NewOrleans& Minnesota Dems fail to repair bridges with tax surpluses--learn from a Master:
>> I was getting ready to leave for my super-secret meeting at a far-away place, and I did not have the television on. I got a flash e-mail, "Boy, you ought to see what happened in Minneapolis." So I turned on the TV, and I saw the pictures. And like everybody, I was stunned. Then you know what I did? I went to kook Democrat websites. For the real story, if you want to find out what really happened and what is really behind all this, that's where you have to go.
I'm sure the bridge collapse happened a little bit before I found out about it. But four minutes after I was told, I went to the Daily Kos. They're having their convention, by the way, these netroots people are in Chicago. They want to unionize. (Laughing) I don't care. These posts were just incredible. "We spend billions in Iraq while we fall apart at home." "We've been warned by engineers our nation's infrastructure is in dire need of repair and upgrade. Who needs terrorism when the inept GOP runs our nation into the ground?" "No one has the guts to take this on. Every week there's a new national tragedy. Tainted food, nutcases with whatever," it goes on to talk about this is what you get with militarists and corporate people. It's predictable, and it really is a little sad that a disaster like this becomes immediately partisan. But that's the nature of our society and culture today. Thursday morning, Tony Snow had to go out and say, (paraphrasing) "Look, it's a state project here, all these investigations, that bridge had been investigated, got 50 out of 120," you know all this. The White House had to go out and try to diffuse some of this. I'm glad that they did. First lady is there today. The president's going there tomorrow. He didn't want to go today because they already have a traffic mess. That's a major artery. When the president goes in someplace, everything gets shut down even more so, so he's going to go in there tomorrow.
This is one of these classic events that is custom-made for the Drive-By Media. "The country is falling apart. Bush spending too much in Iraq. Not paying enough attention to what's happening at home." Meanwhile, all these people complaining about the defense budget taking away money. Do you know that Minnesota was running, it's either this year or last, a $2.1 billion surplus? These states are running surpluses. Most of these states are awash in money. As I have told you countless times, they have more money than they know what to do with, and they still want to raise your taxes, federal government, too. The state of Minnesota is building a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings, rather than fix the bridges. How is that the fault of our being in Iraq? It's not. The Drive-By Media had hardly taken a breath before they turned the cars around to blame Bush and Republicans in general for the bridge collapse. Senator Patty Murray said that Bush has not supported Democrat efforts to increase spending on critical infrastructure. So they immediately turn this into a "let's increase taxes" issue. This has to stop. They have enough money. It's the same thing in New Orleans.
I could get partisan, if I wanted to, but I don't think there's anything partisan about this, but I could do a tit-for-tat. I could say, "Have you ever noticed that the infrastructure failures in this country are happening in cities run by liberal Democrats?" New Orleans, Minnesota. I could say that. Well, I guess I just did say that, didn't I? I could say, "Why are they not paying attention to their infrastructure? What is it that they're not doing?" We know the circumstances in Katrina, the graft down there, the levees not getting fixed and so forth. The Democrats, ladies and gentlemen, are the only people that care about roads and bridges. The rest of us, we never have to drive on those roads and bridges. It's only liberal Democrats have to ride on the bridges. By the way, 600,000 bridges in this country, one of them goes down, "Country's falling apart because we're in Iraq." It's absurd, but it's a perfect template and a perfect action line for our buddies in the Drive-By Media. In 2005, for all these people saying that we spend too much in the military, the federal budget in 2005 was 2.47 trillion. The defense budget that year was 400 billion. Over 60% of the federal budget is spent on entitlement programs. Defense spending as a percentage of the total federal budget has been declining since the 1960s.
Here's the thing. You can see this in states all over the country. Lots and lots of instances of Democrats screaming for infrastructure spending. They scream for it because they've spent the money that should have gone on to fix this kind of thing that caused the bridge collapse. Nick Coleman at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and I have the story here, says that this collapse of the bridge would never have happened if it wasn't for the governor, Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, and his refusal to raise taxes. This is in the Minneapolis paper, Star Tribune. The reason this bridge collapsed is because he wouldn't raise taxes.
Here's a quote from the story. "For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government." What Nick Coleman, the brilliant Nick Coleman fails to point out here is that there was no need for a tax increase when Pawlenty vetoed the gas tax increase. At the time, when Tim Pawlenty vetoed this five-cent gas tax increase, the state of Minnesota had a $2.1 billion budget surplus. The surplus comes from what? It certainly doesn't come from government not spending. The surplus comes from overtaxation. That's the case in almost, not all, but almost every state out there. They've got gobs of money, folks.
North Carolina was running a surplus, the Democrats there raised taxes by 9%." So what's happening here, the political agenda is taking over with the collapse of the bridge. The Democrats and the Drive-Bys are trying to scare us into believing that more taxes would have saved these people on that bridge at that moment, and it's all a GOP governor's fault for refusing to increase those taxes. The fact of the matter is that the problem was not low taxes. The problem was fiscal irresponsibility. The Democrats spend money like a teenager that gets hold of your gold card, with abandon and little thought to the consequences or effectiveness. I have a list here of pork in just the state of Minnesota. There is a book that lists this stuff for every state. In fact, I think I have it here as a pdf file. I might upload it to the website, if it's the same thing I've got here, but it mirrors what is happening in many, many states. They spend millions for animal exhibits at the zoo, millions for stupid art projects. Every county has a stupid art project, state funds in a number of states. They spend money on so many things, if you stop to think about it -- try this. The state bailout of the Minnesota teachers retirement fund, which puts state taxpayers on the hook for $972 million in unfunded liabilities.
This is just a list of pork in Minnesota. A new $776 million Twins stadium to be paid for with a Hennepin County sales tax increase approved by state legislators with no voter referendum, $97.5 million for the North Star commuter rail line, $34 million in subsidies to ethanol producers that have seen a 300% increase in profits in the last year, and yet they're still being subsidized, $30 million for bear exhibits at the Minnesota and Como zoos, $12 million to renovate the Schubert Theater in downtown Minneapolis, one million for a replica Vikings ship in Morehead. Other states are building drag racing museums. They run around and say they don't have enough money to fix the bridges. They don't have enough money to deal with the infrastructure. The thing is with liberals they'll never have enough money, no matter how much they raise, no matter how much they increase taxes.<< |
