Saturday, January 6, 2018

If it is 2018, it must be go time!





"When the caucus meetings take place next month, just remember how things could have been - and then how they will be with Jeff Johnson as our next Governor. The future is ours to take."   


Two of the more frequent questions I get asked about Jeff Johnson are the following: 1) Why not Matt Dehn instead, and 2) What happened last time around? By the way, I am not the only one who gets asked these questions. Many on Jeff's campaign team also do, including Jeff himself. So, since it is early in 2018, that means it is now "go time". The engine is revved, and Team Jeff is ready to go!

First, let me address Matt Dean. Matt is a friend of mine, as well as many on Jeff's team. He is also a friend of Jeff's. Representative Dean is a fine man, a very smart and capable man - Minnesota is lucky to have him. I just wish this time around he was running for Secretary of State or State Auditor so I could support him. And by the way, please do not take this that Matt would not make an excellent Governor - he would. I just happen to think Jeff would make a much better one.

I am now going to talk about the last statewide election cycle. As it started out, I was on the Thompson/Benson team. Because I was a state delegate, Jeff called me once or twice to ask if he received the endorsement instead of Dave Thompson, would I be part of his team. I told him I would. Truthfully, both times I talked to Jeff, his views on every issue I brought up were clearly thought out and cogent. As much as I supported Dave Thompson, I knew I would have no problem being a member of Team Jeff should Jeff get the endorsement. 

When Jeff and I had coffee a year ago November to discuss the possibility of another run, I laid it on the table to him. He is one of the nicest and most modest men I have met in my life. The nice part of Jeff can't be changed - nor would I want to ever see it changed. Jeff will be Jeff until he walks into Heaven. The modest thing however, I can help him with. I can be very braggadocios about the wonderful things Jeff has done while serving in the Minnesota House as well as a Commissioner in Hennepin County.

It is never easy going up against an incumbent. By the time Jeff got the endorsement, Dayton had most of his first term under his belt. Plus, he was also a former Minnesota Senator (albeit a lousy one) for a short time. What did that give Dayton? Almost 100% name recognition within the state. Jeff was well known in a good part of the metro, but not as well as Dayton in other parts of the state. Even with that, Jeff closed that gap quite a bit by the general election. 

We can't change history. What is done is done. But we can learn from history - and that is what Jeff and his team have done. That being said, consider how this state would look right now if Jeff had won last time around. To start with, there would be no dysfunctional mess like we have right now between Dayton and the legislature. The size of our state government would have shrunk under Jeff. We would be able to do more with less. Our state taxes would have also shrunk, including the commerce killing corporate tax. And (this is the big one) - 100% of Social Security (just like in Wisconsin) would have been excluded from state taxation.

Well, Jeff did not win. But he can now. We can have a noticeably smaller and more efficient state government. We can have smaller taxes. We can stop driving our seniors out of state due to cruel Social Security taxation. We can reign in the out of control Met Council, and eliminate it. We can fix our highly inefficient and expensive MNSure. Heck, we might even be able to get our license tabs on time. The list goes on and on. 

One final thing about Jeff being nice. When it comes to fighting for Minnesotans to get the most out of every tax dollar, Jeff can be as tough as he is nice. Jeff can make Minnesota Great Again. Make Minnesota hospitable to businesses and seniors once again.

When the caucus meetings take place next month, just remember how things could have been - and then how they will be with Jeff Johnson as our next Governor. The future is ours to take.   

13 comments:

  1. Good Luck, campaign hard for your guy. Great things might happen. Don't let him take the low road this time around. Take the high ground and maybe enlightened MN voters will give him a chance.

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  2. And if he could come off as different than the typical self-righteous, uncompromising GOP'er, that might gain him a few votes also.

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  3. Sorry, Dave, but I go back to my fundamental, mathematically proven axiom about the Legislature: Any Republican is better than any Democrat.

    Now, within the Republican field, I really want to support Jeff Johnson because of his ability to appeal to anybody that wants reasonable. The guy could sell refrigerators to Eskimos, as the old saying goes. But I did diligent scoring of the debates at the recent State Central meeting, and despite my strong inclinations otherwise, I found Keith Downey came out on top. I was quite upset that Matt Dean won the straw poll, as my impression of him is he is a bit "angry" by comparison with the other two. Sorry, Jeff, it's not time for me to choose, yet.

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    1. fundamental, mathematically proven?
      See my comment above.

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  4. Yep. Using the Taxpayers League Scorecard, I find that the "worst" Republican has a higher score than the "best" DFLer. The average scores are some 70 points apart. QED.

    And assuming that the word you were directing me to was "compromise," I have an opinion on that. A few legislative sessions ago, Republicans wanted to spend only what was "in the checkbook," while the DFL wanted to spend $6 billion MORE than that. So what is the compromise, spending only $3 billion more than we have? In every debate, one side is more "correct" that the other. Any position between the two is therefore to some degree "wrong." I like Jeff Johnson because he can hold out for the "right" thing without starting a battle.

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    1. Taxpayers League of Minnesota. We are an independent, non-partisan voice of Minnesota's right wing voters. We stand for lower taxes, limited government and local control. We don't want to give anyone a hand, a meal, a bed for the night or a doctors visit. We just want to bathe in the riches we have accumulated and ignore those less capable.

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  5. Not quite correct. We don't want GOVERNMENT handing out free meals at our expense, when we are perfectly willing and able to do it ourselves. And who lets YOU, or some distant bureaucrat, decide who is "less capable"? Isn't that a terrible judgement to make of your fellow human beings? Conservatives believe everybody is capable of making their own way, if government would get out of the way. I have worked with organizations that took people DENIED welfare and put them back on their feet, usually in just a few months. Government welfare sometimes runs for generations. Which is better?

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  6. Not recognizing that some people are less capable or incapable is cruel, incorrect and beyond reason.

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  7. Dave, have you ever heard the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? Some people ARE less strong, less brilliant, less driven and even less healthy, wealthy and wise. But to automatically assume that about millions of our fellow Americans is what is cruel and counterproductive, especially when we have not given them opportunities to succeed. And when they truly prove no aptitude for whatever they try, we should find them something they CAN do, rather than just warehouse them, like wild hogs, for another 40 years.

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    1. How does one identify the wheat from the chaff in persons on the federal/state dole. It would take a beauracracy that would make even a snowflake spin to accomplish same.
      Cheaper to warehouse than to spend billions on often ineffective programs to educate/employ. Where is your touted GOP fiscal responsibility?

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  8. "Cheaper to warehouse"? I think not. Take the total amount spent on means-tested programs, divide that among those officially in poverty, and a family of three makes about $63,000/year! And that doesn't even count the cost in human dignity and social pathologies.

    But give that person some life-skills and job training for a few months, that gets them a 9-10$/hour job, find them child care after school and give them a school voucher so the kids can get an education that lets them break that cycle of poverty, and you cut the public expense in half, at minimum. And you have "redeemed the sacred human worth" of one more. The problem is we cannot keep judging people a priori. It is giving them every possible opportunity to improve their own lot. The current system goes the other direction.

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    1. Back to the original topic, we have for too long believed that we could "let George do it." That is, our charitable instincts and efforts could be easily fobbed off on the government. We could "put somebody else's money where our mouth is" and claim to be oh, so charitable, demanding ever bigger handouts to the "less fortunate" [than us] while doing nothing to raise them up OUT of their poverty. We seem to have an entire political party dedicated, in fact, to the proposition that those "poor folks" are a distinct underclass that cannot make it for themselves and must rely on politicians to keep them alive. It's a cancerous compassion. I prefer a "compassionate conservatism" that believes everyone has value and can contribute something to their own sufficiency, and that we have a PERSONAL obligation to help them realize that.

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