In rough order (i.e., either can move up or down 2-3 positions in the list depending on my mood):

“So you’re willing to see the Vikings leave?”:  I’m a baseball fan – and to the extent I care about the NFL, I follow the Bears.  So I really don’t care.

Seriously?  No more or less so than I am to see Medtronic or Bill’s Gun Shop or the corner deli or 3M leave.  They’re businesses.  In a perfect world, they’d all stay here because taxes and regulations and just plain living and doing business in Minnesota were attractive enough.  And let’s be honest, we do subsidize businesses, to an extent; tax-increment financing is the main tool Minnesota cities use to draw and keep businesses, which is a sort of subsidy.  And we constantly trade public infrastructure spending – road, water and sewer improvements – for business commitments.  And in some cases, we do it because business owners say “cut us a break or we’ll move to Texas”.  And sometimes we cave, and sometimes we just let ’em go – usually depending on the business’ or its’ executives’ political clout.  I oppose it then, and I oppose it now.

“For Only $122 Per Minnesotan, It’ll Create Jobs!”: Oh, don’t be a doof.  That $122 will create jobs anyplace you spend it.  Whether I spend it at the corner grocery store, or at Guitar Center, or at Bill’s Gun Shop, or on Amazon, or at Keegans Irish Pub, it creates jobs.  In fact, if I recall correctly, a dollar spent on stadia creates fewer jobs than a dollar spent elsewhere, on average (and King Banaian will let me know if I’m wrong on that, I’m sure).

“Wow – “No Public Money For Billionaires?”  Some Republican you are!”: It’s a fair cop.  I’m a libertarian/conservative first, and a Republican second.  Corporate welfare does the economy no more good than subsidizing eternal poverty does.

“The Vikings are a part of our cultural heritage!”:  So is the Minneapolis music scene.  Tell you what – I’ll drop $122 on your stadium (on penalty of going to jail if I don’t) if you throw $122 and buy me the Replacements boxed set (on penalty of going to jail if you don’t).  Or, I don’t care, any other part of our “cultural heritage” – mallard carvings or Guthrie tickets or polka lessons or lefse ingredients or New Ulm beer or Edmund Fitzgerald books or Saint Paul Saints swag or any other part of our “cultural heritage”.

Sound fair?

“No – the Vikings are an integral part of our cultural heritage!”: Oh, they’re integral?  Then problem solved.  If they’re an “integral” part of Minnesota, they can’t leave; they – and/or presumably the state itself – would cease to exist.

“Wow, Mr. Conservative Talk Show Host – “No Money For A Stadium” is the same position John Marty takes!””  Wrong.  John Marty takes the same stance that I take.  Since he favors all manner of other government subsidies – arts, MPR, eternal poverty – I’m the one being consistent.

“It’s an investment in the community!”: Well, you’re half right.  It’s an investment – in Zygi Wilf.  Wilf is a real estate mogul; he makes his money by having his investment appreciate.  The Vikings, even with their current awful season, have appreciated considerably since he bought the team.  A new stadium – especially attached to immense parking concessions and a vast swathe of retail and entertainment space, as in the Arden Hills site – will tack a huge premium onto that investment.  Now – what’s the only thing better than a huge premium?  A huge premium that someone else pays for so you can reap a huge windfall and not have to pay – or at least not have to pay full price – for.  Zygi’s a big boy.  He can pay for his own immense freaking windfall.

Any more?

So let’s check out this NPR story on Illinois battle to try to keep Sears’ jobs in the state, and other states’ battle to get them:

Thousands of jobs are on the line in a competition between states over the corporate headquarters of Sears. Several states are offering tax incentive packages to try to lure the company away from Illinois, including one bid from Ohio that’s worth up to $400 million.

Why would that happen?.  Can you spot it?

The Sears Holding Corp., parent company to Sears and Kmart, says it is seriously considering the offer after Illinois lawmakers failed this week to approve a package of tax incentives aimed at keeping Sears and [the Chicago Mercantile Exchange] from leaving.

The story shows the folly of “corporate welfare” – government picking winners and losers with taxpayer money. :

“I think that the proposed help for Sears is more than adequate to keep them here, and I hope we can put the movement together this month to get that job done,” he says.

Of course, corporate subsidies are sort of like narcotics; once you get through the starter drugs, you need more and more powerful stuff to keep the same buzz going.

But – and I’ll say, I was amazed at this – NPR did actually cut to the “root cause” of the issue:

Quinn and his fellow Democrats who control Illinois’ Legislature have been taking heat from the business leaders for raising the state’s income tax rates last January to help close a gaping budget deficit.

Oblique?  Of course.  But it’s further proof; taxes kill.

Minnesota Management and Budget announced today that, notwithstanding original reports that today’s budget forecast was going to be a billion dollars light, today it was announced that the state is 876 million in the black.

Let’s be clear about something; we have this surplus because the state’s economy grew.  And it grew because Mark Dayton’s gigantistic spendthrift agenda was thwarted in the Legislature.

And the credit goes to two groups:

1. Minnesota’s businesses, for hiring people (or at least hanging on and laying off fewer of them), keeping them working, and paying for that work.  I think it’s safe to say they did this because of the efforts of…
2. The GOP-controlled legislature, for holding the line on the budget even as well as they did.  While – as the Strib notes – economists note we’re not out of the woods economically, especially because we are tied to the national and international macroeconomy, it could have been a lot worse.  (And with an 8,000 vote swing, it could have been a lot better, but we can’t cry over spilled milk).

Sure enough – on the TV this morning: “Suprcommittee Republicans are proposing $290 billion in new taxes!”.

Compromise is part of politics. But you can not lead with a compromise offer.  Doing so relies on the good faith of people who have none.

With the Tea Party putting the wind in its sails, the GOP scored a historic reversal last fall, turning the Obama “revolution” back on its heels.

Is the GOP establishment about to completely blow it?

Well, not if I have anything to say about it.  Needless to say, I’m going to need some help.

———-

An article in the Lehigh Morning Call indicates that the conservatives on the “Supercommittee”, including Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, are pondering a compromise on the deficit that would cut taxes (good), combined with eliminating some loopholes (not so good):

At the proposal’s core is Toomey’s economic belief that simplifying and lowering taxes will grow the economy, and in turn, a growing economy will produce more revenue. It would cut the deficit by a bit more than the $1.2 trillion required of the supercommittee, with about $700 billion coming from spending cuts. It would lower the top tax rate for individuals from 35 percent to 28 percent, and generate around $500 billion in new revenue from closing unspecified tax loopholes and reducing tax deductions….

Toomey, whose plan was presented verbally to his colleagues and not in written bill form, did not specify which spending or tax deductions to cut. In a phone interview Friday, he said his preference would be across the board reductions in deductions as opposed to eliminating any entirely.

His plan equates to $1.50 of cuts for every $1 of new revenue, he said. It’s a huge concession for Republicans, he said, considering the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform had recommended $3 in cuts for each $1 of new revenue.

This is not a place for compromise.

Hugh Hewitt has some challenges – pronouncing names seems to vex him – but on this sort of subject, he’s as good as they come.  And he’s not happy:

What is crucial is that this approach be loudly and quickly rejected by the House GOP and key GOP senators as any such plan is an enormous breach of faith with the voters who sent back a new GOP majority and who will be asked in less than a year to do so again and to add enough GOP senators to make a working majority for a new Republican president. Any deal like Toomey’s would greatly injure the chances of gathering the sort of energy necessary to recreate the 2010, 1994 or 1980 sweep because it would be an obvious indictment of the credibility of the House and Senate GOP, not one member of which ran on such a platform last year.

I’m not the first to say that this – if it actually happens – is another “Read My Lips” moment; a compromise that depends on the integrity of the Democrats in keeping up their end of a bargain.  They have none, and they won’t.  Ask George H. W. Bush (and, for that matter, Ronald Reagan).

Hewitt:

Both [Jeb Hensarling and Pat Toomey] seem to have forgotten that they were not sent back to D.C. to re-engineer the government or “reform” the tax code so that millions would pay more and millions would pay less and more total revenue would flow into it, but so that spending would be drastically cut.

They were not sent there to be part of the all-knowing, all seeing Committee of Oz.

Which is, by the way, exactly what may of us knew the “Supercommittee” was going to turn into.

It’s time to bum-rush the Capitol switchboard again.

If you’re in Minnesota,

Nationally?  It was a long night last night – but one that proves only one thing; conservatives face a well-funded, entrenched enemy that can count on unions to turn all the money they need to run a defensive campaign, along with a media that is utterly in the bag for the left.

In Minnesota? The results of the Bloomington mayor and Saint Paul School Board races were disappointing – especially the SPPS race.  The Saint Paul Public Schools are a lost cause.  My kids have aged out of that sinking ship, which is the important part; unfortunately, my property has not.

Statewide, though?  Voters generally approved continuing existing levies, but (again, generally) rejected new taxes.  The voters apparently got the message – the Governor and the Legislature passed hundreds of millions in new K12 spending.  We’re already spending more.

Mostly, yesterday should be a wakeup call for conservatives.  Most Republican activists do it part-time, out of zeal and commitment one issue or another.  And for us, life gets in the way – kids, obligations, careers, even burnout cause the turnout to ebb and flow.  The Democrats and their supporters have people – organizers, demonstrators, researchers, even bloggers – who do all of these things full-time, for a living.

It’s going to be a busy year.  There’s no way around it; the next election is going to be for all the marbles.

Obama’s numbers are in freefall – against generic and real Republicans.

Worse – for him?  He’s falling in the demographics that put him in office.  Even students.

Which must have something to do with his ride to the rescue of all those student loan holders:

In keeping with his new campaign theme of “we can’t wait,” President Obama today will roll out a plan to put more money in the pockets of some of the nation’s 36 million student loan recipients.

Obama has broad latitude in this area – certainly broader than the first two parts of his western campaign trip, underwater mortgages and subsidies for hiring veterans – because one of his early legislative initiatives was to have the federal government take over the student lending business in America.

Students are apparently now “too big to fail”.

Obama argued for the measure in 2009 as a cost-savings initiative, saying that the old system of privately issued, government secured loans reduced the amount of available money for needy students and also prevented the feds from making the system more efficient.

And we all know nobody makes systems efficient like the feds.

Here’s the part that should give you pause (emphasis added)

But Obama is now seeking to use that new power to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won’t approve. The idea is to cap student loan repayment rates at 10 percent of a debtor’s income that goes above the poverty line, and then limiting the life of a loan to 20 years.

And you know what that means?  Money thrown away:

Take this example: If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.

Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

The president will also allow student debtors to refinance and consolidate loans on more favorable terms, further decreasing the payoff for taxpayers.

Too bad the founding fathers said nothing about spending without representation…

Ask yourself, tax code, do you feel lucky? Do ya, punk?

 Rick Perry stabs the tax system in the heart.  But under the plan, is it dead or simply pining for the fjords?

Steve Forbes must feel like he’s stepped into a time machine.

The 1996 & 2000 GOP presidential candidate briefly electrified the denizens of political wonkdom with his conception of a national flat tax to simplify – and eliminate – the current overcomplicated tax code over 15 years ago.  Forbes’ idea of broadening the tax base while reducing the individual tax burden proved a temporary hit – too much of one as most of his 1996 rivals embraced similar policies.  Unfortunately for flat tax advocates, the only candidate who didn’t rush towards the concept was nominee Bob Dole, and since then the tax as languished as more theory than practice despite its success in many former Soviet bloc countries.

That is until now, as Texas Governor Rick Perry has revived the concept, winning Forbes’ praise and liberal scorn.  The headlines have screamed about Perry’s new tax rate of 20%, but in most reports, the lead has been buried:

“The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20 percent or their current income tax rate,” Perry writes. “The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.”

 

The plan also drops the corporate tax rate to 20 percent and will temporarily lower the rate to 5.25 percent to promote companies working overseas to move to the U.S. along with implementing a “territorial tax system,” which will  tax in-country income.

 

The plan will eliminate the death tax and end taxes on Social Security, which would help an estimated 17 million Americans receiving benefits today. It would also cut taxes on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains.

The drop in corporate tax rate would put the U.S. as the lowest in the world (among major competitors; there are a number of nations with no corporate taxes).  And with most foreign economies unable or unwilling to respond in-kind with similar corporate tax rate cuts, the U.S. could be looking at an immediate repatriation of up to $1.4 trillion with the addition of a “territorial tax.”  Does that mean an immediate increase in jobs?  Not exactly, but a similar “repatriation holiday” for overseas corporations in 2004 spurred massive investments in capital and employment.

Lost in the corporate tax discussion has been Perry’s proposal to cap federal spending to 18% of GDP, or what would be roughly $2.54 trillion.  That’s under the projected 2012 revenues of $2.627 trillion and significantly under the Obama adminstration’s desired $3.729 trillion of spending.  Perry is obviously expecting that projected $1.4 trillion to soften the blow as increased income would (hopefully) spur GDP growth, raising Perry’s 18% beyond projected 2012 revenue levels.

The chief compliants from the right, much like with Herman Cain’s “999” plan, are that Perry’s flat tax doesn’t go far enough.  Indeed, both leading economic fixes from the GOP field disembowel the current tax system but keep it wrapped together in some fiscal Eraserhead policy nightmare.  Both Cain and Perry’s proposals have foreign models to work from – Cain’s VATesque vision which has hindered Europe; Perry’s opt-out Hong Kong-like system which has worked well despite the complication of individuals being potentially able to switch back-and-forth from flat tax to the current system year to year.

Ultimately, Perry’s flat tax needs to be seen as the beginning of a new policy discussion, rather than as a destination.  A total overhaul of the tax code, while popular in spirit, likely polls poorly when the roughly 47% of Americans who don’t pay federal taxes figure out they might be forced to actually contribute to the system.  As proposed, few Americans will find themselves benefiting from the policy, but I think critics are thinking too short term and too little on the potential corporate effects of the plan.

There was a reason I always referred to Senator Wes Skoglund as “Lying Sack of Garbage“; it was because on second amendment issues (and a few others), his entire body of knowledge seemed to have been unquestioningly drawn from easily-debunked chanting points from anti-gun propaganda factories like the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Factory.

Uncharacteristically, on the issue of the stadium, the Lying Sack of Garbage turns into a crusading seeker of the truth.  And I say “better late than never”, as he  urges the voters and the Legislature to call the Legislature’s bluff – especially the bluff that they’re going to move if the state doesn’t give them what they want:

 I don’t blame them — the tactic often works for them. But no team can move without the approval of the NFL and, realistically, that OK will not be given unless it makes business sense to the league.

According to the Wall Street Journal in 2010, the Vikings rank sixth in terms of popularity as measured by Nielson’s local and national TV ratings. Actually, we tie with the Packers. There always has been talk that the Vikings will move to California, but how do California teams measure up? Only one is in the top half — the San Diego Chargers, which ranks 13th.

To be thorough, the team’s stats may fade a bit after this season…

…but it is a fact that year in, year out, winning and losing, through Bud Grant and Les Steckel, Minnesota has been a strong football market; it sells out games, it fills stadiums,it tunes in, it supports not only the Vikings, but the NFL’s franchise, better than most markets.

The NFL is a franchiser, no different than McDonalds except in terms of numbers of franchisees; neither of them wants to close a franchise in a money-making, attendance-drawing location.

Now,a franchise in a money-losing, unpopular location with no real football mojo?  Rumors among people who follow these things say Jacksonville – a low-performing, unpopular team in a city with no real football tradition and inadequate attendance – would be a much better contender for a move to LA…

…for every purpose but extorting a stadium out of the Twin Cities.

I hope the Legislature does the research and asks the team and the NFL these basic business questions before they commit taxpayer money to the most expensive capital improvement plan in Minnesota’s history.

Let’s hope Minnesota’s fable “intelligence” kicks in here, forcing the NFL to pick a more sane option.

If Skoglund can do it,anyone can.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on what happened at the Ramsey County Charter Commission last night.

The 10-8 vote did not impose a tax  It rejected an amendment the county charter that would have allowed a referendum on the Ramco Commission’s agreement with the Vikings to ask the state to exempt the plan from a referendum on a sales tax hike to pay for the stadium – which is contrary to state law and the county’s charter.

There are really only four things, now, that can come between Ramco’s taxpayers and a generation of paying Wilfare:

1. If your state legislator supports this boondoggle – a give-away to Zygi Wilf and the DFL’s trade-union water-carriers – they need to hear from you.
2. The downtown “Brotherhood” will have to find a way to steal the project for downtown Minneapolis.  Don’t rule this out.
3. The Ramco Commission needs to hear from we, the residents, that this must not pass.  I doubt it’ll work, but it’s worth at try.
4. Ramsey County voters will need to wake up and realize what a bunch of hamsters the DFL-dominated Ramco Commission is.

The Obama Administation was proud to stick it to the banks, limiting the transaction fees they could charge.

Now, the banks are sticking back:

Reuters reports that Bank of America next year will start charging $5 a month for customers who use a debit card.

And when one bank seizes on a revenue stream, the others will follow suit:

“Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co and SunTrust Banks Inc are already testing or plan to fully roll out monthly debit card fees.”

But is it really due to more government regulation?

Yep:

Recent regulations — such as restrictions on overdraft programs — have cut into banks’ fee income. And thanks to the Wall Street reform law, starting next month banks will collect less revenue from merchants to process debit card transactions.

Banks have responded by raising fees or introducing new ones for services that traditionally have been free.

Since Barack Obama is the smartest president ever, he should be able to answer this simple question: where do you think “free checking accounts” come from?

The free account fairy?

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Ah, political season, and the start of neutral, objective, even-handed news reporting in the Minneapolis paper.

The Strib’s headline reads “Oil refineries seek huge tax refunds that could force schools to give back money”, and as Joe notes…:

They couldn’t have been any cruder if they’d said: “GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry taking money from schools to give to oil companies.”

It’s the perfect Progressive attack headline.

Naturally, the story is written in modern techno-thriller style: start with an explosive scene, randomly jump around introducing characters without any context, play up the human tragedy about to unfold unless a hero steps in, blame the usual villains.

It does read a little like someone who didn’t make the cut as a writer for “24” is slumming as a journo…

The story is much less compelling if laid out in a logical format.

1. There’s crude oil under the ground in Texas.
2. Crude oil must be refined to be useable as gasoline, diesel fuel, etc.
3. Hauling crude oil to the refinery is expensive, so
4. Oil companies built refineries in Texas near the oil fields
5. People who wanted good-paying jobs came to work for the refineries
6. Merchants who wanted to sell things to high-paid oil refinery employees built stores near the refineries
7. Refinery employees, merchants and merchants’ employees built houses near the refineries and started raising kids
8. The kids needed to go to schools, built near the homes that were built near the refineries
9. Schools are expensive and are paid for from local property taxes
10. Property taxes are based on local valuation and refineries are valuable so they paid huge property taxes
11. Huge property tax payments by refineries meant lower property taxes levied on homes, paid by employees
12. School districts got used to funding schools with huge property tax payments by refineries
13. Merchant and employee property tax payers got used to living large on the refineries’ dime
14. But federal law requires refineries to invest in pollution equipment
15. And state law gives a tax refund to refineries that invest in pollution equipment
16. So refineries that did invest in pollution equipment, filed for refunds
17. Refunding money to refineries would reduce their huge property tax payments
18. The money refunded to refineries cannot be given to school districts
19. School districts will have to cut spending or raise local property taxes to make up the shortfall
20. The state, knowing this, denied the refund claims, which were appealed
21. The governor appointed a commission to study the problem
22. The governor is Rick Perry, Republican candidate for President
23. The governor’s hand-selected commission is leaning toward giving the refunds; therefore
24. Rick Perry is taking money from schools to give to oil companies

It is a lot more mundane.  It’d sell fewer papers – or get fewer people inflamed against the GOP, whichever.

Well, I guess, in a way, the headline is half-assed, sort-of-true. Good enough for the Star Tribune.

But the entire thing could have been summed up more succinctly as:

“Gravy train ending, women and minorities hurt worst.”

Hell, that’s not news.

But it is campaign material.

Joe Doakes notes that Obama is singing conservatives’ tune:

President Obama slipped and called for a flat tax:

The president welcomed the charge. “I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare,” he told the Rose Garden crowd of 200. “I think it’s just the right thing to do.”

Exactly!  Everyone should pay the same, flat tax!

Cool: I propose 15% flat tax across the board, no exemptions, no deductions, no credits. Employer withholds it so no income tax form to file because there’s never a refund. Lay off half the IRS and taxpayers save trillions in lost productive hours, no longer filling out silly forms.

Almost seems too good to be true to you?  Of course it does:

Of course he didn’t mean that. He meant something different entirely. But hey – you offered it, we’ll take it, thanks.

Pass that bill and make him look stupid vetoing it.

Note to John Kline and Erik Paulsen: wanna get carried back to Washington in January 2013 on the shoulders of twenty million people who’ve had enough?  Take Obama up on his newfound desire for tax fairness, and introduce the flat tax.

A Pennsylvania school district opted to save $15,000 a year via some fairly ingenious thinking:

In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, [cuts to the education budget] meant putting an end to traditional means of cutting grass at two local schools. Instead of lawnmowers, the schools are using sheep:

Rather than spend money on cutting grass, the Carlisle School District has brought in 7 Romney sheep to tend the fields. “They’ve done a good job so far,” says Superintendent John Friend.

The sheep come free of charge, since they belong to the principal of the middle school. Friend estimates that they will save the district about $15,000 this year in mowing costs.

Speaking as a metro resident, this seems like a great idea.  Think of how much money and time metro park and rec districts and public works departments we could save by importing sheep to mow parks, roadsites and other areas we currently have to pay to mow!

Silly?  Maybe.

What’s not so silly is the response:

While the $15,000 saved will barely make a dent in Carlisle’s $2 million budget gap, Pennsylvania could render the draconian education cuts unnecessary if it ended special interest tax breaks benefiting corporations and natural gas companies.

In other words, “don’t bother thinking and getting creative – just raise taxes”.

Ahem.

At the risk of dispersing some of this blog’s usual decorum:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(breathe)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m not usually one for end-zone happy-dancing.  But after all the “you are teh racist/sexist/anti-worker/anti-middle-class/teabagger!/Koch-sucker/crap all of us conservatives have had to sit through since the last election, frankly, I think we’re entitled.

Last night’s victory in Wisconsin, like the “budget compromise” in DC and the Minnesota state budget, weren’t unalloyed victories – but in this case, it wasn’t even as close as it looked for the Wisconsin Democrats.

Think about it, “progressives”; you just spent $40,000,000 of your unions members’ dues – twice as much as the entire campaign for the entire Wisconsin State Senate cost in 2010.

Twice as much as the GOP spent.

You did it, you said, because you just knew Wisconsinites, deep down inside, were a bunch of liberals!  Not without reason; Barack Obama won every single one of those districts in 2008.

You – every damn one of you – just knew that you’d flip three, four, maybe even all six seats!  Because – you just knew this – Wisconsin just BLEEEEEEEDS “progressive”!

Or at least you had to hope so – because this, along with this autumn’s vote in Ohio on a slate of reforms similar to Walker’s – could mark the beginning of the end, not of public unions, but of public unions as a critical, game-ending force in national politics.

Because in a few years, with more stories like this floating around out there, even more voters will see what a crock of crap you “progressives” have been selling for so long.

Your platform – which, when you strip away all of the happy-talk, is “we will force private sector workers to work ’til they’re 72 so public union members can retire with full benefits at 55” – just isn’t working anymore.

And what did you get for your tens of millions?

You got two – one that everyone knew we were going to lose, and one squeaker against a guy with lots of personal electability issues,  The rest of them – even the Darling-Pasch race, which started the evening’s returns with Pasch winning – weren’t even close.

And Shelly “MAKE NO MISTAKE, WE ARE IN A WAR” Moore?  Yep, you were in a war.  And you were Italy.  And even with all that union money for those obnoxious, “A Better Minnesota”-style TV ads, and all those union people trawling the streets, and all those Twin Cities “progressives” coming across the river to help out?  Not to gloat, but that was the sweetest victory of them all last night, at least for a Twin Cities conservative who got to watch that race close-up from across the Saint Croix.

Sixteen points.

And the Democrats’ Holperin seat is looking kinda squishy in next week’s round of recalls.  Your two pickups could very easily turn into one by this time next week.

Scott Walker has been affirmed; Barack Obama has been refudiated.

You want to call this a war?  You know how those end, right?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The question I’d like to see asked:

 

If Congress doesn’t reduce spending to less than or equal to realistic revenues, creditor nations will decline to buy more debt and the President will be forced to decide which checks his administration won’t mail.

 

If you were President, which checks would you hold back, and why?

 

The question is merely a hypothetical today. But if the economy doesn’t recover soon . . . well, military planners run war games all the time, trying to anticipate problems and create solutions before we’re facing disaster with only moments to react in panic. Why not politicians?

 

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s a tough question.  Tougher still because I’ve been told (haven’t looked it up myself, yet) that we could shut down the entire daily operations of our government – Congress, the SCOTUS, and the entire Executive Branch, including all the Cabinet departments, including Defense and Health and Human Services, and still not attack the deficit; it’s the entitlements. (I need to look that up, obviously).

All the usual conservative suggestion – shutting down the Department of Education, defund NPR, privatize the National Endowment for the Humanities – aren’t even a whiz in the wind.  What we need is to cut entitlements – Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Obamacare – and cut them radically.

Which means not just cutting spending, but changing the way this nation looks at retirement and health insurance.

OK.  So go to it.  What do we do?

We’ve known it for decades; raising taxes in a recession is stupid, stupid, stupid.

But being a liberal means believing history just doesn’t apply to you:

CME Group Inc. is evaluating whether to move some operations to other states from Chicago to reduce its taxes, but it has not decided on an exact timeline, CEO Craig Donohue said Thursday.

“Our tax situation is untenable,” Donohue told Reuters, noting that CME is taxed more heavily than any of its global competitors. The company is talking with at least three states — Texas, Florida and Tennessee — about relocating some of its business to take advantage of lower tax rates there, Donohue said.

Illinois bucked the trend that New York and (to some extent) Calfornia recognized; that not only do you have to cut spending (because government is out of control) but that taxes inhibit revenue.

Paul Krugman – who is to Nobel Prizes what John Kerry was to Vietnam – wants to prove that Ronald Reagan never did anything useful for the economy, and he doesn’t care how sharply he has to shave the facts and the historical context to do it:

Reagan did not start an era of unprecedented growth by any measure: employment, GDP, productivity, whatever. But maybe the easiest way to see what didn’t happen is to look at median family income in constant dollars:

The NYTimes helpfully provided a graph:

Krugman:

 A spectacular increase during the high-tax, strong-union postwar generation; fitful improvement since, with the only sustained rise during the Clinton years. That’s the story; it’s amazing how many people don’t know it.

“That’s the story” Krugman says; high taxes (and unions, he adds in a non-sequitur) cause prosperity.

Like household income exists in a vacuum, affected only by taxes (and union membership).

I’m tempted to drive to New York, collar Krugman, and ask “what else happened during this timeline?”

What else happened between 1947 and 1971, besides unfettered taxes and government growth?  Like, the German and Japanese economies starting the period in ruins, and spending the entire period rebuilding?  China and India starting as third-world countries, enduring forty years of socialist governments that couldn’t feed their own people?  And,  respectively, a mass-murdering socialist dictatorship and civil wars?

Did Germany and Japan only get their economies rebuilt, and start to seriously compete with the US, in the late sixties and early seventies – about the time America’s rise in income leveled off?

Did America’s unions develop their high-salary, high-benefit, often low-skill paradigm perhaps because America’s economy had no competition?  The whole world was America’s market for those 25 years!

(And when Germany and Japan’s economies took off, they adopted high-tax, high-“service”, strong-union systems.  And when did their performance start levelling off?

That’s right, it shot up like a rocket from reconstruction until 1990…

…until China and India and Taiwan and the Republic of Korea started performing.

But don’t mind that.  According to “nobel-prize-winning” economist Paul Krugman, none of that matters.  Just taxes.

Media academics:  Distrust, then verify. Then, usually, distrust some more.

UPDATE:  I almost missed this:  Krugman also noted that the US prospered during the relatively high-tax Clinton era, and had troubles during the relatively low-tax Bush administration.

Right.  And Clinton benefitted from cashing the “peace dividend” won during the low-tax, high-prosperity Reagan administration.  And while Bush presided over prosperity from 2003-2007, he suffered from the deflation of the tech bubble early in his administration (exacerbated by a terrorist attack some of you may remember, but which Krugman clearly does not) and, of course, the housing crash, neither of which had anything to do with Bush’s tax cuts.

We really did.

“Socializing 1/7 of the economy”, we tried to tell the other 52-odd-% of you,”will screw up the economy even worse than it already is”.

And we were right:

Private-sector job creation initially recovered from the recession at a normal rate, leading to predictions last year of a “Recovery Summer.” Since April 2010, however, net private-sector job creation has stalled. Within two months of the passage of Obamacare, the job market stopped improving. This suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring. The law significantly raises business costs and creates considerable uncertainty about the future. To encourage hiring, Congress should repeal Obamacare.

Some of us are trying.  We really are.

Boehner’s response to the President’s communal scolding was short and to the point.

Still, this one would have worked just fine:

(Via Brad “The Closer” Carlson)

It’s become a Democrat cliché; any move to touch any government spending will “destroy” the program in question, inevitably starving the elderly and freezing the children, or something.

Lost in much of the barbering and protesting over GOP public-spending reforms – DC, Wisconsin, Minnesota and everywhere else – is that without conservative reform, the programs the lefty is yapping about will collapse under their own weight; it’s only through significant reform that the programs will be sustainable at all.

We’re seeing that in Wisconsin already:

Emily Koczela had been anxiously waiting for months for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill to take effect. Koczela, the finance director for the Brown Deer school district, had been negotiating with the local union, trying to get it to accept concessions in order to make up for a $1 million budget shortfall. But the union wouldn’t budge.

“We laid off 27 [teachers] as a precautionary measure,” Koczela told me. “They were crying. Some of these people are my friends.”

And what happened?

On June 29 at 12:01 a.m., Koczela could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The budget repair bill​—​delayed for months by protests, runaway state senators, and a legal challenge that made its way to the state’s supreme court​—​was law. The 27 teachers on the chopping block were spared.

It was the reforms – the ones that were going to “destroy” education – that saved the teachers.

Not the unions and their screeching about Madison last winter.

With “collective bargaining rights” limited to wages, Koczela was able to change the teachers’ benefits package to fill the budget gap. Requiring teachers to contribute 5.8 percent of their salary toward pensions saved $600,000. Changes to their health care plan​—​such as a $10 office visit co-pay (up from nothing)​—​saved $200,000. Upping the workload from five classes, a study hall, and two prep periods to six classes and two prep periods saved another $200,000. The budget was balanced.

I wonder how many of those 27 teachers called in sick to go to Madison last winter?

I’ve only run into Linda Berglin a few times.  The long-time Legislative insider – nine years in the House, thirty more in the Senate – always seemed to me, an admittedly jaundiced observer, to be one of those legislators that sprouted roots in the Capitol.

Or, more accurately, sprouted roots in the majority caucus at the Capitol – where the power is.

Like Ellen Anderson last spring, Berglin has apparently tried life in the minority, and found it wanting.

State Sen. Linda Berglin announced Monday that she will leave the Legislature on Aug. 15, in the wake of her new job with Hennepin County.

The piece – from Rachel Stassen-Berger at the Strib’s Hot Dish blog – lets out one “moo” for which there is just not enough cow:

Berglin has served in the Legislature since 1972 and is one of the Capitol experts on the state’s health and human services system. She had a hand in shaping the system that created one of the healthiest states in the nation. For decades she has been respected and feared by both sides of the aisle and in the health care industry.

People like Rachel Stassen-Berger keep saying that like it’s a good thing.

Berglin was truly the mother of the Minnesota Department of Health and Human Services as we have known it for the past thirty years; a place with bounding, skyrocketing spending, the place that has truly given baseline-budgeting a bad name and turned it into Target Number One for the GOP’s reform movement this past session. HHS’ increases have always been in the double-digits, biennium over biennium, while Berglin was one of its key legislative benefactors.

And since Stassen-Berger chose to phrase her piece the way she did, I have to ask; did the bureaucracy that Berglin helped build “create” Minnesota as a healthy state, as opposed to Minnesota’s fairly healthy ethnic majority (Minnesota and the low-tax, low-“service”, Berglin-free Dakotas perennially vie for healthiest states in the union) and better-than-average standard of living?

Correlation does not equal causation.

Well, it’s all water under the bridge now.  Like her fellow legislative Ozymandias, Anderson, Berglin has decided the view from the basement – and being out of absolute power – doesn’t become her:

Since the last election, she was marginalized as Democrats lost the Minnesota Senate for the first time since she joined the Legislature…Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk said Republicans and Dayton administration officials were discussing the final health and human services legislative proposal.

“The governor’s office called and said ‘[Senate Majority Leader] Amy Koch wants you out of the room,'” Bakk said. “Linda doesn’t know why. But she’s incredibly knowledgeable.”

And, more germanely, she was part of the DFL’s no-ideas, all-stalling approach to the “negotiations”.  She had no place in the discussion, because she was there to add absolutely nothing.

Still and all, with all that “incredible knowledge”, Hennepin County residents should be immortal soon.

Bon voyage, Sen. Berglin.

UPDATE:  A legislative insider messaged me: “It’s no coincidence that this was the first time in 30 years Berglin wasn’t involved in HHS negotiations and there was reform.”

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

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

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

It’s a claim based on two dubious premises:

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

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

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

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

100% of sitting presidents seem to have a problem with making stuff up as he goes along.  Last week, he claimed 80% of Americans support tax hikes – which would seem to be an epic turnaround in eight months, if it were true.

If it were true:

Where is he getting this 80% figure? How about “out of his hind end.” Gallup doesn’t back him up. Neither does Rasmussen. Gallup gets you closest, but you have do get a little creative with the numbers and even it shows that 50% would prefer a deal with no “revenues” at all (Ras shows 55% on that side).

Obama’s just scattin’ and be-boppin’ and makin’ stuff up.

Where is Snopes?  Politicfact?  All of our legions of journalistic “fact-checkers?”

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

So how’s that going for ’em?

How do you think?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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