Spot The Cliche
By Mitch Berg
When Minnesota’s liberals aren’t trying to scare you into submission on their tax and spend plans, the apparent SOP is to riffle down through shame, ridicule and, presumably, chanting.
Aaron Brown of “Minnesota Brown” issues what could almost be a parody of all of these approaches in a post this morning.
Just to make it fun, we’re going to call out (with emphasis and, er, more) the standard-issue cliches that you can espect to see every liberal and media figure trot out every time the budget is discussed. Be watching for them.
Yesterday, in a fiery press conference Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced his unilateral solution to the budget debate he was unwilling to negotiate during the legislative session.
Uh-oh!
“Unwilling to negotiate”?
Well, that’s a way of putting it. “Using the one tool he has when facing a two-chamber political disadvantage” would be more accurate.
Yay, executive power! Good luck in ’12, bub. But the outcome is devastating and the governor and his allies are unwilling to admit the role they’ve played in trying to turn Minnesota into a cold weather Mississippi.
That’s another of those “Scare” lines that the lefties throw at you to try to get you to cough up taxes, frightened by visions of roach-infested sheds and kudzu growing on school desks.
Of course, Mississippi’s problems have much less to do with money than with a society that for three centuries was built on slavery (of blacks) and systematic disempowerment (of lower-class whites) run by a pseudo-aristocracy (the plantation owners before the war, and their descendents for most of the time since) that created a culture where people don’t do a lot to better themselves and stay in school and improve their communities because, really, what’s the point?
This is in comparison with Minnesota’s industrious, cantankerous, Calvinist Scandinavian and Germans. And, for that matter, the Dakotas’ and Nebraska’s and Montana’s cantankerous, Calvinist Scandinavian and Germans; all of those states have built well-governed, high-functioning (if low-tax and mostly lower-“service”) states, just as Minnesota did – only without the collective mythology of “high taxes are what make us special!” that’s plagued Minnesota.
You could tax Mississippi at Minnesota levels for a hundred years, and it’d still be…a warm, muggy, bug-infested Mississippi. You could cut Minnesota’s taxes to Mississippi levels, and it’d be…
…well, a state full of hard-working people, and a bunch of whiny DFLers.
Brown:
The governor is a pleasant fellow. I’ve met him and, on paper, I can follow his policy goals from point A to point B. But his perspective on the role of government is from another universe, a closed universe that doesn’t reflect the Minnesota than most voters have supported over the last several decades.
Yes, since Gov. Pawlenty took office his policies have been rejected in three consecutive legislative elections.
Like we couldn’t see this coming:
No, Mr. Brown. If his policies had been rejected, he’d have gone back into private legal practice in 2006. Furthermore, voters rejected mushy, republican-in-name-only hamsters who donned the “R” label but voted like…I was going to say Democrats, and that’s accurate, but the real answer is “voted like the national GOP, who spent eight years voting like Tip O’Neil-era Democrats”.
If voters had “rejected Pawlenty’s policies”, they’d have rejected Pawlenty.
Let the record show; they did not.
What Minnesotans seemed to be suggesting in their last three electoral choices is balance. Needed services funded. Efficiencies and budget cuts sought. Taxes made as fair as possible for all Minnesotans.
Needed services are funded; show me a city without police and fire protection, and you might have a point. Efficiencies – like privatizing less-essential government services – are actively rejected at all levels. Money is spent on light-rail boondoggles as cities whinge about being short of money.
The governor is responsible for all Minnesotans — including that majority that didn’t vote for him or his policies in any of the last three elections.
While that’s literally true, it’s also a matter of interpretation. But please, Mr. Brown, run with that theory; please have a word with Betty McCollum and Chris Coleman and Ellen Anderson and Alice “the Phantom” Hausman; while they “represent” the 30-40% of their districts that vote Republican, their voting records are not 30-40% conservative.
Are you willing to put your beef where your moo is?
Tuesday, friends of mine rallied on the Iron Range for the theater program at Hibbing Community College. (Photo: Hibbing Daily Tribune). The program’s full time director is leaving and the college, because of unallotment cuts that are worse than the cuts they had already planned for, is not replacing him. This theater program might sound like a throw-away thing to many who live where there are plenty of theater options, but for the Iron Range HCC’s theater represented a flagship of quality artistic expression. And it — like advanced courses in most of our schools, care for our elderly and more — are out the door not through negotiation, but through a decree.
Sorry to hear that. As a guy from a small town who had enough credits for a theatre minor (but all performance and technical, not academic), that’s gotta suck.
But the question, when times are tough, is “what is essential“. Hibbing’s theatre program may not be a “throwaway”, but is it “essential?” Essenntial as healthcare, fire protection, police, roads?
Go ahead and make that case. Or better yet, take up a collection and keep the guy in his job.
For me and the many others who are trying to promote a better quality of life for the people of the Iron Range (or the people of any other forgotten corner of the diverse geography of Minnesota) these cuts aren’t just bean counting, they seem personal.
But they’re not. They are bean-counting. Because if we took everyone’s “personal” priorities into account when setting up a state budget, everyone else would be taxed at 100%.
They will damage our communities for decades and possibly longer. They will retard our growth and prosperity while the wealthy parts of the state get another pass, again.
So question, Aaron Brown: what level of spending – and taxing the rest of the state – will it take to make the Iron Range prosperous? Bearing in mind that the Range has had preferential tax treatment and received immense subsidies for a solid generation now – what exactly is the price tag?
Something like the price tag for eradicating inner-city poverty and improving public education?
No, that was me talking. Never mind.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
That post has so many flashing lights it looks like the chase scene in The Blues Brothers.
Or better yet, take up a collection and keep the guy in his job.
No, all those folks in Wayzata were supposed to pay for that. Instead, because of Pawlenty, they’ll be rolling around like Scrooge McDuck in the their hidden vaults.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Mitch, you kind of missed one
“Taxes made as fair as possible” — This deserves its own flashing light.
He’s not concerned at all about the level of taxation, just that it’s “fair”
June 18th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Tuesday, friends of mine rallied on the Iron Range for the theater program at Hibbing Community College. (Photo: Hibbing Daily Tribune). The program’s full time director is leaving and the college, because of unallotment cuts that are worse than the cuts they had already planned for, is not replacing him.
This story has a little more info:
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2009/06/18/9600/hibbing_play-goers_protest_budget_cut_seek_to_save_full-scale_theater_program_at_hcc
They aren’t filling the position because they may not be able to guarantee enough enrollment to justify a full time position.
If the full time theater director costs $80k/year and tuition is $150/credit, that $80k could provide full tuition scholarships for around sixteen poor students. Priorities, please. Times are tough. Less theater, more job skill teaching.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Good post, Mitch, that Aaron has a tendency of using emotion instead of facts and logic.
But then you did a very similar thing when you said “…preferential tax treatment and received immense subsidies…”
Come on Mitch, why the distraction at the end like that? Why did you throw in that blather? I don’t think you really want to go there.
Otherwise a good post. I liked the flashing lights.
$80k/year!!!! WTF? Should be half that, no wonder the person retired during such tough economic times, must have so much money that the 201k doesn’t matter.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Y’all better stop insulting Mississippi. When I left, their state income tax topped out at 3%, they had no sales tax, and their budget was balanced, year after year. State Parks were free, and my kids were a year /ahead/ of the Minnesota kids when they started school here. (Of course, they hadn’t learned about Heather and her two mommies yet.)
June 18th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
But of course learning about “diversity” trumps everything alse.
June 19th, 2009 at 9:34 am
If Minnesota is going to become a cold Mississippi, the people here are going to have to be more charitable. Mississippi is the top state for charitble giving (dollars given per income earned). Minnesota is down the list….somewhere around 40th I think.
Also Mississippi blues is cooler then Minnesota polka any day.