Shift? What Shift?

Bill Glahn – who’s been blogging for a couple of years, but has really jumped out as a go-to blog since the election – notices a huge change in the DFL’s tone, starting the second week in November:

For some reason, Dayton is given credit for proposing a “no-gimmick” budget, but he continues the biggest gimmick from the last budget for another four years.

More troubling, the new Democrat majority in the state legislature ran on ending the school shift as one of their top issues.

And “ending the shift” was one of the DFL’s biggest – and most dishonest – rhetorical cudgels:

Freshperson state Senator Melisa Franzen used the school shift as one of her top issues. Senator Franzen was elected from Senate District 49–covering Edina and parts of three other SW metro suburbs–in what was recognized as the most expensive race for the Minnesota state legislature in 2012. Some $600,000 was spend by various entities for a job that pays $31,140 per year.

In her campaign literature, Franzen listed education as her top issue area, and the school shift as her top education issue. “Paying schools back will be a top priority for me,” she writes on her campaign website. Her campaign piece No. 1 (p. 3) mentions “the accounting shifts and gimmicks used to balance the budget.” Piece No. 2, (page 2) has as bullet 2 of her vision, “pay back the $2.4 billion borrowed from schools.” Her piece No. 5 focuses on education and (page 2) has as her first education priority “pay our schools back.” Her piece No. 8 touts her “bipartisan” endorsements and (page 2) lists “pay back our schools” as her first agenda item. She writes, “Melisa Franzen will balance the budget honestly without gimmicks.” Likewise, this Franzen piece shows an adorable toddler and implores the voter to support Franzen’s efforts to “pay back our schools.”

You may also recall – and recollection is all you have, since the media will never mention it – that the GOP passed a bill, with bipartisan support, that would have had the “shift” paid back by now.

Governor Messinger Dayton vetoed it, at the apex of a whisper campaign by the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” (the attack-PR group run by his ex-wife, who also holds his pedigree papers) that the GOP’s plan was “a gimmick”, although not a single DFLer, when pressed, could say what the “gimmick” was.  Messinger Dayton vetoed it entirely to give the DFL a campaign issue.

Glahn notes the results:

What a difference an election makes. During the campaign, ending the school shift was the No. 1 issue, now…we’ll get to it in 2017. Senator Franzen now faces the prospect of running for re-election in 2016, not having achieved her top priority, unless her colleagues reject Gov. Dayton’s budget and do the right thing by our children.

And Alida Rockefeller Messinger will never give them permission to do that.

4 thoughts on “Shift? What Shift?

  1. Obviously, Tom Dooher is calling the shots here. The game is to get a whopping increase in self-sustaining payola investment for the children.

    If the shift is paid back first, the taxpayers will (rightly) take note of the huge influx of cash which might stifle the size of the ongoing payola investment for the children.

  2. Melissa Franzen is a liar! She stood on my front step and lied through her teeth that she wasn’t getting money from Alita, that she supported the 2nd Amendment and fiscal responsibility. As I have already shared many times, the fix was definitely in and voter fraud is the only way that she and Paul Rosenthal could have beaten Keith Downey and Terry Jacobson. Several apartment complexes within their districts provided fertile ground for the criminal Democrats to get vouching and same day registrations cranked up to ensure that they won.

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