1. David’s guest this week is author Lawrence Solomon. Hear about the scientists standing up to global warming hysteria.
2. Willing to have YOU pay for a better Minnesota
3. Start digging for your “couch change” – the transit sales tax goes into effect Tuesday
4. Shouldn’t we really do something about this price gouging?
5. It’s good to be the “Hometown Airline”
1. The David Strom Showpresented by the Minnesota Free Market Institute.
Tune in this Saturday to AM 1280 The Patriot at 9 am when David and Margaret will have a special extended interview with Lawrence Solomon, author of “The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists who Stood Up to Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution and Fraud (And those who are too Fearful to do So.) Also, the Free Market Institute will hold an on-air drawing for a 4GB iPod Nano. To be eligible to win, just go to the Institute’s web page, www.mnfmi.org, and sign-up to receive action alerts and information about upcoming guests on “The David Strom Show.”
2. Willing to have YOU pay for a better Minnesota
“Enough cuts! Enough pain! It’s time to get back to building Minnesota.” That’s the battle cry of yet another collective consortium of progressive organizations out to “mobilize Minnesota’s nonprofit organizations, labor groups, religious community, and eventually Minnesota’s citizens, around the idea of creating new revenue, raising it fairly, and using new revenue to invest in education, health care, and public infrastructure.”
The Invest in Minnesota Campaign, a collective effort of Minnesota Council of Nonprofits; the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition; Growth & Justice; the Minnesota AFL-CIO, has been holding a series of brown bag lunches around the state to alert Minnesotans to the Minnesota’s “disinvestment crisis” – code for we’re not paying enough in taxes. Using dubious tax rankings, theFour Horsemenof the Minnesota Apocalypse arelamenting that Minnesota is no longer in the Top 10 in tax burden, but hovers around average.
Minnesota Free Market Institute senior policy Fellow Craig Westover took on Invest Minnesota in a commentary published at MinnPost.com. Westover points out the collective fallacy that government cannot simply “create new revenue.”
“Government does not produce wealth,” he writes. “It cannot do anything for anybody until it first takes something from someone else. Until someone in the private sector produces wealth, there is no money for public education, no money to build infrastructure.”
3. Start digging for your “couch change” – the transit sales tax goes into effect Tuesday.
This Tuesday, July 1, the sales tax increase dedicated to building new transit projects (projected to run at perpetual operating losses) goes into effect in Hennepin, Washington, Ramsey, Anoka and Dakota counties. The ¼-cent tax is part of the $6.6 billion tax increase disguised as a transportation bill that passed out of the last legislative session of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto. We’ve already been hit with a 2-cents per gallon gas tax increase, just a taste of an ultimately 8-cent a gallon increase, and when you renew a vehicle license, a wheelage tax and higher license and registration fees await.
You think that’s shocking? Try this. According to MPR the top spending lobbying groups during the six months encompassing the legislative session were the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, the Minnesota Business Partnership, together spending more than $1 million dollars.
“This is couch change just for the tax increases that Minnesotans individuals and business pay,” said Charlie Weaver, who heads the Minnesota Business Partnership. He called it money well spent because tax efforts were defeated. “This is nothing compared to what could have happened,” he said.
Huh? When the going got tough on the transportation legislation, the Chamber and the Partnership got going – throwing a share of their million dollar war chest in with No. 3 on the lobbying list: the Minnesota Transportation Alliance ($320,000), a consortium of organizations that directly benefit from government spending. It was Chamber and Partnership support that pushed the $6.6 billion tax increase over the top.
4. Shouldn’t we really do something about this price gouging?
No, we’re not talking the legislation that the House of Representatives (thankfully) killed that would have given the Federal Trade Commission authority to punish oil companies for the impossible-to-define crime of charging “excessive prices” for gasoline during supply emergencies. In a market system prices exist because they motivate some people to produce and supply things to other people who need and want them. Prices shoot up when there is less supply or more demand or both. That’s not “price gouging,” but this is: While Minneapolis and St. Paul are each allowing city bars to remain open until 4 a.m. during the Republican National Convention, both are charging the-maximum-allowed-by-law $2,500 permit fee.
The unsurprising result of this government “price gouging” is discouraging the number of establishments that will be able to take advantage of the increased hours. Even the St. Paul Hotel,which will host the Arizona delegation and presumably Sen. John McCain, a potential convention hotspot, is reconsidering extended hours given the high permit cost. And that’s the idea, according to St. Paul City Councilman Dave Thune, who fears “puking Republican lobbyists”as much as secondhand smoke. Thune acknowledged to MPRthat the $2,500 permit will limit the number of bars that apply.
So, we bring to town a major event to increase economic activity and then implement policies that discourage economic activity? Yes, we guess that makes about as much sense as legislation to repeal the law of supply and demand.
5. It’s good to be the “Hometown Airline”
Minnesota is not losing an airline when Northwest merges with Delta and its corporate offices flies off to Atlanta; we’re gaining another “investment” opportunity. Last week Sun Country officials met with state legislators to pitch the idea that the new “Hometown Airline” might need $50 million in public aid-- “financial relief due to record fuel prices in the form of fee abatements, loans and other non-cash support initiatives.”
Fifty million dollars. We suppose that could be called “couch change” compared to the $500 million in loans and rent concessions Northwest still owes the Metropolitan Airports Commission and that “it could be worse,” but we have more respect for taxpayers than to support spending their tax dollars to prop up a private business. Sooner or later, you think we’d learn that the best investments, the investments that create jobs and grow and sustain Minnesota’s economy are investments made by individual Minnesotans on things they value – not corporate welfare.
That’s the Taxpayers League E-Update for this week – with one final note. In this update alone we have three progressive non-profits and a major labor union joining forces to support increased taxes to fund programs to further government imposition into our lives. We have business groups, who are suppose to be on your side telling you a $6.6 billion dollar tax increase isn’t that bad; it could have been worse. And you have an airline “whining” and dining legislators to use your money to cover their fuel costs (maybe they didn’t get the memo about the gas tax increase you’re paying). Who’s standing up for you? The Taxpayer’s League of Minnesota. If ever there was a time to make a contribution, this is it. Visit our website today,www.taxpayersleague.org, and make an online donation or send your tax-deductible check to the address below. We guarantee your contribution won’t be “invested” in appeasing the tax and spend crowd.
