Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – which would make legal self-defense a more tenable option for law-abiding Minnesotans – is coming up for another hearing in the Senate tomorrow.

For the second straight day, I’m going to urge all Second-Amendment supporting Minnesotans to get on the phone.  These Senators are all pretty much in line to support HF1467/SF1357:

• Michelle L. Fischbach, (651) 296-2084
• David W. Hann, 651) 296-1749
• Ingebrigtsen, Bill, 651) 297-8063
• Magnus, Doug, (651) 296-5650
• Scott J. Newman, 651) 296-4131
• Gen Olson, (651) 296-1282
• Mike Parry, (651) 296-9457

They could use a call to encourage them, but mainly thank them for their continued support for Civil Liberties in Minnesota.

Three more Senators on the committee – Terri E. Bonoff, Barb Goodwin and Linda Higgins – are worthless Metrocrats.  Rust-encrusted enemies of civil liberty, none of them is worth the time it’d take to contact them.

The last two…

• Keith Langseth (651) 296-3205
• LeRoy A. Stumpf. (651) 296-8660

So please – take a moment to email or (especially) call today; the hearing is tomorrow.

Remember – have them support HF1467/SF1357.

[1] Yeah, I went there.  Whatchagonnadoabout it?

Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – which would make legal self-defense a more tenable option for law-abiding Minnesotans – is coming up for another hearing in the Senate Thursday.

The bill – which got side-tracked in the last session, amid a mass of inaccurate and dishonest reporting on the issue – is a must-pass for this session.  And I think it’s fair to say if the GOP allows it to die this time, a lot of gun-owning Minnesotans are going to wonder when they’ll get some payback for all their commitment.

I’m going to urge all you Second-Amendment supporting Minnesotans to get on the phone.  These Senators are all pretty much in line to support HF1467/SF1357:

• Michelle L. Fischbach, (651) 296-2084
• David W. Hann, 651) 296-1749
• Ingebrigtsen, Bill, 651) 297-8063
• Magnus, Doug, (651) 296-5650
• Scott J. Newman, 651) 296-4131
• Gen Olson, (651) 296-1282
• Mike Parry, (651) 296-9457

They could use a call to encourage them, but mainly thank them for their continued support for Civil Liberties in Minnesota.

Three more Senators on the committee – Terri E. Bonoff, Barb Goodwin and Linda Higgins – are worthless Metrocrats.  Rust-encrusted enemies of civil liberty, none of them is worth the time it’d take to contact them.

The last two…

• Keith Langseth (651) 296-3205
• LeRoy A. Stumpf. (651) 296-8660

So please – take a moment to email or (especially) call today and tomorrow.

Remember – have them support HF1467/SF1357.

[1] Hyperbolic?  Maybe. Probably not.

This particular chanting point has been making the rounds this week – a “Public Policy Polling” (PPP) survey appears to show that Mark Dayton is dreamily popular, and the people just can’t stand the GOP-run legislature.

It’s made the rounds of most of the mainstream media, the leftyblogs, and the lowest of the bunch, the  City Pages.  I figured I’d pick on Dave Mindeman at mnpACTttp and his take on it because unlike way too many Twin Cities leftybloggers, he’s articulate, recites the chanting point pretty much verbatim, and is otherwise not an idiot.

Mark Dayton’s numbers have improved since PPP last polled Minnesota in May and he’s one of the most popular Governors in the country.

Now, the numbers would seem to bear that statement out.  Let’s unpack them before we move on.

In observing PPP polls over the past couple of cycles, their results seem to consistently fall a little to the left of how Minnesota reality eventually shakes out.  Not in an egregions-to-the-point-of-fraud kind of way, like the Humphrey Institute or Strib Minnesota polls, but it’s noticeable.

I also think – and this is a theory, not something I’m stating as fact, but a decade of observation has led a lot of us on the right to wonder if there’s something to it – that liberals are much more prone to answer polls, especially in between election cycles.

Let’s ignore both of those for the moment.  Let’s talk about the surface indicators for this polling:

A little belated birthday present for Mark. Dayton has an approval rating of 53%, while disapproval is at 34% — a 19% spread.

The numbers have led Mindeman – and most other lefties – to a misleading conclusion.  Not wrong – I’m not telling people not to trust their lying eyes – but there’s more in those numbers than meets the eye.  Mindeman and the rest of the lefties are ignoring a key bit of American political behavior.

The poll covers the time between the shutdown and the present – when Dayton really didn’t do anything.  For that matter, he really didn’t do anything during the last session, or the shutdown.  He’s been for the most part a non-entity.  And if you don’t do anything – either positive or negative – then your numbers are going to be juuuuust fine.  Or at least fairly steady.

(Opposite case in point – Tim Pawlenty, who fought a two-court DFL advantage in 2009 and 2010 with aggression and passion.  He did not sit in his office drinking Kombucha or, given his hockey-playing pedigree, PBR, and his poll numbers showed it.  They were “lived-in”.  Who was a better governor?  Depends, now, doesn’t it?)

During the session, and the shutdown, it was the Legislature that did all the heavy lifting.  Dayton sat in his office, released the occasional demand, and until his final, fatal tour around the state, where he realized that getting behind his own plan would be political suicide, really did nothing.  And after that tour, when he folded his cards, he did so quietly, minimizing if not the GOP’s victory at least his own defeat.

In other words, he’s played defense.  He’s sat back and let the other guys take the hit.  The media, naturally, abet this behavior.

And in a state as polarized as Minnesota is, when you actually do things, you will take the hit – especially given our DFL-owned-and-operated media, whose interest in fluffing Dayton is obvious and constant.

And the Legisature has done things – affirmative things during the session and the shutdown, many of which pissed off Democrats and a few of which irritated the more conservative, and also not-so-affirmative things that have been all over the news lately.  Of course, sitting back and being passive-aggressive, like Dayton, was not an option for the Legislative branch; they were sent to Saint Paul on a mission, and the mission wasn’t going to get done without some serious action, and given the number of GOP freshmen who said they didn’t care if they only served a term, some fallout was to be expected.  It was inevitable.

But there’s more.

Dayton may get himself an easier legislature to work with next year. Democrats lead the generic legislative ballot in the state by a 48-39 margin. If that holds through November they should win back a whole lot of the seats they lost in 2010. It’s not that legislative Democrats are popular- only 31% of voters have a favorable opinion of them to 49% with a negative one. But legislative Republicans have horrible numbers. Their favorability rating is 23% with 62% of voters viewing them negatively. That honeymoon wore off real fast.

And here Mindeman and the rest of the metro chattering class fall into the seductive charms of drawing using high-level data to draw high-level conclusions on low-level questions.  Mindeman – and the entire regional left – have scoped the data wrong. I suggest.  The fact is that “generic” never manages to get endorsed to run for the Legislature.

The Legislature will take popularity hits – they, as a body, did all the work.

The Legislature, as a body, will always lag a do-nothing governor under those circumstances.  Just like Congress does.

But aggregate polls of the entire Legislature – those mythical “generic” legislators – are meaningless, just like aggregate polls of Congress.  People may want to vote the bastards in general out, but people tend, generally, to support their own bastard.  There are exceptions – they voted a lot of incumbent “bastards” out in 2006 and 2010 – but as a very general rule, unless you have a wave election, incumbency has its virtues.  This election may be many things – it may return both chambers of Congress to the GOP – but I don’t think anyone’s predicting a wave yet.

Tack on the fact that PPP polls trend left, that poll respondents this early in the cycle trend left, that the PPP poll was of registered voters (who always trend left), and the fact that the poll is meaningless, and the additional fact that redistricting – provided that it reflects actual demographic shifts rather than the DFL’s rhetoric – should favor the GOP, and I’m a lot less worried about this poll than the DFL, media (ptr) and the chattering classes want you to be.

And despite those numbers the GOP legislature continues to play ultra partisan games.

Well, yeah, Dave.  They know the numbers are meaningless.  So does the DFL.

To hear the media and the lefty chanting classes, you’d never know that the most recent poll that matters – November of 2010 – showed that Minnesotans support candidates who support lower taxes, lower regulation and less government.

And then there’s the crowd in the DFL and media (PTR) that believes the Minnesota GOP’s internal spasms have anything to do with what’s going on in the Legislature (which, don’t forget, was elected via the Caucus’ efforts; the state party has very little to do with electing legislators).

And they’re going to do their darnedest to try to negate that election.

Against that, as the session kicks off today, we have Speaker of the House Kurt Zellers and House Majority Leader Matt Dean, who h laid out their agenda in the Strib over the weekend:

What a difference a year makes.

Last January, there was more than a foot of snow on the ground, the state was facing a $5.2 billion budget deficit, and Gov. Mark Dayton and the DFL were calling for huge tax increases.

This year, we have no snow to speak of, there is an $876 million budget surplus, and Dayton and the DFL are declaring job creation the No. 1 priority of the 2012 session.

Zellers and Dean are too diplomatic to point out that Governor Dayton’s “Jerbs Plan” is, in every particular, rotting fly-covered suppurating bulls**t.

Fortunately, I’m not that diplomatic, and that’s exactly what the Jerbs plan is.

The GOP has the real jobs plan:

Our economic recovery is too important to become just another line item in the state’s biennial budget that is continually subject to change.

Republicans in the Legislature are focused on the long-term structural needs of our state. Our Reform 2.0 agenda was developed with the input of Minnesotans.

We spent the last five months traveling the state, driving thousands of miles to dozens of cities to meet with hundreds of job providers, local government officials, educators and citizens to listen to their ideas on what government can and should do better.

One of the most maddening DFL chanting points last session was “What is the MNGOP doing to create Jerbs?”, as if they expected the GOP tom, I dunno, pass a law requiring employers to hire people.

The GOP has a grasp on actual reality, fortunately:

In Minnesota, almost one-third of the new job growth in this decade will be in science and math fields. However, these new jobs will not exist unless we reform our education system.

As part of Reform 2.0, we will continue to push for strong teacher evaluations, pay linked to teacher and student performance, and the removal of barriers to get rid of bad teachers. Seniority privileges should not trump student achievement.

Can you see the Minnesota Federation of Teachers hiring assassins yet?

Well, this next section will fix that…:

We will also give serious consideration to granting the mayors in Minneapolis and St. Paul mayoral control of their respective school districts. In addition, we will support an aggressive plan to turn around the lowest-achieving schools in Minnesota and will allow for aggressive replication of high-performing charter schools.

While the idea of Chris Coleman controlling the Saint Paul Public Schools doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence, the point is that the administrative logjam does need to get broken, especially in the Twin Cities, if education is ever going to improve.

We are 20 years behind in streamlining government, and Minnesota taxpayers are paying for it every day. This session we will continue our push to make government more effective for the people it serves and those who pay for it.

From local government mandate relief and outcome-based spending to consolidation of administrative and back-office functions, our reforms will seek out and eliminate waste.

I’m looking forward to our next interview on the NARN.

We will also support a great idea we received while out on the road: require city and county governments to present budget and spending information in an easy-to-understand format designed to educate taxpayers and engage citizens in local government spending decisions.

I’m dying to see how the Rybak and Coleman react to the idea the people can actually read their budgets.

As a usability practitioner, I’d be more than happy to help. Have your people call my people.

In 2011, many good reform ideas were put on hold as we grappled with the budget (and the snow). Today we’re pledging to make 2012 the year of reform.

This is not a partisan agenda. It’s Minnesota’s agenda — an agenda we can’t let rest.

And I’m out to support that agenda.

Along with a few other things; let’s keep Zero-Based Budgeting in the spotlight.  And let’s pass Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill – not just on Second Amendment grounds, but because if Dayton vetoes it, it’ll lose the DFL tens of thousands of outstate votes, and not a few in the Metro to boot.

It’s gonna be a fun session!

If the local leftybloggers have it right, the Governor apparently wants to staff up a bunch of do-it-yourself projects.

I first saw it on Minnesota “Progressive” Project last night – Governor Dayton has announced his “bonding plan”.

And here was the claim:

In contrast to the upcoming ballot measure open season the Republicans will be envisioning instead of working on a bonding bill, Gov. Mark Dayton released his bonding bill proposal today. Dayton’s plan would put 25,000 Minnesotans to work in every corner of the state. It would cost $775 million.

The reverberations throughout our economy of putting 25,000 people to work would be significant. These people would spend money in their communities, increasing the income of people in the service industries.

These are the almighty “infrastructure projects” that Libs are talking about these days.

But after our experience last week – where Dayton’s “Jerbs Plan” turned out to be a meaningless deduction equal to about a month of $15/hour employment – I remembered the great dictum one must always observe when reading liberal commentators:

Distrust, but verify.  Then, almost inevitably, distrust some more.

So I ran the “numbers”, such as they are.

The “plan” calls for $775,000,000, and will supposedly provide 25,000 jerbs.

So when you divide $775,000,000/25,000, you get $31,000 per job.

That’s a little under $15 an hour, on average (and probably lower, since presumably some of those 25,000 people will have to be DFL/union-connected bureaucrats to manage everything, who are just a little  more equal.

And when Eric “Big E” Pusey gushes (or, presumably, takes dictation from some Dayton Administration spokesbot the Alliance For A Better Minnesota) that…:

The projects included in his proposal are ‘shovel ready’ and would improve our state’s infrastructure.

…perhaps he should add that the workers will actually need to bring their own shovels – because creating 25,000 $14-and-change/hour jobs out of $775,000,000 leaves no money left over for shovels.  Or concrete.  Or macadam, asphalt, aggregate, or even paint.

Pusey’s number, in short, is baked wind.

Just like every number the Dayton Administration Alita Messinger and the Alliance For A Better MInnesota have put out so far this year.

Yeah, I know – Pusey’s probably conflating the phantom jobs in the Jerbs Bill with the fantasy numbers in the Bonding Bill.   I’m probably jumping on the wrong thing, because he’s probably writing taking dictation about the wrong connection.

More on that later today.

(With a tip ‘o the hat to Sarge, who did the math just about the time I was thinking about doing the math…)

The Strib Editorial Board has declared itself in the bag for Mark Dayton and the DFL.

Not a huge surprise, if you follow these things.

More importantly, and much worse, it expresses the Minnesota Left’s real priorities.  Although it does it in a slippery, weaselly way designed to actively disinform voters – which, of course, is another way of supporting the DFL.

The state budget is set and in the black, if only temporarily.

But that hasn’t stopped DFL Gov. Mark Dayton from expounding on the virtues of the budget proposal he touted and the GOP-controlled Legislature spurned last May.

Those virtues include a bottom line that would remain in positive territory in 2014-15, according to a new “what if” analysis by the state Revenue Department.

Wow.  Positive territory!  That sounds good – right?

Let’s read on:

It applied the Dayton offer of last May 16, which included $1.8 billion in new tax revenue in 2012-13, to the latest forecast for 2014-15. Do that, and the $1.3 billion deficit that’s been forecasted for 2014-15 disappears, leaving a $35 million surplus.

Let’s be clear on a couple of things – since the Strib and the DFL (pardon the redundancy) desperately want the reader and voter not to be clear on them:

• The “bottom line” they’re talking about is the state budget.
• The “deficit” is the gap between what the bureaucracy wants and is demanding, and the revenue expected at current levels.  It is not a budget passed by a legislature.
• We, the people, elected a legislature that promised to take a different approach to how this state handles budgeting; to give this state an intervention, and wean it from its addiction to limitless spending and the assumption that we’re just going to like it or lump it during a recession.
• This charade has nothing to do with “bottom lines” in any sense that a business owner (or family budgeteer, for that matter) would recognize.  It’s about making sure that government’s various stakeholders – who are suffering from a few mild diet pangs after the last session – needn’t want for their least desire any more.

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.

Here’s what I’m hoping happened on Tuesday:

1. The Senate took a move to reassure people in and outside the party that the GOP is a sane, sober, grown-up party that, despite the press’ giggly and untoward obsession with the Koch “scandal”, is in the business of running a solid government in pulling former minority leader Senjem off the bench.
2. Senjem – called a “pro-business conservative” by some of the leftybloggers (which means “moderate enough to not make them wet their pants with fear”), and a relative moderate by the rest of the world, is a calming, reassuring figure – partly to the caucuses (one of which he’s run before), and mostly to the rest of the world.
3. The Senate, however, has recognizes the invigorating reality that the majority Senjem leads is mostly freshmen, swept into office on a wave of Tea Party conservative fervor, and who both went there to do what they were sent there to do and who haven’t, so far, gone native.   The assistant leaders include Roger Chamberlain, a straight-talking conservative from Lino Lakes, upperclassman Paul Gazelka of Brainerd, Ted Lillie of Lake Elmo and Claire Robling of Jordan, who may have been the architect of any non-tax “solution” we have on the Vikings stadium, among other things.  If you’re a Tea Partier, this is a pretty acceptable rounding-out of the leadership.

I have a few for today.

It’s virtually inevitable that some lefty commentator – probably a leftyblogger, but very possibly a media commentator – will blame yesterday’s shooting in Grand Marais on Minnesota’s concealed carry law.

It’s also pretty much a lock that the Strib and MInnPost’s columnist stables will paint the departure of Amy Koch as Senate Majority Leader as “proof that conservatives are becoming too unruly and powerful”, notwithstanding the fact that Koch is a conservative.

Just saying.

I got a bunch of responses over yesterday’s piece on the $800-million-and-change budget surplus announced yesterday.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

Yesterday, we were told to expect a budget shortfall of a nearly a Billion dollars. Brace for cuts.

Today, we’re told we have a surplus of a nearly Billion dollars. Spending spree!

That’s a swing of TWO BILLION DOLLARS overnight.

Two things:

A. How can the preliminary estimates be off by that much money? And

B. Do you wonder why I have absolutely no confidence in this administration?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Lack of confidence in the Dayton regime is always, always justified.

Others wrote – via email, twitter and in the comment section – that the sudden increase smells like a ploy, and I did my endzone happy dance too early.  It means either…:

• Dayton told his Management and Budget office to show a surplus to help bail him out on the stadium issue, or…
• …he told them to find some more money so the GOP would relent on spending; since he can’t browbeat them into raising taxes, he’ll try browbeating us into spending money, that, quote, “we already have”.

My answer: doesn’t matter.  If the surplus doesn’t exist, the Governor needs to be called on it.  If it does, it needs to be rebated to the taxpayers, or at the very most pushed to the schools to eliminate the DFL’s big shrieking point the “budget shift”.

At any rate – either way, the Legislative GOP majority needs to stay the course that it was sent to Saint Paul to carry out.

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).

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.

Minnesota is heading for a battle over redistricting that may just make the just-passed budget battle look like a stroll in the park.

And, just like with every such battle lately in Minnesota, there is at least one “non-partisan” non-profit claiming to have the interests of average, non-affiliated Minnesotans at heart.  There are a couple of reasons for this; for starters, the Minnesota DFL is a largely impotent organization;

In the 2010 elections, of course, it was “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and a small circle of other groups – “The 2010 Fund”  – a group that funnelled millions of dollars from unions, the Dayton family, and their cronies to try to win the election for Mark Dayton (largely by running a toxic sleaze campaign).  Their power in “progressive” circles is remarkable; Governor Dayton has brought a fair number of ABM’s staffers to work in his office; the former head of the “2010 Fund”, Ken Martin, now runs the DFL.

And for the redistricting battle?  The new astroturf group is “Draw The Line”, an organization that spans several states where the Democrats are fighting for their organizational lives, including Minnesota.

So who’s behind “Draw the Line?”  And what are they after – and by “they”, I don’t mean “Draw The Line”, so much as the people behind them?

More next week here on Shot In The Dark.

As little as governmetn at any level does that’s of any worth, there is a certain amount of responsibility involved.

When it became apparent that there’s a chance the Fed might shut down (or at least cut back its non-debt spending), both Denise Cardinal “Governor Dayton” and Rep. Keith Downey made moves, via their various means (executive and legislative), to start planning how to manage the state without some or all of the billions of dollars in federal money that Minnesota gets.   It only made sense.

Then intellectual giants in the legislative DFL caucus got their two cents in:

The bill passed committee on April 28, but not before being mocked as a “doomsday scenario” by Representative Ryan Winkler (DFL – Golden Valley), who offered an amendment to also ask the state to plan for “asteroid collisions, nuclear war, extraterrestrial invasions, coup d’tat and natural disasters caused by global warming.” Winkler withdrew the amendment after being mocked by Republicans for not taking the issue seriously.

Winkler may or may not be much of a legislator – he’s the Eddie Haskell of the House – but he certainly has a flair for the dramatic (emphasis added, but only to mock the little fella):

“I think you know that this bill doesn’t address a situation that’s anywhere close to reality.  It’s fantasy. I’m afraid it might be a partisan fantasy to see failure on this colossal of a scale. Frankly if the federal government became insolvent I‘m not so concerned about the effect on state programs; I would be concerned about the looters who are gonna be running through our neighborhoods. You are talking about almost an Armageddon kind of situation happening in the country where the United States basically falls apart…”

In Ryan Winkler’s special little world, government makes life itself possible.

I’d love to watch a solid, sharp, conservative debating Winkler.  It would look like a butcher pounding veal with a big hammer.

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.”

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.

Dayton has agreed to the GOP budget:

Gov. Mark Dayton said Thursday morning that he is willing to accept Republicans’ June 30 budget offer, which would close a $1.4 billion budget difference by delaying payment of school funds and borrowing against the state’s tobacco settlement.

“This is the only viable option that’s potentially available,” Dayton said.

It’s not a complete, 1940-NFL-Champtionship-style blowout – I think we started negotiations too high, and may have handed Dayton a propaganda point on the school shift, yet again.  And not getting VoterID and King Banaian’s Sunset Clause – those hurt.

But let’s focus on the big picture here.   We held the line on new taxes.  The line is drawn in the sand; government will live within its means, even if “its means” have been stretched more than conservatives want.   With redistricting coming up, it’ll be a good message to take back to the voters.   And nobody had to do without their Miller and Coors.

Kudos to the legislative freshmen class!  I can’t imagine this sort of outcome happening with the MNGOP of ten years ago.  Salut!

More later.

The next order of business, of course?  Press this win onward.  Dayton’s down (in a gauzy-focused, politically-sanded-off kind of way); we have to keep kicking.

UPDATE:  Was I too exuberant?  Perhaps, but I’m not apologizing, since it’s fun to spike the ball even if the play gets called back.  Friends of mine in conservative political circles say yes, Dayton’s conditions are too onerous, and the deal is DOA.

So hang in there, folks.

More tomorrow.

…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

…but this was pretty good.

Good enough that the NARN’s going to have to find a way to raise the ante…

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.

The DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) have got a new buzz phrase, “quality negotiation”.  It’s what they supposedly want out of the current impasse in Saint Paul.

Let me just say for the record that if the DFL aren’t whinging like a bunch spoiled ten year olds, it’s not a “quality negotiation”.

Speaking of which, the Strib adds to the “quality” of the negotiation – my definition of it, at least- with via Min this piece by one Brian Rusche, the “executive director of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition”, a group that is to religious group what the association of chiefs of police or Alliance for a Better Minnesota are to cops and Minnesotans – a DFL pressure group.

Rusche apparently thinks his churches own the trademark on “princple”:

Minnesota’s legislative leaders are locked in a protracted dispute with the governor, not about the quantity or quality of government output, but out of devotion to a single number: $34 billion.

Legislative leaders insist that all other policy considerations must take a back seat to the singular goal of keeping general-fund revenues and expenses at that amount for the next biennium.

Bla bla bla.

This next bit is the irritating part, the part that needs to be refudiated with prejudice; the part where Rusche abuses his cachet as a “religious ” leader:

This is numerology without principle. It treats one general-fund number like an idol, a number to be prized above the concerns and needs of our citizenry.

This is a mind-numbingly, corrosively stupid statement.

The GOP is operating from set of principles. To be fair, these are fairly new to Minnesota government; government is our servant, not our master.  Government needs to live within its means; it needs to prioritize, just like we taxpayers need to.  If “citizenry” “needs” some parts of government, we need to cut back on the parts the “citizenry” doesn’t need.

Rusche illustrates – no doubt unintentionally –

Finding a worthy general-fund baseline number with which to base all policy decisions is very, very tricky. Minnesota has relied on one-time strategies to prop up general-fund revenues, especially during recessions.

We’ve drained reserves, cashed out the tobacco endowment and spent federal stimulus dollars in efforts to address a structural deficit that has haunted us for a decade. Add accounting shifts and gimmicks, and we’ve been able to disguise revenue shortfalls and delay a true reckoning, until now.

That’s because government has been run by people – Republicans as well as Democrats – who regarded government as a big  fun machine with lots of levers and knobs to play with.   A big huge benefit machine where, if you hit just the right combination of those buttons and levers, you’d get all sorts of good and wonderful things for the people.

And after a generation or two of that, we’re broke.

And the principle has changed. It has to.  Government the way Arne Carlson practiced it – spending money like a crack whore with a stolen gold card during the cha-cha times, turning surpluses into permanent spending, and making up for it with taxes when things turn ugly – is utterly unsustainable.

And – are you listeniong, Mr. Rusche? – it’s immoral and stupid to carry stupid, thick-necked profligacy on the backs of the taxpayer.

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.

Moving MN Forward just released an ad to counter “A Better Minnesota’s” latest round of Dayton family and union-fundeed “spend more or we kill this dog! ads:

Pass it around.

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

Cynthia DelAmitri of Woodbury told her family that their annual trip to visit her parents for a week of camping and fishing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were on ice because the small recruiting company for which she works is cutting staff (they can’t afford the taxes) and she couldn’t afford to take time off; the big national recruiters would eat her lunch.

Rey Jimenez, your grandmother’s oncologist, quietly decided that added onto the state’s confiscatory business tax rates and absurd healthcare mandates, the added income on couples who earn over $135,000 (he and his wife, your grandmother’s internist) was the last straw. He’s moving to Phoenix.

The media doesn’t cover those sorts of stories (and yes, mine are fictional, but only literally).

But let the government suddenly feel not all fat and happy, and “human interest” is the order of the day for the Twin Cities media:

Camille Miller hasn’t signed her daughter up for Girl Scout camp this summer. The state health care analyst from Woodbury is not sure she’ll have the $500 to pay for it.

Wow.

Not sure I ever paid $500 for kids camp…

Jim Ullmer has told his extended family to forget their annual July 4th get-together at Lake Itasca State Park. Ullmer, a state truck inspector from Crystal, is unsure if the campground will be open.

Because everyone knows family get togethers in local or national parks, or private camp areas, just aren’t the same.  There’s something about that patina of “state ownership” that brings people together, right?

They are just two of more than 54,000 state workers bracing for an uncertain summer as the Capitol budget impasse threatens to shut down government services on July 1.

To which the roughly two million of us in the private sector say “welcome to every day in our world, government worker”.

And half of us add “so quit electing obstructionist DFL governors”.  The GOP submitted a budget – one that’d keep government running, increase most spending that “needs” it and demand some new efficiencies.

Look for the same cavalcade of woe to accelerate; the Strib seems to be even more in the bag for the DFL this year than they did in 2005.