I went to “Occupy Minnesota” yesterday, around noonish

And I recorded a video.

Yes, the camera work is bad; the city is occupied, so I had to be careful.

UPDATE: I’m informed that a leftyblogger has brought out video of the last Tax Day Tea Party Rally, by way of comparison.

Which just goes to show you that reading leftyblogs is its own…well, if not “punishment”, it’s at least it’s kinda self-limiting on its own, if you observe even the most rudimentary logic.

I mean, it was in the low thirties at 8AM on April 16 – as opposed to 80-something at noon on a gorgeous Sunday. Heck, even the leftyblogger who’s doing the tittering, who usually shows up with his video camera to try to mock Tea Party attendees, skipped it.

And we’re not talking about the Tea Party – which, to the left and media (pardon the redundancy) bounces back and forth between “irrelevant and pathetic” and “singly responsible for everything that’s in the Democrats’ way”, often at the same time.  We’re not talking about “Occupy Wall Street”, which has gotten absolutely slavish coverage from all the media (for its message of “the media are ignoring us!”).  If the Tea Party is a risible nonentity – which is what the leftyblogger in question usually would have you believe – then his point is a dog bites man story.

The fact that “Occupy Minnesota” is a joke, however, flies in the face of the repeated assurances from media at all levels, though, that this really really is bigger than the Tea Party.

Get back to us when they’ve completely swayed the 2012 election.

And don’t please hold your breath.

It may be the world’s greatest apocryphal quote:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

Apropos nothing, nearly half of US households get some form of federal money or another:

Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.

Click for full-size image

The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years. (See a timeline on the history of government benefits programs here.)

Obama may or may not win this next election – but the left has done one of the crucial bits of homework needed to ensure their power forever.

.One of the reasons that the left’s various attempts to counter the Tea Party have all failed, and will continue to fail, is that when you look at these hamsters, they just don’t look like America.  They look like superannnuated hippies and adenoidal poli-sci students and Macalester professors and the like.

And now, they’re bringing the magic to the Twin Cities:

Minneapolis, MN. – After this Saturday’s open forum in Stevens Square Park, through a group consensus, we now stand firm in our plans to unite at the Hennepin County

Government Plaza. This plaza is the new focal point for the OccupyMN movement.

Previously our plans were to stand in solidarity with those that occupy Wall Street by rallying at the steps of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

“Stand Firm?”  “Stand in Solidarity?”

Hey, “protesters”; Jane Fonda called; she wants her 40-year-old florid rhetoric back.

The plan has changed to reclaim the Government Plaza as the “People’s Plaza”.

It is time to establish a new system that values people over profits. We are the 99% and we are moving to reclaim our mortgaged future.

They’re going to “reclaim” big government property…for big government?

The Minnesota Occupation Begins:

October 7th, 2011 at 9:00am

The People’s Plaza (Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! – Ed)

300 South 6th Street

Minneapolis, MN 55487-0999

(Hennepin County Government Center Plaza)

I was briefly tempted to go there and videotape the Cantina Band scene that must certainly ensue.

Then I remembered – I have a family to spend time with, and an actual life.

It was an uncanny coincidence – if you assume that leftybloggers operate as independent agents, and why, oh, why would one assume that every one of them, from Daily Kos down through Penigma, takes their chanting points from Media Matters for America just because they’ve all been chanting them not merely in unison but in strict top-down sequence for almost a decade now, after all? – to watch the leftyblogs and leftytweeps all chanting the same basic thing almost simultaneously yesterday.

Leftytweep Chris Shields – a semi-frequent kicktoy in this space – twote yesterday:

@ChrisShields There wouldn’t be a need to tax the rich to create jobs if the rich were actually creating jobs.

Gosh – why would “the rich” – let’s broaden that out to “entrepreneurs”, “job creators” and “business” – not be throwing caution to the winds and creating jobs with gay abandon?

• Skyrocketing regulation: The regulatory environment for business – big and small – is getting downright ugly.   There is no realistic chance it’s going to improve during an Obama administration, or while the Democrats control half of Congress.
• The Obamacare of Damocles: Obamacare is already killing jobs, and it’s three years away from going into effect, so we’ve seen nothing yet.
• Taxes Kill: Obama’s initial round of taxes – aimed at “the rich” who are also the investors who provide capital for investing in new business – put a huge chill on job creation.  His “new” “jobs” “plan” may be worse.  They all lead up to…
• Uncertainty: Nothing is ever certain in business, but managing uncertainty is a key part of a good manager’s job.  And when there’s this much uncertainty – in regulation, expenses and taxes, to say nothing of the markets that are all also affected by the same regulations, taxes and expenses – the prudent response is to cut expenses and wait and see.

I find it fascinating that “progressives” like Mr. Shields think that the response to this is to “tax the rich to create jobs”.

Another “progressive” responded to the above:..

Business fears the future, so they hide under the bed where they clip coupons.

…and, when reminded of the need for prudence…

You remind me of the Vikings, who instead of playing to win, play not to lose. How’s that working out?

Which proves the old conservative adage that when it come to business, liberals are generals in the bedroom and whores on the battlefield.

From the facebook page of Gary Miller, who’s at least exercising some of the brilliance of his late, lamented Truth Vs. The Machine blog over there – a response to one of Obama’s questions from last night:

OBAMA: “What kind of country would this be if this chamber had voted down Social Security or Medicare just because it violated some rigid idea about what government could or could not do?” ~President Barack Obama

MILLER: Um, a solvent one? One that abides by the rule of law perhaps?

I think it’s time to give an Obama speech the MST3K treatment…

Gibson Musical Instruments Corp. CEO Henry Juszkiewicz via smacked Obama and his speech with a big piece of rosewood:

”He’s a government fan,” he says. “He has a problem with successful businesses. He thinks they’re the problem, that they shouldn’t be quite as successful.”

“He is using the levers of government to not only redistribute, but to penalize,” he adds. “I see a difference between what he said and what he’s doing.”

“We’re under attack,” Juskiewicz says. “It’s pretty interesting to see that one of the points in Obama’s speech was to cut back regulation and promote jobs, when, in fact, he’s done just the opposite…

The splash Obama’s made about “cutting regulation” is, of course, purely potemkin – or as that other Gibson player, John Lennon, once noted…

The Gibson "John Lennon", modeled after one of Lennon's old instruments

…it’s one (cut regulation) for you, nineteen for me.

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.

The question, rather, is “how dumb does Obama think his base actually is?

“We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again,” Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. “But over the last six months we’ve had a run of bad luck.” Obama listed three events overseas — the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises — which set the economy back.

Leave aside the fact that two out of those three bits of “bad luck” could have been avoided by scrupulously avoiding policies like Obama’s (Obama’s bobbling of Mideast policy, the gundecking of domestic oil drilling which has extended and institutionalized America’s dependence on imported oil, and the running of catastrophic debt levels), perhaps it’s a sign that Obama’s growing up; he’s stopped blaming Bush, and turned to blaming unaccountable, intangible “luck” for his administration’s failure.

The question isn’t so much “is it dumb”.  The question is “why does his base fall for this claptrap?”

..that the government and left (pardon the redundancy) consider me, Mitch Berg, mild-mannered midwestern schlump and father of two, a “terrorist” these days.

• I am a bitter, gun-clinging Jebus freak: Janet Napolitano has already told the police to be looking out for us.
• I’m a Second Amendment activist: Because Goddess knows the nation’s law-abiding gun owners are getting ready to start mowing down the innocent.
• Pro-life!: Fear me, oh innocent!
• Pro-limited government: I’m a Tenther!  I could start blowing things up to educate people about the reality of enumerated powers!

That’s “terrorist” – as in “one who uses terror to cow people into accepting his agenda”.

Who knew?

When government makes its’ mission to be more onerous to the law-abiding than to the enemy, we are all the enemy.

We’ve known it for decades; raising taxes in a recession is stupid, stupid, stupid.

But being a liberal means believing history just doesn’t apply to you:

CME Group Inc. is evaluating whether to move some operations to other states from Chicago to reduce its taxes, but it has not decided on an exact timeline, CEO Craig Donohue said Thursday.

“Our tax situation is untenable,” Donohue told Reuters, noting that CME is taxed more heavily than any of its global competitors. The company is talking with at least three states — Texas, Florida and Tennessee — about relocating some of its business to take advantage of lower tax rates there, Donohue said.

Illinois bucked the trend that New York and (to some extent) Calfornia recognized; that not only do you have to cut spending (because government is out of control) but that taxes inhibit revenue.

What if Minnesota’s unions gave their all to support a DFL senate candidate – and he stood them up when it was time for their key bit of swag?

Yesterday, it got a column in the WaPo.

In the Tech section, in a piece by Cecilia Kang.  Al Franken filed a brief with the FCC opposing the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Tuesday urged regulators to stop AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile, saying the $39 billion deal would drive up prices for consumers and threaten jobs.

We’ll come back to that last sentence in just a moment here.

In a filing sent to the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission, Franken said the deal would lead to a market duopoly and that conditions attached to the merger wouldn’t stop what could be as much as a 25 percent increase in wireless costs for consumers.

“The competitive effects of a merger of this size and scope will reverberate throughout the telecommunications sector for decades to come and will affect consumer prices, customer service, innovation, competition in handsets, and the quality and quantity of network coverage,” said Franken, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ”These threats are too large and too irrevocable to be prevented or alleviated by conditions.”

Now, in a sense, this isn’t a surprise.  The far left, the “Nutroots”, hate this merger.  Behind the banner of “Net Neutrality”, they’d much prefer the government to control the world’s bandwidth.

Franken’s move comes after committee chairman Herb Kohl (D-Wis. wrote a letter to federal officials last week, saying such a merger would violate antitrust law.

But we’re not here to debate Net Neutrality.  We’re here to talk Al Franken.

Franken has two main bases of support in Minnesota, which pushed him – a political neophyte, albeit a pundit with portfolio – over the top in the 2008 Senate race against Norm Coleman; the Netroots – the mass of far-left “alternative” media activists – and the unions.

And on this issue as few others, those two bases are very much in conflict.

And if you’re a union worker, you need to know what Franken did.

More at noon today.

I drove out to North Maplewood the other day to have a chat with some DFLer acquaintances of mine;  Stephen (never “Steve”) Plotznick-Hale, and his wife, Bella Plotznick-Hale-Rehavy.  Committed DFLers both, she is a social worker in the Maplewood school system, and he’s a grievance writer with the Department of Labor.

They sat, dourly focused on their organic boxed wine, as I walked into the bar.  They were in no mood for small talk; they cut right to what passes for the chase.

I’ll join the conversation there:

STEPHEN:  This shutdown is ridiculous!  The GOP is obsessed with protecting the rich!

MITCH: Well, no – the GOP Legislative caucuses are doing what they were sent to Saint Paul to do; oppose all new taxes.

BELLA: But if we taxed the millionaires, we could solve thish problem!  We could afford everything that the Lezh…Ledge…Lesbolature sayzh we needed!

MITCH:  Well, Bella, funny you should say that.  Let’s ignore, for a moment, whether all that spending is needed, much less wise. and start by definining “millionaire”.

STEPHEN: Easy.  Someone with a net worth of a million bucks.

BELLA: YEAH! Shomeone with more money than…Jeeeeebuzh!

MITCH:  OK.  Now, we’re talking income tax rates, here.  They don’t all make a million bucks; if we assume a million or more in net worth, we’re talking everyone from the CEO of United HealthGroup down to regular people who’ve invested very very wisely.  They may make $30 million a year, they may make $150K.  For purposes of this discussion, let’s say they make an average of half a million a year in income.

STEPHEN:  O…K… (takes another sip, fingers nervously drumming table).

BELLA: I’m gonna get a beer. (She sits motionless).

MITCH: OK.  So the first $200K in Adjusted Gross Income is taxed at the current top tier rate of 7.95%.  The rest of their income is taxed at 10.95%, as the Governor proposes.    We’ll hit all 7,700 of them.

STEPHEN:  Exactly!  That’ll close the deficit.

MITCH:  Which is how much?

STEPHEN:  Five Billion dollars.

MITCH:  Heh.  Not exactly.  Taxing “millionaires” according to Dayton’s plan, assuming an average income of half a mill a year, gives us a grand total of $375 million.  About six percent of the “Five Billion Dollar Deficit”.

STEPHEN:  (Stares blankly)

MITCH: Of course, the Dayton rate was never going to stop at an AGI of $200K.  It was going to be more like $135.

STEPHEN:  Yeah!

MITCH:  In which case, assuming a half a million a year in income, we the people rake in a total of a little over $390 million.

BELLA:  Oh, you’re sho full of…(belches)…crap, Merg.  They all make a million bucksh a year!

MITCH:  OK.  Let’s say the average income for these 7,700 millionaires is a million dollars a year.  Applying the Dayton tax rate gets you a total of…

BELLA:  Eleventy billion dollars!

MITCH: Hah!  Bella, you rock!  No – it’s just shy of $797 million.  And if you start the surcharge at $135,000, the extra revenue jumps to $811 million.

STEPHEN:  (Calculates frantically in his head) That’s, like, way less than five billion…

BELLA:  We should just TAKE IT AALLLLLL!  (Bella swoops into a face-plant on the floor).

MITCH: (after helping Stephen help Bella into her chair).  OK.  Let’s do that.  Let’s say we assume the average “millionaire” makes $500K a year, and we confiscate every penny above the $135,000 a year level – a 100% tax rate on the wealthy.

BELLA: (head down on table) Yeahhhh….

MITCH:  You get a total of $2.8 billion the first year – about half of the DFL Deficit.  And let’s say we assume the “millionaires” make a million a year apiece, and we confiscate everything over $135,000; the total we take in is $6.7 billion.

STEPHEN:  So you cover the deficit!

BELLA:  Yaaaay! (starts to vomit a bit in her throat)

MITCH:  Yeah – once.

STEPHEN: Well, that’s the Legislature’s problem, not mine!  Make it happen!  Eat the rich!

(Mitch grabs a mung rag and cleans up the expanding vomit slick under Bella’s passed-out head on the table).

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

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

Nonsense, never happen.

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

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

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

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

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

Doakes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A dollar-an-hour pay cut.

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

How many of you are “happy to pay?”

Minnesota politicans – DFLers all – have blessed the rest of us with three quotes that sum up the difference between conservative and “progressive” politics – and, indeed, the evil of progressivism – more concisely and starkly than all of the Poli Sci PhDs in the world have done through all of history.

Back in 2007, it was Saint Paul DFL Senator Cy Thao, who said “When you guys win, you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money!”.

In 2009?  Larry Pogemiller, who said “I think it’s silly to assume people can spend their own money better than government can”.

Both of these statements can be read as “politicians slipping up and telling the truth”; they’r funny, as far as that goes.

But both statements also point out what is so profoundly wrong with “progressive” politics; it exists by not only sponging off the labor of others, but by trying to convince them that being sponged is in and of itself noble.

And now we have a third.  Last Sunday, on the Esme Murphy show, Elliot Seid  – the capo for the Twin Cities Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem!”.

In other words, everything that everyone earns in this state should be suject to being appropriated, until government’s appetites are met. Maybe exceeded just a bit, just to be sure.

The quote has an inside shot of winning this year’s Charles Townsend award.

And it, along with Thao and Pogemiller’s quotes, should be printed up on T-shirts by the GOP and handed out at the fair this summer.

Number of federally-owned limousines Limous soars on Obama’s watcha;

Limousines, the very symbol of wealth and excess, are usually the domain of corporate executives and the rich. But the number of limos owned by Uncle Sam increased by 73 percent during the first two years of the Obama administration, according to an analysis of records by iWatch News.

In related news; Strib still biased.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

If I am funding an agency whose mission is to promote home ownership among low-income clients but a substantial percentage of those clients are losing their homes and thereby ending up worse off than before they started – foreclosed, credit ruined and evicted – at what point should I conclude that the agency is a failure and stop throwing money down the rat-hole?

Joe is referring to the plethora of non-profits whose goal is to promote home ownership among low-income buyers – like this, and this and this.

It’s Economics 101;  you can not make something worth other than what people are naturally willing to pay for it without creating unintended, inevitably bad consequences.

Well, it was Economics 101.  In the era of Obama and Dayton, I think it must have been dropped from the curriculum to make time for GLBT economic sensitivity training.

I’ve written this before; I’m no anti-rail zealot.  I can see cases where rail transit can make sense.   I can see ery, very hypothetical case where some sort of rail line from Minnesapolis to, say, the southwestern suburbs might actually make sense; it’d take people from where they are (the bedroom suburbs, the inner city) and take them to where they want to go (commuter jobs in the city, all the jobs blooming in the ‘burbs).

I did say hypothetical.  Right?  Because that is as close as any of these projects ever gets to breaking even in a normal human lifetime.

The big case for “commuter rail” lines like the Big-Lake-to-Minneapolis Northstar Line – which differs from “light rail” in using regular rail tracks and right of way  – was that, given a few conditions, it could theoretically get to “revenue neutral” relatively quickly.  Theoretically.

The conditions:

• No buying and rebuilding of right of way.
• Buying used, or at least relatively inexpensive, rolling stock.
• Building austere stations.
• Having lots and lots and lots of riders.

These conditions, of course, are grossly offensive to Commuter Rail’s biggest stakeholders – the Urban Planning mafia.  Rights of way need to be built to further the grand sweeping visions they have (building the line all the way to Target Center), or to show the people who’s boss (the Central Corridor, which is rapidly turning Saint Paul into Cold War Berlin); used rolling stock seems faintly plebeian for fulfilling grand visions, plus the various transit consultants have to scratch the backs of the equipment vendors; urban planners must also build all stations to be monuments to their, and their patrons’, wisdom.

And as rail lines have shown over and over, people just don’t like to be herded into cars to be driven down a fixed route that may only incidentally match their own, if at all.  And usually for higher cost.  They stay away in droves.

And with the Northstar, that is apparently what they are doing:

While views vary widely over the wisdom of constructing Minnesota’s firstcommuter rail line, just about everyone agrees the number of riders for the first year of Northstar service fell far short of expectations— 20 percent and 185,000 riders short.

And that hits us all in the pocketbook.  Because the trains burn the same amount of diesel, and use the same amount of union labor, whether they’re half full or completely empty.

Guess what they are now?

When ridership comes up short, so do taxpayers, who were already expected to subsidize 79 percent of Northstar’s $16.8 million operating costs—before the shortfall. Passenger ticket sales were projected to pay for 21 percent of the cost of train rides, an operating deficit of more than $1 million per month.

Let’s chew on that figure for a moment.

The Northstar costs between $3.25 and $8 a ride; figuring an average of $6 a ride, that means the taxpayer is paying $20-24 for each passenger ride.  (Even at the lowest rate, we’re paying $13 per ride).

That’s on top of the $4 per ride we pay for every single ticket on the Hiawatha Light Rail – which is likely to be about half what we pay per ride on the Central Corridor.

And it’s getting worse:

But we already know that Northstar’s projected operating costs for 2011 will put even more of a strain on taxpayers to pick up the slack. Metro Transit lowered its projected number of passengers for 2011 by 147,000 riders, some 16 percent under its 2010 goal. As a result, Metro Transit raised the amount of its projected taxpayer subsidy to operate Northstar in 2011 to 84 percent, some 5 percent more than its 2010 goal.

You do the math.  Or I will; that $24 subsidy for a $6 ticket will grow to $30-36.  Per ticket.  Every ticket. Until such time as people decide they’d love to be jammed into metal tubes to go to work in a city where, by the way, most of us don’t work.

In 2011, Metro Transit hopes to attract 750,000 Northstar riders, about 40,000 more passengers than in 2010. Compared to last year’s less than expected passenger numbers, Northstar has posted modest increases in riders so far in 2011.

With fewer overall passengers expected to ride the rail service this year, Northstar’soperating budgetwas projected to decline slightly from $16.8 in 2010 to $16.5 million this year. Given the lower number of expected riders, ticket sales are expected to cover just $2.64 million of Northstar’s operating costs.

A rail system is one of those things that the Urban Planning mafia likes to call a characteristic of a “world class metro area”.

Apparently “world class” means “waste money like a crack whore with a stolen Platinum card”.

“The Ryan Plan is scary! The Ryan Plan is scary!”

While Medicare won’t have sufficient funds to pay full benefits starting in 2024, five years earlier than last year’s estimate, Social Security’s cash to pay full benefits runs short in 2036, a year sooner than the 2010 projection, the U.S. government said today in an annual report.

“The Ryan Plan is scary!”

Both forecasts were affected by a slower-than-anticipated economic recovery, the government said. The estimates for funding add urgency to talks between Democrats and Republicans on ways to cut spending to reduce the U.S. budget deficit.

“The Ryan Plan is soooooooooooo scary!”

“Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing, and will require legislative corrections if disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers are to be avoided,” according to the report summary.

“Let’s keep doing what we’re doing.  Because whomever is in office in ten years will need some challenges, right? Because the Ryan Plan is scary!”

I’m not sure what bugs me more about this Doug Grow column; the fact that he deemed a bit of screeching DFL illogic newsworthy, or that he doesn’t seem to realize that it’s screechingly illogical at all.

He’s writing about the MN Senate debate over a Human Services bill which would change the way the state delivers health care to the poor, from a bureaucratic entitlement to a voucher system.

Grow:

Apparently, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander.

That little truth came to light during Tuesday’s Senate debate over health care for the poor.

Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, introduced one of the GOP’s plans for cutting Human Services costs by taking about 15,000 single adults out of MinnesotaCare and giving them vouchers so they can buy their own health insurance.

Hann sang the praises of the bill: It will save the state money. It will give the poor more choices. It will improve the health care of the poor. It will get government out of health care. It’s the American way!

No sarcasm clogging Grow’s keyboard there.  Nosirree Bob!  It’s the Twin Cities Media way!  All them poor folks is too dumb to take care of themselves!

But that’s not really the issue here:

Then, Sen. Barb Goodwin, DFL-Columbia Heights, rose to speak. She offered a simple amendment to this GOP plan.

She said her amendment would require legislators to test the plan for two years, before the poor were forced into it.

“I hear what a wonderful deal this is for people,” Goodwin said. “We can determine if this plan is working as it should.”

Amendment greeted with silence

For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop in the Senate chambers. What? Us on this plan?

When columnists try to play mind-readers, it’s pretty my much their own minds they end up reading.  Because I know that if I’d been sitting in that Senate chamber, I’d have been quiet, myself.  But not from taking offense at someone thinking I’d dream of being lumped in with the hoi-polloi.

No, it’d be because I’d be wondering…:

• …if Senator Goodwin gets the difference between people doing a job who get health insurance as part of their compensation – the legislators, in this case – and people who come to the taxpayers for help with getting health care?  If she recognizes a difference between someone who takes a job (yes, even an elected one) with full knowledge of what the health benefits are, just like most of us in the private sector do (with benefits that are admittedly not nearly as nice), and…
• …if she realizes how much of the private sector is moving in the direction of self-directed health care – where the consumer makes the key decisions about their own health care…
• …whether she appreciates the idea that vouchers, compared to the trough-slopping reality of most government entitlement programs, gives the recipient some dignity…
• …or, for that matter, giving public healthcare for the poor any chance of being sustainable at all…
• … or if any of that matters compared to her prevailing priority – keep the bureaucracy fat ‘n happy?

Doubt it’d be fit all that into a politic statement if I didn’t have the floor.

A rookie senator, Gretchen Hoffman, R-Vergas, stood, clearly offended by Goodwin’s amendment.

“We’re citizen legislators,” she said, adding that she’d waived her right to receive the health insurance benefits that most legislators receive.

After proclaiming her own goodness, she attacked the Goodwin amendment.

One wonders if Grow would ever call a DFLer a “Rookie”, or write off their defense as “proclaiming their goodness”.

“Political tomfoolery,” Hoffman said.

Again there was silence in the Senate. It had been years since anyone had heard the expression “tomfoolery.”

And later, Goodwin said that “tomfoolery” had never been applied to her before.

If “tomfoolery” means ‘incapable of carrying on a logical argument”, I’ll be it has.

Anyway, here’s what they’re arguing about;

Back up for a moment and look at the plan Hann sings the praises of but — as it turned out — wouldn’t want for himself.

Single working adults who have incomes of between 133 percent and 250 percent of poverty-level would no longer be covered by MinnesotaCare, the publicly subsidized health insurance program for the working poor that’s been in existence since 1990. Under MinnesotaCare, low-income working people pay premiums on a sliding scale based on ability to pay.

The Republican plan would force those earning between $14,400 and $30,000 off MinnesotaCare and into the “free” market. With the help of state vouchers, they could select the health insurance they want for themselves.

Hann says that by “allowing” these people to go into the free market, the state would save $100 million per biennium.

And since they’re “single, working” adults – unlike Grow, I’m using using scare quotes in place of an actual argument – it seems like a great compromise.  Grow’s, and Goodwin’s, only argument seems to be that Senators don’t want to trade their current plans for it.

By that “logic”, Goodwin and Grow should both shut up and go on welfare, including MNCare.

(Scene: Sergeant BUCK SLAUGHTER,a 29 year old veteran of two tours overseas in the War on Terror, is  just home from his tour in Afghanistan.  Hestops by the Veterans Affairs office.  Looking worried he steps up to the desk.  ANASTASIA BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER  is sitting at the desk.

SLAUGHTER: Hello.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Take a number.

SLAUGHTER: I’m the only one here.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Then you shouldn’t have to wait long.

SLAUGHTER:  Um, OK.  (Takes a number).

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: (Waits, typing passive-aggressively for about 40 seconds.  Looks up at “Next Number” sign).  “Number 1”.

SLAUGHTER:  That’s me.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER:  (Grimaces). How can I help you?

SLAUGHTER:  Well, I’m just back from Afghanistan.  I just wanna know what I can do about education benefits, and also VA benefits for the shrapnel I got.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER:  (Hands SLAUGHTER a couple packets of information).  Anything else?

SLAUGHTER:  Well, yeah.  I’ve never been all that into politics, but I’m hearing that they’re going to cut funding for Veterans.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Oh, yes.  Republicans are trying to cut everything. Grandma, kids, veterans, even kittens.

SLAUGHTER: OK, well, what can we do?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: You need to call your state representative and demand that they put the following language into the budget… (goes on her computer):  ”

“Add specific language in The Ominous [sic] Bill…”

SLAUGHTER: “Ominous” bill?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Whatever.  Let me continue:

“…UES1047-2 on both sides (House and Senate) on page R19 when addressing any overall general cuts and on pages R20 and R21 at the opening of both Military and Veterans Affairs budgets.”

” To read:”

“In respect to the fact we are a nation at war at the Departments of Military and Veterans Affairs are paramount in those operations providing manpower…

SLAUGHTER: So far so good!

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: (continues)

…support programs and services, the following special consideration is hereby adopted for the Biennium ending 2013: The Department of Military Affairs and the Department of Veterans Affairs are to be held harmless to any budget cuts…

SLAUGHTER: Excellent!  They’ll hold all veterans benefits harmless!  Right?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: (continues)

…in salary, staff, FTE, personnel, equipment, programs and or services including any reductions of deputy commissioners, or the combining of commissioners of these two agencies.”

SLAUGHTER: Um – what’s that?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: We’re going to make sure nothing harms any of the program administrators or management!

SLAUGHTER: And what about the actual veterans?

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER:  The what?

SLAUGHTER: US!  The veterans!

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Oh, yeah…

SLAUGHTER: US:  I mean, “holding harmless” the bureaucrats and administrators is like sending Military Police on patrol.

BECKETT-SCHLUMBERGER: Don’t care.  Number two!

SLAUGHTER: There is no  number two.

(And scene).

Governor Dayton tells the legislature to “suck it”:

Gov. Mark Dayton says Republican legislative leaders are underestimating his resolve if they think he’ll back off his plan to raise taxes on Minnesota’s top earners.

Fewer than three weeks remain in the legislative session, and Dayton and legislative leaders aren’t close to reaching agreement on a plan to erase a $5 billion budget deficit.

Dayton seems to be counting on the GOP reverting to its traditional behavior – bowing to media pressure and DFL browbeating.  Their most recent model – the “Gang of Six”, the GOP “moderates” two years ago who caved in on a DFL tax and spend bill.

And we know what happened there, don’t we?

It’s not the same GOP as it was two and four years ago.

Dayton said the Republican budget is more than $1 billion out of balance, and that they should agree on spending cuts instead of relying on budget savings that will never materialize…

…according to a Management and Budget director that serves at his discretion, using formulas that are not designed to account in any way for savings.

“This is real to so many thousands of Minnesotans and they won’t now, two months away from the beginning of the next biennium, even tell the people of Minnesota what it is they’re willing to do to them. And that I do not respect,” Dayton said.

Dayton is, of course, unwillling to point out that down his path lies madness; 20% spending hikes in this biennium will be followed by 20% more in 2013, and more after that.  And if the economy improves, and tax receipts climb with it?  All of that will be spent too.

Dayton doesn’t want to talk about that.

Dayton said there’s enough time to reach a deal but worries that Republicans aren’t going to budge on their opposition to tax increases. He said Minnesotans want them to compromise.

“They want us to work out our differences. So it seems to me that they have that responsibility. I have that responsibility,” he said.

57% of Minnesotans voted against Dayton.  He’s the one that needs to compromise.

The GOP?   No way.  They got sent there with a mandate.  They had best follow it.

Over on Facebook, Gary Miller writes about the killing of Bin Laden:

[I have] as much blood lust as the next guy, but has the sinking feeling folks don’t realize OBL got everything he wanted: U.S. brought to the brink of insolvency; the very freedoms we went to war to protect we voluntarily took from ourselves; our prestige in the region irrevocably sullied; our military depleted; our best and our brightest killed and maimed, and — the cherry on top — martydom.

True to a degree.

He had plenty of help bringing ourselves to insolvency; Medicare Part D and “Too Big to Fail” and eleventy-trillion dollars in public pensions all play their role as certainly as did the war.  We “gave up” some freedoms during the War on Terro – but no more than we took away from ourselves over “the war on drugs” since 1970, and we didn’t give up the means to get them back (a guy can dream). We never had much prestige to sully in the Middle East, to be fair.   And he was going to be a martyr even if he died choking on a sandwich.

As to the best and brightest…well, there’s no clever quip there.

Here’s what MNDOT spends your tax dollars on; the state telling cities what kinds of signs they can plant along the road:

Two new signs along Highway 57 on either end of town say it all: “Welcome to Historic Mantorville.” The Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) “outdoor advertising control agent” who recently conducted a drive-by state sign inspection may have worn out his welcome, however, after notifying city hall that three older signs along the state highway in this small, southeastern Minnesota town violate state regulations and must go, including one for the community’s annual Marigold Days celebration.

“It’s like his job to go around and look at signs,” said Camille Reger, Mantorville city clerk. “I’m just surprised that after how long [the sign] it’s been there that they’re cracking down now. What’s the reason behind it? “

Possible reasons:

a) The state’s roads are in such fantastic shape that MNDOT finally worked its way down to “The Mantorville Signs” crisis.

b) Someone finally got around to it.

c) MNDOT needs to gin up more work for itself, to justify more spending.  To justify more budget.  To justify taxing your sorry ass back to the 1970’s.

State regulations allow cities to post identification signs on state highways at each entrance to town. For years the Marigold Days signs informally served that purpose for Mantorville—until the new welcome signs were erected in 2010. According to a city employee, a MnDOT road sign inspector recently reclassified one of the Marigold Days signs as an advertisement that he believes is also in the right of way. This, despite the fact that the offending sign has been in place for at least 20 years. MnDOT ordered city employees to remove the sign.

Isn’t this a sign that Minnesota has just too damn much government?

It’s the most iron-clad law in economics; you an not make people to pay more or less for a good or service than the market will bear without distorting the market.  If you force people to pay less than the market would dictate – “artificially lower the price” – the supply vanishes;  if you artificially raise the price, you get an oversupply (and build a black market).

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit iterated the idea to tie it to our last, and most likely our next, bubbles:

“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”

Joe Doakes, who lives in the Como Park, works in the real estate business.  And he notes a real-life example of this in Saint Paul.  His example cuts close to home; it’s the foreclosure of a Habitat for Humanity project that I believe I worked on with a previous employer.

And as I put up the fiberglass insulation batts, I thought about the financials involved.  There was a lot of money going into this house – vastly, vastly more than it was going to “sell” for.  And for all that, to my admittedly financially-unsophisticated mind, it seemed like a real house of cards, all dependent on someone whom the credit industry (also admittedly not my favorite people in the world) wouldn’t deem a great credit risk somehow not only becoming a great credit customer, but riding out an economic downturn (which some saw coming, and some studiously ignored).

In this case, it certainly didn’t work:

The sale closed in April 2009 for $153,000. The purchaser gave Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity a first mortgage for $104,040; a second mortgage for $48,960; a “forgivable” third mortgage for $6,000 (doesn’t have to repay if lives there 10 years); and gave a $10,000 fourth mortgage to Housing and Redevelopment Authority of the City of Saint Paul, for a total debt of $168,000, which is $15,000 more than the purchase price and plainly was enough to cover closing costs, taxes, fees, etc.

The owner walked into that house cheaper than s/he could have gotten into [a typical St. Paul-area apartment] – nothing out of pocket, not even a security deposit!

By July 2009, the homeowners association slapped a lien on the townhouse for unpaid monthly association dues, $1,800.

By April 2010, just one year after the closing, the property went into foreclosure. It has not resold, it’s sitting empty, bank-owned.

Now, I’m not going to pick on Habitat itself.  But Joe’s example shows a microcosm of the madness of America’s entitlement culture; subsidizing the “Middle Class” as a destination is like putting money down on a hotel room in Disneyland when you can’t pay for the gas to get there.