Keith at Redneck Crackers And Beer wonders if  Delta Airlines has just been messing with us:.

I posted back in July that the Essential Air Service program was out of date, needed to be repealed, and cost the tax payers millions of dollars.

This is the government subsidy program that keeps airlines flying to cities that otherwise couldn’t support airline service on their own.

With the news that the program was on the chopping block, Delta announced – as they frequently do – that they’d have to start cutting service to these cities.

Whaddya suppose happened next?

 Just out of curiosity I checked Delta’s website recently and noticed that only a few of these towns have been dropped and several have picked up regional jet service who only had turboprop service previously.

Huh.

So the question is, was Delta just playing the people in these small towns to lobby their congress-critters to pass the EAS bill to keep the pork rolling in to places that can’t afford commercial air service, and want the rest of us to pay for it?

Why not?

The tactic – “keep paying us for something that people won’t pay for, or at least pay as much for – naturally on their own”  – is as predictable as every play in the Vikings playbook.  Every school district and Local-Government-Aid-accepting city in Minnesota does it every year at budget time; “keep the swag coming, or we’re going to have to cut you off!”

While at the “Occupy Minnesota” “rally” over the weekend, I saw a few signs saying that “Labor Creates Wealth”.

Now, I’ve got nothing against labor.  I work for a living; without someone to build things to sell, capital and management will be more or less out to dry.

But does labor create wealth?

For those of you who believe this, I’m going to propose an experiment.

1. Do some work.  Any work at all.  Dig a ditch, draw a painting, ride a bike from downtown to downtown, bake a tray of cookies, write a blog post, play guitar in the skyway, build a dog house, make your bed, it doesn’t matter.  Just do some…labor.
2. Check to see if you have gotten any “wealth” – money, food, lodging, coffee beans, green stamps, trading cards, coupons, strings of beads – by simple dint of having labored.

 I’m guessing “no”.  And without wanting to spoil the experiment, I’m going to speculate on exactly why. 

Without someone willing to pay you something for that “labor”, the “labor” you did in #1 above was just something you did for fun (hopefully; I mean, you didn’t really expect to be paid, did you?)

And who is it that finds someone who needs, and is willing to pay for, a ditch or a drawing or for you to ride your bike, or is hungry for cookies or your insight or your music, or needs a dog house?

Management.

Now, you could very well be your own manager – it happens all the time.

And unless you dig with your hands, draw with your blood, inherited a bike, conjure flour and sugar and chocolate chips and butter and heat from pure mind power, can ethically blog from the library, imitate a guitar with your voice, or pound nails with your face, someone needs to “invest” in a shovel, a pencil, a bike, ingredients and a stove and gas, a computer, a guitar, and a hammer and some wood, in the hopes that they’ll generate a “return” on the investment – money or food or lodging or whatever you get for your labor.  Again – you could be the investor!   But without someone – you, your mom, a venture capitalist, or a bank listed on the NYSE – to “invest” in making sure you have the tools you need to make sure your labor produces something to take to market, you’ll be, well, pounding nails with your face, as it were.

It’s called “Capital”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes that the group “occupying” the square at Henco Gov’t Center tomorrow will be running rampant:

Well, not rampant. The County will provide portable toilets and bike racks. Alcohol is banned, smoking is allowed on sidewalks only, tents are still being negotiated.

These people fancy themselves the heirs to Kent State or Tiananmen Square – rebels, risking all sticking it to The Man. They might as well be Kiwanis.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Or, y’know, Republicans.

First things first:  Pardon the fact that I’m linking to Infowars.

But this was just too good to miss:  the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are truly, truly stupid people:

The zeal for totalitarian government amongst some of the “protesters” is shocking. One sign being carried around read, “A government is an entity which holds the monopolistic right to initiate force,” which seems a little ironic when protesters complain about being physically assaulted by police in the same breath.

One woman interviewed by Kokesh also announces her intention to help Obama to capture a second term. How can a self-proclaimed Occupy Wall Street protester simultaneously support the man whose 2008 campaign was bankrolled by Wall Street, whose 2012 campaign is reliant on Wall Street to an even greater extent, and whose cabinet was filled with Wall Street operatives?

My favorite moment – where by “favorite” I mean “scares the crap out of me” – is the nebbishy little product of, no doubt, an exquisitely expensive post-secondary education at 1:45:   “There are certain things called civil liberties which are limitations on democracy”.

Gibson Musical Instrument Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz will be at President Obama’s “Jobs” speech tonight, to remind His Excellency and the assembled, adoring media that the Administration’s politicized, idiotic policies – enforcing an arcane Indian law – are going to cost the company millions of dollars, and if followed through will cost the Nashville area 40 skilled, high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Close-up of the new re-issue "Eric Clapton 1960 Les Paul". Hint, Santa.

In solidarity with Gibson, I’ll supply them some free advertising.

Indian Freaking Rosewood, Administration Byatches!

I do endorse Gibson guitars (although, to be fair, most guitar players do – even lifelong Fender guys like me; I finally took the plunge on a Gibson product last year, and yeah, it’s niiiice).

Oooh - Gibson provides jobs all over the world!

Gateway Pundit writes:

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz told reporters today that the federal raid on the popular American guitar maker will cost the company $10,000,000. Juszkiewicz also said that he will attend Obama’s big spending jobs speech tomorrow in Washington DC.

Is that a gorgeous piece of work or what? It sounds even better than it looks. And guess what? Yep - made in the USA. One of those "American Manufacturing Jobs" that lefties are constantly barbering about. Outsource this? Why not outsource guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns to the Pakistani military, while you're at it?

Attorney General Eric Holder said the raid on the Gibson was not political.

And if you believe Holder you are an idiot here’s an excellent Fox News clip summing up the entire story so far.

Remember – the CEO of Martin guitars (sorry – while they make gorgeous guitars, and I also own a Martin product, they get no free ads from me), which builds guitars out of exactly the same Indian-grown, American-finished rosewood as Gibson, which is not illegal under US law and only vaguely-sanctioned under Indian law, is a big Democrat contributor.

A Gibson ES335. A favorite of both jazz musicians and loud rockers who like the ES' excellent feedback characteristics.

Of course, Gibson is just one of many such stories – companies being harried, money being confiscated, jobs being destroyed by our rapacious, power-mad bureaucracy.

Yep, there's parts, too. This is a Gibspon "Soap Bar". I have one sunk into the middle position of my Fender Jazz, wired out of phase with the bridge pickup; when they play together, it sounds more like Mark Knopfler's Strat (think "Sultans of Swing") than Mark Knopfler's Strat does.

I’m working to get Mr. Juskiewicz on the Northern Alliance one of these next few weekends.  Keep your fingers crossed; if you’re a fan of limited government or music, it’ll be a great chat.

As we head into America’s annual “Labor Day” holiday, it’s worth asking – all you organized labor members in the private sector, what on earth do you think the government is telling you?

This morning, the AFL-CIO released this statement to the press:

AT&T Will Return 5,000 Jobs to U.S. on Completion of AT&T/T-Mobile Merger 

Company Commits to No Job Losses for Call Center Workers at AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile 

Washington, D.C. — AT&T’s announcement that it will bring back a net 5,000 quality wireless jobs to the United States following the completion of its merger with T-Mobile USA is very good news.

“These jobs will provide quality wages and benefits and good working conditions for U.S. workers — exactly what’s needed to help turn around our struggling economy.  Instead of sitting on more than $2 trillion in assets and sending jobs overseas while millions of Americans are out of work, working people are looking for U.S. employers to follow AT&T’s lead.  If more employers took this kind of action, we could begin to move our economy forward and strengthen the middle class,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

AT&T’s commitment that the T-Mobile merger will not result in any job losses for current call center workers at AT&T Mobility or T-Mobile USA is more evidence of the kind of corporate responsibility we need here in the United States, Trumka said.

CWA President Larry Cohen pointed out that “cuts in wages, benefits, and jobs have become the new normal in America, so that when a company like AT&T takes action to bring back quality jobs, it’s big news.”

In addition to restoring a net 5,000 quality jobs and a commitment that no job losses will occur for U.S. call center workers at either company, the merger has additional positive gains for workers, consumers, communities and the industry.

• It will accelerate the buildout of high-speed wireless broadband to 97 percent of the nation, enabling an additional 55 million people, especially in rural and underserved areas, to share in the benefits of Internet technology.
• AT&T will develop T-Mobile’s assets and offer T-Mobile customers the latest in technology.
• AT&T and T-Mobile utilize compatible technologies.
• AT&T has a demonstrated commitment to workers’ rights, supporting management neutrality that enables workers to make a free and fair choice about union representation and bargaining rights.

That’s jobs, people!  Not just “living-wage” and “shovel-ready”, but good, solid, technical jobs with real skills and long-term potential – not the “shovel-ready” govenment make-work jobs the Administration and the public employee unions are babbling about.  The kind of jobs you can raise a family, build a career and support a community on!

And so what did the Administration do?

Joined up with Al Franken, and kicked you all, every one of you private-sector union employees, straight in the teeth:

The Department of Justice today filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc. The department said that the proposed $39 billion transaction would substantially lessen competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services across the United States, resulting in higher prices, poorer quality services, fewer choices and fewer innovative products for the millions of American consumers who rely on mobile wireless services in their everyday lives.

The department’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to prevent AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom AG.

“The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for mobile wireless services,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. “Consumers across the country, including those in rural areas and those with lower incomes, benefit from competition among the nation’s wireless carriers, particularly the four remaining national carriers. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that everyone can continue to receive the benefits of that competition.”

So there you go, unions; after you spent tens of millions of your dues on getting Obama and Franken elected, what do you get?  Screwed – in favor of a bunch of nutroots whose only agenda is controlling all alternative media!

So whatdya think about that?

Feeling – what’s the word I’m looking for…

…betrayed?

UPDATE:  The CWA is not amused.

The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to seek to block the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA is simply wrong.

In today’s sinking economy, where millions of Americans are looking for work, the DOJ has filed suit to block a merger that will create as many as 96,000 quality jobs. In the U.S., where too many Americans, especially in rural areas, don’t have access to the tools of Internet technology, the DOJ is looking to block a plan to build out high speed wireless access to 97 percent of the country.

In a nation where workers’ rights are routinely violated, as occurs everyday at T-Mobile, the DOJ apparently believes that workers should be on their own instead of having a fair choice about union representation.

The DOJ’s action would put good jobs and workers’ rights at the bottom of the government’s priorities. Just yesterday, AT&T announced that it would return a net 5,000 jobs to the U.S. on completion of the merger. That is the kind of corporate responsibility that more employers in the U.S. should demonstrate if we are ever to have an economic recovery.

Instead of acting to block this merger, our government should be looking to support companies that create, keep and return good jobs to the United States.

They spent millions electing Democrats, and all they got was those lousy, usually awful-colored and ill-fitting, slogan t-shirts.

George Will notes what many upper-Midwest conservatives have been saying since February; the left went all-in on Wisconsin because if they can lose there, they can lose any and everywhere.

I’ll start with Will’s conclusion:

As the moonless night of fa$ci$m descends on America’s dairyland, sidewalk graffiti next to the statehouse-square drinking fountain darkly warns: “Free water . . . for now.” There, succinctly, is liberalism’s credo: If everything isn’t “free,” meaning paid for by someone else, nothing will be safe.

That’s the crux of it all, really – but it wasn’t what the Wisconsin flap was about.

In fact, you could be forgiven for watching the American left this past seven months and having no idea what it was all about:

During the recall tumult, unions barely mentioned either their supposed grievance about collective bargaining, or their real fears, which concern money, particularly political money. Teachers unions can no longer bargain to require school districts to purchase teachers’ health insurance from the union’s preferred provider, which is especially expensive. This is saving millions of dollars and reducing teacher layoffs. Also, unions must hold annual recertification votes.

And teachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members’ paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.

Democrats furiously oppose Walker because public employees unions are transmission belts, conveying money to the Democratic Party. Last year, $11.2 million in union dues was withheld from paychecks of Wisconsin’s executive branch employees and $2.6 million from paychecks at the university across the lake. Having spent improvidently on the recall elections, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the teachers union, is firing 40 percent of its staff.

Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.

Will – or the copy editor that wrote his headline, anyway – uses the “Waterloo” metaphor; a defeat that makes further victories impossible (until some sort of radical game-changer):

Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible. Progressives, eager to discern a victory hidden in their recent failures, suggest that a chastened Walker will not risk further conservatism. Actually, however, his agenda includes another clash with teachers unions over accountability and school choice, and combat over tort reform with another cohort parasitic off bad public policies — trial lawyers.

I can hardly wait for the next session – on both sides of the Saint Croix.

Illinois, which jacked up taxes (making Mark Dayton all green with envy) last January, has seen its unemployment rate rise...:

Illinois lost more jobs during the month of July than any other state in the nation, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report. After losing 7,200 jobs in June, Illinois lost an additional 24,900 non-farm payroll jobs in July.

I tweeted about this last night.  Someone said “but what about as a percent of population!”, they responded with a rhetorical smirk.

Premature, naturally (emphasis added):

The report also said Illinois’s unemployment rate climbed to 9.5 percent. This marks the third consecutive month of increases in the unemployment rate.

Illinois started to create jobs as the national economy began to recover. But just when Illinois’s economy seemed to be turning around, lawmakers passed record tax increases in January of this year. Since then, Illinois’s employment numbers have done nothing but decline.

And for states that reduce taxes?

Well, what do you think?

Poor “Progressives”.

They can’t win elections.  Their politicians can’t do budgets (or, if they do, can never, ever make them work.  Even with years of unfettered control (from 2008 through 2010),  they can’t do anything useful with the economy.

And now even their protests suck:.

“We’re trying to find a caddy,” said a protester posing as Boehner. The Boehner impersonator stood beside impersonators of Minnesota Reps. Michele Bachmann, Erik Paulsen, Chip Cravaack and John Kline.

The “impersonators” were actually people wearing large cardboard cutouts of unflattering photos of the various politicians’ heads, looking like they were cut out from “Dump Bachmann” and blown up.  After eight years of constant caterwauling, they can’t even muster the energy to do those annoying papier-mache puppets anymore.

Cravaack wryly noted…:

“The people that we were speaking with were the job creators. They’re the people who employ Minnesotans,” Cravaack said of the attendees. “So we’re asking the question to them, ‘What is it going to take for you to invest in yourselves and create jobs?'”

He added that businesses are skittish about making that investment with the threat of new taxes and regulations from the Obama administration.

“Taxing companies right now in a recession is not going to create jobs,” Cravaack said. “It’s going to take jobs away.”

But to the progressive worldview, it’s government’s job to create jobs.

How?

By hiring lots of people who’ve never used shovels for a living for “shovel-ready” jobs? (What the hell is a “shovel-ready” job?  Outside of patching streets, what job in the world today actually uses shovels?)

By waving the magic government wand, perhaps?

They can’t even think of original chanting points:

Protesters accused the Minnesota congressmen of meeting with wealthy donors while proposing cuts to the middle class and not creating jobs. One sign read “People before profits,” and the crowd chanted “Hey-hey-ho-ho, corporate greed has got to go.”

Criminy – even Saul Alinsky is rolling in his grave.

Shelly Moore – the Dwight Schrute of Wisconsin politics – lies so blatantly, even the left-leaning Politifact can’t help but notice.  One of Moore’s recent flyers drew Politifact’s attention:

For one, Moore plays loose in stating the impact of Ryan’s Medicare proposal. At one point, her flier says it would “eliminate Medicare as we know it.” In another, it says the plan would “end” Medicare.

For those who turn 65 before 2022, the program would not change. And for the others, Medicare would change dramatically but it would still exist, PolitiFact Wisconsin noted in ruling False a MoveOn.org claim that Medicare would be abolished in 10 years.

And best of all, her flyer misquotes an actual person:

And, last but not least, we called the woman pictured under the flier’s headline: “Lyda Haskins of River Falls Can’t Afford For Medicare to End.”

Haskins, 85, told us that she would have no trouble without Medicare even if it were taken from her — which it would not be, under the plan.

“It’s laughable that I wouldn’t be able to afford it,” Haskins said. “They should have not have done that.”

Haskins, whose daughter Alison Page ran unsuccessfully against Harsdorf in 2008, is well known in the area.

Haskins said she was not told her name would be used, and was not aware that Medicare would be an issue in the direct mail piece. She said she agreed, along with her grandchildren, only to be pictured generically as a Moore supporter.

Which earns Moore an unplaudit:

The flier’s claims are false, barring new information, and the misleading nature of the presentation pushes this into ridiculous territory.

That’s a Pants on Fire.

If you live in the greater Hudson / St. Croix River area, you have a chance today – to help continue saving Wisconsin from its ruinous, California-like fixation on spending, and from forcing the private sector to work ’til it’s 72 so the unions can retire at 55.

While this blog doesn’t do endorsements, I’m just going to say vote early and often for Harsdorf.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The question I’d like to see asked:

 

If Congress doesn’t reduce spending to less than or equal to realistic revenues, creditor nations will decline to buy more debt and the President will be forced to decide which checks his administration won’t mail.

 

If you were President, which checks would you hold back, and why?

 

The question is merely a hypothetical today. But if the economy doesn’t recover soon . . . well, military planners run war games all the time, trying to anticipate problems and create solutions before we’re facing disaster with only moments to react in panic. Why not politicians?

 

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It’s a tough question.  Tougher still because I’ve been told (haven’t looked it up myself, yet) that we could shut down the entire daily operations of our government – Congress, the SCOTUS, and the entire Executive Branch, including all the Cabinet departments, including Defense and Health and Human Services, and still not attack the deficit; it’s the entitlements. (I need to look that up, obviously).

All the usual conservative suggestion – shutting down the Department of Education, defund NPR, privatize the National Endowment for the Humanities – aren’t even a whiz in the wind.  What we need is to cut entitlements – Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, Obamacare – and cut them radically.

Which means not just cutting spending, but changing the way this nation looks at retirement and health insurance.

OK.  So go to it.  What do we do?

Paul Krugman – who is to Nobel Prizes what John Kerry was to Vietnam – wants to prove that Ronald Reagan never did anything useful for the economy, and he doesn’t care how sharply he has to shave the facts and the historical context to do it:

Reagan did not start an era of unprecedented growth by any measure: employment, GDP, productivity, whatever. But maybe the easiest way to see what didn’t happen is to look at median family income in constant dollars:

The NYTimes helpfully provided a graph:

Krugman:

 A spectacular increase during the high-tax, strong-union postwar generation; fitful improvement since, with the only sustained rise during the Clinton years. That’s the story; it’s amazing how many people don’t know it.

“That’s the story” Krugman says; high taxes (and unions, he adds in a non-sequitur) cause prosperity.

Like household income exists in a vacuum, affected only by taxes (and union membership).

I’m tempted to drive to New York, collar Krugman, and ask “what else happened during this timeline?”

What else happened between 1947 and 1971, besides unfettered taxes and government growth?  Like, the German and Japanese economies starting the period in ruins, and spending the entire period rebuilding?  China and India starting as third-world countries, enduring forty years of socialist governments that couldn’t feed their own people?  And,  respectively, a mass-murdering socialist dictatorship and civil wars?

Did Germany and Japan only get their economies rebuilt, and start to seriously compete with the US, in the late sixties and early seventies – about the time America’s rise in income leveled off?

Did America’s unions develop their high-salary, high-benefit, often low-skill paradigm perhaps because America’s economy had no competition?  The whole world was America’s market for those 25 years!

(And when Germany and Japan’s economies took off, they adopted high-tax, high-“service”, strong-union systems.  And when did their performance start levelling off?

That’s right, it shot up like a rocket from reconstruction until 1990…

…until China and India and Taiwan and the Republic of Korea started performing.

But don’t mind that.  According to “nobel-prize-winning” economist Paul Krugman, none of that matters.  Just taxes.

Media academics:  Distrust, then verify. Then, usually, distrust some more.

UPDATE:  I almost missed this:  Krugman also noted that the US prospered during the relatively high-tax Clinton era, and had troubles during the relatively low-tax Bush administration.

Right.  And Clinton benefitted from cashing the “peace dividend” won during the low-tax, high-prosperity Reagan administration.  And while Bush presided over prosperity from 2003-2007, he suffered from the deflation of the tech bubble early in his administration (exacerbated by a terrorist attack some of you may remember, but which Krugman clearly does not) and, of course, the housing crash, neither of which had anything to do with Bush’s tax cuts.

Last week, we took a look at the Strib op-ed by Roger Hale that supported Governor Dayton’s budget plan, whom the Strib felt it was important to remind you was a former CEO at Tennant Corporation…

…but not that he was a large-scale DFL donor who’d given $110,000 in the last gubernatorial race alone to Alliance for a Better Minnesota, the Dayton-family-supported attack-PAC that launched the most epic sleaze campaign in Minnesota history against Tom Emmer.  That, apparently, the Strib didn’t believe was relevant.

“But what about what he said about business?”, some leftybloggers responded.

Doug Baker, CEO of St. Paul-based Ecolab, responded in the Strib over the weekend.  (Full disclosure:  I worked for Ecolab for four years. A good chunk of my retirement is still in Ecolab stock – and it’s performing better than most of my portfolio at the moment.  Their IT department would give Scott Adams a year worth of material, but it’s a good company – as it happens, 20 times the size of Roger Hale’s Tennant).

And Baker is unimpressed by either Hale or Governor Dayton:

I have two reactions to [Hale’s piece]: First, many in the business community strongly disagree — and second, focusing on revenue generation misses the point and delays action on the more important issue — unsustainable increases in government spending.

It’s no secret that Minnesota always has been a high-tax state. An April 2010 report from the Itasca Project, which highlighted our region’s strengths and weaknesses, identified Minnesota’s uncompetitive tax structure as one of the main barriers to job creation.

Blam.

The “progressives” never, never get that.

My experience, which is shared by the majority of my fellow business leaders in Minnesota, is that personal taxes do matter. It’s an issue that frequently comes up when recruiting people or transferring people to Minnesota.

A majority.

And that’s when it comes to getting talent to come to Ecolab Tower in downtown Saint Paul, or the R&D center in Eagan.   Like most big Minnesota companies, Ecolab has created no manufacturing, distribution or non-sales jobs in Minnesota in years.

Following Gov. Mark Dayton and enacting the second-highest tax rate in the nation would hurt our state.

This is especially true today when state and national borders no longer constrain the movement of labor, capital and intellectual property. In this digital age, people can and do work from anywhere — and they can and will choose to work where they can keep more of their income.

And that’s just speaking of people who work for major corporations.

Ecolab started in the 1920’s, back when the barriers to enter business were very, very low.  The corporation was able to build its business during decades when Minnesota’s taxes were blissfully unintrusive.

How about people starting the next generation of businesses?  The little S-corporations that are the big C-corporations of tomorrow?

They’re moving to Hudson, or Fargo, or Sioux Falls, or Dallas/Fort Worth.

Bring this up to a progressive.  Note that North Dakota is lowering taxes as their revenues boom; they’ll respond “but how many Fortune 500 companies have?”  The response is “that’s a function of population density, but nice try.  Still – how many jobs are those Fortune 500 companies creating in MN?”

The answer: fewer:

There also have been recent headquarters moves that cost Minnesota thousands of jobs — MoneyGram comes to mind — which I strongly believe was motivated more by personal income tax rates than anything else (in my opinion).

But you don’t have to take my word for it. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, Minnesota employment growth has lagged the U.S. rate for a decade. More than 1,200 small and medium-sized businesses left the state from 1997 to 2008.

Baker gets the real problem – the one Hale glossed right past:

More important than the tax issue, though, is Dayton’s proposed double-digit increase in state spending. The legislative majorities have offered a 6 percent increase in spending over last year’s budget — this includes a substantial increase in spending on both K-12 education and health care.

For any family or anyone who owns a business in this state, a 6 percent increase in revenue would be considered very good news and would be considered a budget they could live with. However, in government-speak, a 6 percent increase is considered a “cut” because it represents less than the government wanted to spend.

Baker notes the same thing I did in shredding Hale last week; back in the seventies, Japan and Germany were getting done with recovering from World War 2. China and India were mired in experiments with various degrees of extreme socialism, and starving and riven with political contortions and very much third world countries.

Back in the sixties and seventies – which is where Dayton’s entire strategy came from, and when Roger Hale was an active CEO – it was a very different world.

Baker gets this:

Raising taxes and double-digit increases in government spending may have been a manageable strategy in the 1980s and 1990s, when our competition for jobs came primarily from Wisconsin and Iowa.

But the reality our state faces today is a very different one.

Our global competitors and the majority of U.S. states — led by a number of prominent Democrat governors — are moving toward lowering taxes, prioritizing government spending and building a more supportive business environment in order to attract jobs.

Minnesota must do the same if we hope to grow jobs in the future and compete in the 21st century.

Baker’s piece utterly shreds Hale.  You can tell it hurt the DFLers who were defending Hale last week.  They’re responding.

With name-calling.

Nate Silver talks a little history, noting that well into the 1980 campaign, Jimmy Carter seemed to be defying the bad economy.  Carter was…:

…holding his own against Ronald Reagan. Some polls, even well after Labor Day (that’s Labor Day 1980, not 1979), showed the horse race to be tied or even had Mr. Carter with a slim lead.

Mr. Reagan would win overwhelmingly, however, claiming 44 states (even Massachusetts and New York) while limiting Mr. Carter to just 41 percent of the vote. He surged in the final week of the campaign after he posed the following question to Americans in the presidential debate of October 28, the first and only such event in which he and Mr. Carter participated together:

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Where was the unemployment rate four years ago? Four points lower.

Where was our national debt? Bad, but not this bad.

Where was our budget? Settled, and while waaaaay too big (Bad Bush!), much smaller than today.

How was our standing in the world? Leftymedia yammering aside, about the same as it’d always been.

One could argue in a macroeconomic sense that I’m better off because my house doesn’t have all that mortgage-bubble-based false valuation on it. Someday I’ll look back on that had laugh.

Otherwise?

Nope. Worse off.

One day last winter, I went out to eat at this Vietnamese joint I’ve been eyeing for years.

The next day, there was an epic earthquake in Japan; the quake led to a tsunami killing thousoands, and the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactor.

I guess I won’t eat at that restaurant again.  God only knows what’ll happen.

In related news, Joan Walsh at Salon “reports on” yesterday’s tenth anniversary of the Bush Tax Cuts:

I know, a congressman confessed to Tweeting a crotch shot to a woman who is not his wife, along with other online indiscretions that may wreck his marriage. That’s big news. [Or is it? – Ed.] The 10th anniversary of tax cuts that helped wreck the economy? Not so much.

That’s been the left’s chanting point. I heard Dick “Turban” “Let’s Bring Back The Fairness Doctrine” Durbin saying much the same yesterday, something to the effect of “you want tax cuts?  Look at how the Bush Administration turned out!”.

And Durbin, like Walsh, does it in terms that make just as much sense as the connection between the Vietnamese restaurant and the Japanese earthquake:

But it’s worth remembering how badly tax cuts worked in stimulating economic growth, as Republicans continue to claim more tax cuts will revive the economy. Most big economic indicators moved in the wrong direction since then, some horrifically.

Under the Bush-Cheney administration, the U.S. saw a series of historic economic lows, and overall, the slowest overall rate of economic growth since World War II.

Right.

Bush cut taxes.

The tax cuts were responsible for the violent deflation of the tech bubble (which seemed like a big deal, back before the Housing bubble), which began months before Bush was even elected.

Meanwhile on another continent, 8,000 miles away, Osama Bin Laden, outraged at the invocation of Reaganism, organized a revenge attack that, three months later, would kill 3,000 Americans and stick another fork in the economy, driving another recession (whose effects were muted by the tax cuts – Ed).

And of course, two years before Bush was elected, the tax cuts prompted the Clinton administration to impel Fannie and Freddie to socialize the risks of the mortgage industry on the backs of the taxpayer while simultaneously easing up home-buying credit.

The lesson is clear.

Stop eating Vietnamese food.

Dutifully, the Strib carries the short version of the DFL’s current party line; it’s the governor who’s being the “moderate”:

“Here I am in the middle, and they haven’t moved,” Dayton said of Republican lawmakers.

It’s BS, of course; the GOP started the session committed to holding the line at 2010-2011 budget levels; as projected revenues rose, they increased the spending to match – keeping us “within our means”, against the wishes of some conservatives who pushed to cut services back to 2009 levels.

That – when you’re dealing with a legislature with a decisive mandate, as opposed to a governor who backed into office with the tiniest plurality since Jesse Ventura – is more than enough.

So what we have here is…:

• A legislature that’s done exactly what they were sent, and sent in overwhelming numbers, to Saint Paul to do, up against…
• A Governor who is willing to risk a government shutdown to support the only policy initiatives he has; stick it to the state’s most productive citizens, and force us non-government employees to work ’til we’re 70 so his union supporters can retire at 55.  He can do this, because he can count on…
• …the media.  Part of which is actively carrying water for the DFL (I”m looking at you, Esme Murphy and John Cronan), and the rest of which worships at the Cult of Process, believing that negotiation and compomise themselves are the overriding goals of all legislative government, worthy of frittering away all manner of princple and, for that matter, fiscal common sense.

Let the spinning begin!

Polls are showing the GOP didn’t nake nearly as big a hit from Ryan’s budget plan as the Dems hoped:

Ryan and other Republican House members already have faced hostile questions at town-hall-style meetings in their home districts from seniors and others about the GOP proposal to turn the nation’s health care program for the elderly into what would essentially be a voucher system. The GOP budget blueprint would overhaul Medicare, turn Medicaid into block grants for the states and trim trillions of dollars in spending on discretionary programs. It would lower tax rates for top earners and corporations.

“The bad news for the Democrats is that even after the Ryan budget comes out and has been attacked for a little while, the Republicans have an advantage,” says Joseph White, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University who studies budget politics and policy.

Republicans have held their political base intact, he says, but the nation is still polarized along partisan lines, and spending cuts are easier when they’re discussed in the abstract. “Everybody can find something they don’t like,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean there’s a majority to cut anything in particular.”

The Dems so hoped there’d be a free-fall.

The President serves up liberal leftovers in an effort the wrest the national fiscal agenda from Congressman Paul Ryan in his campaign speech this week.

Just one thing Mr. President:

According to Internal Revenue Service data, the entire taxable income of everyone earning over $100,000 in 2008 was about $1.582 trillion. Even if all these Americans—most of whom are far from wealthy—were taxed at 100%, it wouldn’t cover Mr. Obama’s deficit for this year.

These are desperate times for a Democratic President that can’t even keep Pennsylvania in the fold, a state where the last Republican who won it was George H. W. Bush.

At least Jimmy Carter had the good sense to turn apologetic, rather than imperious, when his policies tipped over the cliff.

Perhaps it’ll be Obama’s “Oberstar Moment”.

Hm.  Just in time for the Tea Party Tax Day Rally!

“…the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Winston Churhill

Now hear the new poster child of the socialist movement in Amerika, Michael Moore:

Moore On Wealthy People’s Money: “That’s Not Theirs, That’s A National Resource, It’s Ours”

“They’re sitting on the money, they’re using it for their own — they’re putting it someplace else with no interest in helping you with your life, with that money. We’ve allowed them to take that.

Michael Moore thinks the wealthy should give it back.

I say, you first Michael.

Via David Brauer, I see former governor Arne Carlson has a blog.

Well, don’t get too excited; he’s done four posts so far.  But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as they say.

Carlson dislikes being called a “backstabber” in “Politico” for his tireless work against Tim Pawlenty (and of course Tom Emmer) over the past nine years.  Carlson doesn’t like being criticized, naturally; he tells us so.

Now, the Minnesota GOP tossed Carlson, and a bunch of other former GOP officeholders who actively campaigned against Tom Emmer and, by extension, the party’s nascent conservatism, this past election.

Now, Carlson has the right to his opinion.  And he knows it, naturally: he makes no bones about his not liking the current crop of conservative Republicans, including Pawlenty:

It is no secret that I have serious qualms about the candidacy of Governor Pawlenty and do not believe his claims of prudent financial management come anywhere close to the truth. Hence, the scrutiny will continue……….

He even told Politico that he’d go on the road, pay any price and bear any burden to try to keep Pawlenty out of the White House (emphasis added):

“I will go to Iowa and New Hampshire and have press conferences, if it comes to that,” he told POLITICO in an interview. “With Tim Pawlenty, I’m outraged that his record is one of the worst in Minnesota history, and he refuses to answer any relevant question.”

Now, Carlson is entitled to his opinion.  Of course, his own record is one of a governor who ruled in generally good times; 1990-1998 was a pretty cha-cha time in Minnesota, barring a brief recession early on as the Defense industry retrenched and the Iron Range went through its usual, eternal spasms.  The booming economy gave Carlson repeated budget surpluses – which he promptly turned into permanent entitlement spending, which promptly turned into deficit-fodder when times turned tough in 2000 and again in 2008.   State government zoomed in size.   His own record is that of someone who spent money like a crack whore with a stolen gold card.  We, The People of Minnesota, financed his spending spree with a healthy cut off of our take from the good times in this state.  Had he governed in tough times – as Pawlenty did, through two recessions – he’d have presided over a California-like collapse, in all likelihood.

That’s fine.  Again, he can have his opinion.

But the regional media would have you believe that we, the current MNGOP, have to continue paying obeisance and honor to someone who not only spits on what we believe, but actively tries to use his old (ancient!) party credentials against us, and our candidates, and our most successful alumnus so far!

What would the DFL do to someone like that?  Ask Randy Kelly!

Forget about calling Arne Carlson a “Quisling”, as Tony Sutton did – accurately, if a bit hyperbolically.

We’re not supposed to criticize him in any way – as if having been a spendthrift governor in cha-cha times gives him papal-esque infallibility.

A recent study of Great Tits may lend commentary to America’s over-subscription to government entitlements.

In Britain, the world capital of amateur ornithology roughly half of households put food out for their feathered friends, and it is estimated that around 30m of the country’s birds are given nourishment this way every year. Other places are somewhat less generous, but the general principle holds. Encouraging birds is good, and what better way to encourage them than to feed them?

Dr Amrhein’s team conducted their study in the suburbs of Oslo, in the spring of 2007. The objects of their attention were 28 male great tits, each of which was observed at dawn three times, with 16-17 days between the observations.

The purpose of the study: to see if leaving food out for birds is beneficial or detrimental.

Dr Amrhein expected that males who were being given extra food would perform better during the dawn chorus than those that were not.

The “Dawn Chorus” being the primary element of the males’ mating ritual.

To his surprise, he discovered exactly the opposite. Those who received food supplements got lazy. He and his colleagues report in Animal Behaviour that 36% of the males whose feeders were filled started singing only after the sun had already come up. Among the birds without this extra food, that happened only 10% of the time. Moreover, the effect was sustained after feeders were removed, for it was still apparent at the time of the third observation.

Turns out gratuitous entitlements make birds lazy. Do you suppose it has the same effect on Americans?

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.

I have broken the Tenth Commandment.

Quotes from “the Governor”:

“Under our administration, state government will do only what is necessary – no more, no less,”

[in] his first day in office [the governor authorized his Attorney General] to join a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Democrats, who controlled state government until Monday, had prevented the…attorney general from doing that last year.

[the Governor] was interrupted 14 times by applause, the loudest and most sustained coming when he declared: “What is failing us is not our people or our places. What is failing us is the expanse of government. But we can do something about it right here, right now, today.”

[the Governor proposed legislators, in special session, move to] give tax breaks to business owners and income tax credits for contributions to health savings accounts; reduce business regulations; provide protections from lawsuits; give the governor more say in state rule making; turn the state Department of Commerce into a partly private entity to focus on job creation; and require a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of the Legislature to approve any increases to the state sales, income and franchise taxes.

[the Governor] also promised to improve education, protect natural resources, honor the role of family and “right-size state government by ensuring government is providing only the essential services our citizens need and our taxpayers can afford.”

“Let me be clear on one thing: Increasing taxes is off the table – as it will counter our efforts to provide economic growth”

“[This State] is open for business.”

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Governor.

Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, Governor Dayton was heard to say

“Meow.”

Patrick Ruffini unpacks the real conclusion to be drawn from this week’s census and reapportionment numbers:

[T]his week’s numbers were the most ringing endorsement of the Republican governing model since Rudy Giuliani towered over the vested interests in New York City. Not only did the South and West win — which liberals will dismiss as a function of weather — but low tax states consistently beat high tax states. Not only did conservative states beat liberal states, most tellingly, the winners were almost to a man conservatively governed.

Consider this striking fact unearthed by political strategist (and former Giuliani adviser) Ken Kurson, posted on Facebook:

• Avg tax rate in states gaining a Congressional seat: 2.8%
• Avg tax rate in states losing a Congressional seat: 6.05%

People vote with their feet.

And not entirely because of the weather, although that’ll be what the left attributes the reapportionment to.  Minnesota – which held onto both its eighth house seat for another ten years by the skin of its teeth (perhaps thanks to the fact it held on to fiscal sanity by the same margin) – grew 4%, well off the national average.   North Dakota – which has low taxes and is actively cutting the ones they have – grew by 5%, and income-tax-free South Dakota grew even faster, leading the region.  

Ruffini (with emphasis added):

This finding is relevant to top marginal tax rates, which unlike property or sales taxes more prevalent in redder states punish creation rather than consumption, but the basic finding runs deep throughout the numbers. The big population winners did not just happen to red states with nice weather. They also had a deeply embedded Republican governing model. Consider who governed in the big population-gaining states this year.

• Texas +4 (10 years of Republican governors, 0 Democrat)
• Florida +2 (10 Republican, 0 Democrat)
• Nevada +1 (10 Republican, 0 Democrat)
• Utah +1 (10 Republican, 0 Democrat)
• South Carolina +1 (8 Republican, 2 Democrat)
• Georgia +1 (8 Republican, 2 Democrat)
• Arizona +1 (2 Republican, 8 Democrat)
• Washington +1 (0 Republican, 10 Democrat)

Collectively, that’s 58 years of Republican governance to 22 years of Democratic governance in the states gaining Congressional seats. And Washington State’s impressive record — alone among true blue states — likely had more to do with the little matter that it lacks an income tax, and an initiative this year to impose one was beat back by 2-to-1.

Ruffini notes that the major left-strangled metropolitan areas – the New Yorks and Bostons and Los Angeleses – continued to show some growth; there are benefits to having a large, established commercial sector (or whatever’s left of it) and a throbbing creative class. 

But the reapportionment shows that they only go so far.

Fifty more years of coastal-liberal strangulation and the Democrats just might be a third party yet after all.

Britain more conservative now than when Thatcher was PM:

Britain is now more Thatcherite than when Margaret Thatcher was in power, with people much less supportive of the welfare state and the redistribution of wealth than in the 1980s, according to an authoritative study of the country’s mood.

New Labour oversaw the biggest recorded shift to the right in public attitudes on those measures, despite a surge in concern about the scale of the wealth gap between rich and poor.

The British Atlas’s shoulders seem to be itching…:

Sympathy towards benefit claimants has evaporated, along with support for redistributive tax and spend policies, over the past 20 years, with Labour governing during a period of significant hardening of attitudes towards the poor, the annual results of the British Social Attitudes survey reveal.

So there is hope in Europe.