amend the Minnesota constitution<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 The plan is to take away from the Legislature the power to set its own salaries, giving it instead of an independent citizen\u2019s committee. Sounds good on its face, will be a disaster in actual practice.\u00a0 Which is why nobody is talking about it, of course, that would distract the voters from potty-mouth comments and emails.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>The proposal says the Citizen\u2019s Committee will be staffed by the Governor (Democrat) and the Supreme Court (Liberals, except for Stras).\u00a0 They must pick Democrats and Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>But they\u2019re not required to pick Libertarians or TEA Party members.\u00a0 The Republicans must be acceptable to the appointing authority \u2013 Democrats and Liberals.\u00a0 I confidently predict they\u2019ll end up being Arnie Carlson-Dave Durenburger-style-RINOs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>After that:<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>A Liberal astroturf group will issue a media blitz complaining about the difficulty of obtaining quality legislators with the pay so low.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>A Poli Sci professor will claim the concept of a \u201cpart-time\u201d or \u201ccitizen\u201d legislature is obsolete in these days of complex issues, we need a full-time professional legislature to deal with complicated issues, and higher salaries to attract competent people to take the job.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>A women\u2019s rights group will notice that Minnesota women legislators get paid less than New York women legislators, a clear case of gender discrimination.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>The Committee will hire a Liberal front group to perform a study of legislators\u2019 salaries in other, richer states, which will conclude that ours is too low.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>The Star Tribune and MPR will gravely intone that good government requires adequate resources, none moreso than the people in office, and they\u2019ll recommend we double the pay and be happy to pay for a better Minnesota.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>The type of people who will run for these cushy government jobs will be busy-bodies who think they can solve society\u2019s problems, i.e., Liberals, whatever their nominal party designation.\u00a0 They\u2019ll adopt more programs, which will make problems worse, which will make society more complex, requiring even higher pay and benefits and possibly lifetime appointments with personal servants and frequent retreats to Caribbean Islands, which the legislators will be able to afford even if their constituents can\u2019t, because their strenuous labors deserve it.\u00a0 After all . . . \u00a0<\/span>Some animals are more equal than others.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span>Joe Doakes<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nMy two cents? \u00a0Vote no. \u00a0As many times as you can.<\/p>\n
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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: There is a proposal to amend the Minnesota constitution.\u00a0 The plan is to take away from the Legislature the power to set its own salaries, giving it instead of an independent citizen\u2019s committee. Sounds good on its face, will be a disaster in actual practice.\u00a0 Which is why nobody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-mn-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60772","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=60772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60773,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60772\/revisions\/60773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}