{"id":65680,"date":"2018-01-16T05:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T11:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65680"},"modified":"2018-01-14T10:52:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-14T16:52:35","slug":"the-poet-receives-the-graft-the-taxpayer-gets-the-shaft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65680","title":{"rendered":"The Poet Receives The Graft; The Taxpayer Gets The Shaft."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"xmsonormal\">I suppose it\u2019s nice that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twincities.com\/2017\/12\/17\/st-pauls-poet-laureate-carol-connolly\/\">St. Paul still has a Poet Laureate<\/a>, but I can\u2019t find a website of her commissioned works. \u00a0Last poem I recall her writing for St. Paul was \u201cOde to the City Budget\u201d or something like that, from about 2006. \u00a0You\u2019d think a government worker would be more productive.<\/p>\n<p>Wait, what am I saying?<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, a person might be forgiven for thinking that awarding the Poet Laureate title to a poet who produces no poetry, was simply an excuse to shovel a little graft to a Party insider.\u00a0 It is St. Paul, after all.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, awarding an honored title in exchange for doing nothing is a long-standing Democrat tradition, see, for example, my congresswoman, Betty McCollum, \u201cThe Phantom Rep\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A Laureate Poet in Saint Paul<br \/>\nAccepted her government&#8217;s call.<br \/>\nShe looked once and laughed<br \/>\nat her office&#8217;s graft,<br \/>\nand then walked away with a haul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I suppose it\u2019s nice that St. Paul still has a Poet Laureate, but I can\u2019t find a website of her commissioned works. \u00a0Last poem I recall her writing for St. Paul was \u201cOde to the City Budget\u201d or something like that, from about 2006. \u00a0You\u2019d think a government worker [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65680","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=65680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65686,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65680\/revisions\/65686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}