November 19, 2007
Nov 19 00:50 DFL Misreading the Voters Nov 19 16:01 What If a War Was Being Won & Nobody Reported It? Nov 19 17:39 Haggling All For Naught Nov 19 18:59 Is This Why Democrats Don't Want Total Transparency?
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
Prior Years: 2006
DFL Misreading the Voters
Tarryl Clark uses this press release to essentially place all the blame on Minnesota's weakening economy on Gov. Pawlenty's shoulders. The sad truth is that the DFL should accept responsibility for attempting to ruin Minneosta's economy by proposing crippling tax increases to pay for their unsustainable spending increases. Here's one paragraph that got a chuckle out of me:
"Minnesota's economy continues to struggle, but the governor refuses to do his part to lend a hand," said Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud. "Each month, Minnesotans are seeing more and more job opportunities disappear. It is imperative that we do whatever we can to jumpstart our state's economy."I emailed Tarryl a couple weeks ago with the suggestion that the DFL work with Gov. Pawlenty to cut taxes next session. I still haven't gotten a reply from her on that, nor do I expect one considering the subject matter. The DFL hates GOP-proposed tax cuts almost as much as Superman hates Kryptonite or vampires hate wooden stakes.
I'd just like to second Gov. Pawlenty's quote about maintaining Minnesota's prosperity :
"What my DFL friends don't understand is you can't government your way to prosperity. You have to have a real economy," he said. "So their answer is 'We'd have a better economy if the governor would spend more government money on projects and raise taxes'?"Here's proof that the DFL hasn't figured out that "you can't government your way to prosperity":
"The governor has opposed the Legislature's attempt to help create jobs," said Sen. Clark. "He vetoed the bonding and tax bills, which would have brought thousands of new jobs to the state. He also opposed long-term investments in transportation and education that are critical to starting an economic revival. The transportation bill itself would have created 60,000 jobs."Here's a refresher on last session's Transportation Bill :
The proposed 10-cent-a-gallon gasoline-tax increase moving through the Minnesota Legislature could end up being higher than that, maybe more than twice as high.Here's a better recap of what's in the bill:
Tucked away in a big transportation funding bill being fast-tracked to a Senate floor vote today are future increases in Minnesota's gas tax that could push it from 20 cents a gallon to more than 40 cents over 10 years, higher than any state's current bite at the pump.
"I'm not trying to fool anybody," said Sen. Steve Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, sponsor of the measure that would increase funding for roads and transit by $1.5 billion a year once it was fully implemented in the next decade. "There's a lot of taxes in this bill."
- Higher registration renewal fees on future new car purchases, but no increases on currently owned vehicles.
- A half-cent rise in the general sales tax in the seven-county Twin Cities area, imposed without a voter referendum, plus a $20 excise tax on new vehicle sales in the metro.
- Local-option authority for half-cent sales-tax increases in the rest of Minnesota, subject to voter approval.
- Authority for all 87 counties in the state to impose a $20-per-vehicle annual wheelage tax. Three suburban counties levied the current maximum of $5 per vehicle last year.
- Increased fees for leased vehicle registrations, license plates, titles and drivers' licenses, plus a $20 reinstatement fee for a license suspended for theft of gasoline.
The DFL is free to ignore that message but they do so at their own peril. The DFL is attempting to ignore the message that Rockville citizens are sending , too. That'll lead to their demise:
Resident unrest is growing in Rockville, and some say it reflects how officials have managed the city since its 2002 consolidation with Rockville Township and Pleasant Lake. Some are worried about taxes or assessments they are paying or will have to pay. Others point to the new City Hall and fire station as excess spending and worry about the financial burden placed on residents. It's prompted about 55 households on the south end of town to petition to withdraw from the city and join Maine Prairie Township.Tarryl seems oblivious to the fact that people won't tolerate another major tax increase. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the voters wanted a real property tax cut more than anything else & that they'd accept a cut in the marginal income tax rates to boot. Here's the final ironic Tarrylism:
Spurred by a controversial road assessment policy and general dissatisfaction, petitioners will go before the City Council for the first time tonight. At the meeting, officials also will consider approving assessments on two road projects: Stearns County Road 82 and Stearns County Road 8. It's the first implementation of the policy that prompted residents to picket City Hall, hire a lawyer and meet with state representatives.
Sen. Clark said the Legislature must focus on passing a new bonding bill, a transportation finance package to fix the state's roads and bridges, as well as a new tax bill aimed at spurring job growth and reducing property taxes soon. Many other strategies to promote growth in the emerging bioscience and renewable-energy industries should be examined, according to Sen. Clark.Last session's tax bill would've created the highest marginal tax rates for small businesses in the nation. It would've driven up state commercial property taxes, too. There isn't any doubt that those tax increases would've driven small businesses out of the state, too. Despite all that, Tarryl wants us to believe that the DFL tax increases will create prosperity? I won't buy into that.
When Bill Clinton increased taxes in 1993, the economy was growing. Increasing taxes when the economy is weakening isn't smart policy. Increasing taxes at that time will hasten, deepen & lengthen the coming recession.
During W's first term, Democrats complained about the middle class squeeze. If they were to pass, the DFL's tax increases on small businesses would be the ultimate middle class squeeze because it'd drive up unemployment. If you want to see what massive tax increases does for an economy, just look at Michigan's. The only thing preventing Michigan from sliding into a deeper recession is the new $600 million business tax cut to draw new businesses to the state.
Listen to this :
The Governor's new plan, the Michigan Business Tax, was developed on the following principles:That's the polar opposite of what Tarry's DFL wants to do. When I emailed Tarryl, I'm certain that she thought it was a prank email. It wasn't. I firmly believe that cutting Minnesota's taxes right now would give our economy a much-needed shot in the arm.
- Create a business tax with the broadest base and the lowest tax rate possible
- Provide substantial personal property tax relief to industrial and commercial taxpayers
- Eliminate the tax on payroll, benefits and health care
- Preserve economic development tools to help attract new jobs and investment
- Spread the tax fairly to all types of business organizations while maximizing the number of businesses receiving a tax cut
- Ensure stable funding to protect citizens from higher taxes or huge cuts in
education, health care or public safety while preserving the $600 million business tax cut that takes effect this year- Make the tax simple
Simply put, it's time that Minnesotans told the DFL that we can't afford their destructive tax increases. It's time we told Tarryl that "you can't government your way to prosperity."
The only thing you can government your way to is paying off your political allies.
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 6:27 PM
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What If a War Was Being Won & Nobody Reported It?
Wasn't that the question most bloggers were asking in the back of their minds? Certainly, Harry Reid, Christopher Dodd and John Murtha don't want this reported. They don't want it reported because, while it gets their name in the headlines, it also destroys their credibility on the subject. The bad news for Mssrs. Reid, Dodd and Murtha is that people are reporting on the progress in Iraq. This weekend, I wrote about a Chicago Tribune article written by Liz Sly. Here's the first pull quote I used from her article:
Since the last soldiers of the "surge" deployed last May, Baghdad has undergone a remarkable transformation.The truth is finally seeping into the traditional media outlets' news accounts. In fact, Ms. Sly's article is a textbook refutation of the Democratic talking points on Iraq. I'm sure Ms. Sly's article didn't sit well with Sen. Reid.
No longer do the streets empty at dusk. Liquor stores and cinemas have reopened for business. Some shops stay open until late into the evening. Children play in parks, young women stay out after dark, restaurants are filled with families and old men sit at sidewalk cafes playing backgammon and smoking shisha pipes.
As though that wasn't enough, it gets worse for Mssrs. Reid, Dodd and Murtha because Rod Nordlund has written an article titled "Baghdad Comes Alive" , which describes the improving conditions in Baghdad.
For the first time, however, returning to Baghdad after an absence of four months, I can actually say that things do seem to have gotten better, and in ways that may even be durable. "It's hard to believe," says a friend named Fareed, who has also gone and come back over the years to find the situation always worse, "but this time it's really not." Such words are uttered only grudgingly by those such as me, who have been disappointed again and again by Iraq, where a pessimist is merely someone who has had to endure too many optimists. It doesn't help that no sooner have I written these words than my cup of coffee spills as a massive explosion shakes our building,~ the first blast near our place in weeks, and the more shocking for that. We grab body armor and helmets and await the all-clear. It is "only" an IED near the entrance to the Green Zone, targeting a U.S. convoy and killing two civilians and one American soldier.The Anbar Awakening isn't a passing fad. It's an emphatic statement to AQI that they've rejected AQI's violence, that they'd rather have real lives spent with families than lives spent dying for 'the cause'.
The explosion is the exception to the rule but one of the reasons the U.S. military is gun-shy about claiming success too soon. IED attacks across the country are at their lowest point since September 2004, down 50 percent just since the surge peaked last summer. There hasn't been a successful suicide car bombing in Baghdad in five weeks, and the few ones in recent months have been small and ineffective. There used to be four a day, many of which claimed scores of lives each. "Very sustained trends," the official military spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, says cautiously. "But it's far too early to call this a statistically significant trend."
So the following observations do not come so much from the brass: Al Qaeda in Iraq is starting to look like a spent force, especially in Baghdad. The civil war is in the midst of a huge, though nervous, pause. Most Shiite militias are honoring a truce. Iran appears to have stopped shipping deadly arms to Iraqi militants. The indigenous Sunni insurgency has declared for the Americans across broad swaths of the country, especially in the capital.
As Mr. Nordlund points out, Anbar isn't the only place where a fragile, though seemingly durable peace seems to have broken out. Baghdad is now improving, though much work is still needed to solidify that peace.
People who have long lived like fugitives can now do the most normal things. Zuhair Humadi, a high-ranking Iraqi official who lives in the Green Zone, recently attended a public wedding celebration in Baghdad without a massive security detail. The Shorja bazaar in old Baghdad, hit by at least six different car bombs killing hundreds in the last year, is again crowded with people among the narrow tented stalls. On nearby Al Rasheed Street, the famous booksellers are back in business, after being driven into hiding by assassins and bombs. People are buying alcohol again-as they always had in Baghdad, until religious extremists forced many neighborhood liquor shops to close.Despite all of this information seeping into the public's view, Harry Reid keeps insisting that things aren't going that well:
"Every place you go you hear about no progress being made in Iraq," said Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid. "The government is stalemated today, as it was six months ago, as it was two years ago," Reid told reporters, warning US soldiers were caught in the middle of a civil war. "It is not getting better, it is getting worse," he said.Christopher Dodd is taking it a step further:
"There is a lot of unease and disappointment,"~ said Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who is running for president. "The perception is that we are not leading on this issue. I get it every single day, wherever I go."Yesterday I asked the question "Why Are Democrats Opposed to Winning?" Following this weekend's reporting from Ms. Sly and Mr. Nordlund, coupled with Christopher Dodd's saying that Democrats should simply stop funding the war right when progress is being made and sustained, I have a different question:
Mr. Dodd said lawmakers should just stop financing for the war. "Congress has one authority here, and that's the funding," he said. "The founders never intended for us as a body together to manage a conflict." Mr. Dodd voted to block the spending measure.
Why is the Democratic leadership receptive only to defeat?
Originally posted Monday, November 19, 2007, revised 12-Jun 1:29 AM
Comment 1 by Money Guy at 19-Nov-07 04:38 PM
Here is one of the real reasons we are getting results!! IF ONLY THEY HAD DONE THIS 4 YEARS AGO! Think of the young men and women who would be here today.
Will 'armloads' of US cash buy tribal loyalty?
The US policy of paying Sunni Arab sheikhs for their allegiance could be risky.
By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 8, 2007 edition
"[The US military] threw money at [the sheiks]," says Col. David Hsu, who heads a team advising Iraq's armed forces in Salahaddin, Saddam's home province. He shows recent digital photographs he captured of smiling sheikhs holding bundles of cash as they posed with US military officers. "You are basically paying civilians to turn in terrorists. Money was an expedient way to try to get results."
US military officers on the ground say there is tremendous pressure from high above to replicate the successes of the so-called "awakening" against Al Qaeda in the western Anbar Province. The drive reached its apex in the run-up to the September testimonies to Congress by the top US military commander and diplomat in Iraq, US officers say.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1108/p01s04-wome.html
Haggling All For Naught
When Nancy Pelosi gave her initial speach as Speaker-in-Waiting, she promised that the Democrats would end the Republicans' Culture of Corruption" and that she'd run "the most ethical Congress in history ." Based on Douglas Turner's article in the Buffalo News, all that bluster was for naught. Here's what Mr. Turner is basing his opinion on:
On Thursday, her task force on congressional ethics floated its long-delayed reform proposal. Unfortunately, the new Democratic ethics plan would preserve the bipartisan truce that puts special interest money before the interests of the people.This is another RINO: Reform In Name Only. It's Ms. Pelosi's latest attempt to deceive the American people into believing that they give a damn about ethical behavior. They don't. If they did, they would've run John Murtha, Allan Mollahan and William 'Cold Cash' Jefferson from the House months ago. This hasn't gone unnoticed either:
The Democratic plan protects the "pay-to-play" system perfected by the GOP , supports the perpetual House incumbency and perpetuates the power of crooked, veteran House bosses.
Pelosi's task force chairman, Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., said it will be formally introduced early next month.
It creates an Office of Congressional Ethics, a grand-sounding innovation that adds a layer of bureaucracy to the existing House Ethics Committee. This office can initiate "reviews" of congressional conduct. Great. The devil, as usual, is in the details.
The office will not have subpoena power. More importantly, the office will not hear complaints brought by outside entities or people. And the House Ethics Committee will not hear charges brought by outsiders, as the Senate does.
"It's significant the new office will not 'investigate' but merely 'review' situations," said Meredith McGehee, policy director of Campaign Legal Center, which has been pushing hard for real reform.
"The months wasted haggling over new ethics rules have been all for naught," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. "Given that the new Office of Congressional Ethics will not accept complaints from outsiders nor have subpoena power, in effect, the song remains the same."It's worth remembering that CREW is a Soros-funded organization. There isn't any doubt that they'll vote for Democrats next November. What those brief paragraphs indicate is that Democrats aren't as energized this year as last. The potential ramifications of that are profound.
CREW's communications director, Naomi Seligman Steiner, noted that it was Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who in 1997 successfully offered a floor amendment to forbid the Ethics Committee from hearing outside complaints.
History teaches us that the political party that is the most energized and works the hardests wins the most races. It naturally follows that that political party stands of regaining past majorities and/or increasing their majorities. Whether we're talking Pennsylvania, Washington, DC or Minnesota, liberals aren't as energized this year as last.
That might lead to Republicans recapturing the US House. As I've pointed out about Pennsylvania, liberal 'good government groups' get upset when promised reforms are gutted :
Groups like the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and Common Cause PA that have previously rallied behind the bill have withdrawn their support because of the changes.Does anyone think that 'Lieberman Democrats' aren't seriously thinking about which candidate they'll support? I'd be surprised if some Lieberman Democrats didn't vote for a Republican, whether it's Giuliani or Thompson or McCain. I'd be surprised if some Lieberman Democrats didn't stay home or not work hard for local Democrats if they're faced with a Nutroots lefty and a hardline Republican.
Here's the wisest suggestion I've heard in awhile:
McGehee says Pelosi should tell Capuano "thanks," scrap his report and come up with a strong new ethics office. Without a powerful outside agency with broad powers, the highly touted ethics rules passed by the House last winter are hollow.I knew that the Democrats' promise of cleaning up Washington's culture of corruption was a joke. This report is just documented proof that I was right.
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 5:41 PM
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Is This Why Democrats Don't Want Total Transparency?
I've been pondering why Pennsylvania Democrats like Rep. DeWeese want emails exempted from the transparency legislation that they're currently working on. This post at PassOpenRecords.com makes as much sense as I've read:
One theory for lawmakers' insistence on secrecy is that email gives lobbyists access to lawmakers at the instant they are voting on legislation. In previous eras of corruption, PA was notorious for the influence lobbyists had over lawmakers. The leading industries of the Gilded Age were given seats on the floor of the House so that they could conveniently tell lawmakers how to vote. Eventually, lobbyists were banned from the floor of the General Assembly and relegated to the lobby outside the ornate House and Senate chambers.I'm currenlty having on of those moments where a person says "Why didn't I figure that out? DUH!!!" I guess it was too obvious to see. I hope that Pennsylvania state senators like John Eichelberger pass legislation that makes politicians disclose the contents of their emails. I further hope that Sen. Eichelberger & his allies include a provision barring communications between legislators & lobbyists within 15 minutes of a scheduled vote.
Until email. Now, email puts lobbyists back on the floor of the House and Senate, but in a way that neither citizens nor reporters can see.
I don't reflexively hate lobbyists but I've got a problem with them giving legislators their instructions on how to vote on each provision & amendment of each bill. After all, these legislators are supposed to represent We The People , not just We The Lobbyists .
Here's another thing that's getting the PassOpenRecords people upset:
The state House has voted preliminarily to keep members' e-mail secret. A final vote on the House bill, ironically called "open-records reform", is expected this week.It's insulting to see how secretive Pennsylvania politicians are. It's especially upsetting to see them gut good legislation, then claim that they're doing the right thing. That's hogwash. They're trying to keep their lobbyist connections secret. That isn't reform. It's another RINO: Reform In Name Only. I didn't much care for RINO (Republicans In Name Only) like Chuck Hagel & Lincoln Chafee. I dislike RINO (Reform In Name Only) even more. Neither should be acceptable to taxpayers.
Pennsylvania legislators say they oppose release of their e-mail because confidential communications from constituents might be revealed to the public. They talk about this almost as if they are lawyers protecting the rights of their clients to privacy or priests upholding the sanctity of confession.
Please. Did they ever hear of redaction? They could provide in the law for deletion of a constituent's name in a personal matter. By and large, citizens are writing about issues and legislation or problems in the legislator's district.
Posted Monday, November 19, 2007 6:59 PM
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