About 500 union members – and not much of anyone else – formed a “Downeyville” on the Capitol grounds yesterday.
“Downeyville’s” city government quickly formed a city bureaucracy which hired a unionized workforce to take care of “Downeyville’s” city business. The unions worked with the city and instituted a comprehensive defined-benefit pension plan for “Downeyville” city workers, with automatic cost of living raises and a n0-questions-asked health insurance.
“Downeyville’s” bills quickly spiralled out of control; taxes surged, and “Downeyville” quickly sent lobbyists (further) up Capitol Hill to demand Local Government Aid – which only inflamed the protesters, because the government is shut down. Which caused the entire city work force to form another small town – a suburb of “Downeyville”, further up the capitol steps, called “Zellerston”.
The suburb quickly took the wealthy population from “Downeyville”, causing the “Downeyville” city government to demand the forming of a “Protest Met Council” to equalize revenues between the two “towns”. “Zellerston” also formed a unionized city work force, which quickly adopted a defined-benefit pension plan and cadillac health benefits, which quickly drove the city’s budget into the red, causing the city to demand Local Government Aid. They sent their lobbyist up the hill to the Capitol, where he ot into a fight with “Downeyville’s” lobbyist, getting them both thrown into jail, where their union-paid lawyers (it’s a benefit, hey?) filed suit against each other, both winning multimillion dollar judgments, which spun both cities into crushing debt.
And then the six-o’clock news cycle ended, and the news trucks left, and most of the “population” of both “cities” left, leaving both cities with crushing debts. Both cities called in union members from other cities, who scheduled a protest…
Oh, yeah – union members were the only people that cared.
But Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, one of several DFL legislators who attended the rally, said he was surprised the shutdown did not yet seem to be resonating with many Minnesotans. “I thought there would be a lot more tension on July 4th,” Hornstein said of the many Fourth of July parades across the state. “I’m surprised.
Of couse, Twitter redounded with warnings from Democrats to Republicans about “tension” to be expected at Fourth of July parades. Apparently they thought Minnesotans would be up in arms about the shutdown. Maybe they even tried to see to it – hell, they astroturf eveything else. We just don’t know.
Anyway – while “Downeyville” apparently stiffed as anything but a union pep rally, Hornstein – and by extension, the entire DFL – still has hope:
“But I think the longer this would go on, the public would get concerned,” he said.
AFSCME and SEIU members will be going door to door to union members and registered DFLers to make sure people “get concerned” over the weekend*.
(
If they are only going to the homes of registered Demonrats, over in Bloomington, I will watch with curiosity to see if these dip sticks obtained their solicitation permits from the city. Based on the fact that our city government is insanely liberal, I doubt that they will enforce it.
Peripherally related and possibly unnecessary in this forum, but I would mention to those who have Rep reps to send them a brief note of encouragement. They are reading them, mine responded in a couple of hours, after hours.
Come to my front door. Please. I haven’t much fun with that since the Jehovah’s Witnesses started bypassing me.
I do love that the unions are calling their protest exercise “Downeyville” – a term that most MN voters will never hear and even if they do, won’t have the slightest clue who it references. Meanwhile, Keith Downey should privately love the idea as it boosts his name ID among party activists. I wouldn’t be surprised to see his name get mentioned for statewide office in 2014 at this rate.
I thought it was for Robert Downey Jr. All the ASFCME folk would end up crawling into a strange bed in a drugged fog and falling asleep.
This was mentioned elsewhere:
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/125044304.html
If they contact me, I will certainly mention the craziness of the Governors plan, and how it wasn’t worth considering by California or New York (normally fountains of crazy).
On a slightly related note, Kermit, it’s funny you mention Robert Downey Jr. According to Wiki, he claims that prison essentially cured him of liberalism. I have read that Ironman and especially Ironman 2 have libertarian/Ayn Randian themes in them. I didn’t really see any of that, except for one part:
********SPOILER ALERT in case people still haven’t seen it*********
He was at a congressional hearing where the presiding senator (beautifully played by Garry Shandling – he actually reminded me very much of Chuck Schumer minus the NY accent) wanted the government to essentially confiscate his Ironman suit for the DoD. It was pure poetry in motion, the way he used technology to hijack the congressional hearing and verbally shoved the senator’s face in a pile of dogshit. The first 18 minutes of that movie are a MUST SEE for anyone who distrusts or hates the government.
Bill C;
Saw it. Loved it!
Kind of reminds me Jim Carrey’s character in “The Majestic” a couple of years ago when he essentially told the House UnAmerican Activities committee to pound sand and walked out of the proceedings, to the cheers and applause of the audience.
Kermit Says: “Come to my front door. Please.”
I invite them to come to my door as well! “Will you step into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “
My favorite line from the Iron Man 2 congressional hearing
Shandling: I’m not that much of an expert in prostitution
Downey: Of course not your a Senator
I was fucking rolling in the aisles after that line. It made the movie for me.
Iron Man, hands down the best super hero movie series going.
Scott, they won’t, because they have zero courage backing their feeble convictions. Being a liberal means never having to say “I believe, because…”
A little known fact on the Ironman movies; Stark Industries was almost Minnesota based Alliant Techsystems, but after the brass there thought about the fact that their logo would be everywhere in the movie and associated with weapons, they decided that they didn’t need any more protests outside their HQ building adding to the one that has recurred every Wednesday since 1990, by a bunch of hippies that never grew up.
Less than 3% of the state layoffed workers in theory. Keep in mind part of that crowd was other locals sending people to the rally.
If I were the unions I’ll be concerned because at least in Wisconsin they had emotional mobs that could at least scare the Republicans and governor Walker.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
How about the movie “Citizen Kane” where the rich-born Charles Foster Kane finally got the “keys to the kingdom” and said. I want to run the newspaper, I think it would be fun!” “Rosebud” or something like that could be a reference to Governor Dayton’s “essential” gardener.