Push the suit as long and as far as you can.
I’ll take back 40% of the bad things I’ve ever written about you.
Deal?
Please, Governor Dayton. I Beg Of You.
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Category Archives: Governor
The Pet Governor
Governor Dayton agreed to a budget deal.
Then, when his leash was yanked by the special interests that own him, he vetoed the budget:
And now? Layoffs are imminent. Over 400 legislative staff jobs – not to mention the 201 legislators themselves – will find themselves without a paycheck pretty quick here:
The layoffs could include up to 230 regular Minnesota House employees and 204 staffers in the Minnesota Senate.
And that’s not counting 201 elected lawmakers — a total of 635 people.
Dayton says:
“I regret the effect on the staff very, very much,” Dayton told reporters on Friday.
Maybe he could sell another Renoir?
The Dayton Doctrine: Ghost Of Tax Day Future
Connecticut – a state that has done everything the Minnesota DFL wants to do to the Minnesota economy, but put it on a turbocharger – is about to pay the proverbial piper; Aetna Insurance is pondering leaving Connecticut and its confiscatory taxes behind.
Governor Malloy, after an entire administration spent pilfering the coffers of Connecticut businesses and entrepreneurs to benefit his stakeholders, is wondering what all the moving trucks are for, and he’s oh, so sorry:
“As a huge Connecticut employer and a pillar of the insurance industry, it must be infuriating to feel like you must fight your home state policymakers who seem blind to the future,” Mr. Malloy wrote in a May 15 letter to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. “The lack of respect afforded Aetna as an important and innovative economic engine of Connecticut bewilders me.”
Now he tells us. Gov. Malloy has spent two terms treating business as a bottomless well of cash to redistribute to public unions. Now that his state is losing millionaires and businesses, he has seen the light. But the price of his dereliction will be steep.
Sound like any other governors and minority caucuses in state that this blog is written in that you can think of?
Last month the state Office of Fiscal Analysis reduced its two-year revenue forecast by $1.46 billion. Since January the agency has downgraded income-tax revenue for 2017 and 2018 by $1.1 billion (6%). Sales- and corporate-tax revenue are projected to fall by $385 million (9%) and $67 million (7%), respectively, this year. Pension contributions, which have doubled since 2010, will increase by a third over the next two years. The result: a $5.1 billion deficit and three recent credit downgrades.
Minnesota’s current tax climate is survivable by Fortune 1000 companies – for a while (small business is another story). But Connecticut shows us that even big-business inertia has its limits.
(By the way – the DFL jabbers a lot about the “meltdown in North Dakota” and “Wisconsin’s disaster”. What are the respective unemployment rates as of this week?
Oh, my. Earlier this year, amid the “oil industry melteown, North Dakota was a full point lower than Minnesota, and Wisconsin pulled even. Today, North Dakota’s rate (driven by more exploration, thanks to the impending impact of the Dakota Access Pipeline) is 1.1% lower than Minnesota’s. And Wisconsin, which Minnesota’s DFL and media (ptr) have been calling a “disaster” for six year? It was tied at the end of last year; it’s a half a point lower today.
Look waaaaaay down the list to find “high tax, high-service” Connecticut.
Good Thing I’m Not A Gambling Man…
Protest Too Much
First things first: Mark Dayton is “governor” of Minnesota in exactly the same sense as Mickey Dolenz was the “drummer” in the Monkees. Tina Flint-Smith is calling all the real shots in the state. Mark Dayton is there to say stupid things and draw attention away from where the action is.
But with that said?
Seriously, Governor Flint – Smith “Governor” Dayton?
You want tolerance?
Get over yourself, “governor”. If Minnesotans weren’t fundamentally tolerant, there wouldn’t be 100,000 Somalis in Minneapolis, and 20,000 in St. Cloud.
And if yesterday’s attack had happened in great swathes of the rest of the world – the Middle East, India, the Balkans, Greece, and or dare I say Somalia itself – this ethnic and religious oriented attack would have been met by death squads roaming the streets looking for Somalis to beat, stab and shoot.
No, “governor”, the intolerant one is the one who says “go along with the program and shut up, or get out of Minnesota”. Which, if you recall – and that is by no means certain – was you, “governor”.
For chrissake, just resign already.
UPDATE: Or as Walter Hudson puts it, “If we’re going to talk about tolerance, fine. Let’s define it as — above all else — not going on a stabbing spree at the mall.”
Dodging The Point
Ever since Governor Dayton passed one of the highest taxes in the nation on people earning over about $150,000 a year, conservatives have been predicting an exodus of the productive class.
The Minnesota left is doing cartwheels over “data” showing it’s not happened…
…sort of. I add emphasis:
The ranks of the very rich are growing in Minnesota, despite a controversial tax increase that singles out the biggest earners to pay more.
Critics predicted that the ultra-affluent would flee after Gov. Mark Dayton secured 2013 passage of a new income tax tier of 9.85 percent on individuals who make more than $156,000 a year. But the latest data show that the number of people who filed tax returns with over $1 million in income grew by 15.3 percent in the year after the tax passed, while the new top tier of taxpayers grew by 6 percent.
So many holes in this “story”:
People making over a million a year – the “ultrarich” – can live anywhere they want; the Twin Cities are a great place to be rich; good quality of life with lots of bigger-city amenities, and your dollar, after taxes, still goes a ways. That’s why so many big corporations have their headquarters in the Twin Cities, even though they haven’t hired a non-service blue-collar worker in Minnesota in decades; it’s a great place to be a CEO.
As to the number of people in the >$156K tax bracket rising? So what? As the value of the dollar drops, and inflation creeps in, more real estate agents, dentists, software architects, insurance salespeople and the like find their incomes creeping upward from $145K to $156K.
But you have to then ask:
- How many of them hit that $156K mark, stew on it for a year or so, and decide to move to Hudson or Fargo or Superior?
- How many more would have reached that threshold if it weren’t for the tax hike?
The answers, by the way are “anecdotally, many” and “the Strib, being Tina Flint-Smith’s waterboys, sure aren’t going to tell us”.
Eating The Seed Corn
Minnesota DFLers are romping and frolicking in money from the “surplus” – a misnomer referring to the billion dollars overtaxed from Minnesota’s productive class.
But more and more, the evidence shows that the “surplus” is a false positive – and that Minnesota’s productive class is choosing greener, lower-tax pastures:
Minnesota, on net, lost $1 billion of income to other states between 2013 and 2014. Specifically, the state lost $944 million in adjusted gross income reported by tax filers who moved in and out of Minnesota. This is the largest net loss of income ever reported for Minnesota, and it represents a dramatic rise from just three years ago, when the state lost $490 million.
Gotta tell you – if Wisconsin somehow manages to stay the course, the greater Hudson area is looking better and better…
“But it’s mostly retirees leaving the state!”.
Well, no (emphasis added):
While the IRS has been tracking income movement since 1992, it released a new data series last year that for the first time provides annual information on who is moving from state to state, based on age and income. These new data refute a long-held assumption that Minnesota’s income loss is primarily due to retirement.
In fact, people in their prime working years represent the largest portion of the net loss of taxpayers and income. Working-age people between 35 and 54 account for nearly 40 percent of Minnesota’s net loss of tax filers for the 2013-14 period. People between 55 and 64 — most of whom are still in the workforce — account for another 23 percent.
“But it’s just the ‘one percent’, moving to their beach houses in Coral Gables!”
Some of them certainly are; capital is mobile, and when it needs to, it moves.
But no – in fact, the biggest chunk is the part of the middle class that provides both much of the spending and many of the entrepreneurs that provide jobs for, well, everyone else:
But this isn’t just about the top 2 percent, as the governor wants people to believe.
Minnesota taxes on the middle class are still high relative to other states. Not surprisingly, Minnesota is, on net, losing this population, too. In fact, between 2011 and 2014, taxpayers earning between $100,000 and $200,000 accounted for 41 percent of the state’s net population loss.
Minnesota’s consistent net loss of people and income to other states poses serious challenges to the state both today and into the future. Economic growth is currently constrained by a tight labor market, which, in part, is due to the state not attracting the people with the qualifications necessary to fill today’s jobs.
The parable of the ant and the grasshopper springs to mind.
The DFLers are the grasshoppers.
A Pattern
To: Governor Dayton
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Tomorrow’s Faux Pas, Today.
Governor,
You should be getting used to the fact that your most “progressive” left of center advisers routinely lead you into policy statements that sound disconnected from reality. I say “should” be learning it; clearly you have not yet. Because your latest announcement on second amendment issues – “no-fly, no buy”, barring people who are on the federal “no fly” list from buying guns – is quite clearly an attempt to ramp up the left’s turnout in the upcoming election.
But – as we on the right, and among the second amendment Human Rights movement told you – it’s unconstitutional.
You should be getting used to this by now; they’re wrong, we are right. Every time. No exceptions.
Are we detecting a pattern, yet?
That is all.
(PS: But by all means, keep going. The right needs all the rallying points it can get).
A Dollar Short
It cost $90 million to build the “Taj Ma Bakk”, the resplendent new Senate office building.
Apparently they needed $90,000,100. 
Either that, or the people designing the building never had no book larnin’.
Our Underachieving, Cro-Magnon Governor
Governor Dayton calls North Dakota’s “climate change” policy quote Neanderthal“.
And yet north Dakota not only has much better air quality (it’s smaller state – but all of those gas flares have an effect…) but Minnesota’s dirtier air is a result of the states boundless hunger for…
… North Dakota coal!
Bulletin Bulletin Bulletin
Dog licks dog.
Donald Trump makes a huge, vainglorous declaration he’s never going to have to convince a legislature to support.
Facebook is full of cat videos.
Cheap hotels are often sketchy.
The Vikings don’t look very good this year.
And Minnesota’s real Governor, Tina Flint-Smith, former director of Planned Parenthood Infanticide Hut, pulled the wires and worked the remote control so as to make “Governor” Mark Dayton mumble words that sounded like the state won’t be investigating the goings-on at the non-profit, and there’s no way, nosirreebob that the Abattoir on Vandalia has ever trafficked in baby parts, no way no how, how about those Saints?
And it sure is humid out there. Also big news.
In Which I Admit Defeat
It’s July 1.
And Mark Dayton, amazingly, is still “in office”.
And that means my entry in the Dayton Retirement Pool is officially out of the running.
Best of luck to the rest of you.
Governor Tease
This is actually a post about state politics. But there’s a tangent.
Along about thirty years ago, Holly Dunn – a twangy honky-tonk girl, and one of the highlights of country-western music at a time when the genre was still suffering through the last of its “crossover” mania – had a huge, but controversial, hit with “Maybe I Mean Yes”.
It was a bouncy ditty about romantic mind games. It was also controversial, even in those much less silly times, among feminists for, according to the PC police of the era, “making rape and domestic abuse acceptable”; the teapot-tempest thereafter caused a few country stations to pull the single, making Holly Dunn one of the first casualties of modern political correctness – which is a shame, because most of your Gretchen Wilsons and Miranda Lamberts owe her a huge debt.
But this article isn’t about eighties honky-tonk music. It’s about Governor Flint-Smith.
Dayton. Governor Dayton. Sorry. I have no idea how that happened.
In a legislative session in which the Governor’s “top priority” changed from spending the surplus to, literally, “everything” as a top priority, to synchronizing traffic lights to taking farmland out of production to transportation something or another to passing a universal pre-kindergarten bill that neither the legislature nor school administrators statewide wanted (but the teachers union does) to trying to justify Rebecca Otto’s electoral existence, it should be no surprise that he’s changed “top priorities” again:
Gov. Mark Dayton on Monday said he was dropping his insistence that lawmakers change language dealing with county audits but cited three other, previously unmentioned, objections to the Legislature’s special session plans.
Just last Thursday the DFL governor said that he and the House’s “major remaining difference” had to do with the state auditor. But on Monday, he said that he and the House were still in disagreement over three other issues: funding for programs for the disabled and mentally ill, energy net metering and lower electric rates for industries in northeastern Minnesota.
Apparently, the GOP House and DFL Senate majorities are doing better at reaching agreements than Dayton figured.
Oh, yeah. If we take care of these three “top priorities”, he’s got a bunch more waiting in the wings:
“Before I can call a special session, it remains necessary for us to reach agreements,” on the three other issues, Dayton wrote. He also listed four other issues –an increase in broadband grants, funding for a new sex offender facility, rail grade crossing safety projects and clarification of language dealing with Rochester’s Destination Medical Center — that he urged be addressed.
When the Governor says “shut down”, he means maybe, and then maybe he means yes.
Governor Congeniality
Senator Thompson – who will be a guest on the NARN on Saturday – pretty well nailed the Governor’s tantrum:
And Andy Aplikowski, on Facebook, made the sterling point that Governor Dayton is touring the state trying to convince Minnesotans he “cares about children”…
…with his Lieutenant Governor, Tina Flint-Smith, former executive butcherette of Planned Parenthood (aka “The Vandalia Abattoir”).
Impulse Control
This past week has been a really, really bad one for Governor Dayton and anyone who thinks he’s ready for prime time as a governor.
First, it the promise (since delivered) of a veto of the K-12 E-12 bill over a few hundred million in spending that a bipartisan majority in the Legislature had already turned down (in support of a program that nobody but Education Minnesota really wants).
And now? He’s accusing Republicans of “hating teachers”.
Which certainly perked up my ears, what with having a father, two grandparents and a little sister who’ve been teachers.
Oh, yeah – Sondra Erickson, also a teacher, was not amused:
Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, who chairs the House Education Policy Committee said Dayton should apologize for the remark.
In a statement, Erickson said:
“As a public school teacher with nearly four decades in public school classrooms, I am disappointed with Governor Dayton’s disrespectful remarks. Minnesotans expect their public officials to respectfully debate the issues facing our state without resorting to personal attacks. Republicans and Democrats passed a bipartisan budget that underscored our commitment to students and teachers including significant investments in proven early learning programs. Teachers deserve nothing but great respect because of their dedication to prepare our children with knowledge and skills for the future. Closing the achievement gap requires only the highest regard for those who teach and lead our children. I respectfully request that the governor apologize for his remarks.”
Of course, he’s not going to do it. I fact, look for them to double down.
Because that’s page 1 of the Democrat messaging handbook. Question how veterans benefits are paid for? “Why do Republicans hate veterans?”.
Dispute global warming? “Why do Republicans hate science?”.
Don’t like abortion, and think identity feminism has done a lot of damage? “It’s a war on women!”.
Push back against a pork-barrel program that will at best do nothing useful for the vast majority of kids, but will plump up Education Minnesota’s and the DFL’s coffers? “Republicans hate teachers!”.
And the thing is, 40-odd percent of Minnesota voters are stupid enough to buy it.
Why would he apologize?
Make My Day
Here’s the good news: over the weekend, an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of Republicans and Democrats, in both the House and Senate, voted for the public safety omnibus bill as finalized by the conference committee.
How overwhelming was the majority?
Here’s how overwhelming:
That is a veto proof majority in both the House and the DFL-controlled Senate.
How important is this? This bill will:
- Abolish the capital felony trap – by recognizing that the Capitol police have instant access to the database of carry permit holders, just like every other cop in the state of Minnesota.
- Bar the governor for ordering the confiscation of firearms during emergencies. The governor of Minnesota has immense, wide-sweeping emergency powers, almost completely unregulated by law. This will prevent the situation that new Orleans residents ran into after Hurricane Katrina, with government officials and police going door-to-door to confiscate firearms, rendering citizens defenseless in the face of looters.
- Legalize the ownership of federally licensed suppressors – mufflers for guns.
- Allow Minnesotans to buy a long arms from non-contiguous states.
- Make Minnesota permits reciprocal with many more neighboring states. This is great if you, hypothetically, constantly wind up having to stop at gas stations in Moorhead or East Grand Forks, to avoid inadvertently becoming a felon in North Dakota. Again, hypothetically.
So that’s the good news.
The Bad News – Governor Flint- Smith Dayton has said that he will veto the bill, over the suppressor provision.
Of course, the photo above – the votes for a bipartisan, vetoproof majority passing the bill – might give Governor Flint-Smith Dayton pause. Getting a veto overridden is embarrassing.
You know what else would give her him pause?
We’ll talk about that at noon.
Tipping Point
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In the olden days, waitresses got paid less than minimum wage and made it up in tips. If you didn’t tip, you were stiffing her wages. The rule of thumb was 15-20% to cover her wages and the quality of her service.
Now they’ve changed the law so waitresses get minimum wage. So, why am I tipping 15-20%? Not to make up wages, you already got that. For quality service? Okay, what’s the percentage for quality service?
If Mark Dayton and the DFL already covered her wages for me, then my “quality of service” tip should be 5-10% instead of 15-20%, right? I haven’t noticed restaurants re-programming the helpful chart on their receipts. Am I missing something?
Joe Doakes
No, Joe. You’re not.
Our Vapid Overlords
Let’s flash back:
2012: Heading for what looks like a tough mid-term, Governor Messinger Dayton promises he’ll lower property taxes for “middle class Minnesotans”…
…many of whom seem blissfully, gullibly unaware that the state government has absolutely nothing to do with property taxes, which are levied by county commissions and school districts. Oh, the state increased “Local Government Aid” (mostly to Minneapolis and Saint Paul) – but for a majority of Minnesotans, property taxes increased, promise notwithstanding.
2015: Governor Flint-Smith Dayton promises to work to synchronize traffic lights throughout Minnesota.
Notwithstanding the fact that the timing of traffic lights is controlled entirely by local public works departments, and it’s not a promise Governor Flint-Smith Dayton can deliver on. Ever.
But smart people already know this.
Which says exactly what about the DFL’s audience? And about what they think about our state’s voters?
Pay Up For Your Rights
Up until 1974, Minnesotans didn’t need a permit, or a sheriff’s permission, or a card costing $100, to exercise their Second Amendment right to carry a firearm. Minnesotans could carry anything they wanted, subject to their criminal record; they could do it anywhere they wanted to subject to their senses of etiquette.
From 1974 to 2005, Minnesotans had to beg, convince, or suck up to their local police chief to exercise their Second Amendment rights. And since 2004, Minnesotans have had to pay for the privilege of having Minnesota law-enforcement try to prove they weren’t legally entitled to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
So over the context of the past 40 years, things are moving generally in the right direction.
But there is a proposal of footage, floating around somewhere in the legislature, to adopt “Constitutional Carry” – as several other states around the union have. Constitutional Carry means that any law-abiding citizen can carry a firearm, openly or concealed, as long as they don’t have a criminal record that would deny that ride.
Not only is that exactly the way Minnesota law stood before 1974 – it is, in effect, exactly the way it is today; The law abiding jump through hoops to exercise their right to carry, and criminals carry anyway. Just as they did before 1974.
The actual record is clear and unequivocal; law-abiding citizens in Minnesota are phenomenally unlikely, statistically, to commit any kind of crime of all:
I think the proposal is a good one; Gov. Dayton will veto it, of course, but before that we will get some votes on the table before 2016.
But after 40 years of having to pay, and submit to scrutiny, to exercise our God given constitutional rights, I think we need to have a proposal with more teeth to it.
I think we need a Mandatory Carry law.
Under my law, all law-abiding citizens over the age of 21 will be required to have a firearm on their person.
Now, anyone who doesn’t want to have a firearm will be able to exercise that right – by getting a “Permit to Not Carry”. This permit can be gotten one of two ways:
- Pay $100 to your local county sheriff to obtain a Permit Not to Carry,
- Applying to your county sheriff, with proof you have reason not to carry a firearm.
I think that would be perfectly fair. Or, at least, bring a form of Justice after this past 40 years.
Dayton’s Epic Snit
The DFL controlled Minnesota state senate– perhaps concerned about the optics of giving massive pay raises to government officials in the state where in the “economic recovery” is affecting mainly, well, government officials – rejected Gov. Dayton’s call for the massive pain increases yesterday.
And Gov. Dayton is…
… well, not happy about it:
“Now I know how President Obama feels. I’m confronted with two hostile bodies of the Legislature,” Dayton told reporters hours after the state Senate voted overwhelmingly to put the brakes on the big salary increases to commissioners that Dayton had ordered.
Dayton said he trusted Republican House Speaker Kurt Daudt but would no longer deal with Bakk without someone else in room.
It’s not news; Tom Bakk and Mark Dayton don’t get along. It’s hard to blame Bock; the Iron Range is drifting slowly to the right, but Dayton’s administration is a wholly owned subsidiary of big metro money.
Maybe there is some devious political maneuvering behind what seems to a political layperson like an outburst, a tantrum. It’s entirely possible; I’m just not that bright.
But I’m wondering if this, here, might not be relevant sooner than later.
A Bargain At Half The Price!
I was listening to Jack Tomczak talking with AFSCME’s Javier Morillo on the lesser talk station yesterday, about the Dayton pay raises.
Morillo said, out of one corner of his mouth, that there is no way you could find people in the private sector who deal with headcounts and budgets like these administrators do, at the same pay, even with the raises.
And there may be something to that. Most people who can hold their own in the private sector and look for more out of a career than a pension (outside of law enforcement and fire, the military, teachers and a few other fields) look at government work as a purgatory of eternal frustration and career stagnation.
But out of the other side of his mouth, he said that the salaries still aren’t competitive with the private sector.
So if the salaries are not competitive, the “talent” still isn’t going to get attracted from the private sector (or, apparently, local government). So why have the raises?
It doesn’t make sense as a “talent acquisition” measure; Morillo admitted as much.
But as an expanded payoff to the political class?
There, it makes perfect sense.
That Fourth Estate Of Ours
When was Mark Dayton’s last alcoholic relapse?
What sort of psychotropic medications is he on? And why?
Our media here in the Twin Cities doesn’t think you, mere peasant, have a “need to know”.
But never let it be said the Twin Cities media won’t hold big government’s feet in the fire over the tough issues!
Because, boy howdy, they sure will!
The “Governor” Dayton Pool
UPDATE: The contest now has a prize.
The winner of this contest gets a $150 gift certificate at the St. Paul Grill. So you can eat – for a night, anyway – like the DFL plutocrats who rule you!
Gift certificate courtesy the sponsorship of…
… Well, I can’t actually say. They want to remain anonymous. I can neither confirm nor deny that it’s the Koch brothers. I can also neither confirm nor deny that is Grover Norquist.
RULES UPDATE: When the prize was nothing but bragging rights, I wasn’t going to fuss too much about duplicate entries.
However, now that there’s an actual prize, I will allow people with duplicate entries to make one change to their submission.
——-
Now, if you’ve followed Minnesota politics this past four years, you know that Mark Dayton has been “Governor” is the same sense that Danny Bonaduce was the “bassist” for the Partridge Family. He’s been a marionette, a flapping jaw revealing the will of the special interests who installed him in office.
And his health is not at all good.
And once he cut the crap and made it official by bringing Tina Flint Smith on as his running mate (putting Yvonne something or other out to pasture), the plan’s been pretty much common knowledge: “Governor” Dayton is going to resign and turn the office over to Tina “The Butcher” Flint Smith.
The only real question is when.
And that calls for a pool.
The Pool: Pick the date that Mark Dayton resigns from office. Whoever is closest wins, and earns – I dunno, a drink from me when we have another get-together.
Closest – before or after the actual retirement, counted in calendar days – wins.
Leave your predictions in the comment section, in the form of a date and year.
Example: July 1, 2015 (that’s my prediction, BTW). I’ll make sure this thread gets saved for the long haul – not that I (obviously) think we’ll need to save it for that long…
The deadline will be the beginning of the next session.
UPDATE: See current selections and standings here.
Profile In Courage
The DFL Legislature raises business taxes. Governor Dayton scuttled away from his party.
The DFL legislature’s idea for plundering taxpayers to pay for Zygi Wilf’s real estate improvements – “E-pulltabs” – raised roughly 1/1000% as much money as it was supposed to. Governor Dayton huffed and puffed and blamed it all on other people.
The DFL raised the minimum wage, without adding a tip credit for restaurant workers who frequently make many times more than a “living wage” from tips. Governor Dayton quietly tossed the idea partly under the bus when his sons pointed out it was hurting their restaurant.
When people started talking about legalizing marijuana, Governor Dayton was for it before against it before he was for it before he was whatever he is today.
Dayton favored releasing sex offenders, before he opposed it, before…oh, hell, I don’t know.
And Dayton took great pride in MNSure before he washed his hands of it.
Oh yeah – and although the administration he largely appointed and which reports to him was busted trying to jockey MNSure’s premium rates, Governor Dayton apparently pleads complete ignorance.
It’d be great if someone in the Minnesota media would press the Governor on this – but of course, he isn’t talking with the press this week. Not that anyone in the press would ask him if he were talking to the press.
The GOP has been railing – correctly – on Dayton’s competence.
The competence of MInnesota’s press may be the bigger issue.
Meet The New Huckster, Same As The Old Huckster
During last week’s gubernatorial debate in Duluth, Governor Dayton referred to the Iron Range has having been victimized by “hucksters” with hare-brained economic development schemes to try to compensate for the crash of the mining industry.
Yesterday on their show blog, Jack and Ben (who, notwithstanding working for the lesser talk station, have been on fire this past week or so) discovered something important; exactly who one of the key “hucksters” was:
The smoking gun is a January 1986 document titled “Housing and Community Development Briefs” authored by the Minnesota Department of Energy and Economic Development and several other organizations. According to the document: “The Department of Energy and Economic Development recently approved [a direct, fixed-interest rate, fixed asset new/expanding business loan].” The publication then lists several businesses that were recipients of the loans, including Lakewood Industries [the company that built the chopstick factory]. It states, “Lakewood Industries, a startup company expected to create 76 jobs in the next two years, received final approval for a $250,000 loan.”
Now, Dayton was Minnesota Department of Energy and Economic Development commissioner from 1978-79, and again from 1983-86. In other words, his fingerprints are all over the infamous Chopstick Factory.
Now, $250,000 might not seem like all that much compared to the $5 million in total financing, including $3 million from the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRB).
But the story doesn’t end there (emphasis added):
So let’s look at the IRRRB. The Director of Economic Development of the IRRRB during the chopstick factory fiasco was Mark Phillips. Mark Phillips was intimately involved in the details of the chopstick project, according to a statement he provided in a Chicago Tribune article from June 5, 1998: “They [the Japanese] wanted real white wood with no stain to it. We have a good species here, real white wood that veneers well.” And a December 8, 1986 Associate Press article shows that Mark Phillips was keenly aware of the financing the IRRRB had provided to the project.
So what happened to Mark Phillips? In 2011, Mark Dayton appointed him Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
Once a boondoggler, always a boondoggler; Phillips was a prominent supporter of public funding for both the Vikings stadium and the Saint Paul Saints ballpark in Saint Paul.
As to Governor Messinger Dayton?