Last summer’s government shutdown, according to Minnesota Management and Budget, was a wash:

A nearly three-week Minnesota government shutdown in July over a budget impasse left broad public frustration, but little impact on state finances, the state’s budget office said on Tuesday.

The longest and most expansive state government shutdown in Minnesota history left 19,000 government employees sitting at home and shuttered road construction projects, state parks, highway rest stops, the state lottery and horse racing tracks.

Costs for lost revenue from compliance with taxes, the lottery, the state parks and preparation leading up to the shutdown totaled about $60 million, but Minnesota also saved about $65 million in compensation not paid to state workers.

That, of course, was why the shutdown only lasted three weeks; Dayton left Saint Paul to go outstate, saw that nobody really cared, and realized that his gambit to squeeze Minnesotans into compliance with his tax-hiking platform was doomed.

Indeed the capsule summary shows a slim $5 million profit.  Here’s where I’ll call BS.  If the MMB – which is an executive office which reports to Mark Dayton – says it’s a $5 million profit, the state likely made out much better than that.

No, I have nothing to base that on – but experience watching the DFL-dominated bureacracy.  Which, in Minnesota, is both unsupportable and usually accurate.

Just saying.

I haven’t written a lot about the Vikings stadium controversy.  Partly it’s because I have little to say other than “build what you want, but don’t use any taxpayer money”. Partly it’s because I’m too busy saying “Go Bears”.

And partly because Mr. Dilettante has it covered.

His series on the ongoing Arden Hills shakedown – up to seventeen parts and counting – touched on the visit to Minnesota by the NFL brass who, in an example of the worst optics I’ve seen in this sort of a situatiion since the CEOs of GM and Chrysler flew to Washington in corporate jets to talk with Congress, pulled up to the site of the shakedown talks in a limo.

And he commented on the remarks by the NFL’s spokesman, former Goldman-Sachs employee Roger Grubman:

And in case you were thinking that the Los Angeles option isn’t real, Grubman offered this bon mot:

“To me, if I were a Minnesotan, any alternative other than Minnesota would be equally as bad,” he said.

Got the message? That Grubman is crazy, man. You don’t know what he’ll do. He’ll move the team to Wichita if that’s what it takes. He’s nuts and he’s serious. He’ll take your team away in the blink of a gimlet eye. You better pony up, rubes valued citizens of Minnesota.

So the question is out there. Do we build Zygi World in Arden Hills on the old ammo dump site? Or does the NFL drop the bomb? As much as we’ve all tried to pretend otherwise, I suspect we all knew this moment was coming. The NFL and the Wilfs are going to give Minnesota one chance to answer.

Of course, Jacksonville has worse financials and is a market that, unlike Minnesota, has almost no NFL tradition and doesn’t have a fifty-year record of selling out games even during turkey seasons like this one.  Rationally, they are a much better candidate to move to LA.

But the NFL, and our DFL governor, don’t want you to think rationally about this. They want you bouncing between hazy purple and gold nostalgia on the one hand, and Grubman’s little leash-yank on the other.

Read Mr. D’s whole series.

Why, yes – I did spend a bit of time talking redistricting over the weekend, now that you mention it.

On the NARN, it was my pleasure to interview MNGOP Chair Tony Sutton and his deputy, Michael Brodkorb (punctuated by a surprise appearance by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker; I’ll be posting the podcast link as soon as I find it) about the redistricting process and all the outside money the left is pouring into Minnesota to try to skew the process in their favor.

And then, last night, I drove out to Ramsey to appear on “The Late Debate” with Jack Tomczak and Ben Kruse.  I was on a panel with Gary Gross of Let Freedom Ring, Mike Dean of “Common Cause Minnesota”, and Kent Kaiser, who is part of Draw The Line Minnesota’s (DTL-MN) “Citizens’ Commission”.  In the interest of accuracy, I’ll note that in my piece last week, I lumped Kaiser in with the Commission’s liberal hypermajority, because I personally didn’t know any better; Kaiser is of course well-known in GOP circles as one of the good guys; I regret the error…

…especially since he was the unquestionable star of last night’s debate.

I’m not going to try to reconstruct the whole thing from memory – you can check out their podcast at their site, and Gary Gross did an excellent rundown of the proceedings over atLFR.

I’ll recap this bit, though; I walked in there with two main points:  I walked out with four:

Who’s Politicized?:  As Kaiser noted, the GOP legislative majority’s proposal follows the letter of the law, and the spirit of the last several judicial decisions, pretty closely.  The DFL’s map was…well, nonexistant.  They never drew one up.

It was Governor Dayton’s veto that was, as Kaiser noted, exceptionally politically capricious.

And this entire process recaps a pattern we started seeing during the 2008 election, and rose to a crescendo in last year’s gubernatorial race; the DFL isn’t so much a political party as it is a political holding company, outsourcing its actual policy and boots-on-the-ground work to its “strategic partners” – the unions, and the array of astroturf pressure groups like “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Take Action Minnesota”, MPIRG, and “Draw The Line”.

Outside Money: Behind all of Draw The Line and Common Cause’s noble chatter about getting people involved – nay, getting them interested – in the redistricting process, the fact remains that a raft of “progressive” organizations are doing their level best to try to jimmy the redistricting in their favor, in a census period in which GOP-leaning districts exploded and DFL-districts continued withering.  The demographics aren’t a state phenomenon – and either is the left’s effort; “Draw The Line” is a regional, not state, entity, focusing on trying to attenuate (at least) the gains the GOP should get from pure demographics.  More below.

Competition: One of DTL-MN’s priorities – because it’s one of the priorities of its supporting groups (Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the MN Council of Non-Profits and Take Action MN), is “competitive elections”.  On a policy level, this goal – making sure that politicians are accountable to electoral pressure from their voters – is laudable enough.

It’s at the implementation level that it either breaks down or shows its ideological stripes, depending on your point of view.  Minnesota is a divided state – but not evenly or consistently divided.

Let’s look at the example of a hypothetical state of about five million people, which is closely divided on a statewide basis – but where the division stacks up as follows:

• An urban core – three, really – of about a million people that votes about 70/30 Democrat.
• An outer-suburban and exurban ring that votes, in a good year, maybe 52-55 percent GOP.  Let’s assume a huge year, and say it’s 55-45 GOP.
• The rest of the state – about half the population – which, to arrive at the sort of dead-even split that the last three statewide elections have shown, would be divided about 52-48 in favor of the GOP.

Of course it’s not hypothetical at all.  Minnesota is exactly that; a couple of big blue boils, the Twin Cities and Duluth, two Congressional and 20 legislative districts that routinely deliver 70+% to the DFL, surrounded by an exurban ring that, in a blowout year, might go 55-45 GOP (only two GOP-owned legislative districts topped 70% GOP, as opposed to 20 for the DFL), and an outstate that tips a little bit GOP, but is close enough to send Tim Walz and Collin Peterson to Congress.

So to make Minnesota “competitive” across the board, the legislative map would have to look like a couple of bicycle wheels, with spokes radiating out from the Marshall-Lake Bridge (and Canal Park in Duluth) all the way out to the state’s borders; the Congressional map would look like a big Key Lime (mmm, Key Lime) pie.

That is, of course, not acceptable practice.  New boundaries must, as much as possible, preserve existing community boundaries.

The answer, of course, is that Common Cause want the Republican parts of Minnesota to be competitive, and to leave the DFL-dominated Twin Cities and Duluth, and their 20 districts, pretty much alone.

“When did you stop beating your minorities?”: As Gary noted at LFR last week, there is a noxious little bon mot tucked away in the DTL-MN’s site:  “Historically, redistricting has been done out of the public eye, without meaningful public input, and used to dilute the voting power of communities of color“.

Remember Governor Dayton’s first big initiative?

No?

That probably makes Governor Dayton plenty happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what can he do?

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

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

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

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

Well, no.

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

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

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

(more…)

Looking back through my archives, I think this piece from last December – when Dayton “won” the recount – was pretty dead-on.

The Twin Cities media have largely been dutiful stenographers during the shutdown, carrying the DFL’s message pretty much verbatim while gundecking the GOP pretty consistently.

Let’s let all that slide for the moment.  We’ll come back to it, naturally.

But let’s talk for a moment about the “Old” Twin Cities media’s moldiest meme; that there was once a time when the parties just got along, and agreed to do “what was best for Minnesota”.

It’s baked wind, of course; to the extent things ever worked that way, it’s because the MNGOP used to be both extremely moderate, in the Rockefeller/Stassen mold, and also very weak, especially after Watergate.  So when the Twin Cities Old Media says “they just got along and did what was best for Minnesota”, what they mean was “they shut up and passed a “progresssive”, tax and spend agenda without a whole lot of muss and fuss”.

So let’s accept them at their word for a moment.  Let’s say that they, the old-school, dead-tree media (I’m looking at you, Lori Sturdevant and Doug Grow and Rachel Stassen-Berger) really do believe in that myth, and really think it led to “good government”.

So how does the behavior of Senate Minority (aaah) leader Tom Bakk and House Minority leader Paul Thissen fit into that meme?

The GOP and Governor Dayton had reportedly reached an agreement on June 30 – the day before the shutdown.  The shutdown that had the Twin Cities media wetting its collective pants was minutes away from being averted.  Governor Dayton had agreed to drop tax increases – any of them – from the agreement.

Problem solved?

Until Bakk and Thissen entered the picture – as related by Gary Gross at LFR, with emphasis added?

[State GOP deputy chair Michael] Brodkorb said he could confirm that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen were in the room when Speaker Zellers and Leader Koch returned to say that they’d accept Gov. Dayton’s offer. At that time, Gov. Dayton said that he’d changed his mind and that tax increases had to be part of the final solution.

It’s important to remember that Speaker Zellers and Sen. Koch returned only 45 minutes after Gov. Dayton’s initial offer. The only thing that’d changed was that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen weren’t in the room when Gov. Dayton made his initial offer but they were there when he’d reversed himself.

Let’s make this perfectly clear; it appears that Bakk and Thissen, after spending the entire session lighting farts in their offices (*), coming out periodically to wag their fingers on Almanac and heckle the GOP’s various plans to their various stenographers the media, did exactly one substantive thing during the entire session; scupper a settlement two weeks ago.

It’s pretty clear that they believe they could play the shutdown for their political benefit in 2012, and get that benefit on the back of state employees, contractors, the service-using public, and those that depend on the state  for whatever reason.

Brodkorb then said that “The only thing that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen had done since the start of the session was cash paychecks. You can quote me on that.”

With pleasure.

When will the Minnesota Media raise its collective eyebrow over Bakk, Thissen and the DFL’s exploitation of this shutdown?  The region’s conservative blogs have done everything but engrave the story on the back of a “Society of Professional Journalists” award and walk the story into the Strib’s office.

It’s clear at this point that if Thissen and Bakk could tie defective strollers to the GOP, they’d both roll prams full of infants down the Capitol steps, with cameras rolling and the Strib’s editorial staff pondering with mock sincerity  “why don’t the Republicans just compromise and fight Big Stroller?”

(*) Figuratively and rhetorically speaking.  I have no idea if anyone lit a single fart, and if they did, it’s none of my business.  It’s a figure of speech implying sloth, negligence, and passive-aggressive idleness, and as such it’s richly, if disgustingly, appropriate.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes about the bonding bill that is one of Mark Dayton’s demands to end his shutdown.

It’s infuriating.

Naturally, the Star Trib editors praise the bonding bill, saying “Not all government borrowing is created equal.”

They’re exactly correct, of course. Sometimes government borrows money to build unnecessary buildings that benefit a tiny few; sometimes it borrows money to build public improvements that benefit hundreds of thousands. This bonding bill is almost entirely the former.

This bill is not slated to pay for a Vikings stadium – sorry, Zigi.

But some of the spending is almost as misguided:

New buildings at the U of M and St. Cloud State. Should have come from the school budget via capital funding or alumni fundraising, like any private school would have to do, not a separate state-wide funded bonding bill.

Civic center upgrades to Rochester, St. Cloud and Mankato. These are local projects to benefit local communities – they should raise the money locally, not by a state-wide funded bonding bill.

And this part:

Development of more mass transit corridors in the Twin Cities. “Corridors” reads LIGHT RAIL which benefits (if anybody), local residents, not state-wide population and therefore should be funded locally (or not at all).

And there you go.

Why shouldn’t these things be decided, and paid for, locally rather than by state and metro-wide planning bodies?

Here’s the only line in the article with which I agree:

Bonding is an appropriate and desirable practice when it allows for investment in the infrastructure and amenities that will pay economic dividends in the long run. But it’s a travesty when it’s used for short-term consumption and leaves the future bereft.

True; sadly, the editors cannot distinguish between adding lanes to 35W versus adding The Mark Dayton Wing to the Mankato Civic Center.

Is this bonding bill enough of a stinker to scuttle the budget deal? No, probably not. It’s as infuriating to see the Governor hold up the entire state for pure pork as to see the GOP go along with it. But the enemy of good is perfect, and although this deal isn’t perfect, it’s good enough for now.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It may well be good enough – depending on the reforms that get through the process.  Reportedly, Zero-Based Budgeting and the Sunset Commission are on the bubble – which, beyond any set of financial figures, are the big goals of this legislature for conservatives.

As we kick off the special session sometime this week, probably, Gary Gross at LFR tallies up winners and losers from the regular session.

Business?  They get a draw:

Minnesota businesses still pay too high an income tax but at least it isn’t getting worse. With this settled for at least another 2 years, businesses can breath a sigh of relief.

Gary counts coup for the legislative freshmen, and a few upperclasspeople who just plain got the message:

Steve Gottwalt and Dave Thompson emerged as the next generation of GOP leaders thanks to Sen. Thompson’s stout-hearted defense of conservative principles and Rep. Gottwalt’s seizing the moment to push Gov. Dayton into settling the shutdown. These gentlemen deserve high praise for being great spokesters/legislators for conservative principles.

King Banaian and Keith Downey are winners because they stood their ground on important reforms to state government’s makeup and King’s priority-based budgeting reform of the budgeting process. These gentlemen have proposed legislation that would change how government operates and how it spends money. These aren’t tiny considerations.

I’m looking – and I’m saying this out of hope as much as expectation – to the Freshmen to take great advantage of the out-year session.  I think by the time this budget deal is done, the GOP stock is going to be a strong “buy and hold”.  Yes, I’m biased; with good reason, I think.

And I’m with Gary here:

Speaker Zellers and Leader Koch deserve credit for keep the troops unified. It wasn’t difficult picturing scenarios where moderates could abandon the GOP on this or that vote. That they didn’t is a testimony to their whip operations and their leadership.

Koch and Zellers were at the business end of a regional media that, when they could be bothered to report at all, were hostile to the point of scandalousness, but for the fact that that same media also decides on what is or is not a “scandal” outside the wonk class.  And Gary’s right; they held the caucus together.  To be fair to previous GOP leaders, more of this class was in St. Paul on a mission than some of the previous classes.  To be realistic, pressure is pressure.

The biggest loser was Gov. Dayton. He lost on his signature issue. Initially, Gov. Dayton wanted to raise taxes on the rich. After getting defeated on that, he tried settling for shaking down whoever he could shake down. Both attempts were defeated.

That’s the crux, so far, as we head into the special session; while the GOP didn’t get a perfect 100 – I’d say 75 – an honest appraisal of Dayton as of last Friday had to say “20” to you.

You know the DFL is reeling; it was the height of cynicism to see the DFL’s minions in the media demanding compromise on Wednesday, and on Friday saying that the GOP giving the governor his putative spending figure was “borrow-and-spend”.

Further proof that “compromising” with the DFL is always a lousy idea.

As part of its passive-aggressive, “let the peasants feel the pain” approach to the shutdown, the Dayton Administration shut down all of the state’s publicly-visible databases.

Including that of the Campaign Finance Board.  I know this, because whenever the Strib tries to pass some businessman or private citizen off as a “non-partisan” commentator on politics, a quick glance at the CFB usually shows that they are committed DFLers.

We can’t do that now.

Now, since most of Dayton’s campaign money, including the campaign to justify the shutdown – and make no mistake, it is a campaign, being paid for by liberals with deep pockets, like Alita Messinger and the rest of the Dayton family – is being paid for by what amount to campaign contributions, and those that “regulate”, or at least transcribe, these contributions are out of the office (or at least not maintaining databases), doesn’t that give Democrat groups ample chance to…

…well, cheat?

I mean, how would we know?

KSTP is running an online preference poll on the shutdown.

Get in there and vote.

Early and often.

…that the current Minnesota government shutdown is the longest in US history.

Most of the citizens of Minnesota responded by going to work today.

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

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

Let’s settle this.

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

It’s about reforming government.

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

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

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

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

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

…was two pages away from being resolved.

And Dayton is always two pages away from resolving it.

And no matter what the “pain”, he’s going to stay two pages, and no less than two pages, away from resolving it.

Array

About 500 union members – and not much of anyone else – formed a “Downeyville” on the Capitol grounds yesterday.

“Downeyville’s” city government quickly formed a city bureaucracy which hired a unionized workforce to take care of “Downeyville’s” city business.  The unions worked with the city and instituted a comprehensive defined-benefit pension plan for “Downeyville” city workers, with automatic cost of living raises and a n0-questions-asked health insurance.

“Downeyville’s” bills quickly spiralled out of control; taxes surged, and “Downeyville” quickly sent lobbyists (further) up Capitol Hill to demand Local Government Aid – which only inflamed the protesters, because the government is shut down.  Which caused the entire city work force to form another small town – a suburb of “Downeyville”, further up the capitol steps, called “Zellerston”.

The suburb  quickly  took the wealthy population from “Downeyville”, causing the “Downeyville” city government to demand the forming of a “Protest Met Council” to equalize revenues between the two “towns”.  “Zellerston” also formed a unionized city work force, which quickly adopted a defined-benefit pension plan and cadillac health benefits, which quickly drove the city’s budget into the red, causing the city to demand Local Government Aid.  They sent their lobbyist up the hill to the Capitol, where he ot into a fight with “Downeyville’s” lobbyist, getting them both thrown into jail, where their union-paid lawyers (it’s a benefit, hey?) filed suit against each other, both winning multimillion dollar judgments, which spun both cities into crushing debt.

And then the six-o’clock news cycle ended, and the news trucks left, and most of the “population” of both “cities” left, leaving both cities with crushing debts.  Both cities called in union members from other cities, who scheduled a protest…

Oh, yeah – union members were the only people that cared.

But Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, one of several DFL legislators who attended the rally, said he was surprised the shutdown did not yet seem to be resonating with many Minnesotans. “I thought there would be a lot more tension on July 4th,” Hornstein said of the many Fourth of July parades across the state. “I’m surprised.

Of couse, Twitter redounded with warnings from Democrats to Republicans about “tension” to be expected at Fourth of July parades.  Apparently they thought Minnesotans would be up in arms about the shutdown.  Maybe they even tried to see to it – hell, they astroturf eveything else. We just don’t know.

Anyway – while “Downeyville” apparently stiffed as anything but a union pep rally, Hornstein – and by extension, the entire DFL – still has hope:

“But I think the longer this would go on, the public would get concerned,” he said.

AFSCME and SEIU members will be going door to door to union members and registered DFLers to make sure people “get concerned” over the weekend*.

(

I just finished watching former governor – as in, “not the governor anymore” – Arne Carlson on Channel 11’s morning show.  The former – as in, “hasn’t been elected in 17 years” – governor was promoting his “independent” budget commission.

I didn’t hear much; I was too busy yelling at the TV.  Having that smug, sanctimonous fop back on the TV still makes my wallet hurt.

But I do recall that his little spiel was clogged with references to “the way we used to do things in Minnesota”; code for “parties working together”.  As in “cooperation among elected officials, with no “extremists” hijacking the process to their ends”.

So what do we have here in Minnesota?

A legislative branch whose overwhelming majority agrees on a budget is being held up…

…by the Governor.

Is that the sort of “cooperation” that Carlson is talking about?

Or are his scruples purely partisan?

After spending millions of dollars upsetting the DFL machine, and then more on the campaign of toxic sleaze that put him in office by a whisker, it seems Mark Dayton really doesn’t want to do his job all that badly.

After rejecting a balanced Republican budget that not only lives within state revenue but also gave him most of his purported policy goals, Dayton first called for a “mediator”.

In other words, he called for a single lawyer to dictate what the state budget would be.

And now, he’s brought in a junta – a group of “experts” – to dictate what the budget should be.

Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Vice President Walter Mondale have assembled a six-member panel of experts to help resolve the state’s budget standoff, the two announced Tuesday.

The group “features” Arne “High Times” Carlson – whose only budgetary experience came during the prosperous, cha-cha nineties – and Walter Mondale, who was Jimmy Carter’s vice-president.

These two – the RINO and the hard-line DFLer – are joined by a dog’s breakfast of “experts”.

Any guess on what the “experts” have in common?

Two former legislators are on the panel — Republican Steve Dille and DFLer Wayne Simoneau.

Dille got a 55 from the Taxpayers League.  Simoneau was a DFLer – need I say more? –

It has two representatives of the business community — former Norwest Bank president Jim Campbell and Medtronic vice president Kris Johnson.

That’s Jim Campbell, whose recent political donations have been to DFLers, potemkin Republican Chuck Hagel, and a few Republicans back in the day when the parties were basically different shades of spendthrift, and Kristen Johnson, whose record seems to be Republican, which donations to McCain-Palin, Erik Paulsen and other Republicans.

The other two members are former state finance commissioners — John Gunyou, who served in the Carlson administration, and Jay Kiedrowski, who worked for DFLer Rudy Perpich.

That’s John Gunyou, who ran as Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s running mate in the primaries against Dayton last year – for the DFL nomination – “managed” budgets at a time when budgeting was a piece of cake since the good times were rolling, and has been beating the drums against conservative governance ever since he left office.

Speaking in Minneapolis’ City Hall, Carlson said he thought legislators and Gov. Mark Dayton needed the help.

“When the process loses the ability to be flexible to effect compromise, then you have to have an outside party,” said Carlson. “In business it might be some sort of mediation or arbitration, whatever it may be, but you need that kind of process to take place.”

Carlson said he’d like the panel to offer a settlement of some kind by the end of this week.

Let’s see – with six high-profile liberals (Mondale, Carlson, Gunyou, Kiedrowski, Schowalter and Campbell) and one apparently conservative (Johnson), what do you suppose that “settlement” is going to look like?

Like a “back to the Nineties” – a perfect accompaniment for Dayton’s “back to the Seventies” administration.

Mondale said he also worried that the fiscal debate in Washington could add fuel Minnesota’s budget crisis.

“I’m afraid that if we don’t reassert Minnesota’s ability to think and create in this crisis, that we’ll be overwhelmed by national pressures,” said Mondale.

Dear Carlson, Mondale et al:  we elected people to do our “creating” and “thinking”; a bare plurality got behind Dayton, while a clear majority put the GOP legislature in office.

You want to play governor again?  Get yourselves elected.

Go away.

Ramco Judge Kathleen Gearin has ruled on “critical services” for a potential upcoming government shutdown:

Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin’s ruling came Wednesday, just two days before a state government shutdown would begin. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature would have to agree on a budget before Friday to avoid the scenario.

Dayton and top lawmakers were sequestered in the governor’s office on their sixth straight day of budget negotiations. They have yet to report a breakthrough in a drawn-out dispute over the level of spending in the next two-year budget and how to pay for it. The state faces a projected $5 billion deficit in the two-year budget cycle, which begins on Friday.

Dayton wants to raise income taxes on high earners, while Republicans insist on no new revenue.

One wonders if MPR’s reporter – Elizabeth Dunbar – is aware of the distinction between “no new taxes” and “no new revenue”.  New revenue happens when people become more prosperous and pay more in taxes.

I’ll chalk it up to carelessness, and continue.

Gearin said state payments to school districts and local governments should continue even if there’s no budget by Friday. She said the state must also fulfill its obligations to the federal government and continue to administer those programs, including food stamps, welfare payments and Medicaid.

“The failure to properly fund critical core functions of the executive and legislative branches will violate the constitutional rights of the citizens of Minnesota,” Gearin wrote in a 19-page written order.

But Gearin emphasized that state payments during a shutdown should be limited “only the most critical functions of government involving the security, benefit, and protection of the people.”

What a radical notion; limiting government to what it’s actually needed for.

I need to read the order (and so do you, so go and do it) more completely, but it’s hard to read what I’ve seen so far as anything but at least a qualified victory for the MNGOP.  Mark Dayton’s attempt to push all the pain of this shutdown onto this state’s most vulnerable residents – which we’ve been documenting for weeks, although the mainstream media can’t seem to be bothered – has been rebuffed for now.

With government doing the things it actually needs to be (or should be) doing, I think Governor Dayton just got chopped off at the knees.

I didnt’ write it, but I wish I had:

Top 5 Things

Pass it along.

There may be a Thing #6 to keep in mind as well; although “we” – or the 43% of our neighbors who really aren’t concerned enough about this state’s future to realize what an eternal road to Palookaville “progressivism” is – elected Governor Dayton, he’s not really running the executive branch.

More on Monday.

Since Governor Dayton isn’t doing any actual work, like setting up a special session or anything, the MNGOP has a bit of homework for him.

62211 Worksheet

Of course, he won’t do it – but it’d be interesting if he did.

He’s not doing it, by the way, because he doesn’t have permission from the people who actually pull his strings.

More on that on Monday.

“I’m shocked, shocked that we have no solution…”, says Governor Dayton…

Minnesota’s budget talks are at an impasse and two weeks before a potential state government shutdown, Gov. Mark Dayton said he does not know how the problem can be resolved.

…to the shutdown he and his cronies have been planning all along.

The only real solution is to find some terrorists to phone in a threat to Saint Paul.

Dayton planned the shutdown all along.

As that great observer of Minnesota political nature Nick Coleman used to say (and say, and say, and say, and say…), “connect the dots, people”.

The MNGOP will help you connect them.

Evidence of Dayton Administration’s Efforts To “Create Chaos” & “Greatest Possible Pain” During Shutdown

Spread the word.

Yesterday, we discussed the email in the Department of Human Services that indicated that it’s common knowledge among higher ups in the DHS that Governor Dayton is actively promoting the government shutdown to cause all the misery it can, to try to turn it toward the Legislative majority.

But that’s just the beginning.

A highly-placed source with intimate knowledge of Minnesota’s public heath system contacted me over the weekend. (A similar source contacted Janet Beihoffer; she ran the email at Freedom Dogs).   My source an assortment of high-ranking officials in state public-health agencies and non-profits received the email last week from one Michael Scandrett, a lawyer with the firm of Halleland and Habicht, a term that works in health-care policy consulting.

Accoring to my source, Scandrett’s email said that – I’m paraphrasing, here, so feel free to read the whole thing over at the Dogs – Governor Dayton’s shutdown plan will involve terminating payments to health care providers working with all government programs, as of July 1.

Also according to my source, the email said that the intent of this action appears to be – my source quoted the email – “to create create the greatest possible pain and resulting pressure on the Legislature to resolve the dispute“.

In other words, the Governor is using the executive branch to ratchet up the pain of the shutdown on the state’s workers and those dependent on the state – his supporters – to feed his mania with raising taxes at all costs.

I’ll be seeking comment from Mr. Scandrett, as well as other top DHS officials on this email.

The upshot, though?  If you depend on the state of Minnesota – as an employee or as a client – Governor Dayton is holding you hostage.

This email – purportedly from a State Department of Human Services employee – surfaced over the weekend, and has been making the rounds of the conservative blogs in Minnesota:

Click to expand.

In other words, if the leak is accurate, Dayton has been inducing the government shutdown for the DFL’s political gain.  He’s sandbagged the budget process to try to beat on the GOP.

Dayton, if this checks out, is holding state goverment workers, schools, the U and our state university system, those that depend on government for health care, and the entire state government hostage…

…to pursue his curious mania for raising taxes on the not-very-“rich”, to try to whip up the forces of class envy to his, and his cronies’, benefit, and to defend a an unsustainable status quo.

And you know what else?

I think I may have happened upon an even bigger, more damning smoking gun.

Tomorrow morning at 7AM on Shot In The Dark.

The governor s it a freeze vetoed the K12 Education budget bill…

In his letter vetoing the Republican K-12 budget, Dayton criticized the bill’s “freezing of compensatory revenue.” The state doles out that money, sometimes more than $400 million a year, based on the number of poor students in each school district.

If you suspect that the Dayton administration’s responses to every GOP initiative were written last December, here’s your evidence:

But there’s one problem. Dayton and the Republicans both want spend the same amount on compensatory revenue over the next two years. Each side proposes leaving it at levels set in current law.

Senate Republicans once proposed freezing compensatory revenue, but that provision was eliminated when lawmakers crafted the final version of the K-12 bill (known as the “conference report”).

What Republicans did instead was separate the compensatory revenue from the basic per-pupil formula allowance. That means future Legislatures will have to specifically increase the compensatory revenue formula, rather than just boosting the basic formula.

In other words, they took it off the “autopilot” that drives so much of our biennial budget discussion.  The autopilot that drives up proposed spending, leading to “$5 billion deficits” and 20-odd percent spending hikes in every budget, and that legislatures will have to do their jobs.

Is that a freeze?

“How on God’s green earth do you argue that it’s a freeze?” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, the Republican sponsor of the bill. He noted that not only have Dayton and the GOP both left the formula at current law levels, but spending will also increase automatically if there are more poor students.

The Administration let out a rare honest emission:

At first, Department of Education spokeswoman Charlene Briner agreed the letter got it wrong.

“It is incorrect to say that compensatory was frozen in the conference report,” Briner said in an interview. Soon after, Briner sent Hot Dish e-mails backtracking that statement and adding  “I think I was incorrect to say that.”

“The net effect is a freeze,” she wrote, “unless future legislatures act.” In other words, delinking it from the basic formula could mean future legislatures choose not to increase the compensatory revenue formula.

What?  Requiring that spending be justified?  The nerve of those peasants!

Dayton spokeswoman Katie Tinucci said they stand by the veto letter. “It is our interpretation that the effect of delinking compensatory revenue is the same as freezing it—we cannot rely on the actions of future legislatures.”

In other words – “spending is the goal; shut up and pay up”.

Let’s go back in time:

2005: Confronted with a nonspecific threat of terrorism, then-Senator Mark Dayton shuts down his Senate office in DC, leaving the job of doing the nation’s business to the 534 other Congresspeople who, for whatever reason, didn’t.

His idea of leadership – to lead the run away from doing his job.

2011: Confronted by a GOP majority that outpolled him in the 2010 elections, and propped up only by a series of meaningless, potemkin polls, Governor Dayton does…

…well, more or less the same thing, asking for a “mediator” to work toward a compromise give him political cover for the fact that he holds absolutely no cards.

Remember – he’s been calling the GOP “obstructionist” (I’ve added emphasis):

At a press conference, Dayton said he has asked key cabinet members not to appear before the Legislative Commission on Planning and Fiscal Policy. The joint legislative panel is scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. today to seek details on the governor’s latest budget proposal.

Dayton said his administration was not given adequate notice of the meeting, and would not participate. He said there is no point in discussing the details of a budget agreement until Republicans agree to compromise on some kind of revenue increase to help balance the budget.

“We’re not at the beck and call of the Legislature. They’re not in session. They had their five months,” he said.

They had five months dealing with a Governor whose only concept of “compromise” is “I get everything I asked for even though I’m in the weaker position”.

By the way – ask your lawyer (or any lawyer) about the wisdom of “getting a mediator” when your opponent is dealing in bad faith.  There is none.

And fortunately, at least this time the MNGOP knows it.