While the Minnesota Bar Association is officially non-partisan, most “Trial Lawyers” support the DFL; “Trial Lawyers'” political giving runs about 11-1 for the Democrats, nationwide.

In other words, like most liberals, they’re all for taxes…that affect other people.

But Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s new budget?  That’s different:

Today Gov. Dayton unveiled a budget plan that includes a sales tax on legal services. If the proposal becomes law, Minnesota would become only the fourth state to tax legal services. The Minnesota State Bar Association strongly opposes taxing Minnesota citizens and businesses that need legal advice to plan for their futures and protect themselves.

Robert Enger, a legal aid attorney from Bemidji and president of the Minnesota State Bar Association, refers to a tax on consumers of legal services as a “misery tax.” Individuals and families often need to hire lawyers when they are vulnerable and suffering; such as a victim of the economy filing for bankruptcy, a family facing foreclosure, or an innocent victim paralyzed by a drunk driver. A sales tax on legal services would push citizens to either forego their legal rights or attempt to represent themselves in the complex justice system. Minnesota’s court filing fees are among the highest in the nation, which creates an access to justice problem that will only be exacerbated by taxing legal services.

A 5.5 percent sales tax on lawyers means 5.5 percent fewer people will hire lawyers.

The overwhelming majority of states don’t tax legal services because it is widely considered poor public policy and economically damaging.

(Note: that’s true of every good or service.  But let’s not digress)

Business will be burdened with significant additional costs, and the tax will be especially unfair to small businesses. Corporations large enough to employ lawyers will avoid the sales tax, while smaller businesses will have to pay. Businesses needing legal assistance to expand or locate in Minnesota may choose to do go elsewhere, and Minnesota law firms with national and international practices will have every incentive to relocate attorneys and staff to one of the many states that do not tax legal services.

It’s not just that lawyers are having trouble – although even in good times, Minnesota creates about a third as may lawyer jobs as it does law school graduates.

It’s that when a regular schnook does need a lawyer, it’s usually a stressful situation; it’s already hideously expensive.   And if you need the lawyer to fight a big corporation or any level of government, you’re already at a disadvantage; Governor Messinger’s Daytons’ plan will leave you at a 5.5% worse disadvantage.

To which liberals – in this case, a west-metro DFLer on Twitter – say “Let them eat cake!”:

@mitchpberg @patkessler middle class can go pro se if not poor enough for pub defender & too cheap for atty. Thousands are pro se.

— Sue Lantto (@SueLantto) January 23, 2013

I guess that settles that, then!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As our “leaders” debate how to solve the fiscal cliff, the President seems intent on making sure the rich pay most of it.

Let me just note some of the “tax the rich” schemes that already have been tried and found to be failures at best, counterproductive at worst: Window tax,Brick tax, Wallpaper tax,Hearth tax, and Yacht tax.

Look, here’s the deal:  rich people are rich, they’re not stupid.  Jack tax rates too high and they’ll simply move and take their money with them.

In every one of these schemes, the rich altered their behavior to avoid the taxes, the poor didn’t pay taxes anyway, so the burden fell squarely on the middle class – too “rich” to be exempt, too poor to escape.

President Obama is a Harvard scholar.  His advisors are the smartest in the world.  He cannot be unaware of history.  Why is he intent on repeating it?

Why are Republicans even thinking about letting him repeat it?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

The answer? “Gérard Depardieu est Jean Galt!”

Few Frenchmen are more recognizable at home and abroad than the movie star Gerard Depardieu. Last week, Depardieu caused a great controversy in his native land by moving to Belgium – partly to avoid the 75 percent income tax on the wealthy that was introduced by the socialist President of France,

What was it that Gandhi said? “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then you win?”

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The hype around the “fiscal cliff” reminds me of the hype around Y2K which supports my suspicion that’s all it is – hype.

If the GOP fails to cave in, we automatically enact the spending cuts adopted by John Kerry’s Super Committee and cut the monthly shortfall in half. We don’t cut the Budget in half, just the amount we’re Short each month.

We’ll still be spending ourselves into bankruptcy, only not as fast. That should be okay with Democrats, shouldn’t it? Incrementalism, and all that?

Joe Doakes

Como park

Like most of the Democrat (and DFL) agenda, it’s there to gull the gullible…

…and draw attention away from the real problem; the upcoming debt and entitlement crunches.

Hey, how about that upcoming royal baby?  Lindsay Lohan’s sex life?  X-Factor?

Anyone?

Governor Dayton’s transportation advisors are advocating taxing the crap out of gasoline, and jamming people onto buses and trains.

Is anyone surprised?

The recommendations include two ways to raise $15.2 billion through a higher gas tax — an upfront hike of 10 cents per gallon followed by annual 1.5-cent increases for 19 years, or a series of 3.5-cent increases over five years with 1.5-cent increases for 15 years afterward. The state gas tax currently sits at 28.5 cents per gallon, including a 3.5-cent surcharge.

That’s forty cents a gallon.  So far.

And when Democrats see Money Pits, what’s their first urge?

Fill them with (our, taxpayer’s) money!

Another $4 billion for transit would come from increasing the sales tax in five Twin Cities counties by a half percentage point, or a nickel on a $10 purchase. Raising vehicle license tab fees roughly 10 percent would bring in another $1.1 billion.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this:  this is a removal of five billion dollars from productive use in this state’s economy, to build more “light rail” to run from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie, from Minneapolis through the Brooklyns, from Minneapolis to wherever people aren’t and don’t currently want to go.

Democrats around money are like pit bulls around hamburger:

The 19-member group led by Transportation Commissioner Tom Sorel picked the costliest of three options it studied.

What do us conservatives always say?  “Elections have results”.

And one of the results of this past two elections is that Scott Dibble is now creating tax policy…:

The report comes as the Democratic governor is preparing to unveil a tax overhaul after pushing for years to raise income taxes on top earners. It’s unclear how the array of transportation taxes will fit into his plan. Democrats will take over both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in January, creating an opening for tax increases after years of Republican resistance.

“My sense is the governor would very, very much like to get us back in a posture of making these needed and key investments,” said Sen. Scott Dibble, a Minneapolis Democrat who served on the advisory committee and will head the Senate Transportation and Public Safety Division.

…which is a little like putting Kim Kardashian in charge of the Department Of Sleazy Guys And Video Cameras.

UPDATE:  Dave Thul in the comments notes that the GOP should let Governor Messinger Dayton and the DFL run this straight through the legislature.  I agree; let them have their names on the votes.  And any Republican that votes for it, to give the DFL “bipartisan” cover on this stupid idea, should get primaried back to the stone age.

Here’s the lefty playbook when it comes to exacting more tribute from the people:

1. Make a demand.  Say, a 30% in crease in the school district levy, amounting to an increase in taxes of almost $40 million a year for eight years.
2. Point out that if the voters don’t acquiesce to the demand, the thing that the taxpayers most value – in this case, 364 teachers.  That in a school district with 5,300 employees, only 58% of whom, a little over 3,000, ever set foot in a classroom.   That means you, the lefty, plan on laying off 12% of the district’s teachers – if the voters don’t give you what you want. (No administrator jobs are at risk, naturally)

It’s the way a petulant teenager acts when they don’t get their way.

It’s the choice Saint Paul Public Schools superintendent Valeria Silva has given the voters of Saint Paul.

And it’s worse than that.  Greg Copeland, chair of “Vote NO 30% Levy Tax Hike!”, writes:

“The St. Paul School Board majority, following the recommendation of the Superintendent, showed so little respect for St. Paul Voters that it chose to combine the expiring 2006 Levy Renewal with a 30% Levy Property Tax Hike in a single ballot question, rather than giving voters an open choice of two questions, as it easily could have done; one to renew and another on the proposed 30% levy property tax increase.”, said Copeland.

There are so many angles to this story.

Blackboard Fodder:  Teachers union members are among the most reliable Democrat voters out there.

But when every single bureaucracy that emjploys them uses this exact same tactic – using their jobs as bargaining chips, and never, ever touching the admin jobs that are the district’s greatest sacred cow – I have to wonder; don’t teachers ever get tired of it?

Do they all suffer from Stockholm Syndrome?

Mush, Sled Dogs!:  I’ve been a Saint Paul taxpayer for a quarter of an endless freaking century now.  Near as I can remember, the Saint Paul Public Schools have gotten every single levy increase they’ve ever asked for.   And yet the schools never get anything but worse.

The district is under the impression that the few remaining businesses and residents that actually pay taxes are like ATMs with no limit.

We are not.

In the immortal words of  Little Steven, “I’m getting tired of paying for sh*t I never get / Somebody promised justice, and they ain’t delivered yet”.

Subsidizing Failure:  And yet the schools get worse and worse.  The efflux of families, especially lower-income and immigrant families, to charter, parochial and suburban schools has ripped a minimum of 12% out of the district’s population (and many of the families are putting their money where their mouths are, and leaving the city).

And while some of the marquee schools – the ones that serve the white upper-middle class children of the more-connected government workers in Saint Anthony Park and Desnoyer and Highland are more or less adequate and make most of the right noises on command, the SPPS has among the worst achievement gaps in the US.

The Saint Paul Public School District is a failed venture.  Since it is a wholly-owned arm of the St. Paul DFL, it is in every way a symptom of the failure of one-party rule in Saint Paul. If it were a business, it would go out of business.  If it were a regulated business, it would be shut down by the government.  If it were a charter school, the Department of Education would padlock it and MN2020 would wrinkle its organization nose and write a snarky “white paper” on what a crappy idea it was.

But Superintendent Silva and the School Board – loyal DFLers all – are doing what they do every time the levy comes up; holding guns to the teachers’ heads, and saying “pay up or the teachers get it”.

Call it “Valeria’s Choice”.

The people of Saint Paul need to send our worthless, incompetent school district a message; do a better job, or (heh) get out of the way and give the job to someone who can.

The media – in carrying out their role as Obama’s Praetorian Guard – has been doing its damnedest to try to paint Romney’s “47%” remark as a huge gaffe.

But Mitt was right; 47% of the people don’t pay taxes.  And in some cases – the poor – there may be a reason for this.

The lefty and media (ptr) came out with all sorts of rationalizations and tu quoques –

• “Republican states pay less than average!” was one I saw on TV yesterday (Channel 9 was duly parroting the Media Matters chanting points), which is hilarious, given that the states they point out invariably have lower per-capita incomes and costs of living than the Blue states; you’ve got liberals bitching about progressive taxation!
• “Many rich people pay no taxes!” – Leaving aside the obvious answer – it’s a red herring, the middle class and wealthy as a whole do pay the vast majority of this nation’s tax burdeen – well, gosh, d’ya suppose we should simplify the tax system to remove some of the byzantine loopholes?   A flat tax would sure fix that…
• “Part of that is the Bush Tax cuts!” – This is a dumb evasion.  The Bush tax cuts were across-the-board.  But it’s hordes of “targeted tax cuts” that have so imbalanced the system – because the tax system has long been an instrument of redistribution.

But whatever the qualifications and rationalizations, whatever the reasons for some and the outrages of others, the fact remains that this society can not survive with, soon, less than half of its people paying in.

Romney should not back off of this statement.  His campaign has been far too timid lately; while for about a week or two after the Ryan selection he was cooking with gas, rife with promise that this nation could finally have The Big Conversation it’s needed for at least a generation (the one that Tip O’Neill blocked thirty years ago), he’s been running a campaign only a weasel consultant could love since then.

We need to reform entitlements.  We need an America where everyone has some skin in the game.  Above all, we need a nation that doesn’t believe government is something we “belong to”, but rather something we hire to do some distasteful jobs.

I’ve been a huge Dinesh D’Souza fan since I read his Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary President over a decade ago; it may have been the best Reagan bio ever.

And I got a chance to see 2016 over the weekend.  It didn’t disappoint:

The movie’s thesis is…

(Spoiler Alert: I’m going to talk spoilers below the jump, although to be fair I think much of what’s in the movie has been in the public domain; this is just the first high-profile place I’ve seen it all collected into one coherent thesis)

(more…)

Obamacare won’t raise taxes on the middle class!

Just on big bad businesses, usually owned by “the 1%”!

And they’ll just eat those taxes, right?

Well, no – in a number of senses, you will.

Americans prefer Romney over Obama on the economy by more than 2:1!

That’s after a couple of weeks of Democrat harping on Romney’s bank accounts, tax returns, and his wife’s horse.

Americans would seem to be in a serious mood about economic matters.

But why, oh why, could that be?

…”Obama promised no middle-class tax hike.  Obama promised no middle-class tax hike…”

Unless Congress takes additional action to address the deficit before then, when the New Year’s hangovers wear off, two big things will have happened.

First, the Bush-era tax cuts will expire. That means income taxes for everyone would return to the higher rates that existed under President Bill Clinton. Taxes on dividends and capital gains also would rise from the current maximum of 15 percent. Top individual rates for high income earners could reach 39.6 percent

Second, $109 billion in automatic federal spending cuts will be set in motion, split evenly between defense spending and domestic programs. That’s because last summer’s agreement to lift the debt ceiling required lawmakers to forge an agreement to reduce the budget deficit by $1.2 trillion. As they failed, the automatic budget cuts are set to take effect.

But remember – it’s neeeeeever a spending problem.  No, it’s all you greedy peasants and the spending the government must do on you!:

“People are calling it the fiscal cliff,” Franken said. “It isn’t. It’s a slope.”

Franken said the tax increases would have little immediate effect on most people since their 2013 taxes won’t be due until the following year.

While that’s not the outcome he wants, Franken concedes that a willingness to let taxes go up is part of the Democrats’ negotiating strategy. “This is the only leverage we have, I think, to focus the Republican Party on being serious about this,” he said.

Franken and most Senate Democrats have signed on to President Barack Obama’s proposal to keep the Bush tax rates in place for those making less than $250,000 a year.

To paraphrase that greatest of Democrat thinkers, Rahm Emanuel, “Never waste a wedge issue”.

Some Republicans get it:

“They have a tax policy that says that they’re going to hold the entire economy hostage unless Republicans agree to a tax increase,” said U.S. Rep. John Kline, a Republican. “Is a tax increase on anybody, let them pick the number for how wealthy you have to be, so important that they’re going to send us over the cliff?”

Kline doesn’t want to see taxes go up at all. He’s also worried that the automatic budget cuts could devastate the economy by throwing thousands of defense contractors out of work.

“You’re going to have huge cuts in the private sector, and that’s the piece that I think is most problematic,” Kline said.

But Kline voted for the debt ceiling deal that created the automatic budget cuts, and Democrats say the only way for Republicans to help undo the cuts will be to negotiate a deal with them on taxes.

Of course they do.

I’ve got stereotypes.  We all have ’em.  It’s one of the ways humans process the nearly infinite number of permutations of human behavior into a mentally-manageable size.

For example, intellectually I know that journalists behave in as many differnet ways as there are journalists.  Indeed, they may be have in up to double the number of ways as there are journos – because not a few journalists behave completely differently in their personal and vocational lives.  I do know this, in my brain.

But the stereotype I have is that journos, drawn as they are largely from the strata of society that is wired to be “progressives”, trained at institutions whose general left-leaning bias has always been omnipresent, especially in the departments (journalism, humanities and social and zephyr-soft sciences) that tend to spawn journos, and who work their entire careers in, and develop entire networks of sources and colleagues and social lives among, institutions that tend to be left of center – government, academia, the activist community and the like, will, when in doubt and the chips are down, swerve left.  Maybe not intentially (although some do), maybe just as a result of confirmation bias (as many do) – but to the left they do indeed swerve.

And part of the stereotype is that that those stereotypical liberally-marinated journos will pick the parts of “the truth” that fit their worldview – aka “confirmation bias” – and pass it along as the unvarnished truth.  Not maliciously, usually, but with absolute certainty that they, or people like them, are indeed the fonts of the absolute indisputable truth.

Which brings us to Erik Black at the MinnPost who, er, minnposted an article the other day  entitled, as luck would have it, Stereotypical Thinking About Political Parties Is Often Just Flat Inaccurate.

When it comes to race, gender and ethnicity, we are urged to guard against stereotypical thinking. But how about when it comes to presidents? How about when it comes to political parties?

Stereotypical thinking about political parties is extremely powerful and often highly misleading, unfair and just flat inaccurate.

As a gun-owning custody-reform-advocating pro-life conservative who is frequently called a violent insecure wife-beating woman-hating uneducated dummy, I could hardly agree more.

So far.

But then Black follows it with

Read the following sentences slowly and carefully.

Scoring the last eight presidential terms according to the spending that occurred under the budget signed by that president, federal spending increased at the fastest rate during the first Reagan term (an increase of 8.7%). It went up the second fastest during the second term of George W. Bush (8.1%). It went up the slowest during the current term of Barack Obama (1.4%.) The second and third slowest periods of federal spending growth occurred under the two terms of Bill Clinton.

These numbers from this piece by Rex Nutting who writes for MarketWatch, which is an arm of the Wall Street Journal. They are based on Congressional Budget Office numbers.

And there, in turn, is a bit of stereotyping from Black; as if the Wall Street Journal byline makes it conservative, ergo against Black’s interest.  It’s just not always so – but, again, that’s why stereotypes exist.

In case you don’t click through, here are the graphics from Nutting/MarketWatch:

..

And since it comes from MarketWatch and the WSJ – journalists! – it must be accurate, right?  It must have compared apples with apples throughout – ya?

You know where this is leading – right?

MarketWatch’s Nutting did not compare apples with apples, but rather swerved between CBO figures and Obama’s own numbers for no apparent reason but with the result, mirabile dictu, of inflating Bush’s (as opposed to his Democrat Congress’) spending and lowering Obama’s in comparison, and uses CBO numbers that are known to be wildly inaccruate.

And he has an infographic of his own.   It’s below the jump (because it’s very, very long)

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Sorry if my output is a little light today.

I was watching all those idiot Vikings fans hooting and hollering, and those chucklehead Vikings players doing their idiot dances on camera, over the news that Zygi Wilf’s and the NFL’s exploitation of the state’s stupid and gullible classes convinced a majority of legislators to allow Wilf to pilfer hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers to buff up the  value of his private investment, and I guess I chundered so long and hard it was impossible to write much.

Sorry about that.

Clearly, Mark Dayton knows his niche; go for the gullible, the easily manipulable, the people who think money comes from unicorns from on high, or who just don’t care that they’re making other people pay for their recreation.

To: Minnesota Vikings
From:  Mitch Berg – Bears Fan
Re:  Your Fiscal Plans

Dear Mr. Wilf,

if having “Mitch Berg” come to your new bit of political swag stadium and spend money on user fees, or going to some pull tab machine to lose a pre-planned amount of money to pay for the stadium improvements to your investment on the public dime is in any part of your plans, please subtract from your plans appropriately.  Not going to happen.  You will not see one voluntary dime from me.

(I was going to add “If any of my legislators vote for this bit of legislative larceny, I’ll work tirelessly to remove their lame asses”, but I think you know I’m “represented” by Sandy Pappas and Rhea Montgomery, so I’ll be working tirelessly against them anyway).

I’ll be at Alary’s with the Bears fans.  That’s a private sector business.

Unless they demand money from the state to pay for improvements to their real estate.   Then I’ll tube them too.

The Vikings may suck, they may in the Super Bowl.  But you, Zygi, will never voluntarily get a dime from me.

That is all.

I’m posting a request on behalf of a good friend of the Northern Alliance broadcast, who is trying to find…

…a CPA who will not charge me months months rent to help with my taxes? International taxes are a mess, I’ve tried and tried to figure out the IRS site only to cry and get sick, literally when i look at it. Any Help would be appreciated

If you are, or know, a CPA who can work with someone with not-unlimited means to resolve this issue, please send an email to “Feedbackinthedark@yahoo.com”.  I’ll forward the information to our friend.

Thanks.

Joe Doakes writes:

Which has a longer history and is more pervasive throughout Minnesota: fishing or listening to classical music?

Why aren’t hunting and fishing a part of Minnesota’s cultural heritage?

DNR needs millions more money to keep hunting and fishing programs available. It can’t have any of the Legacy funds that we were told would go to the environment. Meanwhile, Minnesota Public Radio gets $1.3 million per year from those funds.

The fishing license for Joe Sixpack to take his kids fishing will cost more, so Volvo drivers can continue to listen to Vivaldi without commercials.

 

Divert the Legacy money from MPR to DNR.
Joe Doakes

Como Park

I say “divert” it all back to the taxpayher, and let hunters, fishers and classical music buffs pay for their own recreation.

St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman announced in his State of the City address he’s got the city’s mighty plannin’ wheels a’churnin’ to get a stadium built downtown for the Saint Paul Saints:

Arguably, the biggest announcement came midway through the mayor’s annual State of the City address at the James J. Hill Library: He said the St. Paul Port Authority had secured a land deal with the real estate investment trust that owns the old Diamond Products building off Broadway Street.

The vacant building, which is across from the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, could become the site of a future regional ballpark for the Saints and amateur baseball leagues.

The Port Authority plans to swap the Lowertown property with the city, and in turn take over the Saints’ outdated Midway Stadium site off Energy Park Drive for future business development. Midway Stadium is city-owned.

“We’ll own the land,” Coleman said. “Now let’s build the ballpark.”

Sure, Mr. Mayor.

Feel free to get your buddies to pony up for it.  I just got my property tax bill.  I’m done paying for your plans.

A “handshake deal” has been reached with the Florida owners of the Diamond Products building to buy it for $2.4 million, said Tom Collins, a Port Authority spokesman. Details will be made final when the two sides get together next week.

Every time Chris Coleman shakes someone’s hands, he wipes ’em off afterward with a fiver.

Craig Bannister in CNS news reports on the Georgetown Law School student’s frankly bizarre testimony yesterday:

Speaking at a hearing held by Pelosi to tout Pres. Obama’s mandate that virtually every health insurance plan cover the full cost of contraception and abortion-inducing products, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it’s too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage.

Forget for a moment that Georgetown is the province of this nation’s self-appointed “elite” – Ms. Fluke and her classmates are paying $23K plus fees per year, and it’s pretty much an upper-middle-class fiefdom.  We’re not talking Metro State, here.

No – it’s a school for this nation’s self-appointed “elite”.

And it shows in the frustrated Ms. Fluke’s testimony:

“Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception), Fluke reported.

It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations.

$3K for three years? $1K a year?  $80 a month?  $2.50 or so a day?

Numbers like these bespeak a career in Mark Ritchie’s State Department, or the DFL’s budget office.

That’s what your “elite” school tuition gets you these days.

And that’s what their graduates get you; you, Mr. Copier Repairman in Alexandria, will be paying for law students’ birth control.

And they, the future elite, would be paying for yours – except you’re working too hard to have any time for sex anymore anyway.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Remember 4 years ago, when the Minnesota Constitution was amended to provide dedicated funding for clean water and stuff?

Guess who gets that funding?

From their website:

“Minnesota Public Radio is the state’s largest cultural organization.”

Well, if “Liberal” is a culture, that’s certainly true. Do we need to spend tax dollars to preserve Liberalism? Isn’t it doing well enough on its own?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

No, MPR’s certainly got their hooks into the regional money system.

I’m just remembering all the articles this past week from learned “progressive”-leaning political scientists who said “government by amendment isn’t governing”, and wondering where they all were four years ago?

I’m not much of a gambler, personally – but I support legalizing it more broadly at a state level.  I support it because it’s a tax on people other than me.

Cynical?  Sure.  Pass the ketchup.

Seriously?  For better or worse, gambling has its place in Minnesota.  For over two decades, proceeds from pull tabs – the most pointless form of gambling in history, but I digress – have gone to supporting Minnesota non-profits and charities.  Everything from youth hockey to local job training programs benefit from pull tabs.

And now, Tom Bakk and Mark Dayton want to raid that pile of money to give it to Zygi Wilf, according to Gary Gross at LFR.

The clinker?  Bakk’s proposal – “E-tabs”, a zippier, more IPod-enabled version of pulltabs to attract the kids – will take money from a pot that’s already dwindling; charitable gambling is already off by a huge margin in Minnesota:

There’s more reason for concern than those mentioned by Wilson. This House Research report offers a stunning opinion. The title speaks for itself:

2006-2010: Industry under Stress

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This information is troubling:

• Since fiscal year 2004, gross receipts from lawful gambling have declined by over 20 percent
• For fiscal year 2008, the industry reported its biggest drop in state gambling taxes paid—a 12.8 percent decrease from the previous year due to the drop in gross receipts
• Total receipts have gone from $1.500 billion in 2000 to $1.032 billion in 2009, a decrease of about 31 percent

Let’s remember that Sen. Bakk, then the chairman of the Senate Tax Committee, knew this information when he proposed this ‘solution’ to the Vikings stadium situation. This information raises important questions, more than I can address in a single post. The biggest questions go to politicians like Gov. Dayton and Sen. Bakk.

The first question I’d want answered is this: why would Gov. Dayton and Sen. Bakk propose using revenues from an “industry under stress” the last 5 years?

Because gambling is a unicorn.

Not literally, like a flying horse with a horn.  But DFL financing is always built on the idea that some sort of magical unicorn – “gamblers”, or “the rich” – will bring money to them for their grandest plans, and all they have to do is say “heeeeeer, unicorn!”

So Tom Bakk hears “gambling”, and thinks “money for nothing”!

Conservatives know that there is no such thing as money for nothing.

And Gary would like to point that out:

The next question I’d have for Gov. Dayton and Sen. Bakk is equally simple: Why would they put funding for charities and school sports programs at risk?

Good question.

Well, Senator Bakk?  Governor åDayton?  What’s the answer?  And there really are only two choices.  And one of them is “screw the kids, if I don’t keep the Vikes here, my voters will have a cow”‘.

The Met Council has started making the same rumblings about building a new LIght Rail line to the southwest suburbs that they were making ten or so years ago about building one connecting the downtowns – the sort of noises that really mean “we’ve decided to do it, and we’re in the process of getting our political ducks in a row” – sort of like teenagers saying “I’m thinking about going to a party…”

Now, let’s be clear on one thing; I don’t oppose rail transit for the sheer sake of opposing rail transit.  And I don’t oppose it just because all the other conservative kids are doing it – far from it.  If it were shown that rail transit in any of its forms could, someday, be a fiscally-responsible form of transportation, I’d support it.

I’ll give you three examples:

1. At one point in the study process, there were numbers that suggested that Northstar, and its companion concept (at the time, they were both concepts), the Red Rocks line (would would connect Hastings with the two downtowns via existing rail right of way in the East Metro) could have been revenue neutral (if you left the bonding out) – provided the Met Council observed a couple of caveats (bought used rolling stock, kept the stations on the austere side, and kept religiously to existing rail right of way without buying up any new land) and, of course, provided the paid ridership numbers were pretty strong.  And at the time – provided that the money, the logistics and the ridership tracked the way the report said it would (and my sniff test told me it was cooked bureaucratic books even then, but for purposes of argument, I ran with it), I figured Northstar and Red Rocks  could be wise investments.  Experience has proved those estimates…well, we’ll get back to that.
2. The Central Corridor was going to be an expensive money pit no matter what.  But the Met Council could have gone two ways to make the line, if not a money-maker, at least less of a debacle.  They could have built it through the existing rail right of way in Northeast and through the Midway, and made it a much faster train; “Light Rail” trains are designed to go 55 miles per hour between stops that are spaced about a mile apart, and give you some actual speed advantage over riding a bus.  Or they could have built a trolley – literally, a vehicle that is intended to chug along at street speeds and stop every block or two, and replaced the 16 bus and served the traffic that really does use University, people who are carrying groceries home from Rainbow or coming home from the U of M or Concordia, or who live in the middle of St. Paul but work in one of the downtowns.  (Seriously – does anyone think that anyone travels between the downtowns for anything but business?  And if they do, why would they not drive?  And if they don’t drive, why would they not take the 94 express, which gets you back and forth faster than the train likely will?)
3. If you just have to have a light rail train – one that zips along at 55 miles per hour between stops that are a mile or two apart – at least build one from where people are to where they want to be.  This, of course, rules out both the current trains; outside of Twins and Vikings games and a  thin film of people who commute from the eastern reaches of South Minneapolis to Downtown, the trolley connects destinations that people would mostly much rather drive to.  And the Central Corridor is the wrong train designed to do the wrong job.   But the Southwest LRT?  A line intended to connect Minneapolis to the booming southwestern suburbs?  That almost seems like it could make some sense.  It connects where people are – the bedroom burbs of the southwest, the tony garrets and apartments in the city – with where they want and need to be, the jobs downtown or at the booming IT, insurance, service and light manufacturing businesses of the southwest.  If you have to have a train, this would seem to be the one to start with, if you are focused on building a train to, y’know, do something useful.

But that’s not how or why our trains were designed.  

I’ve opposed the current rail transit “strategy” largely because it’s designed not to move people from where they are to where they need to be – something that could, hypothetically, be a less-profligtate waste of taxpayer money than what we have.

And as “profligate”, I’ve accepted on faith the numbers that the Met Council released a few years back that showed that a single passenger ride on the Ventura Trolley costs $6 – of which the passenger fare pays $2, and the taxpayer pays $4.  

If you were running a business that was losing $4 on every $6 transaction, you might hang in there for a while until you found a market.  If you ran a business that ran those kind of losses and connected places where people weren’t with places they largely didn’t want to go (at least in numbers to generate the kind of ridership that would support the numbers you used in your business plan, the one you used to buffalo your investors), you’d have been lucky to go into business in the first place.  Or unlucky.  Hard to say.

I mean, paying 2/3 of the cost of all of our current rail transit just seems like a waste. The whole story seemed bad enough to me, as it was.

That’s where Dave Osmek comes in.

Dave’s an old friend of this blog, a city councilman in Mound, and now a State Senate candidate.  And he’s been grinding some of the numbers regarding the state bureaucracy’s mania for light rail.

And it turns out I was being too pollyannaish.

More tomorrow.

…and it’s a good thing I’m not…

…but if I were Speaker Zellers, and Governor Dayton Alita Messinger and the SEIU brought Dayton’s Jerbs Bill to the House of Representatives to submit, I might respond something like this.

“With all due respect to Governor Dayton, there are laws against using the Legislature for campaign purposes.  And that’s all this bill is; a meaningless campaign slogan dressed up as a tax bill.  If this bill goes forward, the Campaign Finance Board will have to investigate the House of Representatives for making an illegal in-kind contribution to 134 DFL house races this fall.  Because that’s all this bill is, and that’s all it was ever intended to be”.

Again – it’s probably a good thing I’m not the Speaker.

Question:  In this economy, with Obama and Dayton’s regulations strangling you, with Minnesota’s and the IRS’ already-high business tax rates on top and Obamacare looming in the near future, please tell us:  will Dayton’s proposal of a one-time $3,000 tax break in 2012 (and half that in 2012) to hire a veteran,unemployed person or recent graduate have a drastic effect – or any real effect at all – on your hiring decisions?

I’d especially like to hear from businesspeople – people who make payroll and do the actual hiring.

With much fanfare from the media and the DFL’s press-release bloggers (most of them), the Dayton Administration released its “jobs plan”.

Call it “porkulus with a side of lefse“.  It’s a dumb plan – and there’s language in here that shows the DFL knows it (emphasis added):

Saint Paul – Governor Mark Dayton and DFL Legislators together today announced a plan that if passed by the legislature, will put thousands of Minnesotans back to work this year.

And there’s the tell.  This “plan” – more below – will come to the legislature bundled with some of the other nonsense Governor Dayton couldn’t get through the GOP-controlled legislature last session.  The legislature will toss it.  The DFL/media (ptr),the Strib editorial board and the chanting point bots will say “The GOP took your jerbs!” in November.

This plan is intended for no more.

To encourage businesses to hire new employees, Governor Dayton and the DFL Legislators propose offering a New Jobs Tax Credit. This would be a one-time $3,000 tax credit to any Minnesota business for each veteran, unemployed worker or recent graduate they hire during calendar year 2012, and a $1,500 credit for each new hire through June 2013. This $35 million program would create over 10,000 new, private-sector jobs this year.

Which is a great way to create a bunch of low-wage temporary jobs.

Business owners, I’d love to hear from you.  $3,000 is better than a kick in the teeth.  But given the other uncertainties in the economy.- Obamacare and the coming tax hikes and all the other regulatory nonsense that’s been pecking you to death and all the rest that’s looming in the next two years, not to mention Minnesota’s already-miserable business taxes  – isn’t it more like whizzing in the wind?

Like- a chanting point?

It’s a sign that the DFL has learned one lesson – sort of.  They’ve learned that “eat the rich”, in and of itself, isn’t a strategy for a session.  They have to put a meaningless veneer of “job creation” on top of it.

Other proposals in the plan include a new bonding bill with details to be announced next week, a proposal that will help Minnesota compete for business expansion through the Minnesota Investment Fund, an expansion of the FastTRAC program to provide career-specific training to prepare adults for the jobs of the future and the creation of the Minnesota Opportunity Grants Pilot Program which will help Minnesotans get the training required for high-demand careers.

Read:  a) Construction jobs for Dayton’s union backers, b) spending to try to convince businesses that the tax climate isn’t so bad, and c/d) more spending that benefits Dayton’s supporters in the education industry, coupled with platitudes, as if government has ever successfully predicted about what anything will be tomorrow. 

Dayton:

“From day one, my top priority has been to get Minnesota working again.

No, Governor Dayton.  With all due respect, from day one,  your priority has been to do what the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Win Minnesota,and the unions have told you to do.  Last year, they told you to Eat The Rich.  Class warfare bombed.

With that out of the way…

Our jobs plan will help businesses create good jobs for thousands of Minnesotans who are looking for work.

No, it won’t.  It’s of little value alive – at $3K credit is bupkes – but of value as a wedge issue dead. Which is why you have your chanting-point bots yapping so hard about it now.

We need to focus on what we know will work: investing in infrastructure, providing incentives to private sector businesses to create more jobs, and training workers for high-demand careers.

Again with the code words.

Look- if you slash business taxes and cut regulations, the economy improves.  Revenue booms based on economic activity.  Then you build the infrastructure. Then you needn’t worry about training, because companies will train their own workers,on their own dime (although they’re happy to let the state pay for it, too).  That is the only “incentive” you need.

And it’s the one the GOP’s been talking all along.

And it’d hardly do to campaign on that, if you’re the DFL,now – would it?

The important part, of course, is preventing Minnesotans from getting fooled by this Potemkin plan.

I met my old friend, Inge Carroll (whom everyone calls “Lucky”) at a local watering hole to compare notes about politics the other day.  Lucky is a DFL operative.

CARROLL: So did you see teh article?  Teh Republican party said came into offices saying they were going to create jobs,but they have cost 16,000 jobs!

MITCH: For starters, why do you always pronounce “the” as “teh” after you drink cosmpolitans?  And then, huh?  You’ve missed the news? Minnesota’s unemployment rate is down.

CARROLL:  You are teh lier!  Didn’t you hear it on teh MPR?  Teh Republican policies have cost 16,000 jobs!  That means all of you Rethuglicons are TEH LIER!

(CARROLL orders another cosmopolitan)

MITCH: Um, what on earth are you talking about?  Minnesota is recovering from the recession faster than other states, largely because the GOP stood off Dayton’s orgy of taxes and regulations.

CARROLL:  Hah!  You didn’t read the article, did you?  You don’t even know what I”m talking about!

MITCH:  Well, that’d make two of us, if it were true – but yes, I read it. It says that because of LGA cuts, local government are having to either raise taxes, or cut government jobs, or both.

CARROLL:  Yep?  16,000 jobs!

MITCH:  OK.  Well, sorry to hear that – being out of work sucks. But what, you think government jobs are sacrosanct?

CARROLL:  Oh, I think people kind of like having teachers and firemen and cops and services.

MITCH:  Well, at face value, it looks more like people in towns around Minnesota like to have them – provided they can get someone else to pay for them.  When they have to pay for them themselves, not so much.

CARROLL:  (Glares at MITCH):   Why do you hate the troops?

(And SCENE).

Lucky had to get back to her job at “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, where she power-sands memes.