May 12-16, 2016
May 12 03:45 Sarah Palin's candidate May 12 08:31 St. Cloud School Board is deaf May 12 08:54 Wendy's to open ordering kiosks May 12 13:07 MnSCU approves Inver Hills' tactics May 12 20:36 MnSCU's definition of a crisis May 14 14:30 Thissen leads DFL spinmeisters May 15 19:41 The DFL's transportation myth May 16 09:19 Real Met Council reform, Part I May 16 14:44 Real Met Council reform, Part II
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Sarah Palin's candidate
It isn't surprising that Sarah Palin predicted that Speaker Ryan would get "Cantored" in Wisconsin's August primary. I wrote this article to state my opinion that Mrs. Palin has started believing her press clippings a bit too much.
Palin's track record isn't exactly filled with success. That's mostly because she doesn't do her research and her off-the-cuff statements are positively loony. This past Sunday, Mrs. Palin said that she'd do whatever she could to help Paul Nehlen, the sacrificial lamb that's about to get trounced. After this tweet , though, I think Ryan can focus his time on important things rather than waste a split second on this annoying little gnat. Check out what Nehlen tweeted:
Truth. Paul Ryan is perfectly okay risking American's safety, but for himself...not so much. @BreitbartNews https://t.co/n6XE0BMoe6
- Paul Nehlen (@pnehlen) May 10, 2016
Nehlen all but officially ended his campaign with that tweet. That he thinks people will feel scandalized that a Catholic sent his kids to a Catholic school tell voters that he's either stupid or that he's incredibly desperate. I'm betting it's the latter.
The truth is that Nehlen should consider it a moral victory if he doesn't lose by 60 points. Contrary to Mrs. Palin's prediction, this isn't a close race. It never was going to be. The Washington Free Beacon's article highlights what Nehlen was tweeting about:
Breitbart News reached out to the school as a perspective [sic] applicant and obtained a copy of the school's 2015-2016 registration papers and tuition contract. The document inquires specifically into the applicant's religious background; in particular, it asks whether the applicant is a parishioner at the associated Catholic parish. The school recruits through the parish by offering a tuition discount to those who have been baptized and are members of the parish.
Then there's this astonishing admission:
As the registration forms explain, the school exists for the express purpose of helping to foster Catholic children.
Trumpbart has really outdone themselves with this one. If Andrew were alive today, he wouldn't let his websites be used like this. Period. Finally, there's this:
While Muslim students could presumably get into Ryan's school, the school's reliance on the parish as a recruiting center and the above-cost tuition fees would, by definition, function as a mechanism for screening them out.
There's no cheap shot that Trumpbart won't use against their enemies.
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2016 3:45 AM
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St. Cloud School Board is deaf
According to this article , the St. Cloud School Board voted "to ask voters for money to build a new Technical High School and remodel Apollo." St. Cloud Superintendent of Schools Willie Jett will work on "details of the project's cost and when the vote would happen." The vote was 6-1, with Bruce Hentges voting against the measure because the Board wouldn't consider his preference, which is "building one high school that combined Tech and Apollo."
What's stunning is that the Board apparently didn't consider the taxpayers. They didn't consider a proposal put together by Claire VanderEyk and Sarah Murphy to fix Tech. Last fall, the School Board asked voters to approve $167,000,000 in bonding authority to build a new Tech High School, refurbish Apollo High School, improve security and buy technology.
After the vote failed, Ms. VanderEyk and Ms. Murphy inspected the existing Tech High School. Ms. VanderEyk and Ms. Murphy are Tech graduates and licensed architects. After taking notes of what needed to be fixed, they submitted those notes to a licensed contractor. The contractor put together an estimate on how much it would cost to fix Tech for the next 15-25 years. That estimate was for $15,696,000. Voters were told that the cost of building a new Tech High School would be $113,800,000.
That's a difference of $98,104,000 in cost to the taxpayer.
Voters in November rejected a $167 million referendum that would have built a new Tech and remodeled Apollo. Concerns raised about that plan seemed to focus on whether Tech could be remodeled the future of nearby Clark Field and what would happen to the old Tech once a new one was built on land the district owns in south St. Cloud.
The reality is that a significant portion of the people who rejected last November's referendum rejected it because the Board's proposal amounted to asking for a blank check. They rejected it because the Board shrouded the blueprints in secrecy. The School Board acted in a suspicious, arrogant manner, essentially telling taxpayers to write them a blank check on a project that the Board didn't explain in any detail.
Given those facts, it's surprising that the margin of defeat wasn't substantially more than 1,067 votes. Given the Board's behavior, it's amazing that the taxpayers didn't run the Board out of town. This Board should table this proposal and let the next school board submit their proposal. Unfortunately, this Board is too arrogant to let that happen.
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2016 8:31 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 13-May-16 10:23 AM
Deaf? Deaf dumb and blind. But they sure play a mean pinball.
Wendy's to open ordering kiosks
It's totally predictable that Wendy's is establishing self-service ordering kiosks . It's predictable because liberals insisted that the minimum wage be increased to $15/hour.
When the $15/hour proposal first started taking off, conservatives and economists predicted that this would happen. Hardline progressives ignored these predictions. Thanks to their policies, unemployment in this part of the service industry will increase significantly.
Wendy's President Todd Penegor "said company-operated stores, only about 10% of the total, are seeing wage inflation of 5% to 6% , driven both by the minimum wage and some by the need to offer a competitive wage 'to access good labor.'" It won't take long before youth unemployment spikes. That's the predictable outcome in this situation.
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2016 8:54 AM
Comment 1 by JerryE9 at 13-May-16 09:33 AM
As I've noted before, "walk into any McDonald's in Europe." The technology is available, and the fully-automatic build-your-burger-to-order robot is already a reality-- it pays for itself in 3-6 months! Tie it to the kiosks and you've got a whole franchise with one human employee. Way to go, liberals! Your ability to ignore reality in favor of your fevered fantasies is about to hit the fan.
Comment 2 by eric z at 13-May-16 10:21 AM
Sky is falling! Sky is falling!
Comment 3 by Rex Newman at 13-May-16 04:30 PM
Coming soon: a "needed" moratorium on restaurant technology while experts assess the health safety of robo-cooks and the required multi-lingual programming of robo-ordering. Then comes "your order has too much salt, cannot continue."
Comment 4 by JerryE9 at 14-May-16 07:59 PM
Maybe the sky isn't falling for Eric, but if you're a black teenager trying to find a fast-food job, you're probably out of luck.
MnSCU approves Inver Hills' tactics
Apparently, MnSCU, aka Minnesota State , approves of Inver Hills' witch hunt tactics . First, some information is required so people can appreciate what's happening. Last academic year, Dave Berger led the effort to hold a no-confidence vote against Inver Hills President Tim Wynes. That vote passed.
That's just the start of things. Berger has been placed on paid leave while Inver Hills 'investigates' Dr. Berger. He's also banned from campus while this 'investigation' is being conducted. While on paid leave, Berger "was named 'Faculty Member of the Year' in late April by the faculty development committee." With that information in hand, now you can appreciate where this thing gets weird. (As though it wasn't weird already. LOL)
From the time that Berger was put on paid leave, "school leaders began investigating the complaint. Details of the inquiry have not been made public, but Berger, a leader of the faculty union, suspects it has to do with his work to organize a no-confidence vote against college President Tim Wynes. School leaders have denied the investigation is related to Berger's union activity and said the inquiry is continuing. They did not respond to a request for comment regarding Berger's faculty member honor."
Inver Hills insists that this doesn't have anything to do with Berger's union activities but they won't talk about the 'investigation'. That isn't surprising considering MnSCU's penchant for being as transparent as a rock. (Yes, MnSCU is a separate entity but the groupthink is identical.)
If the MnSCU Board of Trustees isn't willing to hold college and university executives' feet to the fire, and they haven't been willing, they need to be dissolved ASAP. If they're letting university and college presidents run roughshod over faculty without threat of punishment, then the Trustees don't act as anything more than a rubberstamp for the executives.
That's the fastest path to disaster imaginable. When executives can do whatever they want because they're confident that they won't get disciplined, accountability disappears.
It's time for legislators to start taking this stuff seriously. Tens of millions of dollars get flushed down the toilet because university and college presidents aren't held accountable. That's unacceptable.
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2016 1:07 PM
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MnSCU's definition of a crisis
After publishing this post regarding MnSCU's implicit approval of Inver Hills Community College President Tim Wynes and after seeing the level of financial mismanagement within MnSCU, I realize that I haven't asked the most important question regarding the financial stewardship of MnSCU's Central Office and its colleges and universities.
Specifically, since the MnSCU Board of Trustees has sat silent on MnSCU's operational incompetence and its financial mismanagement, and since the legislature has essentially stuck its collective head in the sand in its attempt to ignore SCSU's declining enrollment and multi-million dollar annual deficits, a basic question must be asked ASAP.
What's the legislature's, the Dayton administration's and MnSCU's definition of a financial crisis? Do these politicians and executives have a definition for a MnSCU crisis? If they have one, I definitely haven't seen proof of it.
Rather than just highlight MnSCU's and the legislature's incompetence and indifference, I'll take the time to connect the dots since MnSCU and the legislature aren't interested in connecting them.
Over the last 6 years, St. Cloud State has lost $8,700,000 on Coborn's Plaza. Since FY2014, SCSU's annual financial deficits have been in excess of $5,000,000. In fact, it's well in excess of that. Meanwhile, MnSCU submitted a supplemental budget request this session for an additional $21,000,000. It isn't difficult to figure it out that a significant portion of that amount is heading to St. Cloud State as a bailout.
Here's a video promotion of Coborn's Plaza:
Taxpayers shouldn't be viewed at ATMs to fund MnSCU's financial mismanagement. Instead, politicians, whether they're found in the executive branch or the legislative branch, need to start putting political pressure on these ineptocrats and corruptocrats. They're taking the taxpayers' money and, for all intents and purposes, they're lighting their cigars with the taxpayers' money.
That's just the purely financial side of MnSCU's dysfunctional operation. That's before examining the operational side of MnSCU's operation. What does it say about Inver Hills' ethical standards when a professor is the subject of a witch hunt of an investigation and nobody criticizes the people conducting the 'investigation' for not disclosing any information?
In 2013, then-Speaker Paul Thissen bragged about the DFL legislature making historic investments in education, which I wrote about in this post . What Thissen didn't say is that the DFL made historic investments in accountability. Apparently, accountability isn't something that the DFL believes in when it comes to their political allies.
It's time to throw the DFL so far out of power that they won't mistreat taxpayers for a decade or longer. Further, it's time for a wholesale housecleaning at MnSCU.
It's time to ask the DFL and MnSCU what their definition of a crisis is. MnSCU's history of financial and ethical mismanagement has been disgusting. The legislature has been as disinterested as MnSCU in terms of accountability.
Finally, it's time that citizens get outraged about how they're getting abused by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.
Posted Thursday, May 12, 2016 8:36 PM
Comment 1 by Crimson Trace at 14-May-16 09:57 PM
Great article, Gary! Is there anyone in the legislature who is paying attention to this financial train wreck? If so, they don't seem compelled to action.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 16-May-16 07:13 AM
If there are any legislators paying attention, they're hiding it beautifully. Seriously, I don't think there are. That's sad because MnSCU is one of the biggest taxpayer rip-offs in gov't. I'm not exaggerating when I say that hundreds of millions of dollars have gotten wasted by the MnSCU Central Office & by MnSCU universities & tech colleges.
The Board of Trustees should be sued for rubber-stamping Rosenstone's agenda & budget. Margaret Anderson-Kelliher is the vice-chair. She's sided with Rosenstone while university & community college president was shown to be financially incompetent.
Comment 2 by Rex Newman at 17-May-16 04:29 PM
This just in: Burlington College in Vermont is shutting down. Reason: unpayable debt, incurred by an ill-advised land deal. Perp: Jane (Mrs. Bernie) Sanders. Of course, when the equivalent is done in MnSCU, the perps get a free pass. And we (the uninvolved) pay the debt.
Comment 3 by Rex Newman at 17-May-16 04:33 PM
Just watched the video. "Great security" is needed in St. Cloud? On or near SCSU? "I have my own bathroom." This is the exception?
Thissen leads DFL spinmeisters
Rep. Paul Thissen is the chief DFL spinmeister in Minnesota's House of representatives. He's also incredibly dishonest . Friday morning, he was joined by House Deputy Minority Leader Erin Murphy and Rep. Melissa Hortman to spin their attacks against the MnGOP.
I knew they weren't interested in substantive discussions when Rep. Hortman said "The legislative agenda is geared toward attack literature. We have a $900 million surplus, $500 million ongoing. We certainly could reach a deal on a bonding bill that's in the middle. We could do a responsible transportation bill. But then they lose the campaign issue of 'Republicans stopped a gas tax.'"
Rep. Hortman, people can't take the DFL seriously when they're advocating a $1,800,000,000 bonding bill and the GOP is proposing a $600,000,000 bonding bill. If that $1,800,000,000 bonding bill passed, it would be the biggest bonding bill in Minnesota history by $750,000,000. It's nearly double the size of the next biggest bonding bill.
Further, it's impossible to do a "responsible transportation bill" when the DFL and Gov. Dayton are advocating major middle class tax increase. The DFL has made clear that they won't consider Tim Kelly's transportation. Chairman Kelly's plan, which he wrote about here, would create a Transportation Stability Fund that would raise an additional "$3.078 billion over the next ten years" for fixing Minnesota's roads and bridges.
Apparently, that isn't sufficient for the DFL.
Under this proposal, the State of Minnesota would repurpose revenue that is already being collected from existing sales taxes on auto parts, the Motor Vehicle Lease sales tax, the rental vehicle tax and the sales tax on rental vehicles. By placing these revenue streams, estimated at $3.078 billion over the next ten years, in a newly created Transportation Stability Fund, Minnesota would not only provide new money for roads and bridges statewide, but also for small city roads, bus services in Greater Minnesota, suburban county highways, and metro area capital improvements.
Making this change would dedicate $1.44 billion for county roads, $583 million for municipal roads, and $282 million for roads in towns with fewer than 5,000 residents.
In addition to the dedicated funds provided by the Transportation Stability Fund, the proposal would also utilize $1.3 billion in Trunk Highway bonds, $1.2 billion from realigning Minnesota Department of Transportation resources, $1.05 billion in General Obligation bonds, and $228 million in General Funds.
Rep. Hortman spoke about the attack ads that she thinks have already been written on the transportation issue. I hope they have been written because it's time to criticize the DFL for not accepting an offer that would fix Minnesota's roads and bridges without raising taxes. If Rep. Hortman wants to whine about how the GOP is offering Minnesotans the type of transportation that they favor, that's her right.
It's also great advertising for Tim Kelly's proposal.
House Deputy Minority Leader Erin Murphy joined in the chorus:
We've all done that together. And these last weeks can be very intense as you're moving your agenda through using the rules and the procedures of course that are in place. I don't feel that urgency at all in this House leadership in the Minnesota House of Representatives and I think that we've been hearing more from the Republican leadership about who's to blame for the failure of this session than we're hearing anything about what they're going to do to actually accomplish what they said they would do for the people of Minnesota.
There shouldn't be a rush to finalize a bad deal. The DFL's transportation proposal and the DFL's bonding bill are terrible deals.
Further, the DFL hasn't said anything substantive about why they're rejecting Chairman Kelly's transportation proposal. They've said that it takes money out of the general fund but everyone knows that's a scam. The DFL doesn't want that money dedicated because they want it available so they can keep spending irresponsibly.
Watch the entire DFL dog and pony show here (if you can stomach it):
Posted Saturday, May 14, 2016 2:30 PM
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The DFL's transportation myth
The buzz coming from the St. Paul echochamber is all about Gov. Dayton's soon-to-be-released transportation 'compromise' legislation. Ricardo Lopez's post offers a glimpse into the fictitious drama.
The drama started when Lopez wrote "How to fund the state's transportation needs over the next decade has emerged as the linchpin for any global agreement to come together in the final week of the legislative session." Then it escalated when he wrote "Gov. Mark Dayton's administration is working over the weekend to craft what he is calling a last-ditch compromise to at least partly address billions of dollars in needed road and bridge work." (emphasis added)
A "last-ditch compromise" wouldn't be needed if the DFL didn't insist on another middle class tax increase again. Chairman Kelly's plan, which Chairman Kelly outlined in this statement , would generate "$3.078 billion over the next ten years" without raising taxes.
Dutifully, Lopez quoted Gov. Dayton as saying that "Transportation will be the tipping point. If that falls apart, I don't know that we can pull the rest of it together. On the other hand, if we pull that together, I think the framework can be there for the other pieces." Theoretically, reporters are supposed to ask questions, something Lopez apparently didn't do. For instance, Lopez didn't ask why raising taxes is the key when raising taxes didn't work in 2008.
This isn't complicated. In 2008, the DFL, with the help of the Override 6, pushed through a major tax increase. I predicted in this post that it wouldn't be enough because that "bill focuses mostly on transit."
Further, the DFL had total control of the legislature and Mark Dayton was the governor in 2013-2014. They could've raised taxes at any point during that time but didn't. If raising taxes was the right thing to do, why didn't they raise taxes then? Wasn't the DFL interested in doing the right thing then?
The DFL raised the gas tax a nickel a gallon in 2008. Jim Oberstar praised it. Ditto with Steve Murphy, Larry Pogemiller and Tarryl Clark. In fact, Steve Murphy was proud of the tax increases then:
" 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 ."
Sen. Murphy was right. There were a ton of taxes in Sen. Murphy's bill. Despite that fact, the DFL insists that there's a funding shortfall. If that's the case, why should we settle for another DFL-sponsored tax increase?
The gas tax increase won't fix the problem. It would lift money from the taxpayers' wallets. That isn't a solution. That's a rip-off.
Posted Sunday, May 15, 2016 7:41 PM
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Real Met Council reform, Part I
This op-ed , written by an Anoka County commissioner, a Dakota County commissioner and the mayor of Brooklyn Park, highlights what's wrong with the Met Council.
Their op-ed opens by saying "four suburban counties and 41 cities across the Twin Cities area have passed resolutions contradicting the group of mayors who wrote 'Tweaks' are, in fact, the best model for Met Council' (May 9), defending the current model of gubernatorial control of the Metropolitan Council."
The next paragraph says "Those mayors argue that the current model is working well, needing only a few changes to the appointment process, and that any move away from gubernatorial control is ill-advised and impractical. They give the impression that counties and cities are working in a 'highly responsive' partnership with the council."
I don't know who those mayors are but if they think that the Met Council is "highly responsive" to the people living in the 7-county metro, then they aren't fit for duty because they're either incredibly dishonest or they're stupid. This paragraph encapsulates things perfectly:
The council has broad authority, including the ability to levy taxes, charge fees and set regional policy. Cities and counties are the entities most directly affected by decisions of the council, making them the council's primary constituents. Yet appointment of council members resides solely with the governor, effectively making the governor the primary constituent .
What part of that sounds like the Met Council is responsive to the citizens living within their authority? The Met Council will always be more responsive to the governor than to the citizenry because he's the person who can hire or fire them. That's a system that could be called 'whatever the governor wants, the governor gets'. The last I looked, our system of government was built on the consent of the governed.
The Met Council is built on the principle of governing without the consent of the governed and the principle that there be the power to tax without representation. Here's a revolutionary concept:
Many cities and counties believe that the council lacks accountability and responsiveness to them as direct constituents and that the authority to impose taxes and set regional policy should be the responsibility of local government elected officials .
This is what the reformers want:
We support reform that adheres to the following principles:
- ?A majority of council members shall be elected officials, appointed from cities and counties within the region;
- ?Metropolitan cities shall directly control the appointment process for city representatives to the council;
- ?Metropolitan counties shall directly appoint their own representatives to the council;
- ?The terms of office for any members appointed by the governor shall be staggered and not coterminous with the governor's;
- ?Membership shall include representation from every metropolitan county government, and
- ?The council shall represent the entire region; voting shall be structured based on population and incorporate a system of checks and balances.
Posted Monday, May 16, 2016 9:19 AM
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Real Met Council reform, Part II
There's no question that people are resistant to change. They appreciate the familiar, which is why it's difficult, if not impossible, to change things that are broken. Sometimes, though, a dramatic shake-up is exactly what's needed. The colonists knew that in the 1770s. There are lots of angry activists in the 21st Century who wonder if it isn't time for another revolution.
This op-ed , which I linked to in th is post , highlights the fact that the "council has broad authority, including the ability to levy taxes" but that the governor is their primary constituent. In the colonists' times, they started a revolution. One of their chief rallying cries was "No taxation without representation."
According to Dictionary.com, the definition for No taxation without representation "became an anti-British slogan before the American Revolution; in full, "Taxation without representation is tyranny." I can't disagree with that last sentence. Taxation without representation is tyranny.
This paragraph especially stands out:
The mayors in their commentary suggested that elected city and county officials could not handle the workload or think 'regionally' while representing both their municipality and a Met Council district.
There's a simple explanation for these mayors' preference. They want their initiatives to get rubberstamped and put into place ASAP. What politician enjoys the mess that's created when making sausage? The Met Council is a mayor's dream. They get their wish list enacted without having to cut deals with uppity peasants.
This nation's Founding Fathers understood the appeal of mob rule. That's why they designed a system filled with checks and balances. They wanted to thwart entities like the Met Council. They wanted the system to be messy because efficient governments are usually out-of-control governments that don't pay attention to the citizenry, aka the uppity peasants.
Here's the lengthy list of elected officials that signed onto this op-ed:
Scott Schulte is an Anoka County commissioner. Chris Gerlach is a Dakota County commissioner. Jeff Lunde is mayor of Brooklyn Park. This commentary was also submitted on behalf of the following local government officials. County commissioners: Rhonda Sivarajah, Matt Look, Julie Braastad and Robyn West, Anoka County; Tom Workman and Randy Maluchnik, Carver County; Liz Workman and Nancy Shouweiler, Dakota County; Jon Ulrich, Scott County, and Jeff Johnson, Hennepin County. Mayors: Mark Korin, Oak Grove; Kelli Slavik, Plymouth; Jim Adams, Crystal; Jeff Reinert, Lino Lakes, and Dave Povolny, Columbus. City Council members: Jim Goodrich, Andover; John Jordan, Brooklyn Park; Jeff Kolb, Olga Parsons and Elizabeth Dahl, Crystal; Dave Clark and Jason King, Blaine; Brian Kirkham, Bethel, and Bill Krebs, Columbus.
The time for a dramatic reform of the Met Council is at least a decade overdue. Further, there's never a good time to give government the authority to raise taxes without giving people the authority to boot the bums out of office.
Posted Monday, May 16, 2016 2:44 PM
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