{"id":4268,"date":"2009-02-23T12:53:15","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T17:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4268"},"modified":"2011-09-01T08:01:47","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T13:01:47","slug":"we-paid-for-the-damn-cow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4268","title":{"rendered":"We Paid For The Damn Cow"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t believe in public subsidies of broadcasters – but I listen to MPR.\u00a0 I mean, my tax dollars go to them, whether I support the concept of socialized radio or not, so it doesn’t give me any moral qualms.<\/p>\n

I didn’t support public money for the Midtown Greenway – but my taxes pay for it, so I ride it with pride.\u00a0 Dang skippy.<\/p>\n

And Jason Lewis is wrong, wrong, wrong; I bike to work on roads for which I pay no gas taxes for my bike, and I do it without a single sleepless night .\u00a0 I pay plenty of gas taxes when I’m not <\/em>biking, and my bike does no damage whatsoever to the road that – I haste to add – I already paid for<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to join with my conservative friends who are bagging on Governor Pawlenty for not rejecting Minnesota’s share of Porkulus, because, well, we’re ponying up our share<\/a>.\u00a0 While Pawlenty has not been the perfect <\/em>fiscal conservative,\u00a0 he’s done the best anyone could do under the circumstances under which he’s operating, at least trying <\/em>to veto the DFL’s worst excesses.<\/p>\n

The money’s leaving Minnesota.\u00a0 Better that it had not left in the first place, of course; better still that we slash the size of Minnesota’s government.\u00a0 But this is the hand we’re dealt.<\/p>\n

Imperfect?\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 But he makes some sense – and makes Rachel Maddow look like the gabbling, overpromoted ninny fighting four intellectual classes above her mental weight she is in the process, to sweeten the deal:<\/p>\n

Pawlenty recently appeared on MSNBC\u2019s Rachel Maddow show, and fairly effectively rebutted the host\u2019s charge that those who criticized the stimulus bill were hypocrites for accepting the funds now that it had passed.\u201cI have a number of responses to that argument,\u201d Pawlenty said. \u201cMinnesota ranks forty-sixth in terms of getting federal spending in relation to the amount of taxes paid \u2014 for every dollar we sent in to Washington, we get about 72 cents back. We\u2019re a major payer of the federal government\u2019s tabs, unlike many other states that I won\u2019t mention. I say, when you\u2019re paying to buy the pizza, it\u2019s okay to have a slice. Now, if you were a liberal Democratic governor and you opposed military spending, are you not going to take National Guard funding? If you were a liberal who opposed No Child Left Behind, are you going to take federal funding in education? So I\u2019m wondering why that standard is only being applied now to conservatives.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Snap!<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cAll the governors are going to take almost all of the money. I\u2019m not aware of any governor turning down a substantial amount. There\u2019s some talk about not taking unemployment insurance \u2014 about 2 percent of the stimulus \u2014 because it expands obligations in unemployment insurance, and might require a tax increase later on down the road. But the point is moot to Minnesota, because our benefit level is already beyond what the federal government would require.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course it’s politics – on Jindal and Barbour’s part no less than Pawlenty’s.\u00a0 Pawlenty has a hideous, DFL-fathered deficit to close, while trying to buff up his rap sheet for a presidential run in the next 4-8 years; Jindal, Barbour and Sanford are aiming to be seen to Pawlenty’s\u00a0 right.<\/p>\n

Does it make a fiscal budget hawk happy?\u00a0 Of course not; and Minnesota’s not a state of budget hawks.\u00a0 Yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t believe in public subsidies of broadcasters – but I listen to MPR.\u00a0 I mean, my tax dollars go to them, whether I support the concept of socialized radio or not, so it doesn’t give me any moral qualms. I didn’t support public money for the Midtown Greenway – but my taxes pay for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,2,69],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-4268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governor","category-minnesota-politics","category-socialism","tag-pawlenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268","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=4268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22585,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268\/revisions\/22585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}