Almanac: At the Capitol

Lately, there's been slightly more cooperation after the bloated Bonding Bill was vetoed in total.

We promised to be civil and respectful and the bill was vetoed in a civil and respectful manner. It would certainly have helped if the DFL would have involved the Republican legislators and the Governor in setting the budget targets. We've worked together on one budget bill that passed easily: Agriculture and Veterans. As we finish session, I will once again extend the hand of friendship and the olive branch of cooperation to bring a successful conclusion to our work.

And It's Called TAXES!

One of my kids' favorite books when they were small was Mercer Mayer's There's a Nightmare in My Closet. I think everyone knows the story:

There's a little boy who believes a monster lives in his closet. As it turns out, the monster, who is big and ugly and creepy, is just as afraid of the little boy as the boy is of him. They finally realize that they have a common bond and become friends. The end.

Many Minnesota Republicans insist there is a nightmare in their closet ... and it's called TAXES! Taxes can be big and ugly and creepy if you perceive them to be that way, or they can become your friend if you respect them and utilize what they have to offer.

Generally speaking, higher taxes go with higher standards of living and more egalitarian societies. The Scandinavian countries are a good example. Minnesota is another good example. The quality of life in Minnesota is one of the highest in the nation. It is also a relatively high-tax state.

Put simply, taxes are a shared way in which society pays for common properties, goods and services that everyone uses. Examples include schools, parks, roads, police and fire protection, and public defense (in the case of a nation). Taxes also help pay for health care, food, housing and business incentives.

Indeed, taxes are not to be feared but to be utilized.

The logic of treating taxes as if they are a nightmare hiding in a closet is beyond me, unless, of course, it is done for purely political reasons. In that case, treating taxes as if they were a big and ugly and creepy monster makes perfect sense if you put your own political agenda, personal opportunities and personal wealth above everyone else's. To me that's called selfishness — but I guess I'm old fashioned.

That said, I will be the first to acknowledge that not all tax systems are optimal. Complex tax codes create nightmarish administration costs and encourage tax cheating. Unfair tax systems stratify society and also encourage cheating. The best tax codes are the most simple and egalitarian.

Rather than be fearful of the monster in our closet, we need to embrace him and make use of his talents. Heck, he can help us move our heavy bed and help us clean underneath it. He can lift us onto his shoulders and give us a ride around our bedroom. He can read books with us, like Where the Wild Things Are. He can play catch with us, or even a good game of Scrabble. He can even scare away robbers that come creeping around late at night.

In other words, like in the Mercer Mayer book, the nightmare can be our friend. Or he can remain the terrible nightmare behind the closet door forever to be feared.

For many of Minnesota's Republican legislators, and for its governor, this is their choice. Fear or friendship? Selfishness or sharing? Which of these make the most sense?

In 1978, Minnesota foreshadowed the coming Reagan Revolution — that two-plus decade of political reaction at home and unilateral military adventurism abroad — with the election of old-time conservative Al Quie as Governor and right-of-center Rudy Boschwitz to U.S. Senate.

Twenty-years later, it seemed that Minnesota might again be foreshadowing the next great realignment of American politics with Jesse Ventura's upset victory in the 1998 gubernatorial race. For awhile, some political observers wondered whether third-party insurgencies — which got off with a bang with Ross Perot's 1992 Presidential Bid — might not end up dismantling the hidebound two-party system. At a minimum, it seemed possible that one of the two main parties might go the way of the Whig Party in the 19th century, eclipsed by some 21st-century version of the new Republican Party of the 1850s.

None of this, of course, came to pass; in retrospect, though Ralph Nader did mount a spirited challenge in 2000, it's easy to see that the forces that contributed to Perot's success in 1992, most notably a deep recession, were no longer operative during the dot.com speculative boom of the late 90s. By then a large percentage of us, sleepily unaware of the aims of some ragtag bunch of fanatics calling themselves Al-Qaeda, had deluded ourselves into thinking that we were gonna ride our Enron/WorldCom/Tyco-heavy stock portfolios right to the top of Big Rock Candy Mountain. Hard as it is to recall from the vantage point of 2007, in 2000 it didn't seem to make a dime's worth of difference (to quote an earlier third-party insurgent) whether George W. Bush or Al Gore were elected President.

But even as Minnesota has at moments seemed to be a political bellweather rather than backwater, the state has, alas, not proven entirely immune to pernicious developments on the national scene. For a time during the Ventura Administration, it seemed that we might take a pass on the bitter, scorched-earth partisanship that gripped Washington and was quickly infecting the states as well. For all his inability to exert consistent and effective leadership once in office, Ventura made a genuine effort to appoint the best and the brightest, regardless of party affiliation, to top administrative posts as well as to the state bench. And if nothing else, his victory in 1998 served to unite the DFL and Republican Party in a common goal of preventing him and the Independence Party from achieving a permanent foothold in the state. The motive wasn't pretty, but at least it generated a few years of bi-partisanship!

Which brings us to today, on the verge of not one, but three threatened vetoes of DFL-backed legislation in only one session: the higher education bill; the income tax bill; and now, a bill that has just passed the Senate and will be taken up (and likely approved on a straight party-line vote) by the House allowing the University of Minnesota to receive state money for stem cell research. In each case, one or both parties to these transactions — Gov. Pawlenty on one hand, DFL legislators on the other — is acting on that current bane of contemporary American politics: appealing to the base, regardless of the harm such narrow partisan behavior might cause society. The pending impasse is the dark triumph of politics according to Karl Rove, a man whose last name, incidentally, sounds like "rogue" spoken by someone with a mouth full of Jack Abramoff's dirty lucre.

As I've said, neither party is blameless. While laudable in its objectives, the Dream Act — that portion of the higher ed bill that would extend in-state tuition and other benefits to illegal immigrants — seems more like a needless tossing down of the gauntlet (and an appeal to that portion of the DFL base for whom immigrant rights trump all) than an attempt to pass legislation. But again, the lion's share of guilt lies with Pawlenty. There is nothing in the income tax bill, which would raise state taxes on a grand total of 92,000 of Minnesota's wealthiest citizens, then use the added revenue to offer desperately needed property tax relief to middle class families scrambling to hold on to their homes, that makes it a worthy target for a veto. That is, nothing other than the Governor's opportunistic "no new taxes" pledge made as part of his deal-with-the-devil to win the 2002 endorsement. Just how many families are going to have to go bankrupt before Mr. Pawlenty wrests his soul back from the clutches of the Minnesota Taxpayers League?

And as for the stem cell legislation, well, don't get me started. The University of Minnesota is conducting some of the most innovative stem cell research in the world right now. While it is true, as Pawlenty says, nothing in current law prevents the University from conducting stem cell research, or seeking funding for same from private sources, all I can say is that Tim Pawlenty is not a stupid man, and he knows as well as I do that state funding acts as seed money and multiplier, attracting several dollars of private funding for every dollar of public money.

Even more important, it will add to the momentum across the country to override the life-negating "pro-life" anti-stem cell research position taken by the Bush Administration. As a member of a family with a history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other less-common afflictions for which stem cell research holds out at least the possibility of a cure, this is one veto threat I take very personally. Here, appealing to the base is, quite, literally, trading the "sanctity" of embryos — almost all destined to be destroyed in the normal course of things — for the lives and well-being of "post-born" Minnesotans. Partisanship's one thing, Tim. But now you're talking about my kith and kin — and the kith and kin of a lot of other residents of this state — being offered up on the altar of your ambitions to serve as running mate for John McCain's already-doomed 2008 Presidential campaign.

For once, sir, do the right thing — remind the base that you're the Governor of all Minnesotans and sign at least the stem cell bill when it lands on your desk.

A shooting incident on one bus; a physical altercation on another that leads to the death of a passenger. Violent crime on the rise across the Metro area. What's going on? Is this just a local phenomenon, or part of a larger pattern?

Turns out, it's the latter. New figures reveal that, even though the American population is aging (most violent crime is committed by young people), and even though the overall crime rate has been going down, an increase in violent crime is taking place in cities around the country, especially in the Midwest.

In trying to explain this phenomenon, experts have trotted out the usual collection of usual suspects: The meth scourge, easy access to guns, prisoners sent away 20 years ago for assault and homicide getting out of prison, TV, the growing income disparity, illegal immigrants, etc. The police chief of one California suburb whose murder rate rose 20 percent while its incidents of deadly assault soared 65 percent between 2004 and 2006, commented that, "There's a mentality among some people that they're living out some really violent video game."

Indeed.

But while all these factors ­ and others not enumerated ­ undoubtedly contribute to a new violent crime epidemic similar to the one that began in the mid-1960s and did not abate until the 1990s, there's one big factor that you will not see cited in the mainstream media.

It's the war, stupid. And the insane, out-of-control militarism that fueled the Iraq catastrophe and may very well lead us into an even bigger catastrophe in Iran.

Increases in violence and crime in general, as well as "immoral" and reckless behavior, have been recorded throughout history in societies involved in war. And the longer the war, the worse the effects. That the United States has been at war or frantically arming itself to go to war since 1941 is as good an explanation as any for this country's violent tendencies ­ and a violent crime rate that far outstrips all other industrialized nations.

Not only does war and the glorification of war deliver the message that violence is acceptable ­ and the only manly ­ way to resolve disputes, but in the U.S., military spending (which now exceeds $750 billion a year if you count interest payments on previous expenditures along with current spending) loots resources that might be diverted to more productive ends.

We've all heard the (valid) argument that if the United States had spent just a fraction of what the lunatics in the White House have wasted in Iraq, we could achieve energy independence within a decade. Just as true is that, for want of that huge trough set out each year to feed the military-industrial complex and its willing accomplishes in Congress and the Executive branch, we could easily afford a comprehensive mass transit system, universal health care, and public education capable of doing more than preparing young people to become cannon fodder. In fact, there is a not a single social or political pathology afflicting us today, from the outsourcing of jobs to that growing income gap to our crumbling infrastructure to the hubris of the Imperial Presidency that cannot be attributed in whole or part to our addiction to militarism.

If so, what can Minnesota lawmakers do about it? For one, they can follow the lead of other state legislators around the country and pass a resolution calling upon Congress to bring articles of impeachment against the war criminal sitting in the White House; under the Constitution, if only one state legislature passes such a resolution, Congress must initiate impeachment proceedings. No, George Bush is not the problem, but he is certainly a problem and bringing him and the crooks around him to justice is a necessary step toward curbing the Imperial Presidency and all its temptations to warmongering, corruption, secrecy, and contempt for civil liberties.

Second, the Legislature can pass a resolution calling upon the Governor to refuse any further deployments of Minnesota National Guard troops to the Iraqi bloodbath. While it's true that the Constitution gives the President as Commander-in-Chief ultimate say in Guard deployments during times of war, it is equally true that no elected official in this country need abide by an illegal request; in fact, they are legally bound to resist and expose such requests. By every conceivable standard of national and international law, the war in Iraq is an illegal conflict, a war of aggression, and thus a war crime and a crime against humanity. If Tim Pawlenty just said no to any further demands for Minnesota Guard troops, he'd find himself not only on solid ground legally but, I dare say, politically as well, in step at last with the solid majority of his constituents who want to bring our troops home, now.

Third, the Legislature can continue to try to make up for wasted federal resources by devoting necessary funding to those very sectors, like health care, education, infrastructure, and transit, that have gone wanting these past several decades.

Almost 50 years ago, Dwight Eisenhower warned against the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex, which, in an earlier draft of his farewell speech, he more accurately called the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. Today, that complex endangers not just our national security and economic well-being but our very survival as a democratic society. To those who claim that addressing this cancer on the body politic is not a state issue, I say Minnesotans are suffering its affects just as much as residents elsewhere in the country. America was founded as a strong federalist system, with an unusual degree of power reserved to the states. Let's find the courage to use those power in order to bring the beast to bay before it's too late.