|
Taxpayers League of Minnesota eUpdate
1. David’s guests this week are Tom Hackbarth and Don Eberly.
2. Only ten days left of the 2008 legislative session. Let the countdown begin.
3. “Children of the Corn”
4. This week in conservative civil disobedience.
5. Join the Taxpayers League for an End of Session Legislative Wrap Up!
1. The David Strom Show presented by the Minnesota Free Market Institute.
Tune in this Saturday to AM 1280 The Patriot at 9 am when David will be joined by Tom Hackbarth. Hackbarth, a six-term State Representative from Cedar, will tell us about the 3/8ths of a cent sales tax increase ballot question coming up this November that would be used to fund spending on the environment and the arts.
At 10 am, David’s guest will be Don Eberly. Eberly, author of The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up, is an expert on civil society and author of several books on the subject. He has been a senior counselor at USAID, a senior White House advisor on Iraq and has also consulted on disaster relief for the White House and the State Department (hopefully he’s not from the “heckuva job” crew).
Also, be sure to tune in at 9:15 am for the Capitol report with Phil Krinkie. This week, yours truly is forced to pinch hit for Phil. Just think of me as the José Oquendo of the Taxpayers League.
2. Only ten days left of the 2008 legislative session. Let the countdown begin.
But before they can leave (and start harassing you at home) they’ll probably try and come to some sort of agreement on the state’s $935 million budget deficit. Last Sunday’s offer from the Republicans seems to indicate that both sides are getting close to compromise. And though we all know that compromise usually means taxpayers about to get the short-end of the stick, in this case we might get lucky. How so? The Governor’s latest offer includes a “have to have” property tax cap on local governments. Add to that the removal of the Central Corridor lightrail line from the table and you could certainly be forgiven for thinking that things are looking up.
While not all of the news coming out of St. Paul is great – the House and Senate this week passed another minimum wage increase bill (this time indexed to inflation) – an individual liberty-crushing Transportation policy bill was sent back to committee. So we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.
It does seem, however, that the end-of-session pressure may finally be getting to some; State Senator Steve Murphy seems to have cracked. But at least he’s stopped answering every question with “I know you are but what am I?”
3. “Children of the Corn”
From David Freddoso at National Review Online:
“For the first time since the United States government began subsidizing ethanol, its defenders are on the run. World hunger is chipping away at the image of one of America’s most-outrageous subsidies, even sympathetic politicians are being forced to admit that the biofuel industry has gone too far this time.
“‘I’ve supported ethanol from the beginning,’ Sen. Dick Durbin said (D., lll.) last week. Durbin represents the nation’s second-largest corn-producing state. ‘But we have to understand it’s had an impact on food prices. Even in the Corn Belt, we’d better be honest about it.’
“The use of corn as a substitute for oil — made possible only by government subsidies — is now consuming more than one-quarter of America’s 13-billion-bushel corn crop. It has also caused corn prices to follow the skyrocketing price of oil. The price of corn, and the prices for every food product for which corn is an input (meat and dairy) or substitute (all other grains), have increased dramatically as well.”
To read the rest, click here.
4. This week in conservative civil disobedience.
[With apologies to HDT and my 10th grade English teacher]
“I went to the bar because I wished to drink deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.”
And to the bar (or liquor store), must you, too, go this weekend. Why? Because Teamsters Local 792 is on strike and asking supporters to boycott Phillips liquors and Gallo wines distributed by the Johnson Brothers Liquor Company. And so, in a truly serendipitous moment, this weekend you can (and should) raise a glass of Phillips or Gallo and toast to the demise of the American labor movement whilst hastening the demise of the American labor movement.
In other labor news, illegal workers of world, unite…in prison.
5. Join the Taxpayers League for an End of Session Legislative Wrap Up!
Sure, we all know about the painful hits the “good guys” took during this year’s Legislative session: $6.6 billion in transportation and transit taxes, hundreds of millions of dollars in useless bonding projects, a tax increase vote on the ballot in November and enough new rules and regulations to make even the stoutest Commie apparatchik blush.
But, we also had a win or two. And on Tuesday, May 27th at 5 pm at the Metropolitan Club in Golden Valley the Taxpayers League is going to assemble a dozen legislative leaders to tell you about what went right in 2008.
For more information, make sure to check the Taxpayers League website and stay tuned to these eUpdates. If you’ve already cleared your schedule and would like to reserve your spot (with a $25 donation per person), contact Jordan at jordanm [at] taxpayersleague [dot] org.
The Taxpayers League of Minnesota's eUpdate is written by Mark Giga
|
