New Majority Project

Boy, this really makes me feel better about the future of health care in America. How many times do we have to repeat Armey's Axiom: When you make a deal with the devil, you're the junior partner. Why health care providers want to get even more deeply intertwined with the federal government is beyond me.

This George Will piece demonstrates not just the hypocrisy of modern liberalism, but its utter moral bankruptcy. Trapping poor minority children in Washington, DC's failing public schools is apparently President Hope Change's idea of progress.

While he, like Bill and Hillary Clinton before him, sends his own children to tony Sidwell Friends, not DC public schools, President Obama doesn't believe poor DC parents deserve the same choice for their children. In addition to hope and change, I guess the new administration is bringing a little Maria Antoinette, let-em-eat-cake to Washington.

As a veteran of the school choice wars during my days in Washington with Dick Armey, I can tell you that no issue made me madder than this one. Raw partisan politics meant more to liberals than the lives of children whose parents were desperate to give them a chance at a better future. It exposed the true nature of the modern left: Their teachers' union paymasters called the tune, and they danced.

They really are modern-day George Wallaces. Only this time, they are standing in the school house door to trap the children inside rather than keep them out.

The first paragraph of Pat Lopez’s story at startribune.com pretty much says it all:

Cigarette taxes would go up by 54 cents a pack, the liquor tax would be boosted for the first time in 20 years and top income-earners would be subject to one of the highest income tax rates in the country --9 percent -- under a $1.5 billion tax bill presented this morning as the DFL-led House's major revenue raiser.

That’s what referred to in some quarters as an opening bid.  My guess is that their Senate DFL counterparts will see the House’s ante, and raise them.  I suspect that, before the process plays out later in May (or June or July), we will see a bevy of new taxes that will make Minnesota even less hospitable to job creation and sock it to families already stretched thin by a very deep recession.

Fortunately for Minnesota, Governor Pawlenty’s veto pen and enough House Republicans to sustain the veto, stand between us and this irresponsible taxation. But that doesn't mean the liberal politicians and interest groups are going to walk away quietly.

All you Tea Partiers out there, there’s a lot of work to be done.

Perhaps you would classify the Democrats who control the Minnesota House of Representatives as anti-anti-tax. At least that's the message they seem to be sending with their hearing schedule for Tax Day, April 15th. In what could only be considered questionable PR, the House Tax Committee will consider two bills, HF 1896 and HF 2125, that would raise beer and alcohol taxes in Minnesota. See the sordid particulars here and here.

Minnesotans are already among the nation's most taxed citizens. These new taxes on our favorite adult beverages would only add insult - and more pressure on already-stressed family budgets - to the injury we are suffering at the hands of liberal politicians intent on making us the nation's highest tax state when they solve our state's budget deficit later this spring.

Minnesota has a prosperity problem. We are not creating enough high quality private sector jobs. The income and business tax increases being bandied about will guarantee that we don't for the foreseeable future. It's possible we could hold the dubious distinction of having the nation's highest personal income tax rate and the nation's highest corporate tax rate.

Maybe this is an actual strategy by certain money hungry politicians. Their lousy policy options are driving us to drink. When we do, they tax us again. Bang. New revenue stream. Stranger things have happened.

Stay tuned. This is an issue we plan to spend some time fighting. In the current economic crisis, Minnesotans don't need higher taxes, especially on the things they buy.