Aren’t the Democrats the ones who complain that their opposition is in the back pocket of lobbyists?

We’ll come back to that.

We’ll also come back to this:  until redistricting last February, I spent close to two decades in the old House District 66B, which was represented by long-time DFLer and teachers union mouthpiece Alice Hausman.

Hausman, speaking at an event for which she apparently couldn’t find a lobbyist to substitute for her.

Republicans in the district used to call her “Alice The Phantom”, because she was rarely seen out and about in the district, except for the odd photo op.  Redistricting put her in 66A – but she’s the same Alice Hausman she ever was.

Like I said, we’ll be back.

——–

I went to the Capitol last night.  As usual, the number of pro-Second Amendment people dwarfed the number of orcs – in the overflow room I was in, it was 100 to about five, and that was much closer than it usually gets.

While all of the Republicans on the Public Safety committee stayed through the full three days of testimony, a variety of the DFLers picked up and left the hearings.

Hearings for the bills their people were introducing.  Representative  Hilstrom, Savick, Schoen,  Simonson and Slocum were largely absent from the morning’s testimony – at least, testimony from opponents of the gun grab bills.  I’m going to hazard a guess they’re present for the votes.

But more egregiously, Representative Hausman was absent for the readings of both of her gun grab bills – the magazine capacity bill and the “assault weapon” grab.   Which is not uncommon in the House; Reps have busy schedules, and it’s not uncommon for other representatives to fill in for them.

So who read Hausman’s gun grab bills?

Heather Martens, “executive director” (and, likely one of about three actual members, and that’s being charitable and assuming that they don’t actually charge to be members) of “Protect Minnesota”.

Heather Martens, exploiting an earlier crime victim in front of the Minnesota House.

(No, I’m not kidding.  The late Joel Rosenberg used to tell stories of going to “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota meetings – Martens had to rename the group again after what was left of CSM’s credibility evaporated a few years back – where Martens presided over a table with nothing but Second Amendment activist ringers.  Not a single actual gun-grabber showed up for these meetings)

Martens – who, as has been noted in this space for the past decade, rarely if ever says a single truthful or factual word about the gun issue in public – read both of the bills to the committee for the record.  It’s the job the Representative is supposed to do.

This was brought up to Michael Paymar, the committee chairman.  He said it was fairly common for people to fill in for Representatives in front of the committee.

Which may or may not be true, but I’m going to hazard a guess that those people who fill in are almost never registered lobbyists.

I say “almost never”, because it’s against the House of Representatives’ purported “Permanent Rules“:

2.39 EXECUTIVE BRANCH OR LOBBYIST PRESENCE IN COMMITTEE. No House committee, division or subcommittee shall permit any member or staff of the executive branch, registered lobbyist, or lobbyist principal, to be seated at the committee table with members of the House during official proceedings of committees of the House.

“Presenting a bill to the committee” certainly counts as being “seated at the table with members of the House”.

So the facts are these:

• Representative Hausman was absent – according to staff, off doing non-House business – during the introduction of not just one but both of her gun grab bills
• Both of her bills were read by a registered lobbyist
• If a Republican had done this, there’d be an uproar
• BONUS FACT:  After all of the DFL’s whinging about “model bills” last year, in an attempt to impugn ALEC, all of the DFL’s gun grab bills are cribbed from legislation in other states, and are pretty obviously not just model bills, but really stupid ones

So there you go, District 66A. Your voice has been given over to a special interest group.

Are you proud today?

Numerous reports from the Capitol today indicate that Minneapolis 5th Ward Councilman Don Samuels brought a group of school children from Minneapolis to the Capitol to help the DFL pack the hearing rooms at the Paymar/Hausman gun grab hearings.

One correspondent wrote on Facebook:

The children Don Samuelson exploited, I witnessed holding paper signs saying, among other things, “No Guns” as they left the building.

I’m waiting on more photos from the Capitol.

Anyone recognize what school it is that’s sending kids, during the school day, to serve as DFL campaign props?

Twenty-odd years ago, when I first got involved in Second Amendment politics, the DFL controlled both chambers of the Legislature and the Governor’s office as well.

And so there was a constant tug of war every time a putative gun control measure came up.  Real Americans from greater Minnesota would pack hearings at the Capitol to oppose the bills.  So the DFL would jockey the hearing times, dates and places around to try to shake off as many outstate voters as possible.

It worked, to an extent; the Real Americans would only outnumber the orcs 600:20 instead of 1200:20.

In the days before there was an internet, that took some doing.

Today?

There are more hearings  planned for 10AM and 6PM today.  For the latest information, go here.

Democracy.  To the 2nd Amendment movement – it’s about showing up and being counted.  To the DFL, it’s about keeping the wrong people from showing up.

A constituent of Michael Paymar’s writes:

Michael’s domestic partner, Laura Goodman, is a former police officer and now head of security at St Kates.

I think Micheal needs to be asked if there are any semi-automatic handguns in his home and how large are the magazines?

Maybe Ms. Goodman owns nothing but M1911s!

First things first: Charlie Quimby of “Growth and Justice” and Dave Mindeman of MnpACT are two of a small, select set of Minnesota liberal bloggers who needn’t be under police surveillance or at the very least restraining orders.  I’m just giving credit where it’s due (although the idea that a group can be named “Growth and Justice” yet still stand for neither is just a tad bemusing).

But over this past week, both of them assailed Rep. Pat Garofalo’s statement on this past week’s “TPT Almanac” program; the Lakeville Republican claimed, in what struck me as a bit of hyperbole, that the broadening of the state’s sales tax to cover clothing will “destroy” border communities like Moorhead.

Always on the lookout for hyperbole to dissect, Mindeman and Quimby were on the job pronto.

Quimby was – as is his unfortunate wont – dismissive, in a post subtitled “Do We Believe Our Lying Eyes?”

Back in 2007 when Growth & Justice was presenting its Invest for Real Prosperity tax proposals to the legislature, I recall a member waxing nostalgically about his parents hauling the family across the North Dakota border to buy untaxed clothing in Minnesota.

The point of his anecdote was that if Minnesota lowered its sales tax and broadened its tax base—as economists recommend—this lucrative cross-border school clothing traffic would dry up, with terrible consequences for Minnesota’s border city retailers.

We’re hearing a version of the same tale…This week, Rep. Pat Garofalo objected on TPT’s Almanac: At the Capitol. He reported that a North Dakota Democrat was proposing eliminating the state’s tax on clothing as a form of tax relief.

“Retail businesses in border communities like Moorhead will be destroyed,” Garofalo said, attracting blogger Dave Mindeman’s skeptical response:

Mindeman interspersed some facts with the snark (which is to his style what dismissal is to Quimby’s) in his piece, noting – correctly – that North Dakota has a 5% sales tax, onto which Grand Forks and Fargo lard 2% in city sales taxes.

Oh my God….how would Minnesota compete?…Garofalo loves that flaming rhetoric doesn’t he?

Fact: North Dakota sales tax is currently 5.0%. Fargo, ND which is the booming ND metropolis across the river from Moorhead adds a 2% city tax. So here is the facts. Under Dayton’s tax proposal, Moorhead (which adds no city tax) would be 5.5%. Fargo would charge 7.0% Clothing may be exempt in the future, but Moorhead will still have clothing under $100 exempt as well.

And like most DFLers, Mindeman, like Quimby, can’t resist taking a homer shot at the Dakotas:

But let’s suppose North Dakota finally drops its state clothing tax just when the gap with Minnesota is closing.

Then what? Will Minnesota border towns really suffer? Were North Dakota retailers in the thriving cities of Fargo and Grand Forks suffering in silence all these years?

To which Quimby assents – with, to be fair, an actual study with real numbers:

As the Minnesota legislator said in that 2007 hearing, should I believe you or my lying eyes?…Looking at the literature studying economic activity in response to sales tax rates, I found research that supports the following points:

Response to differences in the sales tax depends on proximity of border communities. In other words, the farther you have to drive to avoid the tax, the less likely you are to do so.

How much does distance matter? A 2010 Utah study of local option sales taxes PDF* that investigated distance as a variable found increasing the tax rate lowers taxable sales (all else held equal) when there is a jurisdiction with a lower tax rate within 5 km, or about three miles. The effect disappears altogether within about 40 miles. This is to be expected for low-cost goods and everyday commodities. But it also appears to hold for expensive major purchases such as new or used automobiles.

All of that may be true.

But the effects of an individual tax like the Sales Tax, and its nuts ‘n bolts comparison with other sales taxes, while potentially interesting and certainly economics-class-fodder, are the trees that help you miss the forest.

For the real comparison between the states’ tax burdens – not just sales taxes, mind you, but taxes across the board – you need to ask yourself a key question:

“What did I see last time I went to the Moorhead/Fargo area?”  Or you could fill in the “East Grand Forks / Grand Forks area”, or the “Breckenridge / Wahpeton” area, or for that matter the “Worthington/Sioux Falls” metro area?

For starters, you’d know they’re called “Fargo/Moorhead”, and “Grand Forks/East Grand Forks”, “Wahpeton/Breckenridge” and “Sioux Falls”.  Because in every case, the North/South Dakota side is where the action is.

And it’s not just force of habit; it’s not even close.  The Minnesota sides of each of these metro areas (or clusters, in the case of Wop/Breck) are sleepy, moribund and dismal out of all proportion to their North Dakota neighbors.  They’re not competitors in any meaningful way.  They are all sleepy little bedroom communities with highway exits; whatever commerce, dynamism and action is happening in the area is happening west of the Red (or the Bois de Sioux, or County 17, as the case may be).

Forty years of wide tax disparity – Minnesota has the #7 overall tax burden in the US, while North and South Dakota are 35 and 49, respectively) has left a clear choice to all of those places; move west, and keep more of what you have.  The choice was more nuanced, of course, 40 years ago – when North Dakota was a sleepy agrarian backwater.  Today, with my home state an economic dynamo in both energy and technology, things are a little clearer-cut.  And at any rate – as noted by Quimby and Mindeman – fluctuations in the sales tax, or any individual tax, are background noise to the larger effect of decades of disparity; the Dakotas have better business climates; while the western 3/4 of both states are limited by their sparse populations (which is why working on the rigs out in the Bakken pays so very very well), but Fargo, Sioux Falls and Grand Forks are all well-developed cities with young, highly-educated populations and, at least in North Dakota, K-12 schools that are as good as or better than those in Minnesota.

So once you take a step back and stop the pointillistic crabbling about this remark or that individual tax rate, you see that the real issue is the long-term effects overall tax burdens have.  As the Dakotas prosper more generally and gain more people and – as seems to be their goal – turn more of that prosperity into tax relief, that disparity is only going to get starker.

Put briefly – the reforms of the sales tax won’t destroy Moorhead, because tax policies took care of that forty years ago.  There’s really not that much to destroy.  It’d be like harming business in Saint Anthony compared to Minneapolis; who’d know?

So here’s another question:  Up until 2 years ago, Wisconsin was addled by governments more dementedly “progressive”, as a rule, than ours.  That changed in 2010, right about the time Minnesota seemed to have some hope of shucking off some more of the dross of DFL legislative control.  Now, as NPR noted last week – in a report I’ll be going over later this week – Minnesota’s economy is stronger as a whole than Wisconsin’s.  But the improvement in Wisconsin since 2008 is dramatic;it’s improving fast, bouncing back from decades of neo-socialist perfidy.  What’s going to happen in Minnesota?

What do you think?  We’re raising taxes in the middle of a recession!  What happened in California, Illinois and France?

That said – we won’t know what’s going to happen until things tamp down for a while.  Will Minnesota’s government remain the shiny toy of Alida Messinger’s band of plutocrat dabblers and union fixers?  Will Republicans retain control in Wisconsin?  If so, give it a few years.  Then we’ll check back.

As to Fargo versus Moorhead?  That train left the station decades ago.  Changing the sales tax one way or another is just bouncing the rubble, as it were.

If this Atlanta woman had had a gun with only seven rounds in the magazine…

The woman was getting out of the shower when she was met by a strange man with a kitchen knife, police said. They said there was a struggle in the bathroom, and she fell in the tub. Police later identified the man as Israel Perez Puentes, a Cuban national who lived in Alpharetta.

“The male was armed with a kitchen knife, a struggle ensued between the two of them. She fell in the bathtub injuring herself,” Gwinnett police spokesman Edwin Ritter said.

The woman tried to fight the man off with a shower a rod, and he forced her into her bedroom, police said. They said she told her attacker she had money in the room. But she grabbed a .22-caliber handgun and shot the man nine times, police said.

Police said the man ran out of a back door and collapsed in the yard. He later died at the Gwinnett Medical Center. The victim, who was injured in the scuffle, was also taken to the hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. Police have not released her name.

…she might very well know what a Thanksgiving turkey feels like.

If a thanksgiving turkey knows what it’s like to be raped and then stabbed.

Point being, there are times – and they are not uncommon – when seven shots just aren’t enough.

The Star-Tribune editorial board brutalized a key component of the Messinger Dayton and DFL tax plan over the weekend.

The editorial starts out with a half-squib…:

We urge Dayton to reconsider and the Legislature to reject a sales tax on business-to-business services, a tax idea the Star Tribune has long opposed. While expanding the consumption sales tax to a larger share of the economy and reducing its overall rate, as Dayton proposes, is sound tax policy, taxing businesses’ service inputs is anything but.

The lowering and broadening the sales tax is a fine idea, but broadening it to the point where it takes $2.2 billion more out of the state economy during a recession is just plain stupid.

But taxing business services?

Messinger Dayton may have done the impossible:  forced the Strib and me into a common cause.

We’ll get to the common cause.  First, the Strib accurately describes the inevitable consequences of this tax plan in a way they never did with the Governor’s personal or political record, which shows, I guess, their priorities, but better late than never I guess:

A tax on business-to-business services would distort the choices businesses make about purchasing or keeping in-house accounting, legal and computer services. It would favor large companies with big back-office operations over small firms. It would put Minnesota engineering, architectural, scientific and consulting firms at a disadvantage. And it would turn the sales tax into a price inflator of every Minnesota-made product through a process economists call “tax pyramiding.”

For example, a law firm would pay tax on its cleaning service, and add that cost to the legal bill it sends to a trucking company, which would pay tax on that bill and pass the cost on in its charges to a farmer, who would pay tax yet again on the whole accumulating amount. At that point, the state’s long-standing policy of not applying sales tax to food will have faltered.

To answer the inevitable question:  of course the Strib editorial board is acting in its own enlightened self-interest:

Consider the impact on one particular industry sector — one this Editorial Board serves and understands well — advertising, information and communications. Providers of those services together employ nearly 68,000 Minnesotans. Many of them serve clients outside Minnesota and compete with rivals around the country and the globe.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies ranks the Twin Cities ad industry ninth-largest nationally and second-largest in the Midwest. It reports that none of the top eight markets have a tax commensurate with the one Dayton proposes. A cautionary tale can be found in Florida, where in 1987 a sales tax was placed on advertising and a range of similar services. An advertising boycott quickly ensued. So did a repeal of the tax, only six months after its passage.

It could certainly happen here.  Of course, the spending that’s being matched with that revenue under the Messinger Dayton / DFL budget won’t get repealed any time soon…

But here’s the issue where, for the first time ever, I find myself on the same side of the barricade as the Strib:

More than large enterprises would be affected. Sole proprietor David Aquilina, a “strategic storyteller” whose PR business is based in Minneapolis, said he would be contractually obliged to absorb all of Dayton’s proposed 5.5 percent tax.

“I will have to pass along the full cost of the tax to my employee: me,” Aquilina said. The proposed tax “would effectively impose a 5.5 percent cut in the top-line revenue of my business and in my income.”

The tax would apply to lawyers, accountants, cleaning services, networking jobbers, PR flaks like Aquilina – and freelance IT architects like yours truly, who frequently work “corporation to corporation”, and have nobody to pass the cost of the tax on to.  And it will favor the big IT solutions shops, who can absorb the extra top-line costs and pass them on – although they won’t be much happer about it that…

…I almost choke to say it…

…the Strib and me.

To: Minnesota DFL Pundits, Politicians, Academics And “Journalists”
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant
Re: Put Up Or…

All,

I’m going to take a moment to publicly reiterate a challenge I’ve posted in the past.

I challenge you – any of you – to debate the Paymar and/or Feinstein gun-grab bills.  In public.

Only ground rules:  We’ll do it in public, at a neutral location.  We’ll have actual debate rules – we can gnosh those out when we set things up.   Bring your “A” game.  You’ll need it.

Have your people call my people.

I am my people.

That is all.

They’re baaaaaaack:

House Public Safety Committee Chairman Michael Paymar, a long-time anti-gun advocate, plans to hold committee hearings on his gun control proposals beginning at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, February 5 through Thursday, February 7 in State Office Building Room 10.

The Metrocrats – as opposed to the outstate DFLers – certainly think they smell blood in the water; this is the first time in I think 15 years they’ve seriously considered broaching new victim disarmament legislation.

The press release – from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – notes:

At this time, none of his gun control legislation has been introduced. However, the NRA understands that Paymar’s gun control bills will likely be introduced later this week or early next week and include, at a minimum, the following attacks on our Second Amendment rights:

Paymar’s proposal hits the usual boogeymen:

• A proposed ban on Ugly Guns:  Paymar would ban firearms with scary military-looking cosmetic features
• Big Magazines: Paymar would force spree killers to carry 2-3 times as many magazines as they do before going on a shooting spree (and force law-abiding homeowners and citizens to reload 2-3 times as often if they are beset by determined, dissociative or chemically motivated attackers).
• Private Transfers:  While even some Second Amendment people think this – requiring all purchases to go through a federally-licensed firearms dealer (FFL), to close the non-existant “gun show loophole” – thinks this doesn’t sound too noxious on the surface, its byproduct -a paper trail for all guns – makes the next step, universal registration, trivially easy.

All three are, of course, utterly useless for curbing any kind of crime.  That’s why the proper term for such measures is Victim Disarmament, not “Gun Control”.

And at first blush, it looks grim:  the Public Safety Committee is 10 DFLers and 8 Republicans.
But there’s more to it than that.

So Here’s What Real Americans Need To Do

There are three real factions on the Democrat-controlled House Public Safety Committee

The first is the Republicans.  They all should get a call – especially if you are one of their constituents – to encourage them to stand up for what’s right, and thank them (if applicable) for their past support.

Representative Tony Cornish (R) – Republican Lead: 651-296-4240
E-mail: rep.tony.cornish@house.mn

Representative Debra Hilstrom (DFL): 651-296-3709
E-mail: rep.debra.hilstrom@house.mn

Representative Brian Johnson (R): 651-296-4346
E-mail: rep.brian.johnson@house.mn

Representative Tim Kelly (R): 651-296-8635
E-mail: rep.tim.kelly@house.mn

Representative Jim Newberger (R): 651-296-2451
E-mail: rep.jim.newberger@house.mn

Representative Andrea Kieffer (R): 651-296-1147
E-mail: rep.andrea.kieffer@house.mn

Representative Kathy Lohmer (R): 651-296-4244
E-mail: rep.kathy.lohmer@house.mn

Representative Mark Uglem (R): 651-296-5513
E-mail: rep.mark.uglem@house.mn

The next faction is the Metrocrats.  They’re mostly hopeless; they’re in office because Alida Messinger and her liberal plutocrat friends paid good money, and lots of it, for a bleeding-heart knee-jerk liberal government with all the baggage it brings.  Victim Disarmament, to these people, is not negotiable.

If you’re a constituent, of course, a phone call wouldn’t hurt; they need to know that their opposition is everywhere.  And a quick reminder of what bills like theirs did to the DFL in 1994 and 2002 might not hurt, either.

Representative Michael Paymar (DFL) – Chairman: 651-296-4199
E-mail: rep.michael.paymar@house.mn

Representative John Lesch (DFL): 651-296-4224
E-mail: rep.john.lesch@house.mn

Representative Joe Mullery (DFL): 651-296-4262
E-mail: rep.joe.mullery@house.mn

Representative Steve Simon (DFL): 651-296-9889
E-mail: rep.steve.simon@house.mn

Representative Erik Simonson (DFL): 651-296-4246
E-mail: rep.erik.simonson@house.mn

Representative Linda Slocum (DFL): 651-296-7158
E-mail: rep.linda.slocum@house.mn

Representative Dan Schoen (DFL): 651-296-4342
E-mail: rep.dan.schoen@house.mn

So when you break the committee down, it’s actually 8 Real Americans to 7 Orcs.

But here’s the important part:

Representative Paul Rosenthal (DFL) – Vice Chairman: 651-296-7803
E-mail: rep.paul.rosenthal@house.mn

Representative Shannon Savick (DFL): 651-296-8216
E-mail: rep.shannon.savick@house.mn

Representative John Ward (DFL): 651-296-4333
E-mail: rep.john.ward@house.mn

UPDATE:  As Colonel Flagg noted in the comments, let’s add:

Representative Erik Simonson (DFL): 651-296-4246
E-mail: rep.erik.simonson@house.mn

That’s two DFLers – Savick and Ward – from outstate districts that are chock full of Real Americans, both independent and DFL as well as GOP, who take the Second Amendment seriously, the very type of DFLers that were mowed down in droves in 2002 unless they broke with the Metrocrats.

And Rosenthal, who won on a one-time surge of DFL voters in a very purple district, who can’t afford to take Real American votes for granted in the much-more-normal year coming up in 2014.

And a polite, reasoned phone call reminding them that there are a lot of us out there in both parties who take our Second Amendment civil rights seriously, as well as those history lessons from 1994 and 2002, might just go a long way toward euthanizing Paymar’s authoritarian dabbling in its crib where it belongs.

Any questions?

Your mission is clear.

Let’s take a quick jaunt through history.

Spring 2011: Governor Dayton proposes a budget with a school payment “shift” – a delay of payments to schools until after an arbitrary date, the end of a fiscal year, to “move” the spending from one budget to another – of something well over $2 billion dollars.

May 2011:  The GOP delivers a balanced budget that includes a shift of a little over a billion dollars.  The DFL whinges that the GOP is “using a gimmick” to balance the budget.  Notwithstanding the fact that Governor Dayton had himself proposed a “shift” twice as large as the GOP’s.

June 2012:  The GOP proposes a bill to completely “repay” (i.e., pay before the arbitrary date) the existing “shift”.  Governor Messinger Dayton, incomprehensibly, vetoes it.

DFLers muttered that paying back the shift would have been  irresponsible, although they never really said why.

Election Season, 2012:  The DFL relentlessly beats the GOP over the head with its chanting point about “Short-changing the children!”, notwithstanding the fact that the GOP had made an effort to fix it, only to be thwarted by Governor Messinger Dayton.

At this point, to the DFL, the “shift” is a campaign bludgeon.

Mid January 2013:  The DFL proposes a budget that proposes paying back half of the “Shift”, but in a bill that – notwithstanding that the flood of other new spending and the tsunami of new taxes – has no funding mechanism, so the whole proposal is vapor.

Late January 2013:  A DFL legislator says the shift “is just another tool”.

Summary:  to the DFL, the “shift” has gone from “Irresponsible to pay back”, to “a fiscal assault weapon aimed at our children!” to “just a tool“.

Seriously.

Conclusion:  The DFL defaulted on their promise “to the children”; they defrauded the voters by saying they’d pay “the shift” back, and they lied about the Republicans’ plans to do the same. 

Discuss.

Special discussion point:  why haven’t Rachel Stassen-Berger, Tom Scheck, Tim Pugmire, John Cronan, Pat Kessler and the rest of the elite capitol press corps reported on this?

CORRECTION: First two grafs were 2011, not 2012.  Time flies when you’re fighting rapacious spendthrifts, doesn’t it?

.Yesterday in this space, we watched Betty McCollum at a town hall in Oakdale  repeatedly declaim that she wanted to see a “dialog” between Real Americans and the gun-grabbers.

I had all sorts of suggestions – but I wondered; what does “dialog” mean to Representative McCollum?

I got a copy of the letter she’s been sending her supporters:

Sadly over the past several years, far too many innocent American children, women and men have been the victims of gun violence. The sobering statistics about gun violence speak volumes. According to the U.S. Census, of the 129,741 murders that were reported between 2000 and 2008, nearly two-thirds of the victims were killed by a firearm. Every year nearly 100,000 people in America are shot or killed with a gun according to the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence. Every day, 270 people in America – 47 of them children and teens – are injured or slain due to gun violence.

If this is what she’s bringing to the “dialog”, I’m afraid she’s not trying all that hard to “communicate”:

• Why show eight years of murder stats in one place?  To avoid showing that the gun murder rate is sharply down .
• Where did most of those shootings come from?  A criminal was involved – as the shooter, the target or both – in the vast majority of them.
• The Brady Factory uses stats that cuts off “Children and Teens” at age 19.  Plenty of 18-19 year olds are not only not “children”, they are criminals and gang-bangers, and doing plenty of shooting and getting shot at.

I may not be an elected representative, but where I come from “dialog” is best when it isn’t “one side spewing BS and the other side constantly correcting them”.

Oh, yeah – here’s more “dialog”:

Nonetheless voices like the NRA will do everything to protect guns rather than the lives of our children and law enforcement officers. I have consistently opposed the NRA and their extremist agenda and will continue to do so. As a result of this work I have received an ‘F’ rating from the NRA.

Keep up the “dialog”, Rep. McCollum.  Your seat is safe – for now – so you can do it

But let’s extend the “dialog” to some outstate DFLers.

Tim Walz and Collin Peterson:  do you agree with Rep. McCollum?

How about you, Patti Fritz and David Bly and Zac Dorholt and David Bly and all you other outstate DFLers?  How’s Rep. McCollum’s idea of “dialog” sound to you?  Kinda…extreme?  Is this what you plan on taking to your constituents next year?

To: Rep. Betty McCollum
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Mission Accomplished!

Rep. McCollum:

You had a “Town Hall” meeting deep in the heart of DFL-addled Oakdale yesterday.   MNCD4 Conservative was there to shoot video.

And even there, even you couldn’t dodge talking about the Second Amendment .

Video below the jump, so that the rest of the page can actually load:

(more…)

Betty McCollum is now on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee.

A few months back, those of us who figured Zygi Wilf should pay for his own real estate improvements rather than plunder the state treasury were vindicated when turned out that the “mechanism” (read: gimmick) the state planned to use for its share – “electronic pull tabs” – wasn’t going to deliver anywhere near the planned revenue.  If things didn’t turn around fast (note: they will not), the state’s “contribution” to Zygi Wilf’s investment the Vikings stadium will have to be paid for by all of us taxpaying ripe sucks out of the general fund.

That’s bad enough – and it’s just to cover a putatively fixed bill.

Now, Governor Messinger Dayton has started coming out with budget proposals.  And along with some of those proposals (although, notably, not the one to repay part of the education budget “shift”) come some “mechanisms” to pay for them.  Gimmicks, if you will.

Minnesotans, being virtuous in a passive-aggressive sort of way, love “sin taxes”; tobacco is a common public policy kick toy in this state.  And Messinger Dayton intends to jack up the price of cigarettes by 94 cents a pack.

It’s not going to work, of course.

For starters:  cigarette taxes never, ever deliver the kind of revenue that their proponents expect.

Despite fanciful claims to the contrary, many tobacco tax hikes across the country have failed to produce the promised revenue. In 2009, Washington, D.C. raised its cigarette tax from $2.00 to $2.50 per pack. The District projected the new tax would generate $45 million in revenue, about 20 percent above 2009 levels. Instead, revenues came in $12 million below projections and $4.2 million lower than before the tax was imposed. Similarly, New Jersey reported a $52 million shortfall in tobacco tax revenues after it raised its cigarette tax by 17.5 cents in 2007.

The reason for this?  Addiction notwithstanding, cigarette smokers are people – and people alter their behavior to avoid paying taxes on discretionary things like smoking.  If a tax increase jacks up the price of a pack of smokes by 10%, then all other things being equal, people cut their spending.

“Yay!” say the tax’s proponents.  “10% of people quit smoking!  Or they smoke 10% less!”.  Some do.  Others switch to cheaper cigarettes, or buy from the black market that always, inevitably burgeons whenever government cracks down on something people want; at any rate, people avoid paying the tax as best they can.  It’s Econ 101.

(Indeed, the public health benefits of taxing smoking seem to have stalled over the past twenty years)

But government can’t seem to avoid the spending that was to be based on all that tobacco money, and goodness knows no DFL administration would ever roll back an expenditure that we can’t afford.  Which means:

Due to these declining revenues, states often turn to broad-based tax increases to pay for an overspending problem. A recent NTU study also showed that 41 of 59 state tobacco tax increases from 2001-2006 were followed by more expansive tax increases within two years, as states attempted to make up for tobacco revenue that never appeared.

Just like the Vikings stadium; they’ll be after us to fill in the shortfall.

Oh, yeah – and for all of Governor Messinger’s Dayton’s palaver about making the rich pay their “fair share”, it’s worth noting that the cigarette tax is the most regressive tax of all – according to that noted conservative tool, Governor Mark Messinger Dayton.

Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d assume the Governor‘s ex wife was just saying things to get elected…

Gary Gross has also been covering this.

Comparing two events:

And at least one of the people at the “Gun Control Rally” is a pro-gun ringer.

But compare the media presence, hey?

(Via Andrew Rothman at GOCRA)

Minnesota newspapers, largely, supported Governor Messinger Dayton and the DFL.  They largely not only bought the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s” bill of goods hook line and sinker, but most of them worked tirelessly to propagate it, and to squelch dissent from it.

They studiously avoided, almost completely, any reporting that would have impeded the DFL’s rise to power.

The Minnesota media, at large, were among the DFL’s most valuable players this past two electoral cycles.  At the highest levels – the Strib, the PiPress, and at least the programming arm of MPR – they serve as the DFL’s Praetorian Guard.

But now?  Now that the governor is tacking 5.5% sales taxes (for starters) onto print services, advertising and retail newspaper sales?

Not so much:

Business groups and retailers complain that the proposal would cost jobs. As he spoke to the Minnesota Newspaper Association, several editors and newspaper owners complained that a sales tax on newspapers would hurt their industry.

Tom West, the managing editor of the Morrison County Record in Little Falls, spoke about his concerns during a question and answer session.

“We are the ones who cover local government and state government, and we are wondering why you would think it would be a good idea to have less information about government and what government is up to,” West said.

(Cynical answer: “Because you’ve served your purpose”.  See also The Minnesota Independent).

(Slightly less cynical answer: “While your contributions to DFL hegemony were vital, you don’t have the same political clout as AFSCME, the SEIU or MPR).

(Cynical and partisan but realistic answer: “How about not just “covering local government”, but turnin a critical eye on the DFL?  For once?”)

Others said that expanding the sales tax to newspaper ink, paper and advertising would result in job losses. Dayton said he understood the concern but did not back away from his plan.

Job losses only matter if they’re union.

Small papers aren’t union.

Big papers are – and we’ll see what happens there.

As to the rest of you newspapers?  You got the government you mostly worked for, largely shilled for, and for the most part operated as in-the-bag PR agents for.  Most of your editorial stances praised Dayton and the DFL’s return to power.

So now you’re saying you’re not Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota?

Suck it.

BONUS QUESTION FOR DFLers: What do you think happens when you tack 5.5% onto the price of something?

All other things being equal, people buy 5.5% less of it.

Ponder losing 5.5% of your business overnight.  Ponder hard.

The media yaks endlessly about the thin film of Minnesota law-enforcement leaders – Dakota County sheriff Bellows and prosecutor Jim Backstrom, Chaska’s Scott Knight and a few others – who bark for gun control when the DFL tells them to.

The following group – related in a news release from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – somehow got less coverage (emphasis added):

Yesterday, Minnesota sheriffs — experts in both crime and politics — joined judges and legislators in proposing fact-based, realistic solutions to the problem of violence in our society.

These proposals focused on enforcing existing laws and making government bureaucracies do their jobs without infringing on the rights of the law-abiding 99%

The Minnesota Sheriffs Association, represented by Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek and Carver County Sheriff Jim Olson, laid out five specific recommendations:

Improving the completeness and accuracy of the state criminal records system

Making Minnesota courts quickly and accurately report civil mental health commitments that result in a firearms prohibition

Making these public mental health commitment records instantly available to street cops so they know who they may be facing when they arrive at a call for service

Providing earlier mental health assessments for jail inmates, so they get the help they need sooner

Reassessing Minnesota’s civil commitment laws to ensure that dangerously ill people get the treatment they need

GOCRA fully supports these policy proposals, and applauds the sheriffs and other coalition members for focusing on real, solvable issues, and not on fear-mongering. GOCRA also congratulates Senator Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park), formerly an opponent of gun rights, for signing on to this practical approach.

These elected leaders and sworn law enforcement officials recognize that their law-abiding, gun-owning constituents are not the cause of societal violence, and that infringing on the Constitutional rights that they swore to support and defend will not make us safer.

Their common-sense, to-the-point recommendations should be given immediate attention by the Minnesota Legislature.

You would do well to contact Sheriffs Stanek and Olson – and especially Rep. Latz.  Yes, he’s DFLer, but not only is he one of the DFLers that actually thinks about the issue, he’s one of the first in the metro area to break ranks with the orcs.

Governor Dayton released his list of payoffs to his key contributors budget yesterday.

Is it a coincidence that the budget was called “Budget For A Better Minnesota?”

Maybe.

But the Governor released the budget at an 11AM press conference yesterday.

At 11:13, Carrie Lucking – the “Executive Director” of the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, one of the huddle of lefty non-profits via which liberal plutocrats and the unions launder millions of dollars and run the DFL’s entire messaging operation – tweeted:

Thirteen minutes.

Maybe Carrie Lucking is an incredibly fast reader.

Of course, she’s also romantically involved with Dayton’s deputy chief of staff Bob Hume.

A flurry of conservatives on Twitter wondered last night – is that how Lucking got enough detail about the budget, 13 minutes after it was announced, to call a critic a “liar?”

I thought that showed too much faith in Governor Dayton.  I think it’s more likely ABM gave the budget to the Administration.

Either way – I need your help here.

Back in the 2000s, the media spun up a tempest in a teapot over Governor Pawlenty’s involvement with an outside group, and the potential impact that had on the Pawlenty Administration’s message and policies.   It passed quickly, because there was no there there.  But the media gave it its’ 15 minutes.

Does anyone remember the parties involved in that?  I only remember the dimmest possible outlines of the episode.

But compared with the collegial clubbiness between the Twin Cities media – especially the Strib and the MinnPost  – and the various political non-profits and advocacy groups, I think it’d be useful for comparison’s sake.

UPDATE:  I need to point out that the heavy lifting on Twitter was done by Dave Thul and Sheila Kihne.  They smelled the rat.  I just wrote about it.

The legislature’s been in session for a week, now.

And after running a fierce, lavishly-funded campaign telling Minnesotans that gay people were just like them, and that we “don’t have popularity contests with civil rights”, there is still no bill to undo Minnesota’s gay marriage ban – because Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen are worried about losing a popularity contest over gay rights.

Gays are planning a Valentine’s Day rally…:

They will hold a “Freedom to Marry Day Rally ” on February 14, kicking off what is expected to be a massive effort to rescind the current law banning same-sex marriage and replace it with a law blessing same-sex unions.

The Capitol effort comes after a multi-million dollar campaign last year that successfully turned back a ballot measure that would have constitutionally banned gay marriage in Minnesota.

Opponents say Minnesota may be the first state in the nation to vote against a same-sex marriage ban but that doesn’t mean the state will accept gay marriage.

…but they’re barking up the wrong tree.

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this; from 2006 to 2010, the DFL and its’ supporters whinged that while they controlled the legislature, they didn’t own the governor’s office, so there was no point to passing the legislation, since it’d just get vetoed.  Which is a lame excuse; if most people did, in fact, favor gay marriage, the futile vote on principle would redound to the DFL’s benefit in the next election.

But that was then.  This is now. The DFL controls both chambers and the governor’s office.  There is absolutely no political reason not to push a gay marriage bill – and if there were a political reason, it should be swept aside because, remember, we don’t have popularity contests with civil rights.

Except guns.

But I digress.  Gays – why aren’t you demanding the DFL get off its ass?

Speculation is that, along with the budget, Governor Messinger Dayton will be proposing “reforms” to the state tax code today.

My predictions:

1. The budget will be over $40 billion.  That’s how many chits she he owes.
2. Re: Tax “Reforms”:  I suspect unicorns may actually be involved: Like the French and the Californians, the DFL has a history of assuming money grows on trees, or is borne down from the sky in golden bags on the backs of unicorns.
3. GOP Territory = Salt Mines: Look for Local Government Aid – used as a subsidy of Minneapolis, Saint Paul ,and Duluth – to make a triumphant return, like Lenin coming back to Petrograd. LGA will revert to its nineties-era form; the parts of the state that work (i.e. are mostly GOP) will be impelled to subsidize the parts that don’t (Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth), on top of the parts that LGA was originally supposed to help (small, poor, older towns, and the perpetually-ailing Iron Range).
4. Lots of “aid” to the Iron Range, to help make up for the fact that the metrocrat DFL Environmental movement is going to accelerate the strangling of the mining industry.

Bonus question 1:  Which company will be the first to announce layoffs?

Bonus question 2: Will Governor Messinger Dayton videotape of this event?

Remember – tomorrow’s the “Guns Across America” rally, on the steps of the capitol of whatever state you’re in.  Including here in Minnesota.

The Strib has the basic details of the Minnesota rally, without much editorializing.  Or you can go to the Facebook page for all the official info.

I’ll be there before the event, but I’ll have to leave before it starts; it’s smack in the middle of my show-prep time.

Speaking of which, tomorrow’s guest on the NARN will be Andrew Rothman to talk about the President’s power grab and the outlook in the legislature.

To:  Governor Messinger Dayton
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  A Time For Choosing

Governor Messinger Dayton,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s declaration that legal gun ownership by the law-abiding citizen is a dangerous condition that needs monitoring?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If you support it, please make sure everyone knows.  You’ve never been shy about using the media that serves as your praetorian guard, and the lavishly-funded apparatus that your puppeteer ex-wife owns, to get the message out before; please don’t stop now.
3. If you support the President, could you please prevail upon Minnesota’s DFL legislators to publicly declare their support as well?  Very, very publicly?  Maybe in a big press conference on the Capitol steps?

You ran as a “pro-2nd-Amendment” candidate in the 2010 election.  I’ve always suspected that you did it more out of memory of what happened to Ann Wynia (and the rest of the Democrat majorities) in 1994, or to the DFL’s majority in the House in 2002, than out of any sincere care for civil and human and rights…

…but I’m willing, if not expecting, to be surprised.

I mean, one way or another, it’s time for a big profile in courage, isn’t it?

That is all.

To:  Senator Amy Klobuchar
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Sen. Klobuchar,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you join President Obama in the belief that the law-abiding, legal gun owner is a public health risk and manifesting a mental illness?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. Could you please make your reasons for this support as public as you can, if applicable?  You’ve never been shy about using the media that serves as your praetorian guard to get the message out before; please don’t stop now.
3. If you support the President, could you please prevail upon Minnesota’s DFL legislators to publicly declare their support as well?  Very, very publicly?

You’ve spent the past six years in a calculated effort to create a public image of studied innocuity.  But given your massive victory last November, surely you feel secure enough politically to be honest about your stance and motivations.

I mean, you just know you’re bulletproof come election time, don’t you?

That is all.

To:  Senator Al Franken
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Sen. Franken,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s executive order saying law-abiding gun ownership is mental illness?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If so, please make your support very, very public.
3. Again if so – please do what you can to make MN DFL legislators “come out” publicly on their support, would you please?

I mean, you just know you’re bulletproof come election time, don’t you?

That is all.

To: Rep. Colin Peterson (DFL MN-07)
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Power, Power, Power!

Rep. Peterson,

If you’d be so kind, I’d love it if you answered the following:

1. Do you support President Obama’s decree, yesterday, saying that law-abiding legal gun ownership is a form of mental illness?  Yes or no, please.
2. As you’ve always claimed to be a pro-Second-Amendment guy, then – if you don’t support Obama, what do you plan to do to fight this usurpation?

Your attention to this matter will be appreciated.

That is all.