Category Archives: Dayton Dustbowl

The Dayton Dustbowl: Just A Little Compromise

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“Compromise”.

That’s what the Dayton Administration says it wants (when it’s not calling the GOP “extremists” – which is kind of funny, “extremists” getting the majority of the vote last November, but I digress).

Of course, the GOP did compromise; it hiked the budget, adding the money from the upgraded February revenue forecast to the budget, rather than leaving it in the economy where it might have done some good.  That’s all the compromise the GOP needs to do.

Dayton – or, more accurately, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, the attack PAC funded entirely by Dayton, his family, his friends, and the unions who are renting him until 2014 with an option ’til 2018 – are doing their best to cow Minnesotans into believing “cutting government” means “attacking the middle class”.

Dayton and his minions are lying, of course.

Here’s how it really works:

2011:  “Compromises” with the MNGOP to lower a 22% increase down to something a little less immediately catastrophic.  Somehow, he bullies the GOP into acquiescing.

2012:  Minnesota’s economy falters, as small-business hiring flags.  “It’s because of the GOP budget thefts!”, every single media outlet and DFL blog (pardon the redundancy) opines.  Disgusted by the GOP’s budget cave-in, swing voters stay home in droves, cutting the GOP’s majority in the Legislature.

2013: Emboldened by his “success” in cowing Minnesotans into taking a tax hit and pinning it, putatively, on “the rich”, Dayton proposes another “my way or the highway” budget, with another 20% increase to over $40 billion, to “pay Minnesota back for what the extremists stole”.  To pay for this, “the Rich” are redefined as anyone with an Adjusted Gross Income of over $90,000.

2014: Minnesota’s economy falls still further, as mid-sized businesses flee the state in accelerating numbers.   Dayton, having vetoed Voter Id, wins re-election by a 5 million to 1 million margin.

2015: Dayton’s budget rockets up another 20%, to $48 billion; “you must be happy to pay for a bigger Minnesota”, he mumbles, as he notes that “the rich” are now any Minnesotan with an adjusted gross income of over $60,000.

And so on.

Pass the word to your neighbors; all they have is fear.

The Dayton Dustbowl: Welcome To Mark Dayton’s Minnesota

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I gotta confess, when I hatched the “Dayton Dust Bowl” idea way back last fall, I had no idea it would catch on like this.

But then, I didn’t think Minnesotans were dumb enough to elect a governor whose entire platform was “killing dynamism and growth in Minnesota” and “going back to the seventies”.

But Minnesotans surprised me – not in a good way – and so here we are, having serious discussions about raising taxes during a crippling recession after the idea of “raising taxes during a recession” has gone 0 for 300 worldwide in the past 200 years or so.

The Minnesota Majority, thankfully, is on the case.  About an hour ago, they rolled out…

…the Dayton Soup Truck!

From MNMaj’s press advisory:

“Soup Truck” Launched in Response to Dayton’s Job-Killing Taxation Proposals.

Aims to inform Minnesotans and help them prepare for tough economic times ahead.

Coming soon to a bread line near you.

Unless the GOP wins the budget battle this session, of course.

Coming soon

The Dayton Dust Bowl: “When Did You Stop Beating Your Wives?”

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Dayton “wants the GOP to be honest ” about their budget cuts:

Gov. Mark Dayton is renewing his challenge to the Republican-controlled Legislature to come up with a balanced budget without raising taxes — and without hurting the state’s most vulnerable residents.

“They aren’t being honest about the cuts they would have to make to achieve their budget targets,” Dayton told MPR’s Morning Edition on Tuesday. “Tell us the truth about what the results of that would be and then we can discuss whether that would be in the best interests of Minnesotans.”

…in an argument where all cuts, or even cuts to the DFL’s planned increases, are assumed to be catastrophic, and the “best interest of Minnesotans” means “keeping government fat and happy at all costs”.

Lest you thought the DFL had trouble staying on message (emphasis added):

Dayton, a Democrat, has said balancing the budget through $5 billion in cuts would hurt nursing home residents and others, but he acknowledged that something must be done to slow the growth of health care spending. Dayton has proposed some cuts to health and human services spending and has asked health care providers to return profits to the state.

“We can’t just throw people out of nursing homes or deny them the care that they need,” Dayton said of cutting health and human services spending. “It has to be done skillfully.”

Interesting how Dayton figures that the budget can be done “skillfully”, but he figures the state’s nursing homes and health care providers are too stupid do figure out how to do their job with a lower budget – the sort of things that Minnesota families do every day when budgets shrink.

The DFL is vamping.  The GOP has beaten them; the only venue they have left is to tell the public that something that walks, flaps and quacks like a duck is really a schnauzer.

Chanting Points Memo: How Are They Bogus? Let Us Count The Ways

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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.

Where In The World Are Thissen And Bakk?

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Two weeks ago, the DFL in the House and Senate together provided exactly one vote for the Dayton Dustbowl budget.

There was, of course, a theatrical letter from Dayton telling the various DFL caucuses not to vote for at – but there’s more than a little evidence that was sent to cover the fact that hardly any DFLers were going to vote for it anyway.  These things do not happen by accident on Capitol Hill.

Anyway…

Via the sources that he has so many of, Michael Brodkorb (via MDE) has released a copy of the DFL Legislative caucuses’ takes on the budget.

Here you go:

Indeed, so far this session looks like it’s been a three months vacation for the DFL.

The Dayton Dustbowl: Foreman Says “These Jobs Are Going, Boys, And They Ain’t Coming Back”

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HutchTech is laying off a third of its workforce, and moving a chunk of what’s left to…

…newly pro-business Wisconsin.

Coincidence?  Correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation.  Technology companies – especially companies that manufacture parts for PCs, which have been cheap commodities for years.

Hutchinson Technology today announced it will shed 30-40% of its workforce in a restructuring move. Hundreds of employees will be laid off from the company’s Hutchinson operation, where many jobs will be moved to Eau Claire, WI and overseas (Star Trib story). While U.S. technology manufacturers have struggled to compete with the influx of foreign competitors, Wisconsin’s new pro-business plans certainly didn’t hurt their chances of attracting the employer across our borders.

But that whole “correlation doesn’t equal causation” bit?  As Andy Post at MDE notes, Mark Dayton could stand to remember it:

Who’s to blame for these lost jobs? You may remember last November when Mark Dayton blamed Governor Tim Pawlenty for job losses at Lockheed Martin. Dayton was quoted saying,“It seems to me this is fundamentally a responsibility of Gov. Pawlenty and his administration,” without any further logic or explanation.

Then, of course, these latest layoffs are fundamentally a responsibility of you, Governor Dayton.

Fair for TPaw, fair for Lord Fauntelroy.

And it is fair.  Because at the margins, people – and companies – expend their resources to save on taxes.

And sometimes that involves shedding jobs – whether it’s because the state is hobbled with a tax-and-spend-crazy DFL legislature, or a tax-and-spend-crazy DFL governor who is dead-set on hamstringing the grownups’ efforts to get the house in order.

The Dayton Dust Bowl: Crickets

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I had no idea that when I  suggested last week that…

…a Republican from a bullet-proof rural seat should sponsor the Dayton budget [and that] the GOP-controlled committees involved should pass it right through, so it can go to the floor immediately for a binding, highly-publicized, up-or-down vote.

I think we should let the DFL show their pride in and support for Governor Dayton.   I think they should show how unified they are!

…I gotta confess, I had no idea it could actually happen.

Yesterday, Senator Michel (a Republican who has taken some flak for being a “moderate” in the past, but who earned plenty o’cred with me) introduced the Dayt0n budget into the Senate.

And the DFL whined like stuck cats.

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 63-1 [yesterday] against Gov. Dayton’s proposal to raise taxes on Minnesota’s richest residents, but Dayton and other Democrats called the debate meaningless theater.

“I’m glad people are having fun,” Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, said sarcastically. “I hope some of your relatives are watching.”

Only Sen. Dave Tomassoni, DFL-Chisholm, voted for the Dayton taxes.

Of course, the DFL has never been above staging up-or-down votes for political purposes – to get Legislators’ votes on  controversial issues on the record for political effect.

They’re just not used to being on the business end of the process.

Don Davis noted:

Dayton sent a letter to Bakk [yesterday] morning urging that all legislators vote against the proposal “as a way to reject this charade.”

Something the media has studiously avoided pointing out; Dayton did this purely to provide political cover for the fact that, had he not excused the DFL caucuses from supporting him, hardly any of them would have.  The DFL’s silence in the Dayton Dustbowl budget plan has been complete; asked if they support it, most prominent DFLers – Thissen and Bakk, among others – have squiggled smartly away.

There is no significant support in the DFL caucus for the Dayton budget.  That’s because in this economic climate, Minnesotans outside the bobbleheaded DFL base know that hiking taxes on the class that creates the jobs, or makes the investments that creates the jobs, is just plain stupid.

The DFL’s response?  Whimpering that “it’s just childish theatre”, and demanding to know when the GOP is going to come out with its budget…

…which was interrupted in mid-whimper with the news that the GOP will have its budget out in two weeks.

All in all, it was a masterful day of politics for the MN GOP.

I haven’t had occasion to say that much in the past 25 years.

It feels good.

More, please.

Dayton Dustbowl: Missed Opportunity?

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It’s been two weeks, almost, since Governor Dayton submitted his budget proposal.

The proposal, which jacks up taxes on “the rich”  by adding the highest state income tax in the nation on people who make over half a million a year, stil has no DFL sponsor in the legislature.

None.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this:  in the wake of the Tea Party and the most glorious drubbing the DFL has ever sustained in its entire history, not a single DFL Rep or Senator has so far affixed their name to a bill that would jack up taxes on “the rich” (and, eventually, everyone – since “the rich” that don’t leave the state will pass on the tax burden to their customers, since most of them are small businesspeople).

Not a single DFLer, so far, seems to be enthusiastic to have their name tied to a vote on this job-killing, tax-jacking, inflation-pumping, tax-base-sapping budget (which would, by the way, leave the real rich, like Mark Dayton and his plutocrat supporters, untouched;their income is from dividends and capitol gains on their portfolios. Mark Dayton will never pay 13.95% on his income; the oncologist taking care of Grandma will, though).

I think a Republican – one from a very, very safe seat – should do the job for them.

I think a Republican from a bullet-proof rural seat should sponsor the Dayton budget (and spend the next year explaining why – and yes, I will drive to wherever he or she serves and go door to door to help, if need be – just to help avoid any complications).

And I think the GOP-controlled committees involved should pass it right through, so it can go to the floor immediately for a binding, highly-publicized, up-or-down vote.

I think we should let the DFL show their pride in and support for Governor Dayton.   I think they should show how unified they are!

I think we should let the DFL walk the walk.  I think we should let them all, every one of them, show how happy they are to make you pay for A Better Minnesota.

I think we should give DFLer the chance – indeed, the imperative – to explain why they voted to make their constituents work ’til they’re 70 so that government employees can retire at 55.

Whaddya say, MNGOP?  Anyone wanna make the DFL put all that HopeyChangey BetterMinnesota talk where their votes are?

Dayton Dustbowl: Too Stupid

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Mark Dayton’s budget:  three billion in new taxes.

Minnesotans who make toward $200K – dentists, middle managers, car salespeople, a few really good, hard-working waitstaff, fairly capable software developers, and above all, successful enterepreneurs – will be paying 10.95%.  Over $500K ?  An additional 3% “surcharge”, meaning top-flight lawyers, successful doctors, quite a few upper managers, and above all Minnesota’s most successful entrepreneurs and job creators – will be paying just shy of 14%.

All for the privilege of living in Minnesota.

Even California and New York are smarter than this.

You can not tax your way out of a recession.  Government can not spend its way out of a recession; if it could, California and Illinois would be sitting pretty, and North Dakota would look like Michigan.

This budget should not be voted down in the Legislature.  It should be killed with fire.  Then voted down.

State Of The State

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I’m reviewing Governor Dayton’s first “State of the State” address.

Failure To Meet Me Halfway Is Like The Taliban Attacking Us, Or Something: Dayton kicked off with an invocation of 9/11 , and Bush’s invocation that “we are all united, and the nation has never been stronger”.

Curiously, he jumped from there to scolding the assembled Republicans; “The challenges we face threaten to overwhelm us”.  He scolded us on even thinking about shutting down government, demanding a pledge not to shut down the state government. As if keeping government going at all costs is the sole goal.  “It should not happen, and it need not happen”, as long as we “compromise our wills for the common good”.   And if we do so, we can tell the people “we succeeded”.   “If we succeed, the people will win.  If we fail, they will lose.  It’s that simple”.

Tax Cuts Equal Stagnation: Dayton noted that Minnesota’s per-capita income dropped, after the Ventura and Pawlenty tax cuts.  (Pay no attention the 2001 and 2008 recessions – or the fact that Minnesota started high up the list, and remains there.  Thanks, Governor Pawlenty!)

Give The Teachers Union What They Want, Or The Kids Get It!: Dayton next turned to the need to “invest” in education, bemoaning the cutbacks in Lakeville and the ten districts that have had to put children to work in the coal mines.  Er, wait – have had to cut back to four day weeks.  My bad.

He then went on to introduce the Teacher of the Year, and about 2/3 of Minnesota’s Superintendents, who seemed to be gathered in the gallery.  Interesting to note that the Teacher of the Year teaches at Maxfield, a school that has flunked its “No Child Left Behind” numbers for recent memory.

He then reiterated his promise to “increase K12 every year, no excuses, no exceptions”.

The Dayton Jobs Program: At this point in the speech, it seems to  largely involve schools; all-day kindergarten, early childhood education, and more.  He indulges in his regional snobbery – “how can Alabama have all day kindergarten, and we don’t?”  Should that be telling us something?

“Don’t You Dare Criticize My Owners!”: “For too long, teachers have been battered by criticisms of their service”.   Battered?  By your leave, your highness, may I, a mere taxpayer, speak?

Job Program Redux:  “We are falling behind in every key measure…” of transit construction.

“Roads and public transit are to the state what arteries are to the body”.   Naturally, we should spend 40% of our medical bill on expensive but low-capacity “arteries”…

Dayton is proposing bringing together more blue-chip panels of “experts” to come up with the real answer to fixing infrastructure.

Kissing Babies, Recognizing Soldiers: The ovations – apparently bipartisan – for SSGT Wenzel, his PFC son, and Red Bulls commander Col. Krska (sp?), and Police Officer of the Year Adam Bailey were by far the longest of the day.

I can go along with that.

MPR’s Mike Mulcahy: “the governor is certainly taking advantage of his prerogative to invite guests; he has about a dozen in the gallery”.

And…huh?:  Next came a screeching turn from defense and law enforcement to…health care?

Dayton asks rhetorical question: “the most daunting challege: how do we improve services without spending more?”   He wants to “provide the best private sector practices with public sector expertise” to make Minnesota the best in the world.   That should be interesting.  “It’ll succeed best if we cooperate with our state employees…treating them with the dignity and respect they deserve will be essential to our success”.  I read that as “hands off all government employment, bennies and pensions”.

And Now, More Job Program Talk!: “We need business to create more jobs…partner with education and government”.  “We are determined to streamlining permitting…while protecting the environment”.   Unfortunately, he notes, he was MPCA Commissioner Aussen on the case.  I call it a potemkin effort.

We Need To Spend Money To Save Money:  Dayton plugged his billion dollar bonding bill.  “A key factor in holding back recovery is the lack of construction jobs”.  In other words, let’s get those Teamsters paying their dues again!

We Want Business To Feel Appreciated: He notes that he’s asked the Depts of Ag, Tourism and, I dunno, Happy Thoughts to reach out to business.  I have a hunch it’ll be Dept. of Revenue that’ll be doing the reaching out…

“I stand ready to go anyplace in the state, nation or world…” to bring jobs to MN.

Want to emulate “Lean” business practices.

The Chase:  Dayton asks for “forbearance” from business, while he deals with the financial crisis, “which we inherited” from President Bush Governor Pawlenty.  He basically apologizes in advance for the budget he’s going to be submitted next week.

Because God Wants You To: Dayton cites bible verse, “to whom much has been given, much will be expected”, in leading up to his “tax the rich” proposal.  Mulcahy points out for the tenth time “more DFLes than Republicans” applauding…

And In Closing: “We were lefty a horrendous fiscal mess, a declining economy, and badly-managed state agencies”.  But if we do things his way, “we’ll retain our former greatness”.

Good thing that DFL legislature did such a spectacular job from 2009-2010!

Let’s Condense The Speech:  “I‘m going to raise taxes, and keep spending just like the times are good.  If you disagree, you are spitting on Tim Burnett’s grave.  We inherited the problem, so don’t blame me; just pony up“.

Response: Tim Pugmire interviewed Amy Koch afterward.  “When the governor called for tax increases, the response was nonexistent on the GOP side, and “tepid” even on the DFL side.  I think that tells us something about the reception he’ll get”.

Speaker Zellers: “The governor is looking backward for his solutions…from California to New York, governors are not raising taxes.  We need to adopt this in Minnesota, and not keep going back to get more from society”.

Pugmire talking with Paul Thissen: “I thought it was hopeful – that we can turn this state around again”.  Wow – we’re in the top of this nation on most rational measures; how much better do we need to be?

“I think the majority is pushing through some extreme bills that are not where Minnesotans are”.  The polls on November 2 might suggest differently, Rep. Thissen.

Times the word “Bipartisanship” (or similar) used: 5

Times the word “Compromise” (or similar) used: 3

Times the phrase “A Better Minnesota” – the PAC that his family, ex-wife and union masters – used: 6

Times the word “Invest”/”Investment” used: 12

Gary Gross liveblogged the SOTS here.

DFL To Minnesota Taxpayers: “4+0=3, Winston”

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As I pointed out this morning, the notion of the “Budget Deficit” is at best a bit of manipulative spin; at worst, it’s an outright fraud on Minnesota voters and taxpayers.  Especially taxpayers.

We walked back a couple of the more toxic myths about the Minnesota budget this morning, including the thing all Real Minnesota Taxpayers have to keep trying to hammer home with your friends, relatives and neighbors; the “deficit” is a fraud.

And yet that’s only scratching the surface of the myths in this deeply abusive media meme.

“Were Balancing The Budget On The Backs Of The Poor”: On the one hand, Minnesota pays among the most-generous welfare benefits in the country – “good” enough to draw people to Minnesota to cash in. It’s seem we have some room to pare things back without really hurting anyone. But the statement itself is yet another fraud.

And on the other hand, if hard times call for shared sacrifice, then why are “the poor” exempt from…keeping their funding the same, or at the very most to an inflation-adjusted increase, as well as a trimming of the most gratuitous fat?

And by that, I mean as opposed to having “Health And Human Services funding  jacked up by, ahem, 37% – which is what the DFL-dominated Legislature “forecast” for the 2012-2013 biennium two years ago (see page 4 of this PDF file).

Is the DFL planning for 37% more poor  people?  Or are we going to subsidize the poverty we have 37% more?

“Holding The K-12 Budget SteadyWill Gut Education”:  Except that the DFL’s budget “forecast” planned to increase K-12 funding by 7.6% – with almost all of it going to increasing Teachers’ Union salaries and headcount.  It’s yet another case of the DFL trying not only to insulate its biggest constituency – government and its employees – from  the economy the rest of us have to live with.

Budget cuts will “force” property tax hikes: Yet another bit of fraud. Cuts to “Local Government Aid” will make local governments responsible for (more of) their own spending, which is currently taken care of by state taxpayers.  Local Government Aid was intended to help smaller, poorer cities afford some of the amenities they couldn’t afford – luxuries like water treatment, sewers, actual roads and the like.  It has become a subsidy of DFL-controlled city governments.

Indeed, the budget is chock-full of little deficit-building subsidies for one DFL favored class or another.  The legislature is going to be addressing quite a number of them – in the interest of controlling the deficit – soon.

Stay tuned.

The “Deficit” Is A Fraud

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I’ve been fiddling about with trying to find more oblique, writer-y ways to say it – but sometimes the direct approach is best.

Talk of a $6.2 Billion deficit is a fraud.  People who refer to is are mistaken at best, lying at worst.

What we have is not a $6.2 billion deficit.  It’s a little more like this:

Imagine you take your kids to McDonald’s once a week.  Your son, a budding DFLer, demands that you add a weekly trip to Murray’s for the family once a week.  You refuse.   Your idiot child goes to the media and tells them that you are “cutting the budget by $300 a week“.

What do you do?

Give the kids the trip to Murray’s and quit complaining?

You must be a DFLer.

The Budget Deficit Is Based On A Wish List: The “deficit” that the DFL and media – and even a few Republicans – are talking about is exactly the same thing. It’s assessed against the “2012-2013   Budget Forecast“.

Which, you may note, is a forecast.  Not a “budget”; a forecast.  The “budget” is something the legislature hashes out on odd-numbered years for the following even-and-odd-numbered pair of years (called a “biennium”); in 2009, the Legislature passted the budget for 2010 and 2011.

That, and only that, is the “budget”.

The “forecast”, on the other hand, is what the budget will be in the following biennium, assuming that the budget increases according to current assumptions, legal mandates, and legislative wishes.

So the forecast comes partly from “baseline budgeting” – starting with the current budget for a deparment and guesstimating how much more of that department’s “services” will be “needed”.  In some cases, there are legal mandates involved, And in most of them, there’s the DFL’s urge to leave  a huge budgetary turd the GOP’ doorstep.  Because whatever the cause, the DFL legislature that just got sent packing “forecast” the budget jumping from $30.266 billion to $38.591 billion – a 27.51% jump.

Did you increase your family budget 27.51%?

No.  And either did the government – yet.  Because the budget process – the one that leads us to the actual budget – just started, really, last week.

The “Structural Deficit” Is A Cop-Out: It is true that there are legal mandates to increase parts of the budget. The answer is deceptively simple; if you have a structural problem, the best – albeit not necessarily easiest – way to fix it is to fix the structure.  Put another way,   these mandates need to be reassessed, and most likely abolished. House File 2, sponsored by Rep. Banaian, will be a good start; it’ll start to chip away at the current practice of increasing spending for programs on autopilot; every government department will have to justify its spending and, in its most gratifyingly Scandinavian feature, sic the Legislative Auditor on state agencies with an aim toward sunsetting them when their usefulness has passed.

The most important thing to remember, though – and tell your co-workers and family members and neighbors, if the topic comes up – is, once again, this:

The “Budget Deficit” is a fraud.

Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned

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I have broken the Tenth Commandment.

Quotes from “the Governor”:

“Under our administration, state government will do only what is necessary – no more, no less,”

[in] his first day in office [the governor authorized his Attorney General] to join a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Democrats, who controlled state government until Monday, had prevented the…attorney general from doing that last year.

[the Governor] was interrupted 14 times by applause, the loudest and most sustained coming when he declared: “What is failing us is not our people or our places. What is failing us is the expanse of government. But we can do something about it right here, right now, today.”

[the Governor proposed legislators, in special session, move to] give tax breaks to business owners and income tax credits for contributions to health savings accounts; reduce business regulations; provide protections from lawsuits; give the governor more say in state rule making; turn the state Department of Commerce into a partly private entity to focus on job creation; and require a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of the Legislature to approve any increases to the state sales, income and franchise taxes.

[the Governor] also promised to improve education, protect natural resources, honor the role of family and “right-size state government by ensuring government is providing only the essential services our citizens need and our taxpayers can afford.”

“Let me be clear on one thing: Increasing taxes is off the table – as it will counter our efforts to provide economic growth”

“[This State] is open for business.”

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Governor.

Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, Governor Dayton was heard to say

“Meow.”

Sturdevant: “The DFL Set A Fiscal IED!”

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The old “take a theatrical look in the dictionary to set up today’s column”  trick is an old favorite for writers who’ve hit bottom in the idea bag but still need to crank something out. 

I am, of course, nowhere near the bottom of the barrel – and I’ve always found the whole “Hey, lookit what I pulled out of the dictionary!” thing to be a tiresome cliché. 

Still, I found myself drawn, mirabile dictu, to the dictionary this morning.  For some reason, I felt the need to look up “flack“.  ‘Strooth!  And here’s what it said:

flack    /flæk/  [flak]  

–noun Sometimes Disparaging .

1. press agent.

2. publicity.

–verb (used without object)

3. to serve as a press agent or publicist: to flack for a new rock group.

–verb (used with object)

4. to promote; publicize: to flack a new record.

Use flack in a Sentence

Origin:

1935–40; said to be after Gene Flack, a movie publicity agent

Utterly unrelated to my trip to the dictionary (pinky swear!), I read yesterday’s Lori Sturdevant column in the Strib.  No, I know – I constantly accuse Sturdevant of being, well, a flack for the DFL.  But there is, I swear to Jah Rastafari,  no connection.  Really!

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s self-congratulatory performance Thursday in response to that day’s whale-of-a-deficit state budget forecast sent me to the dictionary [Oh, snap! – Ed.] to check the meaning of the word “chutzpah.”

“Supreme self-confidence: nerve, gall,” Merriam-Webster Online said.

If chutzpah isn’t a fitting label for the show in the governor’s reception room, it surely comes close. It also may be apt for the temperament required for a governor who has presided over eight years of persistent fiscal trouble to mount a bid for the presidency.

Poor Lori.  Tim Pawlenty, governor and in the front ranks of Sturdevant’s phalanx of betes noir of eight years, is moving on to bigger and better things – certainly a run at the Presidency, and most likely a really, really great career in some capacity or another no matter what happens, while the DFL is set to endure at least four years in the Legislative cold and with, frankly, the worst governor in Minnesota history (even before inauguration), as she wraps up her career in a dying industry.   Tha’ts gotta stink.

No other governor in Minnesota’s 152-year history has handed his successor a $6.2 billion deficit forecast along with the keys to the Capitol’s executive suite.

But to be fair to Governor Pawlenty (an idea that no doubt causes Ms. Sturdevant abdominal pain), no other governor in Minnesota history has had to face such a grossly, profligately irresponsible legislative majority.   The DFL majority this past four years has set the “standard” for rodentine cowardice and expedient buck-passing.

Best of all – Sturdevant admits it herself, later in the piece. 

But we’ll get to that.

But if Pawlenty has any remorse or regrets about passing that much trouble along to the next occupant, he didn’t display them. Instead, he boasted that he was ending his watch with the state “on the right track” and with “money in the bank.”

And so he should!  Minnesota has – despite the DFL majority’s best efforts – an unemployment rate two points below the national average.  He kept (to a gratifyingly great extent) his 2002 “no new taxes” promise, and held the line against a crushing DFL majority for the past four years. 

Though Thursday’s numbers foretold a worsening problem in 2012-13, Pawlenty pronounced it “very manageable.” He allowed that most of it would have vanished already if his old nemeses, the DFLers who controlled the 2009-10 Legislature, would have done his bidding.

And Pawlenty was absolutely right.

Had he been paired with a legislature that was focused on anything other than catastrophic spending as a matter of principle, we wouldn’t be in this jam. 

But this is the DFL – the party that believes your money belongs to the government first and foremost.

Even though the 2010 Legislature gave its blessing to virtually all of the spending cuts and shifts Pawlenty imposed unilaterally (and, it turned out, illegally) in 2009, it deviated from the governor’s script in one respect. The cuts were designed to boomerang back for reconsideration by a new governor and the 2011 Legislature. (Those crafty DFLers didn’t anticipate that in the 2011 Legislature, they would be in the minority.

Did you catch that?  Sturdevant is saying that the DFL engineered the “budget crisis” to try to embarass the GOP!  

The DFL – the Party of Fiscal Sabotage!  Lori Sturdevant says so!  And if there’s an official voice of the DFL, Sturdevant is it in all but official name.  

How very statesmanlike of the DFL!  Way to look out for the future of Minnesota!

  The answer is simple; the GOP majority should show the new “Governor” no mercy, and no quarter.   He and his constitutional officers are the last vestiges of a party that gambled with Minnesota’s fiscal well-being, and lost. If that’s what the DFL did – essentially set a fiscal IED to try to pad their own political nest – then they deserve a good crushing. 

Spanish has a good word for that; Degüello.  Applied rhetorically, of course.  I – insignificant schnook blogger that I am – certainly plan to practice it for the next four years.

Look it up in the dictionary yourself.  It’s your cliché, not mine.

Top Five Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor – #5: We Are Better Than This

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Think back over the past six months of Mark Dayton’s campaign. Think over the ads he’s run.  Think back over the messages.

Why would you vote for Mark Dayton?

Now, make no mistake; the Dayton campaign – and its “third-party” advertising from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which is “third party” only on the most technical sense of the term, having been funded largely by the Dayton family – has tried to give you all sorts of reasons to vote against Tom Emmer; two drunk driving arrests 20 and 30 years ago, some grossly out-of-context statements about food server wages and legislative records and some poking and prodding at his conservative voting record.

But why would one vote for Mark Dayton?

Let’s go through his ads and see if we can find a positive, affirmative reason to vote for Mark Dayton, rather than against Tom Emmer.  Let’s run through the Top Five reasons:

5. He wants to tax “the rich”.  Which “rich?”  We’ll come back to that later.

4. He was a high school teacher forty years ago, and will make sure that schools get more money, or something. The message is a little vague.

3. Er…

I got nothing.

The fact is, Mark Dayton’s entire campaign has been run on slime.  Think of the campaign’s salient points, such as they’ve been:

  • Emmer favors “Uncertified” Teachers… – …of exactly the type that Mark Dayton himself once was.
  • Minnesota Cities need to be able to launder their spending through the state to dodge accountability to their own taxpayers: We pretty well addressed and debunked that here, and here, and here, and here, and here.
  • Emmer Got Sued!: The Strib’s Pat Doyle “distinguished” himself with his hit piece on Emmer, which managed to maneuver itself into spreading everything about Emmer’s legal and personal record that could be construed as unfavorable – while carefully excising all exculpatory context.  Someday when they give awards for showing that “journalistic ethics” are merely “a framework by which journalists justify the means toward their ends”, Doyle will be a winner emeritus.
  • Emmer Hates Gays – Except even the most remedial degree of reporting shows that the whole claim is based on a fraudulently-overblown and out-of-context claim of support for one Bradlee Dean.  This was blown up into the most contrived astro-turf campaign I have seen in all my years of watching DFL astroturf – a coast-to-coast fabrication of the vapours that generated much heat about Target Corporation’s donation of $150K in cash and services to a pro-business PAC that, nonetheless, did nothing much except show America what a bunch of yapping McCarthyites Minnesota liberals are.
  • The Phantom Plan: Until about Labor Day – four solid months – the DFL and its minions caterwauled about Emmer’s lack of a “budget plan“.  Then he released a plan – which balanced the budget – and pointed out the inconvenient truth that Dayton’s first whack at a plan came up $3billion light; his second plan is a little over a billion off the mark.
  • Emmer Had Two DUIs, and wanted to lower penalties for drunk driving!: The episodes were twenty and thirty years ago.  And Emmer has been constantly forthcoming about his youthful mistakes, unlike Senator Dayton’s silence on his record of alcoholism, mental illness and other erratic behavior (of which more later).  As to ABM’s giggly claims that Emmer tried to “lower penalties for drunk driving” – it turned to be a gross, craven distortion, the sort of thing that was called a “filthy lie” in a more direct age.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota broke records, not only for spending (nearly unreported by the mainstream media and utterly unchallenged by our state’s so-called “watchdog” organizations), but for the serial falsity of its claims.  The DFL’s bullpen of news-release blogs were only too happy to carry the water.  While the DFL caterwauled about corporate funding, ABM spent nearly four million in funds from public employee unions and…the Dayton Family and candidate Dayton himself.

Mark Dayton has no positive vision for the state of Minnesota.

He waves the flag of “class” envy – really achievement envy – and vague blandishments about school funding…and that’s about it.

Minnesota deserves a better vision than this.

Minnesota deserves better than Mark Dayton.

Behold The DFL Jobs Plan

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After decades of control by the ultraliberal DFL and a GOP that was merely center-left until probably fifteen years ago, Minnesota has had business and corporate tax rates that rivalled some of the nation’s worst tax hellholes – New York, California, New Jersey.

Liberals inevitably respond “well, look at all the companies that have their headquarters here!”.  And it’s true – Minnesota has more Fortune 500 companies per capita than any other state in the union.   And if you were the CEO of, say, Best Buy or Ecolab or 3M, I’d bet you’d rather live in Minneapolis than, say, Mississippi.

But a company is more than just CEOs.

The good news; 3M, based in Saint Paul, is creating new jobs!

3M today announced the expansion of its manufacturing facility for its 3M Ultra Barrier Solar Film. As a key component supplier to the solar industry, this expansion will support the growing demand for high efficiency flexible PV modules.

And where are those jobs?

The majority of the facility expansion, located in Columbia, Missouri, is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

Minnesota’s corporations are not creating manufacturing or distribution jobs in Minnesota.  Even their research and engineering work is being farmed out to out-of-state or offshore companies at an accelerating rate.

You can thank the DFL (and the old, pre-Pawlenty-era GOP that the DFL’s sock puppets are always babbling about) for this.

It’s time to lower business tax rates in Minnesota, and for the government programs that depend on them to suck it up and count on the revenues rising when Minnesotans actually start going back to work.

And that pretty much inevitably means voting for Emmer, and your local GOP candidate for the Legislature, next Tuesday.

The Dayton Dustbowl: Really Really Dead Dead Dead On Arrival

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Between the Tea Party and the general distaste for more taxation and government spending, it might be  bad year to be proposing…taxing and spending.

As I noted on Labor Day, Mark Dayton’s tax-hike-based budget plan is very likely dead on arrival at the legislature.  My rationale at the time was that Dayton’s tax hike was ten times the size of the increase that the DFL managed to pass by a single vote (Tarryl Clark’s, as luck would have it), when they had overwhelming control of both chambers of the legislature, at the height of Obama mania in one of the most ostensibly liberal states in the nation.  Will they get ten times the money out of a legislature that is much more conservative, maybe with a flipped chamber, and an electorate that is just not buying more spending?

According to MPR, even some DFLers aren’t buying it:

DFL candidate former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton wants to raise income taxes on upper earners, but you won’t hear about it from some DFL legislative candidates.

You also don’t hear “Democrat” or “DFL” from some of them.  But I digress.

Some are also promising to vote against the proposed income tax increase if Dayton is elected governor.

“I don’t talk about that,” said DFL state Sen. Terri Bonoff of Minnetonka, who spent a recent afternoon knocking on doors in in Plymouth, a mostly Republican area of her suburban district.

Bonoff is a moderate Democrat, and she said her re-election bid depends on the support of independents and some Republicans.

It’s not that Bonoff is against tax hikes, of course:

“I have a lot of respect for Mark Dayton. But I have my views about what we ought to do with regard to taxes, and it’s not about protecting the rich,” she said. “It’s about right now we have too much reliance on the income tax, and as the demographics change in our state and our folks are getting out of the workplace, more and more seniors, they don’t have that kind of income stream.

“If we’re too reliant on the income tax, I think we’re going to find ourselves in this same mess three years from now.”

The DFL opposition seems to be largely coming from districts that should be GOP, but went DFL during the ’06 and ’08 elections, which were terrible for Republicans.  One of those is Kathy Saltzman, who won her seat in largely-Republican Woodbury in 2006:

The concern is similar in the east metro suburbs. Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, who’s locked in a tough re-election fight, also stresses her independence on tax issues. She’s voted against previous attempts to raise income taxes on upper earners.

Saltzman hasn’t endorsed a candidate for governor, but she’s met with Dayton and Horner. Saltzman said she asked Dayton to be open to other tax ideas, not just taxing the rich.

“I believe that it’s not about targeting one group or one group of services,” she said. “We really should be looking at an overall tax reform policy. That would be the most responsible way to approach this.”

It’s not that they’re deserting the DFL, naturally…:

Saltzman said Republican Tom Emmer’s cuts-alone approach to the budget is unrealistic. She favors a balanced approach that includes some revenue, and is open to a sales tax expansion as part of a broader reform of the tax code.

But Saltzman said she will not support the Dayton tax plan. “It will be very difficult to get it by me. I would say he won’t get it by me. He will note get my vote,” she said.

The Dayton Tax “Plan” will never see the light of day, if Dayton is elected.

Electing Dayton would be a complete waste of time.

Media: AWOL Redux – Nothing Personal; Just Business

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Rachel Stassen-Berger, writing in the Strib yesterday:

Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer is all over the new Republican theme — Democratic candidate Mark Dayton doesn’t have a complete budget plan.

Emmer hammered the point, made by supportive Republicans repeatedly during the past few days, on a Tuesday spot on Minnesota Public Radio.

“Let’s start talking about the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. Sen. Dayton has proposed a plan that is billions of dollars short,” Emmer said. He went on to suggest that Dayton will have to increase taxes more folks than he’s specified — couples making taxable income of $150,000 and singles earning $130,000. “How far are you willing to go?”

Let’s extend that thought for a moment:  Mark Dayton is not a dumb guy.  And he’s got people on his campaign staff who are even smarter.  They don’t own a supercomputer – but they don’t need one to put together the broad outlines of a budget.  Their campaign isn’t short of staff or funding, obviously.

So if you think the only budget that the Dayton campaign has is the one that’s on the website – the one that grins a big dumb grin and says “we’re $890 million short” with the same seriousness of a junior high kid saying the dog ate his homework – then I have to say with all due respect that you’re beggaring reason.   Either the campaign is incompetent, or they know where that extra $890 million is coming from, and would rather the electorate not know.

And if you assume Democrats and Dayton aren’t just plain stupid, that leaves you with only “b”

“Put it on paper, Sen. Dayton,” Emmer said. (Republicans on Twitter and on blogs have taken to accusing individual reporters of negligence for not following suit.)

Stassen-Berger links to my Twitter account, as well as my “AWOL Media” piece yesterday.  I wouldn’t use the phrase “accusing of negligence”, really – it’s got a legalistic tinge to it that’s a little unseemly for free speech.

It just seems that the media, which six weeks ago were hot to get all the details of the Emmer budget, has suddenly gotten incredibly incurious.  And yet now that Dayton’s budget has a large, suspicious hole – and there really is no solution but to jack up taxes on the middle class – suddenly it seems that the people don’t have a “right to know”, accorinding to our regional political media.

I mean, did you see Esme Murphy?

She might as well have been giving the Senator a massage.  “Do you have any plans?”  Er, nope.  And it ended there!

Did you hear Keri Miller’s interview with Tom Emmer?  Back before Emmer released his budget?  She went after him like a barracuda after Charlie the Tuna.

Does the public – especially us middle-class schnook taxpayers – still have a right to know now that it’s the favorite son of Minnesota’s political “elite?”

I mean…:

Dayton has acknowledged that his budget plan comes up nearly $1 billion short. That’s in part because his income tax plan won’t bring in as much money as he had hoped. He has specified how he would make the cuts he’s found, although some are estimates and others have been deemedunrealistic. But he admits a “gap,” which leads opponents to believe he’ll raise more in taxes.

…I’m a complete schlemiel as a “reporter”, and even I see that these are some huge, valid questions!

So David Brauer – who’s never covered up his lefty sympathies, but seems to try to do a decent job anyway – asked via Twitter:

@mitchpberg regarding @Rachelsb & @MinnPost, does thishttp://bit.ly/c4f26t and thishttp://t.co/jj16mXx get them off your bad list?

He links to a this Rachel Stassen-Berger story in the Strib, and a Doug Grow piece in the MinnPost.  Stassen-Berger did, indeed, note that Dayton’s budget comes up short – but there’s no evidence that I’ve seen (I’m willing to be corrected!) that she’s gotten up at a Dayton presser and said “OK, Chauncey Fauntelroy, if you don’t have to hit the middle class, who do you have to get the $890 million?  We’ve got all day, Yale boy” (Those might be my words rather than Stassen-Berger’s).

Grow makes the valid point that…:

…no governor, no matter how popular, will be able to zip a budget package through the Legislature without major changes. In this case, whoever is governor likely will not be elected with a majority of the vote, meaning there will be little chance to claim any mandate, so you can expect nasty legislative fights.

…while basically claiming a pox on all their fiscal houses.

And, most importantly, both of these pieces were two weeks ago.  Juuuuust about the time that the non-wonk class – all those actual voters – started thinking about the election.

Which was why I took exception to Brauer’s followup tweet:

@mitchpberg Fair question. Would venture Dayton’s gap is well-known, covered and acknowledged. For many weeks, Emmer seemed to be ducking.

Well-known to whom?  Political reporters and political junkies and fire-breathing political bloggers?  Sure!

The average voter – especially the ones who start paying attention to politics sometime between the first and fifteenth of October?

Hell – I’ve talked with candidates for the State House who haven’t read anything about this yet.

So while I’m not going to say that our assembled mass of journalists are “negligent” for not asking, I’m still curious; when the public has a right to know, does it imply they’re supposed to exercise that right by developing a jones for research?

Look, journos; if your line is “all three of the candidates’ budgets leave questions”, then ask them.  That’s what you get the big bucks for.  Hell, I’d do it, if any of them (but Emmer) returned my calls!  And since neither of them do, I – and, more importantly, we, the entire body politic – have to depend on y’all, Tim Pugmire and Tom Scheck and Bill Salisbury and Rachel Stassen-Berger and Pat Kessler to do it.

Thing is, so far in the race, it’s Emmer that’s been getting the questioning; Dayton seems to be the only one who can get away with saying “I’ll get back to you on November 3”.

Am I wrong?

What say you, Tim and Rachel and Tom and Bill and Pat?

Media: AWOL! Day One!

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Remember in June and July?

When the Dayton Campaign, and their minimum-wage minions in the leftyblogosphere, demanded that Tom Emmer release his budget plan?

Because without an Emmer Budget Plan in place for their perusal, democracy itself was in mortal danger!

The entire media was in on it. of course.

Tom Scheck at MPR?  Yep.  He was asking.

Tim Pugmire at MPR?  Yep, he wanted the details, too.

Eric Black at the MNPost?  It was surely important to him!

The question certainly fascinated Rachel Stassen-Berger at the Strib!

Over the past five weeks, Tom Emmer has released a budget plan that balances the budget, and lays the groundwork for the kind of economic growth that actually sets economies up for the kind of long-term prosperity that makes budget fiascoes like the past four years dim, comic memories.

In the meantime, Mark Dayton’s first budget cratered – came up $3 Billion short – and his second attempt is well over a billion off the mark, and Dayton is now saying budgets don’t really matter that much anyway until he’s elected.

So I’m wondering – where are the media who were so strident about having a budget to fact-check last summer?

Rachel Stassen-Berger?  Tim Pugmire?  Tom Scheck?  Pat Kessler?  Bill Salisbury?  Eric Black?  David Brauer?

Where are all the great journalistic instincts of one of the nation’s putatively top-twenty media markets?

Or don’t the people have a right to know anymore?

Let’s start counting up days until someone in the regional mainstream media – MPR, the Strib, the PiPress, WCCO-TV, anyone covers the vaporous vacuity of the Dayton “budget plan”.

Good thing I don’t pay for ink, huh?

The Dayton Dustbowl: Living In A World Of Pure Imagination

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Remember last June?

According to the DFL and their buildup of minimum wage leftyblog minions, the fact that Tom Emmer hadn’t released a detailed budget plan was a finger in the eye of The People.  They had a right to knoooooooooow!, after all.  And they had to knooooooooooow it right then and there, dagnabbit!

Then Emmer released a budget plan – one that balanced the budget without raising taxes, lowered taxes on job-creating activities, and left K12 education untouched.

And then it turned out that Mark Dayton’s first attempt at a budget plan fell three billion dollars short on balancing the budget.

And then his second attempt fell 890 million dollars short (or maybe more!).

And now, suddenly, having a budget plan in place just isn’t that big a deal!
He even said on WCCO on Sunday morning, amid Esme Murphy painting his toenails…

Can you imagine what Esme Murphy would have done had Tom Emmer ever called his plan a “work in progress?”

Now, Mark Dayton’s a smart guy.  And he’s got a lot of smart people working for him.  And while they don’t have access to a “supercomputer” to figure out budget numbers, they don’t need one.  A fairly complex Excel spreadsheet will get you the big-picture numbers; some not-cheap software (certianly avaiable to the compaign) can work out the fine details.  Just like Emmer did.

And yet they didn’t.

Wait.  Do you really believe that, after two go-arounds, that the Dayton camp doesn’t have a budget?

Rubbish.

They do.  They just don’t want you to see it.

Because the real Dayton Budget Plan – the one they don’t want you to see yet – socks it to the Middle Class. There is no other way.  To think that Dayton doesn’t know this beggars credulity.  To think that there is any other politically-palatable answer is pollyannaish and just plain stupid.

There are huge questions to be asked about the nonexistant “Dayton Budget Plan”.

So when will the media ask?

Anyone?

Is that an echo I hear?

The Dayton Dustbowl: Those Pesky Contractors Redux

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Remember when we first looked at the Dayton Dustbowl, back on Labor Day?

We looked at all the holes in the original Dayton Dustbowl – the 1.0 version of Mark Dayton’s budget plan.

One bit that got carried through verbatim in Dust Bowl 2.0 was this plan – to save $425 million per biennium by halving the number of contractors employed by the state.

Has it really only been a month?

At any rate, Catherine Richter of MPR’s “Poligraph” reports on what SITD readers have known for a month, now; that this just isn’t going to work:

Dayton’s correct that the state spends approximately $850 million per biennium on outsourcing. And cutting such activity in half could save the state more than $400 million.

But in practice, Dayton’s plan appears difficult to implement. Many of the state’s contracts provide essential services that the state would still have to supply one way or another.

And I had forgotten about this next bit, here (emphasis added):

Further, Minnesota law requires departments and agencies prove no state workers can take on these tasks before they contract with a firm.

Minnesota contractors already provide services that are either legally mandated, completely unavailable on the state workforce, or both; bridge engineers, business analysts, concrete workers, surveyors, usability engineers, prison doctors and the hundreds or thousands of other jobs that state doesn’t need at all, until they absolutely, positively do.

If the state gets rid of “half” of the contractors – who are already doing jobs that the state needs, but does not have in the workforce – then in most cases someone’s gotta do it.

And that “someone” is going to be union labor, in all its exquisite expense, and racking up all those hideously expensive defined-benefit pensions that are going to eat this state alive about the time our kids start paying taxes.

The way I see it, that’s a $425,000,000 hole per biennium blown in the Dayton 2.0 budget.  Tack that onto the $890,000,000 shortfall it already has – by the Dayton campaign’s own admission! – and the Son Of Dayton Dustbowl is actually $1.315 billion short of solving the deficit.

The conservative alt media has called another one.

The Dayton Dustbowl: For The Record

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On the show on Saturday, I talked about how the Dayton “2.0” budget – his second shot at the budget, after his first attempt came up three freaking billion dollars short – was still one freaking billion dollars short.

Someone called off the air asking for proof; I’d gotten into an interview, so couldn’t answer it right away.

But the answer, as a matter of fact, is on the Dayton “Mulligan budget” website, down at the very bottom.

To wit:

T O T A L SPENDING CUTS: $1.213 Billion
T O T A L RE V ENUE INCRE ASES & SPENDING CUTS: $4.876
Billion
F ORE C AST DE F I CI T : $5.766 Billion

TOTAL SPENDING CUTS: $1.213 Billion

TOTAL REVENUE INCREASES & SPENDING CUTS: $4.876 Billion

FORECAST DEFICIT : $5.766 Billion

So do the math; the difference is $890 Million Dollars.

That’s after raising taxes on “the rich” (families making over $150K a year); that’s after a tax hike twelve times the size of the $400 million hike that the DFL-dominated legislature managed to pass by one vote (Tarryl Clark’s!) during a session at the height of Obamamania.

If the media weren’t so busy checking up on Tom Emmer’s landscapers and exactly what percentage of cities he said received Local Government Aid, the people might actually know something about this and…

…oh, wait.  Never mind.

The Dayton Dustbowl 2.0: Not Ready For Prime Time

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After four months of demanding “details” from Tom Emmer, and a month of carping about the details that were actually released, Mark Dayton had to…

…um, scrap his first budget and start over.

The second try isn’t a whole lot better than the first.

I’ll do a much more detailed analysis later, but at first blush, Dayton Dustbowl 2.0 isn’t much better than the first.

Some key points:

Shift This: Remember when Democrats, leftybloggers and the media (pardon the redundancy) excoriated Emmer for delaying repayment of “the shift” – the 1.4 billion of education budget pushed to future biennia in the last budget?  And now Dayton would never ever ever do that?  Either do they; Dayton now puts delaying “repayment” on the table.

It’s Racist: We honkies took Minnesota from the Native Americans.  To give them a leg back up, the State of Minnesota has granted them an exclusive franchise on casinos.  Dayton wants to build a “racino” – a casino at the Canterbury Downs racetrack. In addition to breaking the state’s promise – “reparations”, if you will – with the victims of cracker perfidy, it’s likely the proposal to create such a casino would face huge legal and legislative hurdles.  It’s not so much a “plan” as it is “hope”.  Hope is not a plan.  And Dayton banks a lot of money on this.

All Of The Worst Parts Of 1.0 – Still Right There!: It’s still going to jack up income taxes on upper-middle-class wage earners to almost 11 percent.  Not the “rich”, mind you – there’s nary a reference to trust funds anywhere in the budget.  It’s going to send more job creation out of state.  It’s going to send more than a few Minnesota businesses packing for more hospitable states.  It’s going to be a boon to South Dakota.

Some Of The “Savings” Aren’t: Dayton still claims that cutting state contractors will save hundreds of millions.  Of course, much of that work will sooner or later go to state employees, especially unionized ones.  Maybe not in the next biennium (maybe), but certainly the next one.  Today’s “cut” becomes tomorrow’s eternal entitlement.

It’s Still DOA: The legislature, as Phil Krinkie said, will never pass it.  In the last biennium, the legislature could only pass the current budget by one vote – that of Tarryl Clark. This with the DFL in control of two chambers of the Legislature, at the height of Obamamania. The next Legislature, with a chamber likely to flip and with the wind blowing against profligate spending an taxing…

…well, you fill in the blanks.

And finally, It’s Still A Billion Bucks Short: He’s a billion short!  A freaking billion short! A billion!  A million large! What the flamin’ hootie-hoo – a billion!

When will the media admit to the people of Minnesota – Dayton is not ready for prime time.

More – much more – later.

The Dayton Dust Bowl: Even Scapegoats Have Limits

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Dayton Says: “Taxing the Rich” will raise four billion dollars.

The MN Department of Revenue says:

This proposal adds a new top bracket at a rate of 10.95% starting in tax year 2011. The 10.95% bracket is set at $150,000 for married joint filers, $75,000 for married separate filers, and $130,000 for single and head of household filers. The new bracket is not adjusted yearly for inflation although the bottom brackets are adjusted for inflation in keeping with current law. The tax year impact is as follows:

And the end result, according to the MNDoR?

Tax Year Impact

______ ($000s)_______

TY 2011 $752,800

TY 2012 $813,600

TY 2013 $879,100

In other words, cranking the tax on “the rich” to a confiscatory 8 to 11% (actually 10.95, but let’s be honest here…) brings in less than half of what the Dayton budget “plan” says it will.

But even that is over triple the tax hike that the completely DFL-dominated Legislature could pass at the height of Obamamania.

Mark Dayton’s budget is DOA.  Electing him – or “Mini-Mark”, Tom Hornery , whose plan is marginally less profligate and, at this point, vastly less-vetted by the in-the-bag media – would be colossal wastes of time.

The Dayton Dust Bowl: Details, Details

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The Twin Cities media continues its ongoing wet tongue kiss of Mark Dayton.  This time, it’s Eric Black at the MinnPost – who sniffs that if you’re of those weirdos that focuses on big principles and visions of limited government getting out of the peoples’ way, then maybe Tom Emmer might be for you.  But…

But  if you value straight talk about what a candidate plans to do, based on facts and logic, DFL guv nominee Mark Dayton demonstrated again today at the Humphrey Institute that he is in a class by himself.

That’s another way of saying, apparently, that he droned on about facts and figures for a long, long time.

He also told the press gaggle in the hallway that he may not release the figures he gets from the Revenue Department on his plan, suggesting that it was getting to be unfair that he is so transparent about his taxing and spending proposals while Emmer continues to be so mysterious.

That’s our Twin Cities media; always looking out to make sure people are “fair” to Mark Dayton.  Whether it’s making sure nobody “unfairly” notes his and his family’s contributions to the PAC that’s been running a three-month smear campaign that gets an “F” for accuracy from “factcheck.org”, to breathlessly parroting Daytons’ whinging about the “unfairness” of the GOP trackers actually holding him accountable for his statements (like saying at yesterday’s debate that cutting state contractors will save over $600 million a year, when his own budget “plan” says it’s more like $425, and even that is misleading).

He told [U of M Poli Sci professor Larry] Jacobs that he won’t raise the whole $4 billion he seeks from the taxes he has specified so far, and during his presentation he told the audience that he is “looking for suggestions” of other revenue-raising ideas that will be consistent with his overall determination to make the state tax system more progressive

In other words, for all the “detail” Dayton offers, he can’t close the budget.  Even his own budget “plan” says he comes up over $600,000,000 short – and that’s assuming that the legislature under a Dayton Administration, likely to be much more conservative than the 2010 class, would pass a tax hike fifteen times as large as the one that passed  by exactly one vote (that of Taryll Clark) in the last session.

So could you please pony up an idea or two, so Eric Black’s narrative can remain undisturbed?

Within an hour or so, Tom Emmer is going to release a plan.  It is going to make the DFLers yak up their skulls, because it will not hold government immune from the vagaries of the economy (which is all Dayton and Horner plan to do).

But I’m fairly confident it’ll provide the answers Dayton’s “plan” fobs off for later.