DFL gubernatorial candidate Matt Entenza thinks that “wind industry and alternative energy will be a source of economic development for southwest Minnesota and the entire state…” In making this statement, Entenza also took the obligatory shot at Gov. Pawlenty, albeit a mild one:

The wind industry and alternative energy will be a source of economic development for southwest Minnesota and the entire state, Entenza said. But the present administration is doing little to lead Minnesota in the development of wind energy and other alternative jobs, Entenza said.

Here’s the part that thinking people will question Entenza about:

The wind industry and alternative energy will be a source of economic development for southwest Minnesota and the entire state, Entenza said. But the present administration is doing little to lead Minnesota in the development of wind energy and other alternative jobs, Entenza said.

“This is next big push in the economy for Minnesota, and the state government needs to play a role,” Entenza said.

If it’s a great investment, shouldn’t capital flow freely to it? Isn’t the best role that state government can play in any private enterprise is to get out of the investors’ way?

There’s a bigger question that Mr. Entenza hasn’t answered about state government involving itself in the building of wind farms. Specifically, why should government determine which industries get preferential treatment and which industries get stuck with higher taxes? Shouldn’t state government policy be that we’ll get out of the way for all industries?

Shouldn’t state policy avoid favoring industries that liberal special interest groups push?

Let’s have Mr. Entenza explain why it’s good to keep taxes low for industries that the DFL’s special interest allies support but it isn’t good policy to cut taxes on all businesses. Let’s remember that the last DFL legislature went tried creating a new income tax bracket this session.

Most importantly, let’s ask the biggest question: Shouldn’t small business owners across the state, whether they’re in St. Cloud, Brainerd, Alexandria, Forest Lake Eden Prairie or Jordan, demand the same treatment that Mr. Entenza is proposing to give wind energy-related businesses?

Finally, shouldn’t Mr. Entenza’s statements be interpreted as an admission that tax cuts would have a significant impact on Minnesota’s economy?

Technorati: Economy, Investments, Energy, Green Jobs, Subsidies, Taxes, Tax Cuts, Matt Entenza, Special Interests, DFL, Elections 2010

According to Scott Rasmussen’s polling, “Fifty-six percent (56%) of Americans say they are not willing to pay more in taxes and utility costs to generate cleaner energy and fight global warming.” Here’s more of the details on Scott’s polling:

• Fifty-six percent (56%) of Americans say they are not willing to pay more in taxes and utility costs to generate cleaner energy and fight global warming.
• A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, taken since the climate change bill was passed on Friday, finds that 21% of Americans are willing to pay $100 more per year for cleaner energy and to counter global warming. Only 14% are willing to pay more than that amount.
• Fifty-two percent (52%) of all adults say it is more important to keep the cost of energy as low as possible than it is to develop clean, environmentally friendly sources of energy. But 41% disagree and say developing cleaner, greener energy sources is the priority.
• Sixty-three percent (63%) rate creating jobs as more important than taking steps to stop global warming. For 22%, stopping global warming is more important.

By an almost 3:1 margin, Americans favor keeping their money vs. paying more to “save the planet.” That’s nothing short of shocking. NOT!!! If Congress passes this bill and President Obama signs it into law, it will be just the latest proof that this Democratic administration and this Democrat Congress care more about their special interest allies than they care about the American people or science-based environmental policy.

Let’s be clear about something: This legislation isn’t about climate change. I think many of the people polled haven’t bought into the climate change hyperbole that Rep. Waxman and former VP Gore have been yapping about. That’s speculation on my part. What isn’t speculation is that this polling proves that people are significantly more worried about keeping money in their wallets than they are about saving the planet.

By a 3:1 margin, 63% to 22%, voters put a higher priority on policies that create jobs than on ’save the planet’ issues. If Republicans want to win this issue and draw big blocs of independent voters, they should stand firmly against the Democrats’ National Energy Tax.

I believe that this position is this year’s expression of last year’s anxiety over $4 a gallon gas prices. People haven’t stopped worrying about how high fossil fuel prices affect huge parts of their budget, whether it’s the gas they pump, their electric bills or higher grocery prices.

Democrats are painting themselves into a difficult corner with this. By passing this bill, Democrats are saying that they’re opposed to fossil fuels, that they’re ok with high gas prices and that they’re willing to pass legislation that drives companies from the United States and into China, Mexico and South Korea.

There’s a couple of reasons why that’s a difficult position to see, the biggest being that people care more about their wallets and the opportunity for prosperity than they care about ‘the environment’. Another reason why the Democrats’ position is a difficult position to defend is because driving businesses to other countries gives voters additional reasons for questioning the Democrats’ commitment to prosperity-inducing policies.

Simply put, this Democrat administration and this Democrat-controlled Congress are giving voters lots of reasons to question the Democrats’ economic stewardship.

Isn’t that the only question that voters will remember in November, 2010?

Technorati: Energy, Polling, National Energy Tax, Taxes, Tax Increases, Environment, Outsourcing, Unemployment, Democrats, Election 2010

Cross-posted at California Conservative

The last time the DFL elected their candidate as governor, I was still young.The year was 1986. Since then, pundits have pontificated on why the DFL hasn’t elected another governor. Recently, Sen. Tom Bakk asked former Gov. Wendy Anderson for his opinion on why the DFL has had such a long dry spell. Here’s what Windy Wendy said:

Sen. Tom Bakk, a 2010 gubernatorial candidate, said he asked former Gov. Wendell Anderson why he thinks that is so. Bakk said Anderson’s answer was that [DFL] candidates over the past two decades haven’t appeared genuine enough to Minnesotans.

There’s truth to that opinion. DFL candidates can’t appear real because they’d never get elected if they told people what they really believe. While DFL activists wouldn’t hesitate in voting for a candidate that refuses to say no to the DFL’s special interest allies, John Q. Public won’t. Another thing that John Q. Public won’t vote are politicians who vote to increase spending to unsustainable levels.

Most importantly, John Q. Public won’t vote for politicians whose first instinct is to raise taxes. With Sen. Bakk’s fingerprints all over the DFL’s proposed tax increases, it’s my opinion that he’s fighting uphill into a hail storm.

Based on this information, I think it’s appropriate to say that Sen. Bakk is fighting uphill against hurricane-force winds:

The 1999 tax cuts are no longer sustainable, he said. And he says it won’t be enough to tap the state’s wealthiest earners with more taxes.

“We can’t solve a problem this big on the backs of 80,000 people,” Bakk said of so-called “soak the rich” plans. He said that means all taxpayers sharing in the pain. “I understand it’s a tough sell,” Bakk said of the plan. “Are people going to be willing to listen to the tough medicine? I don’t know.”

A tough sell? No, no, no. A tough sell is trying to sell people on tax increases during a severe recession. Sen. Bakk telling John Q. Public that he’ll raise taxes on everyone is the equivalent of Walter Mondale’s promise to raise taxes during a debate in 1984. The term that most accurately describes that admission is political suicide.

That’s before we start talking about how Sen. Bakk’s promise will sell in a Tea Party world. I’m not alone with that opinion:

University of Minnesota-Morris political science professor Paula O’Loughlin doesn’t think that approach will pack as much punch as some suspect it will. Guts, she said, don’t score political points. “That’s not the way politics works, even in the 21st Century,” she said. “Being honest and forthright about what is needed does not always serve your political interests.”

And a pro-tax stance will be risky, O’Loughlin said. “They’re not going to like it — even the DFLers,” said O’Loughlin, who named Entenza, a former DFL House minority leader, and former U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad, a Republican, as leading contenders in their respective parties.

Unless political realities change, expect DFL delegates to return Sen. Bakk to the Senate.

Technorati: Tom Bakk, Wendy Anderson, Walter Mondale, Governors, Taxes, Spending, Matt Entenza, DFL, Jim Ramstad, MNGOP, Election 2010

If there’s anything that Tom Friedman’s article does, it’s to clarify that Tom Friedman is as clueless about climate change as anyone in the media.

There is much in the House cap-and-trade energy bill that just passed that I absolutely hate. It is too weak in key areas and way too complicated in others. A simple, straightforward carbon tax would have made much more sense than this Rube Goldberg contraption. It is pathetic that we couldn’t do better. It is appalling that so much had to be given away to polluters. It stinks. It’s a mess. I detest it.

Now let’s get it passed in the Senate and make it law.

Why? Because, for all its flaws, this bill is the first comprehensive attempt by America to mitigate climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions. Rejecting this bill would have been read in the world as America voting against the reality and urgency of climate change and would have undermined clean energy initiatives everywhere.

I’m tempted to tell Friedman to interview Bob Weisman on the realities of the effect Waxman-Markey would have on climate change. Here’s what Professor Weisman said in April about the National Energy Tax:

Despite disagreeing with him “100 percent, politically,” Weisman said he agreed with Horner that the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade program likely won’t do anything to effect climate change. “Like the Kyoto treaty, it won’t bring down global warming,” Weisman said. “You’d need something more like a 40 percent cut in emissions (to do that).”

Let’s summarize what Waxman-Markey will and won’t do. It won’t affect climate change one iota. We’d need a dramatic drop in greenhouse gas emissions to accomplish that, something that won’t happen with China dramatically increasing their greenhouse gas emissions. Something that Waxman-Markey is is a huge job-killing tax increase. People living in America’s heartland understand that this is destructive legislation that doesn’t have anything to do with improving the environment.

Only those people who are insulated by the Beltway echochamber think that the Democrats’ legislation is worthwhile. That’s because everyone in their echochamber tells them it’s important. If I hear that a journalist, perhaps even Mr. Friedman, actually asked a why question about how the Democrats’ legislation will affect the Earth’s climate, I’ll faint straightaway.

Now that the bill is heading for the Senate, though, we must, ideally, try to improve it, but, at a minimum, guard against diluting it any further. To do that we need the help of the three parties most responsible for how weak the bill already is: the Republican Party, President Barack Obama and We the People.

HINT TO MR. FRIEDMAN: We The People think this legislation stinks. We The People don’t want our utility bills to skyrocket. We’d prefer that we could keep more of our money. We The People don’t want the Democrats’ National Energy Tax to cause groceries to skyrocket like they did last summer when gas hit $4 a gallon. More We The People types are rejecting the premise that we’re destroying the planet with greenhouse gases.

Finally, We The People understand that this is just the Democrats’ latest attempt to control our lives. Especially as we approach Independence Day, We The People reject the Democrats’ attempt to control yet another portion of our lives.

Technorati: Energy, Environment, Emissions, Economy, Taxes, Kyoto, Greenhouse Gases, China, United States, Ed Markey, Henry Waxman, Democrats

Cross-posted at California Conservative

Steve Findlay’s op-ed in Tuesday’s USA Today contains a fatal flaw in it. Let’s see if you spot it:

Socialized medicine. Government-run health care. Rationing. Bureaucrats in charge. “Cookbook” medicine. Waiting lines. It’ll break the bank.

Welcome to the health care debate 2009. Sound familiar? These notions aim to instill fear. And once again, they bear no more relation to the reality of what is being debated in Washington than was the case when the Clintons had a go at health reform in the 1990s. Don’t be misled this time. In fact, far more bipartisan agreement exists on many core elements of reform than you might think.

Socialized, government-run health care? Nothing President Obama or Congress is proposing would replicate the Canadian, British, or French systems or remotely resemble nationalized medical service. Rather, the proposals offer repairs to an American system that is both broken and going broke. Those proposals build on our current private system where most people younger than 65 get coverage through their employers and treatment through private-sector doctors and hospitals.

What would be new is that people who don’t have access to such coverage (and some who do) would be able to get coverage through insurance “exchanges.” They’d be able to choose from a batch of private plans and policies that would have to accept all comers, offer comprehensive coverage, and be barred from “cherry-picking” only healthy people.

Guess what? Democrats and Republicans embrace the idea of exchanges and broad new federal insurance rules. They also agree that this new proposed system would be a boon to private insurers, doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and drug companies. That’s because tens of billions of dollars of government funds would help many of the 46 million uninsured get coverage.

Those subsidies are one big reason insurers are so opposed to the idea of a “public plan” being offered in the exchanges; they don’t want to lose any of those new customers to a government-run plan.

Here’s the fatal flaw that I’m refering to:

Guess what? Democrats and Republicans embrace the idea of exchanges and broad new federal insurance rules.

Consensus doesn’t mean that the majority is right. A perfect example of that is global warming, now fashionably called climate change because people tune out when they hear the term global warming.

The point I’m making is that there are too many GOP senators who willingly play the go-along-to-get-along game. That they’re willing to be spineless doesn’t mean that they’re making the right decisions. It just means that they don’t have a set anymore.

Findlay’s right about one thing, though. I’m trying to ‘put the fear of God’ in people. If you haven’t read Jim Hoft’s latest column for the American Issues Project, then you should read it ASAP. Here’s a portion of Jim’s column:

Ava Isabella Stinson was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario on Thursday of last week. Ava was 13 weeks premature. She weighed only two-pounds, four-ounces at birth. Ava needed special care and equipment to keep her alive. Unfortunately, there were no open neonatal intensive care beds for her at St. Joesph’s Hospital. In fact, there were no open neonatal care beds in her entire Canadian province. Ava had to be transferred to the United States.

If that isn’t enough information by itself to change your opinion of government-run health care, then you’re more heartless than people accuse conservatives of being. What’s worse is that this isn’t an isolated happening.

If people attempt to say that this isn’t relevant, that this couldn’t happen in the United States, I’ll simply direct people’s attentions to this post. Last week, King Banaian and I sat down with Dave Borgert to talk about health care. What Dave told us about Medicare is slightly less disturbing than the case involving Ava Isabella Stinson.

Dave told us what I’ve often suspected: that Medicare payments to clinics, hospitals and doctors aren’t based on whether their payment covered the cost to clinics, hospitals and doctors. I knew they didn’t cover that. That’s why cost-shifting is one of the biggest problems haunting health care these days. What I didn’t know prior to last Friday was that their payments were solely based on a budget passed by politicians.

Dave confirmed for us that Medicare bureaucrats don’t negotiate with hospitals, clinics and doctors. They simply set prices. How long can a system function efficiently if they’re losing money on a daily basis? How long before hospitals, clinics and doctors start begging for a federal bailout?

I’d point out to Mr. Findlay that if something isn’t scary, it isn’t possible for Republicans to scare people. It’s that simple.

This statement is another thing that Findlay said that can’t go unchallenged:

Nothing President Obama or Congress is proposing would replicate the Canadian, British, or French systems or remotely resemble nationalized medical service.

This video says that Mr. Findlay isn’t telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

How can anyone view that video and say with a straight face that the goal isn’t single-payer? It’s intellectually insulting to hear Findlay say something that dishonest.

The debate over the public plan also puts the distorting rhetoric on full display. Opponents say the idea is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent toward a European-style “single-payer” system. But the reality is that it wouldn’t be that difficult to design a public option that abides by the same rules as private insurers and has no competitive advantage.

First off, yes, it’s difficult to design a public option that abides by the same rules as private insurers. Yes, it’s impossible to picture a public option that didn’t have a serious competitive advantage.

I’ve stated elsewhere that Medicare doesn’t negotiate prices. It sets prices. There’s no back-and-forth. There’s no reaching consensus. It’s negotiation at gunpoint. It’s totally a my-way-or-the-highway situation.

I’ve said in numerous posts that Medicare and Medicaid set payment schedules without consideration of whether the payment covers the cost of the test or operation. It’s based on a budget passed by politicians. Supply and demand have practically nothing to do with the payment structure.

Can we afford reform? This is the real toughie. Proponents insist that not reforming the system is the real financial risk. On the current trajectory, medical costs will soar to 28% of the U.S. economy by 2030, from 18% today, and the average family will have to pay about $25,000 for insurance by 2025, from $12,000 today.

This isn’t a justification for reform. It’s just proof that our population is aging. The prices, from premiums to out-of-pocket expenses, rise as more baby boomers move into their maximum usage years. This is something that actuaries have talked about for the past 15+ years.

The only way prices will stabilize while keeping the quality of our care high is if we limit the cost-shifting that Medicare causes. That means that providing seniors with more private options is needed to prevent Medicare from going bankrupt. It’s also what’s needed to prevent Medicare from bankrupting the U.S.

The medical industry must be challenged to cuts costs; its bloated General Motors gas-guzzler mindset must be radically re-engineered (just as GM is being). Enforceable targets on reducing waste must be set. New, more efficient care systems must be invented. Government must use its buying clout more assertively as it pays for the care of millions of Americans enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and other public programs.

That’s another fatally flawed paragraph. Findlay is arguing for the public option while insisting that “more efficient care systems must be invented.” If ever there was a paradox, this is it. Even after they’ve been streamlined, government bureaucracies aren’t efficient. More importantly, goverment bureaucracies aren’t flexible enough to adjust to constantly changing health care realities because government bureaucracies are intentionally cumbersome.

If a company becomes aware of a better way to do things, all it takes is a directive from management to change how it does things. If government becomes aware of a better way to do things, it literally takes an act of Congress. All too often, it requires the herding of cats and getting them pointed in the right direction.

That’s assuming that bureaucrats even think about looking for opportunities to change things for the better, something I’m not willing to do.

It’s intellectually dishonest to say that the Kennedy-Dodd legislation or the Baucus legislation won’t induce rationing of health care because government is utterly inefficient. If government is efficient, why is Medicare going broke?

Technorati: Reforms, Health Care, Medicare, Single-Payer, Eva Isabella Stinson, Rationing, Price Controls, Kennedy-Dodd, Max Baucus, Fearmongering, Democrats

Cross-posted at California Conservative