Economic Forecast for Minnesota

You can find the November 2007 Economic Forecast at Minnesota’s Department of Finance. A budget deficit of $373 million is now projected for the biennium. Previously a balance of $294 million had been expected.

House Minority Leader Marty Seifert held a brief media response to the budget forecast. His comments include:

We do not need tax increases.

Sacrifices need to take place. The question being asked is who is doing the sacrificing? Republicans believe sacrifices need to take place within government. Democrats believe sacrifice happens with businesses and families.

Republicans and Governor Tim Pawlenty brought fiscal discipline to the legislative process last session. Without the Governor's line item vetoes, bonding bill vetoes the budget deficit could have been more than $500 million. We need fiscal accountability. The Democrats should stay within the debt limit of $965 million for the bonding bill. The bonding bill should be focused on infrastructure like roads and bridge. It would be irresponsible to blow that limit and put that much more on the state credit card.

All levels of government must live within their means — state, county and local.

The House GOP will look toward cuts in government spending to resolve this budget deficit. We talk about fiscal restraint but we need cuts in wasteful spending. FY2010-2011 has a projected major deficit. We need to prepare and get spending under control.

We will again bring fiscal discipline to session. There should be no permanent spending with one-term money, the bonding bill should stay within the debt limit and we don't need to raise taxes.


Sen. Dave Senjem also responded:

This is a wake up call.

We live in a highly taxed state. Our business climate is suffering. We rank 42 in the nation for business climate. We need to create investments in our business climate. We should be in the top 10. Business expansion is not happening in Minnesota because there are no incentives to grow business.

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This is good advice from our Republican leaders. By incentives, I assume Senjem means cutting government regulation and taxes that drive businesses out of the state. Minnesota needs to compete in a world economy. More importantly, Minnesota must compete with all other states. If Dems keep creating a deleterious climate for business, they will leave for other states that do not make business unprofitable.

We keep hearing the ads from Sioux Falls begging for business to leave Minnesota’s high tax rate behind. That’s not good for Minnesota, but Sioux Falls doesn’t realize it’s creating its own growth problems with congestion and the need for ever more infrastructure.

Income and Hype

Income confusion
By Thomas Sowell

Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating.

With that enticement, read the rest of this good article.

And read what Walter E. Williams has to say about this subject in his article entitled The truth about taxes and 'the rich'.

Regional Global Warming Pact

A while ago I posted comments on Governor Pawlenty’s involvement in global warming prevention. Here are Senator Michael Jungbauer’s comments posted by Drew Emmer. Jungbauer is rightly concerned.

This Can't Possibly be True, Can It?

Democrats party of rich, study finds
By Donald Lambro

Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts.

Read more about the rich....

Mankind 'shortening the universe's life'

By Roger Highfield

Forget about the threat that mankind poses to the Earth: our activities may be shortening the life of the universe too.

The startling claim is made by a pair of American cosmologists investigating the consequences for the cosmos of quantum theory, the most successful theory we have. Over the past few years, cosmologists have taken this powerful theory of what happens at the level of subatomic particles and tried to extend it to understand the universe, since it began in the subatomic realm during the Big Bang.

But there is an odd feature of the theory that philosophers and scientists still argue about. In a nutshell, the theory suggests that we change things simply by looking at them and theorists have puzzled over the implications for years.

Continue reading here....

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Not all that long ago, cosmologists loved to tell us how insignificant we are compared to the vast universe. We were told we are specks of dust, vacuous and trivial in the cosmos. Of course the aim of that was to belittle the Christian and Jewish belief that each individual is made in the image of God and therefore significant.

Now some cosmologists have the arrogance to suggest a theory that we are so significant that by looking at the cosmos we can shorten its life. Not content to be insignificant specks of dust, and not wanting to acknowledge the Christian God, some cosmologists arrogate themselves to be gods. Oh the audacity of some!

Continuing the series

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINES
How 1 scared Marine redeemed himself
Surviving in Haditha: A secret side of military life the press never reports
By Matt Sanchez

Reporter Matt Sanchez, currently embedding with military units throughout both Iraq and Afghanistan, has been providing WND readers with a glimpse into the Iraq war most Americans have never seen.

Read his article.

Thank God on this Thanksgiving Day

World should give thanks for America
By Mark Steyn

Speaking as a misfit unassimilated foreigner, I think of Thanksgiving as the most American of holidays.

Read the rest of this nice piece by an outsider who knows America well. Steyn concludes:

Americans should, as always, be thankful this Thanksgiving, but they should also understand just how rare in human history their blessings are.

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It is good to reflect, as does Steyn, how different America is from other countries. Our European ancestors and immigrants said no to the concept of kings and queens of European monarchies. They said no to the class of lords and ladies of the governing aristocracy. They repudiated the concept of a state church which bound the conscience in forced worship. They adopted the rule of law, a republic, as their form of government in which no one is above the law.

The American experiment has not been perfect because it truly was an experiment, shaping a society, nation and government that had never existed previously in the world. And of course it could not be perfect because human beings are not perfect. However, our ancestors created, through dependence upon God, a marvelous, unique place to exercise our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But we are letting this greatness slip away from us quickly. We look for utopia in this world instead of the modest and realistic goal of living out our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the utopia moderns are pandering for, God is excluded. Pandering after that utopia, we hanker to create rights that God does not give us. So we ourselves desire to give them to ourselves. Collectively, we look to government to create and grant those rights to us. We twist and torture our Constitution to grant us those selfishly desired rights.

In the American experiment we have returned to looking to government to meet all our needs, which our predecessors rejected. Rule of law is fast becoming the rule of lawyers–a new class, which inherently creates a ruled class. Judges play God, creating law rather than applying law. Too many presidential candidates cannot wait for their coronation. Senators all too eagerly have become lords and ladies. And we are satisfied to conceive of ourselves as commoners who must appeal to lords and ladies, kings and queens.

My fellow Americans, it is time we back up at least 75 years in our American experiment and start afresh. We have freedom when we recognize that each of us stands equal before God in this world and are accountable to him for all our actions toward all others who should enjoy that same God-given right to freedom. Thank God today for what we have remaining in the American experiment. And work to keep America free.

UN, AIDS and Global Warming

Public policy is generally determined by data and government spending is determined on the basis of that data. Spending on AIDS has increased to $10 billion per year and is classified as a pandemic.

Now the United Nations has greatly reduced the estimate of the worldwide number of AIDS cases. Read the story here.

Daniel Halperin, an AIDS epidemiologist, said, "the numbers are probably still on the high side."

Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS," was quoted as saying, "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda."

Public policy, pandemic, fundraising––these are words that should lead to far more analysis of the data presented for a myriad of other issues on which governments want to spend your money.

On a related note, if the UN can’t get a good handle on the number of AIDS cases worldwide, how is it possible for the UN to have any credibility regarding global warming in its recent warning? The latter is vastly more complex than the former. But you can be certain that the "unequivocal" UN data will be used to drive fundraising through scare tactics. The manipulators are at work, the do-gooders must save the earth from you.

The climate views of John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel, will go unheeded. His non-alarmist declaration doesn’t require spending tax dollars or public policy created by manipulators. Have project, need data. Just manipulate the people with manipulated data.

Talk about faulty data. Check out this on official thermometers. We called attention to this back in July.

Update Nov. 27: Of course the UN needed to offer its denial of cooking the books.

Reflections on Sonia Pitt

Sonia Pitt was properly fired from Mn/DOT for several violations. Read the Pioneer Press accounts here and here and here and the Star Tribune report.

Governor Pawlenty agreed that the firing was proper according to this Press article.

And Governor Pawlenty has called for an investigation to ascertain if Pitt had proper supervision at Mn/DOT (Press accounts here and here and Star Tribune).

Given the vast number of state employees, perhaps every day there are employee firings and/or disciplines of varying degree. This one made the news because it was high profile. A collapsing bridge made her conspicuous by her absence.

Government waste and even fraud is legendary. Taxpayers hate it, as we should. To be fair, we must recognize that the vast majority of state government employees are honest and hard-working, but a few bad apples can make the whole barrel appear rotten. And many a supervisor has been driven to misery by a wayward employee who is protected very much from firing.

What Pitt did is bad enough, but the real odious ones are the politicians, the supercilious ones. According to the Press article, "Senate Assistant Majority Leader Tarryl Clark, DFL-St. Cloud, said Pitt's firing was welcome "but three months late"." That’s easy to say to score political points for herself against the Republican administration; she probably would have said little or nothing if it were a Democrat administration.

The investigation should have been lengthy in order to be thorough. There was a massive amount of documents to review and there were numerous people to interview. The investigation needed to be fair to Pitt and the state needed to be correct in its assessment in order to avoid an employment lawsuit. Mn/DOT needed to do the personnel investigation properly so that no one could say it was not thorough. Thus Senator Clark’s criticism of Mn/DOT’s timetable is self-serving.

Another odious politician in this affair is Jeremy Kalin (D-17B), concerning whom we have posted several times on the issue. Like a vulture from beginning to end in this case, he has been waiting for Pitt to fall. For a freshman legislator, he sure has thrust himself into the limelight through his web site and local paper declarations and pandering after Twin Cities papers and radio regarding Pitt and the bridge collapse to get his name in the media. This is self-serving at the expense of a failing state employee and a state tragedy that took 13 lives and injured scores. He has played partisan politics with calamity for his own personal benefit. He has demonstrated clearly that he puts politics (especially his own) before people, contrary to his mantra.

Kalin was salivating over Pitt’s spending of tax dollars for personal gain. Even though she spent tax dollars for herself and cost the state more to investigate her misdeeds, that total amount is nothing compared to the tax dollars legislators spend. They can bellyache about Pitt, but think nothing of appropriating billions of our dollars, much of which is wasted or has dubious purposes. This last session, the Dems, including Kalin, approved bills that would have cost the taxpayers more than $4 billion if Governor Pawlenty had not vetoed over 50 bills.

This highway robbery makes Pitt look like a small time operator. It’s Kalin and the big time Democrats who should be fired. In order to fund "local property tax relief" for some, Kalin was willing to reach brazenly and shamelessly into the pockets of 61 Chisago County "rich" taxpayers to fund it. What’s the difference between Kalin and Pitt? As an employee, her acts were illegal; as a legislator, he can make wrong legal.

Governors sign energy pact to cut use, build new resources

By EMILY FREDRIX

MILWAUKEE—Midwestern governors and a Canadian premier agreed to two pacts Thursday to reduce greenhouse gases, increase alternative fuel production and raise renewable energy standards.

Other regions of the country, including the Northeast and West, have adopted similar climate accords. The Midwestern deals, brokered by the 12-state Midwest Governors Association, blast the federal government for not dealing with global warming.

"The U.S. federal government has not met the challenge to date of crafting a comprehensive national response to climate change," one agreement says. " The effects of climate change present growing economic, social and environmental risks in the Midwest and the world ... we must begin to take action now."

The governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa and Michigan as well as Gary Doer, premier of Manitoba, performed a symbolic signing in Milwaukee Thursday. Not all states in the association have agreed to every part of the two deals.

One agreement calls for developing a cap-and-trade mechanism to reduce greenhouse gases. Under that system, businesses that don't meet the goals would be able to obtain credit from ones that do.

The plan calls for laying out concrete goals within the next eight months and establishing the cap-and-trade system within a year, with the entire agreement implemented within two-and-a-half years.

Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin agreed to that deal, according to an association ballot circulated among the states. Indiana, Ohio and South Dakota have agreed as observers.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland believes the federal government should deal with greenhouse gases, not the states, his spokesman said.

South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds said he wants to understand the costs to energy consumers and producers before signing.

"We're not convinced we have in front of us the answers we can all agree to," Rounds said.

Under the other pact, biofuels produced in the Midwest and other low-carbon fuels would make up at least half of all transportation energy consumed in the region by 2025. A third of retail gas stations in the region, or about 10,000 stations, would offer the ethanol-based gasoline E-85 by that year.

Thirty percent of electricity in the region would come from renewable sources by 2030. All new coal plants would capture and store carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, and a multi-jurisdiction pipeline would be permitted by 2012 to move carbon dioxide captured from new plants to a reservoir.

The deal calls for working groups, state officials and gubernatorial and premier staffs to being making recommendations early next year on how to reach those goals.

Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Manitoba, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin agreed to all parts of that pact, according to the ballot. Other states agreed to parts.

"If we continue on with the status quo, we are in serious, serious danger in terms of quality of life," Doer said.

Doyle, a Democrat, praised the deals, saying they would create "enormous" economic opportunity for Midwestern energy researchers and manufacturers.

"Our strong manufacturing base and rich agricultural industries, along with the wealth of resources in our vast northern forests and our world-leading research universities, position the Midwest to become the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy," he said in a statement released by his office.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, said the accords could serve as a national model.

"In the not-too-distant future, we want to see national improvement and we hope the states can lead the way," Pawlenty said.

Minnesota state Sen. Michael Jungbauer, R-East Bethel, called the accords a "boondoggle" and criticized Pawlenty for being part of it.

He accused Pawlenty of focusing on a politically popular issue at the expense of more pressing concerns such as transportation.

"I'm mad as heck at our governor for implementing policies that cost a lot of money," Jungbauer said. "There's no cost-benefit analysis and really what they end up being is huge tax increases."

Source: Pioneer Press.

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Senator Jungbauer is right. Gov. Pawlenty has just laid the groundwork for a huge tax increase. The no new taxes governor is no longer that. It is disturbing that a governor would commit a whole state to an agreement such as this. Carbon dioxide pipelines are a mere 4 years away. More and more subsidies will be needed to move toward alternative fuels while cost effective fuels are ostracized. Energy costs will skyrocket. This is taxation without representation.

Government is attempting to solve a problem that does not exist. It is the height of audacity to think that humans are creating global warming. Belief in human-caused global warming is not science, but a religion. Minnesota has now endorsed a state religion with Pawlenty as high priest and evangelist. We will all be forced to worship at this shrine. This is a sad day for Minnesota.

DEMOCRATS TURN A PART-TIME LEGISLATURE INTO A FULL-TIME JOB

House Minority Leader Marty Seifert Says: "It's time to cut government."

SAINT PAUL -- (November 7, 2007) -- Citing the more than 80 committees, subcommittees, working groups, task forces and commissions in the Minnesota House of Representatives, House Republican Leader Marty Seifert today criticized Democrats for the expansive and expensive growth in government.

"The explosive growth of government shows what happens when Democrats take over," said House Republican Leader Marty Seifert. "The complicated and bloated process is confusing to the public, time consuming and expensive. There is very little to show for the excessive amount of meetings taking place. When all is said and done, there will be a lot more said than done."

Seifert said it is nearly impossible to determine how many groups are working on legislation and how much this process is costing Minnesota taxpayers. To view the process, click here:

"There seems to be a lot of repetition without reason. We question the necessity of having so many subgroups working on legislation that a standing committee should be able to accomplish on its own and the great number of meetings being held at taxpayer expense to hear about the problems but not bring forward solutions," Seifert said. "The Democrats have turned a part-time citizen legislature into a full-time job."

Seifert said at a time when schools and nursing homes are struggling to make their budgets, House Democrats chose to almost double its operations budget from $324,000 to $646,000 during a House Rules Committee meeting in August.

"We gave schools a mere 3 percent increase for the biennium and nursing homes received even less than that but then gave gigantic increases to the Legislature," Seifert said. "This is a matter of priorities. The Democrats ran on fiscal responsibility and leadership. They have failed to demonstrate either during their reign of confusion in the Minnesota House. When House Republicans are in charge, we will restore fiscal sanity by cutting the number of committees by more than 50 percent and returning costs to prior levels."

Seifert said he is most concerned about the upcoming legislative session.

"We have important issues we need to resolve and this process doesn’t make me confident that we will achieve those results," Seifert said. "In the private sector, failing businesses are often over managed and under led. The more than 80 House Democrat committees are too busy mopping the floor to take time and turn off the faucet."

Source: Marty Seifert

Also look at the House Committee structure chart under Democrat "leadership."

DFL Woes

Right now, the D in DFL stands for debt

The party needs a $5,000 contribution just to meet this week's payroll. Competition among political campaigns, internal party disillusionment and extra staffing are complicating budgeting. State Republicans, meanwhile, have off-year fundraising troubles, too.
By Doug Grow
Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007

The DFL, which always has presented itself as the political party of the little guy, should have more empathy than ever for all of those Minnesotans living check to check.

A year before a huge election, the party is in debt. Meeting its own payroll has become a week-to-week, white-knuckle ride. One of its big fundraising events of the year lost $48,000. And to complicate matters, a major union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), is on the verge of leaving an important DFL campaign committee.

Read more....

And another article by Doug Grow....

DFL party problems go deeper than finances and debt

There were no signs of unrest. No hard questions about the red-ink budget.

When the DFL Central Committee, a vast body of activists who run the party, met Saturday at Prior Lake High School, good feelings filled the air about financial and electoral successes that surely are just around the corner. Even when the party's chairman Brian Melendez said the party may not be out of debt until January, no one blinked.

All the good will inside the building almost covered the fact that there seem to be structural fissures in the party that could affect its campaign effectiveness next year. Some large bodies of the labor movement are "re-evaluating" their relationships with the DFL.

In both words and actions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the union showing the most unrest. But the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization of unions representing 300,000 Minnesotans, also is cautiously expressing concerns about DFL leadership.

Read more....

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Take heart conservatives. I have a hunch the real cause of low contributions to the DFL has been misdiagnosed. Just maybe the high tax load the DFL always throws on taxpayers is affecting DFL donors! Maybe there isn’t enough moolah to go around. This is probably the case even though DFLers are frustrated that they could not get a $4 billion tax increase passed the conservatives and Gov. Pawlenty in the last legislative session. If they had won, then they would really be in a pickle for donations!

Washington Times Commentary

Socialist oil death spiral
Richard W. Rahn

Socialism always plants the seeds of its own destruction, and state-owned oil is no exception. Most people do not realize that about 90 percent of the world's liquid oil reserves are controlled by governments or state-owned companies. Exxon Mobil, the world's largest privately owned oil company, owns only 1.08 percent of the world's oil reserves, and the five largest private global oil companies together own only about 4 percent of the world's oil reserves.

There is enough liquid oil in the ground to last generations; and when oil sands and oil shale are included, there is enough oil to last centuries. If there were a truly free market in oil, with both the reserves and production owned and controlled by many competitive companies, the price of oil would be a fraction of today's price.

For the rest of the commentary, read this.

Continuing the Series

Making Haditha safe from car-bombs
How U.S. Marines license vehicles in Iraqi-style DMV operation

By Matt Sanchez

It's Tuesday morning, and the 5th battalion 10th Marines out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., are up early and won't be returning to their 'racks until very late.

By 0700 (7 a.m.), Iraqis have begun to form lines in the waiting area just in front of the Civil Military Operational Center, or CMOC, set smack dab in the center of downtown Haditha, directly across the street from the mayor's office.

The Marines had pinned tarps from the rooftop to the gates, so the growing line would have a bit of comfort. As the temperatures rise, a Marine hands out bottled water. Between the dirt-filled Hesco barriers and the C-wire (concertina wire, a modernized and much more effective version of barbed wire), the outside waiting space offers few places to sit. Iraqi women are led to the front of the line so they won't have to wait among the men.

Continue reading more by embedded reporter Sanchez.

Now you know

If you’re white, you’re racist! End of debate. Find out here.