Shot in the Dark

Category: Dayton Dustbowl

  • Black And White And Green And More Black

    Doug Grow – DFL stenographer and reporter for the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost – is convinced that the GOP is lying about the effects of the Warehouse Tax. Exhibit A? Grow writes about the Red Wing Shoes’ opting out of building a new distribution center in Red Wing; it’s something we wrote about here in SITD a few…

  • The “Wreck Everything” Legislature

    Before the 2012 elections, the DFL tried to call the previous, GOP-run legislature a “do-nothing” legislature. Leaving aside the obvious – the government that governs best governs least – it was a lie. The 2011-2012 legislatures accomplished some useful stuff – hobbled by a “governor” who was fully-owned by extremist special interests and some very…

  • Eggs For The Omelet

    The Warehouse tax is going to cause all sorts of damage – and some GOP legislators want to do something about it: Reps. Tim Kelly of Red Wing and Pat Garofalo of Farmington said lawmakers must act soon because the looming sales tax on warehousing services is already prompting businesses to delay planned warehouse expansions.…

  • Governor Messinger Dayton: “Eat The Poor!”

    Governor Alida Messinger Mark Dayton, 2011:  “Rorra rammma hassa humper thunt”.  (Translation:  We’re only raising taxes on the top 1%) Govenor Alida Messinger Mark Dayton, 2013:  “OK, poor people gotta pony up too! The DFL’s current tax plan not only raises taxes on all Minnesotans across the board, but actually raises taxes on the poorest Minnesotans by more than the…

  • Hello Steeltown; Goodbye, DFL

    Jamestown, North Dakota. 15,000 people.  At confluence of the James and Pipestem rivers, about 90 miles west of Fargo.  Home to a state hospital and psychiatric prison (which sounds like something the MN DFL would build for Republicans, but it’s really pretty normal), a school for the profoundly handicapped, a college (my alma mater, as…

  • The Mulligan Session, Part II

    The same DFL employees who gave us “E-Pulltabs” as a means of supplying “the state’s share” of an extorted payoff to an out-of-state billionaire for his real-estate upgrade (which fell 95% short of predictions, as predicted by certain right-wing bloggers) are going to try to take a mulligan and get it right on the second…

  • Governor Messinger Dayton: “The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves!”

    Governor Messinger Dayton famously appeared at the Chamber of Commerce yesterday. And boy, did he give ’em what-for! Gov. Dayton told a stunned luncheon audience that Minnesota is among the best places for business in the country, contrary to the Chamber’s message. He said government spending is right in the middle, and that the state’s tax…

  • Elections Have Consequences, Part CXXIX

    Saint Paul business owners, trapped between Saint Paul’s crushing property tax burden and Dayton and the DFL’s tax hikes, are finally speaking out: Paul Wagner’s family has manufactured and sold conductive wire to the medical and defense industries for nearly 50 years, but he and his wife haven’t ruled out moving the entire company from St. Paul…

  • Chanting Points Memo: Ryan Winkler, Brezhnev-Style Economist

    Conservatives joke that liberals just. Don’t.  Get. Economics. We joke, at times, that at some point a liberal is going to push for a “living wage” statute calling for a $100/hour minimum wage as a means to end poverty, followed by a bill barring any layoffs and banning bankruptcy. It’s a joke.  Some liberals shake…

  • Slouching Toward Hawley

    First things first: Charlie Quimby of “Growth and Justice” and Dave Mindeman of MnpACT are two of a small, select set of Minnesota liberal bloggers who needn’t be under police surveillance or at the very least restraining orders.  I’m just giving credit where it’s due (although the idea that a group can be named “Growth and Justice”…

  • When You’ve Lost The Strib…

    The Star-Tribune editorial board brutalized a key component of the Messinger Dayton and DFL tax plan over the weekend. The editorial starts out with a half-squib…: We urge Dayton to reconsider and the Legislature to reject a sales tax on business-to-business services, a tax idea the Star Tribune has long opposed. While expanding the consumption sales tax to a…

  • Defaulters, Frauds, Liars: The DFL Has Never Said The Shift Was A Gimmick, Winston!

    Let’s take a quick jaunt through history. Spring 2011: Governor Dayton proposes a budget with a school payment “shift” – a delay of payments to schools until after an arbitrary date, the end of a fiscal year, to “move” the spending from one budget to another – of something well over $2 billion dollars. May 2011:…

  • Gov. Messinger‘s Dayton’s Budget: One Dry Well After Another

    A few months back, those of us who figured Zygi Wilf should pay for his own real estate improvements rather than plunder the state treasury were vindicated when turned out that the “mechanism” (read: gimmick) the state planned to use for its share – “electronic pull tabs” – wasn’t going to deliver anywhere near the…

  • Know Your Place, Animals!

    This piece is sort of a natural follow-on to yesterday’s post – all the “Deep Thoiughts” about man’s relationship to government, and the different philosophies liberals and conservatives bring to the table on the subject. But first, a brief digression. I don’t normally rebroadcast other peoples’ ads – but this one was just too good…

  • The Dayton Way

    National Review ran yet another dissection of the complete collapse of Detroit last week. One of the key lessons – giving unions carte blanche neither bolsters middle-class wages nor general prosperity: One lesson to learn from Detroit is that investing unions with coercive powers does not ensure future private-sector employment or the preservation of private-sector…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl: The Veto Scorecard

    Dayton and his minions in the paid PR racket – and I count the editorial board of the Strib among that crowd – are doing what they can to label this past legislature a “Do-Nothing” one. It’d be more accurate, naturally, to call it “The Sandbagged Legislature”.  Now, I’m not going to say all of…

  • Kombucha Out; Koolaid In

    The Strib, mirabile dictu, reaches the same conclusion I did about Dayton’s “Jerbs Bill”, although a good deal more gently in this editorial: Last week, Dayton dressed up his biennial bonding request as a “jobs bill,” and linked it with another short-term stimulus idea: a proposed one-time tax credit for employers who hire a new…

  • Strib Editorial Board: “Feed The Rider, Starve The Horse”

    The Strib Editorial Board has declared itself in the bag for Mark Dayton and the DFL. Not a huge surprise, if you follow these things. More importantly, and much worse, it expresses the Minnesota Left’s real priorities.  Although it does it in a slippery, weaselly way designed to actively disinform voters – which, of course,…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl: The Gucci Marionette

    People ask “why is Dayton squiggling so hard to avoid any form of negotiation with the GOP?  He’s clearly beaten; public opinion largely opposes his “all taxes” approach to the deficit, and the GOP isn’t getting browbeaten into submission anymore?” It makes no sense, if you assume that Mark Dayton is making any kind of…

  • The Shutdown…

    …was two pages away from being resolved. And Dayton is always two pages away from resolving it. And no matter what the “pain”, he’s going to stay two pages, and no less than two pages, away from resolving it. Array

  • Dayton: Rejected

    Ramco Judge Kathleen Gearin has ruled on “critical services” for a potential upcoming government shutdown: Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin’s ruling came Wednesday, just two days before a state government shutdown would begin. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature would have to agree on a budget before Friday to avoid the scenario. Dayton…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl: Petty, Venal, Vindictive

    SCENE:  The Emergency Room at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul.  It’s July 5.  Mrs. JACKIE SZCZYMCZYK, sits in the waiting room, surrounded by other people waiting for results.  She appears distraught.  A BYSTANDER, sitting next to SZCZYMCZYK, is holding a hankie on a cut foot. BYSTANDER (to SZCZYMCZYK):  “What are you here for?” SZCZYMCZYK:  My…

  • All The News That Fits The DFL Narrative

    The regional leftysphere is tweeting up a busy little storm today; as the MNDFL noted on Twitter, “Former head of the MN Business Partnership: the @mngop budget is a “job-killer””. The uninitiated might think “Wow. That’s quite an indictment of the GOP budget!” And the tweet linked to a Strib article, entitled “The governor’s budget plan…

  • The Dayton Dustbowl: Circling The Drain

    Mark Dayton’s budget – and worse, what his budget would mean for the state’s long-term fiscal viability – is a disaster waiting to happen; the equivalent of going out and buying a new Beemer when you’re four months behind on the house payments. Senator Roger Chamberlain of White Bear Lake has been an inspiration this…

  • Strikepocalypse 2011: Shutdown Stories You Won’t Read In The Strib

    Kwama Heaton of Richfield wanted to sign his kids up for basketball camp.  But when he got laid off from his job as a car salesman, due to a lack of used cars (due to Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program and cost cutting for Obamacare), he had to cancel those plans. Cynthia DelAmitri of Woodbury…