“By listening to Minnesota employers, we can obtain a greater, much more precise understanding of the state’s workforce needs. Armed with this data, we can ensure that higher education is delivering the right academic programs and preparing graduates with the skills necessary for the success of Minnesota’s businesses and communities.” – Chancellor Steven Rosenstone

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system is committed to supporting economic growth throughout the state. The system’s state universities and community and technical colleges provide career preparation and continuing career education for more Minnesotans than any other organization in the state.

By providing customized training to more than 122,000 employees annually, the system helps employers stay competitive and workers advance their skills and manage career changes.

It will take time to see whether they’ve successfully met the challenge of customizing the training (I’d argue retraining) of Minnesota’s workforce. Still, it’s more than a bit ironic to see a picture of an SCSU Aviation student in the loop of pictures for their promotion:

I’m not objecting to Chancellor Rosenstone directing universities and especially tech colleges to helping with retraining of Minnesota’s workforce. Those things can’t help but strengthen Minnesota’s workforce.

Still, ignoring transportation needs, which have played an important role in Minnesota’s economic success, isn’t wise. Aviation has the potential to loosen up traffic congestion in the Twin Cities while helping Minnesota’s travelling CEOs be efficient during their travels.

Those are things that can give Minnesota entrepreneurs a competitive advantage over CEOs in other states.

Eliminating the only AABI-accredited Aviation program is foolish in terms of supplying the airline pilots of tomorrow. Considering the fact that a) there’s only 26 AABI-accredited aviation programs in the United States and b) Boeing is expecting historic pilot shortages in the near future, now is the worst time to stop the SCSU Aviation program.

I’ll definitely give Chancellor Rosenstone the opportunity to make great decisions. He’s got a great opportunity to make a great decision right now.

Let’s see how he handles it.

Tags: Chancellor Rosenstone, Workforce, Competitiveness, Entrepreneurs, MNSCU, SCSU, AABI, Accreditation, Pilot Shortage

This morning’s news reports highlights another embarrassing story:

Dozens of demonstrators dashed into the Loop building housing President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters this morning, slipping past security guards and running up escalators as they kicked off what they called a “Week Without Capitalism.”

Eight protesters were led out in handcuffs about half an hour later after they refused to clear the lobby. They were cheered by other demonstrators who began dancing and singing folk and gospel songs.

The demonstration, organized by the Catholic Worker movement. began with about 100 demonstrators picketing at Prudential Plaza and passing out rolls to commuters in what they called a symbolic invitation to break bread with world leaders expected here this weekend for the NATO summit.

A week without capitalism was the theme of the protest. How appropriate for the Obama administration. The only ‘capitalism’ they believe in is crony capitalism that subsidizes their political allies’ failures.

Conservatives would likely enjoy finding out that the “Catholic Worker Movement” is strikingly similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Here’s how similar they are:

Soon after legendary folk singer Loudon Wainwright III finished performing for cheering protesters in Zuccotti Park yesterday afternoon, telling them that the Occupy Wall Street encampment reminded him of the 1968 “Summer of Love,” a Catholic Worker band called the Filthy Rotten System showed up.

Bud Courtney, who plays banjo in the group, said its decidedly unholy name came from the late Dorothy Day, who started the Christian-anarchist Catholic Worker Movement 78 years ago with Peter Maurin during the Great Depression. She is now being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church.

“Dorothy observed that all of our problems come from our acceptance of the filthy rotten system,” said Mr. Courtney, 61, a former actor who served on a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq last year and now lives at one of two Catholic Worker hospitality houses in the East Village. With the help of several bandmates as well as protesters who sang along, he belted out Woody Guthrie’s classic, “My Land is Your Land.”

To summarize things to this point, President Obama praised the OWS movement earlier this year. Now an offshoot of the movement is taking Newt Gingrich’s advice, though they aren’t marching on DC. Instead, they’re marching on Obama’s campaign HQ in Chicago.

The irony is just sweet.

It wasn’t that long ago that Ms. Pelosi was praising the OWS protesters. For that matter, President Obama praised the OWS protesters, too. Now that the protesters President Obama praised have invaded his campaign HQ, what are the odds President Obama will stop praising them?

Ironies this rich should be savored.

Tags: Catholic Workers Movement, OWS, Protesters, President Obama, Campaign Headquarters, Chicago, New York, Zucotti Park, Arlo Guthrie, Democrats, Election 2012

During his presentation, Secretary Ritchie talked about the great expense of a photo ID system. Ritchie also spoke about how people lose their drivers licenses, then don’t get their replacement license for “sometimes up to 3 or 4 weeks.” Ritchie made the point that, if we went to a provisional ballot system, people who had lost their license just prior to that election “would have to do this”, at which point Ritchie crossed his fingers.

First, the odds of a person losing their drivers license right before the election are tiny. Further, if it’s taking the DMV 3-4 weeks to process a drivers license, then the DMV needs a top-to-bottom overhaul. Either that or that function needs to be privatized immediately.

Prior to his presentation, Secretary Ritchie handed out an information packet to everyone in the audience. Part of that information packet was an op-ed written by Randy Maluchnik, the president of the Association of Minnesota Counties.

In his op-ed, Mr. Maluchnik states that “Minnesota’s counties currently do an excellent job of administering fair and open elections across a state with significant geographic challenges. The lack of any significant voter irregularity for decades supports this assertion.”

With all due respect to Mr. Maluchnik, the fact that Minnesota’s counties haven’t noticed “any significant voter irregularity for decades” doesn’t prove anything except that counties haven’t detected significant amounts of voting irregularities. It’s quite possible that it’s happening. It’s equally possible that it hasn’t been detected because it’s impossible to find the things that people refuse to look for.

Another of Secretary Ritchie’s stories was about a felon who’d just gotten released from prison. According to Secretary Ritching, the newly-released felon had “turned his life around” and was living in Warroad, MN. Ritchie then said that Warroad was “near the North Dakota border.” According to MapQuest, Warroad is over 75 miles from North Dakota.

Again, according to Secretary Ritchie, the just-released felon didn’t know that he couldn’t vote. Again, according to Secretary Ritchie, this man called his parole officer. He left a message on the parole officer’s voicemail saying that he was going to vote. By the time the parole officer responded, the felon had voted, requiring him to be charged with a felony.

According to former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer, prisoners that are about to be released are instructed that they aren’t eligible to vote until they’ve finished parole and the Secretary of State’s office informs them that their voting rights have been reinstated.

When asked about felons voting, Secretary Ritchie almost squirmed out of his skin. He talked about the felon in Warroad. He talked about how the laws in North and South Dakota are different than Minnesota’s election laws.

What’s striking is that he never addressed how hundreds of felons had voted illegally and had gotten convicted of voter fraud. According to Rep. Kiffmeyer, it’s almost impossible to convict a felon for committing voter fraud because it requires proving that the felon voted knowing that he or she wasn’t eligible to vote.

According to Rep. Kiffmeyer, that’s why few cases are even brought to trial.

UPDATE: Follow this link to read more aboout Secretary Ritchie’s visit to St. Cloud.

Tags: Photo ID, Voter Fraud, Felons, Mark Ritchie, Warroad, MN, Randy Maluchnik, Association of Minnesota Counties, Op-ed, Elections

President Barack Obama’s decision in February 2011 to hold the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina looked like a bold move to reclaim a state he’d won in 2008. Today, it’s more like an awkward fit.

The state’s Democratic Party is mired in a sexual harassment scandal. Voters just approved a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which conflicts with Obama’s view on the issue. Convention fundraising has been slow, and labor unions tapped to fill the financial gap are angry the convention will be in a city, Charlotte, with no unionized hotels and in a state where compulsory union membership or the payment of dues is prohibited as an employment condition.

North Carolina’s 9.7 percent unemployment rate is above the national average and one of the host city’s top employers, Bank of America (BAC), has announced job reductions. Obama is scheduled to accept his party’s nomination at Bank of America Stadium in September.

FYI- Bev Perdue is the governor of North Carolina. She’s another cookie-cutter Democrat.

National conventions are the opportunity for political parties to highlight their successes. When President Bush accepted his party’s nomination in New York City, he highlighted the fact that he’d prevented another 9/11 without saying a word about it. The setting said everything that needed to be said.

President Obama, on the other hand, will be accepting his party’s nomination in a stadium named after a bank that’s still too big to fail. He’ll accept the nomination in a state where the Democratic governor’s economic plans have failed.

What’s worse is that a major part of President Obama’s base isn’t excited over the possibility of being forced to paying tons of cash to pay for this national convention.

That’s just the start of it. What do you think the Democrats’ lineup of primetime speakers will look like? Will the list include Bernie Sanders, Dennis Kucinich and Chuck Schumer? Will Cherokee Warren get a primetime slot?

Perhaps that’s why they’ve shrunk the convention an additional day. Is it that, in addition to being too broke to pay for the convention, they don’t want to highlight the left wing looniness of their legislators?

Get out the popcorn. Things are about to get interesting in North Carolina.

Tags: President Obama, Democratic National Convention, North Carolina, Right to Work State, Too Big To Fail, Unions, DNC, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Socialists, Democrats, Election 2012

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a slight edge over President Obama in the race for the White House in the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.

According to the survey, conducted May 11-13, 46 percent of registered voters say they would vote for Romney, while 43 percent say they would opt for Mr. Obama. Romney’s slight advantage remains within the poll’s margin of error, which is plus or minus four percentage points.

The horserace numbers don’t tell the real story. These statistics should worry President Obama:

Amongst women, Mitt Romney leads with 46%. President Obama gets 44%. Mitt gets the support of 43% of independents, with President Obama struggling with only 36% of independents supporting him. Most impressively, Mitt gets 91% of the Republicans’ vote compared with President Obama getting 84% of Democrats.

That last statistic essentially says that Mitt’s getting strong support from the GOP base. Campaigns that don’t get their base solidified early tend to struggle the rest of the campaign. It’s difficult catching up if you don’t have the base solidified.

Winning a plurality amongst independents isn’t anything but a positive for Mitt at this point.

Finally, this NYT/CBS poll was amongst registered, not likely, voters. That most likely means that Mitt’s lead is bigger than those statistics say.

Tags: Polling, CBS, NYTimes, President Obama, David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Democrats, Mitt Romney, The Base, Independents, GOP, Election 2012

“Governor Dayton had a one track mind this legislative session, the Vikings Stadium, and in the process, he let several great opportunities slip by. The bipartisan tax bill that Governor Dayton vetoed today would have helped our state’s economy grow and put our people back to work.

Unfortunately, it joined other common sense items, like the end of the Last In First Out policy that governs teacher employment decisions, paying back the school shift, tort reform legislation and several other key jobs bills, in the Governor’s veto pile.

Governor Dayton should have been a little less obsessed with building the Vikings a stadium and a little more concerned with doing the people’s business. If we thought the top agenda was jobs and the economy, we were wrong. Minnesotans deserved much more from Governor Dayton this legislative session.”

The definition of political insanity is passing a tax bill with solid bipartisan support, then expecting Gov. Dayton to sign it.

Gov. Dayton is ideologically wedded to the idea that the rich aren’t taxed enough. What’s worse is that Gov. Dayton is wedded to the belief that jobs bills are those bills that start with taking capital out of the private sector, then inefficiently spend the money on the government’s priorities.

People that know how the economy works understand that the best way to create jobs is to have the private sector produce goods and services that fit people’s needs at a reasonable price. Wealth, and therefore prosperity, are never created by taking money from the private sector.

Gov. Dayton’s and the DFL legislators’ definition of a jobs bill isn’t in synch with creating prosperity.

Tags: Veto, Mark Dayton, Bonding, DFL, Tax Bill, Bipartisan Support, Jobs, Pat Shortridge, MNGOP

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

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

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

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