Joe Doakes from the Como Park neighborhood for Saint Paul write to the new MNGOP majority in the Legislature:

Looks as if you’ll control the state House and Senate, but Dayton will be governor. Obviously, his tax-the-rich plan isn’t going anywhere in the Legislature. But how will you get your austerity budget signed?

Remember when the Democrats sent Pawlenty a tax-increasing budget on the last day of the session and he vetoed it, thinking he could use the unallotment process to balance the budget? Democrats rushed to Court to get Pawlenty’s actions declared unconstitutional. Their argument was he should have vetoed the budget and shut down the government.

It was the great political food fight of the past biennium.

Back to Joe:

Learning from your mistakes is a sign of wisdom. Now that you control the Legislature, pass a slash-and-burn budget on the last day of the session and force Dayton to either (1) sign it, thereby pleasing your constituency while infuriating his; or (2) veto it and shut down the government, thereby mildly annoying your constituency while infuriating his.

Sure, he can call you back for a special session. Doesn’t mean you have to pass anything different the second time around. Keep sending him the same deal until he takes it. Remember, he can’t unallot – they made sure of that – so you’re in the driver’s seat.

This last bit is what’s important:

One more thing : buy some earplugs. The weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth by the unions, welfare recipients and drive-by media will be deafening if you don’t. Ignore them and do the right thing. Your kids and your grandkids will be glad you did.

And if you don’t, you’ll have a great time telling those kids and grandkids about your one term in Saint Paul.

Because you have a mandate. You rode to Saint Paul on a wave of energy, passion, enthusiasm, anger and determination like this nation has not seen – ever! Last night’s victories, in Minnesota and nationwide, were not part of a centrally-orchestrated campaign; this was the sound twenty million newly-minted conservative activists make when they realize that our government is out of control

You are where you are because of us.

You must not seek accomodation with the DFL, or with Governor Dayton.  Politics is about compromise, of course – but unlike GOP caucuses of the past, you must obtain those compromises by squeezing the DFL for their fair share and then some.

We won.  The MNGOP over history has found a million ways to make that phrase ring hollow.  That history must end today.

We didn’t send you to Saint Paul to play kissyface with Lori Sturdevant and Rachel Stassen-Berger.  We didn’t send you there to become popular with Larry “The Stats Masseuse” Jacobs or the Strib Editorial Board.

We sent you there to kick the DFL’s ass.  We sent you there to tell this state’s preening, self-appointed elite that no, we are not “happy to pay and pay and pay for a better Minnesota for the AFSCME and the SEIU.  We sent you there to change Minnesota

Get to work.  We’re watching.  We put you there, and we’ll be more than happy to bring you home.

If last night’s results showed us anything, it’s that any little boy can grow up to outspend his opponent almost 3:1 with family and union money, and run an epochally sleazy campaign based on dodgy context and virtually no fact, with the aid of an in-the-bag media that won’t start asking the tough questions until January, and back into office by a fraction of a point (maybe) while insulting the intelligence of a little over half the electorate, and become governor just in time to sign on to an agenda that just got overwhelmingly repudiated nationwide.

For a term.

That’s one Renoir for every 3,000 votes’ worth of margin.

Congratulations, Governor Hatch.  Er, “Governor Dayton”.  Seriously.  Don’t change a thing.

As I do before every important election, I’m listing the top 100 reasons I’m voting for the top of the ticket.

Of course, I became an Emmer supporter long ago.  The GOP started the campaign early – right around State Fair time in 2009 – with a crop of great candidates and rumored candidates.  Paul Kohls was a sharp guy; I could have easily supported Pat Anderson; Dave Hann is right about everything that matters; most of all, Marty Seifert would have been an excellent standard-bearer.  I would happily have written these 100 reasons about any of them.

But Emmer became my personal front-runner as Ed and I interviewed him at the Fair on September 4, 2009.  Someone asked him a question about some kind of wedge-y social issue or another.  And without skipping a beat, Tom responded “I dont’ care; this election is about jobs and the economy”.  Emmer is the single best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today.  And for all the left and media’s efforts to paint him as some sort of extremist, Tom has not only stuck to that message, but has shown himself superb at explaining that message to people who don’t start out as believers.  Which is the main reason the DFL has had to run such a superlatively slimy, negative campaign against him.

And to be honest, those were the only reasons I really need to support Tom Emmer.  But I came up with 99 more.  Because that’s what I do.

To wit – the 100 main reasons I’m voting for Tom Emmer today.

1. Because the DFL’s plan is a return to the past, in ways that just don’t make sense anymore.
2. Because the DFL’s big-money, big-union, big-service model was based on economy that exploded at a time when America was the only serious economy on earth.
3. And times have changed.
4. And Tom Emmer knows that we have to change our government with those times.
5. And Mark Dayton thinks that if you throw enough obstinacy and rhetoric and taxpayers money at life, the clock will turn itself back to the DFL’s glory days.
6. Not to mention his own glory days.
7. And as that great political commentator said, Glory Days will pass you by in the wink of a young girl’s eye.
8. Because Emmer’s about providing three things; Jobs
9. Jobs, and
10. Jobs.
11. And Dayton is not.
12. Unless you’re an AFSCME, SEIU, MAPE other state employee.
13. Indeed, we know of many companies that are going to leave Minnesota, sooner or later, if taxes don’t moderate.
14. And we know many, many more that are waiting on the fence to see where their investments are going to go.
15. Because it’s not just about creating jobs.  It’s about creating a climate where companies will create jobs, and new companies will form, and hire people to work for them, and more new companies will form to provide goods and services and wholesaling and distribution and support and markets and suppliers for the companies above.
16. And Mark Dayton’s policies will curb that as effectively as any policy designed to curb business growth on purpose ever could.
17. Because our state government needs to be re-engineered…
18. …and Emmer has the plan to do it…
19. …while Mark Dayton’s entire plan is to just pour more of our money down the rathole.
20. Because of Emmer’s enemies; the SEIU, AFSCME, the Teamsters, and the bureaucracy are the only people who benefit from the current government.
21. Because Tom Emmer is one of us.
22. And I just know that some idiot leftyblogger will go “yeah, he’s a middle class white guy”, which shows you yet another reason Emmer needs to win; the phony “diversity” pimps must not be rewarded.
23. No, Tom Emmer is a Minnesota guy who grew up the child of business people, worked for the business, worked his way through college and law school, worked his way up the hierarchy of his business – just the way most Minnesotans have to, whether they’re white middle class guys…
24. …or Latino working-class gals…
25. …or black single mothers who are fighting to keep their kids’ charter schools afloat…
26. …or Asian immigrants who are working in their uncle’s restaurant while they earn their engineering degree.  It’s all part of a story…
27. …that Mark Dayton never participated in, can not understand…
28. …and has to have interpreted for him  by his advisers from the AFSCME, MFT, MAPE, SEIU, ACORN, CommonCause and MoveOn.
29. Tom Emmer doesn’t have to have anyone explain “the Minnesota Dream” to him.  He’s lived it, and his whole plan is about opening up that dream to everyone.
30. Because Mark Dayton is the wrong guy for the job.
31. He was an unmitigated disaster as a Senator…
32. …and an undistinguished State Auditor….
33. …and a failure as Economic Development commissioner – so bad that his boss’ son wrote an Op-Ed claiming that he bailed on the job before a recession, to salvage his political future.
34. And his only “plan” is to start jacking up taxes.
35. And as much as he caterwauls about “taxing the rich”, the fact is that his proposed “taxes on the rich” won’t even begin to cover the deficit, will slow the state’s economy and sent it into a vicious, revenue-killing spiral…
36. …that will result in the definition of “the rich” being pushed ever downward until pretty much everyone in Minnesota is “rich”…
37. …while, paradoxically, poor.
38. Because his plan will gut charter schools – a racist plan that will destroy the only meaninful “school choice” most inner-city parents of color, and from poor families, and immigrants and Native Americans, have to try to get their children a decent education.
39. (But Dayton needn’t care, because he went to Yale).
40. Dayton’s plan, indeed, is voodoo economics of the most trite, vapid order.
41. And Minnesotans are smarter than that.
42. (Or, after Ventura, McCollum, Ellison and Franken, I guess I should say they can be smarter than that.  Here’s your chance, Minnesota!)
43. Because “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” is, paradoxically, an alliance for a much, much worse Minnesota.
44. Because while I don’t really want big corporations buying my elections, I don’t want Alita Messenger buying them, either.
45. Or Big Unions.  What’s the SEIU done for us lately, besides demand more money and more subsidies?
46. Ditto the Minnesota Federation of Teachers?
47. Or, more tellingly, the entire Dayton family?
48. Because anyone the Twin Cities Media has been working so hard to gundeck this last six months has to be good.
49. Because Pat Doyle smeared Emmer in the Strib…
50. …and I busted Doyle.
51. Because if Tom Emmer wins, maybe the Twin Cities media will examine some of their prejudices, and focus less on electing DFLers and more on…reporting the news?
52. Because if Emmer wins, perhaps people will, once and for all, start treating the Minnesota Poll like “news”, and more like an “in-kind campaign contribution”, which is all it is.
53. Ditto the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Poll
54. And “Mid-Morning with Keri Miller”.
55. Because while I have no doubt that the Twin Cities media will eventually ask questions about Mark Dayton’s alcoholic relapses and mental health record, it’d be good to settle that before he takes on the most powerful job in Minnesota.
56. Or preferably rather than taking it on.
57. Because it will pound a stake through the heart of the old, RINO Republican party
58. Because Lori Sturdevant seems to have staked out a market at tut-tutting Republicans for not being like the Republicans of the 1970’s – and far be it from me to want to constrict somebody’s market.
59. Because Tom Emmer survived the most epic smear campaign in Minnesota history.
60. And that sort of behavior must not be rewarded.
61. Think about it; if Mark Dayton wins, all of ABM’s lies will be considered justified.
62. Because to the left, the end justifies the means – and since power is their end, this campaign will codify the means; lying, smearing, slandering.
63. And “power”, in this case, means not only the power to tax you back to the stone age, but to scupper the economy of this state for a generation.
64. Which, let us not forget, is yet another end that’d justify their means, if it succeeds. Because a state with lots of DFL dependants is a state with a happy DFL.
65. Because if Tom Emmer beats out this epic smear campaign, perhaps the Minnesota DFL and its lefty allies will learn some f****ng manners.
66. Because I don’t want the definition of “Marriage” decided by a bunch of moron legislators or bobbleheaded, agenda-driven judges.
67. Because if Emmer wins, free speech wins.
68. It was the “Citizens United” Supreme Court case that allowed corporations to contribute to political campaigns.
69. And so a raft of Minnesota companies contributed to “MNForward”, a pro-business PAC.
70. And a legion of howling lefty nutcases lined up to crucify these businesses…
71. …well, no.  They didn’t line up to slander and badger Polaris or Davisco or Securian.  They lined up to attack Target Corporation as “anti-gay”…
72. …even though Target is one of the most pro-equal-rights-for-gays companies in a state full of companies that bend over backwards to prove their “diversity”.   The attack wasnt’ because of anything Target did, but to try to bully and browbeat all Minnesota companies who dared to dissent from the DFL and their various hangers-on.
73. BTW, Tom Emmer is no more “anti-gay” than Barack Obama or, for that matter, Mark Dayton.
74. Because while the “Minnesota Miracle” of Minnesota Media Myth is indeed largely mythical, and would have happened anyway
75. But today, Minnesota needs a real miracle, and we need it now.
76. And real miracles come from the private sector…
77. …and the best thing government can do is stand out of the way – lending the odd helping hand (by, say, providing an educated and competent work force – ooops, sorry about that, Minnesota Federation of Teachers) and letting private enterprise and the market do the hard stuff.
78. Because while Governor Pawlenty has done a helluvva job keeping the wheels on this state, it’s only going to get more difficult as the Obama Depression grinds on.
79. And we have two more years of The One to survive; and electing a responsible, grownup, conservative government is a great first step in telling the rapacious federal regime “not so fast, bitches”.
80. Because it’s a big wave.
81. And if Emmer wins, then so will Michele Bachmann.
82. And Erik Paulsen.
83. And John Kline.
84. And since the Constitutional Officer races usually follow the governor’s race, an Emmer win will bring back Pat Anderson to State Auditor, replacing the fairly useless but boundlessly venal Rebecca Otto.
85. And Dan Severson could win, replacing Mark Ritchie, who was basically put into office to further George Soros’ grand scheme of having fifty in-the-bag secretaries of state.
86. And Chris Barden could become the Attorney General, giving us an AG that will work for Minnesota, rather than for Mike Hatch.
87. And if Emmer wins big, there’s a decent shot that Chip Cravaack will win as well – and Congress desperately needs Jim Oberstar to leave and go into the lobbyling business, where his heart really belongs.
88. And if Emmer wins, the coattails will help Randy Demmer, too; every little bit helps.
89. And of Tom and Chip take it downtown, then Lee Byberg will stand a decent chance of toppling Colin Peterson.
90. And if Tom, Chip, Randy and Lee pull it off, then the heretofore unthinkable – Teresa Collett knocking off Betty “Mission Accomplished” McCollum – is suddenly thinkable.
91. And Joel Demos might just be able to pack his wife and kids up and head off to DC as well.  Because we’re Minnesotans, and we do believe in Miracles.
92. And if that happens, somewhere on the campus of the Blake School, some mirthless harpy’s head is going to explode.
93. And some hard-scrabble Latina will make a few bucks cleaning up the mess, giving her the money to feed her kids and drive them to a good charter school,  where they become good educated citizens, who vote Republican…
94. …and help repeat the cycle…
95. …so that before too terribly long the DFL – the great destroyer of jobs, the albatross on the back of the Minnesota economy, the racist ravager of school choice, the thuggish apparatchik that wants to make sure you do no better than they do, will become a third party.  Like it so richly deserves.
96. Because I want Minnesota to be a good place for my children.
97. I don’t want Minnesota to become a Cold California, a windy Greece, a passive-aggressive Michigan, a “nice” Massachusetts.
98. And DFL rule merely ensures that that is exactly what will happen.
99. And conservative government is not just sane, stable government, it’s the key to a prosperous, sustainable state.  Even the parts that aren’t government.
100. Because it’s something you can do for A Better Minnesota.  All of us. Together.

So let’s make this happen.

Previous “100 Reasons” posts:

• 100 Reasons I’m Voting For Bush, Not Kerry
• 100 Reasons I’m Voting for the 2006 MNGOP slate
• 100 Reasons I’m Voting For McCain
• 100 Reasons I’m Voting For Eva Ng

Think back over the past six months of Mark Dayton’s campaign. Think over the ads he’s run.  Think back over the messages.

Why would you vote for Mark Dayton?

Now, make no mistake; the Dayton campaign – and its “third-party” advertising from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which is “third party” only on the most technical sense of the term, having been funded largely by the Dayton family – has tried to give you all sorts of reasons to vote against Tom Emmer; two drunk driving arrests 20 and 30 years ago, some grossly out-of-context statements about food server wages and legislative records and some poking and prodding at his conservative voting record.

But why would one vote for Mark Dayton?

Let’s go through his ads and see if we can find a positive, affirmative reason to vote for Mark Dayton, rather than against Tom Emmer.  Let’s run through the Top Five reasons:

5. He wants to tax “the rich”.  Which “rich?”  We’ll come back to that later.

4. He was a high school teacher forty years ago, and will make sure that schools get more money, or something. The message is a little vague.

3. Er…

I got nothing.

The fact is, Mark Dayton’s entire campaign has been run on slime.  Think of the campaign’s salient points, such as they’ve been:

• Emmer favors “Uncertified” Teachers… – …of exactly the type that Mark Dayton himself once was.
• Minnesota Cities need to be able to launder their spending through the state to dodge accountability to their own taxpayers: We pretty well addressed and debunked that here, and here, and here, and here, and here.
• Emmer Got Sued!: The Strib’s Pat Doyle “distinguished” himself with his hit piece on Emmer, which managed to maneuver itself into spreading everything about Emmer’s legal and personal record that could be construed as unfavorable – while carefully excising all exculpatory context.  Someday when they give awards for showing that “journalistic ethics” are merely “a framework by which journalists justify the means toward their ends”, Doyle will be a winner emeritus.
• Emmer Hates Gays – Except even the most remedial degree of reporting shows that the whole claim is based on a fraudulently-overblown and out-of-context claim of support for one Bradlee Dean.  This was blown up into the most contrived astro-turf campaign I have seen in all my years of watching DFL astroturf – a coast-to-coast fabrication of the vapours that generated much heat about Target Corporation’s donation of $150K in cash and services to a pro-business PAC that, nonetheless, did nothing much except show America what a bunch of yapping McCarthyites Minnesota liberals are.
• The Phantom Plan: Until about Labor Day – four solid months – the DFL and its minions caterwauled about Emmer’s lack of a “budget plan“.  Then he released a plan – which balanced the budget – and pointed out the inconvenient truth that Dayton’s first whack at a plan came up $3billion light; his second plan is a little over a billion off the mark.
• Emmer Had Two DUIs, and wanted to lower penalties for drunk driving!: The episodes were twenty and thirty years ago.  And Emmer has been constantly forthcoming about his youthful mistakes, unlike Senator Dayton’s silence on his record of alcoholism, mental illness and other erratic behavior (of which more later).  As to ABM’s giggly claims that Emmer tried to “lower penalties for drunk driving” – it turned to be a gross, craven distortion, the sort of thing that was called a “filthy lie” in a more direct age.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota broke records, not only for spending (nearly unreported by the mainstream media and utterly unchallenged by our state’s so-called “watchdog” organizations), but for the serial falsity of its claims.  The DFL’s bullpen of news-release blogs were only too happy to carry the water.  While the DFL caterwauled about corporate funding, ABM spent nearly four million in funds from public employee unions and…the Dayton Family and candidate Dayton himself.

Mark Dayton has no positive vision for the state of Minnesota.

He waves the flag of “class” envy – really achievement envy – and vague blandishments about school funding…and that’s about it.

Minnesota deserves a better vision than this.

Minnesota deserves better than Mark Dayton.

The DFL starts to work on its damage control from its viciously anti-Catholic attack piece.

Blois Olson – who is not “the DFL”, per se, but has a history of working for DFL candidates – in his “Morning Take”

MN GOP will push to find controversy with a direct mail piece in SD40. GOP operatives are working hard to advance outrage over a mail piece sent by the MN DFL in the race for SD40 where incumbent DFL Sen. John Doll is running against GOPer Dan Hall.

“Find controversy?”

I think the controversy pretty much jumps out and beats you over the head.  Check it out for yourself:

Not a lot of room for interpretation there.

There is no doubt that if they get traction with this it could have some statewide impact on the election, especially if they advance the narrative that the piece is anti-Catholic. While one side of the piece shows a clergy collar with a faux button “Ignore the Poor”. The other takes legitimate pointed criticism at GOPer Dan Hall’s positions related to the MN budget and ties it to his profession as a chaplain.

Which is part of the DFL’s outreach to the region’s – mostly the Metro’s – “social justice-gospel” addled – Catholics; the idea that the state’s budget itself is a sort of Good Work.

That’s no different than finding issue with any other candidates profession and the political positions they take. The piece is hard hitting, but clergy of other faith’s wear a collar, and the word “Catholic” doesn’t appear anywhere on the piece.

Olson goes on to point out that priests of other denominations wear clerical collars.  But the ad’s only context is the current race – where Archbishop Nienstedt has attacked gay marriage, and where Tom Emmer is a very orthodox Catholic.

And neither the Episcopal nor Orthodox hierarchies have taken any key political stances in this election (or have they?  Who would know?) as has the Archdiocese.  If this piece is a swipe at the Anglicans, Greeks or Russians, it’d be a response to an Orthodox or Episcopal stance that nobody’s really aware of; being a highly-qualified pundit, I’m pretty sure Olson knows that’d be a curious misallocation of resources at this point in the campaign.

The ad is a swipe at District 40 Senate candidate Dan Hall, who is a volunteer chaplain with the Burnsville Fire Department.  The DFL’ s line is that Hall is a “Hypocrite” for preaching on the one hand, and supporting Governor Pawlenty on rejecting the big federal Medicaid payment.

The DFL is taking it upon itself to tell us who is or is not a good Christian and Catholic, based on adherence to the DFL’s budget wish list.

Senators Koch and Fishbach gave a statement about an hour ago asking if candidate Dayton stood by his party’s attack.  Dayton is Catholic – or at least he’s given the homily at ultraliberal Saint Joan of Arc in Minneapolis.

I’m gonna suspect he lets this ride without mention…

UPDATE:   MDE has scanned the full postcard.

CORRECTION:  The postcard was sent by the DFL State, not Central, Committee.  It was an inadvertent slip.  Hard to tell all those committees apart.

After decades of control by the ultraliberal DFL and a GOP that was merely center-left until probably fifteen years ago, Minnesota has had business and corporate tax rates that rivalled some of the nation’s worst tax hellholes – New York, California, New Jersey.

Liberals inevitably respond “well, look at all the companies that have their headquarters here!”.  And it’s true – Minnesota has more Fortune 500 companies per capita than any other state in the union.   And if you were the CEO of, say, Best Buy or Ecolab or 3M, I’d bet you’d rather live in Minneapolis than, say, Mississippi.

But a company is more than just CEOs.

The good news; 3M, based in Saint Paul, is creating new jobs!

3M today announced the expansion of its manufacturing facility for its 3M Ultra Barrier Solar Film. As a key component supplier to the solar industry, this expansion will support the growing demand for high efficiency flexible PV modules.

And where are those jobs?

The majority of the facility expansion, located in Columbia, Missouri, is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

Minnesota’s corporations are not creating manufacturing or distribution jobs in Minnesota.  Even their research and engineering work is being farmed out to out-of-state or offshore companies at an accelerating rate.

You can thank the DFL (and the old, pre-Pawlenty-era GOP that the DFL’s sock puppets are always babbling about) for this.

It’s time to lower business tax rates in Minnesota, and for the government programs that depend on them to suck it up and count on the revenues rising when Minnesotans actually start going back to work.

And that pretty much inevitably means voting for Emmer, and your local GOP candidate for the Legislature, next Tuesday.

Between the Tea Party and the general distaste for more taxation and government spending, it might be  bad year to be proposing…taxing and spending.

As I noted on Labor Day, Mark Dayton’s tax-hike-based budget plan is very likely dead on arrival at the legislature.  My rationale at the time was that Dayton’s tax hike was ten times the size of the increase that the DFL managed to pass by a single vote (Tarryl Clark’s, as luck would have it), when they had overwhelming control of both chambers of the legislature, at the height of Obama mania in one of the most ostensibly liberal states in the nation.  Will they get ten times the money out of a legislature that is much more conservative, maybe with a flipped chamber, and an electorate that is just not buying more spending?

According to MPR, even some DFLers aren’t buying it:

DFL candidate former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton wants to raise income taxes on upper earners, but you won’t hear about it from some DFL legislative candidates.

You also don’t hear “Democrat” or “DFL” from some of them.  But I digress.

Some are also promising to vote against the proposed income tax increase if Dayton is elected governor.

“I don’t talk about that,” said DFL state Sen. Terri Bonoff of Minnetonka, who spent a recent afternoon knocking on doors in in Plymouth, a mostly Republican area of her suburban district.

Bonoff is a moderate Democrat, and she said her re-election bid depends on the support of independents and some Republicans.

It’s not that Bonoff is against tax hikes, of course:

“I have a lot of respect for Mark Dayton. But I have my views about what we ought to do with regard to taxes, and it’s not about protecting the rich,” she said. “It’s about right now we have too much reliance on the income tax, and as the demographics change in our state and our folks are getting out of the workplace, more and more seniors, they don’t have that kind of income stream.

“If we’re too reliant on the income tax, I think we’re going to find ourselves in this same mess three years from now.”

The DFL opposition seems to be largely coming from districts that should be GOP, but went DFL during the ’06 and ’08 elections, which were terrible for Republicans.  One of those is Kathy Saltzman, who won her seat in largely-Republican Woodbury in 2006:

The concern is similar in the east metro suburbs. Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, who’s locked in a tough re-election fight, also stresses her independence on tax issues. She’s voted against previous attempts to raise income taxes on upper earners.

Saltzman hasn’t endorsed a candidate for governor, but she’s met with Dayton and Horner. Saltzman said she asked Dayton to be open to other tax ideas, not just taxing the rich.

“I believe that it’s not about targeting one group or one group of services,” she said. “We really should be looking at an overall tax reform policy. That would be the most responsible way to approach this.”

It’s not that they’re deserting the DFL, naturally…:

Saltzman said Republican Tom Emmer’s cuts-alone approach to the budget is unrealistic. She favors a balanced approach that includes some revenue, and is open to a sales tax expansion as part of a broader reform of the tax code.

But Saltzman said she will not support the Dayton tax plan. “It will be very difficult to get it by me. I would say he won’t get it by me. He will note get my vote,” she said.

The Dayton Tax “Plan” will never see the light of day, if Dayton is elected.

Electing Dayton would be a complete waste of time.

Rachel Stassen-Berger, writing in the Strib yesterday:

Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer is all over the new Republican theme — Democratic candidate Mark Dayton doesn’t have a complete budget plan.

Emmer hammered the point, made by supportive Republicans repeatedly during the past few days, on a Tuesday spot on Minnesota Public Radio.

“Let’s start talking about the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. Sen. Dayton has proposed a plan that is billions of dollars short,” Emmer said. He went on to suggest that Dayton will have to increase taxes more folks than he’s specified — couples making taxable income of $150,000 and singles earning $130,000. “How far are you willing to go?”

Let’s extend that thought for a moment:  Mark Dayton is not a dumb guy.  And he’s got people on his campaign staff who are even smarter.  They don’t own a supercomputer – but they don’t need one to put together the broad outlines of a budget.  Their campaign isn’t short of staff or funding, obviously.

So if you think the only budget that the Dayton campaign has is the one that’s on the website – the one that grins a big dumb grin and says “we’re $890 million short” with the same seriousness of a junior high kid saying the dog ate his homework – then I have to say with all due respect that you’re beggaring reason.   Either the campaign is incompetent, or they know where that extra $890 million is coming from, and would rather the electorate not know.

And if you assume Democrats and Dayton aren’t just plain stupid, that leaves you with only “b”

“Put it on paper, Sen. Dayton,” Emmer said. (Republicans on Twitter and on blogs have taken to accusing individual reporters of negligence for not following suit.)

Stassen-Berger links to my Twitter account, as well as my “AWOL Media” piece yesterday.  I wouldn’t use the phrase “accusing of negligence”, really – it’s got a legalistic tinge to it that’s a little unseemly for free speech.

It just seems that the media, which six weeks ago were hot to get all the details of the Emmer budget, has suddenly gotten incredibly incurious.  And yet now that Dayton’s budget has a large, suspicious hole – and there really is no solution but to jack up taxes on the middle class – suddenly it seems that the people don’t have a “right to know”, accorinding to our regional political media.

I mean, did you see Esme Murphy?

She might as well have been giving the Senator a massage.  “Do you have any plans?”  Er, nope.  And it ended there!

Did you hear Keri Miller’s interview with Tom Emmer?  Back before Emmer released his budget?  She went after him like a barracuda after Charlie the Tuna.

Does the public – especially us middle-class schnook taxpayers – still have a right to know now that it’s the favorite son of Minnesota’s political “elite?”

I mean…:

Dayton has acknowledged that his budget plan comes up nearly $1 billion short. That’s in part because his income tax plan won’t bring in as much money as he had hoped. He has specified how he would make the cuts he’s found, although some are estimates and others have been deemedunrealistic. But he admits a “gap,” which leads opponents to believe he’ll raise more in taxes.

…I’m a complete schlemiel as a “reporter”, and even I see that these are some huge, valid questions!

So David Brauer – who’s never covered up his lefty sympathies, but seems to try to do a decent job anyway – asked via Twitter:

@mitchpberg regarding @Rachelsb & @MinnPost, does thishttp://bit.ly/c4f26t and thishttp://t.co/jj16mXx get them off your bad list?

He links to a this Rachel Stassen-Berger story in the Strib, and a Doug Grow piece in the MinnPost.  Stassen-Berger did, indeed, note that Dayton’s budget comes up short – but there’s no evidence that I’ve seen (I’m willing to be corrected!) that she’s gotten up at a Dayton presser and said “OK, Chauncey Fauntelroy, if you don’t have to hit the middle class, who do you have to get the $890 million?  We’ve got all day, Yale boy” (Those might be my words rather than Stassen-Berger’s).

Grow makes the valid point that…:

…no governor, no matter how popular, will be able to zip a budget package through the Legislature without major changes. In this case, whoever is governor likely will not be elected with a majority of the vote, meaning there will be little chance to claim any mandate, so you can expect nasty legislative fights.

…while basically claiming a pox on all their fiscal houses.

And, most importantly, both of these pieces were two weeks ago.  Juuuuust about the time that the non-wonk class – all those actual voters – started thinking about the election.

Which was why I took exception to Brauer’s followup tweet:

@mitchpberg Fair question. Would venture Dayton’s gap is well-known, covered and acknowledged. For many weeks, Emmer seemed to be ducking.

Well-known to whom?  Political reporters and political junkies and fire-breathing political bloggers?  Sure!

The average voter – especially the ones who start paying attention to politics sometime between the first and fifteenth of October?

Hell – I’ve talked with candidates for the State House who haven’t read anything about this yet.

So while I’m not going to say that our assembled mass of journalists are “negligent” for not asking, I’m still curious; when the public has a right to know, does it imply they’re supposed to exercise that right by developing a jones for research?

Look, journos; if your line is “all three of the candidates’ budgets leave questions”, then ask them.  That’s what you get the big bucks for.  Hell, I’d do it, if any of them (but Emmer) returned my calls!  And since neither of them do, I – and, more importantly, we, the entire body politic – have to depend on y’all, Tim Pugmire and Tom Scheck and Bill Salisbury and Rachel Stassen-Berger and Pat Kessler to do it.

Thing is, so far in the race, it’s Emmer that’s been getting the questioning; Dayton seems to be the only one who can get away with saying “I’ll get back to you on November 3”.

Am I wrong?

What say you, Tim and Rachel and Tom and Bill and Pat?

Remember in June and July?

When the Dayton Campaign, and their minimum-wage minions in the leftyblogosphere, demanded that Tom Emmer release his budget plan?

Because without an Emmer Budget Plan in place for their perusal, democracy itself was in mortal danger!

The entire media was in on it. of course.

Tom Scheck at MPR?  Yep.  He was asking.

Tim Pugmire at MPR?  Yep, he wanted the details, too.

Eric Black at the MNPost?  It was surely important to him!

The question certainly fascinated Rachel Stassen-Berger at the Strib!

Over the past five weeks, Tom Emmer has released a budget plan that balances the budget, and lays the groundwork for the kind of economic growth that actually sets economies up for the kind of long-term prosperity that makes budget fiascoes like the past four years dim, comic memories.

In the meantime, Mark Dayton’s first budget cratered – came up $3 Billion short – and his second attempt is well over a billion off the mark, and Dayton is now saying budgets don’t really matter that much anyway until he’s elected.

So I’m wondering – where are the media who were so strident about having a budget to fact-check last summer?

Rachel Stassen-Berger?  Tim Pugmire?  Tom Scheck?  Pat Kessler?  Bill Salisbury?  Eric Black?  David Brauer?

Where are all the great journalistic instincts of one of the nation’s putatively top-twenty media markets?

Or don’t the people have a right to know anymore?

Let’s start counting up days until someone in the regional mainstream media – MPR, the Strib, the PiPress, WCCO-TV, anyone covers the vaporous vacuity of the Dayton “budget plan”.

Good thing I don’t pay for ink, huh?

Remember last June?

According to the DFL and their buildup of minimum wage leftyblog minions, the fact that Tom Emmer hadn’t released a detailed budget plan was a finger in the eye of The People.  They had a right to knoooooooooow!, after all.  And they had to knooooooooooow it right then and there, dagnabbit!

Then Emmer released a budget plan – one that balanced the budget without raising taxes, lowered taxes on job-creating activities, and left K12 education untouched.

And then it turned out that Mark Dayton’s first attempt at a budget plan fell three billion dollars short on balancing the budget.

And then his second attempt fell 890 million dollars short (or maybe more!).

And now, suddenly, having a budget plan in place just isn’t that big a deal!
He even said on WCCO on Sunday morning, amid Esme Murphy painting his toenails…

Can you imagine what Esme Murphy would have done had Tom Emmer ever called his plan a “work in progress?”

Now, Mark Dayton’s a smart guy.  And he’s got a lot of smart people working for him.  And while they don’t have access to a “supercomputer” to figure out budget numbers, they don’t need one.  A fairly complex Excel spreadsheet will get you the big-picture numbers; some not-cheap software (certianly avaiable to the compaign) can work out the fine details.  Just like Emmer did.

And yet they didn’t.

Wait.  Do you really believe that, after two go-arounds, that the Dayton camp doesn’t have a budget?

Rubbish.

They do.  They just don’t want you to see it.

Because the real Dayton Budget Plan – the one they don’t want you to see yet – socks it to the Middle Class. There is no other way.  To think that Dayton doesn’t know this beggars credulity.  To think that there is any other politically-palatable answer is pollyannaish and just plain stupid.

There are huge questions to be asked about the nonexistant “Dayton Budget Plan”.

So when will the media ask?

Anyone?

Is that an echo I hear?

Remember when we first looked at the Dayton Dustbowl, back on Labor Day?

We looked at all the holes in the original Dayton Dustbowl – the 1.0 version of Mark Dayton’s budget plan.

One bit that got carried through verbatim in Dust Bowl 2.0 was this plan – to save $425 million per biennium by halving the number of contractors employed by the state.

Has it really only been a month?

At any rate, Catherine Richter of MPR’s “Poligraph” reports on what SITD readers have known for a month, now; that this just isn’t going to work:

Dayton’s correct that the state spends approximately $850 million per biennium on outsourcing. And cutting such activity in half could save the state more than $400 million.

But in practice, Dayton’s plan appears difficult to implement. Many of the state’s contracts provide essential services that the state would still have to supply one way or another.

And I had forgotten about this next bit, here (emphasis added):

Further, Minnesota law requires departments and agencies prove no state workers can take on these tasks before they contract with a firm.

Minnesota contractors already provide services that are either legally mandated, completely unavailable on the state workforce, or both; bridge engineers, business analysts, concrete workers, surveyors, usability engineers, prison doctors and the hundreds or thousands of other jobs that state doesn’t need at all, until they absolutely, positively do.

If the state gets rid of “half” of the contractors – who are already doing jobs that the state needs, but does not have in the workforce – then in most cases someone’s gotta do it.

And that “someone” is going to be union labor, in all its exquisite expense, and racking up all those hideously expensive defined-benefit pensions that are going to eat this state alive about the time our kids start paying taxes.

The way I see it, that’s a $425,000,000 hole per biennium blown in the Dayton 2.0 budget.  Tack that onto the $890,000,000 shortfall it already has – by the Dayton campaign’s own admission! – and the Son Of Dayton Dustbowl is actually $1.315 billion short of solving the deficit.

The conservative alt media has called another one.

MNDFL chair Brian Melendez sent this out to the faithful yesterday:

The more Minnesotans hear from Tom Horner, the clearer it becomes that he is just another Republican insider, and his only plan is to continue Governor Pawlenty’s failed policies.

Insider?  A guy who hasn’t darkened the doorstep of a GOP caucus since Arne Carlson was in office?

By that standard, Mitch Berg is “just another Libertarian Party insider”.

As far as that bit about “continu[ing] Governor Pawlenty’s failed (sic) policies”?  Let’s take a brief march back through time:

2002

CANDIDATE PAWLENTY: “No new taxes!

2004

GOVERNOR PAWLENTY:  Nope.  No new taxes!

2006

GOVERNOR PAWLENTY: Ixnay on the Axestay!

2008

GOVERNOR PAWLENTY:  You shall not pass…taxes!

2010

TOM HORNER: We need over two billion in new taxes!

I’d think even Brian Melendez could detect the pattern, here.

Tom Horner wants to raise sales taxes on almost everything we buy, which will hit middle-class families twice as hard as others. And while Minnesota’s middle-class families are struggling, Tom Horner’s priority is to cut taxes for big businesses.

As opposed to Mark Dayton – who’ll raise taxes on everyone, directly or indirectly – and Tom Emmer, who …won’t!

With less than five weeks left until the election, we wanted to make sure all Minnesota’s voters know exactly what Tom Horner stands for.

Who is Tom Horner? Just another Republican.

Read:  “Internal polling shows he’s taking a lot more Democrat than GOP votes”

On the show on Saturday, I talked about how the Dayton “2.0” budget – his second shot at the budget, after his first attempt came up three freaking billion dollars short – was still one freaking billion dollars short.

Someone called off the air asking for proof; I’d gotten into an interview, so couldn’t answer it right away.

But the answer, as a matter of fact, is on the Dayton “Mulligan budget” website, down at the very bottom.

To wit:

TOTAL SPENDING CUTS: $1.213 Billion

TOTAL REVENUE INCREASES & SPENDING CUTS: $4.876 Billion

FORECAST DEFICIT : $5.766 Billion

So do the math; the difference is $890 Million Dollars.

That’s after raising taxes on “the rich” (families making over $150K a year); that’s after a tax hike twelve times the size of the $400 million hike that the DFL-dominated legislature managed to pass by one vote (Tarryl Clark’s!) during a session at the height of Obamamania.

If the media weren’t so busy checking up on Tom Emmer’s landscapers and exactly what percentage of cities he said received Local Government Aid, the people might actually know something about this and…

…oh, wait.  Never mind.

After four months of demanding “details” from Tom Emmer, and a month of carping about the details that were actually released, Mark Dayton had to…

…um, scrap his first budget and start over.

The second try isn’t a whole lot better than the first.

I’ll do a much more detailed analysis later, but at first blush, Dayton Dustbowl 2.0 isn’t much better than the first.

Some key points:

Shift This: Remember when Democrats, leftybloggers and the media (pardon the redundancy) excoriated Emmer for delaying repayment of “the shift” – the 1.4 billion of education budget pushed to future biennia in the last budget?  And now Dayton would never ever ever do that?  Either do they; Dayton now puts delaying “repayment” on the table.

It’s Racist: We honkies took Minnesota from the Native Americans.  To give them a leg back up, the State of Minnesota has granted them an exclusive franchise on casinos.  Dayton wants to build a “racino” – a casino at the Canterbury Downs racetrack. In addition to breaking the state’s promise – “reparations”, if you will – with the victims of cracker perfidy, it’s likely the proposal to create such a casino would face huge legal and legislative hurdles.  It’s not so much a “plan” as it is “hope”.  Hope is not a plan.  And Dayton banks a lot of money on this.

All Of The Worst Parts Of 1.0 – Still Right There!: It’s still going to jack up income taxes on upper-middle-class wage earners to almost 11 percent.  Not the “rich”, mind you – there’s nary a reference to trust funds anywhere in the budget.  It’s going to send more job creation out of state.  It’s going to send more than a few Minnesota businesses packing for more hospitable states.  It’s going to be a boon to South Dakota.

Some Of The “Savings” Aren’t: Dayton still claims that cutting state contractors will save hundreds of millions.  Of course, much of that work will sooner or later go to state employees, especially unionized ones.  Maybe not in the next biennium (maybe), but certainly the next one.  Today’s “cut” becomes tomorrow’s eternal entitlement.

It’s Still DOA: The legislature, as Phil Krinkie said, will never pass it.  In the last biennium, the legislature could only pass the current budget by one vote – that of Tarryl Clark. This with the DFL in control of two chambers of the Legislature, at the height of Obamamania. The next Legislature, with a chamber likely to flip and with the wind blowing against profligate spending an taxing…

…well, you fill in the blanks.

And finally, It’s Still A Billion Bucks Short: He’s a billion short!  A freaking billion short! A billion!  A million large! What the flamin’ hootie-hoo – a billion!

When will the media admit to the people of Minnesota – Dayton is not ready for prime time.

More – much more – later.

Dayton Says: “Taxing the Rich” will raise four billion dollars.

The MN Department of Revenue says:

This proposal adds a new top bracket at a rate of 10.95% starting in tax year 2011. The 10.95% bracket is set at $150,000 for married joint filers, $75,000 for married separate filers, and $130,000 for single and head of household filers. The new bracket is not adjusted yearly for inflation although the bottom brackets are adjusted for inflation in keeping with current law. The tax year impact is as follows:

And the end result, according to the MNDoR?

Tax Year Impact

______ ($000s)_______

TY 2011 $752,800

TY 2012 $813,600

TY 2013 $879,100

In other words, cranking the tax on “the rich” to a confiscatory 8 to 11% (actually 10.95, but let’s be honest here…) brings in less than half of what the Dayton budget “plan” says it will.

But even that is over triple the tax hike that the completely DFL-dominated Legislature could pass at the height of Obamamania.

Mark Dayton’s budget is DOA.  Electing him – or “Mini-Mark”, Tom Hornery , whose plan is marginally less profligate and, at this point, vastly less-vetted by the in-the-bag media – would be colossal wastes of time.

The Twin Cities media continues its ongoing wet tongue kiss of Mark Dayton.  This time, it’s Eric Black at the MinnPost – who sniffs that if you’re of those weirdos that focuses on big principles and visions of limited government getting out of the peoples’ way, then maybe Tom Emmer might be for you.  But…

But  if you value straight talk about what a candidate plans to do, based on facts and logic, DFL guv nominee Mark Dayton demonstrated again today at the Humphrey Institute that he is in a class by himself.

That’s another way of saying, apparently, that he droned on about facts and figures for a long, long time.

He also told the press gaggle in the hallway that he may not release the figures he gets from the Revenue Department on his plan, suggesting that it was getting to be unfair that he is so transparent about his taxing and spending proposals while Emmer continues to be so mysterious.

That’s our Twin Cities media; always looking out to make sure people are “fair” to Mark Dayton.  Whether it’s making sure nobody “unfairly” notes his and his family’s contributions to the PAC that’s been running a three-month smear campaign that gets an “F” for accuracy from “factcheck.org”, to breathlessly parroting Daytons’ whinging about the “unfairness” of the GOP trackers actually holding him accountable for his statements (like saying at yesterday’s debate that cutting state contractors will save over $600 million a year, when his own budget “plan” says it’s more like $425, and even that is misleading).

He told [U of M Poli Sci professor Larry] Jacobs that he won’t raise the whole $4 billion he seeks from the taxes he has specified so far, and during his presentation he told the audience that he is “looking for suggestions” of other revenue-raising ideas that will be consistent with his overall determination to make the state tax system more progressive

In other words, for all the “detail” Dayton offers, he can’t close the budget.  Even his own budget “plan” says he comes up over $600,000,000 short – and that’s assuming that the legislature under a Dayton Administration, likely to be much more conservative than the 2010 class, would pass a tax hike fifteen times as large as the one that passed  by exactly one vote (that of Taryll Clark) in the last session.

So could you please pony up an idea or two, so Eric Black’s narrative can remain undisturbed?

Within an hour or so, Tom Emmer is going to release a plan.  It is going to make the DFLers yak up their skulls, because it will not hold government immune from the vagaries of the economy (which is all Dayton and Horner plan to do).

But I’m fairly confident it’ll provide the answers Dayton’s “plan” fobs off for later.

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring does the job the Twin Cities media juuuuust can’t seem to get around to (emphasis added by me):

During his mini-infomercial with Esme Murphy, Mark Dayton admitted that the highest income tax rate he’d propose would be less than 11 percent.

Based on Minnesota Department of Revenue guidelines, which I wrote about here, that means Dayton’s budget wouldn’t come close to balancing. Here’s what the guidelines say about revenue projections:

So how much money would boosting income tax rates actually deliver? According to the revenue department, each tenth-of-a-percent increase would currently bring in an additional $27 million annually, or $54 million each biennium.

Dayton said that he wouldn’t raise taxes more than 3 percentage points, meaning his tax the rich scheme would generate approximately $1,600,000,000 in additional revenue. Dayton also said that he’d raise property taxes on homes valued at more than $1,000,000.

Based on that information, and assuming that Dayton would essentially approve of the spending increases from last session’s budget bills, Dayton’s ‘detailed budget’ would fall at least $3,000,000,000 short of balancing.

It’s time that Minnesotans realized that Dayton’s supposed detailed budget isn’t a budget blueprint. It’s a tax increase. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION.

It is, literally, nothing more than throwing money at the deficit.

The Dayton “plan”…:

• Does not solve the deficit: As Gary notes – but Esme Murphy for some reason won’t – Dayton’s budget comes up way short on its promise to “solve the deficit”.
• Shifts the burden to the legislature, which could barely pass a $400 million tax hike in the 2008 session, will not be passing any huge tax increases in the next session, with the likely blood-letting among tax-and-spend DFLers
• Will required Dayton to push the definition of “the rich” well down into the middle class:  if jacking up taxes on couples whose adjusged gross income is $150,000 a year leaves Dayton’s “plan” billions short, how far down will the definition of “rich” have to get pushed?

Here’s the biggest question of all:  Gary Gross asks some excellent questions.

Why the hell didn’t Esme Murphy ask any of this?

The simple fact is this – the media isn’t going to ask Mark Dayton any of the tough questions.

Paul Demko, writing for Finance and Commerce, reaches many of the same conclusions that I reached on Tuesday’s series fact-checking the Dayton budget “plan- and comes up with one that I missed :

The final plank of the DFLers tax-the-rich proposal involves a crackdown on tax deadbeats. According to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, roughly $1 billion in taxes goes uncollected each year. During the last biennium, the state revenue agency spent $20.2 million to collect $133.7 million in outstanding taxes, a return rate of $6.60 for every $1 spent. Dayton’s plan counts on collecting an additional $400 million in unpaid taxes by upping the enforcement budget to $60.6 million, theoretically netting the state approximately $340 million.

But financial experts see a problem with that calculation: The rate of return on enforcement activities is almost certain to drop as more tax scofflaws are chased down.

Demko, being a liberal partisan, pays the plan his complients and takes a whack at Emmer as well.  But our bottom lines are pretty much similar:

The bottom line on Dayton’s proposed plan to make the state’s richest residents pay their fair share of taxes? It’s unlikely to result in $4 billion worth of additional revenues for the state.

Now, the DFL’s been howling for months about Emmer’s lack of a “plan”; Demko is no exception:

Even so, financial experts give the DFLer high marks for actually presenting a reasonably detailed plan for solving the looming cash crunch. By contrast, Republican nominee Tom Emmer has yet to provide a credible breakdown of how he’d balance the state’s books, although he’s ruled out tax increases.

Of course, the party out of power doesn’t need a complete plan with perfectly-dotted-I’s and crossed T’s.  They need a vision that convinces people they have a better idea.  The plan matters next February.

Still, Dayton’s not getting quite as smooth a ride as one might expect.

Gary Gross also commented on Demko’s piece.

The reporters who’ve been reflexively characterizing Sen. Dayton’s plan as detailed didn’t do their homework. In fact, I’d argue that serious people couldn’t characterize Sen. Dayton’s submission as a plan, much less a detailed plan.

We’ll keep working on it…

I called this series “The Dayton Dustbowl for couple of reasons.  One of them is fairly obvious; raising taxes in a recession is just plain stupid.

The other is a little more subtle; the original Dust Bowl on the great plains was a combination of circumstances; some of them out of human control,  and well within; a drought combined with a depression exacerbated by government reaction to an economic downturn.

The victims?  For all the publicity about stock barons diving off window ledges (mostly apocryphal), the people who suffered the most were the people who had the skin in the game; the farmers and people of the rural midwest.

And as I noted in the first part of this series, the Dayton Dust Bowl – a combination of a deep recession Minnesota didn’t cause, which would be exacerbated and institutionalized by Dayton’s proposed tax policy and spending proposals – would have the same affect; it’d make being a hard-working, middle-class Minnesotan a much more difficult thing.  The “cop and nurse” that the Emmer campaign refers to – the hard-working husband and wife who put in extra hours and scrape and scramble to make over $150K between ’em – will get hammered by new taxes just as they are reeling from the Obama tax hikes next year.

The tax hikes – and their revenue sources – will erase hard-won advances in school choice (charter schools), and make entrepreneurship, especially for the Subchapter S corporations that drive so much job creation, deeply unattractive in Minnesota.

And for what?  A fatter, happier government employee base?

A Teachers Union that can work without fear of competition?

Who else wins?

There was never a chance I was going to vote for Mark Dayton.  After reading this four-page “plan”, I have to wonder – why would anyone with half a brain?

Who’s not a government union employee, anyway?

Last but not least, if you are Dayton’s choice for Budget Commissioner, good luck solving the deficit with this plan, especially when the last line in the document is: “That leaves me $635.4 million to go.”

Now, bear in mind that 635 million is roughly 1.5 times larger than the immense tax hike the Dems were able to pass in the 2008 session, when they controlled both houses, in a year when the Dems had a huuuuge tailwind, with immense political cost to themselves.

And they want to enact this after passing a tax hike that was ten times as large as the one that they managed in 2008.

With a huge tailwind.

And control of both houses.

Against minimal organized opposition, other than the against-the-ropes GOP.

Simple fact:  Mark Dayton’s entire “plan” is based on the vacuous, vaporous idea that “taxing the rich” – who are largely not “rich” – can by itself balance the budget.  Even under ideal circumstances – meaning “Dayton gets exactly what he proposes” – it can not work.

Dayton will not get exactly what he wants.  Even if the DFL retains control of both chambers – and it likely will not – they can not pass a budget ten times as large as the divisive, controversial budget they passed in 2008; there will still be a huge deficit, while will require an expansion of the defnition of “the rich”.  Which will, in turn, kill more jobs and drive more layoffs and lead to less revenue…

…and it’s a moot point.  Dayton is likely going to lose the House this year; if (heaven forfend) he’s elected, he will face fierce GOP opposition in both chambers, and a populace that’s doesn’t even know how shell-shocked the Obama Tax Hikes are going to gut-shoot it.

So if Dayton is (heaven forfend) elected, the best he can hope for is complete, utter gridlock that will leave the deficit to be dealt with by more fee-juggling and accounting jiggery-pokery, even as Dayton is forced to pay off his chits to his constituents; jacking up union hiring, pouring more money we don’t have into our education system.

Even under the “best” circumstances, the Dayton budget is a complete waste of time.

At worst, it’ll multiply the very problem it’s supposed to “fix”.

This is the Dayton “Plan”.

In a state with a functioning news media, it would be the subject of acerbic fact-checking and  muted ridicule.

Since the only real functional news media in this state is the conservative alternative media, allow me to begin the ridicule right here.

Coming up at 3PM:  That Big Brown Cloud Coming In From The West.

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

The paragraph in Dayton’s budget plan is a subtle one:

3. Eliminate tax loopholes, such as the one allowing “Snowbirds” to live outside Minnesota for six months and one day of the year, and pay no personal income taxes in this state. I would ensure that anyone who spends a significant amount of time in Minnesota pays taxes in Minnesota.

So the State of Minnesota is going to define what a “significant” period of time is. and stake a claim to income, property and other non-user fees during that (undefined) time?

The state treasury should not line up to cash that check just yet.  It’s going to be in court for a while, duking it out over interpretations of the Commerce Clause; let’s not forget the suit over Equal Protection clause issues.

It’s going to be a full-employment program for tax lawyers, and that’s after all the ConLaw people get their cut.

Coming up at 2PM:  What happens when a “plan” is really just a mish-mash of ideas that at best will never be adopted, and at worst will make a bad situation worse?

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

Did you pull your kids out of the public school system and put ’em in a charter program?  Like I did?

Start looking for a new school.  If Mark Dayton gets elected and pushes his “budget plan” through, you’ll need to start looking for a new program for your kids.

That’s right – Dayton plans to kill off charter schools.

Oh, he can plausibly claim he’s not “killing” them; merely cutting a piece of their funding that the Star Tribune says is “prone to abuse”.

No, seriously; item 16 in the Dayton Budget proposal says “Reform Charter School Lease Aid Program to eliminate Star Tribune documented abuses. Est. Savings $20 million (out of biennial cost of $85 million).”

Of course, we talked about the validity of the Star Tribune’s “investigation” – Part 1 and Part 2 – and let’s just say it’s thin gruel on which to base policy.

Still, it’s a tiny amount of money in the great scheme of things – but it will pay off a big chit to the Teachers Union.

I wonder if Dayton’s focus-group testing bothered to ask all the African-American, Native American, Somali and Hispanic parents  – who’ve pulled their kids out of their failed public schools to give them a shred of hope, and are charter schools’ biggest proponents – what they think about this?  Not to mention parents like me…

Oh yeah – cuts in lease aid will affect the charters serving poor kids, with not-that-well-to-do parents, the most.  Charters in Stillwater and Eden Prairie with backers with more financial clout will figure out a way – bake sales or construction bonds or something.  But all you Afro-American parents who pulled your kids out of Central High to go to Skills for Tomorrow?

Get back in line and speak only when spoken to!

And I do most sincerely hope the Emmer Campaign is going to do a get-together with charter parents in the inner city before the election.  Have you looked at the percent of students at inner-city charters that are kids of color who are fleeing our wretched failure of a city public school system?

Without lease aid, charter schools will not be able to generate the revenue they need to survive.

Coming up at 1PM:  The Law is what Mark Dayton says it is!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you own or are employed by one of the 305 small businesses being helped by the JOBZ program right now, you’ll be out of luck.

Dayton’s plan reneges on your agreement and eliminates funding for JOBZ.

Of course, during the Almanac debate a few weeks back, Dayton agreed with… Tom Emmer that it’d be wrong for the state to pull the rug out from under the current JOBZ projects.

Check it out yourself!

Didn’t we have a large institution, with printing presses and transmitters, once upon a time to help us keep track of debate inconsistencies?

So let’s try to keep track here; Dayton wants to propose billions in tax hikes that will gut small business and stymie job creation (in the private market), but he wants to gut a program that actually tries to create (private) jobs?

Why, it’s almost as if “private jobs” aren’t an issue at all for Mark Dayton!

Coming up at Noon:  Why does Mark Dayton hate minority families?

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you are benefitting from a professional or technical contract with the state, your funding could be cut. Dayton says we can cut half of the $850 million we spend every two years on state contracts.

He may or may not have a point.  But you’ll never know it from his budget plan.

State contracts are used for a variety of things including road and bridge design, computer consulting and even arts instruction at the Perpich Center for the Arts – basically, any skill that the state doesn’t usually keep on its inventory of elite uniononized employees.

Of course, Dayton doesn’t specify which half of state contractors we can live without.  Because most of the contracting is for work that actually needs to get done, by a person who is qualified to do the job.

Need a big, high-traffic bridge built?  The MNDOT doesn’t keep a big bridge design department on staff – because it’s not like the Dept. of Transportation is constantly building new bridges.  You need a bridge designed and built?  Hire a temp – or a “contractor”, as they’re called.

If the state needs to build a new website for vehicle tab info and renewals (hint hint), and they need to make it usable by a multiethnic, polylingual population?  The State of Minnesota doesn’t employ User Experience Architects (that’s what I do), because they don’t need ’em every day; they contract ’em out.

Building a road?  Remodeling a state building?  Transferring data from an old database to a new one? Analyzing the market for a government service? Anything the state doesn’t normally do, day in, day out? They hire “temps”, contractors – construction workers, dry-wall contractors, database analysts, researchers – to do the job.

Democrats endorsed by government employee unions typically go after state contracts because they take jobs away from union members, not because we’re spending too much. Is Dayton planning to actually cut these contracts or does he want government employees to do the work instead?

The simple fact is, shifting contract work to state employees may very well cost more, not less.  At the very least, it’s not a cut, merely a shift (unless Dayton, AFSCME, MAPE and the SEIU really think there are that many underutilized state employees out there…) blowing a $425 million hole in Dayton’s budget plan.

Coming up at 11AM:  Dayton kills tax cuts for (private) job creation!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!

If you are a potential commissioner in the Dayton administration, prepare to do a lot of work by yourself.

Dayton proposes to adopt the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees(MAPE) proposal to eliminate what they call political patronage jobs in the Pawlenty Administration.

The MAPE proposal targets Metropolitan Council appointments (does Dayton want them elected?), Deputy Commissioners and Directors of Communications and Government Relations. So if Dayton gets elected, presumably these state agencies will operate without these important positions.

Commissioners in the Dayton Administration will handle their own communications, take all phone calls from legislators and legislative staff, and run their agencies.

This was a nonsensical proposal from MAPE and should not be taken seriously by a gubernatorial candidate. If Mark Dayton wins, he will fill his new administration with political appointees because that’s what the people expect. They expect his government will be run by people who think like him.

Coming up at 10AM:  Dayton makes more room for his union cronies – on your dime!

Check out the Dayton Budget “Plan” for yourself!  Find another howler?  Leave it in the comments!