The local media – who have mostly been serving as stenographers for Governor Dayton so far in this shutdown – have finally found the human interest story they needed.

There’s good news and bad news:

The state shutdown means Miller-Coors will have to stop selling beer in Minnesota.

State officials have told the company, it must come up with a plan to remove it’s 39 brands of beer from shelves and in bars in a matter of days.

Lack of Miller and Coors products will be a good thing for the regional beer scene.  But this isn’t about taste – this is about Governor Dayton’s passive-aggressive tactics hitting some Minnesotans where they live; in their alcoholic hazes.

The company failed to renew it’s brand license with the state before the shutdown. Each alcohol brand needs to pay a 30 dollar brand license fee. That fee is good for 3 years.

Actually, a TV news story notes that Miller claims to have sent the check for the renewal.   Miller Brewing’s brand license renewal fees were apparently not processed before the government shutdown – which is well in line with the Dayton Administration’s passive-aggressive approach to this entire fracas.

Without the license, Miller-Coors cannot sell in the state.

And there’s your human interest angle right there.  The TV stations have been trooping into the bars, interviewing a Cantina Band full of sodden souses to grumble “Itsh time for the gummamunt to get itsh jerb done!”, and in one case, a puffy fiftysomething north-woods gretel to shriek “You people need to GROW UP and COMPROMISE!”.

The pieces – clearly aimed at  the legislature, rather than the Governor – underscore a key fact of Minnesota political life; so much of it is focused on people who are hammered when they make their voting decisions.

People ask “why is Dayton squiggling so hard to avoid any form of negotiation with the GOP?  He’s clearly beaten; public opinion largely opposes his “all taxes” approach to the deficit, and the GOP isn’t getting browbeaten into submission anymore?”

It makes no sense, if you assume that Mark Dayton is making any kind of decision at all.

So it only makes sense that he’s not making the decisions.

Mark Dayton is a marionette.

Think about it.

He’s A Rental: Mark Dayton had less to do with his own election than any governor in Minnesota history.  He owes his election to four things:

1. An immense infusion of cash from the unions, and liberals with deep pockets, including himself and his family, which funded…
2. …the most toxic, sleazy disinformation campaign in the history of Minnesota politics, which outspent the Emmer campaign by a minimum of 3:1 and foisted upon Minnesotans a drumbeat of half-truths, untruths or thirty-year-old, context-deprived twaddle about Emmer, which combined with…
3. …a suddenly deeply-incurious media that couldn’t bring itself to write about Dayton’s record in the Senate, much less his known issues with alcohol abuse and mental illness, which meant that…
4. …the 43% of Minnesota voters who don’t think very critically about politics didn’t have any of their assumptions challenged.

Let’s face it; Dayton is less a governor than a delivery man for an agenda set by the special interests that helped him into office; the public employees unions, deep-pocketed liberal plutocrats, and the non-profits that feed off the entitlement culture.

And like Dayton, those stakeholders know that…

Progressivism Desperately Needs A Win: It’s been a horrible year for big institutional progressivism.  The Tea Party tsunami in 2010 has rocked “progressive” government in former strongholds like Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, and even New York and California, where the likes of Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown have become spending hawks all of a sudden.   And Wisconsin – the home of LaFollette, the buckle in the public employee union belt – was a gut-shot for progressives.  If the progressives’ “support government at all cost” creed can crumble in New York, California and Wisconsin, where is it safe?

Which is why…

Minnesota Is Progressivism’s Last Stand: The prognosis for progressivism isn’t good.  Sure, the GOP suffered setbacks in 2006 and 2008 – precisely because the Bush Administration and its attendant GOP caucuses didn’t act like a conservative government.  The economy is making progressive entitlement programs unsustainable – and, even moreso, undercutting the idea that they must be sustained at the cost of the viability of the sector that pays the taxes.  The conservative parts of the country are growing; the liberal ones are largely shrinking.  And with even the biggest showcases of “progressivism” defecting from the gospel, “progressivism’s” big stakeholders – unions, non-profits, plutocrats and the like – are faced with a stark reality; they need a win to stanch the bleeding.

Those stakeholders put him in office.  They will get their money’s worth.

And as the Administration itself telegraphed weeks ago, they don’t care who they hurt to get it.  Government employees?  Entitlement recipients?  Consumers of “services” like jobs at Canterbury?  All just eggs to be broken for the greater omelet.

So are you a citizen, or are you an egg?

…that the current Minnesota government shutdown is the longest in US history.

Most of the citizens of Minnesota responded by going to work today.

…let me answer the standard-issue DFL chanting point that you read on virtually ever tweet, ad and TV ad the DFL puts out:

“The Republicans want to (do horrible things) to protect millionaires”.

Let’s settle this.

None of us gives a rat’s ass about millionaires.  Bupkes.  Zip.  Nada.

It’s about reforming government.

It’s about stopping the DFL’s spending crazy train.

It’s about making all of those safety net entitlement programs for the elderly and children and unemployed and mentally ill sustainable for the long term. as opposed to the current fiscal time bombs they are.

It’s about making sure that public employees actually have pensions to retire on in thirty years.

It’s about having a state where we don’t have a perennial budget crisis, because the state lives solidly within and below its means – and it’s just fine, because the state is so prosperous its’ “means” are pretty darn formidable.

We oppose government sucking up any more of this state’s viability than it really needs – and by “needs”, I don’t mean “wants”, “covets” or “craves”.   That means taxes on millionaires and the poor – including the DFL’s screechingly regressive gas and cigarette taxes.

Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:

The state government is shut down because the Legislature and Governor can’t agree on an extra couple of billion to fund it; meanwhile, the billion-dollar stadium deal is all but done (St. Paul’s tantrum won’t change anything, they’re just pouting because Arden Hills got the glory this time).

Is the public insane? If we can’t keep state government doors open and lights on, how in Hell can we afford a new stadium?

For the same reason families who can barely make their mortgages somehow manage to squeedge out the money for snowmobiles…:

No, the public is not insane, they’re completely rational. They know the vast majority of state spending is welfare and welfare is boring. Football is fun and a new stadium is exciting. People would enjoy spending that billion much more than the other.

“Shut down the government, build a stadium instead.”

We should make signs and go stand on the Capital lawn. How’s Friday work for you?

I’ll be at the Dubliner.

Wearing my Bears T-shirt.

…was two pages away from being resolved.

And Dayton is always two pages away from resolving it.

And no matter what the “pain”, he’s going to stay two pages, and no less than two pages, away from resolving it.

Array

About 500 union members – and not much of anyone else – formed a “Downeyville” on the Capitol grounds yesterday.

“Downeyville’s” city government quickly formed a city bureaucracy which hired a unionized workforce to take care of “Downeyville’s” city business.  The unions worked with the city and instituted a comprehensive defined-benefit pension plan for “Downeyville” city workers, with automatic cost of living raises and a n0-questions-asked health insurance.

“Downeyville’s” bills quickly spiralled out of control; taxes surged, and “Downeyville” quickly sent lobbyists (further) up Capitol Hill to demand Local Government Aid – which only inflamed the protesters, because the government is shut down.  Which caused the entire city work force to form another small town – a suburb of “Downeyville”, further up the capitol steps, called “Zellerston”.

The suburb  quickly  took the wealthy population from “Downeyville”, causing the “Downeyville” city government to demand the forming of a “Protest Met Council” to equalize revenues between the two “towns”.  “Zellerston” also formed a unionized city work force, which quickly adopted a defined-benefit pension plan and cadillac health benefits, which quickly drove the city’s budget into the red, causing the city to demand Local Government Aid.  They sent their lobbyist up the hill to the Capitol, where he ot into a fight with “Downeyville’s” lobbyist, getting them both thrown into jail, where their union-paid lawyers (it’s a benefit, hey?) filed suit against each other, both winning multimillion dollar judgments, which spun both cities into crushing debt.

And then the six-o’clock news cycle ended, and the news trucks left, and most of the “population” of both “cities” left, leaving both cities with crushing debts.  Both cities called in union members from other cities, who scheduled a protest…

Oh, yeah – union members were the only people that cared.

But Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, one of several DFL legislators who attended the rally, said he was surprised the shutdown did not yet seem to be resonating with many Minnesotans. “I thought there would be a lot more tension on July 4th,” Hornstein said of the many Fourth of July parades across the state. “I’m surprised.

Of couse, Twitter redounded with warnings from Democrats to Republicans about “tension” to be expected at Fourth of July parades.  Apparently they thought Minnesotans would be up in arms about the shutdown.  Maybe they even tried to see to it – hell, they astroturf eveything else. We just don’t know.

Anyway – while “Downeyville” apparently stiffed as anything but a union pep rally, Hornstein – and by extension, the entire DFL – still has hope:

“But I think the longer this would go on, the public would get concerned,” he said.

AFSCME and SEIU members will be going door to door to union members and registered DFLers to make sure people “get concerned” over the weekend*.

(

I hereby announce the formation of a budget resolution commission.  We shall present recommendations to Governor Dayton and the Legislature to help resolve the budget crisis.

I’d like to note that this commission is better than bi-partisan – it’s tri-partisan!   Beyond that, it actually contains a majority of DFLers.

It includes representatives from the world of alt-media, academia, and politics.

From politics:

• Phil Krinkie, former Republican legislator and current head of the Taxpayers League.
• Vin Weber, former GOP 2nd District US Congressman.
• Randy Kelly, former DFL mayor of Saint Paul.
• Norm Coleman, former DFL mayor of Saint Paul.

From academia,

• King Banaian, former Libertarian Party member, noted economist.
• David Strom, former MNSCU instructor, former liberal Democrat.

From the Alternative Media:

• John Hinderaker, blogger for Powerline, former liberal, and noted lawyer.
• Jeff Rosenberg – liberal blogger from some blog or another.

This commision should be immune from criticism on the grounds of being “extremist conservative”; as noted, most of the members are liberals!

And the commission has issued its report a day ahead of the Carlson/Mondale commission!  The report calls for…:

1. A $27 Billion budget that trims spending back to pre-recession levels.
2. Abolition of several state bureaucracies – the Departments of Education, Development and Economic Development, Human Rights, Housing Finance, Iron Range Resources and Development, the Met Council and the Metro Sports Facilities Commission will be abolished forthwith.  Also, the Sunset Bill (HF2 in the previous legislature) will be adopted in toto, but with all time-times cut in half.
3. Immediate State Hiring Freeze – the state has plenty of workers.
4. Working toward privatizing public schools by 2015.
5. Immediate radical cuts in business taxes, including an immediate two week sales tax holiday and a Business Tax Lottery granting one lucky Minnesota business a complete one-quarter exemption from business income taxes every month.

These recommendations – which, we hasted to remind you, were developed by a commission made up mostly of liberals – are of such obvious common sense that we recommend Governor Dayton adopt them immediately, in the interest of bipartisanship.

Because we’re bipartisan!

The New York Times opts to toss facts under the bus in yesterday’s editorial about the Minnesota Shutdown:

How far will Republican lawmakers go to protect millionaires? Those who think a default on the federal government’s credit seems implausible should take a sobering look at the “closed” signs dotting Minnesota. The Republican Party there readily shut down the state’s government on Friday by refusing to raise taxes on the 7,700 Minnesotans who make more than $1 million a year.

Well, no.

The GOP refused to raise taxes.  Period.  Dayton chose to make it about “millionaires”, and before that “the rich”.  Had Dayton chosen to raise, say, the gas tax (like the DFL majority in 2009 did), a terribly regressive tax that squats all over working-class prosperity, the GOP would have opposed that, as well.

For the Times to turn the GOP’s opposition to a tax into “protecting millionaires” is a craven bit of rhetorical dishonesty.

Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, campaigned for office last year promising to raise taxes on high earners, so it was no surprise when he proposed a tax increase on families making more than $150,000 a year to help close a $5 billion budget gap. In negotiations with the Republican majority in the Legislature, he compromised and reduced the increase to those making $1 million or more, but Republicans are refusing to consider any income tax increase.

Note the rhetoric: Dayton keeping a campaign promise?  Good.  The GOP? Can’t be good, can it?

Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts.

The Times’ “editorial” was apparently written by the MNDFL’s chair, Ken Martin.  The GOP budget is the biggest spending increase in Minnesota history.

The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs.

All of which the GOP compromised on, meeting Dayton much more than halfway.

The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.

The Times apparently believes the GOP should “negotiate” like a Saturn dealer; start with their “final offer” and work backward from there.

Also unmentioned by “the Times” editorial writer: Dayton walked out of the negotiations every time.  The GOP Legislature was waiting in the Capitol, ready to negotiate and/or pass a “lights on” bill, to keep govermment running

More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets and park fees.

Unmentioned by the Times (or any of the Twin Cities media); the evidence is overwhelming that Governor Dayton rigged the shutdown to cause as much pain as possible, specifically to drive those dependent on state employment or services to try to push moderate Republicans into wobbling.

As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country.

“Extremist ideology”.

The GOP ran very openly on a platform of holding the line on taxes and spending.  Perhaps you remember the Tea Party – it was in all the papers, including the Times.

Extremist?  Governor Dayton won with 43% of the vote; the GOP majorities had, by definition, over 50% of the state’s voters pick them (since the third-party challenges were virtually nonexistant in legislative races in 2010).  Can a policy chosen by over half the voters be “extemist?”

I just finished watching former governor – as in, “not the governor anymore” – Arne Carlson on Channel 11’s morning show.  The former – as in, “hasn’t been elected in 17 years” – governor was promoting his “independent” budget commission.

I didn’t hear much; I was too busy yelling at the TV.  Having that smug, sanctimonous fop back on the TV still makes my wallet hurt.

But I do recall that his little spiel was clogged with references to “the way we used to do things in Minnesota”; code for “parties working together”.  As in “cooperation among elected officials, with no “extremists” hijacking the process to their ends”.

So what do we have here in Minnesota?

A legislative branch whose overwhelming majority agrees on a budget is being held up…

…by the Governor.

Is that the sort of “cooperation” that Carlson is talking about?

Or are his scruples purely partisan?

After spending millions of dollars upsetting the DFL machine, and then more on the campaign of toxic sleaze that put him in office by a whisker, it seems Mark Dayton really doesn’t want to do his job all that badly.

After rejecting a balanced Republican budget that not only lives within state revenue but also gave him most of his purported policy goals, Dayton first called for a “mediator”.

In other words, he called for a single lawyer to dictate what the state budget would be.

And now, he’s brought in a junta – a group of “experts” – to dictate what the budget should be.

Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Vice President Walter Mondale have assembled a six-member panel of experts to help resolve the state’s budget standoff, the two announced Tuesday.

The group “features” Arne “High Times” Carlson – whose only budgetary experience came during the prosperous, cha-cha nineties – and Walter Mondale, who was Jimmy Carter’s vice-president.

These two – the RINO and the hard-line DFLer – are joined by a dog’s breakfast of “experts”.

Any guess on what the “experts” have in common?

Two former legislators are on the panel — Republican Steve Dille and DFLer Wayne Simoneau.

Dille got a 55 from the Taxpayers League.  Simoneau was a DFLer – need I say more? –

It has two representatives of the business community — former Norwest Bank president Jim Campbell and Medtronic vice president Kris Johnson.

That’s Jim Campbell, whose recent political donations have been to DFLers, potemkin Republican Chuck Hagel, and a few Republicans back in the day when the parties were basically different shades of spendthrift, and Kristen Johnson, whose record seems to be Republican, which donations to McCain-Palin, Erik Paulsen and other Republicans.

The other two members are former state finance commissioners — John Gunyou, who served in the Carlson administration, and Jay Kiedrowski, who worked for DFLer Rudy Perpich.

That’s John Gunyou, who ran as Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s running mate in the primaries against Dayton last year – for the DFL nomination – “managed” budgets at a time when budgeting was a piece of cake since the good times were rolling, and has been beating the drums against conservative governance ever since he left office.

Speaking in Minneapolis’ City Hall, Carlson said he thought legislators and Gov. Mark Dayton needed the help.

“When the process loses the ability to be flexible to effect compromise, then you have to have an outside party,” said Carlson. “In business it might be some sort of mediation or arbitration, whatever it may be, but you need that kind of process to take place.”

Carlson said he’d like the panel to offer a settlement of some kind by the end of this week.

Let’s see – with six high-profile liberals (Mondale, Carlson, Gunyou, Kiedrowski, Schowalter and Campbell) and one apparently conservative (Johnson), what do you suppose that “settlement” is going to look like?

Like a “back to the Nineties” – a perfect accompaniment for Dayton’s “back to the Seventies” administration.

Mondale said he also worried that the fiscal debate in Washington could add fuel Minnesota’s budget crisis.

“I’m afraid that if we don’t reassert Minnesota’s ability to think and create in this crisis, that we’ll be overwhelmed by national pressures,” said Mondale.

Dear Carlson, Mondale et al:  we elected people to do our “creating” and “thinking”; a bare plurality got behind Dayton, while a clear majority put the GOP legislature in office.

You want to play governor again?  Get yourselves elected.

Go away.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Governor Dayton wants another $2 billion, supposedly paid for by the richest 2%.

Nonsense, never happen.

The rich are rich, they’re not stupid. They won’t voluntarily hand over an extra $2 billion – they’ll hire tax lawyers and CPAs to hide their money. Worst case, the rich will move out of state and take their businesses with them.

How many of those rich people live within easy driving distance of Wisconsin, with its tax-cutting administration?

So if the Governor gets his way there won’t be any extra tax revenue but we already will have spent the money. How will we pay for it?

If the rich won’t pay, and the poor can’t pay, who will pay? You know who.

That’s been the fact all along; since taxes on “the rich” never generate what the politicians think they will, but spending always meets projections, the taxes will inevitably filter down to the middle class.

Doakes:

There are 5 million people in Minnesota. There are about 2 million tax returns filed but nearly half of them pay no tax at all (they only file to get a refund) and of the rest, a bunch are “married filing jointly” in which there basically is one earner. There are probably 1 million actual middle-class taxpayers in Minnesota.

$2 billion is 2,000 million. That’s two thousand dollars per taxpayer. Your taxes will go up $2,000 per year, call it $160 per month or $40 per week. A dollar an hour more taxes.

Mark Dayton shut down the entire state government, holding everyone hostage, for a dollar-an-hour pay cut.

But let’s be honest; if Dayton gets his way, this is just the beginning.  The auto-pilot increases will continue; it’ll be another six billion dollar “deficit” in 2013; the “rich” will have been tapped out (or left); there’s another buck or two or three an hour.

What’s that you say, it’s not a pay cut? Hey, if your paycheck is smaller by a dollar-an-hour, does it matter whether your boss cut your pay or the government took more taxes? Either way, you’re skipping one tankful of gas, skipping one restaurant meal with your family, skipping one grocery shopping trip, skipping $40 every week for the rest of your life.

Maybe the Governor truly believes we’ll be happy to pay for a better Minnesota. Maybe he thinks his union buddies are clamoring for a pay cut. “Me! Me! Pick me! I want my taxes raised. I want less money in my pocket. Raise my taxes, please!” Personally, I have not heard one single Minnesotan demanding to pay more in taxes out of their own pockets. Raise taxes on other people – sure; but not on me. It’s easy to spend other people’s money. But when it’s your own? Not so much.

But that, of course, has been behind the DFL’s house of political cards for the past forty years – forcing other people to pay for your goodies.

The Governor is holding hostage every citizen in this state, until we accept a dollar-an-hour pay cut.

A dollar-an-hour pay cut.

On top of the cut Obama’s going to give you.

How many of you are “happy to pay?”

Any bets on what they’ll talk about at this one?

Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson have called a news conference to discuss the state government’s shutdown.

Mondale is a Democrat who represented Minnesota as a U.S. senator in the 1960s and `70s. Carlson is a Republican who served as governor in the 1990s.

No, I don’t think there’s any action on that bet.

Whenever the regional establishment (read: left-leaning) media wants to try to delegitimize the MNGOP in the eyes the vast majority of people who don’t pay much attention to politics, they wheel out Arne Carlson.  Carlson, who governed Minnesota from 1990 to 1998, was a Republican, and that’s usually where the media accounts stop, omitting that he governed like a moderate Democrat; indeed, James Lileks used to joke that while he was in DC, he described the Carlson/Perpich race (1990) as “the pro-abortion, pro-gun-control candidate versus the Democrat”.

The MinnPost  continues the media’s curious habit of genuflecting to Carlson.

Gov. Arne Carlson had one of those “hey-wait-just-a-minute” moments Thursday while reading a MinnPost article.

On the surface, the article, about government reform, seemed complimentary of Carlson, who was governor from 1991 to 1998.

Rep. Keith Downey, a leader of the reform movement in the Republican-controlled Legislature, was talking about how way back in the Carlson era a report had been issued calling for structural reforms to help government move from budget to budget more smoothly.

“We’ve been putting off reforms for 15 years,” Downey said. “The time to act is now.”

That’s the line that upset Carlson.

“Who’s this Downey fellow?” he asked me.

“Me”, in this case, is Doug Grow, who along with Lori Sturdevant has been building the gauzy, soft-focus myths about the glory days of DFL/”GOP” cooperation.

And if Carlson doesn’t know Keith Downey, then who the hell cares what he thinks?

A representative from Edina starting his second term, the governor was told.

“If he’s starting his second term, he’s probably part of the problem,” Carlson said.

Can you imagine if Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Amy Koch had said something that so fluently mixed arrogance and ignorance?

Carlson contends that his administration didn’t just point out the long-term structural problems in the 1995 report that Downey was referring to. Rather, it made the “reforms” necessary to correct the problems.

Let’s talk about the truth about Carlson’s administration.

He had revenue surpluses most years during his administration.

You know – surpluses.  Years where revenues exceeded expenditures.  Given that Minnesota’s state revenues are so closely tied to economic performance, through income and sales taxes, a surplus is generally an indicator of a good year.

And most of the years in the nineties were good years.  Indeed, from 1990 to 1998 it was ar pretty cha-cha time in Minnesota; after a brief downtown early in the decade as the ’92 recession worked out and the local economy readjusted to plummeting post-Cold-War defense spending, the economy pretty much boomed the whole last 2/3 of Carlson’s reign.

And Carlson took those temporary surpluses into permanent entitlement spending. The budget more than doubled under Carlson’s regime – spending that was paid for by temporary windfalls during good times.

In other words, Arne Carlson is the problem we currently face in this state; he was the godfather of the autopilot spending increases that feed the all-consuming, ever-escalating  hunger for tax revenue that currently hobble our state’s budget process.

Arne Carlson – shut up and enjoy your retirement.  You are not just irrelevant and in the way; you are not just a Potemkin Republican that estabishment backslappers like Lori Sturdevant and Doug Grow trot out to beat over the MNGOP’s head.

You are the problem.

The Minnesota Legislative GOP, in the waning hours last Thursday before the shutdown, introduced a “lights-on” bill – a bill that would provide a couple of weeks of short-term funding to keep state services going to those who need them, and are genuinely dependent on the state.

Governor Dayton dismissed the bill as a “stunt”.

Here’s Governor Dayton, not “stunting”:

At the Alexandra House, a women’s shelter in Blaine that depends on state money, executive director Connie Moore has begun spending the shelter’s savings to keep the doors open. The desperate move won’t buy much time.

“We’re gambling right now,” Moore said. “If we don’t get reimbursed, the impact will be long-lived.”

The GOP’s “stunt” would have kept Alexandra House operating and solvent.

Governor Dayton tossed that aside to protect…AFSCME’s ability to retire at 55 with full taxpayer support?

In St. Paul, Rhonda Nelson, who is deaf and blnd, just lost her eyes and ears to the world. The aide who helps her go grocery shopping, to doctor’s appointments, to the post office and other appointments has been deemed non-essential in the state government shutdown.

For someone who already spends most of her days in dark silence, losing the service is heartbreaking. “I’m basically stuck at home,” said Nelson, 65, a former disabilities educator from St. Paul, speaking through an interpreter.

The GOP’s “stunt” would have kept Ms. Nelson’s eyes and ears, as it were, functioning.

Dayton sacrificed Ms. Nelson’s eyes and ears to…what?  Chastise entrepreneurs.

Programs that help get families out of homeless shelters, allow single parents to stay in the workforce, provide safe havens for battered women and allow those with disabilities to enjoy everyday life have suddenly lost funding and are teetering on the edge of closure.

The GOP’s “stunt” would have fixed that, while the negotiations continued.

Dayton couldn’t have that.

To: State Employees (who find themselves on-camera with one of the local TV stations that are devoting slavering coverage to the (DFL side of the) shutdown.

From: Mitch Berg, schnook taxpayer.

Re: Priorities

Dear state employees:

Sorry about the whole shutdown situation. You do realize that Governor Dayton could end this whole thing at any moment by accepting the balanced GOP budget that’s been on the table for almost two months.

But I’d like to talk with those of you that’ve been on camera with Channels 4, 5, 9 and 11 on every single newscast for the past couple of weeks, asking how you plan on getting by without a state paycheck.

“Prioritize!”, some of you say. “Gotta pay the rent and the mortgage”, you intone.

“It’s tough out there”, one of you actually said.

Just  a quick question, asked with all due respect; what do you think all of us in the private sector have been doing?

That is all.

Ramco Judge Kathleen Gearin has ruled on “critical services” for a potential upcoming government shutdown:

Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin’s ruling came Wednesday, just two days before a state government shutdown would begin. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature would have to agree on a budget before Friday to avoid the scenario.

Dayton and top lawmakers were sequestered in the governor’s office on their sixth straight day of budget negotiations. They have yet to report a breakthrough in a drawn-out dispute over the level of spending in the next two-year budget and how to pay for it. The state faces a projected $5 billion deficit in the two-year budget cycle, which begins on Friday.

Dayton wants to raise income taxes on high earners, while Republicans insist on no new revenue.

One wonders if MPR’s reporter – Elizabeth Dunbar – is aware of the distinction between “no new taxes” and “no new revenue”.  New revenue happens when people become more prosperous and pay more in taxes.

I’ll chalk it up to carelessness, and continue.

Gearin said state payments to school districts and local governments should continue even if there’s no budget by Friday. She said the state must also fulfill its obligations to the federal government and continue to administer those programs, including food stamps, welfare payments and Medicaid.

“The failure to properly fund critical core functions of the executive and legislative branches will violate the constitutional rights of the citizens of Minnesota,” Gearin wrote in a 19-page written order.

But Gearin emphasized that state payments during a shutdown should be limited “only the most critical functions of government involving the security, benefit, and protection of the people.”

What a radical notion; limiting government to what it’s actually needed for.

I need to read the order (and so do you, so go and do it) more completely, but it’s hard to read what I’ve seen so far as anything but at least a qualified victory for the MNGOP.  Mark Dayton’s attempt to push all the pain of this shutdown onto this state’s most vulnerable residents – which we’ve been documenting for weeks, although the mainstream media can’t seem to be bothered – has been rebuffed for now.

With government doing the things it actually needs to be (or should be) doing, I think Governor Dayton just got chopped off at the knees.

Dave Osmek – a city councilman in Mound, which by the way receives no Local Government Aid, and hasn’t for quite sometime – writes:

I’d like to add my two cents to the whole DFL meme. Consider the following scenerio:

Evil Rich taxpayer A: Owns a nice house out on Lake Minnetonka (valued at $750,000) and his own commercial business (valued at $500,000)

Virtuous Poor taxpayer B: Owns a nice house in St. Paul (valued at $225,000)

Evil Rich taxpayer A pays a property tax rate of 1% on the first $500,000 of value and pays 1.25% on the next $250,000 of value. He also pays 1.5% on the first $150,000 of his commercial value and 2% on the next $350,000 of value.

That’s $8125 in property taxes, and $9250 on the business.

Virtuous Poor taxpayer B pays a property tax rate of 1% on his $225,000 house AND gets a homestead “credit” that further reduces his taxes by another 7% to an effective rate of 0.93%.

That comes down to $2092.

Bear in mind these aren’t income taxes; for all we know, the two hypothetical virtuous taxpayers may well make the same money.

And we’re supposed to swallow the DFL meme that the EEEEEEEEvil rich don’t “pay their fair share”? The numbers just don’t add up!

The DFL is counting on Minnesotans who don’t do things like numbers…

SCENE:  The Emergency Room at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul.  It’s July 5.  Mrs. JACKIE SZCZYMCZYK, sits in the waiting room, surrounded by other people waiting for results.  She appears distraught.  A BYSTANDER, sitting next to SZCZYMCZYK, is holding a hankie on a cut foot.

BYSTANDER (to SZCZYMCZYK):  “What are you here for?”

SZCZYMCZYK:  My husband – he…he…(sobs)…he choked on a buffalo wing.

BYSTANDER: Owwie.

SZCZYMCZYK: While he had a lit bottle rocket in his butt.

BYSTANDER:  Um…oh.  Wow.  My.

SZCZYMCZYK: It was all so trivial – such a stupid thing, really – but he fell over and cut his toe on a piece of glass from the bottle he’d broke over his head.

BYSTANDER: Oh, I’m sorry.  Well, none of it sounds life-threatening…

SZCZYMCZYK: It wasn’t supposed to be.  But it took us an extra half hour to get to the hosital, what with the Stillwater Lift Bridge being out because of the budget shutdown.

BYSTANDER:  But – wait.  I’m sorry, but I heard that Governor Walker of Wisconsin offered to pay the bill to keep the bridge open.

SZCZYMCZYK: Oh, my Chuck is a teamster.  He never woulda had nothing to do with Walker.  But why isn’t the bridge open, then?

BYSTANDER: Governor Dayton turned it down.  He wanted to make sure the bridge shut down.  No matter what.

SZCZYMCZYK: Well…

(DOCTOR MANOJ BALAKRISHNAN enters the scene, along with nurse Excedrine MCCARTHY, RN)

BALAKRISHNAN: Mrs. Szczymczyk?

SZCZYMCZYK: Yes?

BALAKRISHNAN:  I’m Doctor Balakrishnan.  I’m afraid your husband is dead.  There was nothing we could do…

SZCZYMCZYK:  (Breaks down crying).

BALAKRISHNAN: If only he could have gotten here half an hour earlier, I coulda done sometihng….

(SZCZYMCZYK breaks up in squalls of crying).

PANJAKRISHNAN: There was nothing we could have done.  I’m so sorry.  That extra half hour was a matter of life and death.

MCCARTHY: “By the way, on behalf of the nurse’s union, I hope you’re happy to pay for a Better Minnesota!”.

SZCYMCZYK: Huh?

MCCARTHY: “Way to stick it to that top two percent, sister!”

———-

Well, OK.  I usually play these mock dramedies for yuks.  There are usually plenty of yuks in the workings of the DFL mind.  But a death in an emergency room isn’t funny.

So why is Mark Dayton – and only Mark Dayton – insisting on virtually guaranteeing it?

Scott Walker offered to keep the bridge open.  Stillwater businesses offered to keep the bridge open.  Dayton spurned both offers…

…and, for that matter, the Legislative GOP passed a balanced budget that would have taken care of all of this.  And Dayton vetoed that – them, actually – for what?

…to protect a tax hike that is utterly meaningless, except as a way to try to dictate what’s on Minnesota’s moral conscience?

We know what his priorities are.

…but this was pretty good.

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

I didnt’ write it, but I wish I had:

Top 5 Things

Pass it along.

There may be a Thing #6 to keep in mind as well; although “we” – or the 43% of our neighbors who really aren’t concerned enough about this state’s future to realize what an eternal road to Palookaville “progressivism” is – elected Governor Dayton, he’s not really running the executive branch.

More on Monday.

Since Governor Dayton isn’t doing any actual work, like setting up a special session or anything, the MNGOP has a bit of homework for him.

62211 Worksheet

Of course, he won’t do it – but it’d be interesting if he did.

He’s not doing it, by the way, because he doesn’t have permission from the people who actually pull his strings.

More on that on Monday.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The media is fond of trotting out Political Science teachers to opine on political topics. Here’s one I’d like to see them asked:

In a system with three co-equal branches, what is the legal basis for the Court to run the state if the Legislature and Governor won’t? Where was that specific power granted by the people to the Courts in the State or Federal Constitution, or in state law?

For those of you for whom “what is actually in the law?” is an important point, it’s a worthwhile question.

My guess is there is no such specific grant of authority, the courts simply step in. Why? Because somebody has to? Not so, governments can and do shut down, sometimes for a week (last Minnesota shut-down), sometimes longer (Belgium hasn’t had a government for a year, Somalia, ever).

Because there will be terrible consequences? True, the blame for which will fall on the Legislature and the Governor. But how does that give the Ramsey County District Court power to act as Dictator-In-Reserve?

My guess:  “Progressives” abhor a power vacuum, provided they can be the ones to fill it.

Dumping this problem on the courts is too easy. It relieves the pressure on both the Legislature and the Governor to alleviate the problems that a true shut-down would cause. Imagine the public pressure if the prison gates really were thrown open, road construction projects abandoned incomplete, the courthouses shuttered.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court last week took the right approach regarding the collective bargaining law, telling the district court “It might be a stupid law but by substituting your opinion for theirs, you’re pooping in the Legislature’s pool; stop it.”

That would involve  having some respect for the idea of separation of power.

I think Minnesota’s court should similarly decline to act. It should tell the Governor and Legislature: “This is not our problem. We interpret the law in light of the specific facts of the case. Failure to agree on a budget is not a case for us because there is no law in dispute, no facts to decide. This is a political problem which, under state and federal law, is uniquely your problem. Get to it.”

But hey, I’m just a schmuck from Como Park. What do I know? That’s what experts are for. Somebody get Larry Jacobs on the phone.

Joe Doakes

And rest assured – someone will.  Him and Dave Shultz.

As we’ve been showing this past week on this blog, Governor Dayton has been using poor Minnesotans as an anvil on which to try to hammer the GOP, intentionally ratcheting up the pain to them of a possible government shutdown.

It’s part of a great liberal liberal tradition; individuals can, and if need be must, be sacrified to “the greater good” (which, to modern progressives, means “liberals retaining power”).

Perhaps you’ve heard – the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been busted running a “sting” that only stung Americans.

Operation Gunwalker – aka “Fast and Furious” –  has unravelled, with allegations that at very best, it was an incompetently-run operation which allowed thousands of guns to go, untraceably but with tacit, undercover government blessing, to Mexico.  Guns involved in Gunwalker are alleged to have been involved in the death of at least one Border Patrol agent.

And that’s the best that can be said about it.  Because…

The most damning revelations coming out of the hearings on Operation Fast and Furious held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are the unmistakable indications that the program was never designed to succeed as a law enforcement operation at all.

The fact that failed as law-enforcement is bad enough.  It gets worse:

A quartet of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) agents and supervisors turned into whistleblowers to bring the operation down, but only after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down in the Arizona desert. Two of the weapons recovered at the scene of Terry’s murder were traced to the operation.

Bear in mind that every single weapon was bought by a known “straw buyer” under surveillance from the ATF; every single weapon was brought to, and across the border, where it vanished from ATF surveillance.

No, really:

ATF agents testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee could not explain how the operation was supposed to succeed when their surveillance efforts stopped at the border and interdiction was never an option.

ATF Agent John Dodson, testifying in front of the committee, said that in his entire law enforcement career, he had “never been involved in or even heard of an operation in which law enforcement officers let guns walk.” He continued: “I cannot begin to think of how the risk of letting guns fall into the hands of known criminals could possibly advance any legitimate law enforcement interest.”

Note that the entire gun rights movement – the NRA, the GOA, GOCRA, every single one of us – favors keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

But why would the government do this?  Emphasis added:

The obvious answer is that Gunwalker’s objective was never intended to be a “legitimate law enforcement interest.” Instead, it appears that ATF Acting Director Ken Melson and Department of Justice senior executives specifically created an operation that was designed from the outset to arm Mexican narco-terrorists and increase violence substantially along both sides of the Southwest border.

Success was measured not by the number of criminals being incarcerated, but by the number of weapons transiting the border and the violence those weapons caused…At the same time in 2009 that federal law enforcement agencies (the ATF, the DOJ, and presumably Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security) were creating the operation that led to the executive branch being the largest gun smuggler in the Southwest, the president’s team was crafting the rhetoric to sell the crisis they were creating.

On television, in various news outlets, and even in a joint appearance with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Obama pushed the 90 percent lie, implying that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexican cartel violence came from U.S. gun shops.

Like Dayton here in Minnesota, Obama and his administration cynically created a crisis to advance their “progressive” political goals.

It’s the stuff of conspiracy theories – except the evidence is right there, in the words from the ATF whistle blowers.

Unlike Dayton (so far), Obama’s perfidy has claimed the life of a US public servant.

This is worse than Iran-Contra, which never killed any Americans.   Indeed, if the allegations are true, it may be the worst abuse of government power I can remember – because with its complete lack of law-enforcement value, it is intended solely to infringe on the human rights of millions of law-abiding Americans, by way of killing hundreds of Mexicans and one unwitting US cop.

If it were a Republican plan, it would be front-page news.

Progressivism will kill you – literally – if it needs to to meet its goals.

The Mission:

Step 1: Induce a government shutdown specifically to cause pain among those dependent on government.

Step 2:  Get a compliant media to fix blame on the legislature;

Sylvia Hernandez Cruz holds her 5-year-old daughter on her lap and practices letters, as she sits on a couch in the small rambler she rents on the edge of Moorhead.

Cruz says she’s trying to plan for a possible state government shutdown. She’s trying to stock up on basic grocery items, and making sure her son’s asthma prescription is filled before the end of the month. She’s not sure if she will be able to afford those things next month.

“I’m pretty much making it month to month. That’s the situation I’m in,” said Cruz.

Cruz is among the thousands of Minnesotans who receive food assistance and medical assistance. She’s most worried about medical costs. She doesn’t know where she would come up with the $200 a month to pay for her son’s asthma medication.

Cruz says she’s e-mailed her local legislator, Republican Rep. Morrie Lanning. But she feels helpless following the budget standoff in the news.

…notwithstanding that the legislature submitted a balanced budget, and Governor Dayton’s latest attempt is a solid billion dollars off.

Step 3: Lather, rinse, repeat until the DFL tells them to stop.