That’s what I took from the Governor’s support of a sales tax increase to fund “economic development” in Cass County North Dakota.

The Governor calls himself a conservative, and yet the idea that we can tax our way to economic prosperity - giving the tax dollars to private economic development committees run by people who aren’t elected and thus are not beholden to citizens in any way - goes against the very bedrock principles of economic conservatism.

We cannot plan out economic development, and you cannot call yourself a conservative (or even a Republican like Ronald Reagan was a Republican) if you do think so.

As the Gipper once said so famously:  Government (in this instance government in the form of taxation) is not the solution to the problem.  Government is the problem.