Via Breitbart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last two…

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

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

Remember – have them support HF1467/SF1357.

[1] Hyperbolic?  Maybe. Probably not.

SCENE:  MITCH is talking with Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, a meme-buffer at Alliance For A Better Minnesota, at a Cathedral Hill bar.

CARROLL is sitting at a table with an empty martini glass, sipping a cosmpolitan from a second as MITCH approaches.

CARROLL:  We have teh best election system in teh world!

MITCH:  Um, OK – why do you say that?

CARROLL:  Because we get teh most people to teh polls!

MITCH: Well, OK – that’s cool as far as it goes, but if a significant number of those “people” at the polls are duplicate voters, or voters who aren’t supposed to be voting, then each of those votes negates the vote of someone who is entitled to vote, and only votes one time.

CARROLL:  That never happens in Minnesota.

MITCH:  Well, it’s been proven to happen.  The Minnesota Majority has brought hundreds of cases of felons voting and other people who weren’t supposed to vote to the Ramsey County Attorney, and gotten a few dozen election fraud convictions.

CARROLL: Only a few dozen of teh convictions!  Our system is teh PERFECT!

MITCH:  Well, no – because in Minnesota, unless you’re a paroled felon who hasn’t had is rights restored and who signed a piece of paper acknowledging you realize that not voting was part of your parole, pleading “I didn’t know” actually is considered an excuse.  And in every case, their votes were counted.  All of them.   Oh, yeah – and they busted a group home shoveling four – so far – vulnerable adults through the polls during the 2010 elections.  They were using the handicapped to stuff the ballots.  A county attorney basically used a grand jury to whitewash the empirical fact that four adults who are under guardianship, and under Minnesota statute have no right to vote, were registered to vote and voted absentee – basically had their ballots filled out for them by group home employees.   It’s full-blown corruption.

CARROLL:  So you want to disenfranchise teh people!

MITCH:  Blah blah blah.  Another stupid manipulative strawman – but hey, you work for Alliance for a Better Minnesota, so pardon my redundancy.  Nope, untrue.  Every who is entitled to vote should vote.

CARROLL:  Yabbut, what about teh elderly and students!  20% of them don’t have IDs.

MITCH:  OK, so two points, here.  For starters, isn’t it reasonable to ask people to assume a certain bare minimum of responsibility to exercise a franchise that over a million Americans have died defending?  And second:  all significant political parties have “get out the vote” efforts that make sure people get to the polls on election day.  So expand the effort to making sure people have IDs.  I mean, what – do I have to do all the thinking for you?

CARROLL:  See!  You want to disenfranchise teh people!

MITCH:  Er, Lucky?  I just described exactly why I don’t.

CARROLL:  Yeah, but…where’s my cosmo?

MITCH:  In front of you.

CARROLL:  Thanks.  (Drains a cosmopolitan, waves down a waitress).  But none of that is necessary.

MITCH:  Um, what?  “None of that is necessary?”  I’ve just shown you where hundreds of people voted illegally – and I didn’t even get into the credible allegations that students were voting in Minnesota and, via absentee ballot, in their home jurisdictions.

CARROLL:  But all of that is teh BS.

MITCH:  Um, why?

CARROLL:  Because we have teh best electoral system in teh world?

(WAITRESS appears at table)

MITCH:  She’ll have a cosmo.  I’ll have a double Laphraoig, neat.

WAITRESS:  Is she seeing unicorns again?

MITCH: You know it.

(And SCENE)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But there’s more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a difference a year makes.

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

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

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

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

The GOP has the real jobs plan:

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

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

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

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

The GOP has a grasp on actual reality, fortunately:

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

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

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

Well, this next section will fix that…:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I’m out to support that agenda.

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

It’s gonna be a fun session!

The Strib  is usually pretty diligent, if not necessarily artful, about clothing its appeals to its institutional self-interest – but as they show in Tuesday’s editorial, they’re not above the naked appeals to self-interest, either:

(We hope the governor applies that thinking to the question of where a new Minnesota Vikings stadium belongs.)

Yep. I bet they do.

I bet there’s a parcel at 425 Portland they’d just loooooooove to have the governor “apply his thinking” to.

I found this quote in yesterday’s Strib editorial about Governor Dayton’s bonding bill to be oddly revelatory:

“I learned from my father and my uncles, who were pretty successful job creators in Minnesota, the importance of focusing on downtown. … If you lose the core of the downtown, you lose the vitality of the region.”

He’s talking, of course, about spending bonding money downtown – the same kind of bonding spending (at various levels) that’s helped to bring all sorts of government-blessed downtown-saving ventures as Urban Renewal, the clearing of the Gateway, Riverplace, Saint Anthony Main, Mississippi Live, the Conservatory and Block E to Minneapolis’ core.  And we all know how those worked, don’t we?

But there’s a germ of revelation in that quote.  No, not that Dayton learned anything about business – clearly all business sense in the Dayton family passed on with the Governor’s ancestors.

But Dayton – and the DFL – learned everything they knew, and know, about the economy at about the same time that the Daytons chain of stores was at its commercial and social peak, in the forties through the early seventies.

It was a time when…:

• America was the only economy, both worldwide and regionally.  American companies faced little competition around the world, since Europe and Japan were still recovering from World War II through the sixties, and China was mired in the worst excesses of Maoism through the eighties.  It meant that…:
• American Union Labor Was King: Since American business had no competition, it could pay American Labor what it demanded in wages and (especially) pensions.  Like American government, American business and labor spent like there was no tomorrow – because they didn’t think there was one, at least in terms of “the world changing.
• Minnesota Dominated The Region: Minnesota was the only significant commercial center between Chicago and Denver.   Today, of course, we are surrounded by thriving regional centers – smaller, perhaps, but much more nimble and forward-looking; Fargo and, of course, Scott Walker’s Wisconsin.
• Downtown was the only town: Back when Daytons was king, Minneapolis’ only competition was downtown Saint Paul (back before Urban Renewal tore the city’s guts out) – and they put a store there, too.  It worked – because through the sixties, Minneapolis and Saint Paul were where the people lived and worked.  Now, of course, both downtowns compete with huge shopping centers at the MOA, Burnsville Center, Apple Valley’s mass of stores, Southtown, Southdale, Eden Prairie’s huge commercial center, Ridgedale, Maple Grove’s immense Arbor Lakes area, Brookdale, Rosedale, Maplewood, Albertville, and the sprawling commercial expanse in Woodbury – all of which benefit by being where the people are, these days.  Minneapolis and Saint Paul are shrinking and getting poorer (thanks to decades of DFL hegemony); the burbs are getting bigger, and people just plain want to shop near home, barring the odd adventure.

So Dayton is right – if he climbs into a time machine and zooms back to 1955.  Today?  Not so much.

But the world views of Dayton, and the people and institutions that support him – labor, Alita Messinger and all her Rockefeller money, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota – all formed back then, in a time when American business, centered “downtown”, dominated a bomb-ravaged world; when government and business all had all the money they needed; when Minneapolis and Saint Paul towered above humble and prostrate prairies and poor hardscrabble mining towns.

The world changed.

The DFL and its minions didn’t. They got left behind.

And everybody knows it but them (and the 50% + 8,000 people who were gulled into voting for Dayton in 2010), and who apparently never figured out that Woodbury exists, that Germany and Japan and India and China have thriving economies, and that you can’t pay a guy $60,000 a year and a lifetime pension to bolt on headline bezels and expect to sell affordable cars anymore.

The Strib, mirabile dictu, reaches the same conclusion I did about Dayton’s “Jerbs Bill”, although a good deal more gently in this editorial:

Last week, Dayton dressed up his biennial bonding request as a “jobs bill,” and linked it with another short-term stimulus idea: a proposed one-time tax credit for employers who hire a new veteran or recently graduated or unemployed Minnesotan before June 30, 2013.

That credit — $3,000 this year, $1,500 the first half of next year — is probably too small to convince employers to shoulder the long-term commitment that hiring entails. Dayton would do better to focus on building long-term prosperity, and to cast his bonding bill in that light.

Which is exactly what I wrote on Friday.   The tax credit – as Ed pointed out on the show on Saturday – might reinforce some larger companies’ decisions to make hires they were going to make anyway, but it’s not going to affect small-business hiring in any substantial way.

The Strib; last week’s criticism of Dayton, next week.

But they’re all aboard with the $775,000,000 bonding bill – which is actually on top of the $500,000,000 in bonds floated in the last session.  They just think it’s the wrong argument:

But the argument Dayton made Tuesday as he unveiled his wish list was backwards.

“This bonding proposal is about putting thousands of unemployed Minnesotans back to work,” the DFL governor said at the top of his media briefing.

Only after touting the short-term gain for the construction industry that comes from state building projects did Dayton add: “The bill is also about investing in the future of our state.”

It’s not often I shrug my shoulders and say the Strib got something right.  But they are; Dayton’s “Jerbs Bill” at best creates a few thousand temp jobs (almost entirely to benefit his construction union benefactors) that we’ll be paying for for the next three decades.

But the Republicans make a good point: Short-term construction job gains — even the 21,700 jobs Dayton says his proposal would create — aren’t sufficient reason for the state to shoulder 30 years of debt service.

Now, bonding is a perfectly legitimate activity for state government; we’ve always paid for our major projects with the even-year-session bonding.  If we’re smart, that bonding pays for long-term capital expenses we actually need.

So what’s the shopping list of things that’ll foster all this long-term happiness?

For example, $42 million is devoted to clean-water infrastructure projects requisite to industrial expansion.

It’s worth looking at.

Higher-education buildings, many of them sites for science and technology education, comprise 22 percent of Dayton’s recommended total.

When the Strib throws in the “…many of them…” qualifier, it means it’s time to look the bill over; I suspect there’s a “Many more of them are site for administrative deadwood and PC fripperies”.

Investing $25 million to repair local bridges draws down $50 million in federal funds while keeping goods moving to markets.

Remember when the 35W Bridge collapsed?  All the caterwauling the Dems did about the need to update the state’s most critical infrastructure?

That’s about 3.3% of the bonding bill.

And guess what is going to get exactly the same amount of money?

The biggest lever for federal and local funds is the $25 million Dayton asks the Legislature to authorize for the next leg of the Twin Cities’ light-rail network, running southwest from downtown Minneapolis.

That’s a sufficient match to net $225 million in local and federal funds, a major down payment on a 15-mile rail link between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie.

And so there’s your DFL priorities; as much money spent on a nearly-useless train (albeit marginally  more useful than the two we’re already stuck with) that will shackle Minnesotans to generations of long-term spending (expense and capital) for virtually no benefit is exactly on par with repairing the bridges that the vast majority of us use daily, and that all of our commerce depends on.

Dayton’s package is unabashedly pro-downtown — not just downtown Minneapolis, but also St. Paul, Rochester, Mankato and St. Cloud. He’s backing Nicollet Mall’s renovation, a new baseball “regional sports facility” in St. Paul, and long-postponed business-backed civic center projects in Rochester, Mankato and St. Cloud.

History teaches the value of keeping downtowns strong, Dayton said.

History may show it, but it probably won’t show it for very long.

There’s a place for bonding bills; building the infrastructure this state needs.

The Strib editorial board points out several times that Dayton’s emphasis on the plan’s dubious job benefits is a “mistake”.  Their intent is right, but their description is wrong.

The SEIU, AFSCME, Teamsters, MFT, IFO, MAPE, IBEW and the various trade unions all paid lots of good money to get Dayton into office.

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

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

And here was the claim:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on that later today.

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

Yesterday, we took a look at Dayton’s jerbs plan.

It’s a sham.

It’s a piddling little one-time tax credit equivalent to what you’d pay a $36K/year employee for a month (in salary alone – not capitalized cost (liberals, as a conservative to tell you what that is); if you count that in, it’s more like a month at $12/hour, plus benefits and other costs), offered for one year, cut in half for people hired the following year.  In other words, it says “Quick!  We know you don’t know what’s going to happen to the economy, or with Obamacare, or with the payroll tax, or with consumer demand, but never mind that;  hire someone right now, and you’ll get 8% of that credited in taxes in a year.

It is, of course, not a serious “jobs plan”.  It is a campaign slogan.  Nothing more.

Of course,  there’s more to this “plan” – and since the “plan” comes from Dayton Alita Messinger and the unions, you know it’s gonna rhyme with “flexes”:

Invest in Infrastructure: A new bonding bill, to be announced next week, would provide $775

million for new investment in infrastructure, allowing primarily private-sector employers to put tens

of thousands of Minnesotans back to work.

What this means is that the state is going to spend nearly a billion dollars to hire union temp workers to fix the things that should have been fixed with all the money we’re pouring into trolleys on University Avenue – presuming it’s “infrastructure” that’s needed at all.  “Infrastructure” is moving from buzz-phrase to slush fund in Minnesota.

The bill would also include $20 million in bonding requests by the Department of Employment and

Economic Development specifically designed to help businesses expand in Minnesota. These

initiatives would provide grants to cities for business infrastructure, help local authorities renew old

property for business development and aid in the development of transportation improvements

focused on businesses.

Which is both a meaningless drop in the bucket and, of course, more code words for “construction union temp jobs” and “enabling more government spending at all levels”.

Here’s the cruncher:

Internet Sales Tax Fairness—Affiliate Nexus: Under current law, out-of-state retailers that do not have a physical presence in Minnesota are not required to collect the sales tax on online purchases used and consumed in Minnesota. As a result, a large portion of the taxes due on sales by large internet retailers—such as Amazon—go uncollected. This results in a loss of state revenue and

gives these remote retailers an unfair competitive advantage over Main Street Minnesota retailers.

Passing the Internet Sales Tax Fairness bill would level the playing field for Minnesota businesses and generate about $3.5 million in FY2013.

In other words, new taxes.  To enable new spending.

Has it ever occurred, in Governor Dayton’s Alita Messinger and the SEIU’s fevered and obsessed little minds, that perhaps a better way to help “main street Minnesota” “level” the “playing field” would be to lower our ridiculous sales taxes?  And business taxes?  And income taxes?

And wait on the “infrastructure” until the economy switches back to puree, and they money can come from a budget that is as big as it needs to be and still a smaller percentage of this state’s domestic product?

I’m going to guess that’s a big no.

…and it’s a good thing I’m not…

…but if I were Speaker Zellers, and Governor Dayton Alita Messinger and the SEIU brought Dayton’s Jerbs Bill to the House of Representatives to submit, I might respond something like this.

“With all due respect to Governor Dayton, there are laws against using the Legislature for campaign purposes.  And that’s all this bill is; a meaningless campaign slogan dressed up as a tax bill.  If this bill goes forward, the Campaign Finance Board will have to investigate the House of Representatives for making an illegal in-kind contribution to 134 DFL house races this fall.  Because that’s all this bill is, and that’s all it was ever intended to be”.

Again – it’s probably a good thing I’m not the Speaker.

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

Not a huge surprise, if you follow these things.

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

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

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

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

Wow.  Positive territory!  That sounds good – right?

Let’s read on:

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

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

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

Over the past month, it’s come to my attention that I am the only Republican in Minnesota not getting money from either the Racino lobby, the Tribal lobby, or the anti-gambling lobby.

While I never, ever gamble, I’m also perfectly libertarian on the subject, and thus have no baggage on any side of the debate – making me the perfect spokesman for any take on the issue.

Please have your people call my people.  And get with the program.  Thanks.

The Strib editorial board made the latest installment in its effort to make Governor Dayton appear to be anything other than utterly worthless and an utter failure in the first year of his misbegotten term in office.

 “But the DFL governor’s overall performance to date has been strong enough to win over skeptics, rally support from unexpected sources and earn the grudging respect of partisan opponents.

Who – Kelliher and Entenza supporters?

He has turned his political slogan — “Building a Better Minnesota” — into a credible description of not just intentions, but accomplishments.”

I was going to fisk the Strib’s fluff-job – but Luke Matthews already did it over at True North.

And his response was about the same as mine:

Huh?

Did someone set a bale of marijuana on fire in the offices of the StarTribune?  Rather than rebut the entire article, which is as laughably contrived and fictional as to make Dr. Seuss blush, I’ll give a recap of Governor Dayton’s abysmal year as the “Face of the DFL.”

Governor Dayton was inaugurated in January of 2011 and since then his performance has been going downhill fast.  He slapped together a ridiculous budget with every kind of payoff imaginable to the public sector unions and his DFL political cronies.  He proposed a gargantuan increase in spending and a myriad of tax increases.  These tax increases couldn’t begin to cover his explosive spending proposals, but that didn’t deter him.  It wasn’t just unreasonable, it was ridiculous.

The legislature looked at the farce, turned on the shredders, and calmly inserted his proposal page by page into the garbage.  Not even the minority DFL caucus put up much of a fight.  The budget ignored reality, would have stymied economic growth in the state, and didn’t even pretend to be for the population as a whole.  It was a bad joke.

Beyond that?  When the Governor went on a whirlwind tour of the state to try to flog his idiotic budget and buttress support for his shutdown, The People shut him down cold, sending him back to St. Paul with his hat in his hand.

What this is is the beginning of the media’s effort, as unpaid arms of the DFL, to try to make Governor Dayton appear to be a capable,much less formidable, opponent for the upcoming session.

I met my old friend, Inge Carroll (whom everyone calls “Lucky”) at a local watering hole to compare notes about politics the other day.  Lucky is a DFL operative.

CARROLL: So did you see teh article?  Teh Republican party said came into offices saying they were going to create jobs,but they have cost 16,000 jobs!

MITCH: For starters, why do you always pronounce “the” as “teh” after you drink cosmpolitans?  And then, huh?  You’ve missed the news? Minnesota’s unemployment rate is down.

CARROLL:  You are teh lier!  Didn’t you hear it on teh MPR?  Teh Republican policies have cost 16,000 jobs!  That means all of you Rethuglicons are TEH LIER!

(CARROLL orders another cosmopolitan)

MITCH: Um, what on earth are you talking about?  Minnesota is recovering from the recession faster than other states, largely because the GOP stood off Dayton’s orgy of taxes and regulations.

CARROLL:  Hah!  You didn’t read the article, did you?  You don’t even know what I”m talking about!

MITCH:  Well, that’d make two of us, if it were true – but yes, I read it. It says that because of LGA cuts, local government are having to either raise taxes, or cut government jobs, or both.

CARROLL:  Yep?  16,000 jobs!

MITCH:  OK.  Well, sorry to hear that – being out of work sucks. But what, you think government jobs are sacrosanct?

CARROLL:  Oh, I think people kind of like having teachers and firemen and cops and services.

MITCH:  Well, at face value, it looks more like people in towns around Minnesota like to have them – provided they can get someone else to pay for them.  When they have to pay for them themselves, not so much.

CARROLL:  (Glares at MITCH):   Why do you hate the troops?

(And SCENE).

Lucky had to get back to her job at “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, where she power-sands memes.

STOP THE PRESSES!

Yet another lefty writer has discovered that Republicans are TEH HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES! 

In this case, it’s one Brad Friedman over at the HuffPo:

For all of their years of claims that massive voter fraud is going on at the polling place, such that photo ID restrictions are required to ensure the integrity of the vote, youd think that when Republicans have a chance to run their own elections, theyd be sure to want it to be as “fraud”-free as possible.Nonetheless, despite onerous polling place photo ID requirements now passed into law in about a dozen states where the GOP controls both the legislative and executive branches, voters will be able to cast their ballot in next Tuesdays “First-in-the-Nation” Republican Iowa caucuses without bothering to show a photo ID — even though the Republican Party itself sets their own rules for voting there.

Wow.  That could mean the GOP are a bunch of TEH HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES HYPOCRITES! 

Or it might mean that a statewide caucus is open only to registered activists, and that a party precinct will have a better-than-fair idea of who their registred members are, and it’s completely different than an actual election.

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

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

And sometimes “I haven’t said anything” has an implied “…yet” after it.

One the most dull-witted bit of comment-section rhetoric is the old “I see you’re silent on…[some issue you haven’t written or spoken about]”, usually written to imply “silence equals assent”.

I’ve had a few commenters, tweeps and other people say “I notice you’re completely silent on the issue of the MNGOP “Sex Scandal”, the “coverup”, and the principals involved”.

Well, there’s a grain of truth to that, in that I haven’t written anything on the subject.

Yet.

There are a few good reasons for that.

I Have Little To Say:  All of the principals in the case are, to some degree or another, friends.  More importantly, they all have families.  Others may believe that their ends – pillorying the opposition – justfify their means, including piling on a couple of families who, let’s be honest, didn’t ask to be part of this.  So go read them, if that’s what you want.  But before you do, remember…

If You Ever, Even Once, Said “It’s Just About Sex” During The Clinton Administration, You Need To Just Shush: Seriously.  It’s private business.  It didn’t affect government.  Move on.  Just mooooove on.

Some might respond “But the relationship was inappropriate!  What kind of management style is that?”  To which I respond:

It’s An HR Issue:  Is every complaint about “inappropriate relationships” aired out in the media where you work?  Not until it goes to court, if at all.

Yeah, I know – Koch is an elected official in a position of some considerable power, so it’s a little different.  Suffice to say I have no opinion.  Yet.

But…

Much Of The Discourse On The Subject Has Nothing To Do With Amy Koch:  The “relationship” with the unnamed male staffer is the issue that’s got a good chunk of the Twin Cities leftyblogosphere cackling away with their prurient, projection-addled glee.  A name has been popping up, over and over again.  But none of the MSM’s sources on the subject have gone on the record with that name yet – not to a standard that a “real” news media outlet can run with yet.

And I’ll confess this to you all right now – I hope the “rumor” is wrong.  And I hope that the reason the subject of the tittering speculation is lawyering up is because so many of the Twin Cities’ leftybloggers and less-scrupulous media outlets have stuck their tender extremities into a meatgrinder; that they’ve defamed the “rumored” staffer, and done it because they  ignored the standards of fact-checking required to defend a defamatory assertion, and exercised “reckless disregard for the truth” – which is a form of “malice” under Minnesota defamation law that might, with a good lawyer, be enough to void the First Amendment protection they’re all hoping to hide behind.  I’ll cop to it; my Christmas cheer is marred by a hope against hope that the next year sees an awful lot of smug leftyblogging and City-Pages-writing prigs bussing tables at Panera to pay off a humongous legal judgment.

A guy can dream, can’t he?

But What About The Coverup?:  We’ll see.  I’m going to do something that a whoooole lot of – I’ll be frank – dumber bloggers could stand to try; waiting until I know enough to have a perspective worth writing.

Now – as to all of you leftybloggers and comment-section-lawyers who haven’t specifically condemned the massacre at Katyn Wood?  Why do you support Russian genocide against the Poles?

Does your silence speak volumes, or what?

Ed writing on Lightsquared.

Kool Aid Report is back.

I have a few for today.

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

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

Just saying.

Let’s be clear on this; I oppose government funding for stadiums.  All of it.  Any government.  Ever.  End of sentence.

Zigi Wilf could afford to build his own stadium.  But the status quo in the sports industry today is to treat stadia as a public good – which is a loathsome perversion of the idea of “public good”.

The big “Zero” in this debate so far has been Governor Dayton. The Governor’s entire approach to this issue could be summarized as “Hey, you guys – get something done! I don’t want the NFL goons tramping through my office again”; it’s what peple call “leading from the rear”.

And if there’s a hero? It’s the Senate GOP Caucus. It was the Senate Republicans – especially Senator Robling – who’ve managed to cut the crap and get “both” sides – the NFL, the state, and the various local and county governments who,alternately, crave the crowds and commerce but who’ve gone all Ron Paul about paying the tab, and of course RT Rybak, who wants to commit his city full of compliant DFL sheeple and ripe business sucks to a big share of the tab…

…which is dumb, but hey, I didn’t vote for him. Anyway – for cutting to the chase, and getting Zygi Wilf out of all of our pockets and fixing him up with a politician who actually believes he has the political oomph to stick his city with a $1000/head bill.

Am I cynical to say “it’s your problem, now, Minneapolis”?  (No, I’m not being a hypocrite; I have been to exactly zero Vikings games at the Dome since 1987 – and even then, I was working).

On a bit of a tangent – this is a great example of an issue where principle and politics are completely at war.  It is a fact that if you’re a conservative, spending public money on stadiums is anathema.  It’s also a fact that this is a state full of voters who want their damn football team, and they don’t really care (or think that hard about) who pays for it.  Emphasis on “voters”.

It’s not the ideal solution – especially if you’re in Minneapolis – but the fact that we have a (potential) solution is entirely due to the Senate GOP caucus.

A Ramsey county judge has told Governor Dayton, the SEIU and the AFSCME that they’re going to have to go back to shaking down small businesses the old-fasioned way – without state goverment help (for now):

Just two days before ballots were set to go out, a Ramsey County Judge has halted the upcoming election on child care unionization by issuing a temporary restraining order. Ramsey County Judge Lindman said the matter should go through the legislature instead.  He also said the election was “very harmful to all of the parties involved.”

The entire bid to unionize childcare workers get more dues-paying members to prop up their budgets and political efforts is going to have to Plan B – actually make sure it’s a debate:.

Judge Lindman set a hearing on the injunction for January 16th.  “It means we have more time to educate providers and get the truth out,” Hollee said.  “It gives me hope.  We’re small business owners and I keep telling people, who’s next?”

More on the NARN in coming weekends.

A trusted source says had the following all written up long before the election for MN GOP Deputy Chair was held:

MN GOP’s _________ Represents Big Business, Divisiveness, and Bigotry #stribpol

Well, OK – no, there is no source, and I don’ t know what Ed had on his laptop.  But I’m pretty sure his headline was written, at least mentally, well before Kelly Fenton won the Deputy Chair vote yesterday.

And the rest of his post was easily-enough predictable; like a fair chunk of the Minnesota Left, he’s disappointed that the Minnesota GOP didn’t take Saturday’s Central Committee meeting as an opportunity to “move to the middle” and do more of the DFL’s work for it.

Never.  Never never ever.

So sorry, Minnesota Left.  You’ll have to do your own campaigning keep getting Alita to pay for doing your campaigning

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

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

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

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

That’s a swing of TWO BILLION DOLLARS overnight.

Two things:

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

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

Joe Doakes

Como Park

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

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

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

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

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

Minnesota Management and Budget announced today that, notwithstanding original reports that today’s budget forecast was going to be a billion dollars light, today it was announced that the state is 876 million in the black.

Let’s be clear about something; we have this surplus because the state’s economy grew.  And it grew because Mark Dayton’s gigantistic spendthrift agenda was thwarted in the Legislature.

And the credit goes to two groups:

1. Minnesota’s businesses, for hiring people (or at least hanging on and laying off fewer of them), keeping them working, and paying for that work.  I think it’s safe to say they did this because of the efforts of…
2. The GOP-controlled legislature, for holding the line on the budget even as well as they did.  While – as the Strib notes – economists note we’re not out of the woods economically, especially because we are tied to the national and international macroeconomy, it could have been a lot worse.  (And with an 8,000 vote swing, it could have been a lot better, but we can’t cry over spilled milk).