“Obama is fiscally resonsible.  Obama is Fe fiscally responsible…:”

Federal borrowing is on pace to hit the legal limit on the national debt in less than a week.

“Obama is fiscally resonsible.”

As set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on Feb. 12, 2010, the legal limit on the national debt is $14.2940 trillion. As of the close of business Tuesday, according to the Daily Treasury Statement released at 4:00 pm today, the portion of the national debt subject to this legal limit was $14.268365 trillion. (The total national debt, including the portion exempted from the legal limit, was $14.3205 trillion.)

“Obama is fiscally resonsible. Obama is fiscally resonsible. Obama is fiscally resonsible.”

Keep repeating it until it’s true.

It might happen in January of 2013.

Via the Vail Spot,  the GOP blew it:

Here’s a link that shows just who voted for the “deal” that screws America.  Boehner blew it.  He had a chance to do the right thing…and blinked.  I hope that next year, someone will have the courage to give him a real primary challenge.  Remember, for anyone to challenge an incumbent takes time and money…contribute freely to their opponents with both.  It’s the only way to show the leaders of the Republican Party, that We The People meant what we said at the ballot box last year.

My mantra on most political things is “perfect is the enemy of good enough”.  And I know politics is about compromise – especially when you only control one of the three elements for passing legislation.

But with the future of the world’s financial system at stake, and with the US teetering on the edge of the same cliff Greece and Portugal slid down, it’s time for some rock-ripped principle.

The voters of Wisconsin have spoken.

Even after two months of gnashing and thrashing and sniveling, The People of Wisconsin have reaffirmed last November’s results.

After the media and left (pardon my redundancy) all but declared it a Kloppenberg victory and referendum on Walker.

And it just goes to show the media – just because liberals swarm in Madison doesn’t mean an entire state has drunk the koolaid.

You’ve heard the news: corrected tallies put Prosser on top after a 7,500-vote swing.

Naturally, the Democrats are upset.  It’s almost folklore; only Democrats benefit from mysterious and opaque swings in votes!

Kloppenburg supporters reacted with alarm, pointing out that Nickolaus had worked in the Assembly Republican caucus during the time that Prosser, a former Republican lawmaker, served as the Assembly speaker and that Nickolaus also had faced questions about her handling of elections as clerk.

In the liberal world, a public servant’s work in public service is “experience” for Democrats, and “evidence” against Republicans.

And show me a public servant that hasn’t “faced questions”.

“Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg (campaign) deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire city were missed. To that end, we will be filing open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the county,” Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said in a statement.

Yeah, Ms. Mulliken!

And while you’re at it, let’s get answers about all the irregularities in Hennepin County!

Oh, wait…

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) raised the possibility of an independent investigation over the recovery of the votes.

“This is a serious breach of election procedure,” he said. “We’re going to look further. She waited 24 hours to work this. And she waited until after she verified the results, making it that much more difficult to challenge and verify the results.”

‘We went over everything’

I suppose Wisconsin Voters should be happy Barca didn’t make his announcement from a hotel in Chicago.

Of course, not every Wisconsin Dem is chanting the party line.  I’m adding some emphasis:

But at the news conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said: “We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we’re satisfied they’re correct.”

As a Democrat, she said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, who sat in on Nickolaus’ news conference, said voters can be confident in the results because “all the votes are in that office. If anyone wants to look at them and verify, they can.”

This is a great day for America.

I predicted it.

I reiterated the prediction.

And, as per usual, it’s happened; the Obama Administration rule fining airlines for keeping passengers waiting on the tarmac over three hours is causing a huge spike in flight cancellations:

A Star-Ledger analysis of federal DOT figures reveals airlines are simply canceling more flights, presumably to avoid idling on the tarmac and exposing themselves to the whopping fines. In fact, the cancellation rate at the nation’s major airports surged 24 percent during the eight months after the rule went into effect.

There is no breakdown by airport, and there was a noticeable spike in cancellations during the wicked December weather. But over the course of the eight-month period, 7,095 more flights were ditched.

Put another way: Nearly 900 more flights a month are being scrubbed..

At 100 passengers per flight, that’s 90,000 a month having to change their plans on the fly – usually with a lot more than three hours’ delay.

“They’ve exchanged inconvenience for a relatively few number of people for an inconvenience for a tremendous number of people,” said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, a passengers advocacy group.

Jennifer Sutherland, 46, a gymnastics coach and Cedar Grove native now living in Clarksville, Ohio, was among the thousands of air travelers whose flights were canceled at Newark Liberty International Airport after the Dec. 26 blizzard. Sutherland has no way of knowing if the tarmac rule came into play in her case, but she was angry that airlines could be canceling flights as an easy, sure way to eliminate their risk of penalties.

“The airlines are saving the massive fines from the tarmac rule and at the same time forcing passengers into the impossible situation of waiting days or weeks to re-book or simply purchase another ticket,” she said.

Unintended consequences…

If you weren’t depressed about The Obama Economy before,  you will be after you read this.

Saint Paul at Fraters Libertas has the scoop:

Another formerly respected education professional disgraces himself.

Go and read.

And let the outrage out.

The latest Rasmussen Poll shows  likely voters are backing Walker:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters agree more with the Republican governor in his dispute with union workers. Thirty-eight percent (38%) agree more with the unionized public employees, while 14% are undecided…

…Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters think teachers, firemen and policemen should be allowed to go on strike, but 49% disagree and believe they should not have that right. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

Naturally there’s stark partisan divide.

Thirty-six percent (36%) of all voters say that in their state the average public employee earns more than the average private sector worker. Twenty-one percent (21%) say the government employee earns less, while 20% think their pay is about the same. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure.

With states across the country finding that benefits for public workers are becoming difficult to fund in the current economic climate, support for public employee unions has fallen.  Forty-five percent (45%) of Americans favor them, and 45% don’t. These findings include 21% who Strongly Favor such unions and 30% who are Strongly Opposed to them.

This can’t be good news to all the droogs in Madison.

Having lost the majority in both chambers of the Wisconsin Legislature and the governor’s mansion – by the choice of Wisconsin’s voters – Wisconsin’s Senate “Democrat”ic caucus fled the state yesterday to a resort in Illinois, rather than do their job.

In doing so, they disenfranchised a majority of Wisconsin voters.

It is, in effect, a coup-d’etat.

The full weight of law enforcement should be used to round these puling rodents up and haul them back to Madison, first to lose the legal vote on the collective bargaining measure, and then for investigation leading to prosecution for whatever charges the State of Wisconsin gives to those who try to unlawfully seize control of the state’s rightful government and violate the will of the voters.

Remember the movie Monty Python And The Holy Grail?  The part where King Arthur (Graham Chapman) battles the Black Knight (the voice of John Cleese) for the right to pass through the Knight’s land?

The solemn lesson; taunting is no substitute for action.

The DFL is hoping Minnesota’s voters haven’t learned that lesson.  On three issues this past week, the DFL has donned a red shirt to cover the bleeding and asked the GOP why they’re such a bunch of pansies about completely re-engineering government and turning the dominant taxpayer/government paradigm upside down.

Jobs: One reads more than a few leftybloggers who are chanting “The GOP said they were going to create jobs!  And yet it’s four weeks into the session, and they haven’t had a jobs bill yet!  Why’s that?  Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh?Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh? Huh?  Huh?”

Being DFLers, they may not be clear on the concept that the GOP is not going to write a bill – call it “House File 666”, just for our purposes here – saying “Employers must create jobs and  hire people, or the State Patrol will arrest them and a judge will give them an eleventy-billion dollar fine and take their business away from them”.

Silly?  Sure – but no dumber than what the Dems really think a job bill is:  government construction or entitlement projects hiring lots of (union) labor (to pay off the  markers the DFL owes them).

The GOP will cut spending and its attendant taxe and, as Tom Emmer proposed during his campaign, greatly streamline regulations.  The market will respond by starting new projects, hiring new labor.  That’s how it works in the real world.

The DFL is betting the typical voter doesn’t know that.

The Budget: Representative Ryan “Eddie” Winkler tweeted:

GOP so far has not passed a job bill, and are wimping out on their big budget cuts bill. But, they’ll deliver voter ID, guns and abortion.

Jeff Rosenberg of MNPublius – which is basically the same as Ryan Winkler, without the snazzy office – writes:

…this bill doesn’t solve our budget deficit. In fact, it barely even makes a dent, despite committing us to painful cuts.

Winkler’s idea of “wimping out” is tackling the behemoth $32 Billion budget, and its potemkin “$6.2 Billion deficit”, is filing one big honkin’ bill that does everything, in one, huge, conveniently veto-able package.

The Democrats are given to these sorts of things, of course – 2,300 page health care bills that nobody can possibly read in time and the like.  And such an omnibus spending-cut proposal  would make things really easy for the Governor and the DFL, which means it’d be pretty stupid.

Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, speaking at a blogger conference call last night, said “that’s just absurd”.

The GOP majority (aaaaah) is doing this the right way; exposing every single piece of budgetary lard; making the DFL work to justify it in the harsh glare of public scrutiny.

It may make the DFL’s kept talking heads, Winkler and the various bloggers, itchy and nervous at the death of a thousand cuts t hey’re suffereing.  But that’s their problem. Their only priority is to keep government fat and happy, on the backs of the taxpayer.

Voter ID:  It’s pretty much been reduced to a chant; “Republicans want to keep people from the polls”.

The response, of course, is rubbish; the GOP wants to provide our dismal election system the tools it needs to ensure people only vote once, where they’re supposed to.  The GOP slso wants to provide voters the ID they need to be able to vote.  For free.  On us.  Gratis.

The DFL’s response is “It’s more complicated than that – what about the homeless?”  To which the GOP responds “we’ll have to figure something out; in the meantime, for the other 99.99% of the voting population, let us press ahead”.

To which the DFL’s  chanting heads respond…well, who knows?  The bottom line is, the DFL is fighting to keep voting anonymous and un-controlled, to their benefit.  They are not fighting to ensure the right of every Minnesotan to vote; they are fighting to keep the rules opaque enough to hide more abuses that benefit the DFL.  They should be ashamed.

But that’s never been their long suit, now, has it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

You didn’t pay for it.

We did.

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

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

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

By your imperial leave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s always a mistake.

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

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

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

Any reference to reforming litigation.

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

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

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

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

…because Minnesota underspends on health care and social entitlements.

Really!  That’s what the leftyblogs say!

And when they say it, er…ah…:

Just as a debate on Minnesota health care spending rushes in at the Capitol, the Census Bureau offered some numbers to prime the pump.

“State government spending on public welfare was greater than 30 percent of general expenditures in 11 states, led by Minnesota (37.5 percent),” the government numbers bureau said in a news release Wednesday.

The numbers come from the Census’ report on State Government Finances. Dig in to the numbers here.

The article, by Rachel Stassen Berger – mentions:

Worth noting: Although the Capitol debate Wednesday will focus on DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty was in charge when the numbers rose.

As was a DFL-strangled legislature…

Mark Dayton committed Minnesota – the most-insured state in the union, a state that already has comprehensive insurance assistance for the poor, and a state that is complaining of a “six billion dollar deficit” – to a third of a billion dollars in spending.

From a GOP caucus news release:

“There is legitimate cause for concern when actions are taken to add 95,000 people to any entitlement program. The policy in place removes all residency requirements and removes nearly all asset limits that were previously used to determine eligibility. This is a big step in the wrong direction,” said Senator Hann.

Early enrollment in to Medicaid has been estimated to cost $26.5 million from the General Fund budget for Fiscal Year 2011, depending on the time that it could be implemented. Upon Governor Dayton’s Executive Order, a far larger number of enrollees will be transferred into the program, leaving the state with an estimated net cost of $384 million.

On top of our already-immense social spending.

New York’s snow-plowing disaster was apparently a union labor slowdown, says the NYPost:

Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

Allowing government workers to unionize has always been a stupid idea, but that cow’s pretty much left the barn.  For now.

“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.

With unions/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) at a low ebb nationwide, look for a lot more of this.

And bear in mind, I have nothing against unions.  Just as companies and producers and wholesalers try to work the market for their products to their advantage in a free market, so should labor.  Unlike most DFLers, I’ve actually been a union member.

But when unions control government – as they do in places like, well, the Twin Cities – this is what you get; public safety is a chip in the collective bargaining stakes.

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.

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

Seriously!

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

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

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

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

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

…and sample The Great American Liberal Experiment. How’s that going for you by the way?

You’ve racked up nearly $70 billion in general obligation debt, and that doesn’t include your $500 billion unfunded pension liability. Your own analysts predict you’ll face a hole of at least $80 billion over the next four years.

Your government’s run by a brothel of environmentalists, lawyers, public-sector unions and legislative bums. When they’re not taxing or spending, they’re creating regulations and commissions like the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology and the California Blueberry Commission. Many businesses would leave if it weren’t for your sunny climate.

Which may explain why you’re so obsessed with climate change. If your climate changes, no one, including your Hollywood friends, would tolerate you anymore. So you’ve created a law to tax carbon emissions—no matter that it will kill jobs.

California is broke. Broke broke broke (That’s Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire). Most Californian’s think their elected officials are to blame so you’d think a change of course would be in the cards, like the rest of the country…right?

Not a single incumbent state legislator lost re-election this year, including one Democrat who died a month ago (no joke). What’s scarier is that you’ve just given almost all of the keys to statewide offices to Democrats.

So if you want to peer into the future of America, had most if it not changed course last Tuesday evening, you needn’t look so far away to Greece. Go west to “Cah Lee For Nee Uh!”

You think it was fun watching Washington bail out a whole industry? Wait until it’s a state whose economy would be in the top ten if it were a country.

They have a new State Motto: America’s Cautionary Tale.

Jeff writing at National Debt Busters writes about the history of the national debt:

How do the Presidential Administrations compare?

President George Washington through President Gerald Ford, Presidents 1-38, 1791-1976

Debt Increase: $707,142,528,417.78

President James Earl Carter, 39th President, 1977-1980

Debt Increase: $276,666,000,000.00

President Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th President, 1981-1988

Debt Increase: $1,672,127,712,041.16

President George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President, 1989-1992

Debt Increase: $1,462,282,943,480.50

President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, 42nd Presidnet, 1993-2000

Debt Increase: $1,609,557,554,365.20

President George Walker Bush, 43rd President, 2001-2008

Debt Increase: $4,899,100,310,608.44

President Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President, 2009-present

Debt Increase: $3,031,935,408,476.43 (as of 10/28/2010 report on TreasuryDirect.gov)

Obama is on track to triple Bush’s already-criminal debt load – and that’s if Obamacare’s bill comes in where they project it will, which it will not.

The new GOP House has its work cut out for it.

Let’s all make sure they get to it.

Yesterday, we examined how Mark Dayton would endeavor to move Minnesota backward – to try to go Back to the Seventies for its economic model.

And that’s if everything goes perfectly – which it can not.

But it’s so much worse than that.

Mark Dayton, and the Democratic Farmer/Labor Party, wants Minnesota to not only look backwards forty years for its model – but they want Minnesota to look at the sidewalk in front of its feet as it shuffles forward into history.

The DFL in Minnesota – and the state’s once-very-liberal Republican party – have a vision of government that, to take the Dayton campaign at its word, has three messages:

3. Attack the most convenient scapegoats. During tough economic times, “the rich” are a convenient set of scapegoats.

2. Focus on short-term outcomes: The old saying goes “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; show a man how to fish, he eats forever”.  Mark Dayton’s campaign is all about creating a large, elaborate, unionized and exquisitely expensive infrastructure to hand out fish in all its metaphorical forms, while making the art of fishing that much harder for them to master.

1. Above all, keep government fat and happy. Mark Dayton’s axiom for Minnesota, if you take  his campaign at face value, is this; satisfying the wants of Minnesota’s professional and vocational Governing Class is the supreme mission of government.

And history shows us that a state – in the general or United sense – that focuses on these priorities can not survive, much less thrive.

At the very least, these priorities pound society into a master-servant relationship – with government as the master.  A benevolent master, mostly, doling out little bits of satisfaction – fish, if you will – to keep the peasants mollified, but a master nonetheless.

Like a cattledriver and his cattle.

Are you happy to moo for a better Minnesota?

Minnesota deserves better.

Because in its truest form, America is about better.  America in its truest form is not a bunch of serfs serving its lords and masters.  It is a free association of equals, governing itself by consent of the governed, with a government that takes care of its appointed roles and otherwise gets the hell out of the way.

Mark Dayton, at his very best, is a throwback to an era that not only can not come back – it must not come back.

So tomorrow, Minnesota, let us deserve better.

Previous Reasons Dayton Should Not Be Governor

• #2: Moving Minnesota Backward
• #3: Unexamined
• #4: Fool Us Three Times
• #5: We Are Better Than This

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you are one of the 200,000 Minnesotans with a license from the Minnesota Department of Commerce, prepare for a huge fee increase.

Dayton proposes funding the Commerce Department entirely by fees exacted from those “industries.”

Are you a real estate agent? Reeling from the collapse of the houseing market are you?  Tough rocks, Audrey; your license to do business is going up.

Are you an Appraiser?  Your kids are wearing last years’ shoes, and you’re trying to figure out your umpteenth way to fix spaghetti so the kids don’t twig to the fact you’ve been stretching a two-pound box of noodles, since nobody’s buying houses since the Obama Stimulus ceased stimulating?  Pony up, cowboy.

Youre an Insurance agent? Well, your customers may be in good hands – but unless you cough up a pile of extra money, they’ll be someone else’s hands.

Stock broker?  Notary?  Barber? The list goes on and on.  Basically, if you’re any kind of professional whose franchise to do business depends on a state license, you’re going to be paying more – even if you’re making less.

Coming up at 8AM:  No Child Left Paid-For!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

The word’s been knocking around the blogosphere:  The “Socialist Party of America” had named seventy “socialist” US Senators and Representatives.

The problem?:

Quote: The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus.

The problem here is the Socialist Party of America does not exist.

The second problem is the newsletter of question/statement also does not exist. Here is the DSA newsletter for the Fall of 2009 and here is the SP-USA’s newsletter which never published an October 2009 edition.

The American Socialist Party is not the Socialist Party USA and the Socialist Party of America has not existed since 1973 after it had a three way split.

On the one hand, if there’s anything more tedious than listening to Libertarians describe all the different flavors in their own party, it’s listening to socialists talk about the various internecine splits, gyrations and flips they’ve gone through.  I start reading it, and start to picture…:

Apparently the “SPoA” is really just a list of the “Congressional Progressive Caucus“.

Tomayto, Tomahto, really, but accuracy counts.

The Dems did a premature victory lap on the economy last week, at Obama’s last speech in Detroit.

The Detroit Money Pit – The Corner – National Review Online.

General Motors and Chrysler are much better off because Bush gave them $24 billion and Obama gave them another $60 billion. Any company would be. Pouring federal dollars into businesses does improve their bottom lines, but that doesn’t mean it helps the overall economy. The real question is: What would have happened to that money if the government had not spent it in Detroit?

The government shouldn’t plan on getting its money back. President Obama concedes that the $24 billion Bush spent — more than NASA’s annual budget — is gone for good. And Obama’s claims to the contrary, the money he spent isn’t coming back, either.

We’ll never know what the private market could have done; that money’s gone.

General Motors would have to command a market value of more than $70 billion for the taxpayers’ stake in the company to be worth what Obama paid for it. Since General Motors’ highest-ever market valuation was $52 billion in 2000, at the peak of the dot-com boom and the SUV craze, that seems improbable — especially since Obama’s new miles-per-gallon regulations won’t let them build as many of those highly profitable SUVs. At the end of the day, the government will still have sunk tens of billions of dollars into GM and Chrysler with no hope of recovering it.

John Kerry  is sympathetic with people who are suffering from the econony…:

“There’s a sense of some things unraveling” to them, said Kerry.

But don’t do business agains the family!:

But he said that the D.C.-directed attacks are hypocritical, since many of those attacking Washington spending presumably want to keep their Social Security and Medicare and want Washington to play a big role in the Gulf Oil cleanup. “There’s a huge contradiction on a daily basis,” he said.

The great liberal conceit; that if you want some government services, you have to accept all of them.