{"id":9069,"date":"2010-03-05T13:05:59","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T18:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=9069"},"modified":"2010-03-05T12:43:19","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T17:43:19","slug":"the-vulture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=9069","title":{"rendered":"Peasants! Your Master Is Hungry!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The DFL’s primary mission in this session, as in the past four or five, is to money to keep the slavering maw of government satiated and without even the most trivial\u00a0want.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, Dave Mindemann at mnpACT notes that Senator Tom “Baby Got” Bakk\u00a0wants to zip down and let fly on one of Minnesota’s great third rails:<\/a><\/p>\n

State Senator Tom Bakk will probably get a lot of heat for his tax proposal on clothing. However, he should be commended for being willing to take a leadership position on a real solution to our budget problems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, let’s focus for the moment on giving him the heat he deserves.\u00a0 Even I, a middle-income guy with two teenagers, look at clothing as one of the most frustrating expenses in my family budget.\u00a0 No two ways about it; kids burn through clothes like Margaret Anderson Kelliher goes through rationalizations.\u00a0 And I make decent money, and have only two kids, one of whom earns a bit of her own fun money.\u00a0 How much worse are things for, say, a family of six with a household income of $45,000?<\/p>\n

Indeed – I’m looking forward to Bakk and Mindeman explaining this proposal to that family of six, after getting the news this past week <\/a>that government workers’ average salaries (nationwide, but it can’t be proportionally much different in Minnesota) are around $75,000, while private sector workers average around $45,000 a year, and that government employment is safe and rising while private-sector jobs are tenuous and still getting whacked by the bushelfull.<\/p>\n

Personally, I still think any expansion of the sales tax should be on the service sector [Great, Dave.\u00a0 Throttle whatever recovery might just happen before it can start – Ed.<\/em>] but I understand where Bakk is coming from on this proposal as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure that Mindeman does, but I sure do.\u00a0 In the DFL’s special little world, it is the peasants’ obligation to keep government satiated first and foremost; looking to their and their families’ rude needs is secondary at best.<\/p>\n

And in that world, it is the DFL’s and the Government’s sole prerogative to bestow dispensations and mercy within that rule:<\/p>\n

I would be more comfortable if we moved to this type of tax with some restrictions as well. Maybe a rebate for lower income people or only tax clothing on leather or fur, or with a designer label. That is certainly up for debate, but Bakk’s general premise is a realistic position to take.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Provided that the only goal that matters is making sure government wants for nothing, ever – no matter how rough the rest of us have it.<\/p>\n

And that is <\/em>the goal:<\/p>\n

The biggest selling point to me is that it has a particular pupose. To pay back the schools. The Governor (and his minions) have not come up with a way to reallot (is that word?), the $1.6 billion cut in education (and it IS a cut) that the Governor foisted on us last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whenever a DFLer says “and it IS a cut”, the rule is always “distrust but verify”; to a liberal, cutting an increase in entitlement funding is a “cut”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition, the end result in subsequent years is to lower the overall sales tax percentage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Right. Because the Minnesota state government and its DFL-controlled bureaucracy (to say nothing of the stultifying DFL majorities in the Legislature) have such <\/em>a great record at rolling back tax hikes.<\/p>\n

Excellent plan. A realistic plan. A plan that shows leadership.<\/p>\n

Thank you Senator Bakk, for the courage of your convictions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dunno, Dave.\u00a0 I’ll kudo Bakk’s “courage” when he takes that proposal to people outside <\/em>the Capitol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The DFL’s primary mission in this session, as in the past four or five, is to money to keep the slavering maw of government satiated and without even the most trivial\u00a0want. With that in mind, Dave Mindemann at mnpACT notes that Senator Tom “Baby Got” Bakk\u00a0wants to zip down and let fly on one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9069","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=9069"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9071,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9069\/revisions\/9071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}