June 29-30, 2010
Jun 29 03:38 Obama's War in the Gulf Jun 30 03:55 Napolitano Giving Up Border Enforcement Fight Jun 30 05:14 Mark Dayton's Fuzzy Math
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009
Obama's War in the Gulf
When President Obama gave his speech about the BP oil spill, much was made of his using war terminology. Weeks later, it appears that, like everything else Obama, it was just talk. Actually, it's pretty obvious that the only war he's waging in the Gulf is with Gulf state governors, fishermen and environmentalists. Rep. Dan Burton's op-ed in Human Events highlights some things that the American people need to know about:
On the 65th day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the crisis continued unmitigated, with hardly any talk of capping, containing, or cleaning the spill. Rather, the headlines on day 65 were about the federal court's rejection of the Obama Administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.President Obama is helping the economy. Unfortunately, the economy he's helping with his inaction is Brazil's. It's unconscienable that President Obama has declared war on the economies of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama. Tourism was already floundering before the oil spill. It's essentially nonexistent now.
While the President's legal team mounts their appeal and drafts a new explanation for why we need a "pause" in drilling across the gulf, they should include a chapter about Brazil. Specifically, why the "pause" excludes a multi-billion dollar, U.S. taxpayer-funded loan program designed to assist Brazil's state-owned oil company, Petrobras, in drilling off the coast of Brazil in waters deeper than the Gulf of Mexico.
As you might expect, Brazil and Petrobras will benefit substantially from the U.S.-government loans, but the real boondoggle lies within President Obama's gulf drilling moratorium. If the gulf becomes off-limits, much of its $124 billion offshore drilling industry, and the jobs and technology that come with it, will transfer from the Gulf of Mexico to Brazil. In fact, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation is already making plans to relocate its rigs to Brazil if they are idled by the U.S. drilling ban.
What's worse is that the Obama administration has done everything in its power to prevent Gulf coast governors from protecting their states' natural resources by insisting on scuttling Louisiana's plans to build berms to protect their fragile wetlands. They've also grounded skimmers because the Obama administration beached them to make sure they had the requisite number of lifejackets onboard :
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has spent the past week and half fighting to get working barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state's oil-soaked waters. By Thursday morning, against the governor's wishes, those barges still were sitting idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.Experienced executives know that the first thing you do in a crisis is you waive certain rules if they're getting in the way of a swift response. Unfortunately, we didn't elect an experienced executive. For that matter, we didn't elect any type of executive. We elected Barack Obama instead.
"It's the most frustrating thing," the Republican governor told ABC News while visiting Buras, La. "Literally, [Wednesday] morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges."
Watch "World News" for David Muir's report from Louisiana tonight.
Sixteen barges sat stationary Thursday, although they had been sucking up thousands of gallons of BP's oil as recently as Tuesday . Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.
What's become painfully obvious throughout this crisis is that President Obama didn't take charge, he didn't waive the Jones Act, he didn't accept help from the countries that offered to help skim the oil and protect the environment. In short, he failed to live up to his responsibilities.
Just like President Obama can't plug the well, BP can't waive the Jones Act or accept help from other nations. If I was BP, I'd file a lawsuit against the federal government for failing to live up to its responsibilities. Had the Obama administration done what other administrations would've done, the widespread environmental damage wouldn't have happened, at least not to this extent.
I empathize with President Obama's environmental allies. He's let them down in a big way. They understand that his inaction significantly contributed to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history.
What's worse is that, if the moratorium is granted by the courts, the rigs will be shipped to Brazil's coastal waters, Gulf state workers will lose their jobs and the Gulf states' economies will be ruined for a decade.
Instead of meeeting with lawyers to soak BP, President Obama should've been meeting with engineers and people with solutions to the then-impending environmental catastrophe:
"The Coast Guard came and shut them down," Jindal said. "You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, 'Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'"This is a catastrophe in search for a point person. Thus far, the Obama administration has failed miserably in that respect. Naming Adm. Thad Allen hasn't improved emergency operations by any significant amount. The Jones Act still hasn't been waived. Foreign skimmers still haven't been invited in to any meaningful extent. The Coast Guard still is doing more harm than good.
A Coast Guard representative told ABC News that it shares the same goal as the governor. "We are all in this together. The enemy is the oil," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Dan Lauer.
But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.
The governor said he didn't have the authority to overrule the Coast Guard's decision, though he said he tried to reach the White House to raise his concerns.
"They promised us they were going to get it done as quickly as possible," he said. But "every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer."
I haven't seen proof that the Obama administration will get these things done anytime soon. Each day that his administration's response to the crisis is found lacking, the less likely it becomes that voters will grant President Obama a second term.
In fact, the longer the Obama administration mishandles this catastrophe, the more likely it is that President Obama will be seen as a failure. It's also more likely that congressional Democrats will get hurt by his plummeting job approval ratings.
In Alabama Thursday, Gov. Bob Riley said that he's had problems with the Coast Guard, too. Riley, R-Ala., asked the Coast Guard to find ocean boom tall enough to handle strong waves and protect his shoreline.I wrote in this post about President Obama's speech to the nation from the Oval Office. Here's what President Obama said then:
The Coast Guard went all the way to Bahrain to find it, but when it came time to deploy it? "It was picked up and moved to Louisiana," Riley said.
The governor said the problem is there's still no single person giving a "yes" or "no." While the Gulf Coast governors have developed plans with the Coast Guard's command center in the Gulf, things begin to shift when other agencies start weighing in, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"It's like this huge committee down there," Riley said, "and every decision that we try to implement, any one person on that committee has absolute veto power."
But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes.Adm. Allen hasn't pulled the agencies and bureaucracies together, possibly because President Obama didn't give him that authority. The EPA and Coast Guard are still operating as though this wasn't a crisis situation.
From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history , an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost 40 years of experience responding to disasters. We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and clean up the oil. Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf.
If this were an indictment of President Obama's crisis management, we'd be at the point where President Obama pleads guilty to gross mismanagement and throws himself on the mercy of the court.
This won't be the last crisis we'll see before 2016. Based on President Obama's mismanagement of this crisis and the economic crisis, part of which he's responsible for creating, I don't see any rationalization or justifification for his re-election.
He's in way over his head. What's worse is that I don't see him learning from the experience.
Posted Tuesday, June 29, 2010 4:18 AM
No comments.
Napolitano Giving Up Border Enforcement Fight
Janet Napolitano, the most inept DHS secretary thus far, is essentially throwing in the towel on securing the U.S.-Mexico border :
Napolitano spoke and answered questions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on "Securing the Border: A Smarter Law Enforcement Approach," on Wednesday.Arizonans aren't expecting it to be 100 percent sealed. I suspect that they'd be thrilled having the federal government go after the drug cartels that are waging war where killing, kidnapping and intimidating people, including law enforcement officials, is commonplace.
When asked if she could give a timeline on when the border would be secured, Napolitano said, "The plain fact of the matter is the border is as secure now as it has ever been, but we know we can always do more. And that will always be the case.
"It's a big border," she said. "It's 1,960 miles across that Southwest border. It's some of the roughest, toughest geographical terrain in the world across that border. And so, the notion that you're going to seal that border somehow is something that anybody who's been involved in the actual doing of law enforcement, the front office work or the front line work of the law enforcement, would say, 'You're never going to totally seal that border.'"
Apparently, it's asking too much of Ms. Napolitano to aggressively go on the offensive against the drug cartels' campaign of violence and intimidation. What's particularly aggravating is that the Obama administration isn't putting any sort of high priority on stopping the violence against Arizonans. Apparently, they think that fulfilling their responsibilities isn't part of their job description.
Napolitano was also asked if she thought that Republicans withholding support for comprehensive immigration reform until the border is secured was political posturing.If we apply that logic to the Gulf oil spill, then Ms. Napolitano's question would read like this:
"The notion that you're gonna' somehow seal the border, and only at that point will you discuss immigration reform, that is not an answer to the problem," she said.
"The notion that you're gonna somehow cap the well and stop the environmental damage first and that only then will you talk about putting a new energy policy together, that isn't an answer to the problem."
This notion that the federal government doesn't have the wherewithal to stop the violence the drug cartels are visiting upon Arizonans is disturbing and absurd. If this administration stopped pussyfooting around on this issue and went on the offensive against the drug cartels, this issue would show significant improvement in a relatively short period of time.
What's particularly aggravating is that Napolitano sees this solely as an immigration issue. That's wrong-headed thinking. It's also a public safety/law enforcement issue. Certainly, it isn't illegal for Arizona's law enforcement officials to protect Arizonans. If the Obama administration wants to try making that case, they're in for a difficult fight.
What Ms. Napolitano and others in the Obama administration have done is they've talked about Arizona's crisis in merely immigration terms. People are getting kidnapped, murdered and threatened by invading drug cartels. If people started focusing on the fact that this isn't just about immigration, the Obama administration would lose this fight in a heartbeat.
It's time that people understood the impact the coyotes are having on Arizona's safety. It's long past time that President stepped up and did his job of protecting all United States citizens. If he isn't willing to do that, then it's important that we remove him in 2012.
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2010 4:01 AM
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Mark Dayton's Fuzzy Math
It's apparent, putting it charitably, that Mark Dayton is mathematically challenged. Based on Eric Black's reporting , Mark Dayton is about to start running two new 30-second ads:
The Mark Dayton for guv campaign is about to start airing two new 30-second TV ads, which will presumably replace the 60-second biographical spot that's been running the last few weeks. The new ads have different scripts and footage from one another but nearly identical in their basic pitch, which is to keep hitting Dayton's central campaign promise to tax the rich.Here's the part where the fuzzy math comes in:
Dayton continues to cite his favorite fact, which is that if the wealthiest 10 percent of Minnesotans paid the same share of their incomes in state and local taxes, it would raise $4 billion in additional revenue. In the ads, he says he would get that revenue and use it for schools and the deficit.What's missing from that paragraph is the fact that Minnesota is projected to experience a $5,800,000,000 deficit. If we take Sen. Dayton at his word, which I think is the right decision, and if we accept the projected deficit as the likely outcome, and if we accept as fact that part of this money won't hit the state's general fund, you're still left with a huge deficit.
That's before talking about Sen. Dayton's promise to use part of this money to increase education funding. That's before considering the fact that raising taxes on Minnesota's small businesses will likely drive more small businesses out of state, meaning less-than-projected revenues from this tax hike.
Several times during this year's session, Rep. Steve Gottwalt said that Minnesota politicians had to stop trying to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." During a recent conversation with Rep. Gottwalt, I said that it isn't that we're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs as much as we're chasing it away into North and South Dakota, Texas, Colorado and Utah.
With the DFL hell-bent on feeding their spending habits by raising taxes, there's little wonder why businesses are leaving the state. Sen. Dayton's tax-the-rich scheme won't do anything to slow the rate of capital flight. If anything, his tax scheme will accelerate it.
There's a model that we can look at if we want to know what would happen if we let the DFL have its way. Actually, we have 3 models: California, New York and Michigan. Each of those states is a fiscal disaster. If that's what Minnesotans aspire to, they should vote DFL and Dayton.
If they'd rather avoid that fate, they'd be wise to vote in GOP majorities in the House and Senate and Tom Emmer as governor.
To be clear, wealthy Minnesotans do not pay a lower state income tax rate than others, they pay a higher rate. But the official tax incidence study, which studies the impact of all taxes, including sales and property taxes, finds that the wealthiest Minnesotans pay a smaller share of their come than the share paid by average Minnesotans. Dayton hasn't given all the details on how he would raise taxes on the rich, but a couple of components would be new top brackets (he hasn't specified what the rates would be on those brackets) and extra property taxes on very expensive homes.Last session's $435,000,000 tax increase would've still left Minnesota with a deficit of more than $2,500,000,000. If Sen. Dayton's tax increase brought in an additional $1,000,000,000, that would leave Minnesota with a deficit of almost $5,000,000,000.
PS- The fiscal note attached to Rep. Lenczewski's and Sen. Bakk's tax increase bill said that 57 percent of the people affected by this new higher income tax bracket would be small businesses and family farm.
That essentially leaves Minnesota with two options: either making the Pawlenty unallotments/spending shift permanent or raising taxes on Minnesota's middle class.
If Sen. Dayton wants to raise taxes, then spend a significant portion of those projected additional revenues to increase education spending, then there isn't much choice but to accept as fact that middle class families will experience a more onerous tax burden if Sen. Dayton is elected than they currently experience.
Forgive me if I don't consider that as a viable option for returning Minnesota to sustained prosperity. Rather, I see that as a recipe for turning Minnesota into a colder California.
NO THANKS.
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2010 5:18 AM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 30-Jun-10 06:30 AM
Part of the problem here is the flawed logic inherent in the tax incidence study and the broader flawed logic of a "progressive" tax system. I would argue that the rich family derives no more benefit from a "free" public education (to the degree there is benefit at all to that woefully inadequate socialist endeavor) than does a poor family of the same size. Nor does the rich family drive on any more roads and bridges, under any more street lights, nor drink better-treated city water, nor have more sewage removed from their home. It is therefore unreasonable to expect them to pay any more, in total dollars, in taxes, yet that is not the case.
We readily accept, it seems, the notion that rich and poor should pay the same PERCENT of our income in taxes, which means that someone earning $200K would pay ten times what someone earning $20K would, which isn't the least bit fair. It's certainly progressive, in the socialist sense of the word, but that isn't enough for today's "progressive" politicians. Today's income tax system requires that a family making $200K pay one HUNDRED times as much in taxes as someone making $20K. Anyone, like Dayton, proposing to make that unfairness even greater is friggin' nuts.
Comment 2 by Jack at 30-Jun-10 09:07 AM
"That's before considering the fact that raising taxes on Minnesota's small businesses will likely drive more small businesses out of state, meaning less-than-projected revenues from this tax hike."
According to the Minnesota Dept. of Revenue, the notion that Dayton's tax hike would hit small businesses hard and drive them out of the state is completely wrong.
(http://tinyurl.com/2fdeup9) Nearly all small business owners pay taxes as middle-income Minnesotans which means that, like the rest of us, they are stuck with the bill of paying for the tax breaks for the rich. Small businesses are also hit hard by the increased property taxes which, according to state economist Tom Stinson as well as the governor's own 2009 Tax Incidence Study, are a side effect of Pawlenty's no new taxes policies. The adverse business environment for small businesses in Minnesota is a direct effect of Pawlenty/Republican tax policies.
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 30-Jun-10 09:40 AM
Jack, You're full of it. Laura Brod mentioned it during the floor debate the last night of this year's session.
I don't doubt that you don't like that statistic from a non-partisan source but facts are stubborn things. Get over it.
Furthermore, your argument that most small businesses fit into the middle class tax rates isn't what I'm referring to. I said that 57% of the people that would've fallen into that newest tax bracket would've been small businesses & farmers.
Finally, Sen. Dayton's tax-the-rich scheme, coupled with his plan to use a significant portion of the hoped-for revenues, means that he'd have to either make Pawlenty's cuts permanent or he'd have to raise taxes on alot more people than just 'the rich' to balance this biennium's budget.
It's that simple.
Comment 4 by Jack at 30-Jun-10 10:53 AM
Gary, if you were as good at doing analytical thinking as you are at throwing out middle-school level insults, you'd be quite a force.
If the Department of Revenue says that well under 10% of Minnesota small business owners would fall into that high end tax bracket, then obviously the other 90-some percent are middle class folks, most of whom are well under that high end bracket. Last I heard, the five-year failure rate for small businesses is still around 50%, and any small business person making over $250k who can't keep a business operational doesn't know what he or she is doing.
"Tax the rich scheme," eh? If raising the top rate to the same rate the rest of us are paying is a "tax the rich scheme," then your preferred alternative must be a "tax the middle class (or lower) scheme." How is that any less objectionable?
Finally, saying that 57% of those in the top bracket would be farmers, or small business or whatever doesn't mean squat. Anyone who's making $250k or more can afford to pay their fair share of taxes regardless of what kind label you attach to them. That's all that Dayton is asking.
Response 4.1 by Gary Gross at 30-Jun-10 11:08 AM
The tax rate for the top bracket, had it become law, would've been 9.25%. Thanks to Gov. Pawlenty's veto of the DFL's tax increase, the highest marginal tax rate will stay at 7.85%.
You obviously don't have a clue on how a business works. What gets recorded as income on April 15th is money that otherwise would be used to expand the business & hire new workers. That's irrefutable.
Currently, the problem isn't that we're taxed too little. It's that DFL spendaholics like Dayton, Kelliher & Entenza & their cohorts won't say no to their special interest allies.
If the DFL didn't go crazy each year, spending would stabilize & businesses would stay. The trick is to keep businesses here so that there isn't as big a need for LGA & saying yes to each special interest group's wish list.
Comment 5 by Jack at 30-Jun-10 01:00 PM
Sorry, Gary, but apparently it's you who doesn't have a clue how business taxes work. All revenue that goes to hiring employees or expanding the business is written off as pre-tax expenses. This is true for both large C corps and for small S corps, LLC's etc. So hiring new employees or reinvesting revenues in the business actually reduces the business' tax liability rather than vice versa. So, for example, any small business person who found himself in that high income tax bracket could easily enough move himself into a lower bracket simply by reinvesting another chunk of revenue into the business, like maybe hiring another employee or two. It's that simple.
If you don't understand the basics like this, what business do you have on this website pontificating on the state's tax policies?
As for DFL "spendaholics," the only major tax bills I can recall that made it past Pawlenty's veto pen were the transportation bonding bill and the legacy amendment. Anyone who drives Minnesota roads and says the transportation bonding bill wasn't necessary is either a fool or a liar, and of course, the legacy amendment was directly and easily approved by the voters.
It should be pretty obvious that the state's serious budget problems began ten or twelve years ago when Pawlenty and the legislature passed those permanent tax cuts, and it should be equally obvious that we could return the state to fiscal sanity by reversing those cuts. Tom Bakk has had the decency to admit that those cuts were a mistake. Why is it that Republicans/Conservatives can't bring themselves to face up to the truth as well?
