Nyaaa Nyaaa Nyaaaaaa - Yesterday,

Nyaaa Nyaaa Nyaaaaaa - Yesterday, Doug Grow called anti-tax-hike activists copycats. Citizens for a Subservient Safer Minnesota calls pro-carry-reform people "Yahoos in Parkas", as we noted below.

Today, Laura Billings is on the case. If you oppose tax hikes, you're a baaaaaaad person.

Though a grudging but civil send-off for our delinquent dead used to be one of the hallmarks of Minnesota Nice, a no-nonsense funeral now counts as one of those nonessential services, like Porta Pottis in public parks, after-school programs for kids, or libraries that are actually open when people might want to use them.

I, as a non-native Minnesotan, am getting very, very sick of the ever-expanding definition of "Minnesota Nice", which is itself turning into a rather sickening sobriquet. "Minnesota Nice" should be about not letting people starve. I'm not sure where porta potties and indigent funerals fit into that.

Ever since Gov. Tim Pawlenty's budget proposal came out in February, the slow trickle of news about cuts to social services like this have caused "a sort of a smoldering reaction" in Alex Ellison, the South Minneapolis mother of a 15-month-old daughter and the owner of a small recycling bin business.

"As each new thing came to light, I found myself getting more and more angry,'' said Ellison, a self-described Wellstone Democrat who says her interest in paying the upfront costs of social services like education and health care were inspired by the fiscal conservatism she learned growing up in a Republican household.

"I know that taxation has been vilified over the last 30 years, but it serves such a high purpose. Why is everyone so afraid to suggest it?''

Ellison and her husband, Chuck Tomlinson, who works in the University of Minnesota's general chemistry department, decided that Minnesotans who have been intimidated by the anti-tax crowd simply needed some encouragement to admit aloud that taxes can contribute to the public good. So they started a grass-roots campaign complete with an Internet site (www.betterminnesota.org), bumper stickers, prepaid postcards to pass the word, and bright orange lawn signs for others in the state who are, as their signs say, "Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota.''

I'm the last person in the world to criticize people acting in their own self-interest - but do you suppose Laura Billings could be honest enough to note that Ellison and Tomlinson's livelihoods both depend on tax-funded programs, to one extent or another?

Like Grow, Billings doesn't like the fact that the marketplace of ideas in this state has more than one shelf:

The Web site betterminnesota.org was up and running at the end of March, espousing a vision for healthy families, excellent schools, strong cities, clean lakes and thriving businesses, along with links about the consequences of budget cuts to those areas. By last week, the Republican Party of Minnesota had set up its own copycat Web site, www.betterminnesota.com, complaining about Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party "budget games." (Randy Wanke, communications director, explained, "We wanted to make sure there were better ideas presented.'')

"Copycat" site? No, it's not - it's a much better-designed site whose ideas intersect at one and only one point - the concept of "Better Minnesota". The last I checked, the right to express a different view of what a "Better Minnesota" is has not been trademarked.

Here's the part I find the most irritating; the column's slugline. It reads as follows:

Some Minnesotans say it's not nice to be stingy

Stingy?

First - we're not cutting the overall budget at all!

But second, and most importantly - Stingy?

Dictionary.com defines "Stingy" as:

1. Giving or spending reluctantly. 2. Scanty or meager: a stingy meal; stingy with details about the past.

That may be the left's most noxious conceit in this whole sorry debate - the notion that it's about being "mean", or "reluctant" about doing good for others.

No, indeed - I think you're seeing a state full of people who are perfectly willing to build and staff schools, but are sick of being treated like ripe sucks by the MFT; who have no problem paying for good infrastructure, but are repulsed by pork-barrels like the Hiawatha Line; who have no problem paying for a great university system, but are sick to death of the U of M's invincible institutional arrogance.

We're not mean. We're just not bottomless pits of money - not now.

I'd love to see if the institutional left in this state - the likes of Doug Grow and Laura Billings and Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota - can carry on an argument without the cheap stereotypes.

Posted by Mitch at April 23, 2003 10:57 AM