Reading the Sunday Strib online (I buy a paper copy every once in a while for kindling) I find it amusing how the Strib words the following passages…emphasis mine…
Minneapolis and St. Paul will face major budget deficits if the state reneges on its local government aid (LGA), a program that helps pay for services in hundreds of Minnesota cities.
Cities have to lock next year’s budgets into place in less than a month. Yet the governor’s race remains undecided, while Republicans have wrestled control of the Legislature from DFLers, and an estimated $6 billion state budget shortfall clouds the picture.
I might offer a revision for the former: if state legislators are forced to cut subsidies to cities not able to live within their means as the state itself now must?
…and for the latter: as voters wrestled control of a state legislature dominated by the DFL for decades and handed it to Republicans, ostensibly sending a message of confidence lost in the former and gained in the latter.
Meanwhile, Nick Coleman (I am still surprised to see him gainfully employed) suffers from the same malady as President Obama: if only we had communicated our plans better, the American people would have voted differently.
DFL legislators who never put up an effective fight against the No New Tax mantra of Gov. Tim Pawlenty and never had a comprehensive strategy for communicating the goals of all their legislative maneuverings should share the credit for the GOP takeover.
Or, they were actually, absurdly proposing resolving our employment and economic maladies by raising taxes and increasing spending and for the first time in decades, Minnesota said “Nyet!”
It will be months before we know the full scope of the corporate politics behind the legislative takeover. We may never know the sources of much of the money, since anonymous contributions are permitted in the anything-goes political climate.
Careful there Nick, remember if you point one there’s four pointing back at you.
But one Democrat who felt the sting of the corporate lash was David Bly, a state representative from the cow-and-college precincts of Northfield who was seeking a third term. Bly, a high school English teacher, has been a leader in the fight for a universal health care plan for Minnesotans and other progressive causes. He was told by DFL Party leaders that his seat was safe, then stood by helplessly as business interests paid for an endless blizzard of attack ads — a dozen or more — that were mailed to voters in District 25B. Bly abided by spending limits for lawmakers — spending about $31,000 on his campaign — while the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Leadership Fund, the Minnesota Coalition of Businesses, and something called NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business, may, when final reports are in, turn out to have spent far larger amounts on behalf of his opponent.
Nick, don’t confuse the DFL’s inability to hear the train coming down the tracks with treachery on the part of their opponents.
For the record, Bly has supported a balanced approach to state budgeting, including cuts and tax increases where necessary.
…and to a liberal legislator they’re always necessary. Minnesotans seem to have rejected the notion that yet another tax hike is a “balanced” approach.
So relax, everyone. Business is picking up. And business just picked up a new Legislature coming into office in January.
That’s right Nick, business – you know, the sector that actually creates jobs and pays taxes.
Many of the new lawmakers probably don’t even know where the Capitol is.
…only Nick Coleman and his ilk would think that’s a bad thing.
“Minneapolis and St. Paul will face major budget deficits if the state reneges on its local government aid (LGA), a program that helps pay for services in hundreds of Minnesota cities.”
Maybe they will have to lay off the lobbyists that they hire to do the job that their elected officials are sent to St Paul for.
Mitch, you’re quoting Nick Coleman on a Sunday. Isn’t that heresy? Have you asked for dispensation – or did you purchase some indulgences we’re unaware of?
“Many of the new lawmakers probably don’t even know where the Capitol is.”
Mitch commented:
“…only Nick Coleman and his ilk would think that’s a bad thing.”
Right-wing mantra: stupidity is good!
Angryclown lives in NYC and knows where the quaint little Minnesota “Capitol” is.
The architect of Minnesota’s capitol is the guy who designed NYC’s “quaint” George Washington Bridge.
And this, here, is MItch’s first entry to this post, which was written by Roosh, to whom I say “welcome back!”
Angryclown mantra: Tammany Hall is good!
Geez AC, you may be philosophically bent but you’re otherwise a little quicker on the uptake.
My reference to not knowing where the capitol is refers not that they don’t know it’s in St. Paul rather government isn’t the center of their universe, unlike most liberals here.
St. Paul, FYI, is famously hard to navigate. At least to people who weren’t raised there. Minneapolis’ streets were laid out by common-sense Germans and Scandinavians. St. Paul’s streets were laid out by drunken Irishman, leprechauns, and illiterate voyageurs who believed that Minnesota was an estate in the French countryside. At least that is my theory.
West St. Paul is actually south of St. Paul. Midway is west of St. Paul. Frogtown is north of downtown St. Paul. North St. Paul is NE of St. Paul (I think). Lillydale is a mythical place where some people are from, but it does not exist in this dimension. Harriet Island is not an island. For many years there was a Smith Street High Bridge, then it was not there, then it was back again.
Saint Paul makes perfect sense – once you learn the system. But we all make money as guides for people from Wayzata who want to see “Cats” at the Ordway, so we never divulge the system.
It’s better than that. The West End is southwest of downtown. The West Side (not to be confused with the West End or West Saint Paul) is south of the river and straddles a line bisecting the east and west halves of the city.
But the East Side and the North End are east and north of downtown, and the Midway is named because it’s midway between the downtowns (and it is!).
There is one DFLer in Bloomington who probably would still have his seat if the DFL didn’t send out three anti-Catholic mailings.
And how much did the gov’t employees unions spend?
Is it true that Connemara Patch is down stream from Swede Hollow? I know that Swedes Hollow had outhouses well into the 20th century and I want to know the pecking order.
Actually, the Strib is so lame that they used “wrestled” when the term they were looking for was “wrested”.
And Nick… Mr Lame personified. Jeez, where does one even begin? I particularly like his pouty parting snark. Nothing like showing respect for the voters by asserting the stupidity and venality of their selections. Just like another famous Democrat, Dick Tuck: “The people have spoken, the bastards.”
Hey JR- Check this out:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/11/my-application-for-peter-thiel/
That’s Matt Yglesias, hero of the liberal blogosphere. His wisdom comes from being 29 years old, born to the upper-middle-class, and possessing a BA (philosophy) from Harvard.
Terry – thanks for sharing that.
Saying luck is the only thing that makes an entrepreneur successful is as you imply, a hallmark of someone that has never likely set foot in a successful enterprise let alone run or started one. I’ve never seen such a blatant expression of ignorance and arrogance.
The very existence of a successful franchise system is one very basic and obvious refutation of his asinine thesis.
You know, if I were on the City Council and the State told me they faced a breathtakingly large deficit so LGA probably wouldn’t be funded fully, I’d take them at their word and I’d set the city budget based on realistic expectations of what monies we actually would receive.
St. Paul and Minneapolis City Councils both decided to ignore the legion of red flags and bombardment of warning signal flares sent up by the state, choosing instead to blithely assume that LGA will be funded in full and setting spending accordingly.
Later, when the LGA doesn’t materialize, I expect the mayors will be stunned and outraged to be blindsided by the Legislature and therefore forced to lay off police and firefighters in order to reserve what little funds we have for street mimes and new carpet in the Mayor’s office.
Which explains why I’m not on the City Council. Just don’t have the knack for leadership, I guess.
.
You don’t know the game, nate. If they were to actually prioritize the cuts so that the new carpet would be funded only if LGA came through then there’s no way the LGA would come through.
It just makes it so much easier to attribute it to luck. Of course luck can be bad, too, as Lazarus Long noted:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded–here and there, now and then–are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.'”