Speaker Zellers and Senator Senjem had barely brought the gavels down on the session when the DFL’s paid PR organs – Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and the unions – and their unpaid ones in the media started chanting the meme: it’d been a “do-nothing” legislature.
That is, of course, objectiively wrong. The GOP went into the session with big plans, and threw itself into carrying them off.
The DFL and Governor Dayton went into the session with smaller plans:
- Run out the clock
- Veto everything they could
- Hope redistricting would pull their chestnuts out of the fire come November.
It’s not a bad strategy, really; it ties in seamlessly with the DFL’s strategy this past several elections: “lie about everything convincingly enough to sway the stupid vote”.
But in addition to being a really really cynically ofay political strategy, it’s just plain not true. Here’s a sampling of what the “do-nothing’ legislature managed to get past a sluggardly DFL minority and a Governor whose only activities this past session were vetoing legislation and kissing Roger Goodell’s ass:
- Brought the deficit from the “nearly seven billion” of two years ago to a billion dollars and change in surplus today.
- They passed a Voter ID Amendment, which promises to help make MInnesota elections less like Chicago’s
- Furthered policies that led to the creation of 41,000 jobs – almost making up for the 47,000 jobs lost jn 2009 and 2010 when the DFL controlled the legislature.
- Brought Health and Human Services spending increases down from the double digits under DFL mismanagement to just over the rate of inflation.
- King Banaian’s “Sunset Advisory Commission” did something I do not believe any DFL government has ever done; eliminated government offices that had outlived their usefulness.
- Tort Reform
- Changes in school choice laws.
Oh, yeah – and they passed a ton of other bills, which Dayton then vetoed.
Put another way: a legislature elected by over 50% of each district’s voters was stymied by a governor elected by barely over 40% of the people.
But that matters not to Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, and its new astroturf spinoff, “Alliance for a Better Legislature”. WIth nothing to show for their own session, the DFL and its astroturf partners’ only really strategy is…:
- Find a big lie
- Tell it constantly
- Peel off enough stupid people…
- …or fake and duplicate people to flip the Legislature while they still can.
They are about to dump more money into this state than we’ve ever seen – which is, of course, why they’ve spent the last year whinging about the “American Legislative Exchange Commission”. It’s Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.
It’s going to be a busy six months for conservative bloggers and talk radio – the only counterbalance the media and DFL (ptr) and all of their Rockefeller money have in this state.
Not sure if King remembered to include the utterly worthless, job killing power grabbing Met Council!
This just gets too depressing. Debating with an anarchist is more productive than trying to explain reality to a Democrat stooge.
Well there was the giveaway for the Minnesota Vikings and Mall of America combined with requiring vendors to collect sales tax on internet sales that got passed last week. I’m not sure that that is the sort of thing though that would or should appeal to likely Republican voters.
I’m still fuming about that Vikings stadium
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/13421171/the-new-vikings-stadium
I’m still fuming about that Choo-choo train
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