Making The World Safe for BDS
By Mitch Berg
Saint Paul will be getting the 2008 GOP National Convention.
The good news: They have selected a planner:
A federal Transportation Department official and former Republican Party operative will decide where delegates sit, how to keep the media happy and what events to stage at the 2008 Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities.
Maria Cino, who was named deputy secretary of transportation two years ago by President Bush and was his national political director in 2000, will be the Republican National Committee’s lead planner for the convention, committee spokesperson Chris Taylor said Monday.
Cino will work with the local host committee and city officials to coordinate an event that’s expected to draw more than 45,000 people — including delegates, media and visitors — to the Twin Cities…Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn, said Cino was the perfect choice to bring people together in planning the convention.
“Throughout her exemplary career, Maria Cino has been known for her ability to roll up her sleeves and get things done,” he said.
So far so good.
Of course, for the 75-odd-percent of my adopted hometown that votes DFL – and for the 5-20% of that number who could fairly be called the “lunatic fringe” – it’s all about them:
At the first of three St. Paul forums on the convention Monday morning, officials heard concerns about limited access to downtown, protesters and taxpayer liabilities…Some, like West Side resident Gerry Berquist, said they want officials to ensure that protesters are treated fairly and that downtown business won’t be adversely affected.
“There needs to be a huge community gathering so that these questions can be asked,” he said.
Bergquist’s remarks are the tip of the iceberg. The local left – expressing their wishes on a number of local email discussion forums and blogs – want unprecedented access to the XCel Energy Center during the convention. Some of them want absolutely untrammelled access to not only the facility, and to the President himself, but even to the conventiongoers as they go about their daily business. Some want to “debate” convention delegates on the street – “debates” that sound in most cases more like harassment – in order to perhaps “educate” them. When questioned, they seem to studiously avoid references to their more deranged cohorts, as if they’re just no way an anti-Republican demonstrator will cause problems.
I have a couple of ideas in response:
- Democrats – let’s meet out on the street for a real debate. Send your people up against the legion of right-leaning bloggers that’ll be descending on the event. See who “educates” whom.
- While we’re so concerned about free speech (and I am in fact a bigger proponent of genuine free speech than any “liberal” I know), how about we think globally before acting locally. Start by lifting the free speech restrictions at the St. Paul Planned Parenthood clinic. What? You say you can’t, because a deranged person might commit violence against some innocent customer? Hm. Are we seeing the disconnect yet?
Counting the hours until 9/08.
March 6th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
“unprecedented access to the XCel Energy Center”
Would that include the stage and the PA system?
March 6th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I’m sure it would include not only the stage and PA system, but also the backstage secure rooms and every bathroom in the entire facility.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Hey, Bill. We won’t have a choice. With the Freedom to Poop Act from this year’s legislature…they all will have IEB. Actually…to be honest…they ARE Irritable Bowels, anyway.
Thank you, thank you…I’ll be here all week…try the veal!
March 6th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
I’ve lately been defining a “right” as something that you can exercise without interfering with the rights of another — the old “your rights stop at the end of my nose” theory. What these people want is not to exercise the rights of free speech and free assembly for themselves, but to deny those rights to others. They should be told that they have those freedoms but must respect them for all others. Anyone caught physically or verbally threatening or harrassing our “guests” in this city will go to jail, instantly and for the duration. And then make the provisions to do exactly that.
March 6th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Sorry. My bad…its IBS.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Mitch:
We have no intention of interfering with your convention for two reasons 1. the GOP convention will be our only chance to get back some of the tax dollars you Republican freeloaders siphon out of Minnesota every year 2. the convention promises to be pure comedy gold, we will be laughing too hard to worry about debating.
March 6th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Read this sentence you wrote again, RickDFL. Then please rewrite it in a way that makes sense.
“1. the GOP convention will be our only chance to get back some of the tax dollars you Republican freeloaders siphon out of Minnesota every year”
March 7th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Yes Rick, all of those single, Republican mothers collecting WIC are sitting in their Section 8 housing, busy polishing their conceal-carry handguns while planning their next war.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Terry and Kermit:
Minnesota ranks 47th in our return on Federal tax dollars. For every $1 we send to D.C. in taxes we got back 69 cents in spending. The top ten donor states are almost all Democratic (NJ, CT, NH, MN, IL, NV, MA, CA, NY, CO, and DE). The top ten freeloader states are heavily Republican (SD, MT, HI, VA, AL, ND, MS, WV, AK, and NM). So the Federal government transfers money from successful Democratic state economies to less successful Republican state economies.
So while our GOP friends are here from the Dakotas and the deep South, lets try to get some of our money back (at least until Democrats can ease our burden).
March 7th, 2007 at 8:51 am
Oh the irony of RickDFL’s post, it is rich!!!
Let me get this straight. Rick is upset that the top 20% of states in terms of generating “tax wealth” are supporting the bottom 20% of states through revenue redistribution.
Hmmm, the bottom 20% are freeloading, to use Rick’s word (not less fortunate, not disadvantaged), off the hard earned income of the top 20%.
Rick, welcome to the GOP!
March 7th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Nordeaster:
The irony is that you think the GOP intended any other result.
Who do you think steered all those $ to Republican states? It wasn’t Democrats. Democrats will stop subsidizing failed Republican businesses and invest in a secure safety net and quality public services for all.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:09 am
RickDFL-
I still don’t get it. Are you talking about republican states, then? How do you make the determination? majority vote in the last presidential election or composition of their state government? And anyway republicans favor tax cuts for the rich, according to democrats, which would give more money to wealthy residents of democratic states while presumably providing even less money to poor residents of republican states. Why is more money going out of these democratic states than is coming back to them? I know that WV and Hawaii are the recipients of massive amounts of pork, thanks to Robert Byrd & Dan Inouye — and those two are definitely not republicans. Hawaii also gets an outsize share of military dollars, as do VA and ND.
Your list would look much the same if you chose to categorize them according to population density rather than D or R.
You seem to be trying to make a factoid into something that has partisan meaning. Correlation is not causation. All state governments expend a great deal of effort to get free federal money they can spread around to the voters. Maybe the western states — which have a lot more federally controlled land & military bases than the eastern states — are just better at it?
March 7th, 2007 at 9:30 am
“Who do you think steered all those $ to Republican states? It wasn’t Democrats. Democrats will stop subsidizing failed Republican businesses and invest in a secure safety net and quality public services for all.”
I live in Hawaii. It’s 3rd on your list of freeloading states. We’ve had a one hundred percent democratic congressional delegation in Washington since statehood. Both houses of our state legislature have been dominated by democrats since the 60’s. For the first time we elected a republican governor in 2002 but she’s to the left of Arnold. We have incredibly strong public employee unions. We are also known as one of the most corrupt states in the union as well as one of the poorest. Our public schools perform near the bottom of every metric. We also have very high measures of everything that indicates social problems: high drug addiction rates, high teenage pregnancy rates, high suicide rates, high rates of child abuse and high rates of school dropouts.
So go pedal your “secure safety net and quality public services for all.” crap to someone else.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Who do you think steered all those $ to Republican states?
Rick,
You’re trafficking in one of Paul Krugman’s most corrosive, facile lies.
“Red” states “get more tax money than blue states” per capita largely because:
a) so much of their land is owned by the government
b) they are so relatively thinly-populated
c) their per-capita incomes are relatively low.
NOT, as it happens, because they’re sucking on the federal spigot as a matter of cultural habit.
Not that facts matter much to you people.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Oh, and d) they have so many military bases, and so much of the state’s gross product is as a result of the military presence.
March 7th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Plus, Mark Dayton was no Robert Byrd. Now there’s a buccaneer. (for those of you unfamiliar with the etymology it stems from boucain, French for bacon)
March 7th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Ah! It’s one of Krugman’s, eh? I should have known.
Krugman is the left’s most over-valued opinion columnist. The guy is sharp, no doubt, and he’s given 800 words or so each week to make his case in the most prestigious, widely read newspaper in the country. He could write persuasive columns from a unique point of view, buttressed by his expertise in economics, but instead he writes no-enemies-to-my-left screeds that would be unnoticed in Duncan Black’s comments section.
Remember last year when the NY Times public editor resigned and in a very public way criticized Krugman for not being willing to post corrections to his columns? Welcome to the reactionary left of the 21st century.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Kermit-
I thought buccaneer was derived from the french term for “beef skinner”. The story is that during the great Age of
ConquestDiscovery sailors would populate the islands they discovered with cattle so they would always have access to a supply of fresh meat. Sailors who jumped ship in savage island ports would live off these cattle.Beef or pork, Byrd and Inouye have been living off the fat of the land for decades.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:58 am
The English word beef comes from the French, I’m not sure of the spelling, but it’s buof. Carribean pirates smoked pork to make bacon, which they sold. They didn’t have to populate the islands with swine, as they were already there, courtesy of the Carib indians.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Rick DFL said:
So while our GOP friends are here from the Dakotas and the deep South, lets try to get some of our money back
If taxes are rolled back (you know, tax cuts) the money wouldn’t leave in the first place, then there would be no need to “get it back.”
To say that Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) is the recipient of massive amounts of pork is an understatement. What makes it comical is that, like a banana republic dictator, he named it all after himself. A google search of “robert c. byrd” turns up listings such as the Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholarship Program, the Robert C. Byrd High School, the Robert C. Byrd Institute (Marshall University), the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, the State Student Assistance Commission of Indiana (with a Robert C. Byrd Application in PDF format–no, I’m not making this up), the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge, Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing, the Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health, Robert C. Byrd Locks & Dam, the Robert C. Byrd Expressway, the the Robert C. Byrd Freeway, the Robert C. Byrd Federal Building (both of them)…
As Porkbusters puts it, “Senator Byrd has truly left his mark on West Virginia — and the federal budget. (And let us not overlook the proposed Robert C. Byrd rooms in the U.S. Capitol.) It would be appropriate to erect some kind of monument to his century-spanning resume — except that he already did so himself.
Senator Byrd’s diligence in bringing home taxpayer dollars to his home state earned him the title King of Pork from Citizens Against Government Waste, and we must humbly agree, and therefore grant the good Senator our Lifetime Achievement Award.”
March 7th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Well, Byrd is a banana republic dictator, since there is a statue of his likeness:
Sen. Byrd has set a new standard for taxpayer-funded narcissism by convincing the West Virginia Legislature to erect a statue of himself in the state Capitol. The statue’s completion violates state law prohibiting statues of government officials until they have been dead for half a century.
Your tax dollars at work.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Mark Dayton used to have a store named after him, but he was such an idiot in the Senate they got embarrassed and renamed it.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:50 am
In defense of GOP freeloader states Mitch says:
“Red” states “get more tax money than blue states” per capita largely because:
a) so much of their land is owned by the government
b) they are so relatively thinly-populated
c) their per-capita incomes are relatively low.
NOT, as it happens, because they’re sucking on the federal spigot as a matter of cultural habit.”
a. Federal land is often run as a large federal subsidy program with below market rates for grazing and other benefits. Remember how those ‘free market’ ranchers got all weepy when Bill Clinton tried to charge market rates for grazing on Federal land. But show some numbers, I doubt Federal land accounts for much of the difference in tax receipts vs. spending.
b. Low-population density is to a “matter of cultural habit”. They could move to high density areas. They might not want to, but why should economically efficient high population density residents like you and I be over taxed to provide excessive infrastructure investments to low-population density residents. If they are unable to adapt to city living that is their cultural choice, but why do I get taxed to make their choice easier? How do you feel about being overtaxed to support Dakota residents who could not make the choice to move to the city like you did?
c. Low per-cap income is also a matter of ‘cultural habit’. For example, right-to-work laws keep middle class wages low and encourage low-productivity economies. Again why should high-productivity high union density workers in MN, CA, and NY be taxed to support low wage workers in MS, AL, and VA?
So – Republican states are less competitive and need Federal welfare from Democratic states to get by. When the hand-out getters come to St. Paul make sure to get some of your money back.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Rick, I’ll say it again:
If taxes are rolled back (you know, tax cuts) the money wouldn’t leave in the first place, then there would be no need to “get it back.”
If we need to “get it back,” why the hell are we sending it in in the first place?
I want an answer, Rick.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
As for freeloaders, Rick, they tend to accumulate in those high-density areas. I grew up surrounded by able-bodied welfare recipients living in subsidized housing, scamming the system simply because they were too lazy to work, luxuriously sunning themselves in the safety hammock provided by the People’s Republic of Miinesota.
Don’t believe me? Ask Mitch. For 24 years I lived less than a mile from where he now lives, by St. Paul Central High School, during the “fun” times in the 1970s.
How about getting some of our money back from them, Rick?
March 8th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Paul:
I ignored you the first time because your first comment violates the basic laws of math. If you reduce taxes without reducing spending, you simply leave the nation with a higher debt.
As for freeloaders, I grew up near the same neighborhood and I remember lots of hard working tax paying working families with good union jobs. Nobody was paying them billions to grow agricultural products that were cheaper to import. Their infrastructure needs were comparatively cheaper. Hell if you hadn’t of ripped up their streetcars they wouldn’t even need much in the way of roads. So maybe you had issues with some of your neighbors, but the statistics prove more of your tax dollars were going to subsidize red-state freeloaders than your neighbors.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
I ignored you the first time because your first comment violates the basic laws of math. If you reduce taxes without reducing spending, you simply leave the nation with a higher debt.
So are you for cutting spending? If you are serious about “getting money back” from “red state freeloaders” then you should support cutting taxes AND spending.
On freeloaders in my neighborhood, in a word Rick: BULLSHIT. Either you weren’t there or you have a very selective memory. Most of the kids I grew up with are dead (not by natural causes) or doing hard time for things like armed robbery or drug dealing.
the statistics prove more of your tax dollars were going to subsidize red-state freeloaders than your neighbors
What statistics? I want links and examples. If you are going to claim “proof” then prove it.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Paul: I support spending less money in Red States and support spending more money in Blue States.
As for the statistics check for yourself:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/347.html
In 1981, the latest date I can find figure for and the tail end of the last period of sustained Democratic power, MN got 86 cents back for every $1 of taxes sent to the Federal government and ranked 41 out of 50. So the Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush/Delay have cost us an extra 17 cents and six places in relative position. Your neighbors are not the problem, your problem is Republicans in D.C.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Paul: I support spending less money in Red States and support spending more money in Blue States. By the way you are still having trouble with math. Cutting spending and reducing taxes overall would not change the ratio of revenue and spending between states.
As for the statistics check for yourself:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/347.html
In 1981, the latest date I can find figure for and the tail end of the last period of sustained Democratic power, MN got 86 cents back for every $1 of taxes sent to the Federal government and ranked 41 out of 50. So the Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush/Delay have cost us an extra 17 cents and six places in relative position. Your neighbors are not the problem, your problem is Republicans in D.C.