Lori “The One-Woman DFL PR Operation” Stufdevant is watching the meltdown of Larry Pogemiller’s “Happy To Pay!” bloc with the usual near-suicidal depression.

I scarcely have the heart to fisk her anymore.  I feel like I could write everything she’s done this session according to a standard template:

 [pick a DFL legislator] is feeling sad.  Her [pick a program] got vetoed by Tim Pawlenty.

“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to [a constituency the DFL trots out to elicit tears; women, children, immigrants, the elderly are old standbys],” she told me, barely holding back a tear.

A GOP legislator I know who harkens back to a more responsible, caring, cooperative time in this once-great state agrees.  “Arne Carlson would have never stuck [constituency] in the back.”

The only hope, short of an electoral miracle or a meteor hitting Tim Pawlenty and ushering in a more loving, caring time in this state’s history, is a softening of hearts and grips on the $44,500,000 – a fraction of what this state spends on roads and cops! – to buy office supplies and stationery for this program.

Good luck with that.

Need I say more?

Well, of course I do.  The devil is in the details – and there are always details. 

New ideas that build on an intact government-services infrastructure were stopped by evidence that Minnesota doesn’t have one anymore.

Lori Sturdevant would have you believe that Tim Pawlenty has destroyed state government?

“I keep hearing that we should be more like business, and that businesses both cut expenses and invest in new things,” said Rep. Mindy Greiling, DFL-Roseville, the House K-12 finance chair. “I don’t know. I don’t think too many businesses let their whole plant crumble in order to improve the landscaping.”

Her analogy would be more apt if the proposed investments were merely aesthetic improvements. They weren’t.

No, they are much less useful: 

…Getting more little kids ready for kindergarten and bigger kids ready for college goes to the heart of this state’s aspirations for its future.

Read back (if you have the stomach or the tolerance for mindless bathos) in Sturdevant’s piece.  She’s talking about early childhood education – a nice freebie convenience for working parents, but something that does very little to “prepare” kids for school (and that’s even if you assume that “preparing a four year old kid for school” is a good thing!). 

Another interesting detail – Sturdevant’s “don’t look at the emperor” approach to recent history.  Remember – the DFL came into this session proposing a feeding frenzy of spending and regulation, ranging from sending state agents to visit and push state programs on new mothers to bringing the full weight of law enforcement to bear on school stadiums’ lights shining into Phyllis Kahn’s windows to giving the franchise to 16 year olds to sending the Attorney General after companies that don’t achieve “social goals” to…

…well, you get the picture.  Or you would get the picture, if you get your news from Republican blogs and not the Strib, anyway.

Because what does Sturdevant say about Our Silly Legislature?

The ideas bandied about this year may not have been right for Minnesota. Other ways of going at the Big Challenge might work better.

Yes, Lori.  “Other ways”.  “Ways” sponsored by people who are not idiots who are drunk on power and awash with a sense of wanting revenge for having been out of power. 

But discussion of all such options ended too soon this session — silenced by an inability or unwillingness either to raise new revenue or to move money away from programs that were hit in 2003. With one day to go before regular-session adjournment, this year’s Capitol story looks to be the triumph of unfinished business over new priorities. That’s not the way to move Minnesota ahead.

No, but it’s a way to keep it solvent and help the powers that be learn a sense of responsibility.

And by “responsibility”, I don’t mean “…to a phony legacy kept alive by people wanting to re-create the DFL’s salad days”, Ms. Sturdevant.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 4:59 am and is filed under Media, Minnesota Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.