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Republicans believe that spending
the people's money is a sacred trust and that elected officials
should use their power wisely and spend tax dollars carefully and efficiently. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money: Art
Grants to North Dakota – $128,825 (2006) The state of Minnesota has
taken art funding to a whole new abstract level by funding museums,
an opera house, and a performing arts school in North Dakota. (Statutes
129D.04;
www.arts.state.mn.us/grants/2006/orgs.htm) (2. p10)) |
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Right: |
This grant illustrates
how easily pet projects of the legislature can lose sight of even
obvious, common sense guidelines like not subsidizing the arts in
other states. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money:
"Bears of the Ussuri" Exhibit – $20.6 million (Session Laws 2005,
Chapter 20, Article 1, Section
12.) According to the construction company building this exhibit,
this $20.6 million project, expected to open in 2008, will feature
“a cove that functions as a ‘shipwreck’ habitat for sea otters,
eagles and brown bears. Following one of several streams from the
oceanfront shipwreck, visitors encounter the Russian brown bears in
a seemingly barrier-free environment of forest and waterfalls.” (2.
p11) |
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Right: |
It is hard to justify
$20 million for a bear cage as a necessary expenditure. Republicans
agree with the Taxpayers League that "this funding for a Russian
bear exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo should be provided through
increased ticket prices and/or private contributions." (2. p11) |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money:
Ethanol Producer Payments – $34 million (Statutes 41A.09,
Subdivision 3a.) This is a 20-cent per gallon gas tax rebate to
Minnesota ethanol producers. Since the mid-1980s, the state has
doled out $426 million in subsidies to Minnesota’s ethanol industry
($275 million in ethanol producer payments and $151 million in
blender tax credits (which were discontinued in 1998)). The industry
also receives a 51-cent per gallon tax credit from the federal
government. Then there’s the billions of dollars of subsidies from
Minnesota consumers from the state’s 10 percent (soon to be 20
percent) ethanol fuel mandate, not to mention the new federal
biofuels mandate. Since the supporters of ethanol claim this
technology (or fuel) is both promising and profitable, why is it
getting government support and a mandate for its use?
(2. p11) |
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Right: |
This
type of special interest subsidy shows how little regard lawmakers
have for the impact their mandates have on citizens especially the
poorest among us. These subsidies waste taxpayer money, distort the
marketplace, raise the cost of transportation and food (corn
prices), and force us to purchase a product developed with our own
tax money and to pay more taxes when we buy it. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money:Integration Revenue Program – $115.3
million (Session Laws 2005 (1st Special Session), Chapter 5, Article
2, Section 84, Subdivision 4.) These are grants to school districts
for integration-related activities and represent another example of
a government program that rewards failure. A 2005 report by the
Legislative Auditor found that racial concentration has
increased in many of the districts that receive this revenue. The
program creates a disincentive to integrate—the more integrated a
district becomes, the less money it receives. In this way, the
program promotes racial segregation. The auditor’s report noted the
vague guidelines of the program and the lack of measurable outcomes
for program evaluation. Some districts use the money to boost their
general budgets, including purchasing books and computers. There’s
no accountability for how this money is spent. (2. p14) |
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Right: |
Republicans
neither propose nor support this kind of
uncontrolled spending on a program that produces results opposite to
its stated goals and incorporates no mechanism for evaluation or
termination. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of time:Rep. Andy Welti
(D-Plainview) wants to impose severe criminal penalties if you
“carry, use, or possess” a glass container on a watercraft or along
Minnesota’s public waters. Under this bill, you could get 270 days
in jail if you have a picnic on the lake and bring glass bottles of
ketchup, mustard, and relish. If you have a six-pack of Buddy’s Cola
from New Ulm on your pontoon boat, you would face 540 days behind
bars, because each bottle would be a separate offense under the
precise language of the bill. If you bring a jar of cold cream when
you go sunbathing, you could do 90 days for that misdemeanor.
Criminal possession of ketchup? Rep. Welti later said he introduced
the bill as an anti-littering proposal, but his bill outlaws mere
"possession" of the deadly glass containers. (House File 522) (1) |
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Right: |
Another Democrat seemingly unconcerned about the
harmful impact of his proposals on law-abiding citizens.
Republicans believe that laws should not
punish people for perfectly legitimate activities in which no illegal
activity (littering) has occurred. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money:Rep. David Bly
(D-Northfield) wants you to pay $125,000 to provide research on what
"alternative livestock" could eat grass in Minnesota. (House File
845) (1) |
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Right: |
Republicans believe that
if this research is needed then it will be done, and better done, by
the business men and women who understand livestock. |
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| Wrong: |
Waste of money:Rep. Frank Hornstein
(D-Minneapolis) wants road contractors to lose bids unless they are
least 10% below the cost of having the work done by DOT employees.
Under the bill, DOT would keep its
estimate secret until after private firms had submitted their
estimates. Then, if a private contractor submitted a bid of $900,001
for a contract where the secret DOT bid is $1 million, the Hornstein
bill would deny taxpayers a savings of $99,999. (House File 546) (1) |
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Right: |
Republicans do not create laws like
this one that increases the cost to taxpayers while ensuring that
the Department of Transportation is relieved of any motivation to
reduce costs. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of time:
Rep. Carolyn Laine (D-Columbia Heights)
would make it unlawful for a business to advertise a price that
deducts a manufacturer’s rebate "by displaying the net price of the
advertised item (the price of the item after the rebate has been
deducted from the item's price) in the advertisement, unless the
amount of the manufacturer's rebate is provided to the consumer by
the retailer at the time of the purchase of the advertised item. It
shall be the retailer's burden to redeem the rebate offered to the
consumer by the manufacturer.” Further, it would be “unlawful for
any person to refuse to accept a photocopy or other reasonable
facsimile of an original sales receipt when a consumer is redeeming
a rebate.” (House File 1104) (1) |
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Right: |
Republicans do not
create laws like this that meddle in the smallest details of the
marketplace under the belief that consumers are unable to understand
what is said to them in an advertisement. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money:
Rep. David Bly (D-Northfield) wants to
create a study by bureaucrats to identify all the legislation
necessary to “develop a strategy to obtain the maximum economic
benefit for the state and its citizens from the renewable energy
activities.” (House File 660) (1) |
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Right: |
Republicans think that
this is the job description of a legislator. (1) |
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| Wrong: |
Waste of time:
Rep. Neva Walker (D-Minneapolis)
wants to require people who braid hair for payment to go through 30
hours of instruction, and then to register with the state. Oh, and
the instruction should be available in foreign languages. (House
File 1844) (1) |
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Right: |
Unlike Rep. Walker, Republicans do not
spend their time looking for people to regulate in order to solve a
problem that does not exist. |
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Wrong: |
Waste of money:
Rep. Al Juhnke (D-Willmar) wants
to create a “Food Defense Council” with ill-defined missions to
educate the public and state agencies about “food safety and
defense.” (House File 1869) (1) |
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Right: |
Republicans are
convinced that Minnesotans are perfectly capable of learning how to defend
themselves from food. |
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| Sources: |
| 1.
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MN House
Republicans, Marty Seifert's office,
2007. |
| 2.
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2006 MINNESOTA PIGLET BOOK, Taxpayers League Foundation
& Citizens Against Government Waste. |
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