Avoiding the Cheer

There has been a significant amount of good news both locally and nationally of late, but one has to pretty much be a news hound to be aware of it. It might show up for a brief instant, but it doesn’t last very long. Here in MN we have a $1 Billion budget surplus. Last summer the Democrats shut down the Government to demand tax increases as the only way to come close to a balanced budget. They accused the Pawlenty administration of “lying” (Democrats are huge on “truth”) in claiming that he had balanced the budget, and that real deficits would be over a Billion for the biennium. Weeks after the agreement, the State and the media stealthily announced a $300Million SURPLUS for the first 6 months of the year. Now they have announced a $700 Million SURPOLUS for the 2nd half of the year. The big tax increase? A .75 a pack cigarette tax, which of course the Democrats chastised the Governor for.

Is this a newsworthy item? Barely. The shutdown was top billing for weeks, the fact that it was all a sham, Pawlenty and the Republicans were right and we are now running a surplus? Barely a whisper. Wonder what the headlines would say if the predictions had gone the Democrats way, let alone gone their way by $1 Billion worse than their projections? No doubt it would be the apocalypse.

Nationally it is much the same. The 3rd quarter growth rate, projected by the media and Democrat prophets as “hopefully doom” was 4.3%, meaning that we have grown faster than 3% for 10 straight quarters, the longest such string of growth over 3% since the 13 quarters which ended in March of 1986. November job growth came in a 215,000 another nice number. Is this all good news? Not really, Bush is in the WH so the media finds nothing but negatives in it, refuses to report it anything but minimally, and then proceeds to see if they can mention low poll numbers again. There can really be no good news at all with a Republican in the WH.