Perhaps being freed from the angst of being a political minority in a state he believes is “his” (for a couple of years, anyway) is helping. Or perhaps he’s just come to terms with the fact that he’s no political commentator.

But Nick Coleman has managed to write a column that skirts perilously close to a number of inconvenient truths.

He’s writing about Target Corporation’s plea for property tax relief from Hennepin County:

Luckily, when it comes to helping bail out billion-dollar outfits, Hennepin County sets the standard for compassion.

Earlier this year, the County Board came to the rescue of Carl (Big Pockets) Pohlad, handing him half a billion (a billion, when you count the interest taxpayers will pay). Hennepin County has become a beacon to the needy, and this important charity work has attracted other hungry billionaires, such as Zygi Wilf, who is thinking of getting in line for an $800 million stadium. I don’t know about you, but this kind of charity work makes me proud. When you can feel good by doing good, then you are on the right track. No corporation should be left behind.

Well, that’s kinda what happens when a group – a state, a church, a nation, whatever – gets into the habit of subsidizing things, to say nothing of picking and choosing what to subsidize.

Minnesota – and especially Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis – has always subsidized two things:

• Big Businesses – stadiums for billionaire team owners and millionaire players are only the latest in a long, fiscally gruesome record of turning over money and resources from those who have, to those who have more. From eminent domain land grabs (which took private property from business owners to give to…other business owners) led to the Best Buy and Target headquarters buildings in Richfield and Downtown Minneapolis, respectively; Tax Increment Financing (TIF), which is essentially eminent domain with money instead of land, has floated the development of countless businesses in the city and the ‘burbs. Some call it “corporate welfare”, to try to draw a specious equation between it and, say, entitlements paid out to the poor; let’s call it “Subsidizing Business” for right now, since the intended consequence to “subsidizing” something is to create a favorable environment for more of that something.
• Poverty: like every state (only moreso), Minnesota – especially Hennepin County – pays for people to be poor. It’s called “welfare”, since it’s supposed to look out for the “welfare” of the poor, but it is essentially “Subsidizing Poverty” – making poverty a viable lifestyle, and giving the poor a viable option to starving on the one hand (a good thing) or getting themselves out of poverty on the on the other (a bad thing). Sine any time you pay for something – in this case, paying for people to live at a just-good-enough level of poverty – you create more of that thing, both in terms of making it easier for people not to improve their own incomes (most people at any level of income will take the path of least resistance; why get out of poverty, when you’re being paid to stay at a level that’s bearable?). It’s a subsidy; we subsidize poverty.

Coleman:

Once upon a time, companies like Target were ashamed to ask for handouts from a government that had kids to feed and libraries to run and cops to hire. Thankfully, we no longer live in hard times. The welfare queens and their babies — it’s always, “Feed me, wah, wah, feed me!” with these kids — have been kicked off the welfare rolls to make room for worthier recipients.

Except that Minnesota never actually kicked anyone off of welfare. Oh, the state added the thinnest possible veneer of “workfare” and “up and off” windowdressing to its panoply of programs. But at the end of the day, Minnesota still has the most “generous” welfare benefits in the Midwest.

Now – if you accept that putting a bottomless pot of money in front of a bunch of billionaires will draw a parade of Wilfs and Pohlads and Targets and Best Buys begging for their piece of the freebie pie, what makes anyone think that the poor behave any differently? If you give away things, you’ll draw takers. If you make a habit of it, the crowd of takers will stick around for more.

Coleman snipes:

I don’t know why it took so long, but Minnesota finally has turned into the kind of welfare state worth having.

A corporate welfare state.

Coleman is too modest. Minnesota has always been a welfare subsidy state. It’s a big part of the state’s very mythology; from our “compassionate” welfare poverty subsidies to our “public/private partnerships” which provide corporate welfare subsidies to business, to the “Happy to Pay For A Better Minnesota” campaign which is welfare for government workers a plea for endless subsidy of the public class, Minnesota’s very “compassionate” ethos is built on taking money from those who earn it and giving it to those whom government, for whatever reason, favors.

And it’s something that Coleman, like his father before him, has enthusiastically supported at every turn…

…unless the welfare applicant has a corporate logo.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 6:58 am and is filed under Media, Minneapolis, Minnesota Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.