{"id":4785,"date":"2009-05-15T07:30:14","date_gmt":"2009-05-15T12:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4785"},"modified":"2011-09-01T08:01:44","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T13:01:44","slug":"t-pawerful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4785","title":{"rendered":"T-Pawerful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Governor Pawlenty &#8211; virtually the sole Republican with any semblance of power anywhere near Capitol Hill &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/politics\/state\/45042272.html\">drops the &#8220;L&#8221; word, promising<\/a> line-item vetoes rather than a shutdown or a special session:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Turning the heat up to a boil in the closing days of the legislative session, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he would use his powers of line-item veto and unallotment to singlehandedly balance a state budget facing a $4.6 billion deficit if a compromise plan can&#8217;t be crafted in the next four days.The unusual flexing of executive power seemed clearly designed to make Pawlenty&#8217;s adversaries in the DFL-controlled House and Senate blink as the clock ticks toward adjournment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve criticized the Governor in the past, but I&#8217;ll say it now; great job, Governor.<\/p>\n<p>Now, expect the following in the next few days:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A &#8220;Minnesota Poll&#8221; showing that Minnesotans oppose this use of the line-item veto (in a poll that&#8217;ll oversample DFL voters by 2-1)<\/li>\n<li>A Lori Sturdevant column bemoaning how Elmer Anderson would be rolling in his grave over this; how he&#8217;d have taken the DFL out for beer and lutefisk and cigars and gotten them all together by giving them pretty much what they wanted, but scolding them with a colorful homespun story that left everyone chuckling in that beer\/lutefisk\/cigar clogged way that old-time pols in smoky back rooms at Jax or Murray&#8217;s or the Saint Paul Grill always laughed, and everyone would have walked together into the glorious future.<\/li>\n<li>Gauzy, soft-focus stories on &#8220;the Minnesotans affected by the budget cuts&#8221;, which may very well focus on Minnesotans that <em>are <\/em>affected by budget cuts, but which will certainly ignore reams and oodles of waste, pork and subsidy of things government should not be subdizing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Blogger reactions?<\/p>\n<p>With dreary predictability (I almost called it word for word), Grace Kelly at <em>Minnesota Preliterate Conspiracy Wackoes With Dubious Senses Of Ethics<\/em> &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mnprogressiveproject.com\/diary\/3216\/pawlenty-decides-slice-and-dice\">writes<\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Pawlenty&#8217;s idea of compromising is &#8220;Do it my way!&#8221;, each &#8220;offer&#8221; has been the same offer as before. Pawlenty gave a press conference where he said he will sign bills and not have a special session. Pawlenty announced his intention to use line item vetoes and unallotments to create his own budget without the house or senate involvement. Sounds like we no longer have a three part government, we now have a &#8220;dictator&#8221; or &#8220;king&#8221;.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>No, Grace, you deeply dotty little person; we have the governor acting in accordance with a <em>law <\/em>that was passed by our <em>elected representatives<\/em>. Elections have consequences.\u00a0 He&#8217;s doing his job.<\/p>\n<p>Zack at <a href=\"http:\/\/mnpublius.com\/2009\/05\/speaker-special-session\/\"><em>MNPublius<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That\u2019s all fine and dandy, except that in the time that Kelliher has been Speaker there hasn\u2019t been a special session (a streak that is only in danger of ending due to Pawlenty\u2019s Presidential ambitions and inability to engage in any kind of compromise).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Notice how often &#8220;compromise&#8221; is popping up with the leftybloggers?\u00a0 Pay attention to how often you see it in MSM columns in the near future.\u00a0 &#8220;Compromise&#8221; will be the paramount public virtue in this country before long.<\/p>\n<p>This &#8211; when they&#8217;re defaming you on the one hand, and demanding &#8220;compromise&#8221; (i.e., silent acquiescence) on the other, is when you know they&#8217;re getting frustrated.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks again, Governor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Governor Pawlenty &#8211; virtually the sole Republican with any semblance of power anywhere near Capitol Hill &#8211; drops the &#8220;L&#8221; word, promising line-item vetoes rather than a shutdown or a special session: Turning the heat up to a boil in the closing days of the legislative session, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he would [&hellip;]<\/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],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-4785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governor","category-minnesota-politics","tag-pawlenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785","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=4785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22582,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785\/revisions\/22582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}