The Maxi:
It is weird being with out a pet that you have seen everyday (minus a few) for 11 years. My remaining dog Rufus is quite beside himself. He had never spent a day with out Maxi. Tough to get used to. Maxi was the first dog my family had had for years, so everyone had gotten attached to her, everyone misses her.

The boat:
I ripped it apart and had the head checked out. The head turned out to be fine. It did blow a frost plug (due to my shody winterizing), but the Cylinder Head shop said it was perfect, for a 21 year old. I flushed out the block, and inspected every possible element of the engine, with out tearing apart the block. The only other mechanical thing that could have caused the problem would be an internally cracked block. That would be fatal for it. The local shops say that it would be near impossible to find a replacement block or engine. A mid ’70s straight six Chevrolet engine that runs? Tough. Finding a junkyard truck with the same engine, with out an already cracked block? Impossible.

I am going to reassemble the engine with new gaskets, run it in the garage, and check the oil. There is a very very remote possibility that it was a fluke and that it am okay. So remote that I am banking on it. I just need to find a head gasket and a thermostat gasket and then we’ll see. If water gets into the oil again, I will figure out how to shoehorn a V-8 in. That would be a very tough task, but fun. It would require redoing everything. Gauges, lower drive unit, steering, exhaust, intake, fuel lines, electrical, not to mention lots and lots of money. Tip jar anyone?

The State Budget Joke Dealings:
Its a joke. I heard that someone thinks the cig fee is a way around teh casinos getting out of paying. They don’t pay taxes, but they do pay fees. We all know that smokers will make the trek to casinos to save money on smokes. Heck a lot of them probably gamble in the first place. So it would be expected that smokers would buy their smokes at the casinos if they could avoid the tax, people always avoid charges if they can. But if it was a fee, the casinos would have to pay it, and the smokes would not be any cheaper. It is also a way to get money from the casinos.

I don’t like it what ever it is called. It isn’t about the classification or the smoking. For me its the money. I am in the seemingly small group of Minnesotans that thinks teh State has enough money. This cigarette user fee is designed to bring $400 million or so in revenue. That’s $400 million more in spending. $400 million in spending that will be unfunded next year. After people get tired of paying the extra money, find a loop hole around paying it (Wisconsin anyone?), or just plain quits, the projected revenue will go down. Meaning that new ways to come up with revenue will be needed. (My suspicion of the DFL’s plan all along)

So this extra revenue does nothing but make things worse. It increases spending, with no long term revenue supply.Bad bad bad.

I’m glad the casino is off the table.

I’m livid that spending MORE is the goal of most involved. I guess the days of budget hawks is over.

The Chat:
I had a conversation with a union worker in a state college last night. She ‘deserves’ a raise. She ‘deserves’ health care. People ‘deserve’ free education, and by that she means college education. The state needs to raise taxes to pay for the state workers benefits and pensions. She ‘deserves’ her job until she gets her pension/ retirement. She is a union steward, so spouts the party line to the tee, but I gave her pretty good reasoning on why if she gets her way, Minnesota is done for.
Taxing $1 billion dollars more will be equivilant to removing $1 billion dollars from the economy. The Government is a competitor to the economy. And if the state feels it is more important to protect its workers, and acts on it, they will in fact be affecting every other worker in the state. Raising taxes on the rich employers and businesses will result in less employees, and payroll. Which in turn will result in lower economic performance. Which gets me back to less revenue coming in, because with less commerce comes less taxes being paid.

I asked her if 4% was enough of a budget increase? She said no. I asked her if 8% was enough, and she was baffled when I said that is what Pawlenty was proposing. I told her that teh DFL came in demanding 12% spending increases, and the GOP 0-2%. I then asked her who was the ones trying to compromise? Which side was giving more than they should? She was not prepared for this one. She had no union reply.

The conversation was heated, but pleasant. We’ve talked politics before, and always enjoy the back and forth.

The basic sum of it was that ALL state workers had the right to have THEIR job and teh rest of us had to deal with it.

The Death of Minnesota’s Economy:
I caught a bit of the legislative feed this evening while visiting my grandma. Why is it that there was a non-partisan parade of spending speaches? Both GOPers and DFLers got up there and demanded that next time they spend more? Is there not a single conservative left there? According to the majority of the 5 Representatives I heard, we needed to spend another billion dollars on transit.

So let’s tally up where the legislature ‘wants’ to be.
Last Budget: $28 Billion
Promissed Increases: $2 Billion (Already on the books)
Current budget: $30 billion (give or take)
Education Demands: $1 Billion (They want it)
Transporation Demands: 1 Billion (They said it)
Mass Transit Promises: $700 Million (Northstar and Light Rail Expansions)
Health Care Demands: 1 Billion Plus (And that is a low guess)
Stadium Demands: $1 Billion (Vikings and Twins Includes Local Portions)

So where does that leave us STARTING the next bienium’s talks?
$34.7 Billion
If my horrible math is even close, that is a 25% increase. there is no way the Minnesota economy can handle that.

The Other Stuff that people are talking about:
I’ve been out of the loop on most national things. I think the Rove thing is so blown out of whack. 2 Supreme Court vacancies, can the media destroy the reputations of multiple conservatives in coordination with the Dems and not get caught?

The London Bombings and Terrorism in general:
Will the world media get it ever? These 4 boys terrorists were British. They weren’t animals from across the World. They were there own flesh and blood. They killed because a book told them to. Them attacked because of grievences started long before Iraq. They wanted to kill more. They did not isolate friends from foes. They ruthlessly attacked and killed the defenseless. It was not Iraq related. It wasn’t a direct attack agianst the US military. It could have just as well been against the BBC or CBS. These animals who kill for religion will not stop. We cannot strike a truece with some one who believes they must kill us in order to be good at their religion. We can not live peacefully with out them deciding to agree. We could make peace, but only if they agree that we can stay alive.

I haven’t had much time to pay attention to more than that. Did I miss anything?

I’m planning to take off out of town again tomorrow, unless we get rain. So I may not be back until Sunday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Know Thy Enemy, Life, Minnesota, Politics, War on Terror, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.