{"id":11004,"date":"2010-05-24T07:09:02","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T12:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11004"},"modified":"2010-05-24T07:23:09","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T12:23:09","slug":"mnpublius-more-money-laundering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11004","title":{"rendered":"MNPublius: “More Money Laundering!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to take a vacation this summer.\u00a0 I want to go to Norway to run down some of the geneology on both my parents’ sides.<\/p>\n

Of course, a key part of making that happen, budget-wise, is going to be getting other people to buy my groceries and pay my utility bills for the next few months.\u00a0 Or better yet, in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

Lots of vegetables, everyone, please?<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

Absurd?<\/p>\n

Well, no.\u00a0 That’s how cities and counties have been ratcheting up their lifestyles for decades in Minnesota – through “Local Government Aid”, which allows local governments to spend money that they don’t have to raise by taxing their own residents directly,\u00a0 because the state passes it on to all <\/em>Minnesota taxpayers.<\/p>\n

It’s a perverted vestige of a holdover from the 1970’s “Minnesota Miracle”, originally designed to give poorer outstate town and school districts a little more even financial playing field with the once-wealthy Twin Cities.<\/p>\n

In other words, “political welfare”.<\/p>\n

And like any kind of public welfare, there is a legitimate reason for it – and like our public welfare system for people, it’s been perverted far from its original intent.<\/p>\n

Of course, “original intent” to the left means “just the beginning’:\u00a0 to the left, welfare isn’t intended to forestall starvation; it’s about controlling people and society.<\/p>\n

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius\u00a0 does what the entire Minnesota left has been doing for eight years<\/a>, and what theyll be doing for the next six months; he tries to tell the reader that a money-laundering program for local spending is really the capstone of civic virtue.<\/p>\n

And he does it to the tune of every single chanting point the DFL has already worn out:<\/p>\n

As Tim Pawlenty tries to walk into the sunset, he\u2019s got one small problem: He\u2019s left Minnesotans a complete mess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, no.\u00a0 He’s caused our governing class to go into spasms of discomfiture at having to react to a tax gravy train coming to an end.\u00a0 The governing class is perturbed.<\/p>\n

The state itself, with decent unemployment numbers and a generally better private sector <\/em>performance – the sector that actually matters to most of us?\u00a0 Not quite so bad, and thanks to Pawlenty, set up to recover better than many other states if we ever get Obama out of office and see genuine prosperity again.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what you NEED TO KNOW.<\/p>\n

You are paying billions of dollars more in fees on a long list of items, including cigarettes, parking tickets, marriage licenses, building permits, court cases, college tuition and hundreds of other higher fees on Pawlenty\u2019s watch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, no.<\/p>\n

We’re not paying “billions more” for them; we pay the same.\u00a0 It’s just that the taxes sucked out of each of these are being extracted at the local, rather than state, level.\u00a0 Because local governments are now more accountable for their own spending.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more REALITY.<\/p>\n

Since 2003, state budget cuts mean Minnesotans pay significantly more in property taxes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And why is that?<\/p>\n

Because we are squeezed between local governments (especially in the larger cities) that are run by the DFL and the public employees unions and for whom spending is their main grip on power, and<\/p>\n

Yes, Tim Pawlenty has kept the income tax\u2009\u2014\u2009which is a progressive tax that asks the rich to pay their fair share\u2009\u2014\u2009steady since he took office.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s be clear on this – since neither Jeff nor WCCO will:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the “progressive” income tax soaks the “working rich”, the doctors and lawyers and engineers and mid-to-upper management and especialy entrepreneurs that make in low six figures.\u00a0 The “Rich” – the Bill McGuires and Lois Quams and Mark Daytons of Minnesota – mostly don’t pay income tax; their “income” is mostly capitol gains and dividends.<\/p>\n

In its place, he has forced massive increases in our property tax\u2009\u2014\u2009which is a regressive tax that forces the poor and middle class to pay more. Since Pawlenty took office, local property taxes have increased by more than fifty percent. And that\u2019s on top of the massive cuts local governments are making.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rosenberg says this like it’s a bad thing.<\/p>\n

The biggest problem is that forty years of state money-laundering have perverted local spending.\u00a0 In Saint Paul, the city budget spends LGA money – money the city doesn’t directly control – on essentials like the police and fire departments, while its property taxes, which it does <\/em>control, go to nonessential dross like the city Human Rights department and B-list expenditures like the city’s dozens of Rec Centers, and Neighborhood Councils.<\/p>\n

How bad have local government spending cuts become? The city of Brainerd has started turning off the lights:<\/p>\n

Selected streetlights – in alleys, in mid blocks and duplicates at intersections – started being shut off by the utility in early May in response to the Brainerd City Council\u2019s direction to reduce the street lighting budget by $91,000. Brainerd Public Utilities Superintendent Tom Phelps told the Personnel and Finance Committee that in addition to shutting off lights he\u2019s been reducing wattage in downtown decorative lights and looking at switching to LED lights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Govenrment having to live within its means, and get more efficient?<\/p>\n

Gosh, what will we do?<\/p>\n

Our local governments have done everything up to and including reducing the wattage of their lights, but they\u2019ve still been forced to raise your property taxes by over half under Pawlenty\u2019s fiscal malfeasance. And if you don\u2019t like that, it will just be worst under Extremist Emmer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, Jeff, I have a hunch it’s not the light bill that’s raising the property taxes.<\/p>\n

Think featherbedded union labor, bottomless defined-benefit public pensions, redundant services, salaries that are outstripping those of the private sector mopes who have to float it all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to take a vacation this summer.\u00a0 I want to go to Norway to run down some of the geneology on both my parents’ sides. Of course, a key part of making that happen, budget-wise, is going to be getting other people to buy my groceries and pay my utility bills for the next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11004"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11045,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11004\/revisions\/11045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}