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?)

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.

Bright and early this morning on MPR, I heard Cathy Wurzer talking with former MNCD8 Representative Jim Oberstar.

It goes without saying the guy became a slippery wonk over his five decades in DC.

But it was his closing line that stuck with me; it should go up there with Cy Thao’s classic “When you guys win,  you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money“, or Larry Pogemiller’s “It’s silly to think people can spend their money better than government can“.

Asked about the criticisms he’d taken as for being seen as a porkmonger, he replied (I’m paraphrasing as closely as I can; I’ll try to get the audio after work today):

To all of them, I say – don’t drive on Highway 17.  Don’t drive on Highway 8. Don’t drive on Highway 61.  Don’t drive on [this bridge], or [that bridge], or [some other bridge].  Don’t drive on any of the things you criticized.  Follow your principles.

“Representative” Oberstar, by your imperial leave; I paid for them.  So did taxpayers in Manhattan and Mississippi, in Oregon and Ohio.  We paid for those roads, for your bike paths, the Great Lakes Marine Research Institute, the North Star Commuter Rail line, and all the millions upon millions of dollars of other spending you inveigled for your district.

You didn’t pay for it.

We did.

And I will drive on any f*****g highway I want, whether I agree with its rationale or not.  I will ride on the bike paths I criticized you for.  I will go to the ice cream social or whatever they do at the GLMRI, and drive over those bridges – maybe back and forth a few times, like a kid playing on an escalator.  Come to think of it, if I can find any escalators built with your pork-barrelling, I’ll ride ’em until security tells me to stop.

Because I paid for them.  Against my will, in some cases; more than I’d have paid, in others; with my muted assent in still others. And since I paid for them – and since you were my employee (or would have been, had I lived in the 8th CD), I will not only not ask your permission, I may even take pictures of myself doing it, and send them to you, just to gall you.

So go curl up at the Humphrey Institute, and go away.

By your imperial leave.

Katie Kieffer on  the mixed messages Obama is sending China – aka “America’s Lienholder”:

Mixed messages are useful if we want confuse, frustrate or anger another country. They are not useful in diplomacy or relationship-building. Mixed messages are dangerous because they make the U.S. appear weak and untrustworthy. Here are some of the mixed messages that we’ve given China, our biggest debtor and whose central bank owns $896 billion in Treasury bonds:

What, you think I’m doing to just paste the whole thing?  Read the post.

How cool must it be to be in Wisconsin right now?  All-GOP executive and legislative branches?

Scott Walker taunts Illinois:

The Open for Business road signs will be placed along the state roadway border crossings, where the state has traditionally touted the name of the current Governor.

“These signs proudly proclaim Wisconsin is open for business,” said Governor Walker. “Along with the symbolic nature of these signs, there are going to be substantive changes to the way our state government treats job creators. The pro-growth initiatives I support stand in stark contrast to those policies being discussed in our bordering states. These signs are aimed directly at job creators to make them aware that they are welcome here. As our neighbor states make it more difficult for private employers to create jobs, they can ‘Escape to Wisconsin .’”

Hope it works.  It’d be fun to teach hamsters like Illinois – and Mark Dayton – a lesson.

Forbes says F the Twin Cities are the number four Job Market in the US:

“The Twin Cities, and Minnesota in general, has a much more diverse economy than many other parts of the nation,” said Vang. “While our heart goes out to all those individuals who are unemployed right now, our economy tends not to be as hurt as bad as nationally because we are never dependent on one sector. We didn’t extend ourselves as far out during the home mortgage crisis as other cities did so that gave us more breathing room for our economy to return.”

Hmmmm.

Of course, the market isn’t great for everyone:

One of the thousands hoping for an economic recovery is Riordan Frost, 22, of St. Paul. Eight months after college graduation, Frost is still looking for…

For what?

…a public policy job.

“Left college with high hopes, thinking ‘here I am world,’ and it turn out that way, sadly,” he said.

Maybe young Mr. Frost will take the opportunity to find a career someplace other than trying to run society.  At age twenty freaking two.

Frost tried plan B, which was looking for retail jobs and a job at movie theatres — all without luck. He is now working as an unpaid intern at the MN 2020 organization as a transportation policy associate.

Or maybe not.

Anyway – DAMN YOU, Governor Pawlenty.

The state of Illinois is experiencing the fiscal shit storm of the century. Minnesota isn’t far behind.

The difference? There’s a chance Minnesotans won’t get the shaft like like our friends in Illinois just did.

Our hard-won and just-in-time GOP majority, if our elected representatives stay true to their mission, will force a different tact in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn defended a massive increase in state income taxes passed by lawmakers Wednesday and promised to quickly sign the measure to help heal the state’s ailing finances.

Lawmakers worked overnight to pass the increase to raise the personal income tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent for four years — a 66 percent increase. Corporate income taxes also will rise, but Quinn rejected the notion that it would decimate businesses.

Then again, that’s not the point. The point is that governments both State and Federal will continue to spend beyond their means as long as they know that they can always raise taxes down the road.

The rate increase might be the biggest any state has adopted in percentage terms while grappling with recent economic woes. Nevertheless, Illinois’ tax rate would remain lower than in several other states in the region.

Some comfort that must be. They’re less worst.

“It’s important for their state government not to be a fiscal basket case,” Quinn told reporters outside his Capitol office.

Legislative leaders rushed early Wednesday to pass the politically risky plan before a new General Assembly was sworn in at noon, taking a slice out of the Democratic majority and removing lame-duck lawmakers willing to support the tax before leaving office.

Nice move. Screw the people and vacate.

The tax increase will be coupled with strict 2 percent limits on spending growth. If officials spend above those limits, the tax increase will automatically be canceled. The plan’s supporters warned that rising pension and health care costs probably will eat up all the spending allowed by the caps, forcing cuts in other areas of government.

Here’s a novel idea. How about a spending freeze? Everyone else has had to do so. Why not government?

House Speaker Michael Madigan said Republicans should have supported some parts of the plan instead of voting against everything. The proposal passed the House on Tuesday night 60-57, the bare minimum. No Republicans backed the measure there or in the Senate, where the measure passed 30-29.”They’re on the sidelines. They don’t want to get on the field of play,” the Chicago Democrat said. “I’m happy that the day has ended.”

But Republicans noted they were not included in negotiations. They also fundamentally reject the idea of raising taxes after years of spending growth.

…but there apparently weren’t enough of them to prevail. Luckily for Minnesota, we painted our House and Senate Red just in time.

“We’re saying to the people of Illinois, `For eight years we’ve overspent, now we’re going to make it your problem,'” said Rep. Roger Eddy. “We’re making up for our mistakes on your back.”

The increase means an Illinois resident who now owes $1,000 in state income taxes will pay $1,666 at the new rate. After four years, the rate drops to 3.75 percent and that same taxpayer will then owe $1,250.

Republicans predict the tax eventually will be made permanent.

That ladies and gentlemen is what we call “The Slippery Slope.”

“It’s a cruel hoax to play on citizens to say this is temporary,” said House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego.

Funny how that works for liberals. Tax cuts are always temporary. Tax increases are always permanent.

Republicans also accused Democrats of doing irreparable harm to Illinois families and businesses. Business leaders decried the proposal as a job-killer.

“Based on this particular legislation the only businesses that will benefit are the moving companies that will be helping many of my members move out of this particular state,” said Gregory Baise, head of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association.

I suppose having a sense of humor has served him well lately.

Governors of some neighboring states quickly jumped on the issue. Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who took office last week has already proposed a tax cut for businesses that relocate to Wisconsin from other states, invited companies to head north.

Atta boy. I’m still coveting.

“Years ago Wisconsin had a tourism advertising campaign targeted to Illinois with the motto, ‘Escape to Wisconsin,'” Walker said Wednesday in a statement. “Today we renew that call to Illinois businesses, ‘Escape to Wisconsin.’ You are welcome here.”

“And we won’t tax you up the wazoo!”

Quinn scoffed at the notion. “Lots of luck to them, but that’s not going to happen.”

Except for the fact that it already is.

Democrats also bristled at being blamed for the state’s financial problems, although they’ve controlled the governor’s office and both legislative chambers since 2003.

Thank God that never happens in Minnesota (crosses fingers).

Barry is selling it but not everyone is buying his form of plagiarism.

President Barack Obama said U.S. job growth is improving after a government report showed employers added 103,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent in December from 9.8 percent in November.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama today credited steps taken by his administration to reduce taxes and encourage business investment with helping to restore economic confidence and boost hiring.

Really Barry? Steps taken by your administration are responsible for discouraging people from looking for jobs?

A little perspective might be indicated at this juncture, with all due respect, Mr. President:

Although the jobless rate dropped substantially to 9.4% in December from 9.8% a month earlier, the Labor Department said Friday, employers increased payrolls by only 103,000. Economists say that is barely enough to keep up with natural growth in the labor force. Much faster employment and enduring job gains—on the order of 200,000 jobs a month—are needed for lasting improvement.

The decline in the jobless rate, paradoxically, was partly a sign of economic weakness—many people have given up on finding jobs, and thus were not counted as unemployed. Some 8.4 million jobs were shed during the recession, and in 2010 just 1.1 million were added.

Between you and a Congress that was almost gutted of your ilk in November, you’ve spent billions and billions of dollars that we don’t have…sacrificing our nation’s very solvency to create a few hundred thousand jobs when millions and millions have been lost?

Employers in the U.S. added fewer jobs than forecast in December, confirming Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s view that it could take “four to five more years” for the labor market to completely mend.

…and that may be just as optimistic and his assertions that the latent, yet unrealized effect of the trillions of “quantitative easing” will be quite manageable down the road.

Payrolls increased 103,000, less than the median projection of 150,000 in a Bloomberg News survey, Labor Department figures showed yesterday in Washington. The jobless rate fell to 9.4 percent, partly reflecting a shrinking workforce as discouraged Americans stopped looking for work. [emphasis mine-JR]

Lest we not forget why those [JR does that thing with your fingers that denotes quote-unquote] “steps” were taken by [again] “his administration.”

Mr. Obama attributed increasingly optimistic economic forecasts in part to the deal he negotiated last month with Republicans to extend Bush-era tax rates for all, along with unemployment benefits, a payroll-tax cut and assorted other tax breaks.

A deal decried by liberals. A deal that was essentially forced upon him. A move that Obama could have made two years ago had he truly been focused on jobs then.

It is a product of the aforementioned “shellacking” (in the President’s words no less) in November coupled with a sashay to the middle to save what little is left in his political capital account.

President Obama may owe former President Bill Clinton a few finder’s fees, considering all the former Clinton aides he’s been bringing into his administration to help him get through the next two years and win a second term.

Maybe my title should be “Back-Peddler in Chief.”

Pat yourself on the butt Mr. President.

Mission Accomplished.

Oops.  Sorry about the “rhetoric”.  Gotta watch me – I’m a loose cannon…

…DOH!  I mean, I’m a ticking time bomb…

AAAAAGH! I mean “I’m on Janet Napolitano’s Watch List because of  my beliefs”.  Whew.  OK.  Made it.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  The Minnesota Legislative session.

Back during the campaign, when I’d do appearances at campaign fundraisers and the like, I frequently signed off my brief talks with challenges to everyone there; to the voters, the challenge was “on November 3,  your work really begins; you’ll need to keep these candidates true to their promises”.  And to the candidates, it was an allusion to the legend of the Spartans, to told departing warriors “come back with your shield, or on it“…

DOH!  Sorry – another bit of inflammatory rhetoric!  Paul Krugman will be displeased!

Breathe.  Center.  OK.

The bit of rhetoric, in context, is generally understood to mean “fight the good fight, politically; don’t put your re-election ahead of the princples for which we’re sending you to Saint Paul”.

It’s good to see the GOP legislative majority is making its first moves this week.  We’ve got two bits of news to report.

More Nukes!:  With energy prices spiking just in time for the hardest winter in decades, it’s perhaps great timing for the GOP to push for the repeal of Minnesota’s dim-witted 17-year-old “moratorium” on nuclear power plants.

Bills to end the 17-year ban will be introduced today in the House and Senate, with a House committee scheduled to vote on the proposal Tuesday. The chief sponsors will be state Rep. Joyce Peppin, R-Rogers, and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, R-Buffalo.

With new Republican majorities in both bodies, the legislation is expected to pass easily. Then its fate would be up to Gov. Mark Dayton, who has opposed the effort because there’s still no plan to deal with the highly radioactive nuclear waste generated at those plants.

And of course, that’s wrong; there is a plan.  It’s merely been gundecked – DOH, sorry, I mean it’s been sabotaged by generations of soggy-headed environmentalists who apparently prefer coal power, or energy-starved poverty, to nuclear power.  “Environmentalists”, inevitably, from the DFL and their farm team, the Greens.  “Environmentalist” like Paul Aasen, Dayton’s pick to head the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, a man who targets – AAAGH – job creation and economic growth as remorselessly as Sarah Palin targets a caribou.

Both parties agree it would take years for a new plant to be approved and built. But they differ on the impact of the legislation and the need.

Republicans contend the ban, put in place in 1994 as part of a package allowing dry-cask nuclear-waste storage, must be lifted to allow serious planning to begin. Many Democrats say utilities can do that now; they just can’t act on it.

I bolded that last bit there; doesn’t that sound like someone who looooves regulation, and has not the faintest sympathy for people who actually accomplish things?  Can’t you see them giggling about that at their after-session soiree?

Xcel Energy, which owns the Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants, has said it has no plans for another nuclear plant.

Which might have something to do with the moratorium currently in effect…

Republicans contend there’s a greater need for the added baseload electrical generation capacity than Democrats will concede.

Democrats also have argued that ratepayers should be protected from immediate construction costs and overruns.

“I’m really concerned about our energy needs in the future,” Peppin said.

Democrats said they’re surprised Republicans are putting such an emphasis on lifting the ban.

“I’m surprised that with the huge challenges that we are facing … that that is one of the priorities they are pursuing as one of their top issues,” said Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, the House minority leader.

I can see where it might surprise Thissen.

Someone who is actually concerned with real economic growth, on the other hand, might see where inexpensive domestic power might be important for companies that are contemplating doing business in a place that is, frankly, chilly.  Perhaps the DFL believes heat comes from the Heat Fairy; most of us know better.

Jobs Jobs Jobs:  At 2PM – two hours after this post appears – the GOP Caucuses will be announcing their legislative jobs plan.  No details are available as this is written.  Stay tuned.

The financial crisis is over!  Our bank system is sound!

Seriously!

The FDIC has nothing better to do than harass banks that display Christian seasonal imagery!

Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Perkins last week. And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say “Merry Christmas, God With Us.” were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank’s Internet site also had to be taken down.

“I don’t think there should be a problem with them displaying whatever religious symbols they want to display,” said Amy Weierman, a Perkins resident.

Specifically, the feds believed, the symbols violated the discouragement clause of Regulation B of the bank regulations. According to the clause, “…the use of words, symbols, models and other forms of communication … express, imply or suggest a discriminatory preference or policy of exclusion.”

Of course, now that the Feds and, soon, the UN will be regulating what goes on the Internet, I’m sure I’ll have to start wishing people a happy freaking “Festivus” before too long.

A tax hike is averted, but only for two years – not enough time or certainty to “create” jobs but certainly better than a tax increase.

Majorities of both parties supported the bill. Voting in favor were 139 Democrats and 138 Republicans, while 112 Democrats and 36 Republicans voted against it. Eight lawmakers didn’t vote.

The tax-cut plan extends through 2012 all Bush-era tax reductions on income, capital gains and dividends. It continues expanded unemployment insurance benefits through 2011, cuts payroll taxes by 2 percentage points during 2011 and lets businesses write off 100 percent of capital investments between Sept. 9, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2011.

Classic Pelosi:

“I’m sorry for the price that has to be paid by our children and our grandchildren to the Chinese government to pay for the increase in the deficit that the Republicans insisted upon.”

We’ve recently covered this ground before but Nancy is fooling almost no one. The government creates a deficit by spending money it doesn’t have and in this case money it was never going to have and in either case is not entitled to. Voters made that clear to everyone but Nancy Pelosi.

Some early reactions:

The tax-cut deal, along with larger-than-projected gains in U.S. retail sales, prompted economists to raise their forecasts for gross domestic product and consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy.

Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, increased his 2011 growth forecast half a percentage point to 3.1 percent. Tom Porcelli, a senior economist at RBC Capital Markets Corp. in New York, raised his by one percentage point, also to 3.1 percent.

Deutsche Bank Securities economists, led by Joseph LaVorgna, said the tax agreement would increase inflation- adjusted growth by 0.7 percentage point, to a 4 percent annual rate for the fourth quarter of next year.

Only after the fact will we find out what earmarks were hidden in the 1900 pages but for now the passage of this bill brings short-term stability for taxpayers, many of which have been planning all year for higher taxes next year.

In light of this, it will be interesting to see if there will be a last minute boost to holiday shopping – I predict that very thing.

…for attorneys and consultants that is.

As for the rest of you, not so much.

Barack Obama just finished a summit with twenty US CEO’s urging them to get off the sidelines, spend their hoards of cash and start hiring.

President Barack Obama pressed 20 corporate chief executives Wednesday to suggest policies that would spur them to “start investing in job creating enterprises.”

Hey Barry, I got an idea for you if they didn’t come up with it: ask congress to repeal what is left of your shitty health care reform bill.

Big employers faced with incorporating the first round of health-care changes next month are grappling with how to comply with the long list of new rules.

Many companies are hiring consultants to help sort though the mountain of new mandates, which include extending dependent coverage to children up to age 26, and may eventually result in covering more employees. Some are also considering changes to their plans—including pushing costs to workers.

Might they have instead invested these resources in job creating enterprises or hiring new employees?

Maybe, just maybe had you focused on jobs instead of ramming socialized health care down America’s throat you wouldn’t be in such a pickle. How’s that national unemployment rate going for you Barry? Are you excited about your chances in 2012?

Today the national unemployment rate hovers near where it began the year, just shy of 10 percent.

It’s funny how liberals do everything they can to short circuit capitalism and then ask the capitalists to clean up their mess.

And in the end, those they claim to serve end up paying the price via lost jobs, wages, or both.

The Bush tax rates were put in effect in 2001.

…and yet the government and most politicians are calling the current efforts to extend those rates and provisions tax cuts.

The “cuts” happened in 2001. Nine years went by. Anything other than extending these rates is a tax hike. Got it?

It would be different if it had been a few months or a couple years but I think it is fair and reasonable to say that rates in effect for nine years have become the de facto norm. The fact that they had an expiration date doesn’t change that for anyone that actually pays taxes – which is only about 53% of us these days, last I heard.

Senate leaders released an agreement crafted by the White House and Republicans to sustain Bush-era tax rates through 2012, set the estate tax at the lowest rate in 80 years, extend jobless aid and cut payroll taxes by 2 percentage points.

The legislation would add $857 billion to the federal debt over 10 years, government analysts said.

Another semantic error there folks. This legislation will not add anything to the federal debt. Federal spending above current revenue is what will add to the federal debt. Out-of-control spending. Wasteful spending. Spending tagged with the misnomer “investment” or “stimulus.”

No doubt, calculations of the billions that will be added to the federal debt are erroneously, arrogantly based on the premise that the revenue resulting from a future tax hike has already been spent.

Don’t even think about trying to tell us what this is going to “cost” the government. The extension will not “cost” the government anything. More and more Americans are waking up and and telling the federal government that it was not the government’s money in the first place.

A two-year extension of those rates would cost $407.6 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Listen, no one in the next five years, let alone the next two should be considering rasing taxes for anyone.

While short term fiscal and monetary policy that serves to increase liquidity is widely considered a good strategy, lowering taxes is the only proven strategy, in the long run, to stimulate growth. Continuing to flood our system with worthless dollars will not incent employers to hire any more than the last trillion – only lowering expenses and stabilizing the outlook on taxes for the long run will give employers the confidence to hire again. The continued efforts on the part of the fed to further reduce the value of the dollar via “quantitative easing” is politically motivated and will have no effect on unemployment.

You can be sure of one thing. The only reason Barack Obama and his rejected liberal posse are going along with anything resembling what they  deem a “tax cut” for taxpayers earning more than $250K is that they have no politically palatable options to do otherwise.

Elections do matter.

It might amaze you that even in this flaccid employment market, some workers choose to gamble their job.

Rick Raymond parked his black Kia SUV behind a row of trees and peered out at his target. It was 4 a.m. on a recent morning, and Raymond—a seasoned private detective who has worked roughly 300 cases, from thieves to philandering spouses—was closing in on a different sort of prey.

Playing hooky without getting caught—as immortalized in the cat-and-mouse skirmish between Ferris Bueller and Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—used to be an adolescent rite of passage. Now it has given rise to a thriving industry, with stern legal precedent to back it up.

…and that industry, the surveillance they conduct and the terminations that are a result are backed by legal precedent – you sue you lose.

But what do you think?

…the President assertions that:

1) The stimulus didn’t work because it wasn’t big enough

2) What we need is more spending

3) And higher taxes

Are

1) Wrong, 2) Wrong and 3) Wrong.

economic theory, history and statistical studies reveal that more taxes and spending are more likely to harm than help the economy. Those who demand spending control and oppose tax hikes hold the intellectual high ground.

Which tickles just a bit as surely President Obama has staked out the intellectual high ground, right?

Using powerful statistical methods to separate these effects in U.S. data, Andrew Mountford of the University of London and Harald Uhlig of the University of Chicago conclude that the small initial spending multiplier turns negative by the start of the second year.

Sound familiar?

government purchases have a GDP impact far smaller in New Keynesian than Old Keynesian models and quickly crowd out the private sector. They estimate the effect of the February 2009 stimulus at a puny 0.2% of GDP by now.

That’s two tenths of a percent.

By contrast, the last two major tax cuts—President Reagan’s in 1981-83 and President George W. Bush’s in 2003—boosted growth. They lowered marginal tax rates and were longer lasting…tax cuts have been far more likely to increase growth than has more spending.

Read it. It’s a bit technical, but it serves to reveal a President whose recently and soundly rejected policies are founded not in economic efficacy rather at best, in ignorance and at worst, and most likely, in an arrogant, transparent and desperate attempt to further his extreme liberal ideology.

While the rest of the world’s economy spits and sputters, Canada’s makin’ bacon like nobody’s business, recovering from the world’s recession more convincingly than any other developed nation. Now, having gained a chip in the world economic game, they want to cash it in.

“When countries feel confident they tend to assert their national interests,” says Perry Spitznagel, vice-chair of law firm Bennett Jones LLP and organizer of a business forum last week titled “Canada Rising: Our Future as a Global Economic Leader.”

Down the road, experts say, Canada might use its newfound muscle in any number of ways, from demanding better treatment in trade deals with the U.S. to taking a leading role in the development of oil and other resources in the Arctic.

Ahhh. Hmmmm. I see.

My seasoned, thoughtful analysis: I can’t believe anyone lives North of International Falls.

…its that they are bloated and inefficient too, and surprisingly, at least for now, airports can tell them, the TSA, to leave.

Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead. The push is being led by a powerful Florida congressman who’s a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration and counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA’s place.

And it’s not just because of the national attention that their roaming hands are garnering on the news and on the web.

“I think we could use half the personnel and streamline the system,” Mica said Wednesday, calling the TSA a bloated bureaucracy.

the top executive at the Orlando-area’s second-largest airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, said he plans to begin the process of switching to private screeners in January

“I am a frequent air traveler and I have experienced … TSA agents who have let the power go to their head,” Erickson said. “You can complain about those people, but very rarely does the bureaucracy work quickly enough to remove those people from their positions.”

Is this yet another sector that could be performed better, faster, cheaper than by the government?

You mention “urban theorists”, and not a few conservatives roll their eyes and snort “…another ivory-tower wannabe slurper-at-the-public faucet”.  Not without considerable justification, mind you.

I’ll ask the conservative reader to suspend his/her instincts in re Joel Kotkin, a Stanford demographer whose demographic and economic theories acknowledge the reality that people operating in pursuit of their own enlightened self-interest will develop patterns of living and working that defy the efforts of utopian urban planners.

More – much more – on that as the next legislative session gets under way.

Kotkin’s latest big effort, from earlier this week, was in Forbes, and  covers California’s extended economic tailspin, and the rise of pro-business states like Texas, and the political currents behind both.

Perhaps you’ve heard – California is America’s Greece:

In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.

California has drifted far away from the place that John Gunther described in 1946 as “the most spectacular and most diversified American state … so ripe, golden.”  Instead of a role model, California  has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country’s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average.  On Friday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced yet again to call an emergency session in order to deal with the state’s enormous budget problems.

This state of crisis is likely to become the norm for the Golden State. In contrast to other hard-hit states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Nevada, which all opted for pro-business, fiscally responsible candidates, California voters decisively handed virtually total power to a motley coalition of Democratic-machine politicians, public employee unions, green activists and rent-seeking special interests.

Exactly the sort of “solution” the DFL put before Minnesota in this past election…

In the new year, the once and again Gov. Jerry Brown, who has some conservative fiscal instincts [by Kotkin’s standards, naturally – Ed.] will be hard-pressed to convince Democratic legislators who get much of their funding from public-sector unions to trim spending. Perhaps more troubling, Brown’s own extremism on climate change policy–backed by rent-seeking Silicon Valley investors with big bets on renewable fuels–virtually assures a further tightening of a regulatory regime that will slow an economic recovery in every industry from manufacturing and agriculture to home-building.

Kotkin goes on to shred the Cali Dems’ current fairy tale – that “green jobs” will save the day.

Compare and contrast with the prototype pro-business big state, Texas:

Texas’ trajectory, however, looks quite the opposite. California was recently ranked by Chief Executive magazine as having the worst business climate in the nation, while Texas’ was considered the best. Both Democrats and Republicans in the Lone State State generally embrace the gospel of economic growth and limited public sector expenditure. The defeated Democratic candidate for governor, the brainy former Houston Mayor Bill White, enjoyed robust business support and was widely considered more competent than the easily re-elected incumbent Rick Perry, who sometimes sounds more like a neo-Confederate crank than a serious leader.

I read White’s bio and record in Houston, and I thought “what a wonderful world, Texas, where the the “lefty” candidate has not only a platform, but a record, to the right of the “Republcian” in California – or, for that matter, far enough to the right to make Lori Sturdevant and Nick Coleman yakk up their skulls”.

To be sure, Texas has its problems: a growing budget deficit, the need to expand infrastructure to service its rapid population growth and the presence of a large contingent of undereducated and uninsured poor people. But even conceding these problems, the growing chasm between the two megastates is evident in the economic and demographic numbers. Over the past decade nearly 1.5 million more people left California than stayed; only New York State lost more. In contrast, Texas gained over 800,000 new migrants. In California, foreign immigration–the one bright spot in its demography–has slowed, while that to Texas has increased markedly over the decade.

And the conclusions?

A vast difference in economic performance is driving the demographic shifts. Since 1998, California’s economy has not produced a single new net job, notes economist John Husing. Public employment has swelled, but private jobs have declined. Critically, as Texas grew its middle-income jobs by 16%, one of the highest rates in the nation, California, at 2.1% growth, ranked near the bottom. In the year ending September, Texas accounted for roughly half of all the new jobs created in the country.

I bring this up not  just to get you to read Kotkin’s whole piece – although I think you should – but to urge you to compare and contrast the competing visions facing Minnesota today.

Because Minnesotans today do face two starkly-different futures.  There’s the future presented to us by Mark Dayton, if he (heaven forfend) wins the recount, and there’s the one that the GOP majorities in both chambers have been sent to fight for.

Dayton’s vision is fundamentally the same as the one that led to Califorinia’s catastrophic decay; fat and happy public unions, high taxes, hostility to any real economy’s genuine strengths.  The GOP’s – if they do their job, and I’m here to say I’m not the only one who’s gonna make sure they do – is to shade things more toward the Texas model.

This next legislative session will see these two ideals battling like Godzilla and Mothra. 

Or maybe, given Mark Dayton’s fundamental weakness as a candidate and governor, like Godzilla and Andy Dick.

I almost feel sorry for Barack Obama. He’s traveling the world over, looking for some love, and coming up empty.

America handed him an epic rejection of virtually everything he has “accomplished”  just two years in. Knowing fully well what was coming, he skipped the country on a trade mission, a multi-bazillion-dollar entourage in tow, hoping to bring home a trade agreement…or…something.

President Obama’s hopes of emerging from his Asia trip with the twin victories of a free trade agreement with South Korea and a unified approach to spurring economic growth around the world ran into resistance on all fronts on Thursday, putting Mr. Obama at odds with his key allies and largest trading partners.

Does the whole world hate Obama?

After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

OK, maybe not the whole world, just a majority of the largest economies of the world, so technically there are countries out there, theoretically, that don’t think America’s fiscal and monetary policies are being crafted by an administration consisting of a band of arrogant bookworms that have never owned, created or run anything resembling an enterprise.

In two years, the Obama administration has effectively rendered America to the economic equivalence of adolescence, world leaders now treating Obama and his staff like underclassmen.

As if a global scolding wasn’t embarrassing enough for the soon-to-be one-term President, his Treasury Secretary, steeped in academentia, was fending off attacks from back home.

The disputes were not limited to America’s foreign partners. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner got into a trans-Pacific argument with one of his former mentors, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, after Mr. Greenspan wrote that the United States was “pursuing a policy of currency weakening.” Mr. Geithner shot back on CNBC that while he had “enormous respect” for Mr. Greenspan, “that’s not an accurate description of either the Fed’s policies or our policies.” He added, “We will never seek to weaken our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage or grow the economy.”

Well, if you say so.

…well, at least not again…because the Fed’s current plan to buy $600 Billion of government securities is precisely, explicitly that.

Does Geithner actually believe we are all that stupid or that he’s so much smarter?

Much of the rest of the world seemed to share Mr. Greenspan’s assessment. Moreover, Mr. Obama seemed to be losing the broader debate over austerity. The president has insisted that at a moment of weak private demand, the best way to spur economic growth is to have the government prime the pump with cheap credit and government stimulus programs. He quickly found himself in an argument with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

Wait, who? Great Britain? Isn’t Great Britain…like, our Huckleberry? How retarded does the President and his staff have to be to screw up that relationship?

America isn’t subscribing to this administration’s ineptitude and neither is the rest of the world.

Playing a fools game, hoping to win, telling those sweet lies and losing again.

…fire the Fed.

Yesterday we learned the American economy added more jobs than expected. While it was not enough to budge the 9.6% unemployment figure, it was a surprise to everyone…including the Federal Reserve who had just announced a $600 billion dollar initiative to create economic “stimulus” via buying back government debt. This essentially pushes more cash into the economy by printing more dollars, the theory being cheaper money will jump start lending and hiring.

But!

Interest rates are already at historic lows, banks aren’t lending, real estate continues to fall in value, companies aren’t significantly increasing hiring and consumers remain skittish.

And!

There is already more than a trillion dollars of liquidity in the system, on the sidelines – not being lent or spent – and yet the Fed ostensibly believes that what the economy needs now is more liquidity. The federal government has found many and several ineffective ways to mortgage our future in a futile attempt to create jobs and this is the one that we might regret the most dearly.

The Keynesians finally got their wish. The Federal Reserve plans to inject $600 billion of the most caustic debt imaginable into the economy. This is the Agent Orange of monetary policies that has the potential to wreak financial havoc.

In the hope of generating inflation, the central bank is going to enable deficit spending by buying treasury bonds. You read that correctly: the primary goal is to erode the value of the dollar, and we get to watch our currency and wealth literally dissolve before our eyes.

Only a desperate government would consider debasing its own currency. The resulting inflation will be an insidious tax on every American who will suffer as wages lag behind increasing prices. It is doubtful that countries like China will react favorably to the precipitous drop in the value of the debt owed to them.

One has to wonder, had the Fed waited one more day until the employment numbers came out, if they would have paused their relentless attempts to “thwart deflation” and “create jobs” by further rendering the dollar worthless.

Once again, repeat after me: “The government can’t create jobs.”

That’s not to say they can’t hire citizens to park their flabby arses behind desks and vote for Democrats, but the government can’t create jobs in a pure sense – jobs that actually create net-net wealth and prosperity and in turn revenue for the government.

Consumers aren’t buying and employers aren’t hiring because conditions are uncertain. (yes, I bolded, italicized and underlined “uncertain”)

Conditions in turn are uncertain in no small part due to the fact that those that have the cash, banks, employers and consumers don’t know what the government’s next bumbling intervention will be as it relates most substantially to taxes and health care.

So they wait.

No amount of Fed Quantitative Queasing will change that. In fact most consumers and employers could give a rip what the Fed is doing.

Based on election results this week, one might conclude they would just as soon the government get the hell out of the business of manipulating the system.

So why does the Fed insist on more of the same?

1) Because they can’t not. It’s the nature of government the last few decades. They must justify their existence.

2) Furthermore, they must justify past actions; if flooding the economic landscape with liquidity didn’t work before, that must mean we just didn’t do enough.

3) It’s the only lever they have, given the bent of the current administration, who until this past Tuesday were opposed to any economic prescription other than increasing spending.

4) Irrational fears of deflation; the theory is that once prices fall, the consumer becomes even more fickle: Why buy now when the price will be lower tomorrow? So prices go lower still. The problem with this theory is that history shows otherwise and…consumers just aren’t savvy enough to wait until tomorrow.

Despite the misinformation propagated by these big-spending liberals, deflation has existed during extraordinary periods of economic growth and did not adversely affect consumers or wage earners. In fact, deflation is not only a common occurrence in a free economy, but it is also indicative of a vibrant and healthy economic expansion where the innovations and efficiency that competition engenders lower the costs of production. These lower costs translate into lower product prices benefiting the consumer.

Consumers were not harmed by the significant deflation of personal computers prices over the last two decades, and despite these falling prices, there has been explosive growth and profits. No credible economist could argue that consumers, manufacturers, or the economy would have been better-served if the government intervened and forced computer prices higher. Yet Keynesians propose that our economic woes can be ended by forcing the price of all products higher.

Employers and consumers will not budge until the economy naturally, and in this case excruciatingly slowly, takes up the slack created by the collapse of the real estate bubble, which of course was created by another flavor of government meddling.

The employment numbers show this is starting to happen and that the chances of a double dip are diminishing. The numbers behind the numbers show that average hours worked by those that are employed are increasing as well, further demonstrating capitalism’s ability to overcome even the worst liberal economic molestations.

There is no amount of Federal intervention that can or will change the fact that it is the small business owner, the employer, the risk taker; the capitalist, that can take up the slack. It is the newly-minted GOP’s job to make sure this can continue unabated while at the same time recalibrate America’s fundamental expectations of the Fed’s ability to effectively manage the trajectory of the overall economy.

For if the Fed continues to dabble in economic alchemy, it only increases the likelihood of inviting the as yet unrealized but certainly dire consequences of a nuclear currency war in an ever more global economy.

“Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles.  We’re here to steal it back”

— Bono, introducing “Helter Skelter” at the beginning of Rattle and Hum.

———-

There aren’t many things in the world worse than someone – especially someone putatively in charge of you – claiming credit for your work.

All of Minnesota should be upset.

Fifty years ago, Minnesota was a sleeping giant.  Blessed with immense natural resources – taconite, lumber, agribusiness – and with huge advantages being the geographic, demographic and communications center of the upper midwest and upper Great Plains, Minnesota had been hampered by the same dynamics that hampered all rural Midwestern agricultural states.

Minnesota had communications – rails and rivers and roads – and a couple of big cities full of people and a huge land-grant university, located smack -dab at the confluence of America’s greatest river and one of her greatest rail nexuses.

Once communication and capital met, really, it’d have taken serious effort to keep Minnesota from prospering.

And Minnesota did, finally, prosper.  In the 1970s, the combination of brains, talent, communications and infrastructure finally moved Minnesota out of the “underachievers” category and onto the “overachievers” list.  Minnesota companies – 3M, Dayton Hudson, Carmichael-Lynch, Target, Sound of Music (now Best Buy), Musicland, Toro, Polaris, Northwest Orient Airlines, Control Data, Honeywell, IDS, Cray, Medtronic and a slew of others became the lynchpins of a regional economy that performed well above its weight.

Around that same time, the Minnesota Legislature – controlled at the time, we are reminded, by the Republican Party, in those days long, long before “Republican” meant “Conservative – instituted a series of programs that redistributed the state’s new, skyrocketing wealth from the parts of the state that had it – the cha-cha Twin Cities – to the parts that didn’t, the poor rural areas in the north and the the economically-lagging Iron Range and Arrowhead.  The reasons made some sense at the time, in a Keynesian sort of way; the Twin Cities, and especially their new, booming suburbs, were awash in money; towns like Virginia and Thief River Falls, presiding over eroding industries and smaller, less resource-rich populations, were sucking pond water.

Rolling in tax receipts as the regional and national economies both boomed in the sixties and very early seventies, the state launched a variety of programs – “Local Government Aid”, which redistributed money from the Cities outward and helped smaller, poorer areas of the state build better infrastructure, which made sense at the time, and an orgy of spending on schools and post-secondary education and infrastructure.

The national media, noticing the story of Minnesota’s booming growth at a time in the pre-Reagan era when people were still liable to attribute all good things in life to government, dubbed the explosion “The Minnesota Miracle”.  It even made the cover of Time Magazine.

Gov. Wendell Anderson

The message was fairly clear; Minnesota’s growth was due to govenrment.

Now, I’m not so dogmatic a conservative as to say that government had no role in Minnesota’s growth.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that, given the mentality of the time, Minnesota’s state government was a capable partner with Minnesota’s huge, growing, thriving business and higher education communities.

I’m a uniter, not a divider.

But that was then.

Now?  To the Minnesota DFL, what once were tools are now entitlements.  “Local Government Aid” has switched from being a hand-up for outstate Minnesota into a vehicle for laundering spending for the DFL; the Metro area and Duluth get 2.5 times more money per capita than the rest of the state, and many outstate cities get no LGA at all; indeed, some are opting to do without it altogether.  It’s become a political football and, worse, just another entitlement program.

And the companies, big and small, who were once the key partners in this growth?  Who invested billions in infrastructure to create jobs in this state?  They’re still here – it’s a nice place to live.  Taxes don’t necessarily kill big companies, or drive them completely out of the jurisdiction.  Just as companies remain in high-tax hellholes like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, the Twins’ big-ticket employers, the Targets and Best Buys and 3Ms keep their headquarters’ here – but are sending their new jobs and new growth pretty exclusively elsewhere.

And yet the media, and its DFL-allied shills and cheerleaders like Nick Coleman and Lori Sturdevant, keep pining for the myth of the “Minnesota Miracle”, where (liberal) government leads the rest of society into a great glowing glorious future with everyone Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota.

It’s garbage, of course.  Government, at the most, was a less-useless partner, even then, at a time when there was still such a thing as a moderate Democrat.  Nobody can say the same thing about today’s DFL.

Minnesota needs a new miracle.

We need the kind of miracle that Jersey City, NJ had in the nineties, when a conservative mayor, Brett Schundler, slashed taxes and regulation and focused his city on growth, security and education on a responsible budget.  Jersey City throve.

We need the kind of miracle that Texas – with its conservative government and hands-off approach to the market – is having; most of the jobs that are being created in the entire country are being created in Texas.

We need the kind of miracle they have in North Dakota as we speak, where a conservative government is cutting spending and rebating excessive tax collections.  (“But they have an oil boom going on!”, the lefties whinge.  How many states with boundless oil are sucking budget pond water right now?  What was the bumper sticker in Colorado – “Dear Lord – thanks for another oil boom; we promise not to screw it up this time?”  How many states have squandered limitless oil wealth on entitlements and are begging for more today?  Can you say Louisiana?)

We need the kind of miracle that Indiana is experiencing today, with government tightening its belt and getting out of the way of a market that is growing even as those of its surrounding, Democrat-controlled states, are reeling.

Government doesn’t give us “Miracles”, at least not when it comes to free market economics.  Government, at its very best, screws them up less.

Do I believe Tom Emmer’s plan will lead to another Minnesota Miracle – a miracle of the free market?

If the time is right, yes.  I do.  And at the very least, it will do vastly less harm than the Horner plan, to say nothing of Dayton’s hare-brained “plan”.

More momentum building among the Dems Mo for extending the Bush tax  cuts:

Momentum built Thursday for extending all of the Bush-era tax cuts after President Obama avoided a veto threat and a key Senate Democrat voiced support for the extension.

War policy. Guantanamo.  Patriot Act . Tax cuts.

Not sure if we have any policy reason to miss Bush yet; it’s like he never left.

Why Congress should be non-plussed about China’s trade surplus.

One of the oldest trade disputes of this very new century has been the seismic imbalance in U.S./Chinese trade relations.  American lawmakers have repeatedly beg/threated/legislated to try and get China to appreciate their currency, believing that the U.S. trade deficit might get reduced if the Chinese took the yuan on a romantic dinner date…or something to that effect.  U.S. legislators have even attempted to essentially fine the Chinese into currency compliance – trying to hike tariffs on Chinese goods as high as 27.5%.

Considering China’s latest trade surplus may exceed $20 billion, Congress may be closer to the mood of reviving Smoot Hawley:

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee will discuss next week China’s currency policy after Premier Wen Jiabao’s government limited the yuan’s gain to less than 1 percent versus the dollar since a June pledge for greater flexibility. With November elections looming, legislators may push a bill letting companies seek tariffs for compensation for an undervalued yuan…

U.S. lawmakers including Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, have pressed the Obama administration to demand a speedier appreciation of the yuan. The house committee will discuss whether China has made “material progress” on the issue and what action Congress and the administration may need to take to address the nation’s exchange-rate policy.

While the Adminstration is unlikely to approve any Congressional legislation to gode the Chinese into reassessing their currency – especially after already agreeing to do so this summer – bills threatening a tariff war seems almost certain to be introduced.  Similar measures were taken in 2005 and, like in the summer of 2010, resulted in the Chinese acquising to some American demands for appreciation. 

Legislators might as well rub a lucky rabbit’s foot to ward away the U.S. trade deficit if they believe currency appreciation will significantly impact the situation.  The last time the Chinese appreciated their currency, the U.S. trade deficit…wait for it…grew:

Recent evidence suggests that RMB appreciation will not reduce the U.S. trade deficit and undermines the common political argument for compelling China to revalue. Between July 2005 and July 2008, the RMB appreciated by 21 percent against the dollar-from a value of $.1208 to $.1464.⁴ During that same period (between the full year 2005 and the full year 2008), the U.S. trade deficit with China increased from $202 to $268 billion.

In addition to the fact that increasing the currency value won’t have any major impact on the U.S. trade deficit, and will only fray trade relations with America’s second largest trading partner (you might be surprised to know Canada is #1), is the reality that China gains nothing by doing so.  With their economy slowing, in part as China encounters the same real estate nightmare the rest of the world has experienced, the Chinese are unlikely to want to also reduce the value of their U.S. debt holdings.  The Chinese are already reducing stimulus efforts and trying to avoid pumping more money into what is potentially becoming the international economy’s next major bubble to burst – China itself.

If there’s one thing that America could do for its own long-term betterment over the next few years (that doesn’t involve big electoral victories for the GOP), it’s sending Paul Krugman to work at McDonalds or in a nursing home, or something else productive.

This past week, he said the US needed another World War II – at least, in terms of Keynesian government intervention in the market – to revive the economy.

Victor Davis Hanson  points out that the US economy recovered in spite of the government involvement, largely because the war left us as the last market standing:

As WWII ended and the clean-up began, there was an enormous amount of pent-up global demand for goods. Given the wreckage in Europe, Japan, and Russia and the underdevelopment of India, Asia, and South America, we were about the only ones with the industrial and commercial wherewithal to supply the world rebound — often receiving cheap oil, gas, minerals, and interest in exchange, which supplemented our own vast supplies of comparatively cheap and easily recoverable resources. Nor should we forget the psychological element: Americans, after winning two wars, were enormously confident about their newfound international stature and influence.

At home, four years of consumer deprivation during the war and the weak demography of the 1930s had combined to create huge demand, all while society was increasingly leaving the farm for good and becoming suburbanized. The result was that in the late 1940s and 1950s, the birth rate soared and consumers enthusiastically made first-time purchases of washers, dryers, fridges, cars, etc. Thus, the American economy grew by leaps and bounds.

Any similarities between 1948-1958 and today are purely coincidental:

Today’s situation is not comparable: We are in hock to foreign creditors for trillions and have not been a net creditor since the 1980s. A China, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan, or India is as or more likely to supply recovering demand for food, steel, or electronics.

Massive spending will only revive the economy if it involves destroying the rest of the world economy, in other words.