February 17-19, 2014
Feb 17 01:41 UAW's sour grapes serenade Feb 17 14:50 Democrats have 'boogeyman fever' Feb 17 15:46 Making sense of climate change debate Feb 18 02:02 Lying with statistics, Part II Feb 18 01:50 MNsure spin Feb 18 15:13 St. Cloud Times: Senate Office is waste of money Feb 18 16:29 The sad state of MNsure Feb 18 21:21 Shut this project down Feb 19 11:46 Opposition mounting against Senate Office Building
Prior Months: Jan
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Lying with statistics, Part II
More Lying with Statistics?
by Silence Dogood
Anyone present at the Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday, February 11, 2014, was witness to an F5 on the Fujita Scale of Administrative Spin!
Provost Malhotra was trying to explain the FY13 Composite Financial Index (CFI) for MnSCU universities (shown in the background of the picture). Essentially, he explained that the higher the financial composite index, the better the financial position of the university. He was happy to point out that SCSU was above the MnSCU average and that we were higher than our main rival MSU - Mankato. The data from the background of the picture for the Composite Total is reproduced in the table below:
There is one serious problem with this financial analysis: the university on the list with the highest CFI is Moorhead at 3.48, which should indicate a strong financial position. For people who've lived under a rock since last fall, Moorhead announced plans for a 10% reduction in workforce to alleviate their budget crisis as a result of recent drops in enrollment. A second indictor that the CFI may not be very useful in determining the future financial health of a university is that the university with the second highest CFI is Bemidji. Last December, their faculty were told to expect an announcement in February for reorganization, consolidation and retrenchment to respond to their recent enrollment declines.
How can anyone believe that this Composite Financial Index has anything to do with reality in terms of the financial health of a university if the two universities with the largest numbers for their CFI are facing major financial crises?
Almost anyone involved with higher education knows that enrollment (i.e., tuition and state appropriation) is what drives a university's budget. Tuition accounts for as much as 2/3rds or more of the revenue. The FYE enrollments from the MnSCU website from FY10 through FY14 for Bemidji, Moorhead and SCSU are shown in the following figure. Note that the FY14 enrollment is current as of 4:30 a.m. on 2/15/14:
From their highest enrollment in FY11, Moorhead has dropped a total of 773 FYE or 11.3%. From their highest enrollment in FY11, Bemidji has dropped 424 FYE or 8.99%. SCSU from its highest enrollment in FY10 has dropped 2,739 FYE or 18.1%.
I'm not an economist like Provost Malhotra but how can anyone believe that there isn't a serious fiscal problem when SCSU's enrollment decline is substantially larger than Moorhead and Bemidji? With the two universities with the highest CFI ratings suffering financial crises requiring cutting of budgets and staff, what does the CFI really measure? If recent history is any indication, it does apparently have a strong correlation with a need to cut jobs and slash budgets. If that is what the CFI can predict, will SCSU, with the next highest CFI, be the next to announce the need for budget reductions?
Using an average estimated cost of $7,000 for tuition to be a full-time student, the loss of tuition dollars from 2,739 FYE students who are no longer attending SCSU amounts to $19,200,000. When you add to this number another $9,000,000 in reduced state appropriation due to declining enrollment, SCSU will have over $28 million fewer dollars to spend next year than in 2010-11. Leaving positions unfilled and deferring maintenance cannot makeup for this kind of loss!
If the MnSCU enrollment data is correct, then something else has been going on. There are numerous possibilities. One is that the university has a lot more money than it says it has. Another is that it's all smoke and mirrors and Nero is fiddling while Rome is burning. Hopefully, the truth will come out soon. If you don't admit that there is a problem and accept that what you've been doing is not working, it isn't possible to make changes that will lead to positive outcomes.
Let's stop for a second and take a look at the situation. SCSU has a lame duck chief academic officer who seems to be addicted to spin and denial and a brand new CFO still struggling to figure out where the money is and isn't. The architect of the new student success program is also leaving before any results are in on his efforts. SCSU has a president who will not admit when mistakes have been made and can't seem to see that course corrections need to be made. It's just a matter of time before the denial and spin ends with an intervention.
The end of denial and spin will be the best indicator that SCSU's immediate future will be brighter and that a recovery has begun. Let's hope the spin and denial end sooner rather than later.
Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2014 2:02 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 18-Feb-14 02:38 PM
Maybe Moorehead and Bemijdi made the top of the list because they were doing something and that number reflects their plans?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Comment 2 by MnSCUfinancialofficer@mnscu.edu at 23-Feb-14 03:13 PM
You have to understand a few things about the CFI calc. It can be greatly skewed by general obligation bonds for repair and replacement building projects or by new construction like the ISELF building. In these cases, institutions get large sums of one time money from the state and only have to pick up 1/6th of the debt service for the project.
Additionally, institutions like Mankato May expend part of their reserve in a particular fiscal year for something like the demolition of the Gage Residence Hall project. This will bring the CFI ratio down for one year, but it was a planned event and must be taken into account when analyzing CFI.
If one really wants to gain insight from the CFI ratios, one has to look at the CFI ratio over a period of years to see a general trend.
Comment 3 by wonderer at 25-Feb-14 08:31 AM
Ah, so then the information in the chart for that time period was deliberately chosen to say "Look, we're in great shape" when it really should have been set into a multi-year context? What do we call a misleading use of data? Silence evaluated the presented data carefully and pointed out some curious contradictions in the interpretation. Somewhat of an inverse relationship between well-being and CFI? It seems the university administration is grasping for any straw to put a positive spin on its deep problems instead of admitting mistakes, reconsidering the wisdom of some decisions, and even reversing some of them to salvage what it can. Many who care so much for SCSU and have devoted their careers to it are discouraged by its decline and dispirited because they got the message that dissent is not wanted, dissenters are punished. What kind of leader doesn't want to hear warnings and multiple sources of advice as part of decision-making, rather than listening to only those that agree with his/her own desires? One example that comes to mind is George Custer. Of course, it took decades of demonizing the force that defeated Custer for anyone to finally admit the battle was lost because of his stubborn and arrogant decision.
UAW's sour grapes serenade
After last week's stinging defeat, the United Auto Workers, aka the UAW, were singing the blues . Mixed into those blues, UAW President Bob King was performing a bit of the sour grapes serenade:
Mr. King blamed Republican lawmakers for the loss. They made numerous anti-union arguments and a few threats to discourage workers from unionizing. Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, contended that auto parts suppliers would not come to the Chattanooga area if that meant being located near a unionized VW plant. Senator Bob Corker, a former mayor of Chattanooga, said VW executives had told him the plant would add a second production line, making sport utility vehicles, if workers rejected the U.A.W. Mr. Corker and some outside conservative groups told workers that the U.A.W. had contributed to the struggles of Detroit's automakers and would make VW less competitive, a view echoed by some workers.
Adding to the anti-union pressure, Bo Watson, a state senator who represents a Chattanooga suburb, said the Republican-controlled Legislature was unlikely to approve further subsidies to Volkswagen if the plant unionized. Some workers feared that his threat would cause Chattanooga to lose the planned S.U.V. line to a VW plant in Mexico.
'We are outraged that people in the political arena decided that they were going to threaten workers and that they were going to threaten the company,' Mr. King said. 'The threats against the workers were what shifted things.'
It's dishonest for Mr. King to say that "threats against the workers" shifted the race. These politicians simply highlighted the fact that companies don't like dealing with unionized companies. That's just reality.
Mr. King won't admit it but this is humiliating to the UAW. The company didn't campaign against unionization. Still, the workers rejected unionization by a 53.2%-46.8% margin. When the workers reject unionization despite the company not taking a position on unionization, they're sending a clear message that they aren't interested in paying union dues.
There are other implications to this defeat:
For months, U.A.W. organizers have been contacting workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., with the hope that it might soon follow VW into the union fold.
That hoped-for momentum disappeared in Tennessee.
What's worse for unions is that their allies in the Democratic Party are rejecting them in favor of deep-pocketed environmentalists. That's happening here in Minnesota and it's happening with the Keystone XL Pipeline project .
Posted Monday, February 17, 2014 1:41 AM
Comment 1 by walter hanson at 18-Feb-14 02:49 PM
Dear Mr. King:
If you were sick of politicans interferring in the process have you told President Obama that he was wrong to make a statement before the vote to support unionization. That is interference just as bad as the Republicans you complained about.
If you were sick of workers being threatened how come workers told the media that they were getting threatening messages on their phones or in person visits? I assume when you talked about the threatened workers you were talking about what your organizers were doing that helped you to lose the vote.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Democrats have 'boogeyman fever'
I've written this post and this post about Al Franken's fundraising appeals. Mostly, Franken's fundraising appeals have been long on Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, the TEA Party and Citizens United. In other words, they're a collection of the Democrats' favorite boogeymen.
This morning, I got an email from Jorge Bonilla who is running against Alan Grayson. Here's part of Bonilla's fundraising appeal:
We are well over eight months away fron Election Day 2014, yet Alan Grayson is already invoking each and every one of the Left's boogeymen in his fundraising appeals.
It's only February, yet Grayson has already issued pro-forma denunciations of Fox News, Sean Hannity, the energy sector, has compared the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan, and most recently, has smeared our veterans while attacking the eeeeeeevil Koch Brothers.
Of course, such attacks are pure hypocrisy coming from Alan Grayson. The non-partisan and independent Center for Responsive Politics is dedicated to tracking the influence of money in our election process, and they have compiled a list of the largest political donors over the last 25 years.
The scary "Kochtopus" is all the way down at #59. But who occupies most of the top spots? You guessed it...Grayson's Big Labor buddies. A quick crosscheck with Grayson's top donor list confirms this inconvenient fact.
Apparently, the Congressman Without Guts feels compelled to insult our intelligence (as well as that of his own individual donor base) by performing this "outrageously tough progressive" shtick, which now includes this Koch theater.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice a pattern developing. Even intellectual midgets like Franken and Grayson could spot it. What's obvious is that Democrats will go totally negative this election. They'll criticize the entire panoply of conservative 'boogeymen' for this nation's ills rather than admit that it's their policies that've failed. They'll do whatever it takes to distract people from the ACA disaster. They'll insist that they're pushing back against President Obama and 'holding him accountable' for the disastrous performance of HealthCare.gov while criticizing Republicans for wanting to repeal the law that's causing health insurance prices to jump.
The Democratic playbook for this election is simple. To hold onto the U.S. Senate, Democrats will attempt to portray Republicans as utterly beholden to special interests out to destroy America's middle class. They'll do this while accepting money from environmental organizations while pretending to be friends of the private sector unions who want to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Their message will essentially be 'Don't vote for Republicans because they're scary.' Meanwhile, they didn't notice that they're the 'Scary Characters Party'. While it's too early to predict the Franken and Grayson races with anything approaching sanity, it isn't too early to predict that this won't be a good year for Democrats.
The only thing left to determine is how bad it'll be.
Posted Monday, February 17, 2014 2:50 PM
Comment 1 by J. Ewing at 17-Feb-14 10:32 PM
And to do everything possible to make it as bad as possible.
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 18-Feb-14 02:44 PM
J:
Just to clarify your comment, "Do everything possible to make the pile of ex Democrat lawmakers for Federal, State, and Local as large as possible for January 2015"
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Making sense of climate change debate
Thanks to George Will's response to Chris Wallace's question about climate change, we have clarity on the issue:
Here's a partial transcript of Brother Will's response:
GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: ...I'm one of those who are called deniers. And the implication is that I deny climate change. It's impossible to state with clearer precision the opposite of my view, which is that, of course the climate is changing. It's always changing. That's what gave us the medieval warm period. That's what gave us, subsequent to that for centuries, the little Ice Age. Of course it's changing. When a politician on a subject implicating science, hard science, economic science, social science, says the debate is over, you may be sure of two things. The debate is raging and he's losing it. So I think, frankly, as a policy question, Chris, Holman Jenkins, Kim's colleague at the "Wall Street Journal" put it perfectly. The only questions is, how much money are we going to spend? How much wealth are we going to forego creating in order to have zero discernible effect on the environment?
There's actually another question worth asking in light of President Obama's recent golf outing in California:
Regulations for new coal plants would increase electricity prices by as much as 80 percent , an Obama administration official told lawmakers on Tuesday.
Julio Friedmann, deputy assistant secretary for clean coal at the DEPArtment of Energy, told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight board that carbon capture and storage technology was still not ready for prime time.
'The precise number will vary, but for first generation we project $70 to $90 per ton [on the wholesale price of electricity],' Friedmann said. 'For second generation, it will be more like a $40 to $50 per ton price. Second generation of demonstrations will begin in a few years, but won't be until middle of the next decade that we will have lessons learned and cost savings.'
This means that the CCS technology the administration is pushing for would increase electricity prices initially, but that prices would come down a bit once better technology is developed. But electricity prices would still be higher than they are now.
It's disgusting that President Obama insists that he's the champion of the middle class. The middle class will get hit hardest by this rate increase. While it isn't technically a middle class tax increase, there's no question that this is another Obama administration policy that hurts the middle class.
President Obama is the champion of the middle class the way Bonnie and Clyde were bank security advocates.
Posted Monday, February 17, 2014 3:46 PM
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MNsure spin
When it comes to MNsure spin, Scott Leitz's spin ranks right up there. Here's what he said:
MNsure's interim CEO Scott Leitz appeared on WCCO Sunday Morning.
'With regards to the private side, we are running about 30,000 right now, but we do anticipate because of the mandate that people have health insurance coverage by March 31,' Leitz said.
Notice that Leitz didn't say that they anticipate people enrolling because MNsure is selling a great product. Leitz didn't say that people would buy at the last minute because they're having a difficult time picking between a bunch of great options at great prices either. What Leitz said in this unguarded moment of truth is that people would buy health insurance because the government pointed a gun at their head.
It remains to be seen if Leitz's prediction is right. I'm betting it isn't because President Obama might delay imposing the individual mandate because it's as unworkable as other parts of the ACA are. If that happens, people will have an additional incentive to not buy insurance. If people choose not to buy health insurance, health insurance prices will skyrocket. Not just that but there's another important thing that likely will happen if people don't sign up:
Only about one third signed up for private insurance plans, far below the projected numbers. That's a problem because starting in 2015, money to fund MNsure is supposed to come from a tax on those private plans. If that trend continues, MNsure will face a substantial deficit and taxpayers may have to bail out the program.
If Minnesotans don't flock to MNsure, MNsure will run a significant deficit that taxpayers will have to cover. This MNsure report indicates that MNsure won't reach its targets. According to the report, 41,591 individuals have enrolled in Medical Assistance, 29,943 individuals have enrolled in qualified health plans (QHPs), while 21,414 individuals have enrolled in MinnesotaCare. According to the chart on page 4 of the report, approximately 3,500 people have signed up for QHPs this year. That's approximately 3,500 individuals signing up between 1/4/2014 and 2/8/2014. That's a little over 100 enrollments per day.
That's stunning. MNsure needs to go from 29,500 individuals enrolled on 2/8/2014 to having 69,900 individuals enrolled on 4/1/2014. If enrollments continue at a pace of 100 enrollees per day between 2/8/2014 and 4/1/2014, they'll have 34,600 individuals enrolled on April 1. At that pace, they'd fall short of their goal by 35,300 people.
That's just part of the terrible news. According to the latest data, only 21% of the people signing up for QHPs are in the 19-34 age group. If that percentage doesn't double by April 1, next year's premiums will jump through the proverbial roof. If MNsure falls that far short of their goal, Minnesotans would be totally justified in thinking of that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, isn't affordable.
It isn't surprising that Mr. Leitz's spin got past Ms. Murphy's attention. What won't escape people's attention if they're buying health insurance is the fact that it's expensive.
Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2014 1:50 AM
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St. Cloud Times: Senate Office is waste of money
This SCTimes Our View editorial highlights something obvious: that the "legislature didn't consider [the] taxpayers' interests:
The Legislature's $90 million plan to build a Senate office building is as wasteful as it is self-serving.
Lawmakers signed off last session on a multimillion-dollar plan to construct a new Senate office building and parking structure across the street from the Capitol.
The office building is as pure of pork as you'll ever find. It wouldn't house the entire Senate. It would only house 44 of Minnesota's 67 state senators. I agree with this part of the editorial, too:
Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk has said the new building is needed to ensure the Senate has enough office space the next three years during the Capitol renovation.
But a $90 million office building and parking ramp paid for by taxpayers is excessive, especially if some senators will not continue to have offices there once Capitol renovations are complete.
Lawmakers should have considered housing senators' offices in rentable commercial properties near the Capitol. Surely that would have been a more affordable plan than building new offices, which also will take time to construct.
Sen. Bakk should be run out of St. Paul for shoving this project down our throats. It's excessive. It shouldn't have gotten a committee hearing. It certainly shouldn't have gotten through a committee. The DFL legislators who voted for the Tax Bill had the opportunity to strip this provision from the bill. They voted against stripping the provision from the bill.
That means they're just as guilty of pouring on the pork as Sen. Bakk and Gov. Dayton are. Gov. Dayton could've line-item vetoed out the appropriation of money for this project. That's certainly within a governor's rights under Minnesota's constitution. They can't line-item out policies but they can line-item out appropriations.
The House Rules Committee should reject the proposal. If they did that, they'd stop the project dead in its tracks, which is what it deserves. We know that ground hasn't been broken yet. That means construction hasn't started. While there'd be some hard feelings in the Senate if the House rejected the project, it'd be worth it because it would halt the project.
Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2014 3:13 PM
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The sad state of MNsure
Predictably, the DFL's spinmeisters are doing their best to put the happiest face on MNsure possible. This time, ABM and the public employee unions aren't the only DFL spinmeisters plying their craft. Now they've got Scott Leitz, the interim CEO of MNsure, painting rosy pictures. This time, though, it's time to dispel the myths that the DFL is working feverishly to establish. First, let's look at what Mr. Leitz said in painting a hopeful picture:
'With regards to the private side, we are running about 30,000 right now, but we do anticipate because of the mandate that people have health insurance coverage by March 31,' Leitz said.
It's time to see what official MNsure documents say about the health of the MNsure initiative. First, let's look at how enrollment is going:
According to MNsure's report, approximately 26,000 people had signed up for qualified health plans, aka QHPs, as of Jan. 4, 2014. As of Feb. 8, 29,493 people had enrolled, an increase of approximately 3,500. That's an increase of approximately 13.5%. During the same timeframe, enrollments in Medical Assistance increased from approximately 28,000 to 41,591, an increase of over 13,500. That's an increase of 48%.
That certainly isn't the ratio MNsure was hoping for.
Here's more bad news for MNsure and the DFL:
According to that chart, approximately 100 people are signing up for QHPs per day. If enrollments in process continue at this pace, MNsure won't meet its goal of 69,904 until March...of next year.
Unfortunately, that isn't the worst news. This pie chart should frighten Gov. Dayton and every DFL legislator who voted for the exchange legislation:
According to MNsure's own statistics, only 21% of the enrollees in QHPs are in the 19-34 age cohort. That's far below the 40% the federal government said is needed to pay for the benefits of less healthy people. Without 40% of the enrollees being young healthies or invincibles, health insurance premiums will spike this fall.
That should frighten Gov. Dayton, President Obama and Democrat legislators and senators to death because there's nothing President Obama can do to stop insurance companies from announcing big premium spikes before this fall's election. Those rate spikes will be announced in September or October.
If Democrats think they're slamming into fierce headwinds now, they ain't seen nothing yet. When that rate spike happens, employers will dump coverage and pay the penalty. Employees will get hit with the worst sticker shock they've ever experienced.
September and October will be difficult months for Democrats. The only month worse for Democrats than those months will be November.
Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2014 4:29 PM
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Shut this project down
If anything is gaining traction as a totally unexpected issue, it's the DFL's palace, aka the Senate Office Building. In January, Joe Soucheray wrote this blistering piece about the SOB foolishness. He wasn't finished. He's written this article to blast the foolishness again.
The duplicitous DFLers in the state Senate are moving the marble around under the thimbles. Again. Watch it. Keep your eyes sharp.
As near as I can understand it, they are now informing us that a new Senate office building they want to build for themselves has always been a part of the plan to renovate the Capitol building.
We didn't know that. Most of us are on board to renovate the Capitol, but we didn't sign on to build a new office building for 44 of the 67 senators as part of the project. No, they tossed that new building into a tax bill in the closing minutes of the last legislative session and are now trying to sell us on the idea of how desperately they need the new space and that was the plan all along.
Let's cut through the DFL's spin. It's entirely possible that Democrats, starting with Sen. Bakk, always planned on building this monument. Before you get upset with me, take time to think of it from an Obamacare perspective. After President Obama said that people could keep their health plan if they liked it, they followed that up by saying it was never their intent to let people keep their "substandard health insurance plan." There's no disputing that.
Pay attention to this thinking. President Obama and DC Democrats always planned on quietly pushing people out of the health insurance plans that they liked. Likewise, it's totally plausible that Sen. Bakk and the Democrats supported this ill-advised project if it was done quietly .
If you need to seriously remodel your house to the point where you have to move out, it is unlikely that you are going to build a new house for yourself in the interim. No, you would rent a house.
The senators can rent office space in St. Paul. They don't need an opulent $63 million building with a $27 million parking ramp on the side. That parking ramp is a beautiful window into the minds of the people who brought you light rail. In fact, light rail will swing right by the Capitol. So they should put their mouths where your money is, rent some of the extraordinarily available office space in St. Paul, hop on the train and get dropped off at the Capitol for votes and meetings and whatnot. Why would they need a parking ramp? They don't even like cars.
Let's get to the heart of this. Had the Capitol press paid attention and if they were in touch with Main Street Minnesota, they would've highlighted this foolish spending. Rather than actually reading bills and asking questions about whether the bills working their way through the legislature, the Capitol press spends most of its time tracking down quotes from legislators.
That isn't journalism. That's stenography. If newspapers want to increase readership, they should require their reporters to read the bills that are getting passed.
Part of the problem, unfortunately, is because people don't care until after the outrage has happened. If people don't want money to be spent foolishly, the citizenry should be eternally vigilant. Then, if politicians spend money this foolishly, the citizens should boot their arses out.
Finally, let's have a straightfoward discussion about what Sen. Bakk perpetrated. Sen. Bakk didn't want anyone to testify about his ill-advised initiative. That's why he slid the proposal into the Tax Bill as an amendment in the final weeks of the session. If you look, Sen. Bakk didn't author legislation proposing construction of the Senate Office Building.
It's time for Minnesotans to step forward and speak with a loud, passionate and unified voice that any politician that isn't willing to stop this project dead in its tracks will be targeted and defeated this November. Legislators who aren't the taxpayers' watchdog are utterly worthless. They should be fired this November.
That's the only remedy for this disease. When people get re-elected after spending money foolishly, citizens are sending the signal that they're ok with foolish spending. I'm not ok with this foolish spending.
Defunding this project is imperative to good governance and protecting the taxpayers' pocketbooks. The House Rules Committee can stop this ill-advised project with a simple vote. Here's the committee website . All of the GOP legislators will vote against the project so it's imperative to call or email the DFL committee members and politely but firmly tell them that a vote to approve this project is a vote that will be remembered this November.
Posted Tuesday, February 18, 2014 9:21 PM
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Opposition mounting against Senate Office Building
If this article is right, then we're seeing the first signs that opposition to the Senate Office Building is mounting:
Lawmakers in Minnesota had hoped to break ground in March on a $63 million new state Senate office building next to the state Capitol in St. Paul.
But a fight has broken out over the project, which critics have called an unnecessary expense in a city with high office vacancy.
The project has been delayed amid the debate, and now could face further delays because a committee of the state House of Representatives intends to hold a hearing in coming weeks rather than vote immediately on the project.
House Majority Leader Erin Murphy said in an interview that she felt some of the concerns raised by critics were legitimate. 'Before we're going to take that vote, I want to make sure that we've had ample time to consider the options before us,' she said. Those options include using existing government space to house Senate workers, she said. 'I think that it is important to get this right, versus get it fast.'
Yesterday, I wrote this post to highlight the fact that Sen. Bakk shrouded this project in secrecy because he knew that publicity would kill the plan. In that post, I highlighted the fact that Sen. Bakk didn't write a standalone bill for this project.
That's exceptionally odd for this big of a project, especially in light of the fact that legislators routinely write bills for tiny projects to be included in the Bonding Bill.
Sen. Bakk didn't write a bill for this project, opting instead to introduce this project as an amendment to last year's Tax Bill. Testimony wasn't taken for or against Sen. Bakk's 'amendment', probably because Sen. Bakk didn't want the publicity.
Opposition to this project must be building. If it wasn't, Erin Murphy wouldn't be exercising this tiny amount of fiscal restraint. Rep. Murphy is lots of things but the taxpayers' watchdog isn't one of those things.
This feels like a sinking ship. Holding a hearing on the project will bring out tons of angry taxpayers protesting this project. I'm betting there won't be many people testifying that the project should proceed. I'd bet the proverbial ranch that Sen. Bakk won't testify that this project is needed.
Like the Tax Bill this project was contained in, this project is a portrait of the Democrats' lack of fiscal restraint. Now that it's exposed, they'll try telling us that they had to vote for the Tax Bill. The Tax Bill itself is part of the Democrats' attack on taxpayers.
This weekend, Javier Morillo-Alicea tried spinning the repeal of the B2B sales tax increases as proof of the DFL's plan for tax relief. That's chutzpah personified. They raised those taxes last May. If people hadn't expressed their disgust with those tax increases, they'd still be in the bill.
Thanks to that opposition, they're likely to repeal those sales taxes. Thanks to this uprising, they're likely to defund the SOB (Senate Office Building).
The thing to remember is that the Democrats' first instinct was to a) raise taxes on the middle class and b) spend money on a lavish, ill-advised palace for themselves. They voted for the Tax Bill. They voted against stripping out the Senate project. Democrat legislators can't credibly say that they oppose it. They cast their votes. They expressed their priorities.
They're opposing this project because they'd get clobbered this November if they didn't.
Keep the pressure on. Don't relent. Plan on attending this hearing. Plan on testifying against this project. Let's sink this project once and for all.
Posted Wednesday, February 19, 2014 11:46 AM
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