Via Sen Minority Leader Sen. Dave Senjem.

Several controversial issues in the House and in committees will be making their way to the Senate soon, including proposals for tightening auto emissions standards, state-sponsored consumer health plans, revisions to JOBZ, and judicial elections. It’s likely that next week we will hear the Senate version of a bill passed this week in the House for a $40 million state victims compensation fund that will assist I-35W survivors. Also, the complex and controversial plan to give state funding to stem cell research has been revived.

Hillary would be so proud.

A bill for an act
1.2relating to public health; increasing affordability and continuity of care for state
1.3health care programs; modifying health care provisions; establishing a public
1.4health access fund; increasing the tobacco impact fees; providing subsidies for
1.5employee share of employer-subsidized insurance; establishing the Minnesota
1.6Health Insurance Exchange; requiring certain employers to offer Section 125
1.7Plan; creating an affordability standard; requiring mandated reports; authorizing
1.8rulemaking; appropriating money;amending Minnesota Statutes 2006, sections
1.916A.725, subdivision 1; 62A.65, subdivision 3; 62E.141; 62L.12, subdivisions
1.102, 4; 256.01, by adding a subdivision; 256.9658, subdivisions 3, 9; 256B.061;
1.11256B.69, by adding a subdivision; 256D.03, by adding a subdivision; 256L.05,
1.12by adding a subdivision; 256L.06, subdivision 3; 256L.07, subdivision 3;
1.13256L.15, by adding a subdivision; Minnesota Statutes 2007 Supplement, sections
1.1413.46, subdivision 2; 256B.056, subdivision 10; 256L.03, subdivisions 3, 5;
1.15256L.04, subdivisions 1, 7; 256L.05, subdivision 3a; 256L.07, subdivision 1;
1.16256L.15, subdivision 2; proposing coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes,
1.17chapters 16A; 145; 256B; proposing coding for new law as Minnesota Statutes,
1.18chapter 62U; repealing Minnesota Statutes 2006, section 256L.15, subdivision 3.
1.19BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Translation: The state is going to tell you how you have to …. how it will take care of you.

Forget your fears of Big Brother listening to your calls, Big nanny is here to save you from yourself.

I here Wisconsin is nice this time of year. 

I was wrong, Rep. Rod Hamilton’s endorsing convention is not tonight. If my email is correct, Cottonwood County Republicans do not endorse at the County convention. I was informed that “endorsements” are not on the agenda for tonight’s convention up in Windom.

Hamilton’s endorsement will need to be done at a different time.

Angelina Jolie is in Iraq, and is not toeing the Hollywood line.

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Kudos for her not being a limosine liberal and lofting rhetoric from Davos and Beverly Hills.  She sees the refugees in other countries as a burden.

So, let;s domesticize this, who is going to do something about the burdensome criminal refugees that we have in America? No I know they aren’t criminal refugees, they’re criminal aliens. Hang on lefties and Amnesty lovers. Our laws say don’t sneak in or or overstay your visit, they broke them, thus - criminal aliens.

Anyways,m they are a tremendous burden on our country. They are taking jobs, and most likely a lot of them are off the books jobs. In other cases they drive the wages throw the basement. And all of that so they can send billions of dollars back to their countries of origin. Those billions should be in our country.

I’m serious. Mexico and other Latin American countries are invaded our economy and treasury departments. Be it simply stealing jobs and exporting American wage earnings, or getting taxpayer funded medical treatment and education, criminal aliens in the United States may be a huge factor in the economic downturn we are in.

So congrats G.I. Jolie for trying to do something truly humanitarian and doing more than most Hollywood elites. And to my fellow Americans, it is time to get serious about our Domestic world. We cannot be the hostel (not hostile) and ATM for all the world’s impoverished.

Look, I know America was built by people coming here from abroad and taking the risk to live the America dream. My problem is, that that is not what 20 some million or so criminal aliens are doing. Just think, can America continue to be an orphanage. Police force for the world, and afford have jobless people robbing the cookie jar from the shadows and filling up their own jars in another cookie jar?

Now that the World’s eyes are finally on China with the Olympics coming, China is finally trying to figure out how to pull the curtain over all their pollution. Oh and playing God. Read the whole thing, but here’s the conclusion.

Another worry: Beijing’s severe air pollution. Dr. Daniel Rosenfeld, a meteorologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has visited his Chinese colleagues, said there are early indications that pollution decreases rain, which may be driving Beijing and northern China further into drought.

The International Olympic Committee has already threatened to postpone some endurance events if Beijing’s air quality is poor. Beijing, a city of 17 million, is expected to ban 1.5 million vehicles from the roads, shut factories and foundries and halt the city’s frantic construction boom for the games.

“The only thing that cleans up the pollution is the rain, and if they are going to suppress rain, my worry is the pollution will be oppressive,” said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, who will use the Olympics to study the impact of reduced pollution. “It’s a Catch-22.”

Make sure you lock your doors.

NEW YORK - For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

Of course it is a story that tugs at the purse strings of taxpayers.

Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States, said budget woes are pressuring many states to consider new, cost-saving corrections policies that might have been shunned in the recent past for fear of appearing soft on crime.

“We’re seeing more and more states being creative because of tight budgets,” she said in an interview. “They want to be tough on crime. They want to be a law-and-order state. But they also want to save money, and they want to be effective.”

And what is the priority of the DFL controlled Legislature in Minnesota? Sales taxes on clothes, tax increases for trains, and health care for all. Meanwhile they had $50 Billion at their disposal. But they still demand more to perform the basics of State Government. Well the report did say to let the criminals go, so I suppose it is reasonable for Democrats to ignore public safety.

Priorities, priorities.

DFL Chair Brian Melendez & Deputy Chair Donna Cassutt have endorsed Barack Obama. This puts Minnesota’s marxist ‘Ruling class’ strongly behind B.H.O. They did of course have the fortune of remaining patient and endorsing the presumptive nominee unlike the Republican Chair Ron Carey, when he preemptively endorsed Mike Huckabee.

Ruling class? Yes, ‘ruling class‘.

The Democratic Party doesn’t really believe in Democracy. Every vote is not equal and they don’t all carry the same weight.  Nope, they have built in a safety system that allows the party leadership to overrule the peasant party members if they choose unwisely in the Presidential nomination.

So flawed the Democratic system is for nominating a Presidential candidate that no one really knows what the Delegate count exactly is from day to day. The party rules have also disenfranchised some states, and created a weighted vote system.  One man one vote? Not if the results are going to be wrong.

The rank and file Democrats are not really deciding this race, in the end it is going to come down to the ‘ruling class’ of the party. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the communist tree.

Who says guns don’t turn chicks on?

Disciplinary Charges Filed in Probe of SWAT Team That Cavorted With Hooters Girls 

The city’s SWAT team was disbanded in November after officials learned of racy pictures taken during a trip team members made to the New Orleans area in 2006 to help Hurricane Katrina victims. The photos show the unit’s commander and other officers posing with waitresses from a Hooters restaurant in Alabama who appeared to be holding police firearms.

There are even photos.  (no nudity) One has to wonder why the SWAT Team took the bus to a Hooters in the first place.

51% of Americans are disgusted by the SWAT Team’s behavior, the other 49% wish they had AR14’s, handcuffs, and a SWAT bus.

They’ll just raise more taxes, er, revenue

The Democrats promised to bring change and fiscal responsibility to St. Paul on the campaign trail in 2006, but it is clear they have gone in the other direction. Democrats have mismanaged the people’s money so badly that they are putting the state at great financial risk and what’s worse, they are forcing Minnesota’s citizens to pay for their mistakes. They’ve even gone so far as to remove voter approval for local Counties before they can raise your taxes. Taxation without representation.

The wish list of new and increased spending for the DFL is long and very expensive. You name the special interest, and the Democrats have given them more state money with no strings attached. They just throw more money at the same old problems. How do Democrats plan to pay for it? By raising YOUR taxes.

The state of Minnesota is collecting record amounts of revenue. Transportation is just the political football. DFL Legislators have more taxpayer dollars at their disposal then ever before. There is no good reason to raise taxes in order to provide the desperately needed funding for our roads and bridges, other than they blew their allowance already. The state has been collecting the money needed for transportation for decades they’ve just been squandering it away on just about everything but transportation.

Had they raised the gas tax last year or any year before that, it wouldn’t have kept the 35W bridge from collapsing. As tragic as it was, it was not the result of a lack of funding that caused that bridge to fall.

Democrat’s bonding requests are for narrowly focused yet incredibly expensive “transit” projects that stand to serve less than 5% of Minnesotans. Those  requests make up far-less-than half the billion dollars in this year’s bonding bill. Hundreds and hundreds of million dollars of their requests are for municipal welfare and higher ed handouts in the form of new buildings and community centers.  Meanwhile the bottlenecks and congested highways we all sit on everyday go unaddressed, unnoticed, unchanged, and unfunded. If Democrats really wanted to fix our roads, all they would need to do is put it at the top of the priority list ahead of the special interests.

Minnesotans work far too hard for their money already and now they will have to work even harder just to fund state government and have enough left over for themselves. If you want higher taxes; more government intrusion into your daily lives and personal finances; vote for the Democrats in November. Their record is clear. They will raise taxes higher and spend more money than any Republican will.

But will taxpayers get their money’s worth if they vote DFL? If you truly believe we can spend our way out of any problem, follow your heart, just hang on to your wallet. According to the DFL and media pundits, everything in Minnesota is in a crisis: Schools, roads, bridges, health care, you name it all of them are: “in crisis”. Well, who has controlled the Legislature and most of the bureaucratic realms of state government where the decisions are made that could have avoided those crises? DFLers and their Big labor public employee union constituents.

My recommendation to really solve the crises in Minnesota is to vote ‘for a real change’.  Vote to solve problems, not just bury them with more taxpayer money. Vote for your hard earned money and to keep more of it in your own bank account rather than in the state treasury. Vote to keep state and local tax collectors out of your wallet. Vote for accountability. Vote for a sustainable, free, and prosperous future. Vote Republican in November if you really want to see what real change looks like.

This email points out about the media coverage of the Transit Tax override.

You know, I keep hearing over and over again from the media that we shouldn’t criticize the “override six” for having the courage to break with their Party and do what they thought was right.

What about the flip side? You mean to tell me that all 85 Democrats loved that bill? What about those outstate pragmatic types whose constituents could care less about metro rail projects? If the override six are brave for their non-partisanship, aren’t many of those 85 Democrats partisan Party-line cowards? What about the two Dems who voted against the bill, but for the override? You didn’t like the bill enough that you voted NO, but once your chance was there to stick it hard to Pawlenty and the Republicans, you were all over the SAME EXACT BILL? Talk about sticking to your principles!

Christ, if the situation was reversed and those were two Republicans, they would be attacked over and over again! Amazing.