We warned you.

But did you listen?  No!  You said that jobs would not be lost as pay for low-skill jobs was forced upward by government fiat, and that there’d be no unintended consequences – because all consequences, presumably, would be forestalled by foo-foo dust brought down from the skies on the backs of unicorns. 

But there is no foo-foo dust, there are no unicorns, and when you force someone to pay more or less than the free market will bear for something, there will be consequences.

And so there are.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Liberals are so convinced that the Personal is Political, and they have had such success using that tactic to damage our constitutional republic from within, that they think the rule is of universal application. It is not. If it were, the most revered man in history would be Pontius Pilate, who ordered the execution of that rabble-rouser Jesus Christ, to put an end to the religious movement known as Christianity.

Pilate did not succeed, nor will President Obama succeed in putting an end to Islamic Fundamentalism by ordering the execution of Osama Bin Laden. The more Liberals celebrate that act as Obama’s signature achievement, the more they emphasize the poverty of his list of accomplishments.

Joe Doakes

Wasn’t that a scene in 1984?

The IRS Scandal has been dragging on for a solid year now.

Democrats chant in near-unison “It’s just low-level employees!  You have no evidence that it’s tied to the White House!”

Which brings up two additional questions.

Gone Rogue: Let’s say that the Democrats are right – that suppressing conservative activist groups (who, without tax exempt status, have their First Amendment rights hobbled by campaign finance laws) is entirely a product of low-ranking IRS officials exercising their own, peculiar, organic biases. 

That’s the good news? That the IRS is intrinsically politicized and doesn’t need orders from above to play political favorites?  That it feels perfectly empowered to give de facto support to Democrats by harassing conservative organizations? 

Somehow that doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better.

Smokeless Powder:  When a cop or prosecutor says about some bit of government intrusion “If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried”, we all know we’re talking about a “public servant” who doesn’t really get what America is supposed to be about, and who needs to retire for everyone’s own good.

But I don’t extend that same courtesy to official institutions.  Bureaucracies – the DMV, the IRS, Congress, the Pentagon, even the President himself – answer (in theory) to us. 

The Administration has been stonewalling releasing details about their involvment, or lack of it, for a solid year now. 

If they have nothing to hide, they’re showing it in a pretty convoluted way.  Either they think they can blow this up into a Clinton-Impeachment-style backfire, or…they’re hiding something.

I suggest “both”.

A report from the center-left Brookings Institution shows that not only is busines dynamism – the pace of new business openings and old business closings – the slowest it’s been, but during the Obama “Recovery” the pace of closings has far outrun the pace of new business creation, for the first time in post-Great-Depression history:

Says Brookings:

Research has firmly established that this dynamic process is vital to productivity and sustained economic growth. Entrepreneurs play a critical role in this process, and in net job creation.But recent research shows that dynamism is slowing down. Business churning and new firm formations have been on a persistent decline during the last few decades, and the pace of net job creation has been subdued. This decline has been documented across a broad range of sectors in the U.S. economy, even in high-tech. …

While the reasons explaining this decline are still unknown, if it persists, it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future, unless for equally unknown reasons or by virtue of entrepreneurship enhancing policies (such as liberalized entry of high-skilled immigrants), these trends are reversed.

Why has America become less entrepreneurial? 

I’m going to suggest it’s two things; the constant accretion of new regulations atop old regulations, which continually make new businesses harder and harder to launch, and a culture – especially a school system – that is slowly leaching the desire independence out of the citizenry.

(Via Ed)

To: President Obama
From: Mitch Berg
Re:  The Goal, Here

Mr. President,

This is a feature.  Not a bug.

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Here is a long-lost photo of President George Washington performing his duties under Article 1 of the Constitution, dealing with The Whiskey Rebellion by intimidating rebels with passages from . . . “Where The Wild Things Are.”

No? Well, maybe it’s Abraham Lincoln urging his generals to fight The War To Save The Union, using tactics from . . . “Where The Wild Things Are.”

Not him, either? Well, it must be someone doing something Presidential. It can’t be someone posing for a silly photo op when there is so much important work the President should be doing.

Oh wait, I know: it’s President Obama, who brought peace to the Middle East, ended aggression in Eastern Europe, resolved territorial disputes in the Far East, balanced the budget and brought prosperity to all Americans, so he now has time to read stories to children.

My bad.

Joe Doakes

Liberals are still yapping about President Bush reading “My Pet Goat” as the terrorists attacked New York.

Of course, when he opened the book, the US had been at peace for ten years, we were at the tail end (we now know) of the Peace Dividend boom, and people were talking about “permanent prosperity”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama isn’t just the First Black President, he may also be the Most Belligerent. Aside from the ordinary garrison troops at US bases and embassies around the world, and not counting bombing sorties flown by drones, this President has dispatched American troops to put boots on the ground in conflicts in:

Iraq

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Kyrgyzstan

Egypt

Libya

Yeman

Sudan

Uganda

Central African Republic

Poland

and with this week’s the new agreement, the Philippines.

Can he get another Nobel Peace Prize, please? Because for a man this devoted to peace, one just doesn’t seem like enough.

To be fair, he didn’t start all of these conflicts, and wasn’t the first to send US troops to all of them.

To be even more fair, he got elected promising a foreign policy that relied less on military force and breaking things and making them go boom.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

US sent 300 paratroopers to Poland to serve as a trip-wire against Russian aggression. Washington Post explains the reasoning.

It’s a dumb idea.

The trip-wire concept is simple: if the Russians attack and kill our 300 guys, the American public will be so outraged that Congress will Declare War as young people run to the recruiting offices and the sleeping American giant will roar to life to crush the Russians in a savage but fully justified act of revenge.

Never happen. Not in modern America. Democrats won’t declare war, Code Pinkers won’t support war, Millennials won’t go to war. Instead, the public consensus will be “Those paratroopers volunteered to serve in the armed forces so they assumed the risk of being killed. We’re not going to suffer for their bad career choice.”

Now, here’s the scary part: are SITD readers the only people who understand this? Does the US military command know those troops are twisting in the wind but they’re sending them anyway because the WaPo foreign policy wallahs want it? Seems like a major breach of faith to me.

Worse, do the Russians know it’s a bluff? Are they already planning how to invade around our people, knowing there only risk is a scolding from the Teleprompter in Chief or his lurching Secretary of State?

It was bad enough when the President’s idiotic foreign policy got our Ambassador killed. We don’t need another 300 bodies to confirm his error.

Joe Doakes

Reading history, it’s hard to avoid a key fact; most wars are backed into.

Word is starting to leak out; a number of GOP politicians are flirting with supporting the idea of the National Popular Vote.

Let me be blunt:  This idea must be stomped, and stomped some more, until the convulsions stop. 

This is an utterly wretched idea, favored by liberal plutocrats with deep pockets to give the nation’s population centers a stranglehold on presidential (and eventually, all)  politics.

The National Popular Vote means that presidential candidates will not, ever, need to campaign in flyover land.  They need only to play to the coasts.

It completely guts the “protection of minority states” that the Electoral College has given this nation, to its immense benefit.

Need a reason to oppose it?  Here are seven to start with, all of them worthy of a rhetorical death sentence. 

The campaign to institute it has been sneaky, under the radar, and not a little bit sleazy.  The supporters are clearly trying to gull a mass of low-information voters (swaying them with talk of “majority rule”) without fully airing out the consequences. 

It’s even sucked in a number of Republicans who should know better.  I’m not naming names.  But it’s going to happen, sooner or later.

Republicans:  I, for one, will support an NPV supporter about the same time I support a gun controller.   You support NPV?  We’re going to have a pointed conversation. 

This shall not pass.

Al Franken supported a program that uses taxpayer money to give foreign companies a leg up in the market over US companies…

…until someone whispered “Hey, Al – this directly harms Minnesota business, and uses Minnesotans’ tax dollars to do it…”.

But in politics, policy must become parochial for a politician before they see the error of their ways. In July of 2013, the Bank’s activities became a threat to Minnesotans and for Franken, who voted to reauthorize the Bank just months earlier.

Half a billion worth of business (provided you’re a crony of Franken and his clique).  Good, right?

Apparently Franken needed reminding that Minnesotans are his constituents; he reversed his vote when someone apparently reminded him of this factoid:

But when the citizens of Minnesota were in danger of being directly and substantially harmed, Mr. Franken suddenly became “concerned.”…

U.S. iron ore production is concentrated in Michigan and Minnesota…

Australia is in the midst of an economic boom right now, due in significant part to the expansion of its mining industry.

And how’s the Iron Range doing these days?

Now – let’s place some odds on whether MPR, the Strib or the MinnPost ever cover this story.

Question: will the media force Elizabeth Warren – putatively the Democrat second choice after Hillary! – to meet with Cherokee women who’d like to talk with her about her phony claim to being a member of their tribe?

And profiting from it?

(Answer: Sure they will.  When they get done holding Ryan Winkler accountable for turning a SCOTUS justice into Stepin Fetchit).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Damn that Fernandez, he always says things so much better than I could.

This time, it’s about why Obama isn’t stopping Putin. Best paragraph:

“One of the most ironic things about the Obama presidency is that Yes We Can hasn’t even been replaced by No We Won’t. It has shriveled to No We Can’t.”

A President who doesn’t have the guts to take on the Sierra Club isn’t going to make an ex-KGB man quake in his boots. Or even a chinless ophthalmologist. If everybody knows you’re not willing to use the stick, there’s no point is speaking at all.

Joe Doakes

Well, to be fair, the citizens require so much supervision that it’s hard to spare much effort for overseas “enemies”.

Only 40% of Minnesotans think Al Franken is good enough or smart enough, according to this poll.

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG is walking his dog down Grand Avenue in Saint Paul.   He’s walking past an organic car repair shop when Avery LIBRELLE walks out, almost bumping into BERG).

LIBRELLE:  Merg!  Hah! I woke up this morning thinking “Merg must be feeling sad today! Obamacare is a huge success!”

BERG:  Well, it’s not really…

LIBRELLE:  Which bums you out more, Merg – that more people weren’t insured, or that less weren’t?

BERG:  Well, I’m just trying to figure out what all the happiness is about.

LIBRELLE:   Seven million subscribers!

BERG:  Let’s assume the Administration is giving real numbers.  That’s seven milion people who’ve signed up.  Not seven million paid, issued policies.  But if you put it up against the five million people wholosttheir coverage over the past year, that means we’re up a net two million – assuming they all actually pay their premiums, which all of them will not.

LIBRELLE:  You’re just jealous that no Republican healthcare plan gets people lining up for it!

BERG:  Wait – you say that’s a good thing!

LIBRELLE:  When people line up to buy something, that means it’s popular.    Like an iPhone!

BERG:  If that analogy held up – if Obamacare is extremely popular – then they’d have been waiting in line last October, when the plans first hit the market.  This is like people waiting in line to buy iPhone 3s before they go out of production.

LIBRELLE:  That’s stupid!  Nobody would do that!

BERG:  Unless it was your only shot at getting a phone, and you were going to wind up without a phone if you waited another day.  The “lines” had less in common with these…:

HyPsTrZ at the sacrament of unveiling.

…and much more in common with these…:

Waiting for bread in Moscow, 1980s

…or these:

Minnesota clinic, 2018. Just kidding – it’s a DMV line.

People trying to get something before an onerous deadline makes it impossible.

LIBRELLE:  Wow.  You’re a real debbie downer.

BERG:  As always, I’m a realist.  The Administration is trying to put lipstick on a dead pig in time to save the Democrats in time for the mid-terms.

LIBRELLE:  Hey – you used the word Democrat!  You hate women and their children!

(And SCENE)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Must be getting closer to an election, or something. Being pelted with emails from Senator Franken telling me how busy he has been. Yeah? Doing what, senator?

Fourth Annual Minnesota Hot Dish Cookoff. I won’t even comment on a silly PR stunt.

Banning Stalking Apps. Al’s concerned that smart phone apps track your location and that info can be shared with God knows who. He wants Congress to ban those apps. Honestly, Al, I’m a lot less concerned about Google tracking my movements than I am about NSA tracking me, reading my texts, listening to my conversations, and sharing that info with God knows who. Focus on your government oversight duties, please.

Still fighting the Comcast-Time Warner deal because it might result in consumers having fewer choices, higher prices and lousy service. Sorry, Al, you’ve been pre-empted by the City Council, who granted Comcast a monopoly franchise for all of St. Paul so consumers already have no choice, high prices and lousy service. Your services are not required.

Ensuring No Minnesota Child Is Denied School Lunch Because They Can’t Afford It. I’m sorry, did something change in the 40 years since I was a kid? Because we had free lunch for poor families back in my day. Seriously, Al, if you and your DFL buddies have been waging a war on poverty for two generations and still can’t get a handle on something as simple as school lunch, I have grave doubt about the usefulness of the entire program. Again, not seeing an Article I problem here. Not seeing where the Founding Fathers gave the enumerated power to Congress to oversee middle school Char-Burger On Bun With Lukewarm Milk.

Frankly, Senator Franken, it looks as if you’re keeping yourself artificially busy with make-work to avoid doing any real work. What with the Fast and Furious, IRS, NSA and Benghazi scandals, don’t you guys in Congress have enough legitimate work to do? Or are you avoiding that work because you’re terrified of what might happen to the DFL if you actually did your jobs?

Joe Doakes

I think “terror” fits the bill, yes.

News:  Mayor of Charlotte, NC arrested, charged with public corruption and accepting bribes:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon, who has been in office less than six months, resigned Wednesday, just hours after he was arrested and accused of taking more than $48,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen who wanted to do work with North Carolina’s largest city.

Not News:  The fact that Cannon is a Democrat is buried in the middle of Paragraph 2.

News:  A California State Senator who helped author California’s latest draconian gun control laws – was arrested yesterday, accused of trying to trade guns for influence:

In San Francisco, FBI agents have charged California State Sen. Leland Yee with conspiracy to deal firearms and wire fraud. The allegations were outlined in an FBI affidavit against Yee and 25 others. The allegations against Yee include a number of favors he requested in exchange for campaign donations, as well as performing “official acts” in exchange for donations to get himself out of a $70,000 debt incurred during a failed San Francisco mayoral bid, according to court documents.

Yee discussed helping the undercover FBI agent get weapons worth $500,000 to $2.5 million, including shoulder-fired automatic weapons and missiles, and showed the agent the entire process of how to get those weapons from a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines into the United States, according to an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Emmanuel V. Pascua.

Not news:  It took to paragraph 7 to note that Yee is a Democrat.

…may be to just let them be lefties for a while. 

Then watch the hilarity.

Over this past nine months, conservative groups have railed against the Lightworker’s Administration’s abuse of the IRS to suppress conservative political activity.

Of course, if you live in Minnesota, you’re used to this.  The “Campaign Finance Board” has been a cudgel used against (mostly conservative) grassroots groups since its inception.

But the Dayton Administration is doing its best to make things worse:

As we’ve learned, the IRS under the Obama Administration has been weaponized against conservative non-profits in an effort to stifle opposition speech, but that’s not the only avenue of attack. A partisan bill was introduced in the Minnesota Legislature, but ultimately defeated last year that would impose onerous new regulations on grassroots organizations like Minnesota Majority, Tea Party groups and numerous other non-profits

It’s back this year and it contains all manner of vague, subjective language (like “clearly;” “reasonable;” and “biased,” that will allow a small 6-member board, appointed by the governor to determine who has violated the proposed new campaign finance laws and who has not. “Bias” is often in the eye of the beholder. In this case, it’s up to the governor to determine who the “beholders” are.

The bills involved appear to revive some of the worst, dumbest, most turn-free-speech-into-crime-ifying aspects of the late, unlamented McCain-Feingold law:

HF1944/SF1915 proposes to create “free speech zones” on the calendar, allowing the state to determine when grassroots groups can engage in unfettered speech and when such speech would be regulated.

In other words, putting bureaucrats in charge of when and, inevitably, how you may “speak freely”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The reason we have so many potholes is not that the St. Paul City Council pisses away money on frivolous projects while the streets decay; it’s the state and federal government’s fault.
“There’s a lot of potholes out there, and it’s kind of indicative of the condition of the street as a whole … the last time it was reconstructed or overlaid,” said [St. Paul City Engineer Jerry] Maczko, who added that state and federal lawmakers share some blame for potholes. “And it’s amazing how people don’t make that connection.  We’ve got our usual suspects in our streets that are old streets that need to be reconstructed,” Maczko continued. “At the federal level, at the state level, engineers have been saying we need funding for our infrastructure. Well, it’s not happening. … It’s a safety issue for the drivers and for our employees to be out there fixing that stuff.”
But the State Legislature is controlled by Democrats, as is the Federal Congress.  Democrats Care About People so it can’t be their fault. There’s only one conclusion:

Damn that George Bush!

Joe Doakes

There’ve been a lot of “think tanks” and “non-profits” touting “studies” about the “need for infrastructure investment”. They all sound a little like the Samoan Lawyer in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senator Al Franken sends me an electronic newsletter periodically, letting me know what he’s up to. It’s the digital equivalent of the Franking Privilege. Let’s see how he’s been doing, shall we?

“What Will Comcast-Time Warner Deal Mean For Your Cable Bill?” The Senator is worried that Comcast is getting too big, that consumers will have fewer choices, higher costs and poorer service. He wants a Senate hearing to jaw-jaw about it, the implication being maybe government should block the deal so consumers would have more choice and the free market competition would force competitors to provide better service at lower cost. Great theory, Senator, except the City Council has already pre-empted you by granting Comcast a monopoly on cable television service in this city. Not seeing a federal problem here nor a federal power to regulate it. You’re wasting your time holding hearings.

“Helping Alleviate the Propane Shortage.” It’s cold, more people are using propane for home heat, increased demand is forcing prices up which people complained about to Senator Franken and he passed along those complaints. In response, the administration ordered pipeline operators to divert propane shipments and also relaxed trucking regulations so propane delivery truck drivers could drive longer hours. In other words, there are no more cubic feet of propane than before you butted into the free market, but you helped relocate the shortage while making the highways less safe. Looks as if the government intervened to make things worse.

“Protecting Minnesotans Right to Privacy.” Senator Franken wrote: “I believe Americans have a fundamental right to privacy, and that right includes the ability to control who is getting your personal information and who it’s being shared with.” I was excited to read that – finally, a Democrat who thinks the NSA is overstepping its bounds and Obama-care is a data privacy disaster. But no, he’s worried that somebody wearing Google Glass can run a facial recognition app that will identify strangers on the street and search the web for information about that person such as phone number, address and possibly dating preferences. Geez, Al, my brain runs a facial recognition app 24/7 and when it sees somebody it recognizes, my memory searches for their phone number and address while my GayDar detects dating preferences. The difference is the Google system is far more reliable than my aging brain. Not really seeing an Article I power here, I suggest you concentrate on oversight duties by protecting Minnesotans’ fundamental right to privacy . . . from the government.

“Farm Bill is Finally Law.” Yes, Comrade, we have a new Trillion Dollar Five Year Plan to Increase Agricultural Production. And I’m certain it will work as well as any of its predecessors to funnel money into winners’ pockets while shucking money from losers. It’s too early to tell who will be the winners. What we know for sure is the American taxpayer will be $1,000,000,000,000.00 poorer at the end of it. On the other hand, being just 83 miles from Eau Claire won’t affect my milk price anymore, so that’s a step in the right direction. I’m reserving judgment on the new plan until we see just how good or bad it turns out to be.

Joe Doakes

Since I started blogging, I can’t read through politicians’ communications without tearing ’em apart, either.

I’d like to address this to this blog’s Democrat readers – especially of the “Progressive” variety.

You’ve got to be bummed.

I mean, your guy Obama was elected in 2008 – but he got elected in large part because he positioned himself as a “moderate”. 

And what are you looking at in 2016?  Hillary?  A moderate, Democrat-Leadership-Conference holdover!

If you care about true progressivism, your one true choice is clear. 

Bernie Sanders For President. 

And I am here to help you. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We’re winning. The Obama administration is repealing Obama-care for us, one rule at a time.

Pretty soon, it’ll almost be like there was nothing really there all these years. 

Like…an empty suit or something. 

Yeah.  That’s it.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is picking up cat food at the grocery store.  Avery LIBRELLE, carrying a case of kombucha, walks past, sees BERG, and stops. 

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!   University Avenue is about to get a $1.4 Billion dollar tax cut!

BERG:  (Looking for a graceful way out) Um, what now?

LIBRELLE:  The Green Line light rail is rebating 1.4 billion dollars worth of local, state and federal taxes to the consumer of Saint Paul!

BERG:  Um, we’re spending a billion and change on a light rail line. 

LIBRELLE:   Right – the taxes were paid, and then the money is being sent back to the taxpayer in the form of rail!  It’s a tax cut!

BERG:  That’s absurd. 

LIBRELLE:  And MNSure is tens of millions of taxpayer dollars being returned to Minnesota’s healthcare consumers. 

BERG:  And Information Technology companies, and business consultants.

LIBRELLE:  Exactly!  All of them are benefitting from the Tax Cuts!

BERG:  None of these are tax cuts.  All of them are government taking money from some people, and giving it to others…

LIBRELLE:   …you’re a sore loser, Merg!   Why, look at the tax cuts we’re giving to the working poor!

BERG:  “Tax cuts?”  You hiked the budget $2.1 Billion, and took over a billion extra out of the economy, and the DFL’s idea of a “tax cut” is to give a few million back to people to reinforce their DFL votes?

LIBRELLE:  Blah blah blah!  It’s tax money, and someone is getting it back!

BERG:  So giving hundreds of millions of tax dollars to Zygi Wilf is a “tax cut?”

LIBRELLE:   Is it tax money?  Is someone getting it?  It’s a tax cut!

BERG:   So the CIA and the SEALS gave Osama Bin Laden a “tax cut” when they killed him?

LIBRELLE:   Don’t be absurd!  They lowered the unemployment rate!

(And SCENE)

A service to my fellow conservatives as we head into another election season.

DFLer Question:  “Do you think we should care about the poor, and raise the minimum wage?”

Conservative’s Answer: “It’ll just make more poor people.  Now, let’s talk about MNSure”.

DFLer Question:  “Are you supporting tax breaks for millionaires to bring the Super Bowl to Minnesota?”

Conservative’s Answer: “No.  Let’s talk about MNSure”.

DFLer Question:  “Have you noticed that the DFL is leading the way to lower taxes?”

Conservative’s Answer: “You’re “lowering”sometaxes back to where the GOP left them in 2012.  Now, let’s talk about MNSure”. 

DFLer Question:  “Do you support the DFL’s setting up a small business investment fund?”

Conservative’s Answer: “The DFL raised taxes by $2 Billion, but is letting businesses borrow some of the money back?  That’s almost as stupid as MNSure.  Speaking of which, let’s talk about MNSure”. 

DFLer Question:  “What do you think about bullying?”

Conservative’s Answer: “Does MNSure make it harder and more expensive to treat the victims?”

DFLer Question:  “How about gay marriage?”

Conservative’s Answer: “Are those gay couples having a hard time finding healthcare via MNSure, too?”

UPDATE:  A few new ones, from the comments:

DFLer Question:  “You’re a racist and hate women”.

Conservative’s Answer: “Nope, and there is none.  Let’s talk MNSure”. 

DFLer Question:  Koch brothers!

Conservative’s Answer: “MNSure!” 

DFLer Question:  “Faux News!  Faux News!  Faux News!”

Conservative’s Answer: “MNSure MNSure MNSure!”.