It’s been in the works for more than four years, but when the environmental review came out last fall, the federal government blasted the report as inadequate.

Oberstar says he wants a thorough review, but it shouldn’t take so long.

“The red tape, the slowdown, the lack of full attention by federal and state permitting agencies has dragged this process out much too long,” said Oberstar.

Oberstar said the No. 1 issue people talk about in northeastern Minnesota is jobs. And the Polymet mine promises 400 jobs.

“I’ve heard some concerns, ‘Be careful about our environment. We love this land, we don’t want our waters to be adversely affected.’ And I’ve assured people that corners will not be cut, there will be no exceptions made, but we have to do this in an expeditious manner,” he said.

It’s been 4 years since the permitting and inspection process started. Finally, it’s got the attention of Rep. Oberstar? Why didn’t he take interest before this? There’s a simple answer for why it’s finally got his attention: Tom Emmer has made this a focal point of the campaign and Sen. Dayton is looking like he doesn’t care about job creation.

Enter Rep. Oberstar to cut the red tape. Enter Rep. Oberstar so jobs can be created. What a great guy Rep. Oberstar is. For that matter, what a great guy Sen. Dayton is.

There’s just one problem with this picture. If Rep. Emmer hadn’t brought it up, and if the issue hadn’t gained traction, it’s likely that this project still wouldn’t be getting attention. Let’s remember that Sen. Dayton wasn’t worried about streamlining the permitting process during the final DFL debate before the primary.

As for Rep. Oberstar, why didn’t he take an interest in the process long before this? Polymet’s been run through the ringer for 5 years. Suddenly, he cares? Why didn’t he care before the MNGOP candidate brought it up at a debate? Why didn’t he care prior to Tom Emmer making this a major political issue?

Mining is the bread and butter of the Iron Range economy. Creating hundreds of jobs should’ve been Rep. Oberstar’s first priority. Iron Rangers now know that it wasn’t Oberstar’s top priority.

Chip Cravaack is the MNGOP-endorsed candidate for MN-08. Unlike ‘Lord Oberstar’, Cravaack will represent the district. That’s because he’s actually listening to the people of the Eighth District. Had Rep. Oberstar listened to his constituents, he would’ve taken an interest in Polymet sooner.

Instead, he jumped into action when his political ally, Sen. Dayton, got into political hot water. That’s just what I’d expect from the guy whose highest priority many years is getting bike paths built with highway Trust Fund money.

Sen. Dayton and Rep. Oberstar won’t represent Minnesota because they’re too busy catering to their political allies in the environmental movement.

Technorati: Polymet, Mining, Jobs, Tom Emmer, Debates, Permitting, Reform, Chip Cravaack, MNGOP, James Oberstar, Mark Dayton, Special Interests, Environment, DFL, Election 2010

In the legislature, she fought for middle class families, and when the state faced a record budget deficit, she put taxpayers first by voluntarily cutting her compensation and pay.

Tarryl put her compensation first in 2007:

As vice-chair of the Senate Rules and Administration committee, Clark voted to raise per diem allowances from $66 to $96, and monthly housing allowance from $900 to $1,200.

That information isn’t something that the Bachmann campaign made up. It’s information from a St. Cloud Times article written by that noted right wing ideologue Larry Schumacher. In fact, that isn’t the extent of Tarryl’s flippant behavior on keeping costs down. Here’s what Leo wrote about Tarryl about raising per diem:

“Don’t worry. There has never been anyone who hadn’t been re-elected because they raised their (own) pay. The voters won’t remember.”

Does that sound like someone who’s vigilant about keeping government costs down? Forgive me if I find Tarryl’s claims about being fiscally responsible a little less than credible.

It goes further than that. The DFL Senate didn’t want to put that to a vote of the full Senate, preferring to deal with it in the Rules Committee instead. Without Ray Vandeveer’s persistance, the per diem increase wouldn’t have gotten a vote of the full Senate. The DFL leadership, including Tarryl, prefered secrecy to transparency. That speaks volumes about Tarryl. It says that she wanted to raise her pay without there being a vote of the full Minnesota Senate.

It isn’t unreasonable to think that, especially on this, Tarryl puts a high priority on transparency. If she’s that committed to standing up for middle class families, shouldn’t she insist on a full vote of the Senate? If she’s that committed to standing up for middle class families, shouldn’t she have voted against a 50 percent per diem raise. (It isn’t like $66/day isn’t substantial.)

I wrote in this post about all the regressive taxes Tarryl voted to increase. I’d love hearing Tarryl explain how voting for regressive tax increases while the economy is slowing is fighting for middle class families.

I’d love hearing Tarryl explain how increasing spending by 17 percent in 2007 is fighting for middle class families. I’d love hearing Tarryl explain how raising taxes, both progressive and regressive, by more than $5 billion when Minnesota had a $2,163,000,000 surplus is fighting for middle class families.

I suspect that Tarryl won’t explain those things because raising taxes when you have a surplus isn’t how you fight for middle class families. Spending the surplus instead of cutting taxes isn’t the way to fight for middle class families, either.

Tarryl’s actions don’t match the words in her commercials. Tarryl is the legislator who told Tom Hauser that she didn’t think she could find more than $500,000,000 of savings in the Minnesota budget in January, 2009 and she’s the candidate that touts the fact that she voted for a 10 percent spending cut in May, 2010.

That says it all, doesn’t it?

Technorati: Taxes, Tax Increases, Tarryl Clark, Transparency, Per Diem, Regressive Taxes, Spending, Deficits, Spending Cuts, Elitism, DFL, Election 2010

When MDE’s Luke Hellier asked Sen. Dayton if he’d instruct his attorneys to return the documents to the public record, Sen. Dayton replied that he didn’t think that that’s what people are interested in this election cycle.

With all due respect, that isn’t the issue. The issue is whether Sen. Dayton is fine with hiding things from his past. If he is, then that’s something that Minnesotans should know prior to Election Day.

Sen. Dayton, what are you hiding? Are you covering up things from your admitted history of depression and alcoholism? It’s impossible for Minnesotans to know since Sen. Dayton is being secretive. It isn’t that the documents are sealed. They were taken by Dayton’s lawyers.

When Luke asked another question, Sen. Dayton replied this way:

“Minnesotans are disgusted with negative campaign tactics. I trust they want to take the high road.”

If we had a real media, they’d ask Sen. Dayton why his family is running one dishonest ad after another about Tom Emmer. If we had a real media, they’d be asking why his allegedly detailed budget numbers add up to a big deficit. A real media would be asking whether Sen. Dayton would raise taxes on the middle class to cover the shortfall.

Sen. Dayton is counting on the media’s malpractice and double standards to keep letting him get away with saying that he abhors “negative campaign tactics” while his family uses dishonest “negative campaign tactics.”

It’s time that somebody told the truth about Sen. Dayton. Sen. Dayton doesn’t hate “negative campaign tactics” if they’re used against his opponent. Sen. Dayton’s detailed budget numbers add up to a whopping multi-billion dollar deficit. Sen. Dayton would raise taxes on middle class families and on the rich to pay for reckless spending habits. Sen. Dayton is counting on the media’s malpractice to hide this information from Minnesotans.

When Sen. Dayton comes clean about his attorney removing unsealed documents from the public record, when Sen. Dayton tells the SEIU, EdMinn and his family to stop lying about Tom Emmer, when Sen. Dayton stops omitting the part that he’ll need to raise taxes on the middle class, then he’ll have earned the public’s trust.

At this point, he isn’t even close to earning our trust. At this point, Sen. Dayton shouldn’t be trusted on anything he says other than his plan to increase spending.

It’s worth noting that the Agenda Media shouldn’t be trusted in their ‘reporting’ of the Dayton campaign. (It’s difficult to trust in something that only marginally exists, isn’t it?)

Technorati: Media Bias, Agenda Media, Mark Dayton, Divorces, Public Record, Transparency, Depression, Deficits, Tax Increases, Tax The Rich, Middle Class Tax Increases, ABM, Politics of Personal Destruction, DFL, Election 2010

There’s anti-Dayton lit at the GOP fair booth but no pro-emmer lit.

She later updated that with this tweet:

In the strongest possible terms the GOP insists there was always pro-Emmer lit at their fair booth.

I’m incredibly disappointed in the media to varying degrees. In the case of Rachel Stassen-Berger, I’ll probably be a bit more lenient than I’ll be with Lori Sturdevant and Esme Murphy, if for no other reason than she posted a tweet saying that the GOP insists that “there was always pro-Emmer lit at their fair booth.”

I believe the pro-Emmer lit was there from the start because Eric Radtke told me that “he GOP booth is all about Emmer. The buttons are Emmer the balloons are Emmer, and yes there is Emmer lit. Put it there myself.” Knowing Eric, I’ll trust him.

I won’t be as lenient with Lori Sturdevant because didn’t take into account a number of different things that should’ve been taken into account. Let’s start with what she said in column:

In three early morning debates in as many bleary-eyed days, Emmer denied that there’s a red-ink tsunami ahead in the state’s 2012-13 budget.

In fact, the three-term state rep from Delano asserted, the state is going to have $2 billion more to spend in the next two-year budget period than it’s spending in the current one. That’s a 7 percent increase, he allowed, and that ought to be sufficient for any sensible Minnesotan.

Shortly thereafter, she made this comment:

Emmer’s numbers aren’t wrong. They’re just misleadingly incomplete.

Nowhere in her article does Ms. Sturdevant say what I’ve said: that Mark Dayton’s numbers don’t add up to a balanced budget. In fact, they fall far short. More on that later.

I spoke with a man who I consider to be a budget expert last night by the name of Jim Knoblach. Jim had a $4.2 billion deficit dumped in his lap shortly after Tim Pawlenty was first elected governor.

I specifically asked Jim whether cleaning up the permitting process could create jobs and whether those jobs would change the revenue projections. I specifically talked about the mining jobs that will eventually be created when Polymet gets its permits.

Jim said that streamlining Minnesota’s permitting process would help create jobs. In Polymet’s instance, that’s supposed to be north of 2,000 highpaying jobs in an area with high unemployment.

Not so coincidentally, streamlining the permitting process is high on Tom Emmer’s priority list. Wouldn’t it have been informative if Ms. Sturdevant had mentioned that in her article? It isn’t like this is treated like top secret information.

By including that information in her article, though, Sturdevant would’ve admitted that Tom Emmer a) has a positive agenda that will put people back to work, b) has a plan to get Minnesota’s economy going and c) thinks it’s important to make Minnesota more business friendly. That certainly wouldn’t fit into Ms. Sturdevant’s storyline.

Admitting that Mark Dayton’s numbers don’t add up to a balanced budget doesn’t fit into Ms. Sturdevant’s storyline, either. Sen. Dayton says that he’ll get $4,000,000,000 in additional revenue with his tax-the-rich plan. The Minnesota Department of Revenue says that that figure is more likely to be $3,300,000,000 to $3,600,000,000.

It’s important to note that the Minnesota Department of Revenue uses static scoring, meaning they don’t take into account the unintended consequences that happen when policies shift. For instance, they don’t take into account the fact that businesses will leave Minnesota for states with friendlier business climates. Suffice it to say that it isn’t likely that Sen. Dayton’s numbers will come close to being right, perhaps to the tune of $1,000,000,000.

During a debate on Almanac, Rep. Emmer talked about streamlining permitting. When Sen. Dayton said that he wouldn’t have a problem with streamlining the permitting process, Rep. Emmer noted that Sen. Dayton had never written or co-sponsored a bill streamlining any part of government.

This leads to Sen. Dayton’s supposed detailed budget plan, all 2 and a half pages of it. There’s nothing in Sen. Dayton’s supposed detailed budget plan that talks about regulatory reform. in fact, there’s nothing in Sen. Dayton’s supposed detailed budget plan that even talks about reform.

It’s disturbing that Ms. Sturdevant didn’t mention Sen. Dayton’s inconsistencies. If Dayton’s revenue projections are off that much, what will he cut? Or whose taxes will he raise? It’s much more likely that Sen. Dayton will raise taxes on suburbanites making $75,000 than he’s likely to cut spending.

Here’s reality: Dayton can’t cut spending much because he has too many DFL special interest allies to pay off.

It isn’t a secret that Lori Sturdevant is a DFL partisan. It hasn’t been a secret for years. Now it’s getting dangerous, though, because the numbers matter, the policies matter. If you won’t challenge the DFL candidates, then you’re just part of the problem.

Minnesota can’t afford more of this journalistic malpractice.

Technorati: Media, Agenda Media, Lori Sturdevant, Rachel Stassen-Berger, Strib, Esme Murphy, Mark Dayton, Tarryl Clark, Infomercial, DFL, Election 2010

When asked about what needed to be done to get the economy moving, Sen. Klobuchar said that improving broadband access would be a major boost. While I think expanding broadband would be a positive thing if done the right way, I don’t think it’s the key to creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Another of Sen. Klobuchar’s insulting statements was saying that we need to speed up approval rates for medical devices. This coming from the woman who voted to kill medical device manufacturing jobs when she voted for Obamacare? It’s time that Ms. Klobuchar admitted that she says one thing while doing another.

You can’t pretend to be the champion for medical device manufacturers after you’ve voted for a bill that will cripple medical device manufacturing.

State Sen. Tarryl Clark essentially repeated the lies she’s telling in her “Jim, the real voter” ad. She talked about how she’s fiscally responsible, how she’s voted to keep taxes down for 95 percent of Minnesotans and how she’s cut her office expenses.

I debunked each of those myths in this post. Tarryl can’t make those statements without omitting major votes that she’s cast. She can’t say that she’s consistently voted against raising taxes on 95 percent of Minnesotans when she voted for increasing the gas tax, the wheelage fee, the state sales tax (think Legacy Act) and the metro sales tax in the 7 county metro area.

As for Tarryl’s claim that she’s the fiscally responsible candidate in the race, that’s insulting and laughable. This statement was made by the woman who voted in 2007 for omnibus spending bills that would’ve increased state spending by 17 percent in the 2008-09 biennium. Fortunately, Gov. Pawlenty vetoed those bills.

SIDENOTE: The bills that Gov. Pawlenty vetoed had huge tails in them. Most of the bills had provisions in them that raised spending by even more enormous amounts in the out years.

During today’s interview, Tarryl bragged about voting to cut state spending by 10 percent. Tarryl’s attempting to take credit for cutting spending when the reality is that she told KSTP’s Tom Hauser that it would be almost impossible to cut spending by more than $500,000,000. Tarryl had to practically be dragged kicking and screaming to vote to cut spending by 10 percent.

Tarryl’s statements and Sen. Klobuchar’s statements aren’t surprising or unexpected. They’ve had a history of saying things that insult people’s intelligence. They also have a history of sounding reasonable at first listen. That disappears once you think things through and evaluate what they’ve said through the prism of facts.

Finally, it’s worth noting that today’s interviews were disappointing from a journalism standpoint. Esme Murphy accepted as fact everything that Tarryl Clark said. She didn’t ask how Tarryl could say she was fiscally responsible when she voted in 2007 to increase spending by almost 20 percent. That should’ve been automatic.

When Tarryl trotted out her “Washington isn’t working for the people and neither is Michele Bachmann” line, why didn’t Esme Murphy highlight the fact that Washington is being run by Democrats? Further, why didn’t Esme Murphy ask what things she disagrees with Speaker Pelosi on?

Last week, when she interviewed Tom Emmer, there were lots of tough questions. This week, none. I’m fine with Esme Murphy asking Tom Emmer tough questions. I just expect the same when she’s interviewing Tarryl Clark.

Technorati: Interview, Esme Murphy, Tarryl Clark, Tax Increases, Spendaholic, Spending Cuts, Amy Klobuchar, Medical Devices, Medical Device Tax, Broadband, Job Creation, Obamacare, DFL, Election 2010

Add the federal money and the school IOU totals to 2010-11 general fund spending, and the sum is $34.6 billion. That’s $1.7 billion, or 5 percent, more than the expected state tax receipts in 2012-13.

So $1.7 billion is the real deficit? I asked Marx.

Not quite, he said. State budget forecasts project the cost of current state programs tomorrow. Since 2002, cost-of-living inflation has been excluded from the projections. (That bit of lawmaking legerdemain could be another chapter in my book.)

Herein lies the DFL’s flawed thinking. In their mind, anything that’s been appropriated once should be forever considered necessary to fund. There isn’t a business in the world that could survive that type of thinking.

When businesses experience a downturn in revenue, they adjust their budgeting or they’re soon bankrupt. Since businesses prefer making profits, they’re often faced with a decision: do they adjust priorities, reduce or eliminate spending on non-essential items or do they just higher prices from their customers and hope that customers are willing to pay more for their products.

The difference is that, with government, they aren’t often presented with this decision since their charging higher prices isn’t a matter of convincing ‘customers’ to pay higher prices. Theoretically, governments can pass tax increases which are passed onto We The People. These tax increases aren’t voluntary. They’re mandatory because they have the force of law behind them.

Rep. Emmer thinks that there’s too much replication in government. He often talks about the permitting process, where a farmer who wants to expand his operations could theoretically go before 5 different agencies, each in a different department of the government, each with the ability to squash the farmer’s expansion plans.

Sen. Dayton’s budget is built on the premise that the permitting process shouldn’t be changed and that no other budget line items should be changed. That’s foolish thinking because there’s too much replication within government. That’s before asking whether all the budget items are necessities. I’m willing to be that they aren’t. In fact, I’m willing to bet there’s alot of money sent to political allies that could be eliminated without Minnesota’s taxpayers never noticing the difference in quality of life or in the delivery of important services.

In Rep. Emmer’s Minnesota, each agency and each department would start their budget from scratch each 4 years. Instead of guaranteeing each department and each agency the same amount of money plus a little for inflation, departments and agencies would have to explain why their funding levels need to stay the same or be increased.

They’d have to prove that each item is a necessity and that spending that money would improve the lives of Minnesotans. Departments would have to prove that there isn’t a better, less expensive way of delivering their services. Knowing that they’d have to justify every penny of their spending alone would likely change departments’ budgeting habits.

I find it impossible to think that eliminating the replications found in the permitting processes wouldn’t dramatically change what’s needed to be spent. I refuse to think that there aren’t health care reforms that wouldn’t save hundreds of millions of dollars in the state budget.

Politically speaking, Sen. Dayton and Mr. Horner are sitting on a powderkeg. They keep criticizing Rep. Emmer for not having shown his plan to redesign government. He’s entrusted much of that assignment to Annette Meeks.

When Annette Meeks finishes the project and the plan is unveiled, there will be alot of complaining from special interests who won’t like the fact that their racket is getting eliminated. Sen. Dayton will certainly complain, partly because he’s still thinking in terms of funding a 1980s form of government.

This is the 21st century. It’s time we took better advantage of technology to make the cost of government less expensive. It’s time we did a better job of setting sensible spending priorities rather than looking at taxpayers as the politicians’ ATM’s.

Counting all of those things is what brought Minnesota Management and Budget to a $5.8 billion deficit in 2012-13, Marx said. A candidate who says otherwise is “being subjective,” he said. (Marx is a master of diplomacy as well as state finances.)

Actually, I’d describe Marx as a disciple of the status quo. I’d agree that the $5.8 billion number is accurate if you didn’t think that any of this biennium’s spending was wasteful spending. I agree that the $5.8 billion number is accurate if I was convinced that there weren’t less expensive ways of delivering services.

That’s before asking how much money would be generated by Polymet hiring 2,000 people to start their mining operation instead of tying them up for a total of 7 years in the permitting process. How much tax revenue isn’t realized when farmers in Clay County expand their hog farming operation in North Dakota instead of Minnesota because of the permitting process? How much tax revenue would be realized if 3M, Marvin Window and other companies expanded in Minnesota instead of other states?

These companies will keep moving elsewhere as long as Minnesota’s government is this cumbersome and businesses are overregulated.

I didn’t see proof that Ms. Sturdevant considered those possibilities in reaching her conclusions. It’s important that, should she venture into the world of public policy again, she should consider those variables more fully.

Streamlining government, eliminating replication and encouraging dynamic economic growth will dramatically change Minnesota’s budget landscape. We can’t afford government harassing businesses. Government should make sure that businesses aren’t polluting but then get out of their way.

Building a dynamic, fundamentally sound economy will cure most of Minnesota’s budget ails. That’s what Sen. Dayton and the DFL hasn’t figured out. They’re so focused on funding government that they aren’t focused on creating a dynamic economy. Yes, they’ll talk about jobs but that isn’t the same as creating a dynamic economy.

In Sen. Dayton’s mind and in the minds of the DFL, a bonding bill is a jobs bill. It isn’t. It’s a debt bill. It’s a stimulus bill designed to give the economy a brief shot in the arm. A dynamic economy creates jobs that are still there a decade later.

It’s time that Ms. Sturdevant, Sen. Dayton and the DFL figured out that there’s a difference between funding the DFL’s special interest allies’ wish lists and building a dynamic economy. It’s time that Ms. Sturdevant, Sen. Dayton and the DFL admitted that funding the DFL’s special interest allies’ wish lists is what’s driving the projected budget deficits. Eliminating the pork and the replications is the best way to eliminate the deficit.

Technorati: Tom Emmer, Permitting, Annette Meeks, Economy, Zero-Based Budgeting, Reforms, MNGOP, Special Interests, Mark Dayton, Deficits, Polymet, Lori Sturdevant, Strib, Bonding Bill, Stimulus, Debt, DFL, Election 2010