May 13-14, 2012
May 13 09:47 Will California ever see a surplus again? May 13 17:15 This year's swing voter May 14 00:32 Who's the extremist: Paul Begala or the TEA Party? May 14 04:21 Militant environmentalists use EAJA to undermine private property rights May 14 07:51 Will Dayton child care EO end unionization of child care small businesses? May 14 11:25 Do-Nothing Legislature? Pi-Press doesn't think so May 14 18:16 RP announces he won't contest Romney nomination
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Will California ever see a surplus again?
I've questioned California's spending priorities for years now. With the state budget deficit reaching $16,000,000,000, it's time to ask if California will ever run a surplus again. This NYTimes article doesn't address that issue directly but it's the next question that doesn't get asked throughout the article:
'We are now facing a $16 billion hole, not the $9 billion we thought in January,' Mr. Brown said. 'This means we will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year.'
During the recall of Gov. Grey Davis, then-assemblyman Tom McLintock highlighted California's pension system as being the heart of California's budget mess.
After this winter's OWS protests, it's safe to say that California's budget problems aren't just confined to the pension system :
As protesters festively (oops! I mean 'heroically') rally on college quads across California in the wake of the gratuitous macing of a dozen Occupy Wall Street wannabes at University of California-Davis last Friday, UC Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion declared that the rising tuition at California's public universities is giving him 'heartburn.' It should, since Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri and his fellow diversity bureaucrats are a large cause of those skyrocketing college fees, not just in California but nationally.
Something terribly wrong isn't getting fixed when the UC-Berkeley "Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion" is addressing students about why tuition keeps going up. HINT: Perhaps there isn't a need for vice-chancellors for Equity and Inclusion. At minimum, California lawmakers should consider overhauling the state's higher education system.
This part of the article should be read by legislators in every state capitol:
State officials said the shortfall was a result of disappointing revenue collections in April as California continued to struggle to pull out of the recession. 'We are still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s,' Mr. Brown said.
Still, the state controller reported that the state had exceeded spending by $2.1 billion as well, though Mr. Brown said court rulings and other actions that restricted California from making the cuts were at least partly to blame.
At the same time, the deficit projections, which have been increasing since Mr. Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a budget last summer, suggest that the state may have been overly optimistic in estimating what kind of revenue it would take in. That has been a repeated problem in Sacramento as officials have struggled over the past five years with the state's worst financial crisis since the Depression. Mr. Brown, in taking office last year, pledged to end what he said were the tricks lawmakers regularly used to paper over budget shortfalls.
Who would've thought it possible that liberal legislators and forecasters would overestimate the revenue increase of a tax hike? Say it ain't so. It isn't like they could've seen this coming. It isn't like they could look at the so-called millionaire's tax in Maryland had created jobs...for Virginia real estate agents.
Oh wait. They could've known that.
Still, it isn't like they could look at Michigan's problems during the Granholm administration and learn from them. Oh wait. They could've learned from them.
Instead of learning from these states' mistakes, or from their own mistakes, California lawmakers stuck their head in the sand before shouting "The sky isn't falling. The sky isn't falling. I can't hear you."
The reality is that California is taking the fun out of dysfunctional. They once were the Golden State, the state that everyone wanted to live in. This past census shows how that's changed.
For the first time in recent history, California didn't gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Another thing that's crippling California's economy are the militant environmentalists that insist on protecting the Delta Smelt while killing the formerly crop-rich Central Valley.
If there isn't a quick return to fiscal sanity in California, don't expect to see surpluses anytime soon. This isn't surprising. This is what happens when progressive policies are put in place, then kept in place for any amount of time.
Tags: Deficits , California , Pensions , Tax Hikes , Delta Smelt , Environmentalists , Higher Education , UCal-Berkeley , Administrators , Budget Crisis , Jerry Brown , Grey Davis , Progressives
Posted Sunday, May 13, 2012 9:47 AM
Comment 1 by Jethro at 13-May-12 02:01 PM
SCSU is helping California's economy by spending around one-half million on a marketing company. Wonder how much money MnSCU spends on hiring firms for administrators?
Comment 2 by SusanDuclos at 13-May-12 02:46 PM
I just did a piece as well on California and some interesting trivia came up: According to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), illegal immigration costs California nearly $22 billion each year.
I am not sure what type of calculator Governor Brown is using, but according to my calculator, if Brown stopped spending $21.8 billion on benefits for illegal aliens in his state, that $16 billion deficit would turn into a $5.8 billion surplus without raising taxes or cutting social services and education for those residents there legally.
Response 2.1 by Gary Gross at 13-May-12 03:56 PM
Susan, Your logic is impeccable, which means you aren't a Democrat. Thanks for those statistics.
Comment 3 by walter hanson at 13-May-12 06:32 PM
Susan and Gary:
Lets not forget years ago California overwhelming passed a proposition to do that (the thing that turned Hispanics off to Republicans) and the courts immediately shot it down.
The thing that gets me in 2011 Democrats in Minnesota said tax increases and no restraint on spending is what was going to save Minnesota from financial disaster. Will the Democrats in California learn that lesson? Will Minnesota Democrats learn that lesson?
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
This year's swing voter
Each election, the media latches onto a group of voters who tipped the election for this candidate or that. In 1996, soccer moms were the group that tipped the election in Clinton's direction. In 2004, security moms and NASCAR dads tipped the election in George W. Bush's direction. In 2010, Momma Grizzlies led to the biggest up- and down-ticket trouncing in modern political history.
It isn't surprising that Salena Zito's latest column has identified this year's swing voters:
CANTON, Ohio -- Rudy is the quintessential average white guy, right down to his last name. "It literally is Guy," he said, laughing at the irony.
Born in New Eagle and raised in Charleroi in Pennsylvania's Monongahela Valley, Guy comes from a long line of Democrats. "My grandfather worked at Corning Glass, my father worked in the mines, the steel mill and finally at Corning," he recalled. "The family always had union ties, and that usually meant a tie to the Democratic Party."
That's no longer true for him, however: "As my life started to improve financially, I realized that unions seemed to be damaging the economy and Democrat legislation always seemed to impact my wallet."
It's true that President Obama carried average white guys in 2008. Nonetheless, President Obama's connection to average working Joes was tenuous at best.
Things started going downhill for President Obama with average white guys when he started helping his political allies (think Solyndra). They tumbled further downhill for him when he started picking fights with average white guy industries to energize his base (think coal mining in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana).
If this article is representative of what's happening in the Rust Belt states, it's fair to think that President Obama's policies are creating the newest generation of Reagan Democrats.
I wrote that President Obama and Sen. Brown are vulnerable in Ohio . Salena Zito's article, coupled with the most recent polling paint a picture that's disconcerting to Mssrs. Axelrod and Plouffe.
President Obama's coalition of 2008 has shrunk substantially. Doctors don't like him. Young people see the debt he's heaping on their shoulders. Union members are getting shafted by him. Instead, he's doing what the militant environmentalists want him to do.
Simply put, President Obama's policies are making him vulnerable this time. If President Obama is defeated this November, which I think will happen, he'll only have himself to blame.
Not standing up to thugs has a way of coming back to bite you in general elections, doesn't it?
UPDATE: Follow this link for a more comprehensive look at the state of the race.
Tags: President Obama , Average White Guys , Miners , Unions , Pennsylvania , Indiana , Ohio , Virginia , Rust Belt , Manufacturers , Democrats , Election 2012
Posted Sunday, May 13, 2012 5:57 PM
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Who's the extremist: Paul Begala or the TEA Party?
Twenty years ago, Paul Begala had a moment in the sun. He's lived off that moment for the last 2 decades. It's time to end the charade that he's part of the mainstream of American politics. He isn't. Begala's latest temper tantrum is proof of that. Here's a perfect example of Begala's immoderation:
Today's Republicans are different. They truly have put partisanship ahead of patriotism, as the political scientists Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann document in their book, Even Worse Than it Looks. 'The GOP,' they write, 'has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.'
Let's explode this myth into tiny bits by asking Mr. Begala some pointed questions.
First, is it patriotic to put the vast majority of our oil, natural gas and coal offlimits? That's what President Obama, his EPA and the militant environmentalists have done. The next question is simple: If putting America's natural resources offlimits is patriotic, does that mean that higher gas prices, inflated grocery prices and expensive electric bills are patriotic?
Second, is it patriotic to compromise with people whose policies are driven by ideology (think cap and trade) or by the worst parts of crony capitalism (think Solyndra)?
Third, Mssrs. Ornstein and Mann said that the GOP is "unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science." Would that be like the facts, evidence and science that were fudged by the leading voices of climate change? At minimum, the facts, evidence and science are questionable. At maximum, they've been utterly discredited by peer-reviewed scientists.
Fourth, is it patriotic to smear Sarah Palin simply for standing up for time-tested free market principles?
By comparison, Sen. Rockefeller isn't supporting the use of coal ash in highways. It's important that we remember that he's the senior senator from West Virginia, a state that would be in poverty if not for the coal industry.
Is it patriotic or extreme to hate the driver of a state's economy? I'd argue that a senator who won't represent his state's econommy isn't being patriotic.
Finally, it's important that we discredit the premise that TEA Party conservatives are extremists. That's why I tried disproving that premise with my questions. TEA Party patriots only seem extreme if they're viewed through the lens of someone who views the true mainstream of American politics from a distance.
Tags: Liberals , Paul Begala , Thomas Mann , Norm Ornstein , Jay Rockefeller , Fossil Fuels , EPA , Environmentalists , Democrats , TEA Party , Activism , Election 2012
Posted Monday, May 14, 2012 12:32 AM
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Militant environmentalists use EAJA to undermine private property rights
The thought of the federal government paying militant environmentalists to sue the federal government should set thoughtful people's hair on fire. Incredibly, that's what's been happening for years, thanks to the Equal Access to Justice Act. Thanks to Sen. John Barrasso, it looks like that's about to stop :
Under the Equal Access to Justice Act, or EAJA, which was signed into law by President Carter in 1980 to help the little guy stand up to federal agencies, litigants with modest means who successfully show government agencies wronged them can get their legal fees back from the taxpayer.
But the act also covers 501(c)(3) nonprofits, including environmental groups that aggressively sue the feds to enforce land-use laws, the Clean Water and Clean Air acts and laws protecting endangered species. Their lawyers are getting reimbursed at rates as high as $750 an hour, sources tell FoxNews.com.
'It was intended for helping our nation's veterans, seniors and small business owners, but environmental groups have hijacked the so-called Equal Access to Justice Act and abused it to fund their own agenda,' Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told FoxNews.com. 'Then you have small businesses and the American taxpayers left to foot the bill.'
Environmental groups, however, argue that the act is an important tool in their efforts to protect the public's interest in conservation, fighting pollution and ensuring the federal government follows its own rules.
These militant environmentalist organizations don't need federal assistance. Their abuse of EAJA simply saves their deep-pocketed benefactors' money for other attacks against capitalists. I'm not certain about this but I think the MCEA was reimbursed with EAJA funds when they continued their attrition litigation against the Big Stone II coal-fied power plant in Milbank, SD.
Paul Aasen, MCEA's Executive Director at the time, bragged about how they kept losing their cases but still wound up grinding the investors down:
Along with our allies at the Izaak Walton League of America, the Union of Concerned Scientists and Wind on the Wires, the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and Fresh Energy argued, first in South Dakota, then before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), that the new plant was a bad idea. Our message was simple: The utilities had not proven the need for the energy, and what energy they did need could be acquired less expensively through energy efficiency and wind.
We kept losing, but a funny thing happened. With each passing year, it became clearer that we were right. In 2007, two of the Minnesota utilities dropped out , citing some of the same points we had been making. The remaining utilities had to go through the process again with a scaled-down 580-megawatt plant.
In short, anti-energy organizations like the MCEA and the Izaak Walton League get their attrition litigation subsidized by the American taxpayer to harm American taxpayers. These and other militant environmental organizations don't care about cheap electric bills or low gas prices.
The attrition litigation will stop if Sen. Barrasso and Rep. Lummis have anything to say about it:
'It is among the most wide-reaching statutes in the U.S. Code, and what it attempts to do is as complex in execution as it is simple in concept: to aid those who would otherwise be truly hurt by fighting the government when it acts without justification,' wrote Lowell Baier, author of the article and president of the Boone and Crockett Club, a Montana-based conservationist group. 'But it is clear that EAJA is in need of reform.'
Critics say the act needs to be reformed in order to serve its original purpose. Baier calls for limiting it to small businesses and individuals and withholding or at least limiting payments where plaintiffs prevail on 'process instead of substance.'
In May, Barrasso and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., jointly introduced the Government Litigation Savings Act to reform the Equal Access to Justice Act. If passed, the bill would cap reimbursements at $200 per hour. It would also limit repetitive lawsuits and require full accounting of payments authorized by the Equal Access law, the GAO report found.
If you read Karen Budd-Falen's testimony to Congress , be prepared to get hopping mad. Here's a paragraph from page 2 of her testimony:
In 2007, the FWS withdrew the 2004 listing decision based upon the fact that the Slickspot peppergrass was already well protected by the implementation of the CCA. However, the WWP disagreed and sued the FWS over the Slickspot peppergrass again. WWP won and received an award in attorneys fees of $110,000. See Western Watersheds Project v. Kempthorne, 07-cv-161, (D.Id. 2009). The FWS has now prepared its draft designation of critical habitat for the plant. The comment period closes on December 12, 2011. Thus far, the total attorneys fees paid related to the ESA listing of the Slickspot peppergrass is $238,163.00.
Simply put, WWP's attorneys have been reimbursed almost $250,000 after a problem's been solved.
It's one thing for people to have access to the courts. It's another to be reimbursed by taxpayers for repeated, indeed frequent, access to the courts. That isn't litigation. That's attrition. In fact, it might qualify as a racket.
Make sure you read Budd-Falen's testimony. It's both infuriating and compelling. This paragraph is especially compelling:
According to Mr. Lyons, if the WWP is successful in their efforts, it would mean a death sentence to the Slickspot peppergrass and ruination of our ranches . These ranchers would have to sell their cattle and in some cases that money would not cover the mortgage on the ranch.
Like I said, it's attrition, not litigation.
Tags: Militant Environmentalists , Izaak Walton League , MCEA , Paul Aasen , Attrition , Private Property Rights , Western Watersheds Projects , Democrats , John Barrasso , Cynthia Lummis , EAJA , Reforms , Karen Budd-Falen , GOP
Posted Monday, May 14, 2012 5:49 AM
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Will Dayton child care EO end unionization of child care small businesses?
The question now facing the Dayton administration is whether their EO will end child care unionization nationwide. The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota's article lays out a compelling case for why small business unionization is unconstitutional:
A dozen licensed family home child care providers have challenged the constitutionality of child care unionization. Specifically, the Minnesota small business owners, all women, contend the union election authorized via Governor Mark Dayton's (D-MN) executive order violates their first amendment right of free political expression and association. The federal action raises constitutional challenges to the unions' state-by-state strategy of bringing licensed family child care providers under the SEIU and AFCSME banners.
Here's the text of the First Amendment :
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
According to the literal translation of the First Amendment, Congress can't make laws that tells people or small businesses how they shall "petition the government for a redress of their grievances."
The text of the First Amendment is clear. Laws can't be made that tell the people how they'll petition government to settle grievances. Certainly, laws can't tell people who'll represent them in settling grievances.
'It's unconstitutional because the first amendment guarantees everyone the right to choose with whom they associate to petition government and that the government can't choose who's going to represent providers for lobbying the state,' said Bill Messenger, an attorney with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation team on the case.
Having government pick who can or can't represent small businesses is absurd. Businesses have that right based on the plain text of the First Amendment.
If this makes it to the Supreme Court, the Roberts Court will strike down the unionization of small businesses without hesitation.
That's bad news for PEUs but the good news of such a case is that Gov. Dayton would be a prominent footnote in Supreme Court history, albeit not for the reason he'd hoped for.
Tags: Child Care Providers , Small Businesses , First Amendment , Unionization , Mark Dayton , AFSCME , SEIU , DFL , Constitution , SCOTUS , Lobbyists
Posted Monday, May 14, 2012 7:51 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 14-May-12 08:14 AM
Are you saying the government cannot make rules as to how petitioning it will be processed? I don't understand.
People can petition, but how exactly does that relate to how the government elects to deal with child care providers?
Perhaps on this one, going all the way back to square one, what it is that you say Dayton proposes, IN CONTEXT, and then why you do not like it besides a predilection against unions. I don't mean it as a smart alec comment, just that from the start I never understood this issue. What's the Dayton proposal, what's the beef?
Comment 2 by Gary Gross at 14-May-12 08:38 AM
I'm saying that government can't tell small businesses who will represent them when they petition government.
Comment 3 by Gary Gross at 14-May-12 08:40 AM
My problem with Dayton'e intent is that he's telling small businesses who will represent them in lobbying government. Government doesn't have that authority. That's as constitutionally protected as churches are protected against the government telling them what they can or can't believe.
Both protections are found in the First Amendment. Churches are protected by the Establishment Clause. Businesses are protected by the last clause in the First Amendment where it talks about freedom of association.
Do-Nothing Legislature? Pi-Press doesn't think so
The minute the session adjourned last week, the DFL started with their 'do-nothing legislature' chanting point mantra. The DFL didn't count on this editorial popping up in the Pi-Press because it demolishes their chanting points of a do-nothing legislature:
From his vantage point, the biennium has been "a remarkable period, not just for business, but for potential job growth," says Charlie Weaver, executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, an organization that includes the CEOs of Minnesota's largest companies.
As the biennial period began, in 2011, the state had a $6 billion deficit, and had seen little education reform. Further, the rate of heath and human services spending was unsustainable.
By the end of the 2012 session this past week, the focus on fiscal discipline had paid off, Weaver told us, moving the state to a $1 billion surplus, getting health and human services costs "under control without hurting people," and undergirding signature education reforms.
Those successes should mean a more resilient Minnesota as the strain on our public budgets continues in years to come. The early forecast for the next biennium suggests a deficit between $1 billion and $2 billion.
For business interests, however, the 2012 session isn't yet over. The revised tax bill awaiting Gov. Mark Dayton's signature is an "incredibly important last piece of the agenda," Laura Bordelon of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce told us. "It will affect every business in the state."
When ABL appeared on the landscape, I wrote that the GOP legislature should tout their HHS reform legislation that dropped the spending increase from 16% per biennium spending to 5% per biennium.
Eliminating the $6,200,000,000 deficit left from the DFL legislature and replacing it with a $1,200,000,000 surplus without raising taxes is another major accomplishment that GOP candidates and incumbents should run on.
Many came to the Capitol with a jobs agenda, Bordelon said, but "how people defined 'jobs' turned out to be very different." Some focused on the jobs to be created by the spending of tax money via a bonding bill or a new Vikings stadium.
"Ours is a broader focus on the business climate; it's why our agenda looks the way it does," and includes such issues as energy and health care costs, as well as education, she said.
Wins for business this session include a measure that further streamlines environmental permitting. It extends 2011 legislation removing additional obstacles for businesses by addressing timing and procedural issues. It passed both houses with bipartisan support and was signed by Dayton.
It's telling that it took me less than 3 minutes to cite 3 major reforms that helped change the trajectory of the state budget while protecting taxpayers' wallets.
Tags: Chanting Points , A Better Legislature , ABM , Deficits , DFL , Tax Cuts , Reforms , Permitting , HHS , Surplus , MNGOP , Election 2012
Posted Monday, May 14, 2012 11:25 AM
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RP announces he won't contest Romney nomination
This afternoon, Ron Paul announced that he won't contest the remaining GOP primaries :
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said Monday he will not compete in primaries in any of the states that have not yet voted, essentially confirming Mitt Romney will win the Republican presidential nomination.
Mr. Paul said he will continue to work to win delegates in states that have already voted and where the process of delegate-selection is playing out. He said that's a way to make his voice heard at the Republican nominating convention in Tampa, Fla., in August.
'Moving forward, however, we will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted,' Mr. Paul said. 'Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have.'
This is a smart move from a political standpoint. This gesture will earn RP a measure of goodwill with the GOP 'power structure' such as it exists. Hoepfully, this sends the signal to his supporters that the time for acrimony is past and that the time to take the U.S. in a direction that puts it on firm financial footings.
Had he continued campaigning, he wouldn't have gotten a good return on his investment. He might've won a few more delegates but he wouldn't have won the goodwill that'll be needed to help Rand Paul if he thinks about running for president.
Friday night, Ron Paul is scheduled to deliver a speech at the Republican Party State Convention here in St. Cloud, which I'll be covering from inside the campaign hall. If he doesn't reschedule, I plan on liveblogging and tweeting about Dr. Paul's speech Friday night.
Tags: Ron Paul , Rand Paul , Mitt Romney , Nomination , GOP , Conventions , Election 2012
Posted Monday, May 14, 2012 6:16 PM
Comment 1 by Sam at 15-May-12 12:39 PM
Based on the results, I didn't think he had been contesting any of the primaries.
Comment 2 by walter hanson at 15-May-12 04:09 PM
Gary:
I think there is only one good reason why he is doing what he is doing. He's trying not to harm Rand Paul's future.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
