{"id":19014,"date":"2011-03-24T11:30:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19014"},"modified":"2011-03-24T11:37:26","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:37:26","slug":"the-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=19014","title":{"rendered":"A Brilliant Idea!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was watching the replay of <a href=\"http:\/\/mncapitolnews.com\/node\/132\">Tuesday&#8217;s discussion on Marty Owings&#8217; &#8220;Capitol Conversations&#8221; show<\/a>, with Greg Copeland (the GOP-endorsed candidate in the SD66 special election) and Rep. John Lesch, one of three DFL contenders that&#8217;ll duke it out in the primary next Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Toward the end of the interview, the subject of &#8220;what is there left to cut?&#8221; from the budget of the City of Saint Paul, Copeland brought up the $300K the city spent on a tiny fleet of electric cars.<\/p>\n<p>Lesch responded &#8220;OK, that&#8217;s $300 thousand.\u00a0 What else?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Copeland, inconveniently, hadn&#8217;t brought a budget with\u00a0 him; Marty had to disentangle that particular discussion.<\/p>\n<p>But it just occurred to me; <em>what a golden opportunity for an across-the-aisle discussion!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Rep. Lesch?\u00a0 Candidate Copeland?\u00a0 How about we get together with a copy of the Saint Paul City Budget, and go through it, line item by line item, and justify each one&#8217;s existence (or removal)?<\/p>\n<p>This sounds like a <em>fantastic <\/em>idea!<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Lesch (or whomever wins the DFL endorsement); have your people call Mr. Copeland&#8217;s people (note: I am Mr. Copeland&#8217;s people).\u00a0 Let&#8217;s get this set up.<\/p>\n<p>What a brilliant idea, Rep. Lesch!<\/p>\n<p>Disclosure: I am a volunteer on Greg Copeland&#8217;s campaign staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was watching the replay of Tuesday&#8217;s discussion on Marty Owings&#8217; &#8220;Capitol Conversations&#8221; show, with Greg Copeland (the GOP-endorsed candidate in the SD66 special election) and Rep. John Lesch, one of three DFL contenders that&#8217;ll duke it out in the primary next Tuesday. Toward the end of the interview, the subject of &#8220;what is there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disclosure","category-minnesota-politics","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014","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=19014"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19017,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19014\/revisions\/19017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}