Shot and Goal - Tim

Shot and Goal - Tim Pawlenty is fighting for his budget plan against a full-court press from the media, the non-profit community, and the DFL.

And he's getting in some good points.

DFL House Minority Leader Matt Entenza, said:

The governor can't have it both ways. He can't say he's balancing the budget solely through cuts and then claiming the cuts don't have an impact," Entenza said. "The reality is they're going to have real significant impact. The impact is on law enforcement.

Pawlenty retorted:

In a hastily called news conference at the State Capitol, a visibly irritated Pawlenty said local officials who could not handle the magnitude of the reductions without cutting police and fire services should be fired. The reductions would be limited to 5 percent of a city's total revenue the first year and at 9.5 percent the second year.

"If you can't manage your city with a 3 percent drop in revenue without having the first thing you do is run before the cameras and say you're going to lay off cops, then you shouldn't be in that position," Pawlenty said.

As an aside - perhaps Entenza's remarks are actually a good sign for Republicans. That Entenza would protest the potential loss of cops and law enforcement - as opposed to traditional DFL bases like welfare and social programs - is a sign that the DFL knows which voters are really in charge in this state.

Genocide Afoot in Minnesota- This also came from the Strib article:

"It [the LGA cuts] hits the inner cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and rural communities extremely hard, and it doesn't touch the wealthy suburban districts at all," said Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia. "To me, the attack on rural Minnesota is almost like geographic genocide. The social fabric of the state of Minnesota is going to be severely damaged."

Geographic Genocide.

A cut in funding...is equal to genocide (the destruction of an entire people). I'll cut Rukavina a certain amount of slack - I've heard him speak, and let's just say the problems of having an overly-keen intellect are not ones he needs to worry about.

But "Geographic Genocide"? That's not just dumb - that's Maxine Waters/Carole Mosely-Braun-level stupid. And the worst part? Someone out there is going to take this seriously, and vote based on that kind of idiocy.

Seriously - the debasement of our language by such tripe is absolutely galling.

Posted by Mitch at February 20, 2003 11:25 AM