Mark Dayton wants to raise state income taxes on people who make over $500K a year (adjusted gross income) to just shy of 14% – to finance

But this has been tried before:

To close its $3.8 billion FY 2010- FY 2011 projected budget gap, Oregon has relied on an evaporating stimulus, budget cuts of roughly 9 percent and tax increases. The state’s income tax was raised with a new top rate of 11 percent. However the tax on the richest two percent of residents hasn’t performed as expected. Last year the new tax rate brought in $180 million. This year collections dropped to $130 million. The Wall Street Journal writes this shouldn’t be suprising. A full quarter of “rich tax filers seem to have gone missing.” it’s likely millionaires will be looking for other places to domicile. The tax applies to stocks and capital which means Oregon has “virtually the highest capital gains tax in North America.”

You can’t tax and spend your way out of a recession.

Mark Dayton’s budget:  three billion in new taxes.

Minnesotans who make toward $200K – dentists, middle managers, car salespeople, a few really good, hard-working waitstaff, fairly capable software developers, and above all, successful enterepreneurs – will be paying 10.95%.  Over $500K ?  An additional 3% “surcharge”, meaning top-flight lawyers, successful doctors, quite a few upper managers, and above all Minnesota’s most successful entrepreneurs and job creators – will be paying just shy of 14%.

All for the privilege of living in Minnesota.

Even California and New York are smarter than this.

You can not tax your way out of a recession.  Government can not spend its way out of a recession; if it could, California and Illinois would be sitting pretty, and North Dakota would look like Michigan.

This budget should not be voted down in the Legislature.  It should be killed with fire.  Then voted down.

Remember the last Metro Transit strike?

The left and media (pardon the redundancy) predicted Armageddon. The poor, deprived of buses and – so the DFL and media (ptr) seemed to believe) – too stupid to adapt, would starve in their public housing.

“If you don’t get Happy To Pay For A Bigger MCTC Contract, the blood of the innocents will be on you!”

Now, in the first line of this piece, I ask if you “remember the transit strike”; it occurs to me that while it’s a rhetorical question, there might be a literal answer. The strike went (I had to look it up)  six weeks, and by about week three it was pretty clear that Metro Transit really didn’t command either the love or the market share that their press told them they did; people adapted, congestion lessened, and petty crime actually dropped.

The Teamsters wound up settling for less of a contract than they’d asked for – largely because far from the predicted Armageddon, the strike showed how generally superfluous they were in most peoples’ lives.

———-

I’m not the first to make the observation; a conservative sees government as a means to an end.  To have a free market, we need government to enforce the rule of law; to enforce contracts, to protect private property from the depredations of criminals (unofficial and otherwise), and to provide those precious few services that the private sector can not (defense, law enforcement) or, through decades or centuries of possibly-misguided tradition, just doesn’t (roads, schools) do.

Liberals see government as the end; the One Big Eternal that makes all subsidiary things possible.  Over the years, I’ve seen liberals characterize government as everything from a parent presiding over its’ children, society (that’d be us), or as the beating heart and ticking brain of society’s body.

And exactly where, in theory, these two currents collide and interact is, in normal times, the sort of thing Craig Westover and Dave Schultz can debate about in front of a packed room full of wonks, with a cash bar and hors d’oeuvres to make the whole thing more palatable.

But these aren’t normal times.  Perhaps you’ve heard – not only is our national economy a mess (our state economy a little less so, thanks to eight years of Tim  Pawlenty – not that the DFL didn’t try their darnedest), but we have a sharply split government – all the sharper because the two sides, the GOP legislative majority and Governor Dayton, were sent to Saint Paul with clear mandates from their constituencies; “tame government” and “make people give us stuff for free”, respectively.

And the two sides, platitudes about “reaching across the aisle” notwithstanding, are showing no interest in compromise; Mark Dayton vetoed cutting money from the current budget to help deal with the current crisis, for crying out loud.

So there is a chance that, if the two can’t reach a compromise – and it’ll be difficult – tbe government may shut down.

If you’re a conservative, you probably suspect that’ll end up more or less like the transnit strike.

If you’re a liberal – well, you probably already read Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius.  Jeff is, naturally, less sanguine about the whole “Shutdown” thing– and he thinks we conservatives should be, too:

Less then two weeks into the legislative session, the MNGOP held a hearing about a possible government shutdown, a clear sign of how they see this legislative session ending.

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that a strike is possible, given the circumstances.  I’d be mildly surprised if Dayton hasn’t done some contingency planning himself (although as out-of-his-depth as he seems, it’d only be a mild surprise).  The GOP contingent is drawn from people – businessmen, cops and the like – who actually have to plan for contingencies.  Cut ’em a break.

Governor Dayton, in a clear sign of his priorities, used his State of the State speech to ask that legislators pledge not to shut down the government:

I ask you, legislators; I invite you; I implore you — to join with me now, right here in our Capitol and pledge to the people of Minnesota that we will NOT shut down their government, our government — not next July 1st, not any July 1st, not any day ever.

Let’s let that one sink in a bit; the governor, “as a clear sign of his priorities” (Jeff’s phrase, not mine) asked the GOP to pledge…

…to blink.

In other words, when push comes to shove – and it likely will – to shut up and give the Governor his way.

Not a word on his own commitment to compromise.  Not a word on deferring to the wisdom of the legislature, directly elected by the people, over that of the union bosses and special interests.

As their hearing early in the session shows, Republican lawmakers don’t seem at all interested in making that pledge. In fact, they seem to be looking forward to the shutdown. Why? Conservative blogger Mitch Berg expressed their thoughts succinctly:

Long story short, DFL: We don’t NEED to compromise; if gov’t shuts down, *you* lose. Not us.

Jeff is nothing if not reliably imprecise; not “Jeff Fecke”-style “comically wrong”, but just not quite right.

The GOP majority was sent to Saint Paul on a mission; tame government.   Taking the governor’s “pledge” – saying “forget about our voters!  Forget our constituents! We’re her for you, Lord Fauntelroy!” before the Governor had released a single (workable) budget! – would be a deeply stupid thing to do under normal circumstances.

And the circumstances are not normal.  The GOP majority is faced by a very weak governor – whose strings are being pulled by a very powerful clacque of sponsors; the teachers’, government and service unions, the media, the state’s academic establishment from K through PhD, the whole phalanx of non-profits.  The weak governor is being inveigled to boost state spending by a solid 25%, and balance the spending orgy on the backs of the state’s most productive citizens.

And they’re supposed to take “the pledge” – and give up their ultimate bargaining chip, and basically tell their voters “sorry about all that “taming government” rhetoric, we didn’t really mean it that much!”?

But is he right? I think he’s miscalculating the potential impact of a shutdown.

Of course, to some extent, it depends on how Berg defines “lose.” Does he mean politically, or ideologically?

I mean, of course, both.

In terms of policy and the impact on the state, the DFL would lose. We believe the government is a force for good in many people’s lives [!!! – Ed]. So we would certainly see it as a loss if road maintenance stopped, if aid to the poor dried up, if thousands of people were denied healthcare, and so on. Today’s Republican party, on the other hand, would welcome that.

But that’s not what I think he means.

Well, not in the sense Jeff seems to intend – “Today’s GOP hates the poor and wants to destroy infrastructure and kill grandma while they’re at it!”.  Of course not.

But Jeff’s case  – and it is that of the DFL and its minions – is based on a couple of fundamental bits of rhetoric that are utterly illogical, but are being spun to try to inflame the maximum possible emotional response from voters.   They want the GOP to fold its hand now, before the budget is released (actually, it will have been released a few hours before this post appears – it is currently 5:30AM), and at all costs avoid all mention that the real choice – the choice that the Governor and his minions, Jeff included, are trying so hard to keep the voter from comprehending – is not between a 25% tax and spending hike and complete desolation, but between a 25% hike and a 6% hike – the $32 billion 2010-2011 budget that we’re living under, plus the forecast $2 billion in new revenue coming in from the Minnesota economy – combined with a fundamental realignment of how Minnesota government does its budgeting, so that we stop pretending that we, the taxpayers, were put on this earth to be the DFL’s ATM machine.

The Governor, the DFL, and all of their minions and stakeholders and hangers-on and Jeff Rosenberg too, want to make damn sure you, the voter, don’t see it that way.

I think he’s talking about the political fallout of a shutdown. And it’s not at all clear to me that the MNGOP would win that battle. The people of Minnesota have shown time and time again that they believe government has a vital role to play. Not only do they support that, they’re willing to pay for it.

Willing to pay?  Perhaps – to a point.

Willing to have that bill jacked up by 20+% per biennium? By 2-10x as fast as the economy grows?

Does Jeff think the people are that willing to pay?

You do remember how many DFLers got sent home last November, don’t you?

Actually, they already do pay for it. It’s the rich in Minnesota that still aren’t paying their fair share. Will Minnesotans support the Republican party going to the mat to keep the rich from having to pay the same percentage of their income in taxes as the rest of us do?

That paragraph is the consummate chanting point (“Chanting Point:  (Noun)  Similar to a “talking point”, but intended to be recited by rote (often as part of large real or virtual crowds) rather than critically analyzed”).   What it’s saying is “you people – the “rich” who make over $130K a year – have something we want; we want your hard work to benefit us – never mind that you already pay most of the cost of government at all levels from local through federal, while over a third of us pay nothing but sales taxes; you should feel shame, and donate your hard work to filling our needs”.

Do “the people” get that?  See last November 2 again.

Remember, although Americans often express our desire to cut government spending, there’s very little we actually support cutting when it comes to specifics. That’s why a shutdown is so overwhelmingly unpopular: everybody has programs they support, none of which are spared.

Leaving aside that it’s not true – the last “shutdown” actually only shut down around a third of state government operations – I think that’s one of the lessons of this past election; people, especially the ones that pay attention, are willing to do with less government, including “their” programs – and especially “their” programs staffed by people who get paid more than they do, and with gold-plated pensions who bitch to high heaven about being asked to pay a $5 copay to visit a doctor.

(“But wait – the people also elected Dayton!  They must like paying more taxes!” Well, some of them do – maybe the 20-25% that are genuine hard-core DFLers.  Dayton won on name ID, and as an uninformed response to the DFL’s toxic, sleazy anti-Emmer campaign, and most likely by not a few fraudulent votes; the voters “voted for taxes” with Dayton as much as they “voted for crazy and petulant” with Jesse Ventura).

Add to that a side of incompetence for allowing the government to shut down, and it’s a recipe for unpleasantness.

Just like the transit strike was.

So there certainly will be consequences. But on whom will they fall? They’ll fall on the party that refuses to budge, that protects the rich at the expense of the rest of us, and that chortles in glee as the government shuts down.

Nobody’s “chortling with glee”.

Just refusing to blink.

Yesterday in the blog, while discussing the holes I suspect we’ll see in Governor Dayton’s budget to be released this morning, commenter “MyGovIsNuts” proposed a bit of a game to figure out what the Governor will do in his budget:

#1: Blame Pawlenty

#2: NOT blame the previous House and Senate (in DFL control)

#3: Protect LGA for his buddies in Minneapols, St. Paul, and Duluth

#4: Raise income taxes on at least one bracket

#5: Open sales taxes to other items

#6: Blame Pawlenty again

#7: Refuse to defund or reduce one labor position in state government

To that, I’ll add:

• Propose the new 10-11% bracket for “the rich” – couples making over $130K
• “Cut contractors” – which will, inevitably, mean more union government permanent
• All day kindergarten, more “early childhood ed”…
• Lots of talk about “jobs” – for AFSCME, SEIU, MFT and Teamsters workers.

Your predictions?

I’ve been writing for years about how Lori Sturdevant seems to be stuck in the 1970’s, a time when the Minnesota DFL stood for paying for whatever they believed was needed, and the Minnesota GOP pretty much went along to get along.

Lori Sturdevant has always seemed – like our current governor – to be stuck in that era.

Speed Gibson explored a manifestation of that dozey nostalgia yesterday.  By way of giving a synopsis of 40  years of Minnesota Senate History, Sturdevant…

…profiles incoming Taxes Committee Chair Julianne Ortman, generally positive but clearly disappointed that Ortman just isn’t interested in raising taxes or even tax reform.  Doesn’t she understand the need?  Doesn’t she understand her role is to stabilize?  Of course, words like reform and stablize really just mean raise taxes.  For example, she notes:

The lightly taxed services sector now accounts for 80 percent of gross state product. The production and sale of goods, taxed more heavily in Minnesota than in many other states, is down to a 20 percent share.

Taxing the services sector relatively more to allow for taxing goods relatively less has much to recommend it — not least, I noted, the opportunity to shore up state revenues to help erase a big deficit.

Uh, Ms. Sturdevant, there’s a fundamental truth lurking in these numbers: the sectors doing well are the least taxed.  Maybe if we lightened up the taxes on the sectors not doing so well, they also would improve.  Plus, if you go after services, many of which are quite mobile or available from outside Minnesota, we could easily see a net decrease in jobs, especially if the tax cuts you promise never materialize as so often happens.

Not to worry, Sen. Ortman and the GOP will first, correctly, “put government on a diet.”  But this is not the language of “statesfolk” (sic), just politicians in LoriWorld.

I’m finally feeling confident that our Legislature will back Speed up on that.

Mark Dayton is scheduled to present his budget tomorrow.

The question, as I see it, isn’t so much “how will he balance the budget” as it is “how far off from balanced will his proposal actually be?”

Let’s take a walk back through recent history.  We’ve been down this road twice before.

The First Dayton Budget:  Immediately after the party conventions last spring, Mark Dayton released a “budget plan” that, a fairly casual examination showed, deserved the scare quotes I just gave it.

It was  three billion dollars short of balancing the forecast shortfall – the $6.2 billion “deficit” in paying for the wish list the DFL kicked down the road after the 2010-2011 biennium – and that was only if you left out some gaping holes in his assumptions (that taxing “snowbirds” is legal, that the state can cut contractor expenses on work that is largely legally-mandated and for which by law no state workers can be currently qualified, that cutting “patronage” jobs will rack up a lot of savings, that the feds will look the other way when Dayton eliminates the testing that is the cornerstone of the feds’ accountability standards, that jacking up licensing fees would shake lots of money out of Minnesota businesses without driving them across the river into Wisconsin or the Dakotas, that the state could violate the law in setting up a teachers health insurance pool, and many other gaps.  Calling it three billion dollars off was a complete gift.

Strike one.

If At First You Don’t Succeed: And then – after Tom Emmer released a coherent, detailed, balanced budget plan – Dayton tried again.  And his second attempt was, by Dayton’s own admission, almost $900 million short; the real figure was well over a billion dollars short, and that’s even if all the assumptions above (before “strike one”) didn’t happen (they will), and the “wealthy” – Minnesotan couples whose income is over $130K a year – don’t move themselves (as “the rich” in Oregon did) or their money (as Mark Dayton himself does) elsewhere, which they will.

So given that Mark Dayton has never once submitted a budget that came within a billion dollars of granting his supporters their wish list, and given that his State of the State address telegraphed a “spend like it’s 1972!” approach to the issue, what do you suppose the odds are that tomorrow’s budget will be ready for prime time – other than, of course, by lowering the defintion of “the rich” to “people with jobs?”

The region’s DFL, media (pardon the redundancy) and the leftyblogs that fill in the very, very few gaps between them have been spending the past few weeks grousing impotently about the Legislature’s GOP majorities’ “piecemeal” approach to tackling the budget, including the $6.2 billion deficit that is not.

The chanting point campaign reached its peak last week, with Governor  Dayton demanding in his State of the State that the GOP majority send him a unified budget proposal.

The DFL/media/leftyblog (ptr) chanting has coalesced been commissioned along three lines:

1. Let’s just tackle the budget in one fell swoop!
2. The GOP needs to get their budget in front of the governor now (in the aforementioned fell swoop)
3. Governor Pawlenty didn’t let the DFL submit a piecemeal budget!

All three lines are, of course, absurd – the sort of thing you expect from a group fighting a rear-guard battle against logic itself.

Let’s break it down:

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step:  If you hear a rattling under your car’s hood, what do you do?  Hoist the engine out of the frame and start whacking it with a sledgehammer?  Or start taking it apart, piece by piece, until you find what’s broken?

If you’re a DFLer, apparently, “A”.

The “one big budget” approach is of a piece with the Democrat strategy from DC all the way down to your local city council; submit spending bills that are so unimaginably huge that, to closely paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, “you have to pass them to know what’s in them”.

We don’t have to do that.  The MNGOP caucuses could do it, but they do not have to.   There is no legal, ethical, moral or traditional requirement that the GOP submit a budget in one big, ready-to-veto blob.

Indeed, since the GOP was sent to Saint Paul to kick ass and take names, it makes perfect sense for them to tear the budget, and its reforms, down into its component parts.  We’ve discussed this, and we will no doubt discuss it again.

Long story short; it makes zero difference if the GOP puts forth a bill with a $34 billion budget, or (hypothetically) 34 billion $1 bills.  Or something in between.

Zero.

And if your co-workers or relatives say that there is, please ask them why.  And watch them melt down.

Patience: The DFL is trying to pull the same infantile trick on the GOP majority (and, more germane, on The People) that they tried to pull on the Emmer campaign (and The People); trying to browbeat the GOP into putting its budget proposal (in the form of one and only one bill, thankewverymuch) in front of the governor now.

There is no statutory reason for this.  There is no reason at all – save a political one.  The DFL knows that they are over a barrel.  They are facing an energized majority operating with a crystal clear mandate; cut taxes and spending.  And that majority has come out of the gate this past five weeks like the Green Bay Packers’ pass rush, and focused on the goal – balancing the budget through cuts and revenue growth.

Against that, what do they have?  Browbeating and playing the spin game via their friends (and, often as not, future employees) in the media.

The only requirement?  That the budget be in place this summer.

And, caterwauling aside, the GOP was tackling budget issues the moment the first gavel dropped; King Banaian’s HF2 – the second bill on the agenda – will be, if not a revolutionary change in the way our government works, at least a walloping kick in the evolutionary pants.  It will set the status quo on its ear.  More on that in a separate post.

The DFL’s bellyaching about the GOP’s timing is nothing but a diversion for the not-very-well-informed – and they already vote DFL.

Get The Waaaaaahmbulance: “Governor Pawlenty didn’t allow a piecemeal budget – why should Governor Dayton?” is the other line of “reasoning”.

The situations could hardly be different, of course.

The DFL majorities in the last two sessions didn’t really try to submit “piecemeal” plans, as such; there were really two pieces.  The first, the DFL’s budgetary wish list.  They wanted to get that wish list passed first, to get it written into law bright and early.

Then, later in the session, they wanted to actually come up with the money to pay for it all.

Sort of like trying to buy a house first, and submitting your income documentation later.  We tried that in this country.  Notice how well it worked?  Governor Pawlenty sure did.  That’s why he sent the DFL majority back to the woodshed.

The GOP is doing the exact opposite.  The majority is figuring out the money first, and winnowing down the “wish list” to fit inside it – trying to start, indeed, with money from the current budget that hasn’t even been spent yet (a proposal that the Governor vetoed last week, citing his disdain for “piecemeal” budgeting, and showing his fundamental unseriousness when it comes to really controlling the deficit as opposed to trying to buy time for the DFL).

The rhetoric of the governor and the DFL minority is not the rhetoric of people who are interested in getting serious about this state’s economy.  Your job, and your childrens’ economic future in this state, comes in well behind making sure government wants for not the slightest thing.

Mark Dayton vetoes the GOP’s $900 million budget proposal yesterday.  His stated reason – at least, the one for consumption by the not-very-well-informed was that Dayton didn’t want to “…force local government to raise property taxes”.

Which is lunacy, of course; as we’ve discussed in this space many times, “Local Government Aid” is merely a money-laundering scam to fob city spending (by spendthrift DFL city councils cut from the same cloth as Mark Dayton) off on state taxpayers; since the largely-GOP-voting cities outside the top five – mostly outer ‘burbs and outstate – rarely actually get LGA. Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth get vastly more LGA per capita than the rest of the state.

Why shouldn’t cities be accountable to their own voters for their own spending?

But I digress.  This is the game Dayton wants to play?

Dayton wants to turn Minnesota into a cold California, taxing and spending and telling the taxpayers, especially the business and investing classes ,”like it or lump it”.

Senate Majority leader Koch has the Governor pretty well dialed in:

Dayton made a lot of noises during the campaign about “working across the aisle”.  I figured at the time it was just wind in sails; he figured he was going to have at least one friendly chamber in the Legislature.

The Governor’s special-interest masters don’t want to give on a single dollar.

Let’s get ready for a shutdown!

If we’d played a drinking game during Dayton’s State of the State message that involved taking a hit every time the Governor mentioned education, and killing the container whenever he mentioned Early Childhood Ed, then none of us would have made it back to work.

Matt Abe at North Star Liberty noticed this too (albeit maybe not in exactly the same terms).

The governor’s seven-point education plan is not content with dedicating one or two of these points to early childhood education, he embeds “ready for K” goals into five of them:

• Invest in Early Childhood and All-Day Kindergarten
• Target All-Day Kindergarten
• Expand existing K-12 system into a comprehensive pre-K-12 system
• Adopt pre-K – 3 reading standards
• Support early childhood teacher observation and development
• Reauthorize Statewide Early Childhood Advisory Council and reestablish Children’s Cabinet
• Charge Commissioner of Education with leadership of early childhood initiatives

Considering the state’s barely ten-month old kindergarten-readiness study, this obsession with pre-K seems odd.

The Minnesota School Readiness Study found that between 91 percent and 97 percent of Minnesota five-year-olds were In Process or Proficient in five developmental areas necessary for school success: physical development, the arts, personal and social development, language and literacy, and mathematical thinking. This compares to last year’s study with numbers between 87 percent and 96 percent. The increases are within the margin of error between the two years.

When you couple these findings with national empirical studies on Head Start and other preschool programs that show little if any benefit to pre-K programs, you may wonder why Governor Dayton is so bent on a significant expansion of government pre-K and all-day kindergarten.

But that “wonder” is purely rhetorical…:

Dayton’s myopic focus on pre-K and kindergarten to the exclusion of other education reforms such as streamlining the process for sponsors of successful charter schools to open new sites, and education tax credits is a missed opportunity for much-needed education reform for Minnesota students and families. Dayton’s omissions provide an excellent opportunity for the Republican majorities in the Legislature to display some leadership in state education policy initiatives.

The big worry:  If there’s an area where Republicans, especially some of the longer-serving ones, are vulnerable to getting browbeaten, it’s the broad subject of education.

And this is an area where the GOP’s strategy of handling the budget in many small component pieces is going to be important.  Telling a wobbly legislator “why do you hate children” is one thing; trying to browbeat a legislator into supporting, say, a specific program with real-life empirical consequences is a whole ‘nother thing.

Early Childhood Education is a particularly, cynically noxious fixation.  It just doesn’t work; we knew it twenty years ago, and we know it even more today.  The only thing is succeeds at…

…is putting new Education Minnesota members to work, with lifetime pensions.

Which is what it’s all about.

The Dems latest sweeping meme – predating the State of the State, although it certainly appeared in it – is “why won’t the GOP send one big budget bill.

This is a meme – a chanting point – that can only be aimed at the ill-informed and not-well-read.

Draw your own conclusions.

At any rate, you see this from Democrats all up and down the food chain.  Small Democrats, like  Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius, are carrying their masters’ water by telling us “Why A Piecemeal Budget Is Unacceptable“:

A piecemeal approach limits our ability to negotiate. That, of course, is the Republicans’ goal. They hope to trap Dayton into agreeing to their cuts so they don’t have to negotiate. But that sort of political strategy is a terrible way to make policy.

This is, of course, “2+2=5” material.  A piecemeal approach requires negotiation – on every bit and piece of the budget.

The “piecemeal” approach – what Rep. Holberg calls “how you eat a hippo – one bite at a time” – takes the budget apart, down to all of its 32 billion pieces, or as close to it as has been done in recent years. It shines the light of legislative scrutiny on parts of our budget that have been on autopilot for generations.

It requires stakeholders in every single piece of that budget to negotiate for it.

The DFL, on the other hand, wants to take the Nancy Pelosi approach; they want to bundle up their whole, noxious $39 billion proposal and go at the whole festering mess.  Like Obamacare, it’ll be such a thick book of gibberish that “we’ll have to pass it to see what’s in it”.  And since nobody will read it all down to its most infinitesimal detail (other than King Banaian), and no legislative body can possibly sustain a debate on it, the “debate” will turn from the need for every single item in the budget to the imperative – invariably emotional (“why do you hate children and single mothyrs?  Why do you want to put dioxin in their formula?”), invariably ill-informed, invariably trite – all traits that favor easy media consumption,and hence the DFL.

The DFL, above all, doesn’t want you to see how the budgetary sausage is made. They know the skeletons that are hidden deep inside the budget.  They want You, The People, to remain blissfully, bovinely ignorant, and just shut up and be Happy to Pay For A Better Minnesota.

The GOP way shows Minnesotans how the sausage is made. That’s just gonna kill the DFL.

I’m reviewing Governor Dayton’s first “State of the State” address.

Failure To Meet Me Halfway Is Like The Taliban Attacking Us, Or Something: Dayton kicked off with an invocation of 9/11 , and Bush’s invocation that “we are all united, and the nation has never been stronger”.

Curiously, he jumped from there to scolding the assembled Republicans; “The challenges we face threaten to overwhelm us”.  He scolded us on even thinking about shutting down government, demanding a pledge not to shut down the state government. As if keeping government going at all costs is the sole goal.  “It should not happen, and it need not happen”, as long as we “compromise our wills for the common good”.   And if we do so, we can tell the people “we succeeded”.   “If we succeed, the people will win.  If we fail, they will lose.  It’s that simple”.

Tax Cuts Equal Stagnation: Dayton noted that Minnesota’s per-capita income dropped, after the Ventura and Pawlenty tax cuts.  (Pay no attention the 2001 and 2008 recessions – or the fact that Minnesota started high up the list, and remains there.  Thanks, Governor Pawlenty!)

Give The Teachers Union What They Want, Or The Kids Get It!: Dayton next turned to the need to “invest” in education, bemoaning the cutbacks in Lakeville and the ten districts that have had to put children to work in the coal mines.  Er, wait – have had to cut back to four day weeks.  My bad.

He then went on to introduce the Teacher of the Year, and about 2/3 of Minnesota’s Superintendents, who seemed to be gathered in the gallery.  Interesting to note that the Teacher of the Year teaches at Maxfield, a school that has flunked its “No Child Left Behind” numbers for recent memory.

He then reiterated his promise to “increase K12 every year, no excuses, no exceptions”.

The Dayton Jobs Program: At this point in the speech, it seems to  largely involve schools; all-day kindergarten, early childhood education, and more.  He indulges in his regional snobbery – “how can Alabama have all day kindergarten, and we don’t?”  Should that be telling us something?

“Don’t You Dare Criticize My Owners!”: “For too long, teachers have been battered by criticisms of their service”.   Battered?  By your leave, your highness, may I, a mere taxpayer, speak?

Job Program Redux:  “We are falling behind in every key measure…” of transit construction.

“Roads and public transit are to the state what arteries are to the body”.   Naturally, we should spend 40% of our medical bill on expensive but low-capacity “arteries”…

Dayton is proposing bringing together more blue-chip panels of “experts” to come up with the real answer to fixing infrastructure.

Kissing Babies, Recognizing Soldiers: The ovations – apparently bipartisan – for SSGT Wenzel, his PFC son, and Red Bulls commander Col. Krska (sp?), and Police Officer of the Year Adam Bailey were by far the longest of the day.

I can go along with that.

MPR’s Mike Mulcahy: “the governor is certainly taking advantage of his prerogative to invite guests; he has about a dozen in the gallery”.

And…huh?:  Next came a screeching turn from defense and law enforcement to…health care?

Dayton asks rhetorical question: “the most daunting challege: how do we improve services without spending more?”   He wants to “provide the best private sector practices with public sector expertise” to make Minnesota the best in the world.   That should be interesting.  “It’ll succeed best if we cooperate with our state employees…treating them with the dignity and respect they deserve will be essential to our success”.  I read that as “hands off all government employment, bennies and pensions”.

And Now, More Job Program Talk!: “We need business to create more jobs…partner with education and government”.  “We are determined to streamlining permitting…while protecting the environment”.   Unfortunately, he notes, he was MPCA Commissioner Aussen on the case.  I call it a potemkin effort.

We Need To Spend Money To Save Money:  Dayton plugged his billion dollar bonding bill.  “A key factor in holding back recovery is the lack of construction jobs”.  In other words, let’s get those Teamsters paying their dues again!

We Want Business To Feel Appreciated: He notes that he’s asked the Depts of Ag, Tourism and, I dunno, Happy Thoughts to reach out to business.  I have a hunch it’ll be Dept. of Revenue that’ll be doing the reaching out…

“I stand ready to go anyplace in the state, nation or world…” to bring jobs to MN.

Want to emulate “Lean” business practices.

The Chase:  Dayton asks for “forbearance” from business, while he deals with the financial crisis, “which we inherited” from President Bush Governor Pawlenty.  He basically apologizes in advance for the budget he’s going to be submitted next week.

Because God Wants You To: Dayton cites bible verse, “to whom much has been given, much will be expected”, in leading up to his “tax the rich” proposal.  Mulcahy points out for the tenth time “more DFLes than Republicans” applauding…

And In Closing: “We were lefty a horrendous fiscal mess, a declining economy, and badly-managed state agencies”.  But if we do things his way, “we’ll retain our former greatness”.

Good thing that DFL legislature did such a spectacular job from 2009-2010!

Let’s Condense The Speech:  “I‘m going to raise taxes, and keep spending just like the times are good.  If you disagree, you are spitting on Tim Burnett’s grave.  We inherited the problem, so don’t blame me; just pony up“.

Response: Tim Pugmire interviewed Amy Koch afterward.  “When the governor called for tax increases, the response was nonexistent on the GOP side, and “tepid” even on the DFL side.  I think that tells us something about the reception he’ll get”.

Speaker Zellers: “The governor is looking backward for his solutions…from California to New York, governors are not raising taxes.  We need to adopt this in Minnesota, and not keep going back to get more from society”.

Pugmire talking with Paul Thissen: “I thought it was hopeful – that we can turn this state around again”.  Wow – we’re in the top of this nation on most rational measures; how much better do we need to be?

“I think the majority is pushing through some extreme bills that are not where Minnesotans are”.  The polls on November 2 might suggest differently, Rep. Thissen.

Times the word “Bipartisanship” (or similar) used: 5

Times the word “Compromise” (or similar) used: 3

Times the phrase “A Better Minnesota” – the PAC that his family, ex-wife and union masters – used: 6

Times the word “Invest”/”Investment” used: 12

Gary Gross liveblogged the SOTS here.

In the run-up to the State of the State address, MPR’s Gary Eichten is interviewing….Arne Carlson.

We’re listening to him, of all people, lecturing us on how to balance budgets and build an economy.

Tomorrow; Les Steckel on all the things the Packers did wrong at the Super Bowl.

Being a DFLer means never wasting  a crisis – or a tragedy.

The Minnesota DFL is seizing on and exploiting the Tuscon Massacre in the special election campaign in House District 5B (Tony Sertich’s old seat):

A campaign brochure for Republican state legislative candidate Paul Jacobson depicting a hunter looking down a shotgun and urging voters to “take your best shot’’ while criticizing opponent Carly Melin has sparked outrage from some supporters of the DFL candidate.

Here’s the brochure:

Scary stuff, huh? A hunter, in his Elmer Fudd hat, holding a hunting shotgun. Just like most Iron Rangers do during hunting season.

Not sure if anyone is implying Carly Melin is, perhaps, rising out of a swamp and getting ready to fly south – most DFL memes really don’t make much sense.

The brochure, mailed this week to residents of Minnesota House District 5B, shows a person looking down the barrel and urges people to vote in the Feb. 15 special election to fill the open seat.

While the gun is not pointed at anything or anyone in particular, Melin’s photo is on the next page. The ad also calls Melin “a fake’’ and states that her campaign is “full of holes.’’

I’m starting to get the message; “criticizing the DFL in any way is a threat”.

Gary Cerkvenik, a longtime Iron Range DFL political activist and now a volunteer for Melin’s campaign, said the ad is eerily similar to attack ads last year that depicted several Democratic members of Congress in crosshairs. The ads were harshly panned after the attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords last month in Tucson.

And Gary Cerkvenik is “eerily similar” to a smart person, but he doesn’t quite pull it off.

Two years ago, the Democrats in Washington used their eroding majority to jam Obamacare down over the American peoples’ objections.

The DFL in Minnesota has learned their lesson; notwithstanding that a crushing majority of Minnesotans support reforming our election system to proof it against abuse, the DFL is wheeling out its big guns most annoying Representatives and most specious memes to try to oppose Mary Kiffmeyer’s HF210.

Here’s Minnesota Majority’s video on the subject:

It’s in the DFL’s interest to oppose it, of course; a fraudulent and dishonest vote is pretty much invariably a DFL vote.

As Reagan once said, “It’s not that liberals lie.  It’s just that they say so many things that are not so”.

Now, if you’ve read this blog for a while, you know two things:

1. I, among very few partisan bloggers in the Twin Cities, make a concerted effort to try not only to remain civil, but to create some sort of a productive, or at least neutral, relationship with leftybloggers – or at least the ones that are worth the effort.  And there are a few.  Rare, but few.
2. It’s really not easy.  It gets frustrating, dealing with so much bad logic for so long.

Which brings us to this bit by Eric “Big E” Pusey, covering Senator Howe (R – Red Wing) and his effort to restructure the renters rebate.

The piece – and if you guessed it’d be entitled “Why Does Senator John Howe Hate Renters?”, you’re right, but you needn’t get cocky, since one out of four posts on every Minnesota leftyblog starts with some variation on “Why Does Someone Hate Something?” – starts: –

On the Senate floor today, Sen. John Howe (R-Red Wing) tried to explain how canceling the renter’s credit is a good idea. The Senate was debating the Republican’s $1 billion cutback’s bill. This is basically a tax increase on all renters.

“That’s a $170 tax increase on every renter in Minnesota,” Sen. Scott Dibble (DFL Mpls) said.

Well, no.  It’s a cutback on a rebate that renters get.

In Minnesota (if you don’t live here), renters are entitled – via a niggling, sliding, income-based formula – to a refund of a piece of the property taxes paid by their landlord on the property they’re renting.  On the one hand, if you’re poor – and up until about 18 years or so ago, I certainly was – it is an annual tradition in Minnesota; waiting for the rebate check.  When I was a single guy making $12K a year and paying out $300 amonth in rent in 1989, it was a nice little $400 bump.

Of course, that money comes from somewhere – the state’s gross property tax receipts, in this case.

And with that pool dropping, as property values decline and foreclosures continue mounting, it’s high time the state re-jiggered the formula.

Pusey doesn’t see it that way, naturally.  He quotes Howe’s speech to the Senate:

It’s [the renter’s credit] actually encouraging people to stay in that renter mode, and not achieve what we want people to move forward. If we want to be “progressive”, we need to help people to achieve their dreams and their goals. And we shouldn’t hold them back. I view a renter’s credit as something that holds people back. It doesn’t encourage the type of behavior that we want. It doesn’t encourage the type of dreams and hopes that people can achieve to having their home ownership. And it runs counterproductive to other things that we do.

First of all, he keeps using the word “progressive.” To quote Inigo Montoya from the movie “Princess Bride”: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

(Entirely possible, but that doesn’t mean Pusey gets it right…)

Secondly, isn’t it the Republican mantra on taxes that people should keep more of their own money or something? So why is it a good idea to take away this tax break for renters? Oh … I get it … they’re not millionaires …

Pusey doesn’t get it.

People should keep their own money – poor, rich, and everyone in between, myself included.

But don’t  mistake the renters rebate for “people keeping their own money’; it’s a rental housing subsidy that gives tax revenues back to certain “targeted” constituencies – renters making less than $30K or so a year.  While landlords (and regular homeowners, who have nobody to pass the costs down to, even more so) get clobbered with property taxes (especially if you’re stuck living in a DFL-plagued city like Saint Paul), renters get a piece of that money directed back to them.

Wouldn’t it be better to just lower taxes, and let the rental market pass the savings down to the renter?

Indeed, the market for rental prices is affected by a dizzying number of variables, most of them tied, directly or indirectly, to big government.  “Affordable Housing” – houses and apartments that might not make it into Architectural Digest, but are inexpensive – is zoned out of existence by utopian City Councils from New York City to Saint Paul, to be replaced by tax-funded Public Housing and/or “affordable housing”, built and subsidized by taxpayers but not remotely “affordable” except maybe in the out-of-pocket cost to the government client “renter”.   The taxes to make more “affordable housing” combine to make housing, ironically, less affordable and, in bad times, contributing to a vicious cycle that forces out home owners (by foreclosure or tax fatigue), lowering property values, and thus tax revenues, thus requiring more tax increases…

At its worst, the “Renters Rebate” insulates the poor from the profligacy of city government; if they didn’t get part of the price of their over-taxed rental property rebated to them, perhaps they would take a closer look at the stupidity of their city and county governments, the same way the profligacy of the 2009-2010 DFL legislature and the 2009-2010 Congress made so many Americans do the same before the last election.

Look – the formula’s being re-jiggered.  People will still get rebate checks.  They’ll get smaller.

Perhaps it’s time those renters took a moment to ask where the money comes from, and why.

I wonder if Eric Pusey would care to help do that?

(And isn’t it hilarious that the Democrats call the Bush Tax cuts – which cut taxes across the board, from billionaires to minimum wage owners, a “subsidy” and “spending”, while the portion or the renter’s rent that goes into property taxes is not?)

By the way, I was a guest on Marty Owings’ “Minnesota Capitol News” on Wednesday evening, live from the gallery over the Minnesota House of Representatives, in a brief panel with Professor Doug Rossinow from Metro State, talking about the Gubernatorial election.  Tom Emmer and Dave Fitzsimmons were also on the show – it should go without saying that was a fun interview.

Tune in!

As I noted a while ago, I have been tempted for quite some time to write a long, long series of posts trying to explain the basic logical fallacies to leftybloggers.  I do this – or would do it, if I ever get the project underway – to improve the quality of the alt-media debate in Minnesota.

A good one to work first might be “correlation doesn’t equal causation”.

Because in the case of the four GOP voters who split from the majority to vote against the GOP’s first budget bill, it’s safe to say that correlation doesn’t equal much of anything.

Dave Mindeman at mnpACT thought he was on to something the other day:

Rep. King “Landslide” Banaian gave me a bit of a surprise the other day. I saw his vote on the House authorized $1 billion cut legislative package and surprisingly, the conservative, former SCSU Scholars blogger, voted NO….voting with the Democrats.

Well, no.  Remember – correlation doesn’t logically lead to causation.  He voted – it is safe to say, although I’ve not interviewed King about it – against one of the proposed cuts.  King would gargle Drano before he voted “with the DFL”.

Banaian works at St. Cloud State as an economics professor and represents St. Cloud and the surrounding area. The kicker here is that he won his legislative race by a 10 vote margin. Which means that, unlike Senator Newman and his selective constituent recognition, Mr. Banaian is probably wise to consider all comers.

It’s good that Mindeman has discovered this tenet of democracy.  Many DFLers, especially in the Metro, never need to learn any of this stuff.

Except I had assumed that Banaian was one of those true believer, first principle guys. He generally talks of government spending with utter disdain and one would think that this particular bill would certainly meet those first principle ideals.

Well, you know what they say happens when you assume…

After all, it hits that unnecessary Local Government Aid and outrageously out of control Higher Ed spending… as well as all of the Commission offices in the executive branch. Would have assumed that to be a no-brainer for Banaian.

I’m  not sure – I haven’t interviewed King, or Kriesel, or the other two Republicans who voted against the bill on its first pass.  Of course, either has Mindeman.  But I’m going to suspect that those were not the reason.

Yet, that pesky RED button went up. Explanation?

Well, Doug Grow at Minnpost, looked into this and found this quote:

And, as we discussed the other day, Grow was as wrong as Mindeman.

The Republican proposal calls for the continuation of cuts made to state colleges by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature to bring the budget in balance last year. Those amount to $184 million for public colleges, including Banaian’s employer, St. Cloud State.

“We’ve taken a couple of pretty serious hits already,” Banaian told an Associated Press reporter in explaining his opposition to the bill. “To do this on extending an agreement by a previous Legislature and a previous governor didn’t seem like the right vote for St. Cloud at this time.”

What?

So those particular cuts were OK last year, but (ahem) not so good this year? Would that be 10 votes worth of caution, Rep. Banaian?

Well, maybe – but both Mindeman and Grow strip out some key context; SCSU took some serious cuts; a lot of King’s voters think it’s time for the U to take its lumps.

All that red meat rhetoric with “first principle” shouts of storming the castle seem to fade when looking toward a new election cycle.

One wonders if Mindeman has read HF2.

Once that passes, I suspect all this “King voted with the Dems” nonsense will be forgotten.

Certainly by Mindeman.

Remember last session’s’ spending debate?

When the DFL – which had a crushing majority in the Minnesota State House, pushed through a massive $435 million dollar tax hike.

They squeedged the increase through on a couple of very close votes; the final vote in the House was 71-63.  Bear in mind that the DFL controlled 87 seats up until this month.  Tha’ts 87/47 in favor of the DFL; almost, but not quite, veto-proof.

And in the Minnesota Senate?  Much worse; the DFL  had a 47-21 veto-proof majority in the Senate.

So when it came time for up-and-down votes on the Dems’ pet tax proposal, you’d think – given not only the DFL’s fabled unity, but the power of the mandate with which they’d been sent to Saint Paul to refudiate the Pawlenty government the previous fall, that the votes in favor of the bill might have been 87/47 in the House (or maybe 93/44, given the power of the “moderate Republicans”), and 47/21 in the Senate.

To have performed any worse would certainly have been a sign that the DFL was splintering under the pressure of working with their mandate.

Right?

Well, of course it didn’t work out that way.  The DFL carried the bill through the House by 71.  Sixteen DFLers crossed over to vote against the bill.

And before that?  In an epic bit of political theater, the Senate had to do all but send the Mounties out to find Tarryl Clark to drag her into the Senate chamber to get the bill passed by one vote.  A total of twelve DFL senators crossed over to vote against the bill.

And this, at the height of the post-Obama afterglow.  When people seemed Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota.  Less than a month after the first appearance of the Tea Party, when it still seemed (because the media was trying to paint it)  like a fringe-y little brushfire.

Quiz Question:  Did this loss of 16 votes in the House, and 12 in the Senate, mean that…:

a) The DFL was fragmenting?: The DFL legislators saw the Tea Party rallies, three weeks early, anticipated the upcoming summer of anger at the Obamacare Town Halls, and were consumed with a wave of originalist fervor, which Larry Pogemiller and Margaret Anderson Kelliher managed to hold together by only the barest of margins, in an epic feat of legislative engineering?

b) That was the plan?: Some DFLers from outstate and outer-tier suburban districts felt nervous about piling taxes on their already-disgruntling districts; they made their reservations known to their caucus’  House and Senate leadership, which did the math – not only for the bill, but for the next round of elections.  They figured out how many votes were safe, not only for the bill, but for future elections; they realized that some DFLers  – especially some of the ones that had just won squeaker elections in the previous two cycles  in usually-GOP-districts – were going to need to be able to deny association with the bill to their voters.  The did the math, and made sure they had the votes to both pass the bills and give their more potentially-vulnerable members the out they knew they were going to need?

Answer? B, mostly; of course there were DFLers who had objections – but for the most part,notwithstanding the media’s push to impart drama on the proceedings,  the votes came as no surprise to anyone in legislative leadership.

Of course, drama sells newspapers.

Last week, the House voted on the GOP’s billion dollar budget cut bill.  And the regional DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) hopped around like a toddler who’d just made a good pants – because four Republicans broke with the GOP.

Doug Grow wrote about it at the Minnpost:

Republican legislative leaders quickly are learning that it’s easier to hold the caucus together when they’re in the minority rather than the majority.

On the first big economic vote of the still-new session, four Republicans joined a united DFL minority in opposing a $1 billion budget-cutting bill that Republican leadership claimed was the “easy part” of cutting into the state’s $6.2 billion deficit.

Well, actually, there were 3.5 Republicans joining the DFL in opposing the bill. Freshman Rep. Rich Murray voted for the budget cuts but then, after voting had closed, switched to vote against the measure, which passed 68-63.

The biggest Republican defector was freshman Rep. King Banaian a St. Cloud State University economics professor and a conservative blogger.

Just a couple of weeks ago, beaming House Republican leaders described Banaian as the caucus’s “Wayne Gretzky” on economic issues.

For non-hockey followers, that means that Banaian was being described as the majority’s economics superstar, its guru, its leader.

Now, right out of the box he said “no” to the first Republican plan.

What happened?

What would Doug Grow suppose happened?

Is it that…:

a) The GOP majority is falling apart, with members – including my radio colleague Banaian, who had heretofore authored and sponsored HF2, a step toward instituting Zero-Based Budgeting, one of the most transformatively fiscally-conservative ideas – already souring on fiscal conservatism, to the immense surprise and shock of the MNGOP’s leadership?  Or is it…:

b) Those devilish details that caused the DFL’s leadership to let 16 Reps and 12 Senators seek a little cover, after making sure that they had the votes to pass their tax bill two years earlier?   Details that had been discussed between members and leadership for weeks – even since before the session began?   Details that made the GOP’s leadership do the math, and figure that they could afford to let three potentially-vulnerable Representatives flake off and still leave plenty of votes to pass the vital bill?

What do you think?

I don’t talk with a lot of legislators, so it’s not like I know any details.  But do you suppose that Banaian – who represents an area that includes Saint Cloud State University, which already went through some serious budget cuts, and which would take more with the proposed bill, and who won his seat by 13 votes, the closest margin of victory in the entire United States last November – just might have had a talk or two with Kurt Zellers, who might have gone over the votes one way or the other, and rationed out a few “no” votes to GOPers that might need ’em?

What do you think?

When the DFL needs heavy buckets hauled from the well to the corral, Doug Grow is always there:

Reality crossed paths with rhetoric…

…If Republican leadership can’t hold its caucus together on this first budget vote, imagine how difficult it will be to find conformity as it attempts to cut the remaining $5.2 billion with a cuts-only approach.

Grow taking part in the DFL’s strategy in the legislature; trying to paint the GOP majority as divided in the run-up to Mark Dayton – the weakest governor in recent memory – releasing a budget that is sure to be a big tax-clogged monstrosity.  They are trying to find a wedge to pound in between the new majority and the newly-minted activists who put them into office.

To some extent, it’s drawn some blood; a few conservative activists are making disgruntled noises.

We’ll talk about that later on here.

The point being this:  relax, everyone.  The procedure of getting votes lined up, and handing out some exemptions from party  mandates for purposes of planning for future elections, is the very definition of  “politics as usual”, and not even in a necessarily bad way.

The larger point is that the agenda is moving ahead – and needs to, in advance of Dayton dropping his fiscal duke in two weeks.

More on the big picture later today or tomorrow.

Dave Mindeman at mnpACT has his eyes on the GOP’s priorities:

Remember the good old days when the House and Senate GOP were going to make the budget and JOBS issue number one?

Actually you should remember….it was three weeks ago. But that was then, this is now….priorities seem to have changed:

Well, no.  And of course, HF1, the very first bill introduced in the session, which would reform the permitting process in Minnesota (and which Mindeman curiously ignores) does directly address those priorities.

And perhaps, being a DFLer, Mindeman thinks that the GOP should push a bill, perhaps one requiring companies to create jobs.  But debate over most of the real job-killers – regulation and taxes, especially corporate taxes – happens when we get into the budget process.  The GOP has a proposal out there.  Governor Dayton is waiting until February 15 – presumably because, as we discovered during the campaign, he hasn’t the foggiest idea what to do, other than “Tax the Rich”.

Still, leaving aside Mindeman’s selective choice of bills, the fact is the word “priorities” implies that there is more than one thing to be accomplished.  The MNGOP was sent to Saint Paul to do a whole bunch of things; jobs are the top priority; if it were the only objective, then there’d be no need to prioritize at all.

Mindeman cherry-picks some initiatives:

SRepublicans push photo I.D. bill

Republican legislators are using their new-found majorities in both chambers to push a bill to require photo identification at the polls.

Estimated Job generation: 0

Imagine how many jobs we’d create if we legalized fraud!

Union options could wind up on 2012 ballot

The proposed legislation would ask residents to vote on a constitutional amendment on whether workers should have the “freedom to decide to join or not join a labor union; to remain with or leave a labor union; and to pay or not pay dues” to a union, without the choice affecting their employment status.

Estimated Job generation: 0 (but you might get to work for less)

Well, maybe and maybe not.  One of unions’ key purposes is to restrict the supply of labor available in a given trade and area, to help keep prices high.

One of the DFL’s other memes on this issue is “now you can work for less”.  Well, that depends on how effective your union is, now, doesn’t it?

Partial smoking ban repeal introduced in House

A bill that would partially repeal Minnesota’s smoking ban has been introduced in the House. The legislation would allow smoking in bars provided they meet certain requirements.

Estimated Job generation: Possibly a few minimum wage jobs but probably offset by more health care costs

I’m going to guess that Mindeman has never worked as a server, and doesn’t know anyone who does.   Waiting can be minimum wage; it can pay six figures; most of all, it is a job with no entry requirements that, with effort and application, can pay just fine – just like any other trade.

But Mindeman seems not to care for the jobs that the smoking ban destroyed; the waitstaff laid off, the bars and restaurants closed.  Those jobs may or may not come back – but I’ll take my chances.  Real estimate of jobs created: hundreds and hundreds.

Hackbarth backing amendment protecting right to bear arms

Rep. Tom Hackbarth is proposing an amendment to the state’s constitution that would explicitly guarantee the right to bear arms. The proposal would essentially mimic the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in ensuring gun rights.

Estimated Job generation: 0

Civil rights are every bit as important as jobs.

Abortion emerging as major issue, lawsuit at Minnesota Capitol

Today, a bill restricting funding for abortion was submitted to the Minnesota Senate, co-sponsored by Koch. The bill, Senate File 103, is the first anti-abortion bill of the session.

Estimated Job generation: 0

Except that some of the babies saved will be the entrepreneurs that start the companies that’ll create the jobs that’ll generate the wealth that’ll be sapped by government to pay for Mindeman’s retirement.

Jobs generated: Countless.

After the election Senator Koch and Speaker Zellers were telling us how “focused” they would be. It wasn’t that long ago that these words were uttered…..

“If it doesn’t have anything to do with business and jobs, it shouldn’t be our first priority.” Rep. Kurt Zellers, the speaker of the Minnesota House

“There’s a lot of important issues and we will get to them. But the priority now is the budget, jobs, and the economy,” Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch

That was then….this is now… (and the way they were going to do it all along).

Dave Mindeman: Cross “clairvoyant” off of your future career options list.

And hang on.  February is going to rock.

SCENE:  The House Minority Caucus is meeting around a table at the Road Apple Saloon, at the Kelly Inn near the Capitol.  Paul THISSEN, Minority Leader, sits at a table with Debra HILSTROM, whips Larry HOSCH, Phyllis KAHN, Melissa HORTMAN, Alice HAUSMAN, John LESCH and Terry MORROW. They are joined by the rest of the DFL caucus around the table.

THISSEN:  OK, the caucus will come to order.

LESCH: He said come to order, you pigs…

THISSEN: John, that’ll do.  The first order of business is, we have to figure out how we’ll take the battle to the enemy.

Jim DAVNIE: Er, “Enemy?”

THISSEN:  The GOP.

DAVNIE: I knew that.

THISSEN:  We are outnumbered, of course – and the governor is, well…you know…

(The table murmers assent)

Rep. Ryan WINKLER: Ooooh!   Oooh!  I know.

THISSEN: Yes, representative…er,…

HOSCH: Binkley.

WINKLER:  That’s “Winkler”.  (HOSCH rolls his eyes)   I’ll go and tell everyone that “the real voter fraud is believing that the GOP cares about election integrity”.

THISSEN (absentmindedly): Sure, whatever.  Now, Alice – there’s some work that needs to be done on transportation…

WINKLER:  Oooh, oooh!  I got another one!

THISSEN (a little impatient): Er, yes, Representative Winkie?

WINKLER: Winkler, sir. I’ll tell the media that the GOP wants to kill poor womyn!

THISSEN (wearily):  Sure, whatever.  Alice, what can we…

WINKLER:  Oooh!  Ooooooooh!  I got it!

THISSEN:  For the love of Goddess, what, Representative Twinkle?

WINKLER: It’s “Winkler”, sir.  I’ll tell them that Amy Koch eats dog poop!

THISSEN:  Er, sure.  Get right on that.

(Winkler rises from table, exits the restaurant).

HAUSMAN: OK, I’ll get to work on that…

HORTMAN: Oh, my Goddess.  Paul, look…

(THISSEN turns up the volume on the TV, which shows WINKLER talking with a fake news crew)

THISSEN: My god.  The little twerp did it.

MORROW:  Good Wellstone, what a tool.

LESCH: Should I have him eliminated?

THISSEN:  No.  Not yet.  He may serve a purpose yet.  What was he going to say about Senator Koch?

(And Scene).

———-

OK, OK.  It’s a dig at Rep. Ryan Winkler (44B), who took a pretty unconscionable dig at all Republicans yesterday, claiming that the only voter fraud in Minnesota is the notion that we Republicans care about election integrity.

Winkler has become the Eddie Haskell of the Legislature.

And the claim itself really doesn’t deserve a dignified response; it’s just stupid.  Minnesota’s statistics look good, because the system is designed to make the statistics look good.  And it’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are the most-documented victims of our state system’s weaknesses; military absentee ballots (which vote overwhelmingly GOP) have been systematically dispensed with since Mark Ritchie took office.

Republicans who seek election integrity have been a prime target for the DFL’s smear machine.  But you know what Gandhi said; first they ignore you.  Then Ryan Winkler mocks you.  Then they attack you.  Then you win.

More on the voter ID bill tomorrow.

Some of my friends who are teachers, and also Republicans, have described a life a little like being a dissident in the Soviet Union, with samizdat greetings and everything short of secret handshakes.  I remember going to one teacher conference and having a teacher furtively tell me he or she was a fan of the NARN – “but please don’t tell anyone.  You understand, right?”

I did.

Of course, that was in the cha-cha days when the DFL controlled, or nearly controlled, the Legislature.

But now, appropriations come through the MNGOP’s majority – and Tom “Look For The Union Label” Dooher is trying to make nice:

From: President Dooher [mailto :[Redacted]@edmn.org]

Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 5:03 PM

To: ‘[Redacted]@educationminnesota.org’

Cc: Governing Board [MN]

Subject: Republican members meeting Feb. 5

January 21, 2011

Dear local presidents,

Over the last two years, Education Minnesota has made efforts to involve Education Minnesota Republican members in legislative and political activities on behalf of public education.

Any GOP teachers in the audience: can we get a sniff-test on that statement?

It’s more important than ever for our Republican members to start building relationships with their legislators.

Is anyone but me thnking “I’ll just bet it is”.  Tom Dooher wasn’t banking on the DFL losing both chambers, was he?

Education Minnesota will hold a meeting of interested Republican members on Saturday, Feb. 5, from noon to 3 p.m. at the Education Minnesota headquarters in St. Paul. Education Minnesota will provide lunch and pay mileage for all members.

The agenda will cover:

1. The importance of Republican members’ involvement in education policy

2. Building relationships with legislators

3. Current education issues

4. Recruiting other Education Minnesota Republican members

And I loved this one:

5. Getting involved in the Republican party process

EdMinn has spent at least thirty years fighting the GOP at every turn.  They contributed heavily to Alliance For A Better Minnesota, which just spent an entire election cycle slandering Republicans.

The “involvement” they want, no doubt, is to do what they can to turn the GOP back into a party that Arne Carlson would recognize.

Education Minnesota political organizers and lobbyists will facilitate the meeting. Please take the time to contact politically active Republican members of your local and encourage them to attend. Interested members should RSVP to Jim Meyer, Education Minnesota political organizer, at [Redacted]@edmn.org or [phone number redacted] by Wednesday, Feb. 2. We need at least 15 participants to hold the meeting.

I wish it weren’t at the same time as the show.  I’d love to see if anyone shows up.  Even more, I’d love to see if any of the local presidents actually know any Republicans.

In solidarity,

Tom Dooher

President

In mockery,

Mitch Berg

Admiral.

Yesterday, after asking the House to hold off on holding hearings on HF1 (Rep. Dan Fabian’s bill to reform state permitting), Governor Dayton released an executive order that will do the same thing.

Well, that’s what the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) will want you to think.

Dayton’s order will do a bunch of the streamlining that HF1 would do…

…with one absolutely key exception. Via Gary Gross at LFR, House Majority Leader Matt Dean said in a statement:

“Today’s executive order is concerning. Just a week ago, Governor Dayton was asking us to slow down and allow more time for public hearings and input.

In other words, the MNGOP reached across the aisle.  They gave a little procedural ground, and worked with the Governor.

And that’s always a mistake.

The Minnesota House has held two public hearings on HF1 and are planning a third hearing on this important legislation. We are concerned that Governor Dayton selected components of HF1 for his Executive Order, watered down some provisions and ignored key areas of reform.

We find his actions today to be counterproductive to the legislative process and his stated commitment to work together on these common ground issues. House Republicans will continue with our previously-announced public process for HF1 and other initiatives designed to make Minnesota’s business climate competitive. We hope Governor Dayton will join us in that endeavor.”

So compare HF1 and the statement.  What’s missing?

Any reference to reforming litigation.

It’s the litigation that not only kills projects, but blows up the price of  private-sector and state projects.

Now – given that Governor Dayton has stacked his administrative appointments with people whose entire public resume involves litigating development to death, what do you suppose his “executive order” is going to be worth?

Oh, yeah – and “executive orders” exist, and are enforced, at the pleasure of the governor.  What the governor orders with a swipe of his pen, he can un-order the same way.

The GOP needs to continue and pass HF1, and tell the Governor “thanks, but no thanks; we’ll stick with the brand name”.

The League of Minnesota Cities is starting to get the message; Local Government Aid is going to get reformed:

Sen. Claire Robling (R-Jordan), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, introduced a bill on Jan. 18 that begins to address the state’s $6.2 billion deficit. The bill, SF 60, extends many of the unallotments that were ratified in 2010 as well as the supplemental budget cuts that were enacted in 2010. In total, the bill would apparently reduce the state’s general fund deficit by roughly $1 billion, including $200 million in unspecified reductions for the remaining five months of the state’s 2010-2011 biennium.

The bill appears to target several of the general fund appropriations that were fully or partially restored in the 2010 final budget reduction compromise.

As we pointed out last year, Local Government Aid – which started out as an attempt to help small, poor rural towns build critical infrastructure like roads and water treatment plants  – has become a money-laundering scheme for large, DFL-controlled cities, enabling to shift their spending from their own property tax payers to the rest of the state – especially the parts of the state that pay full taxes, but receive no LGA (most of the state’s top-forty cities, mostly third-hier, GOP-leaning suburbs).

For cities, SF 60 includes cuts to both local government aid (LGA) and market value homestead credit (MVHC) reimbursements. The bill would permanently extend the calendar year 2010 supplemental cuts to MVHC reimbursements beginning with the scheduled MVHC reimbursements for 2011. The 2010 supplemental MVHC reimbursement cuts were originally enacted in Session Laws 2010, Chapter 215 and totaled $52.5 million, of which roughly $43 million was allocated to city MVHC reimbursements. Due to the fact that the 2010 supplemental budget cuts were first applied to each city’s MVHC reimbursement, these cuts impacted nearly every city.

Note that the 2010 supplemental budget bill already permanently extended about $25 million in MVHC credit reimbursement reductions to roughly 120 cities beginning in 2011. With the additional permanent reductions included in SF 60, virtually all of the MVHC reimbursement to cities would be permanently eliminated. No changes to the way the credits are administered were included in the bill meaning that homeowners would continue to receive the full value of the credit.

Of course, MVHC is a vehicle to reimburse cities with lots of low-value properties – Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth – for having lots of low-value properties, notwithstanding the fact that most of the blight is caused by those same cities’ policies.  MVHC rewards cities for policies that drive down home values!

The proposal would also permanently reduce LGA to cities by roughly $100 million beginning in 2011. The LGA cut for each city from the amount certified last July would be equal to roughly 91.5 percent of the total 2010 LGA cut under the 2010 ratified unallotment reductions and the 2010 supplemental budget reductions. For future years, the plan will permanently freeze the LGA appropriation at the $426 million level.

And that’s just the beginning:

In addition to the cuts specified above, the bill will impose yet-to-be-determined cuts on the budgets for the Legislature, the governor, the state auditor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state. The renters’ refund program will be reduced, and the political campaign refund will be eliminated. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system (MNSCU) and the University of Minnesota would lose $48 million and $45 million per year, respectively. Human service programs would lose roughly $32 million per year under the proposal.

As noted last week – and, indeed, constantly since about this past Labor Day, when Tom Emmer released his own budget – most of the “decreases” are in fact reductions to the forecast increase.

For the remainder of the current 2010-2011 biennium, the proposal requires the commissioner of Management and Budget to identify $200 million in general fund spending reductions to executive branch agencies.

And King Banaian’s HF2 will go farther, forcing agencies to justify their spending, and in some cases their existence.

It wouldn’t be the League of Cities if it didn’t pay homage to the DFL:

The proposal addresses only about 17 percent of the state’s $6.2 billion deficit. Legislative leaders will have to identify other much deeper cuts to balance the remaining state deficit. Even if the repayment of the $1.3 billion school payment shift is delayed, as many expect, the remaining deficit would be roughly $3.9 billion.

That is, of course, buncombe; the $3.9 billion figure is the amount of the forecast that will not be granted.  But one can expect the LoC to repeat DFL talking points…

The mid-year cuts to city MVHC and LGA are particularly problematic. In December, cities set their 2011 budgets and property tax levies and they will not be able to adjust revenues to offset even a portion of these cuts until December 2011. Even then, any revenue adjustments would not be available until mid-2012.

The DFL’s party line is “this forces cities to raise their property taxes”.  It’s rubbish, of course; it forces cities to find their own revenues for, or cut spending on, the parts of their budgets that LGA had been floating.

Of course city residents will prefer to have other people pay for their city budgets!  Who wouldn’t?

But it’s time for local taxpayers to do one of three things:

1. Be Happy To Pay For A Better Town, and quit your whining.
2. Let your city council know that you’ve had enough, and you’re going to vote someone else into office if they don’t clean up the city’s fiscal house, using something other than cops, firemen and other essential services as cut-fodder.  And then follow through on it.  Just like the rest of the US and Minnesota did this past election.

Then you’ll see some changes.

The DFL’s “Forecast” for this biennium calls for a 37% increase in Health and Human Services (HHS) spending.

And the DFL is portraying any spending proposal less than a 37% increase as a “cut”.

And the media is, for the most part, carrying that meme without question.

Bob Collins at MPR does, in fact, question it, although his piece’s headline, “Despite warnings of cuts to child protection, House committee passes cuts in human services”, manages to hit the “decreasing the increase is a cut” and “the GOP is balancing the budget on the backs of womynandchyldryn and the poor” memes with admirable economy.

Jessica Webster, a staff attorney for Legal Aid, said the bill will hurt more than just children. “One of the things that’s frustrating, when we get these pieces of legislation, there’s nothing here that shows the people who receive these services,” she said. “Low-income people who are sick, who have serious injuries, poor people who have ill or injured children, battered women in battered women’s shelters, people living in homeless shelters, homeless youth, displaced homemakers, the developmentally disabled, people with low IQ, people who are mentally ill. All of these people are unable to work.”

The thing is, the GOP’s bill doesn’t “cut” anything from the previous budget.

But Republicans said they were not cutting the programs, since the programs had already been cut by lawmakers in their last-minute deal with then Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

“These folks having genuine needs, but over the last year or so, what this bill does just maintains… so what was done in the last year would be continuing,” Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer said. “You hear some of these phrases …. what we do is we make spending permanent.”

The bill continues the cuts to which Governor Pawlenty and the DFL-dominated legislature agreed in the last budget.

And it sends the message that HHS spending will not be going up by a over a third.

Health and Human Services are going to have to stretch their dollars further, just like the rest of us.

If there’s been a gratifying story so far this year, it’s that the GOP majority in the Minnesota Legislature isn’t wasting any time.  It’s going out and taking the fight to the DFL bright and early, with proposals to pare back the current budget, curb automatic budget increases, and trim the headcount at the state’s largest employer, The State.

It’s what the Tea Party sent ’em there to do; that’s all to the good.

The DFL, for its part, is doing what parties that are used to be one-party governing bodies tend to do; sitting back and hoping that it’s all a big aberration.

According to Dave Schultz, left-leaning Hamline prof and occasional blogger, it’s a bad idea.

For the DFL, anyway:

This is a naive strategy. It is effectively one that says when the voters regain their sanity they will again vote for Democrats. This is a purely defensive and passive strategy. It depends on the steps and missteps of others in order to get elected. This is the fundamental problem with the Democrats for the last 40 years. In 1972 McGovern’s slogan was “Come home America.” Notice how well it worked. In 1984 Mondale’s was “America needs a change.” It did not work. The failure of both candidates was in part the inability of Democrats to offer a compelling narrative to counteract that of the Republicans. Democrats cannot always count on disgust with the GOP and missteps by the latter to get elected. They need to offer a narrative, to provide a set of policies that serve as an alternative. They need to stand for something

Additionally, Democrats need to fight back if they want to win.

The problem is, the DFL hasn’t had to stand  for anything other than its institutional imperatives (“More union jobs”, “more spending”) in recent memory.  And it’s only been recently that they had to “fight” for anything; it’s only been in the past eight years that the MNGOP didn’t work almost as hard as the DFL to enact DFL policies; it  was only in this past eight years that the MNGOP differed enough from the DFL in terms of concrete policy to be measured and had enough power to make it matter.

The Republicans know how to do that. The Democrats don’t. After 2008 the GOP developed a plan, a message, recruited well, and they took advantage of the Democrats screwing up or failing to define themselves and the GOP. Right now I see little sign that the state DFL is doing any of that.

I disagree; the DFL is trying to define the GOP.  That’s why you’re hearing all of the “continuing the failed policies of the last eight years” talk.  Unfortunately for them, they’re trying to define the GOP as something a majority of MN voters agreed with last November.

Yes, the opposition making mistakes creates an opportunity. But you need to do more than that to win and then to govern effectively. Begin now defining the narrative and themes for what the party stands for. Do focus groups, recruit candidates, and develop a game plan now regarding how you plan to take back the legislature and govern.

And there’s the DFL’s problem.  For all their barbering about “who’s the bigger tent?”, the fact is they are defined by the people whose hands are inside the puppet; the government and trade unions, and the metro left.  The DFL is not amenable to being overtaken by a transformational groundwell, as the GOP was by the Tea Party, growing pains and all.

The DFL is going to have to put ever-thicker layers of lipstick on the union-jacketed pig to try to fool the gullible.