Precinct caucuses are just over a week away! Posted by KenAnderson

Posted 01/25/10 Last updated 01/25/10

Do you have your proposal(s) ready? Here's mine, feel free to borrow from it as you like...

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WHEREAS

Minnesota's declining revenue situation has resulted in steep cuts to the more positive state endeavors while the more authoritarian aspects of govt have only continued to grow greater in proportion; the state spending for the public safety / judiciary spending category is tops in runaway general fund growth, increasing at double the rate of general fund spending overall since the beginning of the Carlson administration, with nearly 5 times more spending today as then;

WHEREAS

The elimination of local general ed K-12 funding from the property tax revenues in 2001 shifted that education burden completely to the state, and freed up those local monies for greater local gov't spending diverted mainly towards increased enforcement of victimless matters and correspondingly larger court systems; furthermore that Minnesota now supports nearly twice the attorneys per capita as any of our neighboring states;

WHEREAS

Our liberties and freedoms are natural to our creation and existence as stated in our founding documents, and must never be usurped by gov't action without due process; furthermore the classical definition of crime and guilt includes the connection between body of evidence of crime and specific victimization and injury to specific persons/property contained within the principle of corpus delicti;

WHEREAS

The implementation of statute creating civil administrative penalties in conjunction with criminal charges has become widespread in victimless matters, eliminating the due process requirement; furthermore that proceeds garnered from civil property forfeiture actions are presently awarded directly to arresting agencies encouraging maximization of such actions and minimization of the application of sound and reasonable discretion as to whether to charge victimless matters;

WHEREAS

The governor's recent proposal for a constitutional amendment restricting state spending to the prior biennium's revenue intake exempted the two general fund spending categories where runaway growth has been most rampant to date – public safety / judiciary and health and human services, making revenue growth possible in those already bloated categories only while denying the possibility to the categories most severely cut;

BE IT RESOLVED

The Minnesota __________ Party supports the return to K-12 of the traditional 40-50% of the property tax revenues, shifting that portion of the state K-12 burden back to the local revenue pie; we support the return to more positive traditional general fund spending proportions that would cut public safety / judiciary spending in half; we support the decriminalization of victimless crime and an end to criminal statute being used for social engineering purposes in victimless matters; we support an end to civil penalties prior to conviction and rather favor due process principle; we support an end to civil administrative property forfeiture statute and an end to those proceeds ending up in the hands of the arresting agency; we support a return to the application of sound, reasonable discretion in victimless matters. We support no constitutional spending cap that exempts the most overgrown, bloated state spending categories - public safety / judiciary in particular. We support individual liberty, individual responsibility, individual sovereignty invariably and oppose creeping authoritarianism; we recognize the critical importance of standing together shoulder-to-shoulder in staving off creeping authoritarianism on all fronts, and that thinking we can pick and choose our own pet statist measures is ultimately resulting in the gradual loss of all of our freedoms and liberties as every statist proposal eventually has its day without such united, attentive diligence.

Limited Government - what is the comparative state of your State? Posted by KenAnderson

Posted 01/13/10

Of course it goes without saying that all 50 states of the union have strayed from the founding principles of limited gov't, often with significant encouragement and pressure from the Federal beast, usually outright coercion. So no state is a limited government utopia today, needless to say, and the principle has fallen by the wayside to one degree or another, everywhere. But within that depressing picture there is still a whole lot of wiggle room for the various states to show difference in the degree to which they allocate resources to the most negative of government functions - their justice systems - and here's a look at comparative size of those state systems, as measured by the number of public parasites feeding on those various states' residents through those civil/criminal systems. '09 active resident attorney numbers by state from abanet.org; '09 state population estimates just released last month by census.gov

RESIDENTS PER ACTIVE RESIDENT ATTORNEY:

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Minnesota stands today at a crucial crossroads for civil liberties Posted by KenAnderson

Posted 12/29/09 Last updated 12/29/09

Our state legislature is now giving serious consideration to changing or dissolving civil administrative property forfeiture statute. The catalyst for this possible legisative action is of course all of the excess that has occured in the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force, essentially funding itself through rampant forfeiture seizures regardless of whether any criminal action was to be filed. But the problem is so much more than a strike force problem, it infects each and every law enforcement agency statewide, and they've all come to rely on funding from the proceeds of civil forfeiture to advance their growth. The result is a statewide atmosphere of petty and not-so-petty thievery, legalized and institutionalized into seeming legitimacy, despite being one of the most unconstitutional directions the state has ever chosen.

Today's Mpls Star-Trib feature on the issue:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/80241037.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUac8HEaDiaMDCinchO7DUs

We are about to step into 2010, an election year for each and every state representative and state senator, as well as having a whole plethora of gubernatorial candidates announced. This issue is a true liberty litmus test in every sense, and we all have a responsibility to pin those who seek our vote to a firm position that embraces no compromise.

Civil forfeiture must end. LE agencies keeping any proceeds of seized property under any circumstances, even after full due process, must come to an end. Property seizure over misdemeanor issues through any process must end. No compromise, period. This is a change that would likely have to occur over a veto from the sitting guv, who along with his wife has long been entrenched in careers in the overbloated criminal justice industry. We must have a firm commitment from our legislators to stand together across both sides of the aisle and pass these changes, and override the anticipated veto from the legal profession's elected rep.

Today's TP Attorney-Welfare Amendment Proposal Posted by KenAnderson

Posted 11/05/09 Last updated 12/29/09

The Naked Neocon

This morning the Guv did a striptease at the capitol, revealing his true colors, not that they were all that hard to discern in the past. Somewhere I'm sure Richard Haass and his CFR goons are applauding the gaudy display.

Cloaked within a proposed state constitutional amendment to limit state general fund growth, the Governor Pawlenty has proposed two things - 1) That the upcoming state budgets be limited to the prior biennium's revenue intake. Sounds good on the surface, but the hidden red flag is this: this will insure that the vast majority of the time there is a surplus to be distributed somehow. 2) That the only acceptable govt functions that may receive those adt'l funds are the categories of public safety/judiciary, and health & human services.

A previous blog post here detailed exactly which categories of state general fund spending have seen the greatest increases, and the competition wasn't even marginally close. Public Safety / Judiciary, hands down the winner in the bloat sweepstakes, by more than a two-to-one margin.

Minnesota presently supports almost twice the active and practicing attorneys per capita as any neighboring state. 6th in the nation in this regard. This amendment as proposed is essentially a Holiday gift proposal to Tim and Mary's colleagues and the justice industry's customer delivery services. This constitutional amendment as proposed represents the perfect vehicle to further increase the revenue proportions diverted in this direction, for the purpose of advancing state authoritarianism, ramping upward the hidden taxation and fees that goes hand in hand with that. It should insure that we are #1 in this very telling atty/capita stat in reasonably short order. Simultaneously it is a death knell for all of the good and positive things we used to accomplish as a state at a much lower inflation/population adjusted tax revenue per capita, and those things are already pretty much crippled and on minimum life support maintenance.

Counterproposal: Already put forward in that earlier blogpost, return MN's GF priorities to some previous historical benchmark relative proportions. Put MN back on positive footing. Save 6-7 B biennially in the process if we choose to setback to the beginning of the Carlson admin, without either bloating or diminishing any spending category, indeed granting full allowance for inflation and population growth in all areas.

No liberty-minded Minnesotan should fail to be aware of the hidden agenda behind the curtain on this proposal, and it falls so very much inline with the Guv's track record in regard to increases in authoritarian govt scope as well as scale. This measure as proposed deserves no less than the utmost scorn from both political parties.