Restoring Common Sense

...one bakery at a time.  The Common Sense Restoration Project.  Say, didn't I once read about another revolution that started in Boston?

H/T InstaPundit.

Race to Oblivion

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal carries an editorial (“California's Coming Green Outs”) that warns of looming disaster for the Golden State.  The editors open with,

Regulate first, think later.  That seems to be the guiding principle of California’s policy makers.  Take the state’s renewable energy standard, which will soon cause a surge in electricity prices and could even lead to rolling blackouts when the weather heats up.

Under California’s renewable energy standard, the state’s electric utilities are obligated to obtain 33 percent of their electricity from certain renewable sources by the year 2020.

The Journal notes that,

Excessive energy costs have helped to obliterate the state’s manufacturing base.

I’m sure glad this is not California.  Wait…what’s that?

It turns out that the Minnesota legislature is considering a 40 percent renewable standard by 2030, with a 4 percent solar-only standard by 2025.

Who will be the first to reach rolling blackout?  Let the race begin!

Dayton Does Town Hall Minnesota

I have been a long-time promoter of the idea of Town Hall Minnesota, a structured setting in which ordinary citizens can question elected officials.

To his credit, Minnesota’s Democrat Governor Mark Dayton has embraced the town hall concept and is now ¾ of the way through another such tour of the state.  By all accounts, the events have been well attended and, perhaps, even productive.

It seems that the Governor receives feedback on these out-state trips that he is not receiving (or heeding) back in St. Paul.

You may recall that, in July 2011, Dayton decided to end the state government shutdown while still in the midst of a statewide tour selling his side of the story. 

The Politics of More

Former third-party candidates for governor Tim Penny and Tom Horner write an occasional column on state politics in the Sunday edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  I know both men to be sincere about improving the state and offer their ideas in good faith.  So with apologies in advance, I submit this post.

Their latest column,” Why does Minnesota get bad policy?”, touches on a theme I have been developing over the past two-and-a-half years.

The authors pose the questions,

Why has it become so hard for politicians to make good decisions?  Why has compromise become a dirty word?

As an example of a good decision, the authors offer the single example of expanding the sales tax base and wonder why current Gov. Mark Dayton’s 2013 Budget 1.0—which included the idea—didn’t receive more support.

I feel confident that had Gov. Dayton proposed a modest expansion of the sales tax base, he would have gotten it.  But his idea was wrapped inside a much bigger, and truly bad, business-to-business sales tax proposal, which doomed the whole package.

The authors talk of compromise, which is odd, because after the 2012 election, we have one party rule in Minnesota, with Democrats controlling the state legislature and the governor’s office.  There should be no need to compromise when everyone is on the same team.

They suggest that,

Rather than start at the point of disagreement—the size and role of government— why not begin on common ground?  That may disappoint special interests, but it is more likely to produce good policy.

As I’ve written before, at this point in history, a debate on the size and scope of government is the only debate worth having.  With one-party rule in Minnesota, it is not a debate likely to break out any time soon.

I would suggest to Messrs. Penny and Horner that in Minnesota we have done—for at least the previous 20 years or so of divided government—exactly as they suggest.  Common ground is what has produced the various sports stadia and rail lines and ever growing government.

To not have the debate on the size and scope is to decide the issue:  in favor of more spending and bigger government.  Having the debate means making tough choices, emphasizing “common ground” means never having to say no.

More Decline and Fall in California

Victor Davis Hanson provides more first hand reporting from the formerly Golden State.

Has the "Creative Class" Theory Failed?

That's the question posed by Joel Kotkin in his newest piece for the Daily Beast.  The Wall Street Journal included an excerpt of the piece in today's paper.  Read the whole thing.

I’m Still Working on “Old”

This week I return to the subject of this February column on the future of the Republican Party.

Here in Minnesota, we are saying farewell to our outgoing party Chair in the midst of the campaign for his replacement.  It’s tough to have a gathering of more than two Republicans without a seminar breaking out on what to do next.

At the national level, the party is going through a self-evaluation of what went wrong in 2012.  The Republican National Committee (RNC) issued a 100-page report, a post-mortem of the last election.  Much of the report’s advice was common sense stuff:  new voter database, better technology, etc.  But the Wall Street Journal reports that,

In focus groups, voters who had left the Republican Party said they found the GOP to be "scary," "narrow-minded," "out of touch" and the party of "stuffy old men."

House DFL Budget Pleads Temporary Insanity

The Democrat majority in the Minnesota House of Representatives has come out with its budget targets for the next two years.  Their plan would increase state spending by $1 billion, with more than half of the net increase dedicated to the Education line item.

House Democrats include Governor’s Dayton’s proposed increase in income taxes on the state’s higher earners, but add on top an additional temporary income tax surcharge on those making more than $500,000 a year.  Funny.  My local Democrat state representative campaigned on lowering taxes.

Over the years, we’ve heard a lot from Democrats about “budget gimmicks” and “kicking the can down the road.”  What could be more gimmicky, or more can kickery, than a temporary surcharge?

Dayton’s Budget 2.0 Road Trip: Hope > Experience

In a classic triumph of hope over experience, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton is taking his Budget 2.0 on a road trip.  Most of the controversial bits from Budget 1.0 were jettisoned, but a few zingers remain.

Dayton is still seeking to raise income tax rates on higher earning households.  His “snowbird  tax” on out-of-state residents remains in the mix.  The snowbird tax has been laughed at from coast to coast to coast.  However, the Governor’s trip will not extend beyond the state’s borders, so it is unlikely that he will run into any potential victims of the tax.

We are now well into the third month of one-party rule in Minnesota.  Democrats control all the levers of power in St. Paul and in the state’s largest cities and counties.  Their progressive allies control the K-12 public school system, the public universities, local media, and the non-profit community.

So it’s fair to ask:  why is there still suffering in Minnesota?  Why have all of the state’s problems not been solved?  What is standing in the way of a snow-covered utopia?

With the passage of the new health care exchange bill, the current legislature has passed exactly 9 laws this term, by coincidence the same number passed by this point in the 2011 session.  You remember 2011, the days of gridlock and partisanship, when no state business was done.

It’s early days yet, there is still time for the new Democrat majorities to legislate the state into oblivion.  But what is the hold up?  Nirvana awaits!

A Palliative Cure for Minnesota’s Economy

Now that Governor Dayton has executed his “do over" on the state budget and the legislature has reached its first deadline of the year, it is a good time to assess where Minnesota stands in the third month of one-party rule.

About a month ago, I observed that those voters still waiting for that pro-growth agenda promised by the state’s Democrat (or DFL, Democrat-Farmer-Labor as we style it in the North Star State) majorities were going to wait in vain.

After unveiling his Budget 2.0, Governor Dayton spoke to the state’s largest business group.  Although accounts of the meeing are wildly divergent (the differing accounts did not go unnoticed), local CBS-TV reporter Pat Kessler filed this report under the headline “Gov. Dayton Lashes Out At Chamber Of Commerce.”

Detroit's Decline and Fall

Walter Russell Mead has a hard-hitting take on the decline of this once-great city, and shines a light on the role of the Wall Street banker in the whole mess.

The Axis of Crazy

Mark Steyn's weekly column.

The University as Political Instrument

Paul Rahe writes on The Perils of Intellectual Apostasy.

Budget Redux

A few weeks back, when Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton first introduced his latest budget proposal, I wrote in this space that the document represented the state's first "post-modern" budget.

If I may quote myself,

"It does not meet the Minnesota of the 21^st century where it can be found, but rather, the Governor’s budget alternates between addressing a Minnesota that exists no longer (if it ever did) and addressing the world as he wished it existed."

Well, less than two months on, the Governor's budget has indeed foundered on the shoals of reality.  Now, the Governor is in the midst of a massive redo, trying to salvage what he can from his mix of new taxes, rebates, and more spending.

The Literal Nanny State

Looking over the horizon at the future of progressive policy, I will try in this space to give early warning of new mandates on the way.

In Minnesota, unions are hard at work, seeking to unionize in-home child care providers.

In seeing what’s next for Minnesota’s child-care industry, I came across this grant of $170,000 in 2011 from the Princeton, New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to Minnesota non-profit Public Health Law Center, located at St. Paul’s William Mitchell College of Law.

To bring the fight against childhood obesity to a new front, Grant No. 69299 reads in part,

“This project will provide new data about the potential for local governments to take meaningful action to prevent childhood obesity through policy implementation in child-care settings.  Because local laws often serve as drivers of state law, this research will help inform childhood obesity prevention policy both at state and local levels around the nation.

“This study aims to: (1) determine the scope of local government authority to impose nutrition and physical activity standards in child-care settings in all 50 states; (2) examine specific local government regulations and other strategies for addressing nutrition and physical activity; and (3) identify examples of promising or innovative local government practices.

You read it here first:  state standards for nutrition and exercise in child-care settings.  Because they know better than you.

Charlie Quimby on Homelessness, 2

Charlie Quimby left a quick comment on my last post on homelessness in Minnesota.  He says he's working on a longer reply.  In the meantime, I encourage those interested in reading about the front lines of the fight against homelessness to visit his blog "The Great Divide".

What We Talk About When We Talk About Homelessness

[Note:  on the subjects of homelessness in Minnesota and government accountability, in this post I respond to the thoughtful comment posted by author Charlie Quimby on this site last week.  I encourage you, the reader to read his comment first before reading this post.]

Upon reflection, I would say that my comments on these subjects have been directed more toward the media and public relations aspects of homelessness, rather than toward the efforts of people doing good work to alleviate the problem.  I hope that view is more clear in this post.

On the usefulness of audacious goals
Mr. Quimby provides some helpful history behind how the last Governor in 2004 brought together state and local governments, along with charities and the private sector, to set the goal of ending long-term homelessness in Minnesota by 2010.

A User's Guide to the Liberal Legacy Media

You hear the constant complaint that the media are biased against conservatives in general and Republicans specifically.  Indeed, straightforward partisan bias--Republicans bad, Democrats good--would appear to explain about 98 percent of the political reporting found in the legacy media.

As explanatory theories go, 98 percent is good, but not good enough.  I have discovered a theory that explains 100 percent of the content found in the legacy media in the areas of politics, government and public affairs.

Charlie Quimby Replies on Homelessness in MN

Author Charlie Quimby posted a reply to my short piece yesterday on homelessness in Minnesota.  Rather than having it buried in the Comments section, I thought it deserved more prominent display.  I will provide a response when I get a few minutes.  Quimby writes,

"Bill, I like reading your perspective on issues. We've gone back and forth on this on Twitter because I couldn't leave a more extended response here earlier.

Ending homelessness is an audacious goal. I know, because I volunteer with the homeless in Minnesota and Colorado. But I also see change and I see people getting into better living situations.

I see children who've been thrown into chaotic situations able stay safe and in school. I see breadwinners get training and help finding employment. I see veterans who've been living in tents for years get into clean, sober housing. I see men whose family life fell apart get admitted to college and reconcile with family members. I see families get short-term financial help to stave off eviction. I see a mentally ill man no longer in trouble with the law because he has stable housing and can consistently take his meds.

For all these people, homelessness ended, but it might not have without the help they received.

Homelessness is not one condition with a fixed population and normal housing supply and demand. As you've acknowledged somewhat, it's dynamic, affected by a variety of factors——broadly social, local and individual. One agency will not change it in a big way by itself, and the leaders of all the public and private organizations working in this field know it.

So have the various agencies and non-profits working on this failed? Is pointing to changing economic factors shrugging shoulders? Has leadership failed, going back to Gov. Pawlenty who, to his credit, initiated the plan?

In our Twitter discussion, I agreed with you on the need for accountability in government and the private sector. But you seem to dismiss or not understand the reasons why organizations adopt big goals and initiate efforts that have a chance of falling short, especially in the short term.

Pawlenty's goal was not for state government alone. It was for business, non-profits, foundations, local government agencies, the faith community and private citizens. And it was intended to create a sense of urgency around tackling a larger issue that crossed so many lines, it would be easier to shrug off responsibility.

Out here in Colorado where I am, there's just such a coalition working homeless issues, ranging from the police department to Catholic Outreach to the public library in addition to housing agencies and the VA.

How do all these diverse entities decide to work together and share credit and expense without a big goal that's out of their individual reach?

I'm sorry that in your desire to beat the accountability drum you picked this target. I'd encourage you to become more informed about the issues and what's being done. Consider how homelessness is not just a "government" problem with a government solution.

Tell me, given your jaundiced view of government, are you truly handing the issue over to government with this: "homelessness will not end in Minnesota until someone in state government's job depends on ending homelessness in Minnesota"?

Or maybe, in your desire to make a point about accountability, you've decided to ignore a larger point about homeless."

Who Will Fix Homelessness in Minnesota?

I've written a couple of times about the problem of homelessness in Minnesota.  The issue perfectly illustrates a number of problems around government accountability and effectiveness.

In 2004, our state government set the goal of ending homelessness by 2010.  The agency in charge says it has met 99 percent of its program goals.

But, somehow, we have more homeless than ever, 10,214 at last count, thousands more than when the 2004 campaign began.  In the past 10 years, state government has spent enough money on the problem to provide a home to each and every one of those 10,214 people.

Yet homeless advocates blame the problem on "market failure."  MinnPost reports on one advocate's opinion,

"The homeless numbers, he says, are 'clear evidence of market failure, both on the wage side and the housing side, the huge mismatch between people’s income and their ability to secure housing.' "

No mention of the half billion dollars spend by state government in the past decade or the blown deadlines, recalibration, or shoulder-shrugging of the people in charge.

I feel confident in predicting that homelessness will not end in Minnesota until someone in state government's job depends on ending homelessness in Minnesota.

Spinning Unemployment Rates

So there I am this morning, eating my breakfast, reading the paper version of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The above-the-fold headline blares,

DOW HITS ALL-TIME HIGH;

STATE ‘ROBUST’ ON JOBS

So I think, “Hey, good news on the economy!”  I check out the headline on the “robust jobs” and read, “In Minnesota: The addition of 12,100 jobs in January comes on top of other positive gains.”  Great, more good news!  I wonder how much the unemployment rate has fallen.

So I read the story, and find out that “Minnesota has recovered nearly 90 percent of the jobs lost since the Great Recession, as the latest jobs report shows the state’s economy is on a roll.”  Wow!  It just keeps getting better.

But then I think, aren’t we five years into the recession?  Just 90 % ?  When are we going to get back all of the jobs lost, plus produce additional jobs for the new workers who have appeared in the past five years? 

Still, I wonder, “Did the unemployment rate fall below 5 percent?”  (It bottomed out at 3.9 percent in mid-2006.)

As instructed, I turn to page A7 of the newspaper.  I read all kinds of stats, see quotes from various people, and then—at the very bottom of the page, tucked in the corner beside a department store ad—I see a number: 5.6 percent.  In the third-to-last paragraph of the story, I find out that the state’s unemployment rate actually went up last month, rising from 5.4 percent to 5.6 percent.  Huh?

Here comes the spin,

“But while the state’s economy is on the mend, [unnamed] economists warned Tuesday that it could take a while for the unemployment rate to stabilize.  An improving economy means that thousands of jobless workers will resume their searches again and will be considered part of the official labor force.  If there aren’t enough positions for them to fill, then unemployment could jump.”

Really?  That may even be true, but never in the history of this great nation has a Republican President or a Republican governor gotten away with that spin.

Under a Governor Emmer or Horner, the headline would have read this morning, DOW HITS ALL-TIME HIGH; STATE FALLS BEHIND ON JOBS.  The emphasis would be on the rising percentage, not the raw numbers of jobs created.

Digging deep into the actual data released yesterday, the real unemployment story is much more disturbing than the spin.  Not only did the state’s unemployment rate go up last month, but the rate in January 2013 was actually higher than it was a full year ago, even while the national unemployment rate has fallen in that time.

Now the Star Tribune’s website is slightly more balanced, with the headline reading, "Minnesota adds 12,100 jobs in January, jobless rate ticks up".  But the damage was done, even before I had my coffee.

Political Charity Stands Astride the World

We are now into the third month of one-party Democrat rule in Minnesota, and political charity finds itself going from triumph to triumph under the Capitol Dome.

On a daily basis, you can actually watch as progressive advocates recalibrate upward what is possible in this receptive policy environment.  It's all hands on deck for every liberal initiative ever conceived of and any half-baked idea will get an airing.

The seeds of today's victories were sown years ago.  You may recall 2011 as the year Republicans took control of the full state legislature for the first time, ever.  For the sophisticated, far-sighted investor in Minnesota's left-wing politics, 2011 was a year that the state's public policy was on sale at some very attractive prices.  As a result, Minnesota now fills a market niche for national foundations as a laboratory for new ideas.

Raising the Stakes on Renewable Energy

The latest proposal would require 40 percent of all electricity in Minnesota to come from renewable sources by 2030.  My advice:  buy a portable generator and install an extra fuel storage tank.

Our Fiscal Past is a Foreign Country

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there

--L. P. Hartley

A couple of weeks ago, a minor kerfuffle arose here in Minnesota over something as seemingly mundane as a “tax incidence” study.  Democrats wanted to study only the impact on taxpayers of state and local taxes.  Republicans wanted to include the impact of Federal taxes.

The dispute may have been minor, but the impact is major.  Taxpayers located in Minnesota pay taxes at all three levels.  Too often, each level of government considers only its own actions, never the cumulative effects.  In the end, the Democrats got their way and as far as the State of Minnesota is concerned, Federal taxes don’t officially exist.

As it stands, Minnesota ranks 6th in the nation for worst tax climate but more importantly, we rank even worse than our neighbors No. 8 Wisconsin and No. 9 Iowa.  Minnesota’s Democrats are considering proposals that would increase the state’s tax burden by an additional $2.1 billion. 

With one-party rule in Minnesota, what the Republicans think of all this is of no consequence.  However, at the national level, the GOP seems to be the source of all problems.

The Shifting Winds, Part 4

I marked my calendar today--March 3, 2013--as the first day I actually agreed with liberal Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Lori Sturdevant.  Her Sunday column, "Minnesota school IOU: Why now's the time to repay," argues that the state needs to repay the school funding shift, and soon,

 "That way, the state’s books would be back in normal order, with the school-shift option fully available as the state’s backup reserve account when the next economic downturn comes. Like the regular reserve, the school shift needs to be reset to normal to be a useful cushion against economic shocks."

Putting things to right sound like a good idea.  Not sure I agree that the school shift is a good idea come the next fiscal crisis.

But anyway, Sturdevant gets closer to the real reason why repaying the school shift now is a good idea, quoting freshperson Democrat state rep. Yvonne Selcer whose bill (HF1) is "part of keeping the promise I made to voters in my district."  Sturdevant notes that House Democrats "who made that pledge will face the voters again in 2014".

In the last election, Rep. Selcer upset incumbent Republican Kirk Stensrud by only 202 votes in a hotly contested SW Metro-area suburban swing district.

Following the majority-winning playbook from last fall, Rep. Selcer made repaying the school shift part of a top campaign priority.  Her campaign website's "priorities" page opens with this statement,

"RESPONSIBLE leaders balance the BUDGET

"Our community members expect legislators to use a bi-partisan approach to balance our state budget, without shifts or gimmicks, while maintaining our quality of life."

Not surprisingly, Selcer was endorsed by the Star Tribune editorial board.  So both the credibility of Rep. Selcer and the Star Tribune are on the line here.  The paper and Democrats worked to convince a skeptical public that what Minnesota needed was to end "gridlock" by electing a few "pro-business" suburban moderates who would vote for kinder, gentler "balanced" solutions to the state's problems.

Instead we ended up with one-party rule by what has to be the most radical government the state has seen.  The first casualty was bipartisanship.

A Dangerous Game
In her column, Sturdevant reports that local school officials are,

"telling legislators that repaying the shift can wait.  Repayment would only accelerate the receipt of money already built into their budgets.  It won’t give them what they crave—new money."

Local school officials were conspicuously silent during the demagoguery phase of the operation last fall.  Now with their preferred candidates safely in office, officials expect to be rewarded for their part in making it all happen.

Perhaps local school officials do not realize how dangerous is the game they have played.  The overheated campaign rhetoric around the school funding shift was--how do I say this delicately--strictly speaking, not true.

Regardless, at this stage, to not replay the shift as quickly as possible would be to add bad faith on top of duplicity.  To gain the majority, in no small part, because of the school funding issue, and then turn around and not repay the money until 2017 (as currently proposed) would damage the state's political culture in a way not easily recovered from.

The Leaders We Deserve

Walter Russell Mead writes about the quality of our current world leadership,

"But the problem is bigger than politics; in civil society as well as in government we are in an age of empty suits and stylish haircuts on hollow heads."

Read the whole thing.

Government Disasters (And Other Redundancies)

In his weekly column for the Orange County Register, Mark Steyn writes about how Washington has become a dreary "Mayan Apocalypse of the Month" disaster movie on perpetual replay.

For my own bit, I warned readers two months ago not to bother paying attention to the daily silliness coming from our imperial capital.