With Republicans trained like parrots to repeat the word “overreach” and DFLers repeating the word “progress,” political reporters are reporting that the public is giving the session “mixed reviews.”
As far as the 2014 state legislative elections are concerned, that leaves things in the hands of swing voters. What staunch partisans on both sides conclude about the 2013 session is not particularly important, because those activists were never likely to change their minds between now and November 2014. They are not the biggest electoral variables. Continue reading →
The new DFL majority in the Minnesota State Legislature is anxious to prove to voters that it is better equipped to lead than the previous Republican majority. The DFL agenda has essentially been the polar opposite of the Republican agenda. Whatever Republicans did, DFLers are undoing. Republicans used Minnesota schools as their personal ATM to “balance” their budget. DFLers are rushing to pay school kids back. Republicans used budget gimmicks instead of fixing the long-term structural deficit. DFLers are increasing taxes and cutting spending to close the long-term structural deficit. Republicans tried to restrict the freedom to marry. DFLers are expanding it.
Those are all good and important changes. But of all the things that DFLers could do to impress Minnesota the swing voters who will determine in 2014 which party remains in control of the Legislature, I submit that the most memorable and impressive achievement would be to adjourn early.
I’m serious. Declare victory and vamoose early. Voters would adore legislators for it. Continue reading →
When Governor Dayton proposed to charge a sales tax on clothing items costing more than $100, fashion-challenged Minnesotans like me shrugged. In fact, until the Governor made that proposal, I personally was not even aware that clothing items costing more than $100 existed.
But Senate DFLers are going a step further, and it’s a step too far. They’re proposing to charge a sales tax on clothing items under $100. I’m fine with their “soak the rich” income tax proposal, but this “soak the kitsch” tax is an outrage.
This would be a devastating blow to those of us who have found that one can build a kick ass wardrobe at Mennards and Fleet Farm, and never exceed a $20 per item threshold, much less a $100 per item threshhold. Truthfully, my Carhartt ensembles looks better than the pretentious crap the swells buy at Nordstrums and Nieman Mark-up. I swear, NO ONE can tell the difference.
Taxing millionaires. Surcharging millionaires. Raising the minimum wage.
For the casual observer who hasn’t done their homework, I can see how this might be confused with “class warfare” waged by mean DFLers intent on punishing rich people.
But here’s the thing about warfare. You can’t take a quick glance at a battlefield and identify the aggressors. For instance, an observer flying over Normandy Beach on June 6, 1944 couldn’t reasonably conclude “those mean Americans storming that beach down there are obviously wreckless war mongers.”
After all, what about the blitzkreig and Pearl Harbor, right? You have to know at least a bit about the prelude to an event to be able to make informed conclusions about the event. Continue reading →
We all remember those times on the playground when kids’ names would be twisted into teasing word play. Private parts and mental health were common themes, as I recall. Woe be unto the unfortunate child born with a name like “Seymour Butz.”
During childhood, the motives behind the name-oriented word play varied from benign to bullying. But whatever the motive, it was rarely welcomed by the recipient, and was, above all else, childish.
So surely adults have left all that infantile behavior behind, right?
Well, take a look at recent blog posts on leading Minnesota conservative blog aggregator “True North:” Continue reading →
Former St. Paul Mayor and U.S. Senator Norm Coleman is nothing if not flexible.
When leftist radicals were de rigueur in the 1960s, Norm 1.0 was a leftist radical.
When Skip Humphrey and Bill Clinton were on top of the political world, Norm 2.0 clung to them and the rest of the Democratic establishment.
When the easier path to higher office appeared to be through the GOP, Coleman retrofitted into GOP Norm 3.0.
When the Tea Partiers became power brokers, Norm 3.0 dutifully donned a tri-corner hat, formed a Super PAC to fund Tea Party-backed candidates, and endorsed Tea Party darling Michele Bachmann for, I kid you not, Vice President.
Then in 2012, the going got tough for Senator Coleman and Tea Partiers, so the tough got a poll. In a St. Paul Pioneer Press commentary this week, Coleman advises Minnesotans that he is in possession of scientific evidence indicating that “Minnesotans are not anti-government.” Continue reading →
For Governor Dayton’s bold package of tax increases, there was more good news than bad in the Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll, released yesterday.
Bad News for Dayton
Bye Bye Professional Services Tax. Only 28% of Minnesotans support a sales tax on business services. With only 36% of DFLers supporting this idea, and an army of special interests mobilized against it, this part of the Governor’s budget is in deep political trouble. Continue reading →
Minnesota remains one of the few states in the nation that requires decisions about which public school teachers to hire, promote or lay off to be made solely based on seniority, and not teacher performance measures, such as student progress or principal evaluations. DFL Governor Dayton and the DFL-contolled Legislature want to keep it that way.
The DFL has faired well at the polls recently, but Minnesotans aren’t tracking with the DFL on this “last in, first out (LIFO)” issue. The education reform group MinnCan commissioned a poll which put the following statement in front of a random sample of Minnesotans: “If teacher layoffs are required, seniority should be considered, but the primary factor in deciding which teachers to layoff should be based on teacher performance.” An overwhelming 91% of Minnesotans support that notion (68% strongly support, 23% somewhat support), while just 9% oppose it (4% strongly oppose, 5% somewhat oppose). Continue reading →
Governor Mark Dayton went big and bold this week. He took on the most powerful special interests in order to fix Minnesota’s chronic structural budget deficit problem. Recent Minnesota Governors haven’t had the guts to do that. This governor did.
The nitpickers are busily picking nits in Dayton’s proposal, and it’s not a perfect proposal. But when you focus on the big picture, there is much to admire: Continue reading →
WCCO-TV’s Pat Kessler tweets that Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk (DFL-Virginia) wants to reduce Republican payrolls because of the over $200,000 in legal expenses associated with the contested firing of Senate staffer Michael Brodkorb after Brodkorb had an affair with Bakk’s predecessor, then Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch.
I have a confession to make. I am actually glad that elected representatives do not always “do what the people want.” If they did, we would have government from floor to ceiling, and no taxes. Yummy, but ultimately bankrupting.
The idea of representative democracy really is to give the public what is collectively realistic, not everything that we want. What is collectively realistic is best delivered if there are a lot of bipartisan fingerprints on the final product. No one lawmaker, or one party, is suppose to “sweep the table.”
Whether we’re talking about the congessional “fiscal cliff” negotiations or the new Legislature’s budget, we need people coming at problems from more political angles to shape the final rascal. We should care little if the parties to the negotiation get along. But we should care that the product gets legitimately checked and balanced by both the House and the Senate, and all political perspectives. Pucker your lips and say it with me now: “Bipartisan.” Continue reading →
Don’t you dare feel sorry for 2010 Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner. Yes, because of his electoral set-back Horner doesn’t have the Governor’s bully pulpit to promote his center right ideas, though he does have his new non-profit, NextMinnesota. And of course, he isn’t able to exercise the gubernatorial power to pardon turkeys. That still has to sting a little.
But according to this weekend’s Star Tribune, the tax reform agenda that will be put forth by Horner’s DFL opponent Mark Dayton in 2013 may look a whole lot like the platform that Horner ran on in 2010. Continue reading →
If the new DFL-controlled Legislature dares to raise the minimum wage, strengthen the social safety net or make the state tax system more progressive, reporters will surely characterize the moves as political payoffs to DFL constituencies. Mainstream news reporters have fallen into a habit of covering policymaking like it is nothing more than a politically motivated auction of gifts for special interest.
To be sure, those policies help traditional DFL constituencies, and political motives are very much in the mix. But beyond crass vote-buying, there is also a pretty darn good reason to help low- and middle-income Minnesotans.
Minnesota is increasingly becoming a land of haves and have nots. From the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that poorest Minnesotans have seen their incomes decrease by 3%, the middle quintile has experienced a 2% decline, and the wealthiest have enjoyed an increase of about 6%. Therefore, Minnesota’s income inequality gap has been growing. Continue reading →
“It’s not that Republicans have the wrong message…” – Amy Koch, GOP Former Senate Majority Leader
“As I read you some state spending cuts being considered to fix the budget deficit, please tell me which one would be most acceptable to you.
8%: Reducing health care assistance for lower income people, the elderly and disabled
13%: Reducing aid to cities and counties
15%: Reducing aid to colleges and universities”
There are hordes of leadership consultants out there offering advice, and a lot of the advice is pretty much the same: Set a goal for the result you hope to achieve, and make a plan to focus all of your future efforts toward achieving the goal. Duh. It’s not a unique insight, but it does work.
Therefore, as the incoming DFL-controlled Legislature prepares its agenda for the 2013 legislative session, I have some mind-numbingly stale advice to offer them: Think about the one sentence reply that you want to be able to give when 2014 swing voters ask “Why should we re-hire you?” Then build your 2012-2014 legislative workplan around that reply, and stick to the plan.
I have a prediction, though not a particularly prescient one. Minnesota Republicans will say they lost the election because of bad candidates. Mitt Romney, Kurt Bills, and the Tea Party-supported freshmen legislators were all just bad candidates, they will say.
“Victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan,” as John F. Kennedy observed, and in the coming days a lot of Republican candidates will be orphaned.
But for their own good, Republican leaders need to objectively ponder this question: Bad candidates, or bad policies? Continue reading →
In an era of extreme partisan polarization, DFL Governor Mark Dayton and Republican former Governor Arne Carlson have teamed up in an interesting bipartisan effort to defeat the highly partisan voter restriction constitutional amendment.
While I admire the integrity of both men, let’s just say these are not two of the more perky pitchmen you’ll ever hear. Minnesota has been host to the filming of Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, and, now, Grumpiest Old Men. Continue reading →
When proponents of the photo ID constitutional amendment burst onto the scene, they identified themselves as “reformers.” As a result, many reform-minded Minnesotans initially accepted their reform claim at face value. In June, a poll found the proposal was backed by nearly six-out-of-ten (58%) voters.
But over the course of the summer and fall, Minnesotans began to scrutinize the “reformer” claim more closely. Many discovered that the alleged “reformers” were trying to deceive them with what amounts to a really bad fake ID.
Who is figuring it out the fastest? Non-white Minnesotans. Though I earlier noted that 68% of non-white Minnesota voters supported the photo ID in an early June 2012 Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey, that number has decreased dramatically to 55% in an October PPP survey. Clearly minority voters, whose families have endured literacy tests and scores of other procedural barriers to keep them from voting, are beginning to smell another voter suppression rat.
Seniors are catching on too. The support of Minnesotans older than 65 years old has decreased from 55% in June to 45% in October. This is a key development, because Minnesota has a lot of seniors, and they are more reliable voters than many other groups.
Independent voters are also getting it, though a bit less slowly. In June, 58% of self-identified Independents supported the photo ID amendment, and this month that number had decreased a bit to 52%.
The momentum with minorities (13-point swing), seniors (10-point swing) and Independents (six-point swing) over this four-month period is encouraging news for photo ID amendment opponents. But it is still remarkable that the support for photo ID among these groups is relatively high, in the 45-to-55% range.
Therefore, the battleground over the next three weeks includes Independent, senior and minority voters. If the momentum among those voting blocks continues through the next month, the “reformers’’” fake ID scam could be fully exposed by Election Day.
In this year’s battle for control of the Minnesota State Capitol, Republicans and DFLers alike hyperventilate over government spending. DFLers maintain Minnesota has drastically cut state and local government. Republicans claim that state and local government spending is skyrocketing out-of-control.
Candidates on both sides exaggerate. Over the last decade, Minnesota has had divided government – with Governor Dayton checked by a GOP-controlled Legislature and Governor Pawlenty checked by a DFL-controlled chamber of the Legislature. Divided government has produced a remarkably flat price of state and local government for Minnesotans, hovering right around 15% of average annual income. Continue reading →
With Republicans trained like parrots to repeat the word “overreach” and DFLers repeating the word “progress,” political reporters are reporting that the public is giving the session “mixed reviews.”
