Racing Toward The Wrong Finish Line
By Mitch Berg
Conservatives see government in the same way as we do the guy who cleans out the septic tank. It’s dirty work that we’d rather not do, and we’re willing to pay a fair price to have it done, but at the end of the day we want a fair deal done, and then we want it to go away.
Liberals see government like a factory; you put stuff in one end, you get cool stuff out the other. The more stuff you put in, the more cool stuff you get out! And if everyone works together to make sure that factory gets all stuff it needs put in, there’ll be no shortage of cool stuff coming out!
Lori Sturdevant in the Strib writes;
A case of the “what-ifs” hit me last week. I was listening to state Sen. Linda Berglin describe her clever ploys for drawing down more than $7 in federal health care money for every new $1 the state spends while still cutting spending overall — and musing about Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s vow to send her handiwork to vetoland.
What if the Legislature’s ablest health care head had been allied these last eight years with one of the state’s most politically gifted governors? What if instead of being sparring partners, Berglin and Pawlenty had been real partners in remaking health care?
Then we’d have gotten what we had from time immemorial through the end of the Ventura years; a government that, like any other addict, can always find a rationalizion to spend more.
Slower growth in state spending is the new normal, and Pawlenty has applied a heavy foot to the brake. Through eight years, the GOP governor has muscled more fiscal restraint into state balance sheets than did any of his predecessors in the previous half-century.
Re-read that last paragraph.
And everyone finish the last sentence: “…, no thanks to the DFL, the Mainstream Media and Lori Sturdevant”.
It’s crucial now for state government to maximize the bang of every tax buck. Large-scale reform is in order. And in a politically purplish state with a penchant for electing divided government, reform requires bipartisan partnerships.
Plenty of them should have been possible in the past eight years.
Rubbish.
While politics is about compromise, bringing real epochal change to government – in this case, breaking Minnesota’s (and especially Minnesota’s “elites'”) smug, smarmy addiction to taxes, spending, entitlement-mongering and wastrelcy – is about taking control and showing the side that you will accept nothing less than a change in the way business is done.
The DFL have shown great willingness for “bipartisanship” – where “bipartishanship” means “acting like DFLers”.
No more.
It’s time to get serious with our “elites”; with a small, finite list of exceptions (responding to attacks on our nation, finding kidnapped children, taking care of families of servicepeople, cops and firemen who are killed or seriously injured protecting us all), “bipartisanship” is the wrong response to the challenges that face us. Partisanship – fighting for divergent ideas that everyone believes are better solutions than the other sides have to offer – is what makes for better government.
Not necessarily more impeccably-smoothly funded government – but keeping government fed is not our mission, either.
May 17th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Another fine job putting a stop to Sturdevant’s smarmy and smug socialism.
The debate about the “$1 for $7 in Health Care” was played out on “At Issue” yesterday. The DFL is staunchly behind this payment scheme, but methinks they’d have better odds spending the money at the Kentucky Derby.
May 17th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
“Liberals see government like a factory; you put stuff in one end, you get cool stuff out the other. ”
B as in Berg
S as in Schlock
We (liberals) see the role of government to:
a. Help organize society through a mechanism to establish and enforce law
b. Providing certain services as requested by the governed and as supported by the Constitution.
c. Help make certain services more efficient through economies of scale when such delivery/economy is preferred by the voters – laugh as you like, and I’ll reply with, “yeah and BP does oil drilling so well too”.
You might want to actually get a liberal to comment before you universally impugn them. It saves you from looking somewhat blinkered.
May 17th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
b. Providing certain services as requested by the governed and as supported by the Constitution.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
You might want to actually get a liberal to comment
Fifty years of DFL control at the Capitol, several generations of tradition.
Comment would be superfluous.
May 17th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Mitch good description of how Conservatives view Government. However, you need to modify the Liberal view
“Liberals see government like a factory; you (get other people to) put stuff in one end, you get cool stuff out the other. The more stuff you (get other people to)put in, the more cool stuff you get out! And if everyone works together to make sure that factory gets all stuff it needs put in (by other people), there’ll be no shortage of cool stuff coming out!”
May 17th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
ehehhe.. Pretty funny. Where does the de-lux GMAC health plan fit into? a, b or c?
How about the stadium? Maybe a “d” is needed; ” Help make certain services available when not requested by the governed, or supported by the constitution, or feel the need to ask the governed through pesky mandatory referendums..
May 17th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
OK. Now that the spasms of guffawing have petered out, let’s break it down:
a. Help organize society through a mechanism to establish and enforce law
“Establishing and enforcing law” is a property of every government, except maybe gangster governments. Like Chicago.
The “organize society” bit? Wow, Penigma; when did you become a Maoist?
b. Providing certain services as requested by the governed and as supported by the Constitution.
Pen, you have walked into the trap, and I bet you don’t know how or why.
You have precisely confirmed by take on the issue.
“As requested by the voters?” Wow. So in other words, government is a mechanism for getting people stuff they ask for, and making someone else pay for it!
In your own words!
c. Help make certain services more efficient through economies of scale when such delivery/economy is preferred by the voters
Again with the proof of all the worst stereotypes of liberalism.
– laugh as you like, and I’ll reply with, “yeah and BP does oil drilling so well too”.
IN other words, with a non-sequitur.
You might want to quickly amend what you wrote. Think long and hard about what the Founders really intended. Maybe dig back and read some Jefferson and Madison.
Because I’m going to have a ton of fun with the above if you don’t!
May 17th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
OK. Now that the spasms of guffawing have petered out
Nah, they’re still echoing. But you might want to actually get a liberal to comment on that. Provided they are organized enough to survive that awful impugning.
May 17th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
My favorite state chart (as of Nov 2009): http://www.mmb.state.mn.us/doc/budget/report-spend/nov09.pdf
There you’ll see that total state spending (not just GF) jumped over 40 percent despite Pawlenty, who held GF to under 18 percent. Inflation is about 18 percent for that period. Such austerity! GF got cost of living increase, non-GF exploded.
May 17th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
You might want to actually get a liberal to comment before you universally impugn them.
Nah. It’s just as much fun to impugn assnozzles in absentia as it is standing right up in their grillz…and I speak from experience here.
All you get with aforementioned assnozzles present and accounted for is the pleasure of watching them squirt pretty tears….which, now that I think on it is actually pretty good stuff.
May 17th, 2010 at 9:18 pm
a. Help organize society through a mechanism to establish and enforce law
b. Providing certain services as requested by the governed and as supported by the Constitution.
c. Help make certain services more efficient through economies of scale when such delivery/economy is preferred by the voters
Let me take these one by one:
A) There is no information here about in whose interests society will be organized. Also, the enforcement of law is mentioned but not the creation of law.
B) All of the government’s power derives from us. We created it, not the other way around. We don’t ‘request’ anything of the government. It has no interests aside from our own.
C) Efficiency is not a characteristic of the State. It serves to do those things we cannot do as individuals or non-sovereign associations of individuals.
The words missing from Tweedle’s manifesto are “Rights”, “Freedom”, and “Liberty”.
If you want to know what a conservative thinks the purpose of government is, read the Constitution.
May 18th, 2010 at 9:10 am
peeve asserted:
Help organize society through a mechanism to establish and enforce law
a couple hundred years ago a liberal asserted:
“…rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
May 18th, 2010 at 9:57 am
Yeah, Pen – I’d really take me up on that chance to amend what you wrote, which was a very, very authoritarian little piece there.
May 18th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
The debate about the “$1 for $7 in Health Care” was played out on “At Issue” yesterday.
I didn’t see the program but my experience over the last two years is that the federal government offers two kinds of “free money” to the States.
1) The kind in which the States agree that in exchange for accepting the “free money” they either have to make changes or refrain from making changes to the eligibility for certain programs (e.g. unemployment, health insurance, etc.) that often end up making these programs more expensive in the long run (see the Stimulus Bill), or
2) The kind in the which the federal government agrees to have federal taxpayers pay for the State’s portion of a new or expanded program for a FEW YEARS, after which State taxpayers have to come up with the funds to pay their portion at the new/higher level (e.g. the increase in Medicaid eligibility found in the ACA).
Based on what we’ve seen so far in just the last two years, I’m going to assume that this “free money” for early Medicaid expansion probably would have cost Minnesota taxpayers more than we would have saved.
May 18th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Thorley is right, and one would think Berglin would have learned from the experience of the state’s Local Government Aid program. Once it was nice, fat reliable check from the state to various cities and counties. Then the budget crises hit, and LGA was very, very easy to cut. Now there’s a couple hundred budgets in crisis, not just the state one.
With our massive federal deficits, anyone who believes that $1 for $7 funding will remain in perpetuity is delusional–or, as in the case of Berglin, doesn’t care. She just wants the program in place, and presumes that sooner or later a DFLer will be governor, and taxes will go up to pay for it.