Governor and Legislature, it’s time for them to get their piece of the action.
The plan also includes measures to close a nagging $627 million budget gap, the residue not only of the Great Recession but also of a dozen years of legislative failure to balance the budget in a lasting way.
Further proof that Lori Sturdevant wrote this. Remember 2010?
A Six Billion Dollar Deficit?
The Strib editorial board is rewriting history for the benefit of the smug and the stupid.
But remember – they have their own self-interest at heart:
But the plan’s tax features are a disappointment. They raise revenue in a way that puts Minnesota’s economic competitiveness at risk.
Particularly worrisome is a new marginal tax bracket that will apply to the state’s top 2 percent of incomes. The rate attached to that bracket remains to be set by a House-Senate conference committee, but it is almost certain to be among the nation’s highest, especially after an anticipated temporary surcharge for top earners “blinks on” to get state aid payments to schools back to their normal schedule…While that decision is true to Dayton’s 2010 campaign promises, it comes at an economic price. Making Minnesota an income tax outlier among the states won’t be helpful in attracting and sustaining private-sector investment.
Especially the next round of investors the Strib will need to stave off bankruptcy.
Right?
It gets worse:
In addition, like a bad penny, a bad tax policy idea that disappeared two months ago turned up again Sunday. Applying the state sales tax to some currently untaxed business-to-business purchases will be part of the plan, Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk announced. He was not specific about which items or services would become taxable, nor about how the revenue thus raised would be used, other than for “significant economic development.”
Oh, well, then. Good enough for me!
The Strib is worried that taxing business to business purchases – which could include advertising, as well as pretty much anything in the supply chain – is going to hit their bottom line. It’s a legitimate worry; businesses of all size, from the Strib all the way down to lil’ ol’ me, are going to see some arbitrary percentage come out of our revenues; we can pass it along and hope that our goods and services continue to get purchased, or we can eat a percentage – 5.5%? 6%? – lopped out of our revenues and try to ride it out.
Regardless of how the money would be used, taxing business inputs is not sound policy. It layers hidden taxes into the cost of goods and services and takes a toll on wages and job creation in the affected industries. Those costs will affect low- and middle-class Minnesotans as surely as a clothing sales tax would. But the spurned clothing tax would have had the virtue of transparency, and could have been offset for low-income earners by a refundable tax credit, as the Senate tax bill provided.
Waaaah.
In for a bad penny, in for a poo-streaked pound, Strib. This is the government that you wanted. You did whatever it took to get this government; you served as an adjunct PR firm for the DFL, you covered up their transgressions, you whinged about “ALEC” while laughing over cocktails with “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, you did whatever it took to get them into power, and you do your best to cover up the train wreck that is Mark Dayton.
To be sure, businesses will benefit from some of the property tax relief measures that total a hefty $400 million over two years in the DFL plan. But low- and middle-income homeowners and renters ought to be favored as the tax conference committee allocates that sizable sum.
This is Minnesota’s source of information. Good lord.
Where does the Strib think that “relief” comes from?
It’s money that’s redistributed from the parts of the state whose votes the DFL doesn’t need, to the parts whose votes they need to protect.
Who do you suppose that is, Strib?
Republicans have offered no alternative budget plan this session, evidently preferring to stand aside and criticize DFL decisions.
Further proof it’s Sturdevant.
The DFL offered no alternative budget in 2011. The Strib editorial board had not a word to say about it.
They should know that if they scuttle a bonding bill, they will deserve to be seen by this session’s critics as part of the problem.
And the Strib will do its’ level best to make sure they do.
I can not wait for the Strib to go bankrupt again.
And Here You Go
The new Vikings stadium has been unveiled.
About a year after $500 million in public money was approved by the Minnesota Legislature for a new Vikings stadium, the curtain was pulled back Monday, May 13, to let the public see what the $975 million facility will look like.
The new design was unveiled at a 90-minute event Monday evening at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
The building will be asymmetrical and multisided. The roof will slope to ensure snow doesn’t pile up atop it.
It looks like a microwave that fell out of a truck on the freeway.
But at least it’s being paid for by electronic pull tabs oops. It’s going to be paid for out of your taxes.
The least the Strib, WCCO, KFAN and KSTP could do is give away some free tickets, since this is our “present” to them and their long-term viability.