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Mike Ring

St. Paul, MN
Commenter for
3 years 31 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 11/04/11 at 11:31 am in response to Is the No New Taxes dam starting to crack?

I will believe that the no-new-taxes dam is cracking once there is a recorded vote in favor of any kind of new revenue. Until then, it's just talk.

Wasn't it just a month or so ago when all of the GOP candidates for president raised their hands in opposition of a hypothetical deficit reduction plan of 10 to 1 spending cuts to tax increases?

Posted on 03/31/11 at 11:32 am in response to Pawlenty endorses anti-union bill in Ohio

Peder:
I don't believe that anyone is making the case that public sector workers should have a better total compensation package than private sector workers. Public sector workers already have smaller total compensation packages than private sector workers in similar positions (once you take into account experience and education levels). As far as I can tell, mostly public sector workers don't want to fall farther behind.

Posted on 02/28/11 at 11:39 am in response to Content-neutral: Expanding Minnesota Senate media credentialing

A few little questions:
Do credentials ever expire? Are they good for one session, or do you have them indefinitely? If they're indefinite, do you have to show up a certain number of times in a session to have automatic renewal?

Posted on 11/10/10 at 02:45 pm in response to Pawlenty: Freeze federal worker salaries

Some questions that weren't asked but would be useful:
- What happened? Why did it increase so quickly? Most federal jobs have set (and not very fast) raises. These jobs must be increasing much more quickly. Going from 9 to 994 in Defense in 5 years is astonishing. Why?
- How much of these increases are from required overtime, hazard pay, or other similar things? As there are fewer people to do the same amount of work, those people may earn significant overtime or hazard...

Posted on 08/10/10 at 12:40 pm in response to Have you voted?

I was voter #3 at about 7:05 in Highland Park in St. Paul. There were quite a few people in there voting before work, especially in the other precinct that votes in the basement of that church.

Posted on 06/22/10 at 10:06 am in response to Emmer outlines another radical idea for limiting federal power

"If the federal government can pass laws effective over all 50 states, why do we even have state constitutions?”

If states can just decide what laws to follow, why do we even have a United States Constitution?

The Supreme Court seems to have taken a pretty strict view of this in 1982 (and 1941):
"Of course, a state statute is void to the extent that it actually conflicts with a valid federal statute; and...where the state 'law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment...

Posted on 06/15/10 at 12:09 pm in response to Emmer searches for distortions -- and finds lame examples

Directly from the MPR piece: "In late April, he suggested he could eliminate a third of overall state spending, roughly $20 billion..."

My frustration is that he's spending all of his time talking about combining and eliminating agencies, and no time talking about programs that he wants to eliminate. If all you do is merge functions of one department into one or many others, you might save a bit on overhead, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to the budget deficit. As the MPR...

Posted on 05/20/10 at 08:18 am in response to TV ad attacks MN Gov candidates who support legalizing gay marriage

This ad was on during the Twins-Red Sox game last night too. On my agenda today is to send a complaint to FSN about it.

Posted on 10/27/09 at 11:18 am in response to Pawlenty endorses third-party-ite over Republican in congressional race

Nate Silver takes a look at the Club for Growth poll here, and basically concludes that it might be right, but there are a whole lot of "yellow flags" that might raise some doubt about the reliability of the poll. Starting with the fact that the Club for Growth has endorsed Hoffman and threw $300k into the race.

Posted on 10/14/09 at 10:10 am in response to Anti-Vikings column gets caught behind Star Tribune paywall

As a print subscriber, I'm frustrated that I can't read content that I've already paid for if I don't happen to be sitting at home with the physical copy of my newspaper. (if, as often happens, I leave for work before my newspaper gets there)