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The short version:
Minnesota governor Mark Dayton this morning offered the Republicans controlling the Minnesota Legislature a choice: He’d accept their June 30 proposal, which delays school payments and doesn’t tax the rich, on these three conditions:
– They dump all the ALEC-inspired social/policy agenda bullshit (including their own version of Scott Walker’s union-busting bill), crap which they’d spent the entire session pushing
– They drop their plan to cut state employee numbers by 15%
– They approve a $500 million bonding bill to put people back to work in Minnesota.
It took them several hours, but the Republican leadership decided that protecting the rich from more taxes was far more important than looking fiscally prudent or even gutting unions and pushing mandatory picture voter IDs.
The details will have to be worked out, and this is still a tentative framework, but (assuming Zellers and Koch — or rather, their leaders Tony Sutton and his deputy Michael Brodkrob, who dictate every breath Zellers and Koch take — can get the rest of the GOP caucus to agree) the shutdown is very likely going to end soon.
Think about it. They were so desperate to protect the rich that they actually agreed to dump ALL the Taliban legislation they’d been trying to push all session — the union-busting, the anti-stem-cell crap, the picture voter ID, all of it — along with any pretense that they were deficit hawks, just to keep Dayton from taxing the top .03% or 7,700 richest Minnesotans.
That tells you something.
By the way, Dayton’s not up for reelection until 2014, whereas the legislature’s all up for reelection next year.
And again, there is a chance that some of the wackier GOP freshmen might refuse to back this because all of the Taliban crap got stripped out. But it’ll probably go through, with GOP votes — the DFL will sit this one out most likely.
37 Comments
I thought the report would tell us that every sensible person left the state and only the politicians remained. They couldn’t get a drink to drown their sorrows. What choice would they have but to leave.
They can get drinks, all right — just not MillerCoors crapola. Beer that’s made here is A-OK; it’s only the MillerCoors stuff that wouldn’t be sold here.
I guess we know now what’s the cake — not taxing millionaires — and what’s the frosting — all the talibangelical and anti-union stuff. Shows who’s paying their freight, anyway.
Compare this to what Obama’s doing with Cantor et al. Obama’s trying to out-Cantor Cantor in the cuts department, whereas Dayton actually wrings $500 million in stimulus out of a GOP desperate to keep him from taxing their rich backers.
Well, that’s a great reason to stay! I thought the state required tickets for every bit of alcohol purchased by a store, bar, etc.
I try to rise above snobbery but its hard when confronting the prospect of drinking fast food beer.
It does. The Republicans agreed to $500 million worth of stimulus — for a state our size, that’s just about the equivalent of Obama asking and getting Eric Cantor and John Boehner to agree to $500 billion worth of nationwide stimulus — rather than tax the richest of the rich.
In other words, Mark Dayton is a better negotiator than Barack Obama.
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You may find this is like Dayton’s announcement, appears to be giving in, but when the details come out, no dice.
Dayton was thinking 1995, but no such luck. And, he had to give in–at least to some degree. There was no big movement to back him.
Do you really think Dayton thought his plan was going to pass? Or was the “tax the rich” thing always to be bargained away for the status quo?
“In other words, Mark Dayton is a better negotiator than Barack Obama.”
Mark Dayton is a negotiator, Barack Obama is not.
Is there a chance MN will get a Democratic legislature after 2012 that will actually pass some “tax the rich” legislation?
If the Lege had held out six weeks longer, Minnesota could have started to run out of cigarettes. Then there would have been real pressure to negotiate.
Anyway, glad to hear that you think things are on the upswing. It’s hard negotiating with the insane.
It still is a sad time when a whole state is shut down in order to prevent tax cuts for the rich. Minnesota once had many progressives and one of the best educational systems. What happened?
Incorrect wording…I meant to say “prevent tax HIKES for the rich”.
$500 million worth of stimulus. That is really going to help the state of Minnesota. Good for Governor Mark Dayton. Maybe some of the Republican legislators in Minnesota are somewhat smarter than they are being credited if they recognized that a stimulus package is exactly what the state needs now (or at least won’t fight it).
PW,
Thank you for the post.
I was waiting for my wife to get ready to take her out to dinner and had the 5:30 news on and the guy that replaced Katie Couric announced that Mark Dayton had caved or words to that effect.
I was angry/upset because it looked like Dayton surrendered in total.
I was wrong and your post shows what I should have known, MSM strikes once again.
Dinner was fine and I did not let the “news” ruin a good evening.
Mark Dayton appears to have driven a hard bargain, now lets wait and see what the Koch Bros. et al think of the deal.
Again, thank you for setting me straight.
I have no clue. But he at least started from a position that was far more progressive than Obama’s, so he wound up getting a better deal than Obama likely will.
That’s what may well happen.
These guys are well and truly nuts. It’s going to be fun watching the GOP negotiate with itself over this — the DFL is going to sit this one out so if it passes it’ll have to be with solely Republican votes.
What happened? Locally, it was a big influx of white-flighters from out of state, who wound up settling in the exurbs around the Twin Cities — people who like working sewer systems but don’t want to pay for them. And of course the organized nationwide conservative push to control not just all media, but all other arbiters of objective reality.
Not a problem!
The national news may be calling it a “cave”, but it was more of a Hobson’s Choice: Dayton gave the GOP a lot of the cuts they wanted, but only if they dumped their Taliban policy agenda, their anti-union legislation, and agreed to back a $500 bonding bill for a stimulus program. That’s a much better deal than the one Obama’s likely to get.
Our state’s shutdown MIGHT be coming to an end but the really BIG problems are just beginning.
I’ve been saying this for the past couple of years. The only absolutely non-negotiable ideological belief the current GOP has left is tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. They can be had on almost anything else. They’d legalize cannabis, make abortions free, back gay marriage and more in a second if they were convinced that were what is what was necessary to preserve or expand those tax breaks.
There must be ways to take advantage of this.
When the deal is actually done, can Minnesota lend Gov. Dayton for a few days to teach our President how to negotiate?
I don’t understand it. I mean, I know his agenda is farther right than mine, but still, he invariably starts from the opposition’s hardline position, and then gives up more. How is that negotiating?
I learned how to negotiate in law school, for heaven’s sake; didn’t he? And I was just at that third-tier school across the river from his!
Wait, wait…there’s the flaw; he was editor of the Law Review, and I took the clinical course…there’s the difference. No negotiating skills needed when you’re the king of the LR; you just make the decisions. Me, I had to learn how to negotiate with some of the worst slumlords in Boston, so our instructors took the time to teach us techniques and even role-play them.
Honestly, I got much better deals from sleazy money-grubbers as evil as the Republicans. He needs to learn, quick.
Classic negotation style, and it worked.
Dayton started on the left, and then came to the middle. He didn’t start in the middle or on the right like the idiot in the White House always does (and never learns, or maybe it’s by intention, which is another debate).
“There must be ways to take advantage of this.”
There are, but Obama ain’t gonna do it.
He’s had almost 3 years, and he isn’t learning at all. In fact, he keeps making the same mistakes. Or are they mistakes?
When Hubert Humphrey was the Senator from Minnesota, the state was known for having a “reformism that tenaciously promoted “the disinherited” underdogs at the expense of “the interests.” How times have changed…and not for the better.
what debate?
He’s either a complete sell-out or he’s the dumbest smart-person/well-educated person ever.
And all the evidence points to the former.
Dayton actually played ball on the people’s side, unlike O.
Nailed it.
“Mistakes”, ie. the kind he intentionally, purposely, and willfully wants to make.
Folks
This deal may not be as good as it looks.
I will post as soon as I get details.
I supported Dayton but now I am not so sure.
Please let us now.
Thanks in advance.
Is there any way to keep all that shitty beer outta the state with this deal? I mean, who drinks Miller or Coors with all the microbrews there are nowadays?
Expecting Obama to be looking for ways to take advantage of this is like expecting OJ to look for the real killer.
The McCain Family? Seriously, maybe that’s why CrazyTrain is so cranky all the time.
St. Paul, MN, Capitol:
Street Theater Action: Friday, July 15, 11AM, in solidarity w/ Shutdown/Rise Up take part in street theater on the capitol steps.
Bring scrubs, bandages, fake blood for serious street theater followed by a march to the GOP headquarters 2 blocks
away to show graphically, if theatrically, that sick, elderly, children, disabled, and poor HUMAN BEINGS are NOT expendable,
only to be CUT from a budget line item.
Then Squat the Capitol Lawn: The St. Paul Capitol building is “CLOSED” (the federal gov’t could also plausibly close on aug2) but we declare our CAPITOL LAWN “OPEN” 24 hours a day to: inaugurate the “General Assembly of Minnesotans”, squat a Tent & TP Town”, craft the “Peoples Budget of MN” based on human needs and environmental sustainability, NO Cuts to health and human services, and serve as a focal point for networking/actions. Feel free to come on down to a “free state”, and express your concerns creatively (music, dance, theater, spoken/written word, cabaret, painting). All are welcome, but especially if you are homeless, unemployed (196,000), uninsured (800,000), poor (500,000), bankrupt (20,000), while the richest 10% of MNs own almost half of our state’s personal income. People of color are the hardest hit. The capitol is your new statepark. We will form a budget where the rich support the poor, the healthy support the sick, the young support the old in Intergenerational and Multi-cultural solidarity ! Consolidating ALL currently fragmented publicly-funded health insurance and services which are administered across nearly every state government agency total $20 billion. Consolidation would save $2 billion without cuts. THIS IS what democracy looks like. We dont have a vote, we dont have a seat, listen to the voices of the people on the street.
Sponsors: a group of Minnesotans who have camped on the Capitol lawn several all- nights since the shutdown started.
Here’s what MPR has to say about it: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/07/15/deal-at-a-glance/
Considering that Governor Dayton has to deal with a legislature where both houses are firmly in the hands of the GOP — and a rather psychotic GOP at that — this is about as good a deal as could be achieved. The $500 million bonding bill in particular is a welcome surprise. The worst thing, obviously, is making the schools borrow money to keep running. But I suspect this will all be revisited soon, as every single state legislator is up for re-election next year, whereas Dayton won’t be until 2014.
The GOP might well lose control of the state legislature faster than they gained it, at which point Dayton can, with a Democratic-controlled legislature, come back with his original tax plan and have it pass this time around.