among many others<\/a>.<\/p>\nFebruary 28: The Star Tribune “Minnesota Poll” claims that Minnesotans want the Dayton budget passed, that the people want to carry Governor Dayton through the streets on their shoulders, and that violence is about to break out against the Minnesota GOP.\u00a0 Bloggers point out that the survey was conducted entirely at one “Drinking Liberally” event in Minneapolis.\u00a0 Informed of the allegations, KTCA’s “Almanac” embarks on a three-week special on the history of Danish cooking in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
March 20:\u00a0 Speaker Zellers assigns the budget to the House Government Operations and Finance Committee.<\/p>\n
March 28:\u00a0 Rep. Quam (GOP) of Byron demands that the DFL members of the committee play a game of Twister on the House floor if they want the budget to get out of committee.\u00a0 The committee members comply.<\/p>\n
April 8:\u00a0 Nick Coleman, writing his new colum in the Wayzata Shopper, remembers when his father was running things.\u00a0 “The wingnuts wanted <\/em>to play Twister for a better Minnesota”.<\/p>\nApril 12: The Dayton budget comes to a vote in the House.\u00a0 It loses decisively, on state party lines.\u00a0 To signify the defeat, Speaker Zellers ties the budget to a string hanging from the ceiling of the House chamber, and members of the House Republican Caucus whack at it like a pi\u00f1ata.<\/p>\n
April 15: Speaker Zellers tells a cheering crowd of 10,000 at the Tea Party rally on the capitol grounds that the budget is dead on arrival.\u00a0 Six pro-tax protesters stand across the street wanly chanting in favor of the Dayton budget.<\/p>\n
April 16: The Strib <\/em>editorial reports that a crowd of “dozens” at the Tea Party rally were evenly split, showing the deep partisan divide in Minnesota politics today.<\/p>\nMay 1: , Governor Dayton start making contingency plans for a shutdown.\u00a0 Bloggers point out that the Governor’s plans include evacuating the Governor’s office to Vail, and euthanizing animals in all state parks.\u00a0 Told of the allegations, Keri Miller of MPR wonders on the air “whatever happened to bipartisanship?”<\/p>\n
May 14: A day ahead of the deadline, the GOP Caucus introduces a $33 Billion budget that makes steep spending cuts and balances the budget with no new taxes.\u00a0 It passes on a straight party line vote, is sent to the Senate, which also passes the budget by the end of the day.\u00a0 The bill is sent to the Governor.<\/p>\n
May 15\u00a0 Mark Dayton appears at the Hockey Hall of Fame, dressed in a Minnesota Wild Uniform, with Minnesota hockey legend John Mayasich, to veto the GOP budget. “Minnesota demands that we do the responsible thing and pass my budget without all this debate and democracy and crap”, he says, as Mayasich looks on.\u00a0\u00a0 Bloggers point out that “Mayasich” is actually Alliance for a Better Minnesota chair Denise Cardinal in a bald wig.\u00a0 Told of the allegations, KARE 11 news re-runs the January 4 Humphrey Poll.<\/p>\n
May 16:\u00a0 The Strib <\/em>runs a piece by reporter Pat Doyle, an expose of the “Casualties of the Shutdown”.\u00a0 Doyle, clearly gunning for a Pulitzer, writes a heartrending tale of Minnesotans standing in line at soup kitchens, of families (mostly “womenandchildren”) living in huge “Zellerville” on the Capitol Mall living on McDonalds coffee, and people lining up to throw themselves off the High Bridge.\u00a0 Bloggers point out that government hasn’t actually shut down yet, that nothing Doyle wrote had actually happened, and that the piece was clearly pre-written weeks earlier and run by mistake.\u00a0 Told of the allegations, MPR’s Keri Miller runs a two-hour broadcast on “How Blogs Provide A Chilling Effect On Free Speech”, featuring a bipartisan panel of Larry Jacobs and Nick Coleman.<\/p>\nMay 17: Dayton demands the Legislature pass his budget.<\/p>\n
May 18: Nobody at the legislature responds.<\/p>\n
July 1: Minnesota’s state government shuts down.<\/p>\n
July 2:\u00a0 The Strib <\/em>re-runs the Doyle piece.<\/p>\nJuly 22: The state budget office notes that business activity is increasing, and tax receipts are rising.<\/p>\n
July 23: The Strib editorial board runs an extended interview with Elmer Anderson, who gruffly demands that Minnesota Republicans “think about what’s best for Minnesota” and adopt Dayton’s budget immediately without any of that “commie wingnut debating crap”.\u00a0 Bloggers point out that Elmer Anderson died in 1998, and “Anderson’s” rhetoric read like Nick Coleman writing with a bag over his head.\u00a0 Told of the allegations, MPR’s Mark Zdechlik embarked on a two-week series on “What we can learn about Democracy from the Iroquois”.\u00a0 Salient observation: the Iroquois tradition of “Local Tribe Aid” was considered inviolate.<\/p>\n
August 18: The State Budget Office notes that, with no government expenditures and business thriving, the state is in a surplus.<\/p>\n
September 2: Katherine Kersten’s column, “Happy Days Are Here Again”, notes that Minnesota is in a much better state with the government shut down.\u00a0 Lori Sturdevant muses in her column that in Wendy Anderson’s day, the governor would have told the State Patrol to arrest Kersten for “making terroristic threats”.\u00a0 Bloggers point out that that is utterly absurd, there is no record of any such demand, anywhere.\u00a0 There is no response to these allegations.<\/p>\n
September 23: With no budget in place and government shut down for weeks, Mark Dayton, operating from his office in Vail, orders the National Guard called out to react to what Dayton’s press secretary Tinucci calls the “Terrorist Threats”.\u00a0 Bloggers point out that the “threat” was the conclusion of Sturdevant’s slanderous column about Kersten.\u00a0 The National Guard’s commandant says “the paperwork is in process, call back in July”.<\/p>\n
September 24: Dayton exercises his unallotment power on the GOP’s budget.\u00a0 Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch is left visibly speechless on hearing the news.<\/p>\n
September 25: Finished with his line item vetoes, Governor Dayton signs a 27 billion dollar budget.\u00a0 Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s Denise Cardinal notes that “Mark Dayton has always been the budget-cutting candidate”.\u00a0 But Andrea Outrage-Guevara, president of Minnesota’s “Alliance of WomynAndChildryn”, speaking at a rally on the capitol grounds that drew “Millions” (according to the Strib), demands that all budget cuts be reinstate immediately or “Dayton will be ousted”.<\/p>\n
October 15:\u00a0 Dayton, relocated his office from Vail, sits on a whoopie cushion left in his office by Tony Sertich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
January 3: Session kicks off.\u00a0 Mark Dayton throws a “blue jeans” inaugural.\u00a0 Musical highlight: the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” Choir singing “Look For The Union Label”.\u00a0 For four solid hours. January 4:\u00a0 The Humphrey Institute releases a poll showing that 80% of Minnesotans want the Legislature to pass Mark Dayton’s budget immediately.\u00a0 Bloggers point […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,144,2,35],"tags":[115,164],"class_list":["post-16833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-governor","category-minnesota-politics","category-money","tag-abm","tag-mn-cd5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16833"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49864,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16833\/revisions\/49864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}