Tag Archives: Shutdownpocalypse 2011

Chanting Points Memo: The Cult Of Compromise

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In anticipation of tonight’s game against the Detroit Tigers, who are ten games ahead of the Twins in the AL Central, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire gave a press conference early this morning.

“We’ve done our best to be bipartisan in the run-up to the game”, said Gardenhire, whose team has a .321 record so far this season.  “The Tigers need to compromise!”

As the team tries to avert a sweep at Detroit’s “Filth and Crime Stadium”, Gardenhire noted “the Tigers’ manager is being boorish and intransigent; the people overwhelmingly support compromise in tonight’s game”, he said, citing a Star Tribune Minnesota poll showing fifty random Minneapolis adults support the Tigers forfeiting tonight’s game.

“We’ve reached out and given enough”, Gardenhire concluded.  “It’s time for the Tigers to give a little”.

———-

Dayton’s case for “compromise” is about the same as Gardenhire’s.  Let’s get clear on a couple of facts here:

  1. Dayton’s mandate is nonexistent:  Dayton backed into office with 43% of the vote (DFLers will respond “But Horner favored raising taxes, too!”  Perhaps, but you can not assume Horner’s voters supported him because of taxes; indeed, the DFL’s propaganda machine couldn’t stop reminding people what a “Republican” Horner was during the campaign; it’d be pretty funny for the DFL to try to have it both ways, but hardly unprecedented. It’s every bit as likely that 10% voted for Horner out of blind hatred of Mark Dayton as because taxes make them tingly), the second-lowest in history.  He’s weak.
  2. The GOP ‘s mandate is real: The GOP majority in the Legislature, on the other hand, won big, with a broad mandate made even more lopsided by the fact that a disproportionate number of the DFL’s votes came from blowout races in the Metro.  There was no mistaking it; it was the biggest turnaround in state political history, from the dismal 2008 race to crushing majorities in both chambers.  The GOP is not only entitled to govern like they won – they’d be disingenuous not to.

The DFL’s only real support on this issue is astroturf, bogus polls, and endless browbeating.

Which is noisy and showy, but doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Strikepocalypse 2011: Shutdown Stories You Won’t Read In The Strib

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Kwama Heaton of Richfield wanted to sign his kids up for basketball camp.  But when he got laid off from his job as a car salesman, due to a lack of used cars (due to Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program and cost cutting for Obamacare), he had to cancel those plans.

Cynthia DelAmitri of Woodbury told her family that their annual trip to visit her parents for a week of camping and fishing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were on ice because the small recruiting company for which she works is cutting staff (they can’t afford the taxes) and she couldn’t afford to take time off; the big national recruiters would eat her lunch.

Rey Jimenez, your grandmother’s oncologist, quietly decided that added onto the state’s confiscatory business tax rates and absurd healthcare mandates, the added income on couples who earn over $135,000 (he and his wife, your grandmother’s internist) was the last straw. He’s moving to Phoenix.

The media doesn’t cover those sorts of stories (and yes, mine are fictional, but only literally).

But let the government suddenly feel not all fat and happy, and “human interest” is the order of the day for the Twin Cities media:

Camille Miller hasn’t signed her daughter up for Girl Scout camp this summer. The state health care analyst from Woodbury is not sure she’ll have the $500 to pay for it.

Wow.

Not sure I ever paid $500 for kids camp…

Jim Ullmer has told his extended family to forget their annual July 4th get-together at Lake Itasca State Park. Ullmer, a state truck inspector from Crystal, is unsure if the campground will be open.

Because everyone knows family get togethers in local or national parks, or private camp areas, just aren’t the same.  There’s something about that patina of “state ownership” that brings people together, right?

They are just two of more than 54,000 state workers bracing for an uncertain summer as the Capitol budget impasse threatens to shut down government services on July 1.

To which the roughly two million of us in the private sector say “welcome to every day in our world, government worker”.

And half of us add “so quit electing obstructionist DFL governors”.  The GOP submitted a budget – one that’d keep government running, increase most spending that “needs” it and demand some new efficiencies.

Look for the same cavalcade of woe to accelerate; the Strib seems to be even more in the bag for the DFL this year than they did in 2005.

Let The Interference-Running Begin

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Session ends and, if you believe the the media, the MNGOP spent the entire time sightseeing:

All that and more must now await a special session this summer, as the Republican majority and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton ended an acrimonious five-month session with very little business done and a $5 billion projected shortfall mostly untouched.

There’s no sign more time in St. Paul would spark a deal to avoid a bruising government shutdown. A long season of legislating only hardened and widened the deep, bitter divide between Dayton and the new legislative leadership.

Read: The Governor used the only tactic he has: stalling, and counting on the media to shape public opinion for him.

Expect a “Minnesota Poll” showing Minnesotans favor “compromise” 60-40, with a 3:2 oversample of DFLers.

And probably a “Humphrey Institute” poll showing it’s more like eleventy-teen to one.

Here you go, Star Tribune and KARE11 and Esme Murphy; it’s your moment to shine.