You know me.
You know I believe that the Strib is – and at the highest level, sees itself – as a PR arm for the DFL.
I don’t think I’ve left a whole lot of you wondering about my beliefs about Minnesota’s Newspaper of Record.
But I never figured the business section’s Neal Saint Anthony would turn into a stenographoer for Alida Messinger, too.
But one of my last little outposts of pollyannaism about theStrib’ssense of detachment has been the business section, especially Neal Saint Anthony.
Nearly half of the tax cuts Gov. Mark Dayton proposed Thursday are for businesses and their owners, a move that may reduce the anti-business criticism that has dogged him.
Dayton proposed — and the House almost immediately passed — eliminating three business-sales taxes that accounted for $232 million in his overall $616 million in tax cuts.
He also asked lawmakers to simplify and raise the estate tax deduction to $2 million from $1 million and to eliminate the gift tax, a 10 percent levy on any personal gift above $1 million. Those moves would cut $43 million in taxes, bringing the combined cut on businesses and the wealthy to $275 million, or 44 percent of the total.
So let’s get this straight:
- In 2013, the DFL went on a taxing orgy, jacking up taxes by a net $2 Billion. With the economy still moving forward after a decade of Republican control, revenues actually went up $3 Billion. That’s an extra $600 taken out of the productive economy for every man, woman and child in Minneosta. This orgy of larceny was treated with kid gloves by the Minnesota media.
- In 2014, the DFL proposes “giving” a few hundred million of those three billion dollars “back”. This “gift” is being greeted with saturation media coverage, in a key election year in which – mirabile dictu – the DFL is in dire need of a PR win.
Why, it’s almost as if a cynic might expect to dig back into the “hypothetical” Minnesota version of Journo-List and find a conversation between key DFL operatives and the major Twin Cities media figures saying “we’ll grab all the taxes we can first; keep mum about it. We’ll give some back next year; make a huge deal about it. And for God’s sake, never talk about MNSure!”.
But that’d be cynical, wouldn’t it?
You’d almost think that these cuts benefitted someone high-up in the majority party …