Remember Governor Dayton’s first big initiative?

No?

That probably makes Governor Dayton plenty happy.

Oh, it’s likely you remember the broad outlines; Governor Daytons’ first – and, until this week, only – real platform was to “reduce” the “deficit” by taxing the “rich”.

Of course, the “deficit” was precisely the same as the one you get when your kids say “I got my last pair of jeans at Abercrombie and Fitch for $60, and they just raised their prices, so please give me $80 [*] right now”.

Your family doesn’t budget like that.  The State of Minnesota does, though – and will until we institute zero-based budgeting (which fell off the table this past session, and cannot be allowed to in the next one).

The battle between the two solutions to the phony problem eventually led to a mexican standoff that eventually brought about a government shutdown – until Governor Dayton went outstate to St. Cloud and Albert Lea, and saw exactly how little traction his plan actually had, causing him to come back to Saint Paul to negotiate a graceful less graceless exit.

He seems to have gotten a new consultant.  His latest campaign meme, stolen from his BFF Rudy Perpich?  He wants to be “the jobs governor“:

[Dayton] — who vowed as a candidate to “go anywhere in the state, nation or even world to bring a job to Minnesota” — said in an interview this week that he wants to make job creation his main goal for the rest of his term, which runs through 2014.

“This will be my No. 1 priority for the rest of my term — trying to help businesses create additional jobs in Minnesota and trying to get new jobs in Minnesota,” Dayton said. “I will go anywhere, call anybody, do what I can.”

And what can he do?

Business leaders said Dayton probably won’t make an immediate dent in the unemployment rate, but can initiate policy changes to improve the job climate over the longer term. High on their list: Lower business taxes, a stronger K-12 public school system and fewer energy regulations.

“We’re not going to wave a magic wand and suddenly have 3 percent unemployment in Minnesota,” said Bill Blazar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

Why, that sounds great, doesn’t it?  Cutting business taxes, including taxes on the entrepreneur class that, in the last session, he worked so hard to impose taxes on?

Perhaps Dayton will take the chains off of Minnesota’s entrepreneurial class?  Maybe by spawning the type of prosperity that Minnesota could actually use?

Well, no.

Labor leader Harry Melander said he hoped Dayton’s jobs tour would lead to new construction jobs, including another round of public works projects next year.

In other words, the state will throw more money into “infrastructure” jobs – paid for by taxpayers or via bonding.  Which are, by the nature of the work, almost all temporary – but all of them will run through the various  construction trade unions that are part owner of the DFL.  So they can get more dues.  To pay into the DFL’s war chest.

It coudln’t be any more obvious if he started smoking cheap cigars and sending goons out to bust sanitation workers’ knees.

(more…)

Four months ago, liberals nationwide and locally proclaimed the Tea Party “dead”.

Today, it’s “responsible” for the collapse of western civilization!

Liberalism means not caring if you get called on your own BS!

But let’s be fair; liberals aren’t supposed to think about what they’re chanting – that, indeed, is why they’re called chanting points.

No – they’re told “if you want your (rhetorical) dinner, you chant away”.

And so they do.

By the way – saying “the Tea Party is responsible for the debt downgrade” is like saying “the kid was responsible for the Emperor being naked”, or “the victim shouldn’t have been wearing that provocative skirt.  What a slut”.

Lately, there’s been a flurry of lefties claiming that today’s GOP wouldn’t vote for Ronald Reagan because “he was too moderate”.

Is it true?

I said it was lefties, didn’t I?  Of course not.

Last week, we dispensed with the idea that “Reagan raised taxes“, showing it was both a gross oversimplification and a complete lie.

Another point that the lefties will make is that Reagan signed the bill legalizing abortion in California.

Now, it’s a fact that I don’t follow pro-life issues as closely as some do.  I remember Reagan using his bully pulpit to attack abortion, but I don’t remember the details. I’m pro-life, to be sure, but it’s not my most important issue. I leave that beat to others.

Two of those others are Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, whose National Review piece three years ago adds the context the leftybloggers weren’t told by their superiors to include don’t:

[Honest] discussions of Reagan’s record on the abortion issue admit that as California governor he signed into law a liberalization of abortion that led to an explosion of abortions in the nation’s largest state. Reagan critics and supporters alike recognize this fact — one that is particularly tough to swallow for staunch pro-lifers. The full story, however, is more complicated — and worth setting straight now, 35 years after Roe v. Wade.

As with all “Reagan was a moderate!” memes, the story the lefties give you is a grain of truth amid a wad of inconvenient, omitted context, in other words.

June 14, 1967, Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, after only six months as California governor…How did this happen?

When the issue surfaced in the first months of his governorship, Reagan was unsure how to react. Surprising as it may seem today, in 1967 abortion was not the great public issue that it is today. Reagan later admitted that abortion had been “a subject I’d never given much thought to.” Moreover, his aides were divided on the question.

Reagan began to vigorously study the issue and the Therapeutic Abortion Act. He asked his longtime adviser and Cabinet secretary Bill Clark — a devout Catholic who had contemplated the priesthood — for counsel. “Bill, I’ve got to know more — theologically, philosophically, medically,” Reagan confided. Clark loaded up the governor with a box of reading materials, which he took home and read in semi-seclusion. Edmund Morris later said that, by the time the Therapeutic Abortion Act reached his desk, “Reagan was quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas.” Years later, Reagan remarked that he did “more studying and soul searching” on the issue than any other as governor.

Nonetheless, he signed the bill. Reagan and his staff calculated that if he vetoed the bill, his veto would be overridden by the state legislature. Therefore, he decided to do what he could to make the bill less harmful, arguing for the insertion of certain language that eliminated its worst features and allowed for abortion only in rare cases — such as rape or incest, or where pregnancy would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the mother.

In other words, Reagan seized the second-worst outcome available to him; he negotiated to try to make the bill less onerous.

And the results?  Today they’d call it a “teaching moment”:

The Therapeutic Abortion Act became law. And as would happen with nearly every abortion law in the years ahead, the mental-health provision was abused by patient and doctor alike….Reagan was shocked at the unintended consequences of his action. Morris said Reagan was left with an “undefinable sense of guilt” after watching abortions skyrocket. Cannon claims this was “the only time as governor or president that Reagan acknowledged a mistake on major legislation.” Clark called the incident “perhaps Reagan’s greatest disappointment in public life.”

And Reagan learned from the mistake and the  – spending the rest of his political career as one of the voices of the pro-life movement.

As we noted on the “Reagan Raised Taxes” issue, it’s not that Reagan was a moderate; it’s that he made the mistake of trusting Democrats on the tax issue, and ignoring the very real  political and social motivations behind the infanticide movement.

We all know better than that.

Your lefty friends, cow-orkers and neighbors likely do not.  So set them straight.

Two things that make me think “something’s just not right here”, and warrant some investigation:

• Teenagers asking “so, are you going out Friday night?”
• Liberals citing Reagan.

Lately, there’s been a plague of liberals, in print/blogs/on Twitter, stating without fear of contradiction (because, if you’re a Twin Cities liberal, nobody has ever contradicted you) that “today’s conservatives would never nominate Ronald Reagan”.

It’s a claim based on two dubious premises:

As to the abortion issue – that, again,shows how little the left understands the Tea Party.  Abortion is a key conservative issue – but when the economy is in the tank, it’s not the most important issue facing the Chief Executive.  As Reagan allocated political capital among his key priorities – the economy, defeating communism – his metaphorical “abortion” budget was squeezed down to “using the bully pulpit against the practice”…

…which is pretty much where today’s Tea Partiers are with the issue; mortally opposed, but focused on other things at the moment.

The lesson?  As your liberal friends start parrotting these memes, by all means set ’em straight.

(Closed-circuit to liberal commenters: Go ahead.  Point out that “Reagan legalized abortion in California”.  I dare you)

Remember last year?  While New York and California, where noted conservative tools Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown instituted sweeping tax cuts and austere budgets, opted to cut budgets and rein in spending, Illinois swam against the tide, jacked up business taxes in a downright Daytonian orgy of confiscation.

So how’s that going for ’em?

How do you think?

Doug Whitley, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, says his members aren’t happy with the state’s approach toward businesses.

“Big-name, household-name companies that are long-standing Illinois businesses have begun to rattle the cage and say, you know, this isn’t the best environment,” he says.

The tax hikes were serious and, for companies rattled by the simultaneous collapses of the housing and credit markets, a kick in the corporate teeth:

Construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar was among the first corporate giants to complain in January, when Illinois raised the corporate income tax rate from 4.8 percent to 7 percent.

The latest complaint comes from an iconic company along the Chicago River: CME Group, the parent of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade.

CME Group Chairman Terry Duffy spoke to NBC about moving the company’s headquarters out of Illinois.

“All our transactions are taxed in Illinois. Whether they’re coming from Mumbai or some other part of the world, they’re being taxed here in Illinois. That’s absolutely unjust,” he said.

Retail giant Sears is also making noise about leaving, as the tax incentives that kept the company in Illinois almost 25 years ago are set to expire.

And that’s the big companies, like Sears; in Minnesota terms, companies like USBank, that squeedged tax concessions out of the city to stay in Saint Paul while smaller companies decamped en masse for Eagan, Woodbury and Minnetonka.

Some suggest the big-name companies are just posturing to get larger tax breaks, a strategy some smaller employers complain they can’t use.

“There are 372,000 companies operating in Illinois. We cannot afford to give hundred-million-dollar deals to all those companies; it’s inefficient and impractical. What we really need to do is talk about creating a level playing field environment that makes Illinois a magnet,” Whitley says.

The “we can’t give everyone a hundred-million-dollar break” bit is just a dumb strawman – but it leads you to the “level playing field”; cut taxes, and make them low, but fair, across the board.

Y’know – the way Minnesota’s also aren’t.

It’s become a chanting point on the left lately.

Liberals – many of whom are not capable of carrying Reagan’s jellybean jar – are chanting “Reagan, the [Jon Stewart-issue snark turned on] “Godfather of conservatism”, raised taxes!”

The occasionally-unspoken coda to that? “So you have to do it too!”

But is it true?

Silly people.  It’s on lefty blogs.  What is the rule with leftyblogs?  Always assume it’s a lie, or at least grossly omitted context, until you can prove otherwise.  And you can almost never prove otherwise.

If you look into the details – and your liberal friends certainly hope you don’t, because none of them really have (because the whole meme is something they got from Media Matters, that has been passed down from the higher-ranking ranking blogs to the lower-ranking local blogs.  It’s the way they roll), you’ll see “no”.

Here’s a year by year walk through the major tax legislation of the Reagan administration, and the cuts (black) or hikes (red) they made in terms of percent of gross revenue.

So the table shows us a couple of key facts:

Reagan’s Tax Cuts Were Greater Than The Hikes:  Reagan’s total tax cuts outstripped his hikes by over 50%.  But even more importantly…

When The Economy Needed Cuts, Reagan Cut Them: During Reagan’s first term, when the economy was reeling from the seventies, Reagan by an average of 2% of revenues per year.  The result?  The economy boomed.  The cuts led directly to one of the greatest economic expansions in history.

Now, if you’ve been listening to your liberal friends, you are intellectually poorer you might say “But in his second term, he turned into a tax-hiking machine, didn’t he?”

Focus, people.  This is leftybloggers we’re talking about.  Because even if they’re not outright lying (the numbers are right there, so they’re not), they’re leaving out key context.

And so too with this issue.  Because…

The Tax Hikes In The Second Term Were A Result Of Democrat Perfidy: Remember – Reagan always faced Democrat legislative majorities.  And eventually Reagan had to deal.  Part of the deal was that in exchange for some tax hikes, the O’Neill Congress would cut spending.

The Democrat Congress naturally reneged on the deal (as commenter Kermit pointed out yesterday).

So when your liberal friends stand by the water cooler and chant with their glassy eyes and Jon Stewart smirks “Reagan raised taxes”, you can respond “it’s true.  Reagan raised taxes – after cutting them much more, and only as part of a deal on which the Democrats cheated”.

…let me answer the standard-issue DFL chanting point that you read on virtually ever tweet, ad and TV ad the DFL puts out:

“The Republicans want to (do horrible things) to protect millionaires”.

Let’s settle this.

None of us gives a rat’s ass about millionaires.  Bupkes.  Zip.  Nada.

It’s about reforming government.

It’s about stopping the DFL’s spending crazy train.

It’s about making all of those safety net entitlement programs for the elderly and children and unemployed and mentally ill sustainable for the long term. as opposed to the current fiscal time bombs they are.

It’s about making sure that public employees actually have pensions to retire on in thirty years.

It’s about having a state where we don’t have a perennial budget crisis, because the state lives solidly within and below its means – and it’s just fine, because the state is so prosperous its’ “means” are pretty darn formidable.

We oppose government sucking up any more of this state’s viability than it really needs – and by “needs”, I don’t mean “wants”, “covets” or “craves”.   That means taxes on millionaires and the poor – including the DFL’s screechingly regressive gas and cigarette taxes.

In anticipation of tonight’s game against the Detroit Tigers, who are ten games ahead of the Twins in the AL Central, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire gave a press conference early this morning.

“We’ve done our best to be bipartisan in the run-up to the game”, said Gardenhire, whose team has a .321 record so far this season.  “The Tigers need to compromise!”

As the team tries to avert a sweep at Detroit’s “Filth and Crime Stadium”, Gardenhire noted “the Tigers’ manager is being boorish and intransigent; the people overwhelmingly support compromise in tonight’s game”, he said, citing a Star Tribune Minnesota poll showing fifty random Minneapolis adults support the Tigers forfeiting tonight’s game.

“We’ve reached out and given enough”, Gardenhire concluded.  “It’s time for the Tigers to give a little”.

———-

Dayton’s case for “compromise” is about the same as Gardenhire’s.  Let’s get clear on a couple of facts here:

1. Dayton’s mandate is nonexistent:  Dayton backed into office with 43% of the vote (DFLers will respond “But Horner favored raising taxes, too!”  Perhaps, but you can not assume Horner’s voters supported him because of taxes; indeed, the DFL’s propaganda machine couldn’t stop reminding people what a “Republican” Horner was during the campaign; it’d be pretty funny for the DFL to try to have it both ways, but hardly unprecedented. It’s every bit as likely that 10% voted for Horner out of blind hatred of Mark Dayton as because taxes make them tingly), the second-lowest in history.  He’s weak.
2. The GOP ‘s mandate is real: The GOP majority in the Legislature, on the other hand, won big, with a broad mandate made even more lopsided by the fact that a disproportionate number of the DFL’s votes came from blowout races in the Metro.  There was no mistaking it; it was the biggest turnaround in state political history, from the dismal 2008 race to crushing majorities in both chambers.  The GOP is not only entitled to govern like they won – they’d be disingenuous not to.

The DFL’s only real support on this issue is astroturf, bogus polls, and endless browbeating.

Which is noisy and showy, but doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Dutifully, the Strib carries the short version of the DFL’s current party line; it’s the governor who’s being the “moderate”:

“Here I am in the middle, and they haven’t moved,” Dayton said of Republican lawmakers.

It’s BS, of course; the GOP started the session committed to holding the line at 2010-2011 budget levels; as projected revenues rose, they increased the spending to match – keeping us “within our means”, against the wishes of some conservatives who pushed to cut services back to 2009 levels.

That – when you’re dealing with a legislature with a decisive mandate, as opposed to a governor who backed into office with the tiniest plurality since Jesse Ventura – is more than enough.

So what we have here is…:

• A legislature that’s done exactly what they were sent, and sent in overwhelming numbers, to Saint Paul to do, up against…
• A Governor who is willing to risk a government shutdown to support the only policy initiatives he has; stick it to the state’s most productive citizens, and force us non-government employees to work ’til we’re 70 so his union supporters can retire at 55.  He can do this, because he can count on…
• …the media.  Part of which is actively carrying water for the DFL (I”m looking at you, Esme Murphy and John Cronan), and the rest of which worships at the Cult of Process, believing that negotiation and compomise themselves are the overriding goals of all legislative government, worthy of frittering away all manner of princple and, for that matter, fiscal common sense.

Let the spinning begin!

As I’ve pointed out in the past, I’m deeply ambivalent about pretty much everything in the Gay Marriage mix; gay marriage itself, sure, but straight marriage too, and amending the constitution to protect it as well.

Yesterday, if you were at the Capitol, you saw a Madison-like outpouring of support for gay rights and opposition to the Amendment.  And by “Madison-like”, I mean “largely Metrocratic”.

But while I’m ambivalent about gay marriage (I support civil unions, but don’t plan on ever getting a government marriage license, even if I do get married ever again), I think there is one uncontrovertible fact; the DFL’s motivations in opposing the Amendment were purely, and just a tad cynically, political.

Call From Pauline Kael:  The left’s approach on gay marriage, thus far, has been to get it instituted by fiat, either by politicians (former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome) or the courts.  It’s a fact that gay marriage has never passed a public referendum, not even in “progressive” cesspools like Oregan.

But there are polls that indicate that people are changing their tune; that people actually support gay marriage.

So is the landscape changing?  It depends on the polls you believe, of course; I’ve seen surveys of likely voters  that indicate most Minnesotans oppose it; there are others, of course.  We’ll see – in November, 2012.  I strongly suspect most people do, in fact, oppose gay marriage because…

What Happened In 2009? Last night, during the Madison-like surge of lefty outrage on Twitter, a “progressive” sniffed at me:

Sir- the agenda is Rights. DFL Benson: My conscious comes first, my constituents second, and my desire to be reelected, third.

Which makes a good chanting point.  But it doesn’t stand up to history.

Four years ago,the DFL took control of the government in Saint Paul.  Two years ago, the DFL had absolute control of Minnesota government, except for Governor Pawlenty.  Had they wanted to push a gay marriage law, they could have.  It would have been vetoed – but they’d have made their moral case to take to the voters.

And don’t forget that they could have  passed a constitutional amendment, as the GOP just did, and bypassed the Governor completely.

And yet they dawdled for four years, and made no significant effort toward Gay Marriage.  None. Zero.

If the DFL’s stance were “about civil rights”, about immutable libertarian principles, as Rep. Benson grandiloquently claimed, they’d have used their absolute majority to do something,

Contrast that to the GOP, which introduced the Constitutional Amendment immediately.

Leaving aside whether it’s good to vote on civil rights or whether Gay Marriage is a civil right, here’s a question: which is the stance of a party that believes that they are going to win a referendum?

I suspect the DFL ignored gay marriage (and their gay supporters) for four years because they knew the votes weren’t there throughout Minnesota; that if they voted for legislation pushing gay marriage, they’d get shredded statewide.   They’d be kissing any outstate seats goodbye; they’d shave some of their majority in the Arrowhead and in the Twin Cities; few people oppose Gay Marriage less than Afro-Americans and Latinos; they might even jeopardize Tim Walz’ seat.

My thesis – this was never about principles, about liberty, about fairness for gays.  This is about votes.  The DFL believes they’ll lose them – lots of them.

The “first class” cities – Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth – are, predictably, howlin’ mad over the proposal to return Local Government Aid (LGA) to its original purpose – help out poor communities.

Both the GOP-controlled House and Senate this week passed a tax plan that would cut the amount of local government aid that cities across the state are certified to receive this year by 26 percent or $137 million.

Republicans say the effort is needed to balance the state’s budget deficit. But critics say it’s a politically charged move aimed at crippling urban centers — which are largely governed by Democrats.

It’s buncombe, of course.  The cities crippled themselves.

The linked piece – by MPR’s Laura Yuen – is balanced enough, but it’s clearly cribbed this next bit from a DFL or League of Minnesota Cities (pardon the redundancy) handout:

LGA was part of a series of tax reforms in the ’70s known as the “Minnesota Miracle.” It was designed to pay for basic services — from parks to public safety — that cities with greater needs couldn’t cover through property taxes alone. The idea was no matter where you lived in Minnesota, your quality of life would be consistent.

The key part Yuen left out – it was initially aimed at small, poor outstate cities with smaller, aging tax bases.  At the time, the Twin Cities were wealthy – booming, even.

And that’s where things start to break down.

Here’s the quote that set me off.  Saint Paul mayor Chris Coleman said:

“If the leadership of the Republican Party wants to come and look through my budget, tell me how many cops they want me to lay off, tell me how many fire stations they want me to close, tell me how many libraries I’m supposed to close. The fact of the matter is they’re governing in ignorance. They don’t know what we do. They have a mythology of what cities do. They have a mythology of where we spend our money.”

Now, I think Coleman is being tongue in cheek – there are most certainly Republicans in Saint Paul who’d be happy to take him up on that very offer, and none of us have heard from him yet.

But let’s say he has a point; let’s say the Saint Paul budget – notwithstanding its electric cars and loafing employees and brand-new indoor ice rinks in a city that is below freezing seven montsh a year  – really is cut to the bone.   Maybe, in that case, it’s not a spending problem.

Maybe the problem is that Saint Paul – and Minneapolis and Duluth – once prosperous cities, don’t have enough tax base to support the spending they want.

And there’s the problem; the governments of the Big Three cities – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth – have been doing their best to become poor cities.

Not, perhaps, in the sense that they actually sat down and tried to dive into a vortex of crime and poverty; that’d be a silly claim.  Probably.

But looking at the history of the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota from the 1960’s through today, it’d be hard to say how the DFL majorities would have governed differently if they had been trying to flense their cities of prosperity and gut them of vitality:

• Minnesota, driven by the Scandinavian communitarianism which had served small, impoverished communities in the old country well, adopted a highly comprehensive welfare system; in many ways, by the 1980’s, it was the “best” in the country.  DFLers saw it as a sign of advanced civilization; Conservatives rightly noted that if you pay people to do something – in this case, nothing – people will take the money.
• The state, like much of the country, adopted service-based budgeting; in other words, if you spend $100 on a service this year, and the person providing the service guesses the need will rise 10% next year, then you pay $110 next year.  This was put on auto-pilot, so that in effect social spending could not shrink.
• In the meantime, Minnesota also become the softest-on-crime state in the Union, a distinction we still hold.
• The Big Three cities also became warehouses for the poor, both “inadvertently” (“urban renewal” and highway construction gang-raped the property values in the inner cities) and on purpose (centering welfare services in the Big Three cities – partly out of government convenience, partly to build a large pool of voters who were dependent on the DFL’s bureaucracies, either as employees or clients.
• DFL tax and spending policies – and those of the “Independent Republican” party, which were largely indistinguishable from the DFL – aggressively stripped businesses from the Big Three cities.  Look at a list of Minnesota’s major corporations; the ones that existed in 1970 (3M, Ecolab, the parts of “Daytons” that became Target) have done all their expanding in the ‘burbs, or in other states (the network of plants that 3M used to have in Saint Paul is a distant memory); the ones  that sprouted up since then (United Healthgroup, Best Buy, Medtronic) have all located in the suburbs from the very beginning.   The jobs – and the people who worked at them – moved outside the cities.
• In their quest for “affordable housing”, the Big Three cities have virtually outlawed “affordable housing” on the private market.  Starting in the eighties, the cities stigmatized small, “absentee” private landlords (Saint Paul DFLers can’t refer to them as anything but “slumlords”).  Focusing on outcomes (“the poor should have nice housing!”), the cities’ bureaucracies essentially made it impossible to rent out housing that didn’t meet the cities’ absurdly high standards (Government-owned housing wasn’t held to the same standards, naturally).  The process is in the process of culminating right now; as a mammoth surge of supremely affordable housing gets foreclosed onto the market, the cities – led by Saint Paul – launched a campaign to actively crush private, market-driven low-income housing.
• While all this was going on, Minnesota in effect developed two school systems; a blighted, addled, watered-down system in the cities, and a modestly capable one in the ‘burbs and outstate.  The vortex has accelerated, as school choice – charter schools and open enrollment – have taken the families, especially low-income ones, that actually care about education out of the public system.

So over the course of forty years, the DFL’s policies have denuded the Twin Cities of everything – jobs, primary education, quality of life, affordable places to live – for anyone that isn’t already thoroughly comfortable or, by the opposite token, a government client.

Opponents of the current system say that cutting LGA will expose the urban DFLs’ free-spending wastrelcy to their taxpayers.  But it’s worse than that.  It’ll expose the extent to which the DFL administrations have not only cooked the golden goose, but then let it go bad in the refrigerator.

Fisking Lori Sturdevant is the new Fisking Nick Coleman.

Like Coleman, Sturdevant is a reliably monochrome columnist; practically her every word is predictable.  In fact, if anything Sturdevant is worse; Coleman at least had the occasional story about the community, something about a crime or a community institution where he could depart from “droning DFL hack” mode and actually write something worthwhile.  And, as I acknowledge over years, he did that occasionally.  Rarely, but it happened.

Sturdevant writes about nothing but politics – and her writing is entirely, 100% DFL chanting points.

Like yesterday, where  she burned 20 column inches parrotting Tom Bakk.

There’s nothing in the column that couldn’t have come from DFL Legislative PR flaks Beau Berendtson or Carrie Lucking; indeed, it reads in every particular like it does:

It must be acknowledged that the official line from the Legislature’s GOP majorities is that they don’t need to look for more revenue for the state’s 2012-13 budget, even though it’s $5 billion short.

(Of course, it’s not, and never was, except in comparison with the DFL’s wish list).

But it also must be noted that the GOP’s proposed fix to said budget contains a little north of $1 billion in presumed cost savings that no credible nonpartisan analyst will vouch for.

Sturdevant is repeating the DFL’s chanting point.  Minnesota Management and Budget is no more “non-partisan” than, well, Lori Sturdevant.  And the DFL was saying exactly as much, back when they were trying to pass off a bogus budget:

In the meantime, the GOP has gotten, well, “credible nonpartisan analysts” – ones” that don’t report to Mark Dayton, anyway – to “vouch” for their budget.

I’d love to see someone from the Strib defend the notion that Lori Sturdevant is anything but a DFL propaganda tool.

I try to be civil.  I really do.

But it needs to be said; Heather Martens is a liar.

Maybe not in every single area of her life.  She may well be perfectly good, ethical human being in some areas of her life.  I don’t know.

But it is an unassailable fact that virtually everything Heather Martens has ever written about guns, gun laws, gun owners and the Second Amendment is wrong; it seems improbable that she’s unaware of how much of her oeuvre is just plain not so.

Yesterday, Minnesota Public Radio ran a “commentary” column by Martens (entitled, I kid you not, “Bill would encourage citizens to shoot first, even when they could walk away instead”) that may be the richest single trove of concentrated untruth in one place since Baghdad Bob strode the stage.

Lie #1: HF1467 Legalizes Murder!

[Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder] wants to legalize a kind of murder.

It’s hard to count the number of ways this statement screams “stupid”.

• Current law “legalizes” defending oneself with lethal force – under certain, rigidly-delineated circumstances.
• For that matter, the concept of self-defense is a part of Western legal thought going all the way back to the Bible.  It’s broadly and correctly recognized as the second-worst possible outcome – but it’s been legal, within limits, pretty much forever.
• Cornish’s law changes nothing about that “legalization”; as we’ve noted in the past few days, it only removes some of the ambiguity from the current law, and gives legitimate self-defense shooters the benefit of the legal doubt.

Either Martens is trying to scare people into submission, or she’s an idiot.

Reading this next bit, I could easily go both ways (emphasis added).

Lie #2: HF1467 Will Legalize Shooting People For No Reason!

I’ve read Martens’ piece at least half a dozen time as this is written. And every time I think “This is the most cynical lie of the bunch”, I remember some other part of the article that’s even worse.

But this one may be the dumbest – or most craven – lie of them all:

House File 1467, which ought to be called “Shoot First,” (sic)

[But it’s not.  Which doesn’t stop Martens from calling it “Shoot First” for the rest of the article.  I get it – rhetoric is rhetoric.  But it leads her down a factual dark alley later on – Ed]

will be heard in the House Public Safety Committee this Thursday. It would allow the killing of anyone who enters another’s yard, even when the person is unarmed and posing no threat; and it would allow the killing of anyone in a public place who seems threatening — again, even if the person is unarmed, and even if walking or driving away is a safe option.

Cornish’s law “allows” no such thing.  Self-defense with lethal force in Minnesota will still rest on four links in a chain; you…

• …must not be a willing participant
• You must reasonably fear death or great bodily harm (and “Great Bodily Harm” means “seriously maimed”; limbs, eyesight, brain damage.   “He seems threatening” won’t cut it.
• Lethal force must be reasonable.  “If the person is unarmed and poses no threat” doesn’t come close.
• You must make reasonable efforts to avoid using lethal force.  This is a gross ambiguity, entirely dependent on County Attorney discretion, and Cornish’s bill adds some black and white to the law.

And the fact is that if your case is missing any of those four elements, you are screwed.  And should be. And Cornish’s bill doesn’t change that; as I pointed out Wednesday, it merely removes some ambiguity from current law.

Martens should know this; she’s been getting her head handed to her on this subject for a solid decade.  That means she’s lying.

Lie #3: The Out Of State Rabble Will Kill Us!

Martens tries to address some of Cornish’s proposal’s technicalities

Also buried in this bill is a loosening of concealed-carry permit laws to recognize all other state’s pistol permits in Minnesota, even states with lax background checks that issue permits valid for life.

“Lax Background checks?”  All states use the same federal government system.

Notwithstanding that, it is a fact that there has never been any empirical link between  a state’s acceptance criteria and their carry permittees likelihood to commit crimes.  None.

Lie #4: It’ll Be Easier To Buy Guns!

Martens claims..:

It also makes it harder for local law enforcement to prevent prohibited purchasers from getting permits to buy guns,

On this Martens is 180 degrees removed from reality.  While Cornish would make a “permit to purchase” a handgun expire after five years, rather than one – it would also require them to be reviewed and if necessary rescinded for cause during those five years.

Current has no such provision.

Cornish’s

Lie #5: It’ll Hurt WomenandChildren!

Martens claims that Cornish’s bill…:

…limits law enforcement’s ability to confiscate weapons in domestic violence situations.

This is just face-palmingly dumb.

The bill bans confiscations after disasters, and establishes consequences if government oversteps its authority.

Domestic Violence is never mentioned in HF1467.

Not only that, but the bill requires the state to provide more data to the Federal database against which background checks are run …

(a) When a court places a person, including a person under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, who is charged with committing a crime of violence, into a pretrial diversion program before disposition, the court must ensure that information regarding the person’s placement in that program and the ordered expiration date of that placement is transmitted as soon as practicable to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. When a person  successfully completes or discontinues the program, the court must also report that fact as soon as practicable to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

2.19(b) The court must report the conviction and duration of the firearms disqualification imposed as soon as practicable to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System when a person is convicted of a gross misdemeanor that disqualifies the person from possessing firearms under the following sections:

…meaning that “Domestic violence” convictions, among others,  will be more likely to turn up on Carry or Purchase Permit applications than under current law.

Lie #6: Everything You Do Is Deadly!

Martens’ selective cognition is especially on display in this next lie:

The Shoot First bill (sic) includes the words “self-defense,” but it uses obscure legalese and a bizarre redefinition of the common word “domicile” to make the bill apply to much more than self-defense. “Domicile” is redefined to include not just a person’s home, but also the “curtilage” (fenced yard), “appurtenances” (outbuildings or garages), and even occupied cars (or conveyances).

OK, that was actually factual; it may have been the first fully factual significant statement in Martens’ article.  It may well be the last.

It is a fact that Cornish’s bill expands a person’s “domicile” to include their yard, their garage, their car and the like.  This is a good thing.  Because while Minnesota’s “Castle Doctrine” law gives the citizen certain presumptions while in their home, those presumptions end at the door – which is why some ignorant but hopeful homeowners say, sometimes-but-by-no-means-always jokingly, “if someone tries to attack you on your porch, shoot him and drag him inside!”.  It will prevent absurdities like being convicted for failing to retreat into their house if they’re attacked in their garage.

Still, kudos to Martens; she managed one true fact.

The lie comes next:

If someone enters “by force or by stealth” — in legal terms, that means as little “force” as turning a doorknob or opening an unlatched gate — then the person is “presumed” to intend to badly hurt someone. In court, a presumption cannot be rebutted, so no evidence would be allowed that showed the dead person had entered the yard by error, by invitation of the homeowner, to rescue a drowning child, or for any other reason.

True, more or less.

Of course, there’d be the little matter of showing that lethal force was justified, and that the property owner had a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm.  Absent both of those, the property owner will more than likely be convicted of some sort of homicide.

(And it’s interesting to watch people like Heather Martens come up with scenarios that reflect their view of their fellow human; that an otherwise law-abiding citizen would sit in his back yard inviting strangers into his yard to “legally” shoot them to death.  Huh? How many moons orbit Heather Martens’ world?)

A Brief Divergence Into Facts – Which Prove Cornish’s Case, And Undercut Martens’, Anyway

Martens writes:

The main rationalization for this bill is the false claim that Minnesotans can’t legally defend themselves [it’s a strawman, of course; nobody said any such thing.  Merely that there are ambiguities in the law that would be well rationalized before a law-abiding citizen’s life is ruined – Ed] and that even if someone invades a Minnesotan’s home, the homeowner must run away. In fact, self-defense is legally protected in Minnesota; we already have “Castle Doctrine.” Here are three examples from recent years:

(For those of you who take Martens seriously, I’ll emphasize the bits that lead you to where she undercuts herself).

Minneapolis: Vang Khang shot two police officers who had invaded his home by mistake. Khang was not prosecuted and collected over half a million dollars from the city.

Coon Rapids: Gerald Whaley shot and killed an unarmed teenager who entered Whaley’s home, apparently believing it to be a vacant house. Whaley was not charged.

Rockford: Eric Cegon shot and killed his partner’s ex-boyfriend, who was armed and breaking into the couple’s home. Cegon was not charged.

One wonders if Martens thinks the cases above were mistakes; Khang’s home was assaulted by a SWAT team carrying out a no-knock raid on the wrong house.  Don’t think Khang was in the right?  How often do you think you can shoot cops and have it stand up in court.  The Cegon case was a blazingly legitimate shoot (I covered it when it happened).  And the Whaley case (I’m not intimately familiar with it) was dismissed by a county attorney who has shown himself not to be especially friendly to citizens and self-defense.

And all three are a digression – because, as I emphasized, all three occurred in the citizens’ houses.

So what if Samantha Simons’ (Eric Cegon’s girlfriend) ex boyfriend had cornered the two, and their child, in the garage rather than the bedroom?

Probably  nothing; Wright County is good GOP territory; the law-abiding can catch a break.

Proponents of Shoot First (sic) laws have no examples of Minnesotans who have been sent to prison for defending themselves.

Had they lived in Susan Gaertner’s Ramsey County at the time?  Gaertner would have had every means (and likelihood!) of prosecuting them for murder, because they didn’t retreat as fast and far as they could.  She might have lost – but Cegon and Simons would have had to prove their innocence in court, against the full weight and budget of the Ramsey County Attorney’s office, even though the shoot was in every possible way legitimate.

And that is, in fact, just plain wrong.

Lie #7: State Boundaries Make A Difference

Martens mixes up her laws in the next bit:

But in states that passed Shoot First laws [I keep asking lefties who use that terms – “does it make sense to you to shoot second when your life is legitimately in danger?  They never, ever answer – Ed] (over law enforcement’s objections), [to be accurate, “big law enforcement” is a political, not ethical, organization] unintended consequences abound.

But will Martens favor us with any?

As Paul A. Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association, pointed out, such laws “basically giv[e] citizens more rights to use deadly force than we give police officers, and with less review.”

That is a completely absurd statement, presented without the faintest support; police in every jurisdiction have deadly force rights that are vastly more lax than private citizens.

There are some states who passed “Make My Day” laws which moved some presumptions of innocence in favor of citizens…

…but not in Minnesota. Because Minnesota’s criteria for legal self-defense aren’t changing; not under Cornish’s bill, or any other!

In Minnesota, the associations of police chiefs, peace officers and county attorneys all opposed Shoot First (sic) in 2008, when it was rejected by the House Public Safety Committee.

And I showed where at least one of them – Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom – was a liar in doing so, too.

Lie #8: If I Repeat A Strawman Over And Over, It Becomes Fact!

Undeterred by the fact that Minnesota has no “Make my day law“, and Cornish isn’t proposing one, Martens presses on with a trail of irrelevancies:

One consequence of Shoot First (sic) laws in other states has been the shooting of unarmed people in incidents that go uninvestigated or unprosecuted. For example, Jason Rosenbloom of Clearwater, Fla., was in his neighbor’s yard – unarmed and wearing a T-shirt and shorts — when the two were disputing how much garbage had been put at the curb. Kenneth Allen shot Rosenbloom once in the stomach and once in the chest. There was no investigation.

And this could have happened for a lot of reasons; facts in the case that Martens doesn’t know (or bother) to report, vagaries of Texas law, even error on the part of law enforcement (it happens).  We don’t know…

…and it’s irrelevant, because the criteria for legal self-defense in Minnesota aren’t chanaging.

Lie #9: The Biggest, Reddest Herring There Is!

Martens continues:

Another consequence has been to encourage people to take a life, even when they face no danger. Joe Horn of Pasadena, Texas, called 911 from inside his house when he saw two apparent burglars leaving his neighbor’s house. The 911 operator told Horn to stay inside. But Horn said, “The laws have been changed in this country since September the first, and you know it,” referring to the passage of Shoot First (sic) in Texas. “I’m going to kill them.” He did, shooting both men in the back, and he was cleared by a grand jury because of the Shoot First (sic) law. Afterwards, Horn himself told the Houston Chronicle, “I would never advocate anyone doing what I did. We [human beings] are not geared for that.”

Maybe it’s not a lie – provided that Martens truly believes Minnesota is somehow governed by Texas law.

I don’t know the details of the Horn shooting – and it’s for damn sure that Martens doesn’t, not really – but reading the text of HF1467 that Martens herself quoted above, and Minnesota law, shows that Martens is just raving; Horn was outside his “domicile” as defined in the bill; if you shoot two people in the back, the odds are good that they presented you no danger of death or great bodily harm, and lethal force (under Minnesota law, present or proposed!) would not be reasonable!  It doesn’t look like the kind of shooting that’d fly in a Minnesota court.

Martens either doesn’t know that, or doesn’t want you to know it.

Diversion Into Illogic: All Killing Is The Same!

Martens next indulges in the logical fallacy of “questionable cause“:

Horn said it well. Normal people don’t take another person’s life unnecessarily. People who are inclined to do so are considered sociopaths. Shoot First (sic)laws encourage normal people to act like sociopaths, and provide a way for sociopaths to kill with impunity.

“Sociopaths kill.  The Cornish law makes it (ostensibly) easier to kill in self-defense.  Therefore, self-defense shooters are like sociopaths”.

You don’t even have to approve of the Second Amendmente, like guns, or believe in self-defense to see that this is just plain twaddle.

Lie #10: We Don’t Need To Match No Steenking Causes And Effects!

Martens continues to romp and play in the world of law:

According to an Orlando Sentinel article, in the first five months Shoot First (sic)was in effect in Florida, 10 central Florida people were shot in cases where Shoot First (sic) came into play. All but one of the people shot were unarmed.

Unmentioned – quite possibly because it’s inconvenient to her case, but more likely because she’s parroting chanting points from a  national anti-gun group; no details about any of those ten shootings.  Were the “unarmed” people ex-spouses stalking ex-wifes?  Were they in a kitchen, surrounded by knives that were one thrust away from becoming a deadly weapon?

Is an unarmed ex-boyfriend harmless and innocent because he’s not carrying a weapon?  Ask your local feminist advocate.

We don’t know whether the ten casesd Martens cited were legitimate or not.  Martens wants you to think they weren’t – but she doesn’t know.  And in any case

Lie #11: Minnesota is not Florida!

Minnesota is not adopting Florida law. no matter now much Martens tries to obscure the difference!

Lie #12: Minneosta’s current system is the model of uniformity!

Martens continues babbling about Florida:

A clear result of the Shoot First law (sic) in Florida is wide disparity in the way cases are handled by different police departments. In some shooting cases, there was no investigation at all, while in others, detectives investigated for up to 20 hours. Uninvestigated cases in Florida and Texas included ones in which drunk or disoriented people went to a stranger’s door and were shot.

Which is, by the way, exactly how things work in Minnesota.  A shooting – any shooting – in Ramsey County will be investigated to a fine sheen, and will almost inevitably result in an arresat.  A shooting in Kandiyohi County that looks like a legit self-defense case will likely be off the books before the ink is dry.

Lie #13: If Only We Banned Anger!

I almost feel too sorry for Martens to continue – but principles are principles!

In Shoot First (sic) states, disputes between neighbors have turned deadly.

As they do in Chicago, where civilians gun ownership is still effectively banned.  And in New York, Washington and Los Angeles, where it’s strongly legally discouraged.  And in Newark, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Flint, which have more restrictive laws that Minnesota has now.

“Shoot First” laws don’t kill people – people do!

Lie #14: The Law Is Still The Law!

Martens steers for the big conclusion:

People can now shoot others over small provocations.

As we’ve shown, over and over – no, they can’t. It is simply not true.  Under Minnesota law, self-defense with lethal force does, and shall continue, to require reasonable fear of mortal danger, and must be reasonable under the circumstances.  This remains utterly unchanged.

For the last time;  all Cornish’s bill does is remove ambiguity in favor of people whose self-defense shootings are blazingly, obviously legitimate.

That is all.

Not A Lie, But Just Stupid

Martens closes:

Any legislator who votes for Shoot First (sic) places a very low value on human life.

Heather Martens places no value whatsoever on honesty and integrity.

It’s nothing new – except, perhaps, to Minnesota Public Radio.

So Before We Go…:

Why does Minnesota Public Radio publish crap like Martens’ chain of lies – which is all she ever has to say about the issue of firearms – without question?

It’s perhaps a sign that Minnesota is becoming at least incrementally less “blue” over time, that Rep. Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill is, er, drawing fire only from the most  extremes of the Twin Cities left.

But being the Twin Cities, the extremes get disproportionate coverage from the regional media.

And so as HR1467 works its way through the process,  likely to a floor vote in the fairly near future, it’d probably be useful for you, the Real American who supports Second Amendment rights for the law-abiding citizen, to get a jump ahead of the Extreme Left’s chanting points, to help you respond effectively when you run into it among your crazy aunts, the mailroom staff in line at the cafetria, your worthless professor, or wherever.

With that in mind, I’d like to walk you through a few of the Extreme Left’s chanting points about the “Stand Your Ground” bill – either memes they’ve used already, or ones that my 24 years’ experience in this field tells me will pop up eventually – and provide you with some responses.

Because I’m a helper, that’s why:

“If HF1467 passes, a murderer will be able to claim “self-defense” to get immunity from prosecution”:  Well, no – at least, not as a function of the Cornish bill.  It’s not unusual for murderers to claim self-defense;  the guy who shot St. Paul Police Sergeant Jerry Vick six years ago tried it.   Of course, most such attempts come a-cropper;  the standard for self-defense…

• …one cannot be a willing participant
• There must be reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm
• The use of lethal force must be reasonable
• The shooter must make reasonable efforts to avoid the use of lethal force…

…is already a pretty high one.  Imagine what it’d take to meet that standard, under any circumstances (whether self-defense is an affirmative defense or if the state must disprove it); a killer would have to find a victim with whom they had no history of animosity; they must set up a situation where that victim appears to attack the perpetrator with lethal force (and remember – planting weapons on a body is a very risky proposition, and if you don’t know exactly why, then there’s probably a good reason not to tell you), and to create the impression that they had tried hard enough not to shoot…

…in other words, they’d have to want to plan the “perfect crime” to kill their intended victim and claim self-defense – which is both equally feasible under current law and First Degree Murder.   Cornish’s bill does nothing to make psychopathic killers’ jobs any easier.

And let’s be honest; the number of killings that start as planned hits is infinitesimal.  The vast majority of murders are crimes either of passion, depravity or stupidity; wives shooting husbands, drug dealers killing each other, morons blasting people at bars.  Not planned assassinations.

Go over the story of any random murder committed from passion, depravity or stupidity – say, a gang banger shooting another gang banger  (let’s call them Josh and Taylor, respectively) outside a nightclub.  Let’s say Josh and Taylor get into a fight over colors, turf and drug sale territory and adjourn to the parking lot, where Josh shoots Taylor, and flees the scene.   Upon arrest, Josh tries to claim self-defense.  But…

• …there’s a club full of witnesses who report that they were arguing, pushing and shoving, and threatening each other.  Under MN law, you have to strenuously avoid participating in the fight.
• Witnesses, and possibly surveillance video, shows that Josh drew his pistol after Taylor took a swing at him with a beer bottle; fear of Death or Great Bodily Harm is not reasonable.  They also show  the shooting was not”reasonable” to protect Josh’s life, and that from the moment they left the bar Josh was aggressively pushing toward, not away from, the late Taylor.

So sure – Josh could claim self-defense.  The police at the scene would likely have all the evidence they needed to render that claim a bit of black comedy on Josh’s way to prison.

Just like under current law.

“It’s a “Shoot First” Bill!”: I’m not sure if anti-gunners even think about this one at all.  Has it occurred to them that, in a situation where one reasonably fears death or great bodily harm, that “shooting second” would be a really, really awful idea?

Do they honestly believe that the penalty for being the unwilling target of a lethal attack should legitimately be death?

Or do they just not think that hard about their chanting points?

“Claiming “Someone gave me the stink eye” will get you off the hook for murder“.  Only in a world where every investigator and prosecutor is a gabbling moron.

What this particular meme – and yes, “Spotty” from Cucking Stool used it, word for word – really means is the extreme left thinks, or wants the public to think anyway, that the Cornish bill will put an end to the investigation of killings, provided the shooter claims self-defense.

Anyone wanna put some money on that bet?

Killings – and shootings, and for that matter drawing and brandishing of firearms – should always be investigated.  Even if it’s a potential victim shooting a Level Eleventy Sex Offender who attacks her in a parking lot at the office while he’s wearing only a “Scream” mask and carrying an assortment of meat cleavers and chainsaws; the cops and prosecutors must go over the incident to make sure it was legitimate.  Nobody argues that, and Cornish’s bill doesn’t even try.  It merely says that someone who appears to have a solid case for self-defense – if the shooter legitimately appears to be…

• …an unwilling victim…
• who reasonably feared death or great bodily harm…
• in a situation where lethal force was reasonable, and…
• who did a reasonable job of trying to avoid killing anyone…

…should be considered innocent until proven guilty, rather than forced to prove they’re guilty-with-an-explanation – bearing in mind that if any of those four criteria are in question, it’s really not an issue at all.

“It says people can kill people who walk in their yards!” – Well, no.  Currently, if you shoot someone in your home – as in, between your front and back doors – there’s a presumption that that person was up to no good – provided there’s a reasonable fear that person is trying to kill you, etc, etc.  Cornish’s bill expands that presumption to the rest of your property – your yard, your garage, your car. A rapist in a woman’s garage is no different than a rapist in your house; there’s no rational reason for the law to treat them differently.

There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Cornish’s bill; all of them are based on a political, or emotional, rather than ethical, agenda.

Which will bring us to Heather Martens’ piece at MPR.  More at noon.

You remember the old lawyer’s bromide; “if the facts are against you, argue law; if the law is against you, argue facts; if both are against you, argue like hell”.

The DFL is arguing like hell.

The Dayton Administration and the various DFL cauci  have been claiming that the GOP’s budget proposal is a billion dollars short – based on numbers from Minnesota Management and Budget.  As we pointed out the other day, MMB is run by Commissioner Schowalter, who was appointed by Governor Dayton and serves at his discretion.  And its forecasting methods, according to a legislator closely involved in the process, are highly sclerotic, well-calibrated to ring up costs but not to account for savings.

And now – not only is MMB’s leadership not “non-partisan” (as the DFL and its minions continually claim), but either is its data:

The Dayton administration engaged in a new level of hypocrisy today in the ongoing dispute over fiscal notes used to back up spending bills. Today’s example: a fiscal note from Governor Dayton’s Department of Administration regarding the photo ID bill which cited information from Common Cause Minnesota, an overtly partisan liberal group.

The Department of Administration used numbers from a Common Cause Minnesota report to back up its contention that a multi-million dollar ad campaign is necessary to inform the public about a new photo ID requirement at the polls. They also used information from two other outside groups cited in the Common Cause report, the Brennan Center for Justice and the Pew Center on the States.

Which is a little like declaring the National Ketchup Board a “non-partisan” source in a bill aimed at making ketchup a mandatory part of school lunches.

As the GOP in the Minnesota Legislature drives toward a budget – and does it a solid month earlier than the Democrats managed it in the past session – the Dems’ latest chanting point is that “the budget doesn’t’ agree with the fiscal notes!”

And it sounds pretty serious…

…oh, who am I kidding.  As much as I’ve followed politics over the years, as of yesterday I had absolutely no idea what a “fiscal note” was.

I was out the other night at a local restaurant with my friend Moonbeam Birkenstock, a guy who’s out on the far-left fringe of the DFL.

He’s been having financial trouble.   We got to talking about it.

I suggested the usual stuff – cut back on  nonessential expenses, shop at Aldi instead of the organic section at Kowalski’s, find cheaper phone service, turn off the lights – y’know, the  normal stuff people do to trim the fat around the  house.

He nodded repeatedly as I talked and he ate his dinner.  Then he chimed in.  “I have a better idea.  I’m going to buy a big-screen TV”.

I cut up a cod fritter on my plate.  “Um, a big-screen TV?”

“Yep”, Moonbeam said, beaming.

“Why?”

“Because if we have more stuff, we’ll have more impetus to earn more money to pay for it all!”

“Um, you don’t have the money for that.  I thought we were clear on that…”

“I know”, he said, munching on a piece of deep-fried breadfruit.  “You need to buy it for me”.

I stared at him for a monent, and finished eating without a word.  I wound up picking up the check.  His card wouldn’t go through.  Something about being five billion dollars overdrawn.

———-

The DFL and their messagebloggers are still at it.

“Where are the jobs? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? You’ve been in office two months, and you haven’t solved the recession like you promised!”

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius is, naturally, one of them:

The MNGOP told us they’d be all about jobs, jobs, jobs. But time and again, they keep proposing cutting jobs and cutting wages for the middle class.

Wow.  Did they pass a law telling employers, in and out of the public sector, to trim their payrolls?  Maybe an across-the-board ban on companies – everyone from Target and Medtronic to the Caribe Bistro on Raymond – from hiring?

Well, no:

Yes, they’re going after public employees again. And although they don’t have the power to mandate this, they want you to know that they’d really like the University of Minnesota to cut its wages too:

The salaries of all employees in the executive branch, the judicial branch, and the legislative branch are decreased by six percent…. The University of Minnesota is strongly encouraged to comply with this section as if it were subject to it.

…Somehow, cutting wages for the middle class is all part of the GOP’s jobs agenda.Once again, I find it mind-boggling that conservatives tell us we need to pay CEOs for performance, but they think everyone else needs a pay cut.

Every time I put off my “Logic For Leftybloggers” series for another month, I read something like this, and think “maybe April really is the month to tee it up again’.

Government employees are not “the middle class”.  Oh, in places like Saint Anthony Park and the Midway, with their block upon block of university employees and teachers and government employees, they might be mistaken for it.  And at the DFL caucuses and conventions and functions that seem to define the parameters of Moonbeam and Jeff’s worlds, they probably correspond pretty closely.

But they’re not.  Most of us in the  middle class, even here in Minnesota (where three of the top five employers are the State, the Fed and the various cities) toil away in the private sector.  We find our own jobs, we save for our own retirements, we cover our own copays.   And when business turns down, we work harder and produce more with less and, sometimes when worse comes to worst, take our skills and start over in different jobs and fields to pay the bills.

And just as regular commenter Terry so concisely asked about pensions “Why should I be required to work until I’m 70 so you can retire at 55”, one might also ask “why must I be pay  more taxes to make your job sacrosanct when I’m scrambling to make ends meet myself?”

Because that’s what Jeff and the DFL are demanding; that we, the private sector, dig deeper to keep the government fat and happy, and just shut the hell up about unemployment, layoffs and our own stress.

I’ll say it again and again and again. How do we get the economy going? Consumer demand. We need money in the hands of the lower and middle classes — the people who will actually spend it. All this shortsighted, petty bill would accomplish is to increase income inequality while depressing our already struggling economy.

Where do we start with this?  It’s wrong on so many levels:

Picking Consumers And Victims:  Jeff is focusing on a smallish sliver of consumers – government employees – and the ideal of propping up consumer spending…by taking money from all of us private-sector consumers!  Just like Moonbeam picking out his big-screen TV on my credit card! Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

He Who Forgets History Is Condemned To Repeat It As A DFLer: Did we learn nothing from the mortgage bubble?  If you “create wealth” that has nothing underpinning it, all you get is a bubble; when that bubble deflates, it’ll cause more pain than if it’d never existed.

Creating “consumer spending” by taking money from the private sector – reducing the private sector’s ability to create and maintain jobs, say nothing of “consumer spending” – works, sort of.  Until we in the private sector run out of money, anyway.

The only sustainable way to grow consumer spending is to grow jobs.  And growing government jobs without growing the private sector enough to not only support but justify it – creates yet another bubble, a government spending bubble.  It’s a bubble that’s bursting in Portugal and Greece and Ireland now, and will burst across the EU, and California and Michigan soon, and that strenuous efforts may keep from bursting in New Jersey, and which may yet blow up across the entire US…

…and for which we in Minnesota, right this moment, face a time for choosing.

With no majority in either chamber, the DFL has resorted to chanting points.

The first one was “where is the GOP’s budget?  Huh?  Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

Then the GOP released a budget – and demonstrated that the DFL really didn’t have one, since none of them supported Dayton’s budget proposal.

Then, it was “But you said it was going to be call cuts?  Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

That must not have tested well.  The meme died off in a week or so.

The latest?  “The GOP is attacking the cities”.

What they mean, of course, is “cutting Local Government Aid”, the program that started out as a state subsidizing small towns’ infrastructures, and has turned into a state subsidy of urban DFL profligacy.

The governments of Duluth, Saint Paul and Minneapolis have done a great job of inextricably tangling their budgets with the state, to the point where any discussion of reforming LGA is met, I think without any actual considered thought, with “we’re going to lay off firefighters and cops and teachers!”.

Not “we’ll have to cut back on lawn-mowing”.

Or “We’ll have police doing less non-essential stuff”, or “we’ll have to replace unionized staffers with lower-priced help for lower-profile jobs” or “maybe we don’t need to mow the grass in the parks quite as often” or “we can consolidate some summer rec programs” or “maybe spending $25,000 on dadaistic, incomprehensible “traffic calming art”…

…which may or may not “calm” traffic, but certainly had a lot of drivers meandering about holding their heads in mute incomprehension, which probably caused accidents, until all the “art” was stolen”, or “maybe our schools need to spend their resources on teachers, rather than administrators”, or “maybe if we stopped putting half the boys in special ed for being boys, we’d have a lower Special Ed budget” or “maybe we don’t need to bus kids who live half a mile from school; the obese little monsters could stand a good walk”, or “Maybe we don’t need $300,000 worth of politically-correct electric cars”, or “maybe fourth-coldest state capitol in the US doesn’t need three refrigerated ice rinks” or “maybe taking huge swathes of housing off the taxable rolls for “affordable” public housing that just isn’t “affordable”, and serves no purpose but to turn the cities into warehouses for the poor, primarily to create islands of utterly DFL-dependent voters”…

…or much of anything.

None of the above.  Because it’s traditionally been easier to scare people into submission by threatening to lay off cops, firemen and teachers (rather than meter maids, community organizers and administrators).

Attack on the cities?

Pfft.  The rest of the state has been getting attacked by the cities for a generation now.

What you’re seeing isn’t an “attack on the cities”.  It’s the rest of the state standing up to three big bullies.

And like big bullies, they’ll bluster and phumpher and fume and threaten.

And just like anyone who is responding to a bully, the important job is to stand firm, and not letting their bluster sway you.

Over the weekend, the MN House GOP released its new K12 Funding bill.  Tom Scheck at MPR reports:

The bill, released Saturday afternoon, makes a slight reduction in expected growth for K12 schools, but increases the amount of money in the state’s per pupil formula.

“The debate in education this year isn’t going to be about how much we spend,” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington as he compared his bill to Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget plan. “The debate instead will be what we fund and what reforms we make to the system.”

And that’s going to make metro DFLers squeeeeeeaaaaal…

Garofalo finds the extra funding in the per pupil formula by cutting the state aid schools rely on for integration.

And that particular bit got the metro DFLers into high dudgeon.  “It’s pro-segregation”, in many varieties, coursed across Twitter yesterday.

It’s buncombe, of course.  Have you been in a metro-area school lately?  They’re integrated.  And as the bill’s sponsor Pat Garofalo notes, we’ve been spending money on “integration” for a long, long time – and the more we spend, the worse the black-white “achievement gap” grows.   There is some evidence that integration itself exacerbates the achievement gap – which is not an argument for segregation (since if I don’t disclaim it, some lefty will claim it for me);

It also caps state special education funding at current levels, leading many Democrats to allege that it would force local school districts to raise property taxes to meet federal requirements.

To be fair to the DFLers, that’s their answer to everything from financial meltdown to rainy days.

Alternate – and, in this case, correct – solution: push back on the definition of “special ed”.  These days, it covers the things that most of associate with “special education” – teaching kinds with serious physical, mental and emotional handicaps.  It has also grown to cover a lot of politically-correct expediencies;  “special ed” has become a part of the Gender Ghetto in public schools, the place to which teachers shunt kids who zig when they’re told to zag.

And make no mistake – school districts love special ed.  Because while teaching the seriously handicapped is an expensive (and justified) job, school districts also looove shunting kids with “insta-Shrink” diagnoses like ADHD – usually boys – into “special ed”; it jacks up the funding, while barely adjusting the amount of “Services”.  In the worst case, it is a covert funding stream for school districts – one that stigmatizes the inconvenient (usually boys).

Special Ed could use a serious reform.  If this bill starts the discussion, then it’s a big win for everyone.

The DFL’s big response to  this – to pretty much everything the GOP has come up with this session – is that it’s a “war on the city”.   They’re doing it because they’re scared; a lot of their base flaked away in 2010, and there are signs it’s not stopping.

Regardless, Democrats say the bill unfairly targets inner-city schools and schools treating the state’s hardest to teach students.

“If you’re a needy student, you’re a loser in this bill,” said Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville.

It’s untrue, of course; if you’re a needy, inner-city student, you’ve gotten the short end of the stick for a generation.  That’s why you, the inner city parent, have been fleeing the public schools – for parochial, charter, and suburban schools – by the thousands.

The bill would also create a pilot program for low income students in poor performing schools to enroll in private schools at state expense. Greiling says the so-called voucher system would allow the state’s private schools to pick and choose which students to accept leaving the public schools to teach the state’s most challenging students. She says the bill is too aggressive.

“It’s not just rearranging the deck chairs,” Greiling said. “The whole hulk of the ship is tipped over and shaken out and spewed out in a different way. We have a whole new ship and that new ship is taking from school districts that have the greatest needs and spreading it around to other districts, small schools and charter schools.”

Republicans argue the voucher proposal is a pilot program for schools in St. Paul, Minneapolis and Duluth and is aimed at helping close the state’s achievement gap. The bill would also dedicate more money for charter schools and smaller rural schools.

And the DFL is petrified with fear over this; they know that, given an alternative, the parents that care about their kids will take advantage of any lifeboat they can find.

And yes, it will leave inner-city schools with the biggest challenges – the kids whose parents just aren’t paying attention.

The bill – read it’s right here – will help students who need the help.

But it’ll reduce the subsidy the DFL has always given to failing schools, and the union that  made ’em that way.

And that’s gotta scare the crap out of the DFL

Back in college, when I was still a liberal, I was involved in the elections for the leadership of the Young Progressives.

I campaigned in favor of Rebekah Zildjian-Grothman.  Her opponent, Joshua-Micah Belcher, got wind of this.

“Mitch – don’t drop out of college if I win!”, he said at a meeting.

“I had no plans to”.   It seemed simple enough.

Oddly enough, all his posters had fine print at the bottom; I was standing by the bulletin board outside the cafeteria when Angie Schlegel pointed it out;  “I disclaim responsibility if Mitch Berg drops out of college shoul I happen to win”.

Angie looked at me, concerned; I shrugged my shoulders.  “I have no idea what he’s talking about”, I said, baffled.

The election happened.  Joshua – excuse me, Joshua-Micah – won.  As he gave his acceptance speech, he looked at me.  “And now, we’re going to watch Mitch Berg kill himself!”.  He reached into his pocket and handed me a “Withdraw From College” form.

“Huh?”

“You were going to drop out of college if I won!”

I threw the form back at him.  “That was a story you made up…” I started.

“Don’t change the subject!”, he bellowed.

———-

The DFL’s current “tactic” (scare quotes fully intentional) is, if anything, dumber than my fictional story above.

Let’s walk through the facts:

1. While setting up the 2010-2011 budget back in 2009, the DFL-dominated legislature, using the auto-pilot formula they use for these things, forecast a budget of almost $39 billion.  The increase – 21%, overall – was predicated on inflation (relatively low) and putative increase in demand for services.  The forecast was nothing more than the DFL’s wish list. it was focused entirely – 100% – on forecast increases in demand and price.  Nothing more.
2. The leadership of the then-DFL-controlled legislature subtracted the then-forecast revenues – around $32 billion – from the forecast, and declared that there would be a “$6.2 billion deficit”, primarily to put pressure on then-governor Tim Pawlenty.
3. The GOP – first during the Emmer campaign, and then after the November elections – declared that they could do a budget that would live within what were forecast to be government’s means; as of 2009, that was $32 billion.
4. During the 2010 Governor race, Mark Dayton made it clear that he was going to treat the $39 billion forecast as the gospel for the budget.
5. In response, Tom Emmer made it clear he and the GOP would not raise taxes, but force government to live within its means (and reform the system to help that happen.
6. Once it became clear that revenues were going to rise.  Tom Emmer made it a key part of his campaign; “living within our means” meant $33 or $34 billion.  Not $32 billion.
7. Emmer lost – but the MNGOP swept to commanding majorities in both chambers of the legislature.
8. The new GOP majorities made it clear that they were not going to raise taxes; that living within our means, and reforming our government and tax systems to make that possible were the orders of the day.
9. Time marched on.
10. Mark Dayton released his budget – which was greeted with all the enthusiasm of Vanilla Ice’s sophomore album.  Last week, Dayton had make a grand show of telling the DFL not to vote for his budget when the GOP brought it to the floor – to cover the fact that nobody was going to anyway.

At this point, the DFL knew what was coming; that the revenue forecast was going to show exactly what Emmer predicted, that government’s “means” were going to grow to $34 billion, and the GOP was going to use that fact.

And so they started perhaps the most cynical, transparently-desperate political memes I can remember – worse than my ol’ buddy Joshua-Micah’s, from so many years back:

The GOP’s all-cuts budget is late!  And if it’s not all cuts, then they’ve failed!

Put concisely, it was “the party that released all-tax-hike budgets in mid-April the past four years wants you get outraged that the GOP is releasing a balanced, no-tax-hike budget in March”.

The GOP released its budget last week – a budget that lives within government’s means – those means being $34 billion in revenue.  And the DFL’s chant-bots have been trying to cash that meme in.

House Minority leader Paul Thissen launched a broadside on the House DFL caucus Facebook page:

Apparently, “living within our means” is not as easy as the Republicans made it seem to Minnesotans on the campaign trail. Republicans promised Minnesotans that $32 billion was more than enough to balance the budget and that it could be done holding school children, seniors, and the disabled harmless.

And Thissen is lying.  The GOP never said “government’s means” was $32 billion, now and forever.

Today’s release of Republican budget targets proves that the magic act Republicans promised Minnesotans is running into hard reality. The $32 billion that was enough a week ago is now more than $34.

Thissen, and the DFL’s, plan is pretty transparent.  With a weak governor, no legislative power, and a $39 billion wish list, they are trying to convince Tea Partiers – including the moderate DFLers that deserted the party last fall – that the GOP, the party of no tax hikes and the $34 billion budget, are the spendthrifts.

This is the hallmark of a party that is desperate for a win – and fully confident that the media will not seriously question them about such a transparent bit of spin.

As a result, middle-class Minnesota taxpayers should start guarding their wallets against a Republican pick-pocket budget characterized by hidden taxes.

That’s another oldie but goodie, a very cynical bit of carefully-waterboarded context; “if the government cuts LGA, it will hike property taxes”.  That is, of course, the job of the local governments involved.  It has nothing to do with the legislature.

And hard-working Minnesotans should also guard their jobs. We know that the Republican budget will do more harm to Minnesota’s fragile economic recovery than a balanced approach. Cutting nearly 50% of Jobs and Economic Development, raising property taxes – the largest tax businesses pay already, and slashing the workforce are a recipe for job killing, not job creation.

Another bit of cynical distortion; the “Jobs and Economic Development” spending creates very few jobs and very little economic development, for the money we’ve poured into it.

Republicans heralded $300 million in new tax cuts for middle and lower income earners.

And that is a lie.  The “new taxes” will come from city councils, who can no longer camouflage their own spending by having state taxpayers subsidize it for the.  And as we showed last year, those city councils are run by DFLers.

Playing poker with a pair of deuces, Thissen is passing on the most transparently cynical set of chanting points I can recall in all my years of watching Minnessota politcs.  Thissen can get away with these statements – lies, grossly-waterboarded context – because he knows the mainstream media statewide won’t disturb his narrative.

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring responded as well;  you should read the whole thing.  Money quote:

I’ll just be blunt. Rep. Thissen isn’t an impressive leader. His credibility doesn’t exist because his constant sky-is-falling predictions aren’t believable. People might or might not agree with the Republicans’ plan. I suspect more do than don’t because that’s how they voted in November and because people understand that spending $34 billion is substantially more than spending $30.7 billion.

Gary’s right.

Worst case?  That’s what the DFL is counting on; the idea that there are enough Tea Partiers who will see “Two Billion more in spending”, and ignore the “that’s what we have”.

Years ago, I heard a great cliche while I was playing poker. That cliche applies to this situation. Sometimes, the best way to throw a hand is away. The DFL’s hand is awful. Their plans aren’t that appealing. It’s time for the DFL to admit that it’s time to throw this hand away and return to the proverbial drawing board. They won’t win this hand with the hand they’re playing.

I wish I could be as sanguine as Gary.  The DFL is counting on there being a majority of the population that pays no attention beyond the chanting points they and their compliant media present for them.  The last election showed he’s a little over 43% right.

The message, if it comes up at the water cooler?  The GOP budget lives within the state’s means, without needing to jack up taxes to do it.  There are hikes, there are cuts – but it’s a sane, sensible budget for tough times.

Thissen, like my old pal Joshua-Micah Belcher, thinks if he can deny it often and loudly enough, people will believe it.

NOTE: I know, I know – neither my college friends Zildjian-Grothman nor Belcher actually existed.

The DFL loves playing politics more than just about anything else. One of their favorite ploys – using their advantage with the complaint mainstream media to frame all debates in terms that favor them.  Have you  noticed the way the media has, on cue, picked up the meme of the “all cuts budget?”  No significant Republican has used the term – but the DFL and its minions and press enablers use the term every single time the topic of the GOP budget comes up.

Now, in the bad old days when the GOP  was largely RINOs, a little of this framing was enough to help enough “moderates” flake away to help the DFL get pretty much everything it wanted.

Those days are done.  If I have anything to do with it, they’re dead, cremated, and scattered at the foot of Elmer Anderson’s statue.

The DFL hates losing at it more than just about anything else.  Yesterday’s vote on Governor Dayton’s tax proposals was the sort of thing the DFL used to excel at.  Gary Gross gives us a snippet of recent history (that the media would largely prefer disappear down the memory hole:

It’s that the DFL hasn’t stopped playing political games since the session started.

They want nothing to do with Gov. Dayton’s budget. They’re treating it like toxic waste:

One exchange:

Question: “Do you support the tax increases in this bill?”

Thissen: “The governor is delivering on what he promised. We have always been in our DFL caucus in favor of a solution that is going to be fair…We need to look at the details of it. I think the most important thing now to look at is asking the Republicans, okay, what’s your answer.”

Question: “That didn’t answer the question…Do you support these tax increases?”

Bakk: “If you look at the tax incidence study, it will show you that more well to do Minnesotans, especially those over $500,000 in income pay a little bit over eight percent of their income in taxes and the rest of us, in the middle class and lower income Minnesotans, pay about 12.3 percent. And I think from a policy standpoint, the governor is right that everyone should be expect to pay about the same percentage of their income in state and local taxes.”

A third:

Question: “So yes or no. Do you two support the tax package in the governor’s proposal? Yes or no.”

Bakk: “Well, I certainly want to see the budget pages and I’m not going to tell you if they offer a vote on it I’m going to vote yes or no on it because we are actually having a hearing in the tax committee (to delve into the budget) either tomorrow or Thursday…After Thursday I can probably give you an answer.”

That exchange happened on Feb. 15. Sen. Bakk still hasn’t given a reply to Rachel Stassen-Berger. The bottom line is this: the DFL want to criticize Republicans like they do every budget year. They just don’t want their fingerprints on anything that Gov. Dayton has put together.

And the GOP knew it.  Which was the entire motivation behind yesterday’s exercise; the good guys kicked some sand in the DFL’s face.

And they’re used to being the big guys on the beach, dammit!  Not only are they not used to being in the minority – they are not used to a GOP that does politics better than they do!

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius – who presumably has gotten the memo that the GOP’s budget is less than two weeks away, closing in on the DFL like Eisenhower’s fleet weighing anchor and turning toward Normandy, writes:

Instead of putting together their own budget proposal [Hahahaha! – Ed.] the MNGOP has been content to simply snipe at Governor Dayton’s proposal. Today was more of the same. Instead of finally revealing their all-cuts budget, they opted for a sham vote on a portion of Dayton’s budget.

The shorter Rosenberg – “I’m going to give an incomplete-to-the-point-of-dishonesty side of the GOP’s agenda – I’ll carp over one of an entire palette of GOP budget-balancing tactics, the cut, and gabble about the fact that the GOP hasn’t submitted a budget because I can count on the media not to point out that the DFL didn’t submit one until the literal last minutes of the last session – because it’s to my and my party’s political advantage to do so.  But don’t you dare do it yourself!”

Of course, they didn’t vote on Dayton’s entire proposal. Despite Dayton’s frequent objections, the MNGOP continues to treat the budget in a piecemeal fashion. In today’s sham vote, they voted on the tax portion of Dayton’s proposal while ignoring the rest of it.

Dear DFL: we are not here to make you look smart (and either, apparnetly, are many of you).  We are here to win.  The electorate sent the DFL packing, and sent the GOP to the Legislature, with a very clear mandate; kick DFL ass.  Well, no – not “kick DFL ass”, but to get the growth in budget and government under control, which will inseparably involve kicking DFL ass.

And they are.

And yes, compromise is inevitable.  It’s politics. The GOP doesn’t have complete control.  You DFLers are used to a GOP that would get intimidated by your framing, and by your old stranglehold on the media, and essentially fold its cards right after the deal and beg for mercy.

Those days are over.  The GOP is playing to go into those negotiations from a position of strength – not the craven, panicky accomodation of the hamster-like “Republicans” of the Carlson era.  The GOP is playing like it’s holding the full house, Kings over Tens, that it actually holds.

Deal with it.

Or live in the ancient past.  Your choice.

Now that Mark Dayton has proposed to jack the taxes of Minnesotans making over about $150,000 up to 10.95%, and those who earn over $500,000 to an unprecedented 13.95% – one dollar out of every seven they earn – it seems there’s a little ambiguity on who “the rich” are.

Who are “The Rich?”

Let’s break it down for you.

The Rich Are Not…: DFL uber-donor Vance Opperman, who donates millions to the DFL’s pet causes, and whose income comes largely from dividends and investments.  He’s not rich.

The Rich Are…: The guy who runs the small consulting shop that landed you the IT gig with the company that was hiring.  He and his wife – who does the accounting – might break $200K for the year.  They are “the rich”, in Mark Dayton’s world.  Not Vance Opperman, silly reader.

The Rich Are Not…:  John Cowles, who donated $2.4 million to help start the Guthrie – in 1960, when that was serious money.  Who used to publish the left-leaning Star Tribune, and who ponied up to help found the center-left MinnPost a few years back.  He’s also given tens of thousands of dollars to the various groups that funded the epic, toxic sleaze campaign that helped squeedge Mark Dayton into office.  Cowles, with his money coming from dividends and trusts and all the usual shelters that the super-wealthy can afford?  What, you thought he was “the rich?”  Of course not!

The Rich Are…:  Grandma’s oncologist.  The guy or gal who spent eight years working his or her ass off taking the hard courses in high school and college to get into med school, then more of the same to survive the weeding-out process during four years of education, an internship and three years of brutal residency designed to test his/her mettle for the field, leading to post-doctoral training leading to a board-certification and then a few decades of experience that make him able to  help Grandma to turn her cancer into a harrowing cautionary story rather than an early good-bye to the grandkids.  After all that, the doctor and his/her spouse – a hospital administrator, as luck would have it – earn a little over $500K, of which about $40,000 currently goes to the state of Minnesota.  Since they – not John Cowles – are “rich”, that tab is going to go up to almost $70,000.  Doc and spouse, of course, still have options; that place in Prescott is looking mighty nice right now.   Which Prescott – Wisconsin or Arizona?  I think they’d both love to have an Oncologist for a neighbor, especially since they’re “rich” – don’t you?

The Rich Are Not…:  Mark Dayton, whose net worth is somewhere between $3,000,000 and $12,000,000 (or was, back in 2006, the last time he deigned to report his net worth according to the Minnesota Birkeydependant.  It’s mostly tax-sheltered, of course, off in tax havens like South Dakota or all those other states where people aren’t so Happy To Pay For more government.  Which makes them ideal for trusts, where trust fund babies like The Governor can keep his money!  So even though Governor Dayton has Renoirs to sell to finance his gubernatorial campaign, he’s not The Rich.  Nosirreebob.

The Rich Are…:  You, if you are (to pick an example from my own social circle) a programming consultant who started working as a code jockey right out of college, and spent a decade or so honing your skills as a software enginer.  You write good, tight code; you’ve stayed up on all the advances, and are fluent in not only several programming languages but in many of the arcane architectural environments that seem to so completely tribalize software these days.  You’ve moved on up; from your first job, making $24K a  year as a COBOL programmer for, say, Best Buy back in 1989, you’ve worked your way up to being a pretty indispensible part of some big, business-mission-critical projects.  You’re a hired gun, and a good one, and you get paid pretty well for it;  you bill $85 an hour or so, and work for six-month stretches on high-profile projects.  Tack on the salary from your spouse – a corporate HR benefits administrator who makes about $55K – and that means you make about $$225K on a good year; more during up years, less when the market’s off.  Not enough to have Renoirs to sell, but plenty comfortable.  Good thing, too – you pay for your own retirement, and write your own checks to Medicare and Social Security.  You know better than to complain – but you’re both one layoff or cut contract or downturn away from living on savings until the market turns up again.  Oh, yeah – your state tax bill is going to rise from $17K and change to almost $25,000.  Because you, you greedy bastard?  You are rich!

Unlike Vance Opperman, John Cowles or Mark Dayton.

Hang your head in shame, plutocrat.

CORRECTION – MAYBE: I’ m told that the 13.95% rate only applies to income over $500,000.  It changes the math…

…but not the principle.  “The Rich”, according to Daytons’ budget proposal, are people who earn income, as opposed to the rich, who make their money from capital gains and dividends and can afford to shelter their income in ways “The Rich” usually can’t.

Nothing in state government is so sacred that you can’t link it to a drinking game.

Although we urge our actual state legislators not to be doing the game-drinking while working.

At any rate – since the DFL has a legislative minority and an incredibly weak governor, their best shot at eking a victory out of this session is to convince The People that 2+2=”Blue”.  And so the DFL has unleashed a wave of DFL propagandabots in the media, the alt-media, the press and in government itself, repeating the same series of lines, and lies, over and over and over – not so much repeating the Godwin-fodder “Big Lie” often enough as repeating a wide swathe of little lies – along the lines of “Tom Emmer tried to lower penalties for drunk drivers” – until the dim-witted and not-very-savvy (aka “The DFL’s swing voters”) start to think they’re true.

And we might as well have fun with ’em!

So it’s time to turn all the bile, the ire, the vitrol and the waterboarded context into…

The Chanting Points Drinking Game!

You need the following to play:

• Three or more people – the more, the merrier!
• Alcohol
• One drinking glass for each contestant, suitable for the alcohol (beer glasses for beer, shot glasses for booze, wine glasses for whine).  Alternate: empty jars will suffice.
• A Mark Dayton bobblehead doll.
• A TV or computer  tuned to any political discussion – the session, TPT Almanac, “At Issue”, Esme Murphy’s show, whatever.  If no suitable TV program is on, someone can read from MNPublius, Minnesota “Progressive” Project, mnpACT!, MN2020, Alliance For A Better Minnesota, Bluestem Prairie or any other combination of Twin Cities leftyblogs.

Here’s how you play:

1. Before viewing, give the bobblehead to a random particpant.
2. Turn on the TV.
3. Whenever anyone says any variation of the following, everyone take a hit from your glass…

• “We have a $6.2 Billion deficit!”
• “The only choices we have are tax hikes or layoffs!”‘
• “The GOP wants to force cities to raise property taxes!”
• “Minnesotans won’t stand for this departure from our government tradition”
• “The GOP needs to reach across the aisle” / “Mark Dayton has done an admirable job of reaching across the aisle”
• Any reference to Orville Freeman, Arne Carlson, or any former governnor named Anderson
• Any use of the term “tipping point”
• “Where is the GOP’s no-cuts plan?” (If accompanied by a knowing smirk, make that two hits)
• “Government spending is essential for a healthy economy!”
• “We inherited this from Tim Pawlenty” (Take an extra sip if the word “disastrous” is used)
• “If the GOP says they want jobs, then why are they laying off state workers?”
• “The [GOP/Tea Party/any opponent of the DFL]’s plan is ‘extreme’ and/or ‘wrong for Minnesota'”

4. After each drink line, the holder of the Dayton Bobblehead passes it to the next person in the circle.

5. If anyone says “The GOP plan will [throw Grandma into the street/freeze the children/etc]”, the holder of the Dayton Bobblehead must drain his/her glass immediately before passing it on to the next person.

Feel free to add “house rules” for other Chanting Points – mentions of “Wall Street”, “Koch Brothers”,  variations on the term “Neocon” or “Mubarak”, or whatever works for you!

Your entire party will be passed out in puddles of vomit within the hour.

Just like the Senate DFL caucus on the last night of the session, come to think of it.