The DFL chanting-point bots were out in force yesterday; a Forbes survey put Minnesota at number eight nationwide in terms of “Best States for Business“.

Recapping MN’s economy under DFL-led #mnleg: 8th best state 4 biz, unemployment falling, credit rating upgraded, thousands of jobs created.

— Matt Roznowski (@MattRoznowski) September 26, 2013

So look at the rankings.  And read Forbes‘ blurb:

Minnesota’s overall rank jumped 12 spots on the strength of an improved economic outlook. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area is home to 62% of the state’s population. It also serves as the state’s economic hub, with companies such as Target, U.S. Bancorp, General Mills, 3M and Medtronic headquartered there. Minnesota has the second highest percentage of adults with a high school degree at 92.5%. With its good schools, low poverty rate and healthy populous, the state also scores well on quality of life measurements.

We’re reminded that the state jumped from #20 in last years’ rankings.

Two things to say about this article.

For starters:  everything the article measures about state business climate is directly related to changes made under GOP control of the legislature.  Everything.  What – you think Minnesota’s business climate is going to have a radical jump in business climate in the eight months since the DFL got the keys to the car?

Business climate changes slowly.  It improved under GOP control – for two years.  It was imperfect, but it was an improvement over 2006-2010.

And what’s the other thing this study tells you?

Look at the factors it measures:

• Business Costs (Minnesota is 34th)
• Labor Supply (18th)
• Regulatory Environment (22nd)
• Economic Climate (9th)
• Growth Prospects (13th)
• Quality Of Life (5th)

What do these factors tell you?

Labor Supply and “Quality of Life” are primarily issues for big businesses – the Targets and Best Buys and Medtronics, the big Fortune list titles that have their headquarters in Minnesota.  And we know – it’s a great place to be a CEO!

But how about small business?  What are the important measures?  A good economic climate is useful – but business costs and regulation are life and death.

And they were merely adequate over the past year – and have gotten much, much worse.

But we know that, since Minnesota has become the worst state in the nation for entrepreneurship measured in small business starts per capita since the DFL took control.

Which is not something the Forbes study visibly measures (or at least gives much weight to), and has little effect on the big Fortune 1000 companies that the DFL is most concerned with.

The big test will be how the state ranks next year and the following year.

Any bets?

http://onforb.es/1dM1Fz3

Last year, the hard left in Minnesota put together an immense coalition of groups to defeat the marriage amendment…

…and then to push a reluctant DFL to support and pass a gay marriage bill.

And the problem with coalitions is they’re pretty much all made up of unlikely bedfellows, or at the very least people who can only stand each other so long.

As the Twin Cities best feminist, I’m naturally on the National Organization of Women’s Minnesota Chapter’s mailing list.

Minnesota NOW and the Pro-Choice community as a whole contributed significant resources to the fight for marriage equality here in Minnesota. That is why we at Minnesota NOW were very disappointed to hear that the Minnesotans United PAC screens their candidates focused singularly on the issue of marriage for same-sex couples and that they will be providing funding to several legislators who have a history of voting for anti-choice legislation. We were told the Minnesotans United PAC will raise and spend resources to support legislators who voted for same-sex marriage – they have no other screens and are aware this model won’t work for all donors. We are truly saddened that the Minnesotans United PAC does not have our back when we need them. We are not equal until we are ALL equal.

Because infanticide is a civil right, dammit.

 We encourage you to direct your financial support to the Minnesota NOW PAC which screens candidates on all of our six core issues: LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, economic justice, racial equality, constitutional equality and freedom from violence. This will ensure your money is supporting a candidate that acts on all of your values, not just one.

All you DFL gay marriage supporters – are you going to take this sitting down?  Did you hear what they call you?

They listed 11 legislators – eight outstate DFLers and three Republicans (Kieffer, Peterson and Garofalo) who voted for the gay marriage bill – as being insufficiently pro-infanticide for their taste.

I may – in my capacity as the Twin Cities best feminist – start a new group:  “Minnesotans United For Womynandtheirchildren, Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Questioning And Others” (MUFWLGBTQAO) to campaign to resolve the battle between NOW and MUAF once and for all!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everybody who works for President Obama must echo the party line, from the Vice-President down to the UN Ambassador.  They have no choice.

But here are some of the people outside the Administration, who think it’s a good idea for America to go-it-alone and start a war against Syria:

John McCain

Betty McCollum

Hillary Clinton

This list of names alone convinces me it’s a stupid idea.

Joe Doakes

Note to Joe; you left out Ellison.

To:  Carrie Lucking, “Executive Director”, Alliance for a Better Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re:  Chain Of Command

Ms. Lucking,

The “Special Session” to deal with disaster relief teed up a few hours ago.

Just a hint; it might behoove you to copy your audioanimatronic marionette “Governor” Dayton on any legislation that gets proposed, or especially passed.  The vision of your audioanimatronic marionette our “Governor” proclaiming shock at legislation that the DFL has jammed through embarasses this state makes your chain of command look “not ready for prime time”. 

It’s pretty simple; route things from Governor Ms. Messinger, to you, to handler “Chief of Staff” Bob Hume, to Mr. Dayton.  And spend some time making sure he really knows what’s getting written into law. 

You’re welcome.

That is all.

It’s almost a week old – but this is the most glorious smackdown of urban enviroweenies ever.

Of course, it’ll take more than a great op-ed; it’ll take defeating the DFL – since those enviroweenies are the ones that control the DFL, and are strangling the livelihoods of just about every Minnesotan north of US 2 that isn’t working for government or a non-profit.

We warned the DFL.  “Go ahead – raise cigarette taxes – the most regressive tax there is.  Watch what happens.  People will go out of their way to avoid paying the tax.  Just you watch!”

And the DFLers – and their camp followers in the local Sorosphere – assured the,selves “Naw!   People won’t drive miles out of their way for…cigarettes.  No way. It people aren’t that manic about not paying for A Better Minnesota”

But at a price break of almost two bucks a pack? <A href=”http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2013/aug/19/cigarette-buyers-flee-minnesota-to-avoid-tax-hike/”>Of course they are</a>.

As Gary Gross notes, the DFL seems at the very least to be floating as a trial balloon that they’re doubling down on the warehouse tax. 

It’s outside the scope Governor Dayton Messinger wanted for the special session. 

I’m torn on this one.

On the one hand, I think that if the warehouse tax goes into effect, it’s going to be a disaster.  And the DFL, and its Praetorian Guard, the media – will spin it – the job losses, the dislocation, the businesses heading across the Saint Croix, the Red, and Duluth Harbor – as a Republican problem because…well…because Gay Marriage, for the Children.  Or something like that. 

On the other hand, this absolutely is the Democrats’ fault.  “Governor” Dayton signed it, I suspect, without even bothering to get Bob Hume to Ask Carrie Lucking to ask Alida for permission to read it reading it.  Being a Democrat, and a couple generations removed from the generation of Daytons who knew anything about running businesses, it didn’t matter to him. 

This is the sort of issue that conservatives – Republicans – should win big, provided that we’re in a party that has the equipment and expertise to fight a message war.

So can you see why I’m worried?

It’s gotta be tough to be the Strib Editorial Board.

On the one hand, you are joined to the DFL at the hip.  You run what is in effect the DFL house organ.  

On the other hand, you’re not only trying to run a business – you’re running a business in a dying industry and a garbage economy.  Alida Messinger has you on speed-dial.  You worked overtime – well, you had your people work overtime – to see Mark Dayton and a couple of DFL legislative majorities elected. 

St. Paul and Minneapolis mayoral property tax bids for 2014 came in Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, and with them the strongest indication to date of how much change in Minnesota’s property tax climate was wrought by the 2013 Legislature.

The change is in the right direction, but it’s more modest relief than the Editorial Board had hoped for, particularly in St. Paul.

As I’ve predicted for the past year, and correctly noted yesterday, the hikes to “Local Government Aid” will not lead to any meaningful property tax cuts anywhere in the state, least of all in the Twin Cities and Duluth.  True enough; Minneapolis is instituting what’ll be a fairly cosmetic cut for most people.  Saint Paul is, ostensibly, holding its taxes steady – which is not a cut at all:

Mayor Chris Coleman — who is seeking a third term this year — recommended that city levies be held flat next year. He called it a “no-drama” budget. But for St. Paul homeowners hoping for a partial reversal of the big increases in recent years, it was a disappointment. The City Council should aim lower as it sets next year’s levy.

While each city’s budget will benefit from a state infusion next year, the Twin Cities are not twins in city government size, scope and fiscal condition. St. Paul is in many ways the needier twin, more dependent on state aid, which was slashed in 2003 and has only this year begun to recover, and on homeowner taxes, which rose steeply in response.

This year’s $10.1 million LGA increase does not quite fill the $11.5 million gap projected for next year’s St. Paul budget before more state aid arrived.

Just as promised, Saint Paul isn’t putting one red cent toward reducing property taxes.  Its budget remains a grab bag of goodies for Chris Coleman’s and the City Council’s key stakeholders, the unions and the non-profits. 

Anyone who expected otherwise was deluded.  Anyone who told you it’d be otherwise is either naive or lying. 

So what is the Strib editorial board, then?

2011:  As the GOP majority began working to try to tame Minnesota’s government monkey, the DFL prattled “the GOP is raising property taxes!”. 

It was baked monkey doodle, of course.  The GOP re-focused “Local Government Aid” toward its original mission, helping poor outstate communities, as opposed to subsidizing the urban DFL. 

But in 2012, it was one of the DFL’s big chanting points; “Elect us and we’ll lower property taxes!”, by restoring and boosting Local Government Aid. 

And some of us warned you back then – while the DFL would certainly tuck into the job of wrenching more money out of the parts of the state that pay their way, there’d be no guaranteed cuts in property taxes…

…because the state has nothing to do with what counties charge.

Nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  Zilch. 

But the voters – maniupulated by a lot of emotional issues, and not thinking all that clearly – turned the House and Senate over to the DFL.  And the DFL raised taxes, and jacked up LGA payments to their friends in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth. 

And then what?

What the hell do you think?   Property taxes aren’t going to budge!

Joe Doakes from Como Park noticed it, and emailed:

St. Paul’s budget proposal has no layoffs; instead, there are new hires and expanded services, which the City Council President Lantry attributes to Local Government Aid received from the State of Minnesota.

Two weeks ago, Governor Dayton and the DFL promised that LGA would produce $120 million in local property tax relief instead of new spending.

But DFL politics aren’t driven by actual results.  All that’s necessary, in a state where the media mostly takes its marching orders from Alida Messinger, is that someone says taxes will go down, probably. 

And that’s exactly what’s happening. 

Doakes:

Nope, not in St. Paul. St. Paul taxes stay the same. The LGA gets spent on fun stuff, not boring old property tax relief. Again.

Joe Doakes

And by “fun stuff”, we mean more government employee union jobs. 

At any rate, I’ll claim a big win here – taxes in Saint Paul won’t drop, and they’ll probably rise.  Taxes in Minneapolis and Duluth will also stay the same, although there will be more “services” that serve precious few at exquisite cost.

The DFL lied.  And it’s you, the taxpayer, that’s paying the price – being taken for a ripe suck at both the state and (most) local levels. 

The funny part?  The DFL’s apparatchiks are still claiming taxes are dropping, even though they aren’t. 

It’s almost like they don’t expect the regional media to fact-check them, or give any coverage to those who do.

“No guns in capitol!”,
Michael Paymar says amid
Capitol Police.

Mulligan Session!
The only real question is
which “Fail” to start with.

The NARN is Fair-bound!
Again, the constant battle
against the cheese curd.

Chaos in Egypt.
How often must I explain
it’s not that “Morsi”.

35 choices
as Minneapolis votes.
“Instant” runoff? Hah!

The history books
Say we’re created equal.
Some, moreso, I guess.

Ryan Winkler called
Clarence Thomas “Uncle Tom”.
Thomas: “Sorry – who?”

Zygi Wilf? A crook?
He seemed so above reproach!
Who woulda thunk it?

Governor Dayton
sees Alida, starts to sweat.
“No more shock collar!”

Welcome, darling kids!
Time to meet your new sitter
Sal “Bug-Eyes” Rossi.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Governor Dayton says George Zimmerman “went way beyond” what was necessary in the Trayvon situation and thus, Stand Your Ground laws are bad. Aside from Stand Your Ground having nothing to do with that case, specifically Governor, what did George Zimmerman do that was “way beyond?”

Was it when he joined the Neighborhood Watch, was that “way beyond” what was necessary? People shouldn’t join Neighborhood Watch?

When he called 911 upon seeing a person acting suspiciously? People shouldn’t call 911?

Getting out of his car to better direct law enforcement to where the suspect was hiding, was that “way beyond?” People shouldn’t help police?

Returning to his car when the dispatcher told him “we don’t need you to do that,” was that “way beyond?” People shouldn’t obey police?

Failing to run away when Trayvon confronted him, asking Trayvon what he was up to – was that “way beyond?”

Everybody – even Trayvon’s girlfriend on the phone – agrees Trayvon threw the first punch that broke Zimmerman’s nose. Was that Zimmerman’s mistake – allowing his nose to be broken, was that going “way beyond?”

Everybody – including the prosecution, at the end – conceded Trayvon was sitting on Zimmerman’s chest, holding him down so he couldn’t get away and banging his head on the cement sidewalk. Was that when Zimmerman went “way beyond,” leaving all that blood lying around?

All six jurors agreed that Zimmerman truly believed Trayvon was going to kill him. Was forming that belief, going “way beyond?”

Shooting Trayvon to save his own life – was that going “way beyond?” At that instant, what should Zimmerman have done, instead?

I’m willing to give up my pistol permit and throw my pistol in the lake – if the Governor can explain to me what Zimmerman SHOULD have done differently to achieve the same outcome. So far, not hearing any good explanations.

That’s the problem with trying to talk Second Amendment issues with liberals; so many of them pretend to be lawyers on the issue, and yet know nothing about the subject.

Even the lawyers. 

Even the prosecutors.

Democrats are starting to get defensive about the DFL’s Democrat Tax Orgy.

How defensive?

Sally Jo Sorenson, one of the very few Minnesota leftybloggers that doesn’t deserve to be under police surveillance, took time off from her busy schedule of amending incoming comments to have a screaming, body-function-control-losing cow tweet:

MNGOP troll blames “DFL anti-biz MORONS” in 2013 for June 2011 Unline [sic] relocation choice #mnleg #oops #stribpol bit.ly/1ahYf5i

The linked blog post notes that a Republican tweep blamed ULine moving its warehouse to Wisconsin on Governor Dayton’s warehouse tax, when ULine actually started making its plans for the move in 2011.

Well.  I guess that crunches it.  I’m going to have to draft a pained concession.  Bear with me a moment.

Ms. Sorenson,

Great point.  That rhetorical “oops” on Twitter completely invalidates the entire case against raising taxes in a recession.  With that, I guess we have to admit the DFL tax orgy, notwithstanding the fact that Democrat tax orgies never ever ever work, will not only have no effect, but will set the state’s economic blender to “puree”.  All by its lonesome. 

All because a Republican tweep bobbled a date on one event.  We sit corrected, and admit abject defeat.

Oh, wait – your entire point is invalidated too, because you misspelled “ULine”. 

I guess we’re both completely utterly wrong!

Don’t have a cow!  Or a melt-down!  Or go all emo on us!  It’s just a misspelling – albeit one that completely invalidates – by your own “logic” – your entire argument, whatever it is. 

Regards,

Berg

Of course, Sorenson missed the memo (or perhaps just isn’t being paid to fret about such things) about Navarre packing up shop and heading for Texas.  Or Red Wing Shoes and Laurence Transportation moving their warehouse plans across the Mississippi.  Or the other warehouses around Minnesota that are not-so-quietly eyeing locations across one river or the other.  None of those count…

…because of that darned Republican tweep bobbling the date for “Unline’s” plans.

That’s all it takes, apparently, to prove an economic plan unimpeachably correct. 

Of course, 2011 was a date we had a Democrat governor back into office promising a raft of business taxes.  And when the Republican party showed signs of unravelling; for those paying attention, 2011 was full of messages that Minnesota’s tax future was going to be a departure of some kind from the relatively conservative past; at the very least, the future promised uncertainty (and delivered it!).  Businesses hate uncertainty – they plan years, not weeks, ahead; perhaps the folks at “Unline” were more on top of the situation than we knew.

Or maybe not.  And it doesn’t matter, because it’s moot point.  Because once a “Republican troll” gets a date wrong, the entire argument is over!

(more…)

The DFL ran in 2012 on a series of issues that – you heard in on the blogs first – were entirely buncombe. 

So let’s take stock of the things the DFL Alliance for a Better Minnesota said for which they need to be held accountable over the next 17 months or so:

“Property Taxes Will Drop”:  For the past six years, the DFL has been yapping that cuts in Local Government Aid forced property taxes to rise.  It’s a lie, of course; the “cuts” forced city and county governments to make tough choices about their spending, and made them justify their spending to their own taxpayers, rather than passing the bill off to the rest of the state with few if any questions asked.  And as I showed back in 2010, cities and counties jacked up property taxes by vastly more than the amount cut from LGA.  In the meantime, many cities learned to live without LGA entirely; it is they that are subsidizing everyone else’s spending. 

Prediction: the “extra” money from the state will almost entirely be consumed with extra spending (in fact, every single penny of “new” LGA sent to Minneapolis and Saint Paul will go to new spending).  Cities and counties will almost universally raise their property taxes, or at best hold steady.  Any exceptions?  They’ll prove the rule. 

That Economic Outlook:  The Minnesota left has been jumping up and down and beaming like toddlers that made good pantses about a “study” put out by the Philadelphia Fed a few weeks ago that showed Minnesota was clobbering Wisconsin in economic growth.

The “study” also showed that Minnesota was clobbering North Dakota.   Indeed, the “study” showed North Dakota in the bottom 10%, along with Wisconsin. You’ve heard what a wasteland North Dakota is, right? 

Oh, yeah – along with Minnesota in the “yay” column were fiscal and employment basket cases Illinois and California.  Economic powerhouses like North Dakota, Texas and Florida?  In the “Meh” column. 

Do with that information what you will.

But beyond that?  It was a short term analysis of growth, based on exceedingly transient indicators.  And to the extent that it had any value, remember: Wisconsin is still digging out from under decades of wastrel Democrat regimes.  And except for smokers, Minnesota is in the last couple of weeks of the result of over a decade of policy largely controlled by responsible GOP governors and legislatures.  The GOP never got everything they wanted – the shared the legislature from 2002-2008, had only the governorship in ’09-10, and both sides of the legislature but no governor in ’11 and ’12 – but at worst, Governor Pawlenty ran his veto pen red-hot and staved off the worst DFL-predations; at best, they were able to impose some restraint on things. 

But on August 1 – less than three weeks from now – that all changes.  Warehouse taxes, business taxes, wealth achievement taxes (make no mistake, income taxes don’t tax the “wealthy”, they merely penalize people who work for high incomes, leaving trust fund babies like Mark Dayton and Alida Messinger blissfully alone) and a raft of new regulations go into effect, penalizing businesses and – slowly – making Minnesota a lousy place to do business.

It’s already having an effect; Minnesota has sunk to the lowest ranking for new business creation in the nation.  More will surely follow.  And the raft of new regulations is going to brutalize the already somnolent mining industry; it’s literally cheaper and easier to build a tailing-recycling smelting plant in North Dakota and ship the ore – rock! – there than it is to build it where the actual ore is, here in Minnesota. 

Feeling good about that DFL vote, all you Iron Rangers?  This is your livelihood, being exported to a state that already has more jobs than it can fill. 

So over the next year, people have to ask themselves; outside of state government union jobs, who’s really benefited?

Prediction:  Other than “liberal plutocrats”, the answer will be “nobody”.

The Deficit:  The DFL and its toadies in the mainstream media did their by-the-numbers prancing last week over the news that the state’s economy generated $400M more revenue than expected. 

That, of course, was the last quarter of GOP-driven rules. 

In fact, as House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt noted on Twitter, we raised more money with the budget the Democrats called “the All Cuts budget” than Governor Messinger Dayton did with his All-Tax budget. 

What’ll happen this time next  year?

Place your bets.

“We Did It For The Children”:  After a couple of years of efforts to pay off the “Education Funding Shift” – a DFL-spawned accounting gimmick that the GOP adopted to compromise with rapacious DFL minorities and governors in years past – the GOP had most of the “shift” paid down.  The growth in the economy – not the Democrat tax hikes – paid that “shift” down.  The DFL will want to claim credit – and the media won’t challenge him on it in the least.

Over the next two years, education will get more expensive, and the achievement gap…

…will go unmeasured, since the DFL worked overtime to remove accounability from its biggest, most influential bloc of government-union supporters.

But we’ll know.

Who’s Watching The Kids?: The DFL promised that unionization of daycares would improve childcare. 

Easy prediction: the price of childcare will rise, as its availability drops.  More poor Minnesotans will be squeezed out of the market.  The Democrats will need to add a new subsidy program to try to lower the prices whose hikes were their fault to begin with. 

There’ll be more.

Doug Grow – DFL stenographer and reporter for the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost – is convinced that the GOP is lying about the effects of the Warehouse Tax.

Exhibit A?

Grow writes about the Red Wing Shoes’ opting out of building a new distribution center in Red Wing; it’s something we wrote about here in SITD a few weeks ago.  

According to Grow, the GOP’s line is wrong because the executives involved didn’t step out on stage and burn an effigy of Tom Bakk as the cameras rolled. 

Business Is Hard:No, really; asked if the tax was the sole reason Red Wing Shoes deferred its expansion…:

Sachen couldn’t say that it necessarily would have.

Would the project definitely go ahead if the tax were eliminated?

Sachen couldn’t say that was necessarily the case, either.

He did say that the company, which has a facility in Potosi, Mo., is “in talks with Potosi.” But again, he wouldn’t say that there’s a direct link between the tax and the warehouse project.

Who’da thunk it; a businessman whose business depends, on a certain extent, on not pointlessly pissing people off over politics in this rent-seeking environment, gave an honest answer; there are many reasons that a company does or does not go ahead with an expansion.

Which on the one hand means there’s not a smoking gun hovering over “jobs that won’t be created” leading back to the DFL’s Warehouse Tax (point for Grow).  And on the other hand, it means that there never will be that smoking gun. (Take a point away from Grow). 

By the way – Democrats get hurt when conservatives say they don’t understand economics or business.  Reading this next bit, one would have to say “hurt” is probably less appropriate than “chastened”:

Additionally, it should be noted that the Red Wing Shoes warehouse wouldn’t create jobs — other than construction ones in building the warehouse. Rather, it would allow Red Wing to consolidate its current the five warehouses into one facility. Those warehouses, by the way, employ about 80 people, a number that would not increase with a new warehouse.

Er, yeah. 

Making the business – and the efforts of those 80 existing warehouse workers – more efficent gives the business more profit.  Which gets used to hire more people, design more shoes, improve existing products…heck, even just make staying in Minnesota more tenable.  Which means those 80 warehouse jobs stand less risk of becoming 40, or 20, or 0 warehouse jobs. 

It’d also speak to the long-term commitment on Red Wing’s part to keep those jobs in Red Wing, rather than someplace else. 

Leave The Gotchas To The Comedians: Of course, it’s not just Doug Grow.  Dave Mindeman of mnpAct thinks he’s got the DFL Warehouse Tax’s MNGOP critics over a barrel:

In addition, Rep. Garofalo apparently missed the June 28th Star Tribune clarification on where the tax actually applies…..

Myron Frans, state revenue commissioner, said Dayton has asked him to study the issue, and he has spoken with Red Wing officials about their concerns. He said the tax only applies when the producer or manufacturer purchases warehouse or storage services from another firm.

Garofalo offered no other examples of a potential problem. Thus the Red Wing Shoe factory will NOT be affected by this tax.

In other words, Rep. Pat Garofalo is, as usual, making it up.

And Mindeman deigns to condescdend:

I would hope this legislator will someday learn to get the facts right before making another condescending statement of inaccuracy.

Um, yeah.

Garofalo has actually worked in the private sector.  I know this because we worked for the same company, once upon a time; it was he that actually introduced me to the Drudge Report back when we were both minions at a local Fortune 500.

And he knows – as all of us who work in the private sector and pay attention to things do – that businesses rarely make decisions based on single factors, or on short-term stimuli.  Running a significant brick-and-mortar business (shaddap, consultants) is the ultimate long bet; it involves considering everything; access to the needed workforce, communications, supply chain, price to get product to market, taxes…

…and long-term outlook. 

Red Wing – and Laurence Transportation in Red Wing, who also held off on a warehouse expansion that will be directly affected by the DFL’s Warehouse Tax – is betting against Minnesota in the long term, given the way the climate looks now.

And since Mindeman wants to play the “they curiously ignored a Strib article” game, it’d seem he missed one too; Navarre is up and moving to Texas.  It warehouses products – providing the “value add” that the state is taxing – and also works in e-commerce, which is getting slapped by the DFL’s Amazon Tax. 

So it’s gone:

That was the first time the 30-year-old Minnesota firm had said publicly that it planned to move not just some of its warehousing operations but also its headquarters to the site of its recently acquired Speed FC e-commerce operation based in Texas. Navarre acquired Speed FC Inc. last November for $50 million in cash and stock.

Was it just the DFL’s Warehouse Tax?  Or the DFL’s Amazon Tax?

No.  But both of them, and other changes to the state’s business tax code, had to look ugly to a business that’s already losing money – money that will probably be made up by consolidating operations in a lower-tax locale alone. 

If you’re one of the almost 300 employees being pink-slipped, do you think it makes a difference?

They Also Think Penelope Garcia Is Like A Real Investigator: Back to Grow’s column, where in a quote of Governor Dayton’s chief of staff Bob Hume, he shows that…:

• he is aiming his piece at economic low-information voters, or…
• …he’s an economic low-information voter himself:

Hume is commenting on Garofalo’s call for a special session to get rid of the tax.  If you work in the  private sector, see if you can spot the clinker:

Bob Hume, the governor’s deputy chief of staff, made it clear that a special session is not in the offing.

“This is a stunt, not a solution,” Hume said in a statement. “The Legislature is coming back more than a month before this tax would take effect, which is more than enough time, if revenues permit, to review and possibly revise this tax.”

A whole month?  To make a decision affecting the profitability, well-being or survival of a business?

These decisions get made based on long-term outlook.

And while the state’s long-term outlook is subject to debate, let’s remember that when the DFL-shilling media says things like…:

To date, though, the Minnesota economy is humming at a far healthier rate than the economies in such business-friendly states such as Wisconsin and South Dakota.

…that the economy still largely reflects Republican policy, set when the state had responsible two-party rule (shaddap about Ventura) between 2002 and 2012.   The DFL’s tax and spend orgy still hasn’t largely gone into effect; even the first of the taxes have been wending their way through the process for about a week now, and the worst is yet to come.

Get back to us in a year. 

Around election time, preferably.

We broke down the GOP race for US Senate here.  We now take a similar look at the Governor’s contest.

—–

To listen to the polling establishment that gave us Govs. Mike Hatch, Skip Humphrey and the ’02 version of Sen. Walter Mondale, Republicans should just give up any notion that Mark Dayton could be defeated in 2014.  Dayton posts a 57% approval rating, up from 43% just this past February.  Of course, Tim Pawlenty was sporting a 54% approval rating around this time in his first-term, in what turned out to a nail-bitter of an election decided by Mike Hatch’s failure to attend his anger management class.  And Dayton’s polling numbers, like most politicians, seem to go up when the legislature is out of session and thus his name is off the front pages.

Unlike with the Senate race, GOP interest in the gubernatorial nomination is high and has attracted among the best Republican office-holders still standing after 2012.  The highest profile Republicans may have passed on running (Pawlenty, Coleman, Kline, Paulsen), but if the current crop of candidates represents the GOP “B Team,” they’re certainly stronger than the 2010 field.  And unlike 2010, they probably are more aware of what advertising deluge awaits the winner from the Alliance for a Better More Expensive Minnesota.

(more…)

Back in March, we broke down the various Republican contenders and pretenders looking to make a statewide bid in 2014.  Since then, there’s been a bevy of candidates and plenty of armchair analysis that’s been backlogged.

We start by breaking down the emerging GOP race for US Senate.  We take a similar look at the Governor’s race here.

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On the surface, Minnesota Republicans should have 312 reasons to want a strong challenger to Sen. Al Franken.

But with a party mired in debt and warring factions, and following a nearly one million vote margin of defeat against Sen. Amy Klobuchar, there have been ample reasons why Franken has been off the GOP radar as a potential target.  Running for Senate is an extremely expensive proposition, with a price-tag likely around $10-15 million minimum (Franken raised $22.5 million in 2008) – a tall order for anyone, especially candidates with limited name ID.

Still, Franken remains the candidate who won in a bitterly contested race and whom even Democrats had doubts about, hence the last-minute primary candidacy of Priscilla Lord Faris in 2008.  Franken leads potential rivals right now by margins around 15-16%, a testament in part to the incumbent’s name ID.  Keep in mind, Norm Coleman lead Franken by 15% as late as July of 2008 (an admitted outlier of a poll, to be sure), reminding activists of all stripes of the “tempest in a tea pot” nature of all polling data.

(more…)

Before the 2012 elections, the DFL tried to call the previous, GOP-run legislature a “do-nothing” legislature.

Leaving aside the obvious – the government that governs best governs least – it was a lie. The 2011-2012 legislatures accomplished some useful stuff – hobbled by a “governor” who was fully-owned by extremist special interests and some very un-conservative detours like the Vikings stadium.

But as we wait at the halfway point of a session of one-party government, what does the DFL have to show for their unfettered power?

• Business taxes – especially the warehousing tax – that lop a serious chunk off of Minnesota business’ bottom line, and that already have businesses heading for the exits.
• Two extra billion dollars taken out of the productive parts of the state’s economy.  Remember – Minnesota’s GDP is about $267 Billion.  Another two billion is nearly a percent – on top of the 30-odd billion in state spending that the state already sucks out of productive use.  Imagine having an additional 1% of your productive income taken out of circulation – $500 a year if you make $50K.   It’s not chicken feed. 
• A home daycare system saddled with useless graft to the public employee unions, and with its revenue further cut by the state’s move into all-day kindergarten – which adds virtually nothing to kids’ education, but does create lots of new union jobs that pay dues to the DFL. 

And all of that at the end of a session that wasted months arguing about DFL social-domination issues (gun control, gay marriage) and power-acquisition. 

In exchange for what? 

So far, nothing but damage.

I’ll take “do nothing”, thanks.

The Warehouse tax is going to cause all sorts of damage – and some GOP legislators want to do something about it:

Reps. Tim Kelly of Red Wing and Pat Garofalo of Farmington said lawmakers must act soon because the looming sales tax on warehousing services is already prompting businesses to delay planned warehouse expansions.

But the DFL could scarcely care less:

But a spokesman for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor governor dismissed the request as “a stunt, not a solution.

“The Legislature is coming back more than a month before this tax would take effect, which is more than enough time, if revenues permit, to review and possibly revise this tax,” Bob Hume, Dayton’s deputy chief of staff, said in a statement.

Hume is speaking like a bureaucrat and party stooge who thinks the private sector is the same of a hip club in Northeast Minneapolis.

The tax is already killing jobs!

Kelly said two large Red Wing businesses are delaying expansions because of the tax, and the prospect of losing those new jobs calls for quick action.

Stephen Lawrence, president and CEO of Lawrence Transportation Services in Red Wing, said a 6.5 percent sales tax on his company’s services would put them at a competitive disadvantage with firms in neighboring states, none of which has a warehousing tax. He said his business is considering building facilities in Wisconsin.

Governor Dayton was apparently waiting for Alida Messinger to tell Carrie Lucking what he was supposed to say about this.

Governor Alida Messinger Mark Dayton, 2011:  “Rorra rammma hassa humper thunt”.  (Translation:  We’re only raising taxes on the top 1%)

Govenor Alida Messinger Mark Dayton, 2013:  “OK, poor people gotta pony up too!

The DFL’s current tax plan not only raises taxes on all Minnesotans across the board, but actually raises taxes on the poorest Minnesotans by more than the wealthiest.

2013 Minnesota Tax Bill Incidence Analysis by minnesoda238

Down below is the key table, showing net tax hikes by income “decile”:

That’s right – not only did taxes rise more for the bottom 20% than for the top 10%, but under the DFL plan taxes rose more for the bottom 10% than for Dayton’s friends, family and neighbors in the top 1%!

To add stupid insult to pointless injury – the report (prepared by Dayton’s employees) notes that the taxes on the lower deciles might drop because of “property tax relief”.  But that assumes that city and county governments will pass “their” local government aid raise on to taxpayers, rather than plowing it into more spending – an assumption that history shows is too stupid even to laugh at.

This is the change you hoped for, Working Minnesota?

Kurt Zellers announced his candidacy for Governor yesterday, entering an increasingly crowded field.

And seconds after his announcement, the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” – Alida Messinger’s union-and-plutocrat-funded attack-PR firm, henceforth “ABM”  – was out with the party line on Twitter:

@ABetterMN: Failed Speaker Kurt Zellers led a historic era of partisan politics. WATCH: http://bit.ly/16ukH99 #wrong4mn #mn2014 #mnleg #stribpol

(I wonder how “forcing daycare providers and personal care attendants into a union against their will so the DFL can get another $2M a year in “donations” will be spun as “non-partisan” by ABM and the media that parrots their chanting points without question?)

ABM, of course, is run by “Executive Director” Carrie Lucking.  She’s a former junior high social studies teacher who now runs Messinger’s little message shop; she ran the epic, toxic sleaze campaign that barely squeedged Mark Dayton over the top against Tom Emmer’s flawed campaign in 2010, and packed the polls with the uninformed in 2012. 

But what about in between?

Dave Thul was the first with the story:

@davethul: The irony of @ABetterMN’s ‘failed candidate’ mantra? Their Exec @CarrieLucking left teaching to become a Failed Campaign Manager. #stribpol

She was a “failed” campaign manager, working for a woman who had a failed marriage to a failed Senator. 

Oh, the video about Zellers that Lucking links to?

You be the judge.  But I’d call it an epic failure.

Carrie Lucking:   Remember – the greatest president of either of our lifetimes, Ronald Reagan, was a “failure” running for president.  Once.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Rep. Keith Ellison is trying to learn about business because he has no idea how it works or why.

That’s a common problem with Democrats. At least he’s making an effort. But he picked the most liberal “Republican” possible to advise him. And he is still pushing the same tired crap: more unions, no Social Security “cuts” and taxes galore. Socialism, with an MBA, is still socialism.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

That could be a new corollary to Berg’s Eleventh Law (“The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected.”)  Perhaps “The Ellison Corollary to Berg’s Eleventh Law:  The “Republican” that liberals turn to for their information on “conservative” issues will be the least conservative Republican available”.

Could also be called the Arne Carlson corollary.

Jeff Johnson is running for Governor.  Here’s his website, Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Desperate to keep the stadium finance “plan”…er, afloat, the state is making another big push to try to sell “E-Pulltabs”:

In Duluth on Tuesday night, about 35 charities and bar owners showed up for a chance to test-drive all the electronic pulltab and bingo games now available in Minnesota. They got tips from charitable gambling leaders and bars along the North Shore who use them. They received the latest data from state officials on Minnesota’s most popular e-gambling counties, the effect on charity collections and more.

“I’ve seen the machines before, but I’ve never tried them,” said Duluth bar owner Mike Ronning, checking out the electronic pulltabs. “It’s fun. I just don’t know if it’s right for my place.”

The upshot:  people are still keeping them at arms length.

One wonders if we might have saved a whole lot of trouble doing thisbeforethey made them the key revenue-generator in the state’s Viking stadium jamdown.

Depending on who you believe, the DFL apparently traded away a minimum wage bill for money to restore the building they see as their clubhouse the State Capitol.

I stress the “depending on who you believe” bit, since I’m not entirely sure they even know themselves.

Or maybe it’s just me.  Anyway – I read the story in the Joyce-Foundation-supported © MinnPost, and it seems a little confusing.

The piece, by James Nord, starts out by noting (I’ll add emphasis) that…:

DFL Rep. Ryan Winkler and two Republican legislators who declined to speak on the record say Senate leaders came to a deal that secured a bonding bill for Capitol repairs and ensured an orderly end to the session in exchange for no action on those two policy provisions.

Winkler, the chief House sponsor of the minimum wage legislation, said Republican lawmakers told him of the deal. He described his understanding of it to the Star Tribune just after the session ended May 20.

No, you need not link to the Strib; I’ve done it for you. Here’s Winkler’s quote:

 Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley said leaders in his own party ditched a proposed minimum wage increase to accomplish other priorities.

“Senator Bakk agreed with the Senate Republicans not to pass a minimum wage bill and not to pass the bullying bill, in order for them to agree to support a bonding bill to restore the State Capitol building,” said Winkler, who heard the same story of the deal from House Republicans.

But – back to the Joyce-Foundation-supported © MinnPost, now – later in the Nord piece, Winkler says:

Winkler told MinnPost that he was standing next to House Speaker Paul Thissen at the speaker’s rostrum when Minority Leader Kurt Daudt told Winkler about the agreement…Thissen said in an interview that he had heard about a supposed deal but didn’t have any specific knowledge of it. He hadn’t discussed the issue with Bakk or Hann.

When asked about the diverging stories, Winkler responded, “Well, that may not have been a deal, but all the Republicans believe it was a deal. One way or another, somebody’s misinformed.”

This past session was replete with stories of how the various factions in the DFL were disjointed, how the left hand didn’t know what the farther-left hand was doing.    Especially amusing were the stories about how very, very badly Paul Thissen and Tom Bakk hate each other, and what a hard time they had working together.

But a legislator appearing to disagree with himself?  That’s a new one even for me.

The MInnPost is an organization I’d very much like to respect. It includes a raft of people I’ve considered good reporters.

But over the course of Minnesota’s gun debate over this past session – brought on by Minnesota DFL legislators launching a raft of authoritarian gun bills, including at least one that called for confiscation of certain firearms – the MInnPost has shown a very crafty bias toward the anti-Second-Amendment crowd. From Erik Black’s series suggesting that the Second Amendment was just too complicated for modern people, to the fawning coverage the entire publication gives Heather Martens (“Executive Director” and one of very, very few actual members of “Protect Minnesota”), down to Doug Grow’s apparently pre-written slime job on Representative Hilstrom’s compromise “good gun bill” during the past session, the MinnPost has supported the orthodox anti-gun line to a fault.

Why is that?

It might be this:

I’m not sure, but a $50,000 grant from the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation might have something to do with it.

No, correlation doesn’t equal causation. The fact that the MinnPost threw all sense of objectivity and journalistic detachment to the wind this past session on the gun issue and getting a nice-sized grant from a group that has bankrolled anti-gun groups around the country for over a decade could be purely a coincidence.  And it’s not like opposing the Second Amendment doesn’t come along with the left-of-center beliefs most of the staff hold. 

But when I read Doug Grow’s “coverage” of a post-session wrapup party for “Protect Minnesota“, the piece had the faint whiff of “PR” to it.

Given the outcome of the legislative session, the tone of Tuesday night’s meeting sponsored by Protect Minnesota was surprising.

Heather Martens, who leads the organization that long has been a force for advocating for stricter gun-control laws, urged the 23 people who attended the North Minneapolis meeting to think about the “successes” that came out of the session.

On first blush, that may seem like a hard thing to do, given that gun-rights organizations got all they wanted: No universal background checks, no limits on magazine capacities, no assault rifle bans.

It’s simple. There were no successes. Heather Martens – who has never, not once, uttered or written an original, non-numeric statement about firearm policy that wasn’t a lie – and her “group” were, er, shot down at every turn.

But “Protect Minnesota” doesn’t exist to convince people. It exists to manipulate the media – and, via them, the people.

Confederates! With Guns! Defending Slavery!  

Which may be what led to this next statement by Grow (with emphasis added):

And by the end of session, cowed legislators refused to even have a floor vote on anything resembling major gun-law change.

That’s just wrong.

The legislators weren’t so much “cowed” as organizing behind Deb Hilstrom’s Good Gun Bill (Ortmann’s in the Senate). Half of the House, comprising reps on both sides of the aisle, co-authored her compromise bill.  And when the backroom “negotiations” between the metro DFLers (who were carrying Heather Martens’ water to the point that one, Rep. Alice Hausman, let Heather Martens do her job for her) broke down, the bills were scuppered from the floor by a bipartisan coalition of Republicans and responsible outstate DFLers.

But that doesn’t fit the “big bad NRA!” narrative, does it?

History Is Written By Those With The Printing Presses

Grow carries on his stenography for Martens (emphasis added):

Martens told the group there was victory in the bipartisan support for $1 million to fund a law that requires the state to file data with the feds on those who should be prohibited from owning firearms.

The law requiring the state to file the data was passed in 2009 but was never funded, essentially making it useless.

Will Grow mention that it was a DFL legislature that scuppered that funding? The metrocrat Democrats didn’t want a bipartisan-backed background check to give the impression that it worked better than actual harassment of the law-abiding citizen.

“But Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln…”

Grow feels obliged to list the outcome of the tiny group’s self-therapy session:

The successes:

Phone-banking (more than 1,000 calls to legislators sitting on the fence).

Legislators reported that constituent calls ran at least 50:1 against the DFL’s bills.

Media coverage was complete.

Yeah, the suspense was killing us on that one.

That’s what Heather Martens does – get friendly media coverage. She’s the Larry Jacobs of the gun issue – the one, single, sole person that every Twin Cities “journalist” calls for the left’s take on guns in Minnesota.

We’ll come back to that.

“Wait – That Was Your “Intellectual” Argument?”

One of the other “Successes”, according to Grow:

Finding a “visceral” message, one that appeals to the emotions as well as the intellect.

I got a laugh there.

Emotion is the only message Heather Martens’ group has! Talk with any of her group’s “members”, I dare you. You’ll get a broadside of anger and grief over Sandy Hook (but never, ever Chicago, or any other crime scene where the kids don’t look like the children of NPR executives) – and not even the faintest whiff of an “intellectual” message.

Although, as always, I do invite Heather Martens on the NARN to make that “intellectual” case. I’ve been asking for nine years, now.

You Don’t Do Business Against The Family

As Martens via Grow noted above, one of their “successes” was “complete” media coverage.

Now, there’s no surprise there. Most of the media editors and producers in the Twin Cities support gun control. Other reporters, I suspect, haven’t the depth of knowledge on the issue to know that pretty much everything Heather Martens has ever said on the issue is a lie.

But Doug Grow’s piece – really, his entire history covering Martens for the MinnPost – has been at a level of obsequious fawning that outstrips the rest of the media.

Why?

Well, I’ve got a theory.  And remember – it’s just a theory.  I’ve got nothing but circumstantial evidence to back it up. 

But do you remember way up above, where we pointed out that the MInnPost gets big bucks from the anti-gun Joyce Foundation?

Guess who else is bankrolled – to the tune of “most all of its budget” – by Joyce?

This might not be “conflict of interest” for Grow, in any actionable sense of the term. But I’d think that identifying the fact that both Doug Grow’s and Rep. Martens’ jobs are paid for, in whole or part, by a non-profit supported by liberal plutocrats that is the single major funder of anti-gun organizations might have been worth a mention. 

Again, correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But given the complete abandonment of any sense of balance or concern for fact on the part of the MinnPost in covering the Second Amendment issue – not to mention Grow’s obsequious. fawning, toenail-painting coverage of Martens and her “group” this session –  “causation” doesn’t seem like a big stretch.