Home » Nooze (Page 100)

Category Archives: Nooze

Journalism and other myths.

Say, Can You See?

Posted on by | 11 Comments

Oh say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O’er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

Not according to Wayne La Pierre of the NRA, it doesn’t.  He has a vision of a nation imprisoned and afraid, an America I simply cannot recognize.  His call for a new security regime with armed guards posted at every school, every place where the vulnerable cringe with fear from gun violence, has drawn detractors from every corner of the country.  That’s only reasonable, of course.  But I have to thank him for starkly painting the picture as to exactly where we are going if there is not a change of some kind.

A school in Connecticut, a church in Pennsylvania, a trap set for fireman in New York – every week it seems there is another event or two.  The corrosive action of fear creeps in like rust, never sleeping and eating its way gradually to our core.  A change must come because this is intolerable.  The change, however, must not just be one of law.  The change has to be one from deep inside us as a people.

Continue reading →

Let Christmas Come

Posted on by | 9 Comments

Christmas is easy to dump on – and I’ve been as guilty of that as anyone.  It should be a sacred holiday, but it’s been turned into an orgy of consumerism.  This year, there are so many news items that deserve reporting and discussion, ranging from the NRA’s response to the Connecticut shooting to the fiscal cliff to Prince Harry getting his first official “kill” in Afghanistan.  It’s all so … not Christmassy.  And the only defenders of Christmas appear to be the ahistoric lunatics at Fox Nooze.

Let me be true to the motto “I don’t break news, I fix it” – and let me make that a subtle pitch for your contributions to keep this humble blog going.  Christmas needs a lot this year.  It needs defenders, it needs reinvigorating – it needs to be fixed.  Let’s do it.

Continue reading →

Emptiness at the Core

Posted on by | 20 Comments

As we digest the news from the Newtown, Connecticut shooting there is not a parent who is not ravaged deep in their soul at the horror of this event.  The reaction so far tells us that this one is different – that this rampage will be the one that finally changes things.  I have thought of many things that I want to say to add to the discussion, but all of them feel inadequate.

Let me try to find just a little to add.

Continue reading →

Where does Minnesota’s Money Go?

Posted on by | 19 Comments

Heading into the new Legislative session at the start of the new year, we can expect that things are going to be different.  The DFL is in control of the House, Senate, and Governor’s office for the first time since 1990 – and comes in with a lot of pent-up demand from their own interest groups.  Attention tends to focus on social issues such as universal marriage, but we predict here that most of the time will be focused on the budget.

As discussed here, there is a structural imbalance of $1B per year obscured by a 2002 law that restricts how the forecasters are allowed to figure the state’s budget (though this is not without controversy – see the comments).  We can predict that this will be plugged primarily by flattening out tax rates and making the highest earners pay a similar rate to most of the state, 12.1%-12.3% of defined, taxable income.  And we have determined that, on balance, Minnesota is a remarkably average state in terms of its total size (represented by combined state plus local income) and net tax burden.

But what about expenditures?  How does Minnesota compare with the rest of the nation?

Continue reading →

It’s All Good (except the bad stuff)

Posted on by | 10 Comments

The economy added 118k jobs in November, if you go by the ADP report, or 146k jobs if you go by the noisier official number.  Let’s call it 118k because we’ve consistently touted the value of the ADP report.  By any measure, it was a lot more than was expected, given the landfall of hurricane Sandy at the end of October.

Now that the election is over, there is growing optimism that the economy is indeed … growing.  It’s not a lot, but it’s there.  And that’s where we stand as we move into the next phase of the political season – the part defined by getting down to work and making use of the mandate given by voters.  That mandate is clearly defined by a divided Congress and a Democratic President who are at odds over how to either avoid the Fiscal Cliff or, perhaps, go over it.

Even if the election didn’t tell us much, the economy is.  We’d be wise to listen to it.

Continue reading →