Just to make it fun, we’re going to call out (with emphasis and, er, more)\u00a0the standard-issue cliches that you can espect to see every <\/em>liberal and media figure trot out every time <\/em>the budget is discussed.\u00a0 Be watching for them.<\/p>\n Yesterday, in a fiery press conference Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced his unilateral solution to the budget debate he was unwilling to negotiate<\/strong> during the legislative session.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Uh-oh!<\/p>\n “Unwilling to negotiate”?\u00a0<\/p>\n Well, that’s a way of putting it.\u00a0 “Using the one tool he has when facing a two-chamber political disadvantage” would be more accurate.<\/p>\n Yay, executive power! Good luck in ’12, bub. But the outcome is devastating and the governor and his allies are unwilling to admit the role they’ve played in trying to turn Minnesota into a cold weather Mississippi<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That’s another of those “Scare” lines that the lefties throw at you to try to get you to cough up taxes, frightened by visions of roach-infested sheds and kudzu growing on school desks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of course, Mississippi’s problems have much less to do with money than with a society that for three centuries was built on slavery (of blacks) and systematic disempowerment (of lower-class whites) run by a pseudo-aristocracy (the plantation owners before the war, and their descendents for most of the time since)\u00a0that created a culture where people don’t do <\/em>a lot to better themselves and stay in school and improve\u00a0their communities because, really, what’s the point?\u00a0<\/p>\n This is in comparison with Minnesota’s industrious, cantankerous, Calvinist Scandinavian and Germans.\u00a0 And, for that matter, the Dakotas’ and Nebraska’s and Montana’s cantankerous, Calvinist Scandinavian and Germans; all of those states have built well-governed, high-functioning (if low-tax and mostly lower-“service”) states, just as Minnesota did – only without the collective mythology of “high taxes are what make us special!” that’s plagued Minnesota.<\/p>\n You could tax Mississippi at Minnesota levels for a hundred years, and it’d still be…a warm, muggy, bug-infested Mississippi.\u00a0 You could cut Minnesota’s taxes to Mississippi levels, and it’d be…<\/p>\n …well, a state full of hard-working people, and a bunch of whiny DFLers.<\/p>\n Brown:<\/p>\n The governor is a pleasant fellow. I’ve met him and, on paper, I can follow his policy goals from point A to point B. But his perspective on the role of government is from another universe, a closed universe that doesn’t reflect the Minnesota than most voters have supported over the last several decades.<\/p>\n Yes, since Gov. Pawlenty took office his policies have been rejected in three consecutive legislative elections<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like we couldn’t see this coming:<\/p>\n No, Mr. Brown.\u00a0 If his policies had been rejected, he’d have gone back into private legal practice in 2006.\u00a0 Furthermore, voters rejected mushy, republican-in-name-only hamsters who donned the “R” label but voted like…I was going to say Democrats, and that’s accurate, but the real answer is “voted like the national GOP, who spent eight years voting like Tip O’Neil-era Democrats”.\u00a0<\/p>\n If voters had “rejected Pawlenty’s policies”, they’d have rejected Pawlenty.<\/p>\n Let the record show; they did not.<\/p>\n What Minnesotans seemed to be suggesting in their last three electoral choices is balance. Needed services funded. Efficiencies and budget cuts sought. Taxes made as fair as possible for all Minnesotans<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Needed services are <\/em>funded; show me a city without police and fire protection, and you might have a point.\u00a0 Efficiencies – like privatizing less-essential government services – are actively rejected at all levels.\u00a0 Money is spent on light-rail boondoggles as cities whinge about being short of money.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n The governor is responsible for all Minnesotans — including that majority that didn’t vote for him or his policies in any of the last three elections.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0 While that’s literally true, it’s also a matter of interpretation.\u00a0 But please, Mr. Brown, run with that theory; please have a word with Betty McCollum and Chris Coleman and Ellen Anderson and Alice “the Phantom” Hausman; while they “represent” the 30-40% of their districts that vote Republican, their voting records are not <\/em>30-40% conservative.\u00a0<\/p>\n Are you willing to put your beef where your moo is?<\/p>\n Tuesday, friends of mine rallied<\/font><\/a> on the Iron Range for the theater program at Hibbing Community College. (Photo: Hibbing Daily Tribune<\/font><\/span><\/a>). The program’s full time director is leaving and the college, because of unallotment cuts that are worse than the cuts they had already planned for, is not replacing him. This theater program might sound like a throw-away thing to many who live where there are plenty of theater options, but for the Iron Range HCC’s theater represented a flagship of quality artistic expression. And it — like advanced courses in most of our schools, care for our elderly and more — are out the door not through negotiation, but through a decree.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sorry to hear that.\u00a0 As a guy from a small town who had enough credits for a theatre minor (but all performance and technical, not academic), that’s gotta suck.<\/p>\n But the question, when times are tough, is “what is essential<\/em>“.\u00a0 Hibbing’s theatre program may not be a “throwaway”, but is it “essential?”\u00a0 Essenntial as healthcare, fire protection, police, roads?\u00a0<\/p>\n Go ahead and make that case.\u00a0 Or better yet, take up a collection and keep the guy in his job.\u00a0<\/p>\n For me and the many others who are trying to promote a better quality of life for the people of the Iron Range (or the people of any other forgotten corner of the diverse geography of Minnesota) these cuts aren’t just bean counting, they seem personal<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But\u00a0they’re not.\u00a0 They are <\/em>bean-counting.\u00a0 Because if we took everyone’s “personal” priorities into account when setting up a state budget, everyone else <\/em>would be taxed at 100%.<\/p>\n They will damage our communities for decades and possibly longer. They will retard our growth and prosperity<\/strong> while the wealthy parts of the state get another pass, again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So question, Aaron Brown:\u00a0 what level of spending – and taxing the rest of the state – will it take to make the Iron Range prosperous?\u00a0 Bearing in mind that the Range has had preferential tax treatment and received immense subsidies for a solid generation now – what exactly is <\/em>the price tag?<\/p>\n Something like the price tag for eradicating inner-city poverty and improving public education<\/strong>?<\/p>\n No, that was me talking.\u00a0 Never mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Minnesota’s liberals aren’t trying to scare you into submission on their tax and spend plans, the apparent SOP is to riffle down through shame, ridicule and, presumably, chanting.\u00a0 Aaron Brown of “Minnesota Brown” issues what could almost be a parody of all of these approaches\u00a0in a post this morning.\u00a0 Just to make it fun, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951","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=4951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22330,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4951\/revisions\/22330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.mdc.edu\/homestead\/PS_Homestead\/Images\/Animated_Siren.gif\")
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