Author Topic: Politics at the State & Municipal level  (Read 59686 times)

DougMacG

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #50 on: November 05, 2014, 10:11:32 PM »
When dem's took over Colorado's state legislature, they changed the voting to make it very fraud friendly. I fear Udall with be rescued by this.

That wasn't enough to rescue Udall, but it might be how Hickenlooper squeaked out a win.

The Scott Walker win in Wisconsin, 3rd in 4 years, is paradigm shifting.  Wisconsin has gone for the Dem Presidential candidate every time since Reagan 1984.  Yet Scott Walker has been able to win there as a reformer, and Ron Johnson and Paul Ryan too.

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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Puerto Rico bankrupt 2.0
« Reply #52 on: August 06, 2015, 12:36:01 PM »
Though it is not a state, this thread seems the best place for this.

I do not vouch for all the particulars of this article (op-ed page of Pravda on the Hudson) but it seems worth reading for its historical background material and its identification of what is at stake.

Free Puerto Rico, America’s Colony

By NELSON A. DENISAUG. 6, 2015

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PUERTO RICO has begun to default on its bond payments, for the first time since it became part of the United States, 117 years ago. If it fails to make interest payments on its $72 billion public debt, pension funds across the United States may be unable to meet their payment obligations. But if it were allowed to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, as cities and counties have done, every state will want that right.

For this reason, the Puerto Rico crisis is a national financial crisis, one that neither President Obama nor Congress has taken steps to resolve. Even a simple debt restructuring — in the unlikely event bondholders agreed to it — would not solve the mess. With a population of 3.6 million, every person on the island would need to pay $1,400 a year — 9 percent of Puerto Rico’s per-capita income — just to cover this year’s $5 billion principal and interest payments on the debt.

The problem is not Puerto Rico, or even the vulture funds that have refused to renegotiate the island’s debts: It’s the rigged capitalism the United States has forced on its Caribbean colony.

The United States “liberated” Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898. The following year, Hurricane San Ciriaco destroyed millions of dollars in property and nearly the entire year’s coffee crop. Banks swept in, buying land at a steep discount.

Even worse, in 1901, property taxes on every remaining farmer in Puerto Rico were raised. Farmers were forced to borrow from American banks at usurious rates; many lost their land to foreclosure. By 1930, 34 percent of land in use was managed on behalf of absentee owners.

A once-diversified island harvest (coffee, tobacco, sugar and fruit) was turned into a one-crop economy, dependent on sugar. By 1930, a collection of syndicates controlled all of the island’s sugar farms.

With no money, crops or land, Puerto Ricans left for cities like San Juan, Ponce and Mayagüez. The Legislature enacted a minimum-wage law, but the United States Supreme Court did not recognize the constitutionality of the law until decades later.

In the 1950s, the United States began giving companies tax exemptions to produce cheap products like bras and razors on the island. But once the corporations found cheaper labor in Asia, the factories disappeared.

The most unfair law of all is the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, which requires that every product that enters or leaves Puerto Rico — cars from Japan, engines from Germany, food from South America, medicine from Canada — must be carried on a United States ship.

A foreign-flagged vessel may directly enter Puerto Rico — but only after paying taxes, customs and import fees that often double the price of the goods it carries.

This is not a business model. It is a shakedown, a form of legalized price-fixing, the maritime version of a protection racket. From 1970 through 2010, the Jones Act cost Puerto Rico $29 billion.

If the Jones Act did not exist, neither would the island’s debt, and tens of thousands of maritime jobs would shift to the island from Jacksonville, Fla., where the giant carriers Crowley, Horizon Lines and Sea Star Line conduct their offloading and reloading for shipment to Puerto Rico.

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Puerto Rico has more Walgreens and Walmarts per square mile than any other part of the country. It’s a dumping ground for cheap American-made exports.
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Recent Comments
Jim M.
1 hour ago

The residents of Puerto Rico elected ineffective politicians that raised the minimum wage to a level much higher than the average wage,...
Michael
1 hour ago

Not once does this article mention Prepa and the cronyism that takes place there and in goverment. The power company is the singular reason...
Mara
1 hour ago

There is another option: Return the island to Spain. I think it is time for US to transfer sovereignty over Puerto Rico to their mother...

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Car prices are typically $6,000 higher in Puerto Rico than in mainland United States. Some products, like unprocessed food items, cost twice as much as on the mainland. The cost of living is higher in Puerto Rico, even though per-capita income is less than half that of Mississippi, the poorest state.

When a set of tax exemptions expired in 2006, pharmaceutical companies abandoned the island, the final blow to its manufacturing sector. Without a real private sector, the government became the island’s largest employer.

The island’s Legislature has done what creditors and bond rating agencies have demanded: Since 2010, it has laid off workers; raised prices for water, gasoline and electricity; increased property, sales and small-business taxes; cut public pensions and health benefits; raised the retirement age; and closed schools.

No surprise that over the past 10 years, nearly 400,000 Puerto Ricans have moved, many to Central Florida. With a shrinking tax base, Puerto Ricans are unable to meet this burden. Gov. Alejandro García Padilla calls it a “death spiral.”

What can be done? The Jones Act must be repealed, right away. Congress will have to overcome opposition from lobbyists for the Jacksonville-based carrier companies that control trade to the island.

All import fees levied on foreign-flagged vessels should be paid into the Puerto Rican Treasury, not the merchant marine. Any tax abatement deals for corporations should require the reinvestment of a stipulated percentage of profits into Puerto Rican infrastructure and industrial development. Puerto Rico must be permitted to develop its own shipping industry and, eventually, negotiate its own international trade agreements.

Independence is the only solution, for Puerto Rico and the United States. After 117 years, many Puerto Ricans are victims of Stockholm syndrome, fearful of losing the “safety net” of United States benefits. But it’s clear that the safety net is a chimera. A gradual transition to independence (like that of the Philippines in 1946) would allow both island and mainland to adjust to a sovereign and self-sustaining Republic of Puerto Rico. It is the only way to end this colonial tragedy.

Nelson A. Denis, a former New York State assemblyman, is the author of “War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony.”

DougMacG

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Re: Politics at the State level - Minnesota 35th in disposable income growth
« Reply #53 on: February 03, 2016, 08:34:46 AM »
(from electoral fraud thread)
OMG.  Landlords have to provide voting registrations?   :x

How did Minnesota become such a Democ(rat) stronghold?

I don't know exactly, but you might compare it to Sweden.  Back when everyone had a strong work ethic, there was no measurable harm or dependency caused by social programs.  But when you have the biggest and best safety net over a sustained period, new people come in for the wrong reasons and the work ethic of people already here starts to deteriorate.  Like everywhere else, our population is changing.  People come not just for better benefits, but incoming welfare recipients talk of the shorter lines and better service to get the free money, goods and services.

A lot of the murders in north Minneapolis are committed among people with Illinois license plates, in other words, Chicago murders that happened elsewhere.

Powerline makes fun of StarTribune headlines about "Minneapolis man" did this or that such as join al Qaida when in fact these people are Somalians residing in Minneapolis.  Recall that Zacarias Moussaoui exploited Minnesota Nice to get his flight school training.  He showed a surprising lack of interest in safe landings.

Minnesota always has a low unemployment rate under the accepted rules that we don't count the underclass who isn't part of the labor force.  Twin Cities unemployment is typically around 3% in a good economy.  We have a diversified economy and have become the model for how "blue state", leftist policies can succeed.  That is all good and well unless someone peels back a layer and looks more closely.

Center for the American Experiment, a rare conservative Minneapolis based think tank reports that
Minnesota ranks 35th over the last 10 years in disposable income growth.  
http://www.americanexperiment.org/
In other words MN is close to last even when everything seems to be going well.

They also report that within state to state migration, close to a billion dollars a year of net assets is leaving.  Apparently not enough to reform the nearly worst in the nation death taxes.  

People say they leave Minnesota because of the cold weather (even in the face of global warming).  But cold weather has been here for a long time.  People leave because of high taxation, similar to California.  Wealthy people from MN (and everywhere) already have a home somewhere else (or 2 or 3) because they can.  It does not take rocket science or the moving of heaven and earth for a wealthy person to spend 6 months and a day somewhere else and tell the MN Dept of Revenue, income and death tax divisions to take a flying leap.

Minnesota has a great and diverse economy, as does America.  Copy our policies nationwide and maybe we can see our 0.7% national growth rate cut in half one more time.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2016, 08:37:19 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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Politics at State Level, Politico: Something is Rotten in Minnesota, Race
« Reply #54 on: July 20, 2016, 02:01:52 PM »
"Self inflicted Stupidity", i.e. unforced errors.

This article is not good enough to post 3 times, in state and local, race thread and cognitive dissonance of the left.  But it is an interesting look into leftist cluelessness that affects everyone, everywhere.

They start by interviewing the architect of the current, failed plan, Myron Orfeld, a former state senator and professor of leftism at the University of Minnesota.  To balance his view, they talk to more and more leftists and ask them all the wrong questions about what has gone wrong.

MN WI and IA always have the best test scores in the nation.  Unfortunately it is because they have the highest proportions of white people, not the best schools.  If some other state had that proportion of Asian-American students, the advantage would be there.

People ask why the blue model works in Minnesota, a loaded question with a false premise.  Like Sweden, the welfare state worked back when the population had a more homogeneous culture and a widely held Scandinavian work ethic that was stronger than the disincentives to work contained in the blue state welfare mess.  

Minnesota has the highest disparity of incomes between black and white in the nation.  So much for success.  Many blacks live in neighborhoods where welfare is abundant and employment is scarce.  The goal of the leftists is to get a balance of blacks and welfare and programs and assistance into all the suburbs and communities, not just the currently black neighborhoods.  That would solve what?

Whites tend to come from here.  50% of blacks came here from other states.  That gets loser to 100% as you look back a few generations.

The article goes from quoting the person who designing the current failure:  “It was a lot of self-inflicted stupidity” is Myron Orfield’s analysis, to quoting other leftists who think more government programs and subsidies would this time help these people become self sufficient. [an oxymoron?]  Did the people who succeed do so because of more government programs and bigger subsidies?  No.  But they aren't black.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/minnesota-race-inequality-philando-castile-214053

"Minnesota may be paying for its own success; its consistently thriving economy [nation's most generous welfare benefits?] has drawn thousands of blacks and migrants of color from other states and countries, and traditionally homogeneous Minnesota has been slow to absorb them.
--------------------
The ones not working for the most part didn't come here to work.

The Twin Cities is roughly 1st in the nation for lowest unemployment rate (3.1%) for metropolitan areas:
http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laulrgma.htm
Like the national numbers, that does not include entire segments of the population who live their lives outside of the BLS defined workforce.

Bring these people back into the economy in a positive and constructive way and it would solve nearly all our problems...
« Last Edit: July 20, 2016, 02:16:06 PM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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Politics at the State level, Failure of the Blue State model, MN
« Reply #55 on: August 15, 2016, 11:43:56 AM »
http://2lffqo2moysixpyb349z0bj6.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/MN-Economy.pdf

Minnesota has been a solid success for a long time due to a lot of strong factors all of which are headed on a negative path. 

Strong work ethic and other things like a diversified economy tended to overcome the hurdles of big government.  Strengths like 3M, Honeywell, Control Data, Cray, General Mills, Target, Best Buy, Medtronic, United Healthcare, rivers, railroads, air hub, Great Lakes, Univ of MN and an educated workforce led to strength that handled a pretty large public sector burden for a long time. 

New report show MN is surviving off of past success and growing average or below average in many categories.  For example, productivity growth lags and high tech jobs are on the decline.

Not Venezuela yet but not a model of current success either.

DougMacG

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Republicans in control of Minnesota House and Senate
« Reply #56 on: November 13, 2016, 08:50:17 AM »
News from the bluest of blue states, the only state Reagan never won.  Note the non-msm source.  Did you see or hear this yet anywhere else?

https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2016/11/historic-election-puts-republicans-control-minnesota-house-and-senate

DougMacG

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In MN, Republicans gained with high turnout
« Reply #57 on: December 01, 2016, 06:29:19 AM »
Minnesota, the only state Reagan never won, had the highest voter turnout in the nation in 2016 and turned it's state houses Republican.

Liberal Dem Senator Amy Klobuchar won MN in 2012 by 35 points.  Hillary won in 2016 by 1.5℅.

The pundit class is still too shocked to explain this.

www.twincities.com/2016/11/29/minnesotas-no-1-in-voting-again/amp/
« Last Edit: December 01, 2016, 06:32:59 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #58 on: December 01, 2016, 11:31:10 AM »
 :-o

DougMacG

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Minnesota, the only state Reagan never won, had the highest voter turnout in the nation in 2016 and turned it's state houses Republican.
Liberal Dem Senator Amy Klobuchar won MN in 2012 by 35 points.  Hillary won in 2016 by 1.5℅.
The pundit class is still too shocked to explain this.
www.twincities.com/2016/11/29/minnesotas-no-1-in-voting-again/amp/

Is it okay to laugh at their misfortune?


It was a bad year for Democrats in Minnesota. They didn’t see it coming.  How bad was it? Democratic legislative staffers on the losing end of the 2016 election have banded together to seek benefits under Minnesota’s Dislocated Workers Program.

The Dislocated Workers Program is aimed at mass layoffs or plant closings affecting 50 or more workers. The program is administered by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, which produced the educational video below to explain it. In the video, one laid-off employee explains: “I felt humiliated to lose a job, even though I had nothing to do with it. I was very frightened. How was I going to live? How was I going to support myself?”


http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/12/what-happened-in-minnesota-a-coda.php
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/12/14/dflers-job-loss-benefits/


Did they really think that being partisan staff for officials who face the voters every two and four years was a permanent source of income? (Yes.)  Here's some advice, get a job.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2016, 09:48:53 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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NJ property taxes average 8500 per house
« Reply #60 on: January 27, 2017, 07:48:44 AM »
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/01/average_property_tax_bill_reached_85k_per_home_in.html

It's probably just rich people living there, right ccp?  )

I thought my property taxes were bad.  I pay more than 100% of my take home income in property taxes.

We need a tax revolt, preceded by a spending revolt.
« Last Edit: January 27, 2017, 11:26:58 AM by Crafty_Dog »


Crafty_Dog

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Illinois goes Banana Republic
« Reply #62 on: June 22, 2017, 11:05:44 AM »

Crafty_Dog

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Gov. Eric Greitens of MO
« Reply #63 on: September 16, 2017, 10:09:11 AM »
A Former Democrat Rises in Trump Country
Missouri’s governor talks about his journey to the right, his fights with the unions, and his experience as a Navy SEAL.
Illustration: Ken Fallin
By Matthew Hennessey
Sept. 15, 2017 6:10 p.m. ET
WSJ

Jefferson City, Mo.

A few years ago, Eric Greitens was a Democrat—not that you’d know it from his first eight months as the hard-charging Republican governor of Missouri. A Rhodes scholar and former Navy SEAL, Mr. Greitens has pursued an unexpectedly muscular conservative agenda, enacting free-market reforms and gleefully going toe-to-toe with unions. While the GOP in Washington seems bent on squandering its legislative and executive power, Mr. Greitens, 43, illustrates how Republicans in many states are intent on making the most of theirs.

A day after taking office in January, Mr. Greitens signed an executive order to freeze pending state regulations. It also required agencies to review rules already on the books to ensure not only that they are “essential to the health, safety, or welfare of Missouri residents” but that they pass a cost-benefit test. In July he assented to a law overriding St. Louis’s $10-an-hour minimum wage. “This increase in the minimum wage might read pretty on paper, but it doesn’t work in practice,” he said at the time. “Government imposes an arbitrary wage, and small businesses either have to cut people’s hours or let them go.”

Mr. Greitens’s most contentious actions have challenged union power. His Democratic predecessor, Gov. Jay Nixon, repeatedly vetoed right-to-work legislation, under which workers can’t be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. Mr. Greitens signed a right-to-work bill within a month of his inauguration.

During a 75-minute interview at the governor’s mansion, Mr. Greitens explains that his inspiration came from another Midwestern state. “I read Mitch Daniels’s book, ‘Keeping the Republic,’ several times” before running for office, he says. The former Indiana governor’s 2011 paean to fiscal discipline and personal responsibility provided an example, as did the right-to-work law Mr. Daniels signed in 2012. “Look at the data,” Mr. Greitens says. “Indiana became a right-to-work state, and today Indiana has more private-sector union members than before . . . because it was good for the economy.”

Not surprisingly, the unions don’t share that view. They formed a group called We Are Missouri, which last month turned in more than 300,000 signatures—only about 100,000 were required—to force a referendum on right to work. If Missouri’s secretary of state certifies the names, right to work will go before voters in 2018—and the law will remain on hold until then. The tactic has succeeded before: In 2011 a referendum campaign styled We Are Ohio defeated Gov. John Kasich’s collective-bargaining reforms for public employees.

Mr. Greitens launched another salvo at the unions in May. He signed a law banning so-called project labor agreements, which require that all workers hired under a given government contract be paid union wages. In a move calculated for confrontation, Mr. Greitens invited Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker —whose 2011 collective-bargaining reforms stuck, unlike Mr. Kasich’s—to attend a bill-signing ceremony in a St. Louis suburb. The unions and their Democratic allies got the message. “Eric Greitens is rubbing salt in the wounds of working families by celebrating another attack on their paychecks,” said Missouri’s Democratic chairman, Stephen Webber.


Mr. Greitens is unruffled by the criticism. “I think that you’ve got to take action that actually helps people,” he says. “We know that we’re always going to get criticized and we recognize that there are certain liberal media institutions in the state of Missouri that will always see whatever we do in the worst possible light.” But the economic data, he insists, tell a different story: “Since I’ve been in office, Missouri has been outpacing the nation in job growth. Missouri has moved up nine places in the ranking of best states to do business. We’ve got more jobs in Missouri than ever before.”

What explains his appetite for bare-knuckle fights with the unions? More to the point, how did a lifelong Democrat announce he was switching parties the year before the 2016 election, run as a gun-toting conservative, win a Republican primary against three veteran officeholders, and—in his first try for public office—defeat a sitting state attorney general on the November ballot?

Mr. Greitens’s critics—Republican and Democratic alike—have implied it was mere opportunism. During last year’s campaign a Kansas City Star reporter suggested Mr. Greitens was “an ideological weather vane” whose “conservative bona fides” were in question. His evolution has matched the state’s. Missouri was a longtime presidential bellwether—carried by the winner of every election between 1960 and 2004—but has shifted Republican in the past decade. Donald Trump won here by 18.5 points.

Mr. Greitens’s explanation? “My parents were both Democrats and I grew up as a Democrat,” he says. “Basically I was told that the Democrats were the party that cared about people. I liked people and I cared about them, so I was a Democrat.”

His politics began shifting rightward while he was in college, he says, after an encounter with a Bosnian refugee during a trip to the Balkans in 1994: “This guy says to me, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here. I appreciate that there’s a roof over my head and that there’s food for my kids and that there’s a kindergarten for them . . . but if people really cared about us, they’d also be willing to help to protect us.’ ”

That, he says, led to the realization, that “if you care about people, then you’re willing to act not just with compassion, but you’re also willing to act with courage.” In January 2001, ink not yet dry on his Oxford doctorate, he enrolled in the Navy’s Officer Candidate School. By 9/11 he was training to become a SEAL. Then he served four overseas deployments—in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Iraq. In the Philippines he commanded a detachment of 20 men on two 82-foot Mark V special operations craft patrolling the waters of the Sulu Archipelago in support of Filipino marines battling the Islamic terrorists of Abu Sayyaf. In Iraq, he was in charge of an “al-Qaeda-targeting cell.”

After returning stateside in the mid-2000s, Mr. Greitens started a security consulting business and founded The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that helps veterans readjust to civilian life. The organization’s success gave Mr. Greitens a national profile. He wrote two best-selling books, 2011’s “The Heart and the Fist” and 2015’s “Resilience.” In 2013 Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

With his star on the rise, Mr. Greitens entertained the advances of Missouri Democrats who wanted him to run for Congress. All the while, he says, his politics were evolving. He announced his party switch in a July 2015 op-ed at FoxNews.com. “I was raised to stand up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class,” he wrote. “If I thought the Democratic Party had the right ideas to do that, I’d still be one of them. But they don’t.”

The change in his thinking, he says, grew out of experience more than philosophy: “Seeing what it took to actually start a business, while at the same time working with all of these other veterans who are trying to start businesses, just gave me a very practical sense of what it means to deal with burdensome regulations.” He didn’t know policy, so he turned to think tanks. “I read things that are put out by the Manhattan Institute. I read things that are put out by the American Enterprise Institute. I also read things that are put out by left-leaning organizations,” he says. “I think that it’s important to see what works.”

Last month Mr. Greitens traveled to Springfield, in the state’s southwest, to greet President Trump, who was in town stumping for tax reform. Unlike in many states, Mr. Trump did better in Missouri than other Republicans running statewide, beating Mr. Greitens’s vote total by more than 150,000. A recent SurveyMonkey poll gives the president a respectable 50% approval rating in the Show Me State.

When I ask Mr. Greitens if he has a good relationship with Mr. Trump, he grins broadly and doesn’t quite answer. “The president, on multiple occasions, has been great to Missouri,” he offers. He cites a February incident in which vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis. Mr. Greitens, who is Jewish, organized an interfaith initiative to restore the damaged headstones. The president called the next day to thank him, the governor recalls, for “standing up to anti-Semitism” and “bringing people together.”

Isn’t that a contrast with Mr. Trump’s initial equivocation last month after white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Va.? Mr. Greitens is quick to condemn that rally. “I grew up in this household where we always talked about, ‘Never again. Never again,’ ” the governor says. “You have to be willing to stand up and fight and defend people.” But he declines to criticize the president directly, observing only that in a crisis, it’s important for a leader “to send a very clear and strong message.”

He faults his predecessor, Gov. Nixon, for failing to do so in 2014 when riots erupted in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. “The great tragedy of Ferguson,” Mr. Greitens says, “was that if you had had a leader who had shown up with any kind of command presence and courage and calm and clarity, we could have had peace by the second night.” Mr. Greitens’s time as a SEAL taught him how to assess whether a tense situation is about to spin out of control: “What you saw in Ferguson was a complete abandonment of the situation by our political leadership.”

Same with the 2015 disruptions on the University of Missouri’s flagship Columbia campus. The Mizzou administration, Mr. Greitens says bluntly, “was too willing . . . to appease the left.” There was “a failure to act,” as in Ferguson. “One of the things that I’ve found in everything that I’ve done: People want leaders to create a sense of direction and to lead and to act,” he says, “and they know that we will never get everything perfectly right, but they want us to lead.”

While Mr. Greitens is conservative, he isn’t always predictable. When I ask his opinion of Mr. Trump’s proposal to ban transgender military service members, he opposes it vigorously. “The military is not a place for us to have culture wars,” he says. “The No. 1 criteria that we should be looking at for every person who joins the military is, ‘Can they close with and kill the enemy in close-quarters battle?’ ”

Then last month Mr. Greitens earned praise from opponents of capital punishment when he stayed the scheduled execution of Marcellus Williams. A DNA test had raised serious doubt about whether Mr. Williams had in fact killed Felicia Gayle, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was stabbed at home in 1998. Mr. Greitens says he’s not against the death penalty but views it as “the ultimate irrevocable punishment.” A board of inquiry will now review the evidence against Mr. Williams and make a recommendation. “Ultimately, it’ll be my decision,” the governor says, “and I will make it.”

Mr. Greitens is the nation’s second-youngest governor, after 42-year-old Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. If he survives what is sure to be an unrelenting union assault on his 2020 re-election, Mr. Greitens will be only 50 when term limits require him to leave the governor’s mansion in 2025. What comes after? Mr. Greitens is too disciplined to bite. “There are certain times I think in your life where you feel like you’re in exactly the right place at the right time,” he says. “I love doing this job.”

Mr. Hennessey is an associate editorial features editor at the Journal.

G M

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #64 on: September 16, 2017, 10:32:44 AM »
"The heart and the fist" is a great book. Well worth reading.

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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Politics at the State & Municipal level, Meet (Gov.) Kristi Noem
« Reply #66 on: June 06, 2018, 08:10:07 AM »
America meet Kristi Noem; South Dakota already knows her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1TCFSn0O7c

She doesn't fit the angry-white-male mean-spirited-Republican caricature very well.

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #67 on: June 06, 2018, 09:04:49 AM »
That is one of the best political ads I have ever seen!!!

G M

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level, Meet (Gov.) Kristi Noem
« Reply #68 on: June 06, 2018, 09:12:49 AM »
America meet Kristi Noem; South Dakota already knows her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1TCFSn0O7c

She doesn't fit the angry-white-male mean-spirited-Republican caricature very well.

Nice to see there are parts of America that are still America.

Crafty_Dog

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ccp

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need to split
« Reply #70 on: July 03, 2018, 07:25:24 AM »
Montana Wyoming Utah and N and S Dakotas into 3 states each so we can have 30 Senators rather then ten . 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/02/bid-to-split-california-into-3-states-gains-traction-could-it-really-happen.html

DougMacG

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Re: Stata and Local
« Reply #71 on: July 03, 2018, 12:32:04 PM »
ccp:   need to split
Montana Wyoming Utah and N and S Dakotas [each] into 3 states each so we can have 30 Senators rather than ten. 

   - Very funny.  )  Why don't WE do it if it's so easy.

Like Puerto Rico, why don't we make them get their own act together before we invite them in.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/02/bid-to-split-california-into-3-states-gains-traction-could-it-really-happen.html

"But she maintained the state [California] is “too big to govern.”

Other adjectives?  Too ______ to govern?

I thought it was governed great.  Big surpluses etc.  We could all learn from them...

Only in Calif are points in Northern Calif and Calif south of points in Southern California.  [And Reno, NV is west of LA!]  There are no logical dividing lines to split this up.  If the three capitals are the cities listed, San Francisco, LA and San Diego, some areas on the map, will be closer to the other two capitals than to their own.  The nature of the split is political more than geographical?

Wouldn't a leftist want far left Calif to have 3 Dem states?  But make it harder to get approval from other states.  If one new state is 'R', Dems lose electoral votes, and the rest is even further left, uncontended. 

They could govern differently, by region, and not change statehood.  Give some power back to the counties?  Leftists decentralizing power?  Ha!

I am disappointed that Congress without supermajority can agree to a change this large, way easier than I thought. Still, why would Kansas or anyone else agree to this? It makes all other states smaller in clout, at least in the Senate.  Maybe this is finally a reason for a 'convention of the states' to change the constitution and make split-offs harder.

Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution states, “no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state … without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”

[Not 2/3rds of the congress and 3/4th of the legislatures like a constitutional amendment.]  Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned is rather specific.  This ballot initiative is not that.

No new state has been created out of an existing state for more than 150 years.

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DougMacG

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Re: If you are going to San Francisco , , ,
« Reply #74 on: August 01, 2018, 07:11:57 AM »
second post

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=ld6qYJe4pRs

" America's largest, unsupervised, outdoor mental hospital."

And it makes the neighbors all want to vote Democrat? How is that working out??

Crafty_Dog

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #75 on: August 01, 2018, 08:50:31 AM »
A very good friend is now a LEO in precisely that part of SF.  I forwarded the clip to him and he tells me it is dead on accurate.

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ccp

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #84 on: May 16, 2019, 05:25:12 AM »
deBLAZ to the rescue of America
to save us from the tyrant and to help the middle class
like he does for NYC

https://nypost.com/tag/bill-de-blasio/



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Speaking of the Cuomos , , ,
« Reply #92 on: May 03, 2020, 08:26:33 AM »
I remember Congressman Ed Koch visiting in our home in 1968 to meet with a Dem committee headed by future Congresswoman Bella Abzug and my mother.  I was 16 at the time and he struck me as rather wimpy and deferential to Bella-- who was a force of nature.  I remember being surprised at what a bold mayoral candidate and mayor he became and I remember the "Cuomo, not the homo" campaign by Team Cuomo.

https://710wor.iheart.com/featured/mark-simone/content/2020-04-23-remember-why-ed-koch-hated-the-cuomos/

Crafty_Dog

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Andrew Cuomo
« Reply #93 on: May 03, 2020, 08:51:34 AM »
third post

Not clear to me why calling Cynthia Nixon out on her BDS position is wrong, but lots of insider trivia in this one

https://nypost.com/2018/09/11/andrew-cuomo-has-been-playing-dirty-in-politics-for-years/

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2020 at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #94 on: November 28, 2020, 09:28:46 AM »
Democrats targeted state chambers in 12 states and failed in all.
-----------
“I think that there were voters out there who were disgusted with Donald Trump and saw Joe Biden as an alternative,” said state Rep. Chris Turner, chair of the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “They said, ‘You know what, I’m not a Democrat — maybe I’m an independent; maybe I’m a moderate Republican — I’m going to vote for Republicans down ballot.’ ”

Turner said Republicans successfully nationalized the races by accusing down-ballot Democrats of seeking to defund the police, favoring socialism and aiming to ban fossil fuels, ...

https://news.yahoo.com/democrats-suffered-crushing-down-ballot-151200736.html
------------
There is a lesson for Republicans in there somewhere.


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Judge strikes down South Dakota recreational cannabis measure
« Reply #96 on: February 10, 2021, 10:54:24 AM »
Interesting that it is Gov Kristi Noem and her appointed judge are acting against the will of the people.  Isn't that a losing battle?
-----------------------------------------
Judge rules recreational marijuana measure unconstitutional in South Dakota

...argued last month that because Amendment A added an entirely new section to the state Constitution instead of modifying an existing one, it should be considered a revision, not an amendment.
https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2021/02/08/south-dakota-marijuana-court-strikes-down-recreational-pot-measure/4442883001/

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PJ Media: Done with Minnesota
« Reply #97 on: April 13, 2021, 09:25:06 AM »
He barely touches on the bad stuff here, like Minneapolis city clowncil.

1984, in my whiny, Walter Mondale mocking voice:  "Ronald Reagan and I will both raise your taxes.  He won't tell you.  I just did."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/04/13/the-morning-briefing-u-s-may-want-to-look-into-getting-rid-of-minnesota-n1439273

U.S. May Want to Look Into Getting Rid of Minnesota
BY STEPHEN KRUISER APR 13, 2021 3:49 AM ET
   
What Has Minnesota Done for Us Lately?

Early in my stand-up career, I drove to all of my gigs. The average opening act in comedy club isn’t flying all over the place. I got to see a lot of this great land and became quite enamored of it. Most of it, anyway. I never did get San Francisco.

That was a long time ago, however. People change. Countries change.

The Democrats go off the socialist deep end and turn the states and cities that they run into fetid cesspools of civil unrest.

I’m kind of over those places now.

Hear me out. I know that we have all gotten used to the way the American flag looks and that change is difficult but, let’s be honest here, we could all probably get used to having fewer stars on it. Maybe start by removing one after we rid ourselves of, say, Minnesota. I’m done with it. Minnesota and its 10,000 lakes need to go somewhere that isn’t here.

Off the top of my head, Prince is the only worthwhile thing I can think of to ever come out of Minnesota. OK, our own Ed Morrissey lives there, but he’s not a native and we can rescue him and move him to a free state.

In recent years, all the state has given us is Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, and race riots since last summer.

We can do better, America.

These people really need hobbies. Ones they can do as Canadians, preferably. Or Greenlanders. Progressives are obsessed with Russia, maybe Vlad can take this miserable place off of our hands. This is a breakup that’s been a long time in the making.

If we have any luck getting rid of the thorn that is Minnesota, maybe we can find a taker for Oregon and its ne’er-do-well hellhole Portland, which has been in a state of permanent unrest since last summer doesn’t show any signs of letting up.

The only goal for these leftist enclaves is to have all of this rioting lead to the de-Americanization of America. Why keep them around? If they were acting out under another country’s flag it might make them just a bit easier to ignore.

If it doesn’t, at least somebody else would be picking up the bill for all of this nonsense.

We’ll always have Prince.

ccp

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Re: Politics at the State & Municipal level
« Reply #98 on: April 13, 2021, 10:12:26 AM »
".We’ll always have Prince."

and WE have Doug :))

even Bob Dylan I am sure is a lib

plus he was weirdly at a hotel some yrs back new Newark airport when some cab driver asked Katherine if she wanted to meet him

same thing happened once in Florida yrs ago
  cabbie tells Katherine he could introduce her to Dolly Parton

I did not know cab drivers had such connections


Crafty_Dog

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