You depend on government.
You are a government worker. You’re looking at the budget negotiations, and noticing that at the Department of Transportation, even though the Governor and the Legislature were eight tenths of a percent apart on their budgets – something even the Hatfields could have negotiated with the McCoys – Dayton vetoed the Transportation budget.
Dayton is holding you hostage.
You depend on government. You are a walking, talking country western song, only it’s just not funny; you’ve been laid off, your significant other bailed leaving you with three kids to feed and clothe and try to insure. One of them has chronic, serious health problems – and in your current state, you have no choice but to try to get help from the state. But Mark Dayton has opted to stop all payments via Health and Human Services to health-care providers during the shutdown – indeed, he has specifically engineered that result from the budget battle.
Governor Dayton is holding you hostage.
The Republicans offered a budget that, by any rational measure, is a useful compromise; a 6% raise. Too much for conservatives, but certainly more than enough to run the government at a time when none of the rest of us are getting 6% raises. If a solution was what he wanted – for your benefit, Mr State Worker, and you, Ms. State Insurance customer – he’d have signed the Legislature’s budget.
Governor Dayton, on the other hand, has offered a budget that is still a billion dollars from balanced; he’s lying about not taxing 98% of Minnesotans, and he wants to commit us to endless autopilot increases; the bureaucracy will ask for $40 Billion next biennium, $46 B the budget after that.
He cares not one iota about compromise.
He doesn’t care about your job.
He doesn’t care about your kid.
He cares about raising taxes, and no more.
To protect a tax hike, he is shutting the government down.
Which doesn’t harm most of us; the vast majority of GOP voters only notice the state government on payday, or when we see a Highway Patrol car out on the road. We may or may not notice at all if the government shuts down.
But you will, Mr Employee and Ms. Client.
And it’s you he’s holding hostage.
It’s you he’s warning; “dont’ break ranks with the unions and your DFL, or this will hurt you baaaad”.
You’ll notice it if you head out to a State Park on the 4th.
Otherwise? Not so much.
The point is well taken: this is intended to fire up the DFL base.
Or is it punishment for the base for not having given him a full DFL government? I’m not sure which.
But really, more GOP supports are fine with defunding government and saving the money than DFL supporters are with seeing their paychecks withheld. A shutdown is the GOP playing to its strengths since now the DFL actually has make the argument of what constitutes an “essential government service” while the GOP asks why we fund the other services.
I hope more folks will see the light around here, so thanks for shining some around. They need it. When otherwise intelligent people cannot see the economic difference between public and private sector employment (in a simple ‘burden’ and ‘resource’ context), you know they’ll have a hard time of it.
Add “why doesn’t government hire everybody so we can have 0% unemployment?” to the list of reductio ad absurdum arguments.
“Nice little state you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it. Someone get me a bourbon on the rocks.”
he’d skip the rocks and go straight for the fucking bottle
Lets not forget the insane hell that Dayton is making us go through now. I recently was trying to get more license plates for our office. I was asked can I take up to eight series at one time to help save the state money. I had made an order for as many different plates that I thought I needed at the same time because I had been asked to in the pass. The state is now only giving me one series and just parts of the plates I ordered because they have been ordered to ship only through the end of the fiscal year.
In the long run over a hundred deputies will make multiple orders for plates which will cost the state money because of this gambit!
Walter hanson
Minneapolis, MN
And still, one of Dipshit Dayton’s support groups, corraled a few useful idiot sycophants, exploited a guy in a wheelchair (well, most the wheelchair was a prop) and stated a lame ass web site Taxtherich.org.
Never in my life have I wished more that I was a millionaire so that I could start my own anti-Dipshit PAC and run counter ads. I wonder if I could get away with MarkDaytonisaMoron.com? But als, several years of being under the heel of the libturd’s jackboots have set my retirement back at least 10 years.
Some days I wish Dayton was merely a lying politician. Most days I see him as a demented cantaloupe elected by democrat guilt money.
SHUT IT DOWN!!! People will be amazed how little they’ll miss.
An acquaintance who works for the state told me she was hoping for a shut down to last about two months. There’s one week of no pay (that’s your ordinary waiting week) then unemployment kicks in. She’ll get the rest of the summer off, with pay, to play with the grandkids.
It’s almost as good as being a school teacher!
Not much of a threat there, Mitch. Dayton’s threat is aimed at the mushy middle fretters who worry about what will happen to “the poor” without really knowing much about it. Insiders know it’s all political theatre.
.
You most certainly will notice a government shutdown!!!
.
.
.
.
Rush hour will be a breeze!
I disagree with our side pressuring Dayton to keep government open, and I second Scott and K-Rod’s remarks
Pingback: Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » Stalling