True North

The St. Cloud Times LTE's are up for their Sunday edition. This LTE is enough to make a grown conservative scream. Check out this portion of the LTE:

Joanne also has a balanced view about the role of government and the market. She says that government is not inherently good nor bad; it is us. And it is up to us to make government build community and promote the good of all of us.

With all due respect, that's nanny state talk. While it's true that government is needed to perform some basic functions (providing police and firefighters come to mind), it isn't up to city government to "build community." If you think that's bad, this paragraph is infinitely worse:

She believes the same about the market. The role of the market is also to promote the good of the community and it is up to all of us to see that it does. In both cases, you get what you pay for and we should expect and pay for value from both. This is a Central Minnesotan I can believe in. My vote is for Joanne Dorsher.

When did the "role of the market" become "to promote the good of the community"? This is socialist tripe. It must be utterly rejected ASAP. This type of thinking is what leads to high taxes and outrageous spending. That isn't what we need, especially right now.

A glimpse of Ms. Dorscher's website reveals a similar mindset:

We need action more than talk, and the talk we need is honest talk, not rhetoric designed to make people suspicious of government and reluctant to invest in the common good.

Ms. Dorscher's socialism is scary. We don't need people who are willing to "invest in the common good" through higher taxes and higher government spending. We need people who reject most of the things that the nanny state's lobbyists say we need.

A look at Ms. Dorscher's platform page doesn't provide much comfort to rational thinking people. Here's one of her statements:

Students must get the best education possible without shifting the burden onto property taxes and those who have the ability to pay the least.

There's nothing in her brief statement that indicates a reformist's mindset, which isn't surprising. Ms. Dorscher is an EdMinn apologist. I wonder if it's ever happened that Ms. Dorscher told EdMinn that education isn't just about funding but about teaching kids the things they'll need to move into the industrialized world.

Further, I wonder what accountability measures Ms. Dorscher pushed as a school board member.

One thing that I'm sure isn't part of Ms. Dorscher's agenda is vouchers. EdMinn won't let their apologists/legislators talk about that type of reform. EdMinn isn't interested in competition. In the past, they've avoided competition like a vampire avoids wooden stakes.

Here's Ms. Dorscher's statement on health care:

Every Minnesotan needs to be ensured that they have access to high quality, affordable health care.

The last statistics I've seen show that 93 percent of Minnesotans are insured. Of those that aren't, 59 percent of those are eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. That figures out to being 97+ percent of Minnesotans either being insured or eligible for taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. In other words, Ms. Dorscher wants to work on a non-existent problem.

This statement on job creation is the scariest of all:

I will search for innovative solutions to create good jobs and strengthen our economy in central Minnesota.

We don't need innovative solutions to create good jobs. Let's start by lowering marginal tax rates, reducing bureaucratic regulations that hinder job creation and then getting the hell out of the way. In short, it's pretty simple: Give businesses the incentive to put their capital at risk and they'll put their capital to work. There's nothing innovative about that. It's just the right thing to do.

Comments welcome at LFR.