Courtesy of XKCD, here‘s one of my favorite comic strips ever:

I think about it every time a DFL chantingpointbot starts talking about things like “proof” and “evidence”.

Which brings us to this piece in MNPublius, which gurgitates one of the most alarmingly cynical memes the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) are trying to foist on the less-literate:

It’s been well-documented that cuts to local government aid cause property taxes to rise.

Now, I spent the weekend going through the text of every piece of legislation that led to a freeze, reallocation or cut in Local Government Aid in the past ten years [1], looking for a passage that read like “Local Governments are required to raise taxes to make up for the change in the aid formula”.

Because there is none.

Local Government Aid, for the umpteenth time, was originally intended to redistribute money state tax money to poor outstate school districts and cities, so that towns like Hibbing could rebuild old schools, or Thief River Falls could have a waste-water treatment plant, or Osage could get a new police car.

It’s become a vehicle for the state’s largest (and most DFL-addled) cities, Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth, to launder their own rapacious spending throug the state budget without having to account to city and county taxpayers.

My own analysis ([in the original MNPublius posting – Ed]) shows that property taxes have steadily risen as state aid has dropped.

But Jeff’s piece doesn’t show where the causation, the coercion, the cause is.  Because yes – as Local Government Aid has slowed, cities have had to decide whether to make their own tax base cover the difference, or to do without.  Some cities, like west-metro Mound (which hasn’t gotten LGA in years) made the tough choices, cut the budgets, and learned to make do.

Others, like Minneapolis and Saint Paul and Brainerd – addled by DFL mayors and/or city councils – raised property taxes by far more than the cuts to LGA.

At any rate – Rosenberg’s premise , that “cuts to LGA force property tax hikes”, is a canard, a shrill chanting point that is based in no fact whatsoever.

A local government can opt to keep taxes rock-steady no matter what happens to LGA, and trim what’s needed; they can also make the case to their citizens and taxpayers to keep paying the bills that were formerly paid by taxpayers around the rest of the state, and let the chips fall come election time; in cities like Mound, it’s a dodgy proposition; in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the DFL will keep getting elected no matter what.

There’s a simple reason for that: Cities provide essential services that residents don’t want cut. So instead of cutting back on public safety or filling potholes, local governments are forced to make up for lost revenues by increasing property taxes.

There’s a non-sequitur there – one the DFL is counting on The People not to notice; cities do provide essential services.  They also provide plenty of non-essentials.  In Saint Paul, I pay for the best urban fire department in the US; I’m happy to do it.  We have a decent police department; there’s room for improvement, but they’d OK.

We have a lot of libraries. I love libraries – I practically grew up in one.  But as libraries become home to fewer and fewer books, it pains me to say we could perhaps do with just a tad fewer of them and not make them any less available.

We have a public works department.  I pay them to fill in potholes.  They get to it – eventually.  Clearly there is fat to be cut here. They also plow the streets.  They do an adequate job – one that could easily be privatized, along with many other city-paid services.

We have a park and rec department. I love parks. I love recreation.  The city has dozens of “Community Centers” which serve as public service catchalls for every variety of recreation and social program imaginable.  There would seem to be room for some consolidation.  And frankly, mowing the grass in the parks could be cut waaaay back.

I also pay for a city Human Rights office that fully duplicates the functions of the Ramsey County and State human rights offices, all located within a few blocks of each other in downtown Saint Paul. I pay for a mayoral staff with nineteen along with a phalanx of assistants and other hangers-on.

Could any of these be trimmed before we start laying off cops and firemen?  I think so.

Will it happen?  In Saint Paul, probably not. For all the Mayor’s whinging, the city’s government-dependence-addled electorate will likely increase property taxes to cover whatever they lose from LGA.  Most of the people who care about tax rates have already fled the cities to places with more responsible, responsive governments.

Now – if you live in a city with a more responsible government, the answer may be different.  The mayor may not be able to justify the expense.

But it’s a matter of choice.  Not “force”, as Jeff, the media and the DFL (pardon the redundancy) would like you to think.

Fortunately, the MNGOP has a “solution” for that: take away the right of local governments to make their own decisions and force them to cut essential services. That’s the impact of HF481, a bill by House Republicans that would make local governments’ budget decisions for them by outlawing any property tax increases in the 2012 fiscal year.

That sounds nice, except for one thing — if property taxes are frozen, that means services must be cut. Apparently, an all-cuts budget that slashes $6.2 billion in state funding for things like education isn’t good enough for the MNGOP. They want to force your city government to cut even more services.

The merits of HF481 notwithstanding – it’s worth a discussion – Rosenberg’s wrong.  Not all “services” are essential.  We, the taxpayers of our DFL=-addled cities, can do without $50,000 drinking fountains and misappropriation of city staff to political ends and all the other worthless patronage our cities pay for.

The point is, cuts in LGA do not lead inexorably to property tax hikes.  It is entirely voluntary – dependent entirely on the addiction of local government to spending, their success in selling those compensatory hikes to their voters, and how fed-up the voters are.

Why should voters in Bemidji pay for Saint Paul’s human rights office?

(more…)

The Wisconsin teachers union publishes the names of and home addresses of state legislators:

WEAC has provided a list on their website of the home addresses for all legislators set to vote on the Governors plan.  The link which takes a user to this list only states that it has “Phone Numbers & Email Addresses” however a quick glance at the list proves otherwise.

The WI GOP grabbed the screen shot.

I’m sure it’s just for purposes of writing letters.

Nudge, nudge.

Nancy LaRoche had a conversation with a MN State Senator – and was amazed at what she heard:

One of the most remarkable comments the Senator made was how Governor Mark Dayton has transformed his office.

He installed cubicles into his office space for staff, and moved his office into… a closet. My first reaction was, “that sounds like a panic room.” The Senator replied that some Democrat legislators are struggling with how to work with him. This office space raised my concerns for his handling of leadership, and the location sounds like a physical way to insulate himself. The State Senator is also wondering about the state of Dayton’s mental state.

True North is going to be looking for more on this.

In the meantime, some more meaningful shrinkage, if you’re a Minnesota taxpayer; not a single DFL legislator, as of yesterday, had sponsored the Dayton budget in the Legislature.

That could change at any  moment, of course.

But this budget has been on the record for nearly a week, now.

UPDATE:  Dayton’s office was noted in a Strib piece a month back.  According to the story, he prefers a small, spartan office.

No word yet on whether he prefers small, spartan support for his budget among the DFL caucus.

I used to think this was just fanciful and comedic.

Just goes to show you that nothing is too weird anymore.

Bring video cameras.  Lots of them.  And don’t interact with a “union” protester without at least one camera on you.

Because yesterday, the unions and the other organizations leading the protests were warning their members “not to be provoked” by the Tea Party counterprotesters.

And you know Berg’s Seventh Law:

Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection – When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.

Or planned misdeeds.

So keep those cameras spinning.  Because the media will hang everything that goes wrong on you, and you know it.

Jesse Jackson on the Wisconsin union protests, with emphasis added:

Civil Rights activist Jesse Jackson led protesters Friday at the Capitol in civil rights-era chants and called the protest over Gov. Scott Walker’s union cuts “a real Martin Luther King moment.”

Black people who’d  been kept as slaves and/or second class citizens for 400 years vs. people who are treated as better than regular citizens, who earn more than their private sector counterparts, per capita.

People whose rights and humanity had been systematically stripped from them for a dozen generations vs. people whose rights and humanity the system put above private sector workers for fifty years.

People who had dogs and water canons sicced on them for demanding their rights vs. people who’ve gotten an adoring media tongue bath for demanding to be kept

People whose color was used to make them less than human vs. people whose union cards made them more important than democracy itself, to the Wisconsin Senate Democrat caucus.

Yep.  Just like Martin Luther King.

I’ve seen a few liberals on Twitter chuckling that the Madison protests are “like the Tea Party”.

No.  These protests are like King George III protesting against his subjects.

Mount Everest isn’t that big – if you’re looking from the top of K2.

Las Vegas is “back east” – if you’re in Los Angeles.

Mark Dayton’s budget is a reasonable set of compromises, and the GOP is being pigheaded and intransigent – if your entire frame of reference is the world according to the DFL and the mushy Minnesota left.

And while I don’t know that that can be entirely fairly said about Hamline University professor and contender for Larry Jacobs’ post as “the most quoted academic pundit in the Twin Cities”, Dave Schultz.

But reading his Schultz Take post on the budget squabble, it doesn’t seem all that terribly unfair, either. When you read the piece, you can’t help but notice that he’s built his case on the entire parade of current DFLer memes:

Meme 1: “Where’s The GOP’s Plan? Huh?  Huh?  Huh?  Huh?”

Job killing and detached from reality. This is the core argument of the GOP against the Dayton budget. Yet behind the name calling one looks in desperation for the Republican alternative and it has yet to emerge.

It’s sort of like last summer, when the DFL spent three months chanting “where’s Tom Emmer’s budget?”.  They knew as well as we did that it’d be stupid for Emmer to release his budget early, and play into the DFL’s hands.

The legislature has the same leeway today; they can, and, politically, should, bide their time.   They gain nothing by giving the Governor, the DFL minority and their media enablers time and space to try to re-spin the GOP’s effort; the DFL knows this, too, but they’re counting on The People not knowing it.

Meme #2: “A “Budget Forecast” is just another word for “Budget”.  Really.  Honest.”

Schultz:

Just last week Dayton vetoed the $1 billion in cuts the GOP had already suggested. Yet that $1 billion was more than $5 billion short of what is needed, and the GOP has yet to propose how they plan to find the additional money.

And there’s #2; because there is no $6.2 billion deficit.  There was the forecast wish list the DFL kicked down the road for what they assumed would be a DFL-dominated legislature this biennium.

Schultz’s entire piece operates on the assumption that the DFL wish list is a foundational document, and that the GOP is obligated to do the DFL’s political work for it.

Meme 3: “Spending is essential for a healthy economy!”

The truth is they do not have a solution. Yes they will rant and rave about tax hurting the state economy (little evidence that is true), that there is waste and fraud (little evidence that is true), and that the budget is a job killer (even less evidence that is true).

“Little evidence that this is true” – other than the examples of California, New York, Illinois, and for that matter Greece and Ireland – states that became addicted to spending first and assuming the revenues would be there to take care of it later.

Which, if you think about it, was precisely what has led to every huge economic crash, from the Tulip bubble to the Housing bubble to the coming Higher Ed bubble.

Other than that?  Nope, no evidence at all.

However, they do not have a solution and are afraid to offer one.

Now, there, there’s no evidence, other than “we haven’t seen it yet”.

Meme #4: “Our only choices are taxes or cuts. Nothing else!”

Schultz again:

Why? Two reasons.

First, education, health, and public safety constitute 70%+ of the state budget. Any solution that seeks to address the deficit without cutting these items will not work. As Willie Sutton said when asked why he robs banks: “That is where the money is.” These items include K-12 and other popular programs for health. Cuts to them will be unpopular and the GOP does not want to be the party proposing them.

Schultz presumes (as the DFL wants you all to presume) that there are only two choices; spend more, or cut.

It’s not true, even if we don’t change the current budgeting system; “keeping funding at its current levels” is a perfectly acceptable option.  Not the one that the state’s HHS and education bureaucracies want, certainly, but acceptable in times like these.

Especially after the next revenue forecast comes out, and likely shows that revenues will grow by at least $2 billion – making the current budget completely tenable, while letting the state’s private sector try to start recovering, too…

Meme #5: “Failure to honor the DFL’s forecast will throw grandma into the street”.

This is among the most cynical, thud-witted memes there is – the idea that government is like a light switch; you can only have too much, or none.  That any cuts, or even a sober reassessment of spending priorities, or re-engineering of the budgeting process, automatically must take things away from the mythical Grandma or the eternal Child.

You’d think a professor would hold out for a more sophisticated argument.

You’d be wrong:

They want to be a majority party beyond 2012 and if they get tagged as the ones who threw grandma out of the nursing home and took books away from Suzie, they are dead.

The GOP knows, of course, that there is a middle way – indeed, an infinite number of middle ways.   Programs and spending aren’t a light switch; they’re a hose.  You can control how much comes out of the hose.  It can be a little, it can be a lot, depending on who controls the faucet, and who’s just getting hosed.

The DFL knows this too.  Which is why they – the DFL, their stooges in the media, and their allies like Schultz – are working so hard to obfuscate it.

They are hoping Dayton and the DFL take the lead on these cuts and then the GOP can escape blame. Moreover, the $1 billion cuts they suggested so far? Simply trial balloons on programs such as LGA to see how Dayton would react. So far, none of their proposals inflict clear pain upon voters.

So what – the GOP is supposed to be stupid?

Meme #6: “The DFL owns sanity, reason and reality. The Tea Party and the GOP base is an insane mob”

The other reason they cannot swallow taxes? Their core constituency seems dead set against it. Tax opposition is the cornerstone of the GOP and the Tea party.

So far, so good.

To raise taxes is to violate a core belief no matter the reality. [I added the emphasis]

And there it is; the leftist conceit that they are the custodians of “reality” – and that reality is “spending must rise, and you must float it with taxes”.

We reject that “reality” – or as we call it, “conceit”.

To raise taxes means the GOP is no different than the Democrats. To raise taxes also risks alienating many fiscal conservatives who might go elsewhere or not vote if the GOP supports taxes.

Right.

The voters that flipped the GOP from a rump minority to a solid majority in one cycle.

Why would we want to offend them, after all?

Meme #7: “If the GOP doesn’t play the game the way our hallowed anscestors, from Hubert H. Humphrey through Arne Carlson, played it then they are screwed!”

Schultz:

Thus the rock and hard place for the MN GOP: Be responsible, compromise, and accept some tax increases on the wealthy along with some spending cuts and risk alienating their base. Oppose tax increases and cut spending to popular programs and lose your majority in 2012. All Dayton and the DFL need to do is figure out how make this GOP dilemma work to their advantage.

Schultz is acting as a part of the DFL’s most treasured response to a “GOP dilemma”; the use of the DFL, union, academic and media establishments (pardon the serial redundancy) t0 try to convince people that 2+2=”blue”; that the traditional, DFL/RINO way is the only way.

Which involves convincing people that a “budget forecaset” is a “budget”.

That the only way to raise revenue is via taxes.

That reassessing spending is the same as killing grandma.

That a freeze is a cut, and that a cut is a zeroing.

That budgets must grow on top of past budgets, rather than start from zero every year.

That King Banaian’s bill, HF2, requiring state agencies to justify their spending and existence, isn’t itself an answer to a huge part of the problem.

Meme #8: “History favors us!”

Some will argue the GOP can make all these cuts without tax increases, without hurting the state, while also making additional tax cuts, and in the process grow the economy. Sound familiar? About 30 years ago Reagan said he could cut taxes, increase defense spending, and grow the economy without hurting the poor.

And in every case, he did – hampered only by the O’Neill Congress’ unwillingness to touch social spending.

The basic GOP message on the economy, taxes, and the budget has been smoke and mirrors for 30 years. It has been about cost shifting, fund raiding, program bleeding, living on past spending approaches. It has been about blaming government waste, immigrants, and lazy welfare cheats as the cause of the financial problems we face. It has been about ignoring how the demand for tax cuts to benefit the wealthy have forced a hemorrhaging of the deficit at the national level. It has been about Pawlenty pushing through a law counting inflation for revenue purposes but not for the purposes of state expenditures.

And for all that, the GOP’s approach – left undiluted by statist fripperies – works.

The DFL’s approach, on the other hand, has for eighty years revolved around…

• Picking scapegoats – “the rich”
• Sending armies of strawmen – “immigrants”, “welfare cheats” and “Grandma” – to try to dilute the argument into meaninglessness
• Demand “compromise” from the GOP, while rejecting giving way on any but the most cosmetic changes to their own agenda, unless dragged to it by force.

We deserve better.

Schultz – and the DFL, the media, the academic establishment, the unions – don’t want you to know that.

Pardon the redundancy.

…I don’t recall seeing these pictures in the mainstream media’s gauzy, soft-focus coverage of the Madison, Wisconsin union members’ “keep paying us or else” demonstrations today:

This one?  Nope – not this one either:

But remember, conservatives – no vitriol!

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.

Yesterday, I noted that the CEO of National Public Radio was shocked, shocked that conservatives thought her network leaned left.

And then, on “All Things Considered” as I drove home from work, I caught NPR’s piece on the Wisconsin Senate Democrat Caucus’ coup d’etat, fleeing the state to avoid losing a vote on collective bargaining.

And I was astonished – not really – to hear the audio tongue bath that ensued.   The NPR piece – from Wisconsin Public Radio’s Kristen Durst (I’ll post a link to the audio when it’s available) – positively glowed with approval, lionizing them as heroes showing “solidarity with the unions”, giving only the most technical shred of balance; it was a puff piece for the demonstrations, and nothing more.

So, National Public Radio – if you’ll suffer a question from a mere peasant – what is the surprise?

In his inaugural budget this past Tuesday, Mark Dayton declared it our duty to pay any price, to bear any burden…

…to help government avoid any form of discomfort whatsoever.

We conservatives have been warning of the inevitable ends of this philosophy for years – decades, really.

But it’s not remotely hypothetical.  We can see the wages of putting a profligate, unresponsive state’s wants ahead of everything else.  It’s two states to the east – in Chicago.

Chicago – a high-tax, high-“service” city – is shrinking.  Fast:

After peaking at 3.62 million people in 1950, Chicago underwent a half century of decline that ended only when the 1990s boom years produced a small gain in the 2000 count. At that time, the city loudly celebrated its comeback.

But the recent recession accelerated a migration both to the metropolitan area’s farthest suburbs and to the Southern U.S. Chicago nonetheless is expected to remain the nation’s third-largest city, behind New York and Los Angeles and just ahead of Houston, for which final census numbers aren’t in yet.

The only answer, obviously, is racism:

The exodus took a big chunk out of the city’s black population in particular, shrinking it to 887,608 from 1,065,009, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

“The black decline is really powering the city loss,” Mr. Frey said, calling it “part of the great reverse migration to the South.”

Blacks remain the most-populous race in Chicago, Mr. Frey said, while the number of whites fell during the decade by about 52,000 to just under 855,000 and Hispanics’ ranks rose by about 25,000 to just below 780,000.

The population of Cook County, which is dominated by the city of Chicago, fell 3.4% during the decade. But it remained by far the state’s most populous county, with about 5.2 million people.

And yes, there is a conservative angle to it:

The explosive growth of suburbs far outside Chicago produced huge gains in neighboring counties. Kane County grew by 27.5%, Will County by nearly 35% and Lake County by 9.2%, while DuPage grew a more modest 1.4%.

This population shift to traditionally conservative counties could alter the balance of power in both the state house and the Illinois congressional delegation.

The influx of residents to outlying areas could translate into additional Republican seats, though the arrival there of Chicagoans—particularly minorities—could make those regions more politically diverse. For instance, said University of New Hampshire demographer Kenneth Johnson, “DuPage County could become less Republican.” Mr. Johnson said his analysis of census data showed that metropolitan Chicago grew 4% to 9,683,000 people.

Overall, the population of Illinois grew slightly, to 12.8 million from 12.4 million. Among its fast-growing cities, Aurora expanded by 38.4%, Naperville by 10.5% and Joliet by 38.8%. In something of a surprise, Rockford—currently beset by double-digit unemployment—actually grew by 1.8%. The growth of the industrial city, which was ravaged by the early 1980s recession, may reflect the city’s efforts since then to diversify its manufacturing-based economy.

So let’s break this down:

Conservatism wins.  Statism loses.

(Or at least conservatism wins the parts that aren’t going to decamp to Wisconsin)

In the comment section of yesterday’s post about the Wisconsin Public Employees’ Unions protests against Govenor Walker’s bill to elminate collective bargaining, regular commenter “Terry” wrote something I think every Conservative group in American that faces a similar fight should put on T-shirts and picket signs:

I, for one, will not work until I am 70 so public employees can retire at 55.

Not that Governor Dayton wants to give lil’ ol’ me any choice in the matter.

Groups?  Start printing.

The Seventh (mostly) Annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Winter Party is now scheduled for Saturday, March 26 at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville!  Googlemap)

We had a great time there last year, what with the large-ish indoor room (with attached outdoor smoking patio) and really really amazing waitstaff.  We figured “Why mess with success?”

Please RSVP to “feedbackinthedark”, which is a Yahoo email address, or to go the MOB Facebook page!

I take the occasional bit of flak for not reflexively bagging on Minnesota Public Radio.

Oh, I do think it’s a travesty that the taxpayer is supporting an organization that can easily support itself.  Perhaps in the style to which it is accustomed – the MPR headquarters and broadcast center at the Taj Ma Kling, in downtown Saint Paul, would put most TV stations to shame – but then, most of us are having to pinch pennies these days.

But I think MPR – at least, the News side of it – does a decent job of balancing its coverage of the news.

But National Public Radio?  From Nina Totenberg’s Pauline-Kael-like sense of ideological entitlement to “On The Media’s” preening media elitism to “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”‘s endless George W. Bush jokes (although they at least did have P.J. O’Rourke as a panelist a few times) to the firing of Juan Williams for going trayf on Fox News, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board’s institutional Victorian Vapours that George W. Bush would try to appoint conservatives to their club, there is no sentient, honest person in America who doesn’t know that NPR is a center-left reservation.

Still – they have to try to keep up appearances.

Which, as an MPR News staffer noted on Twitter the other day, gets just a little more difficult when the likes of MoveOn.org leap to your defense.

When House Republicans put the money for public broadcasting on their list of budget cuts two weeks ago, there was barely a peep from either the right or the left. But that changed when MoveOn, a liberal organization that’s a favorite bogeyman for and target of conservatives, jumped into the fray.

MoveOn turned the entry page for its Web site into a petition opposing the proposed cuts and e-mailed its members imploring them to sign the petition.

Public broadcasting executives appreciate the support—to a point. But several who spoke with Adweek wish MoveOn would have stayed quiet. They’re concerned that the group’s support will help opponents paint public broadcasting as a tool of the left wing, rather than a thoughtful, educational and often high-brow approach to news and culture.

“We’re embarrassed,” one exec said.

Well, to be fair, MoveOn’s support didn’t tell anyone anything they didn’t already believe.

As if on cue, Brent Bozell, the founder and president of the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog, seemed to confirm public broadcasters’ worst fears. Bozell entered the debate by tweeting: “Earth to media reporters: If PBS and NPR subsidies are being promoted by MoveOn.org, doesn’t that hint at WHOSE media these are?”

Paula Kreger, president and CEO of PBS, disagrees with that sentiment.

“When you look at the breadth of people talking about us right now, they aren’t all left- or right-wing crazy people,” Kreger told Adweek. “MoveOn is out there, but so are others. It’s a stretch to point to them and say, ‘See, they’re all one.’ It’s a polarizing time, and there are some people who look for these opportunities.”

Ms. Kreger:  here in Minnesota, now that we have a Republican majority in the state House and Senate, the Teachers Union is suddenly – as in, with apparent panic – “reaching out” to teachers who happen to be Republicans and/or conservatives – a minority that the union had wasted no time acknowledging, much less listening to, in the previous forty-odd years.  Conservatives – teachers among ’em – got a good chuckle; after decades of what could loosely be called “repression”, suddenly the Union wants conservatives at the table.

Your statement reminds me of this.

But I have a question;  is there actually a conservative group, along the lines of a “MoveOn”, also jumping in to defend NPR’s federal funding?

No?

Why do you suppose that might be?

I’m open to theories.

For want of 8,000 more votes…

Scott Walker is doing what governments at every level should do – ending collective bargaining for public union employees :

Gov. Scott Walker said Friday that he wants to end collective bargaining for nearly all public employees because the state is broke and there’s no point negotiating with the unions when there is nothing to offer.

Union leaders and Democrats, powerless to stop Walker’s plan from passing the Republican-controlled Legislature next week, were reeling. They blasted the proposal as a naked power-grab that will gut Wisconsin’s deep organized labor tradition and result in layoffs that devastate the economy.

If I were a Wisconsin taxpayer – and a place in Hudson is looking better and better every time I look at the Dayton “budget” – I’d say “screw your tradition”.

As to the layoffs?  If the jobs aren’t actually needed to run the state’s government, then why are we paying them?  Why is a public-sector job more sacrosanct than a private sector one?

Walker, a Republican who took office in January, argued that his proposal is an alternative to ordering furlough days and laying off 12,000 state and local public employees over the next two years to balance a $3.6 billion budget shortfall.

“The state’s broke,” Walker said. “Local governments are broke. They don’t have anything to offer.”

Walker wants to remove all collective-bargaining rights, except for salary, for roughly 175,000 public employees starting July 1. Any requests for a salary increase higher than the consumer price index would have to be approved by referendum.

He also wants – gasp – to require   public employees to pay half the cost of their gold-plated public employee pensions, and pay 12.5% of their healthcare costs.

I caught MPR’s coverage of the protests “sweeping” Wisconsin today.  Standout note – a Minnesota public-employee union leadership stooge whinging that the changes will “cost union employees’ …”

I was ready for the next word to be “jobs”.

“…money toward their retirement”.

I wished, fervently, that I could have met that woman face to face, and showed her what I – a self-employed guy – pay for retirement.

8.000 more freaking votes.

Super Blow, Schmuper Bowl.

Wild?  Mild.

Hoops?  Who-op cares?

The Twin pitchers and catchers report for spring training today.

Call the dour Calvinism of my Scandinavian anscestry rearing its head, but the wave of epicureanism – the Food Network’s various paeons to gluttony – have always rubbed me the wrong way.  Part of it is that the whole notion of glorifying ostentatious consumption strikes me as just wrong; you’re taking what you just plain don’t need (rural Scandinavians were crunchycons long before there was a term for it).  Part of it is the the way some “foodies” have turned gluttony into a secular religion, a cult of satiation.

B.R. Myers, writing in Atlantic, tackles the cult.  It’s a long read – four jumps – but very, very worth it.

Conclusion?

I used to reject that old countercultural argument, the one about the difference between a legitimate pursuit of pleasure and an addiction or pathology being primarily a question of social license. I don’t anymore. After a month among the bat eaters and milk-toast priests, I opened [former Motley Crue drummer] Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries (2008) and encountered a refreshingly sane-seeming young man, self-critical and with a dazzlingly wide range of interests. Unfortunately, the foodie fringe enjoys enough media access to make daily claims for its sophistication and virtue, for the suitability of its lifestyle as a model for the world. We should not let it get away with those claims. Whether gluttony is a deadly sin is of course for the religious to decide, and I hope they go easy on the foodies; they’re not all bad. They are certainly single-minded, however, and single-mindedness—even in less obviously selfish forms—is always a littleness of soul.

Jumping to the conclusion, though, shortchanges you of a great read.  Go do that when you get a moment.

Another Everyday Wonder Woman isn’t a “new” conservative blog – she’s been writing the blog for a few years now.  But Another Everyday is focusing on education these days.

And she knows a thing or two:

Most people have no idea how complicated and painful education funding is. Virtually every dollar that comes into a district has strings attached in the form of mandates, restrictions and requirements. Some administrators have estimated that the staff time needed to keep up with all the mandated reporting and submission requirements amounts to nearly half of every full time employee in a school district. If you wonder why the ratio of administrators to teachers is so high, this is one big reason.

For instance, did you know:

1. School districts are required by law to keep separate accounts for capital, food service, debt service, future retirement benefit exposure, and operating funds, and those funds may not be transferred from one fund to another, even if they are not needed in their area;

There’s a whole string of “didja knows” following – some of them I did, some I did not.  It’s a good primer on the problems in re-jiggering education funding under the current system.

Conclusion:

Simplfiying the budgeting and allocation process will allow school districts the ability to focus on their most important priorities, ease the contortions that legislators, staff members and the public have to go through to understand and administer the process, and might even save a little money to boot as districts spend less time searching for all the little scraps they can find to make up for general fund formula reductions.

There is, of course, a whole lot of material between the intro and the conclusion.  Read the whole thing.

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?

So the GOP, as we’ve noted, is underwhelmed with Dayton’s budget; since they control both chambers of the legislature, it’s pretty much toast.

But the DFL is right behind the governor – yeah?

Well, maybe not. Rachel Stassen-Berger did something more capitol reporters should oughtta do; asked some questions (emphasis added):

DFL leaders of the House and Senate Tuesday would not say whether they support the tax increases in DFL Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget.

House Minority Leader Paul Thissen and Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk, both of whom ran for governor last year, were asked multiple times, in various ways, whether they would back, vote for or want to run on the proposed $4 billion in tax increases and they refused to give a yes or no.

They said it was an honest budget that was better than what Republicans could offer but, despite repeated chances, did not say they supported it.

Now, this can mean anything – or nothing.

Still, you’d think the DFL would want a little more love for the gov, right?

One exchange:

Question: “Do you support the tax increases in this bill?”

Thissen: “The governor is delivering on what he promised. We have always been in our DFL caucus in favor of a solution that is going to be fair…We need to look at the details of it. I think the most important thing now to look at is asking the Republicans, okay, what’s your answer.”

Another exchange:

Stassen-Berger – whom I’ve certainly criticized in this space before, and will no doubt criticize again – runs through two more such exchanges; go read ’em.

I’ve been calling Dayton a very, very weak governor.  It could very well be I’m right…

You’re a guy who’s been working in Human Resources sales – basically selling labor – for your whole career.  You match up companies that are looking for contract labor – everything from office temps to database analysts – and you’ve been doing it your entire career.

You just got a bigger, better idea; start your own business.  So you took your life’s savings, and a book full of contacts, and hung out your own shingle as a software staff augmentation vendor – basically a temp service for software engineers.

You worked 12 hour days, and weekends, working your book of contacts, in a competitive market full of some very big players (including the tech services branches of some national players, like Robert Half and Manpower).  Each of those people takes work,  – HR paperwork, keeping up contact with them and their hiring managers – on top of your sales efforts which, in this economy, are a lot of work.

But your efforts, after several years of building a name and a rolodex, are paying off.  Your company has a solid name and reputation, , and have managed to have an average of 10-15 of “your” people working at companies around the area.   And this yields, after years of working very hard, about $250,000 a year for your efforts.  Figure that translates into an Adjusted Gross Income of $220,000 – you rack up a lot of business expenses.

And because you have managed to pull that off – especially in this economy – the Minnesota DFL and Mark Dayton believe that rather than the roughly  $17,600 of your income the state currently appropriates, they should take $24090.   That’s an extra $6,490 that the state believes would be better spent on its’ clerks’ defined-benefit pensions (you pay for your own IRA), and on light rail trains you’ll never ride (because your customers aren’t on Hiawatha or University, or even largely in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, for some reason), or on the pages and pages of other things…

…that are more important than whatever you planned, above and beyond what they already spend.

Which you clearly didn’t begrudge when you were paying $17,600 in state taxes – after all, you’re still here, right?

But another $6K?  On top of the federal tax hikes soon to come on people like you, “the rich”?

The Dallas market’s looking pretty good, isn’t it?

Mark Dayton wants to raise state income taxes on people who make over $500K a year (adjusted gross income) to just shy of 14% – to finance

But this has been tried before:

To close its $3.8 billion FY 2010- FY 2011 projected budget gap, Oregon has relied on an evaporating stimulus, budget cuts of roughly 9 percent and tax increases. The state’s income tax was raised with a new top rate of 11 percent. However the tax on the richest two percent of residents hasn’t performed as expected. Last year the new tax rate brought in $180 million. This year collections dropped to $130 million. The Wall Street Journal writes this shouldn’t be suprising. A full quarter of “rich tax filers seem to have gone missing.” it’s likely millionaires will be looking for other places to domicile. The tax applies to stocks and capital which means Oregon has “virtually the highest capital gains tax in North America.”

You can’t tax and spend your way out of a recession.

My radio colleague and now Represenative King Bauaian writes his constituents (with emphasis added by me):

Neighbor-

Gov. Mark Dayton today unveiled historic tax increases and the nation’s highest income-tax bracket as his means to setting Minnesota’s budget.

His plan calls for around $4 billion in tax increases; that’s approximately $4 in tax increases for every $1 in spending reductions. Our state would increase spending by 22 percent over current levels – to around $37 billion.

There would be two new tax brackets, including our top earners paying 13.95 percent – the highest income-tax rate in the country. It is supposed to be temporary, but many temporary taxes become permanent. The second new tier would be 10.95 percent, a mere .05 percent behind the nation’s current top late. The tax increases would begin for joint/married filers earning $150,000 a year combined.

We face a $6.2 billion budget shortfall and this is the wrong proposal to send Minnesotans; it keeps government spending on autopilot, which I campaigned against last fall and will continue to work to stop. We need to focus on reforming government to help us live within our means.

Sincerely,

King

There are a lot of GOP freshmen who need to send that same message.  Clearly.

I got to the party a little late for the Super Bowl last weekend – late enough to miss Christina Aguilera’s ill-fated attempt at the National Anthem.

Fortunately, Nihilist In Golf Pants not only saw it, but got a transcript:

Ohhhhohoho whoaaaohh, say can you seeeeeeeeee

By oh by oh baby bye bye the dawn’s early light

What so proudly, so prouououdly we watched

At the twilight’s last, it’s last, it’s layihayahaidiast?

Whose broad stripes and bright, so briiigidiyight, and stars

Thru the really bad fight,

At the twilight’s last, it’s last, it’s layihayahaidiast

And if you wanna be with me, baby there’s a price to pay,

Goin’ proof through the night, you gotta rub me the right way.

Oh, say say saiaiaiay does that star-spangled banner yet wave

Whatever makes me happy sets you free

and the home of the brave,

And it keeps gettin better!

Next year: Reginal Spector does a minimalist version on an old Casio keyboard.