A Big Fat Zero

The Taxpayers League of Minnesota has published its annual scorecard for Minnesota Senators and Representatives. Download it here, save it and peruse it.

Representative Jeremy Kalin (D-17B) scored a big fat goose egg on all twelve issues. In other words, he has never seen a tax increase he did not like.

And wonder of wonders, Senator Rick Olseen (D-17) tied with Kalin with a zero rating. He too has never seen a tax increase he did not like.

If it were not for Governor Pawlenty’s veto pen and the legislature’s failure to override, Chisago County taxpayers would be in tax overload. These elected officials do not represent Chisago County taxpayers.

Why U.S. kids rank 33rd in math

Walter E. Williams

American education will never be improved until we address one of the problems seen as too delicate to discuss. That problem is the overall quality of people teaching our children. Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have graduated with an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admissions tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. As such, they are home to the least able students and professors with the lowest academic respect. Were we serious about efforts to improve public education, one of the first things we would do is eliminate schools of education.

This paragraph should grab your attention, but read the whole article here.

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The amount of money spent educating a child has little or no relationship to that child’s learning according to Williams. We all knew that, but these numbers substantiate it. Senator Olseen needs to put that in his pipe and smoke it before he wastes more of our tax dollars as noted in the previous post.

Olseen Pandering to Raise Taxes

The Chisago County Press carried the following December 6, 2007 appeal by Senator Rick Olseen (D-17). His article entitled, We must find a better way to fund schools, can be found online at the Forest Lake Times and at Olseen’s Senate site. Please read it online and then consider my comments.

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Former Governor Jesse Ventura brought about a higher level of state funding for education and a corresponding lowering of property taxes that funded schools. That legislation allowed local property owners to vote on school levies for more dollars to augment state funding, which many districts have done.

Senator Olseen says, "...we must move away from our reliance on operating levies to fund education in Minnesota." He wants to move beyond Ventura "...to ensure that ALL kids receive a quality education"—more money from the state so local referenda are not needed.

Of course this is for the kids—children get dragged into everything the Dems want. They are the excuse to soften up the taxpayer to be willing to let go of more hard-earned money.

Olseen is empathetic with local taxpayers who are stressed to come up with the cash to pay for local school operating levies. In fact he is so empathetic that he wants the state to pay for the extra cash for education so we taxpayers don’t have to do that. Wow! Isn’t that generous of him?

Apparently Olseen thinks the state is an ATM machine; it can tap into cash that just magically appears. This is how Dems always talk—it’s free so you would be stupid not to go along with it. We voters are not so stupid to realize that those who are stressed to come up with the cash to pay for local school operating levies are the same ones who will be taxed by the state to pay for the increased state funding of education. We will have the same stress either way, Senator Olseen.

Olseen is also in favor of taking away the local taxpayer’s voice in local funding. He is much in favor of the legislature usurping that say. The vote of thousands in each school district in his senate district will be preempted by his vote in the Senate. By one vote he will dip into your pocketbook to fund schools at the level he thinks is right. Who made him a god over us? I don’t want that kind of stress either!

Senatorial Partisanship

On August 21, Senator Rick Olseen (D-17) wrote a news release entitled Time to Invest in Transportation Infrastructure. With the need to rebuild the I-35W bridge is mind, he wrote:

The time is now to come together in the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship to reach a solution that properly addresses the funding deficiencies that have been plaguing our transportation system for many years.

On September 12, he wrote about the one day special session to provide disaster relief, saying:

I’m pleased that the governor and Legislature were able to work together and deliver this much-needed relief to those who have been affected by this disaster. Although I am disappointed that this special session did not address the broad safety concerns facing our state’s roads and bridges, I’m hopeful that this spirit of compromise will continue and an agreement on a comprehensive transportation package will be reached in time for the 2008 Legislative Session.

While we may not agree with all of Senator Olseen’s solutions, his tone is much appreciated. He expresses that the Governor, Senate and House must work together for Minnesota, laying partisanship aside.

After this seeming good start, however, Olseen is now lining up with his DFL buddies against the Pawlenty administration, calling for the resignation of Transportation Commissioner Carol Molnau. T.W. Budig reports about Olseen:

"The best possible thing for her (Molnau) is to gracefully resign and pass the torch to someone else," said Sen. Rick Olseen, DFL-Harris, speaking at a Wednesday (Sept. 26) press conference in the shadow of the Lafayette Bridge on the Mississippi River in St. Paul.

What happened to the spirit of compromise and bipartisanship? He has joined the attack dogs. Without adequately stating publicly any actual causes or reasons, the wolf pack just wants to take her down. The dogs smell blood and will not be satisfied until they get it.

With this latest declaration, we now should return to his two press releases. Perhaps we need to read them as a statement that the Republican Governor needs to demonstrate a spirit of compromise and bipartisanship and that Olseen was not personally adopting a spirit of compromise and bipartisanship. If that is not the case, he has changed his attitude from August to September.

Once this attitude is adopted, Molnau will not be able to do anything right in the eyes of the attack dogs. Anything that goes wrong (and there is plenty of that), will be her fault even if it is not her fault. We had hoped for a statesman; we are getting a partisan politician.