Congrats, same sex marriage supporters. After five months of noodling non-stop with social policy – gun grabs, forcing daycares into the union racket and so on – Governor Dayton took a few minutes from his grueling day of sitting in his office to come out and sign same-sex marriage into law.
Well, there you go!
Now, when all that wedding excitement wears off, take a moment to think about a few things if you would:
- Where are the jobs? Minnesota’s big businesses are doing…OK, provided they’re not in the medical device business. But while you all were busy campaigning for same sex marriage, Minnesota small-business startups slowed to the worst rate in the entire country. Which means the small-business jobs of tomorrow, and the mid-sized business jobs a few years down the road, all the coffee shops and repair garages and interior design firms and web design firms we’ll need to run the day to day economy will be…gone. Nothing. Bupkes. They’ll have never existed. And this is a reversal from recently; it’s a result of policies the DFL has been pushing while y’all were busy watching the same sex marriage debate.
- Why is daycare so freaking expensive? Many of you two-income same-sex adoptive couples will be needing daycare (presuming that’s the route you choose at some point or another). Minnesota’s child care costs are already among the highest in the nation – even higher compared to per capita income. And yet the DFL majority has been working tirelessly to force childcare providers (and personal care assistants) into a union that six out of seven of them don’t want, that makes no sense (unionizing small business owners? Hello?) and that will do nothing but increase the cost of child or adult care (presuming the providers don’t just eat the cost of the union dues or “fair share” costs).
- Again – where are the jobs? The DFL is fixated on raising taxes. Yeah, yeah, “fair share”, the rich, bla bla bla, but their real plan, the plan to make the actual money, involves raising taxes on business to business purchases and services. Which means somewhere between 5.5 and 7% of every business’ revenue is going to – poof! – vanish (presuming, again, the businesses don’t pass on the costs, which is a stupid thing to do in a crappy economy). Do you want a 5-7% pay cut? How would that work for you right now?
I know – same sex marriage was a big thing for you. But just as weddings and honeymoons give way to the push and pull of actual married life, the euphoria you feel over getting a legislative milestone passed (I had my moment on my issue ten years ago, so I know how you feel) eventually passes, and you get to dwell on other things.
Like what an unholy has the DFL is making of this state’s economy. The one we all live in, gay or straight.
This reminds me of what George Will said after the Supreme Court ruled ‘flag burning’ was protected speech after recently overturning pornography statutes based on ‘community standards…”Conservatives should content them selves with saying that liberals want to read pornography by the light of burning flags. … “.
The laws of unintended consequences for what GuvJimBeam and his DFL majority consider Important!! Make it expensive to expand my business? Guess what-I won’t expand my business, here. Raise my income tax rates -I’ll find a way to make or at least declare less. Raise taxes on alcohol – sounds like I’ll need to make an extra stop before heading home from ‘Sconnie or Iowa or NoDak or SoDak. See clothing for sale while on vacation elsewhere? I’ll buy it there, why wait and pay more? Create a tax on the work the newly married ‘Creative Class’ (yes, “Not Sure”/Doug Grow, it’s a euphemism right out of the Lefty playbook when issues that might prevent gay people from living here comes up) might do for my business here? Easily remedied by having it done elsewhere by some other ‘creative class’ people.
Now what the DFL is counting on is that only a few people have the means or where-with-all to do these things. But as Detroit, New York (state and city) and California have learned, it only takes a few to get the ball rolling. And it’s not just the wingnuts or TEA-partayers. Look at Hollywood and their massive fundraisers for The One while simultaneously producing their films/tv shows in low tax/low wage Canada. Or Apple – sheltering their billions in foreign profits overseas. Even our own sperm lucky GuvJimBeam keeps his trust fund safely parked outside the state. He’s no, er, at least his tax advisor is no dummy.
The DFL obviously has their priorities. As the sportscaster in the movie “Dodgeball” said after a team forfeited the championship match: “Interesting strategy, we’ll have to see how that works out for them”.
Meanwhile, I’m now paying $4.19 a gallon for gas here in God’s Country this afternoon, after a 25-cent hike over my lunch hour. But at least the DFL has taken care of the truly important things.
Colonel, I paid $3.29 a gal this morning for regular with no ethanol. Regular WITH ethanol was $3.17…how does that work, exactly?
Fill your tank with the warmth of gay marriage, Flagg!
Yeah, why doesn’t the Minnesota DFL lower gas prices??? Smart take.
Yeah, why doesn’t the Minnesota DFL lower gas prices??? Smart take.
Uh, Tim? DFL can’t lower gas prices, but they can raise them if they go through with a hike in the gasoline tax, which has passed the Senate recently. It might die in the House, but the way things are going in this session, it might just pass. There’s more zombie action going on in St. Paul than you get in a George Romero movie.
Stop complaining about gas prices. Now that our friends in Saint Paul have finally unionized the down-trodden babysitters of the state, daycare will make working impractical. Once you quit your job, you’ll save a ton of money on gas.
The higher gas prices go, the more money you’ll have saved by not working. You’ll save even more money on the inflated gas that you’re not buying each time it goes up. Probably at a faster rate than the growth 401k that you had to cash-in when you quite working.
See, it all works in the end. Not unlike same-sex marriage.
Joe, I’m with you in hoping that running daycare into the ground by making it a closed shop will make people wake up and see that the second income isn’t bringing very much home. I’m holding out hope that it’ll be the UAW or USW that unionizes them, because they just have awesome records in the past few decades in terms of costing their members their jobs. Then those moms will start homeschooling, putting another nail into the coffin of government education and transitively the DFL along with the NEA and AFT.
OK, I can dream, can’t I? :^)