With no majority in either chamber, the DFL has resorted to chanting points.

The first one was “where is the GOP’s budget?  Huh?  Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

Then the GOP released a budget – and demonstrated that the DFL really didn’t have one, since none of them supported Dayton’s budget proposal.

Then, it was “But you said it was going to be call cuts?  Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?”

That must not have tested well.  The meme died off in a week or so.

The latest?  “The GOP is attacking the cities”.

What they mean, of course, is “cutting Local Government Aid”, the program that started out as a state subsidizing small towns’ infrastructures, and has turned into a state subsidy of urban DFL profligacy.

The governments of Duluth, Saint Paul and Minneapolis have done a great job of inextricably tangling their budgets with the state, to the point where any discussion of reforming LGA is met, I think without any actual considered thought, with “we’re going to lay off firefighters and cops and teachers!”.

Not “we’ll have to cut back on lawn-mowing”.

Or “We’ll have police doing less non-essential stuff”, or “we’ll have to replace unionized staffers with lower-priced help for lower-profile jobs” or “maybe we don’t need to mow the grass in the parks quite as often” or “we can consolidate some summer rec programs” or “maybe spending $25,000 on dadaistic, incomprehensible “traffic calming art”…

…which may or may not “calm” traffic, but certainly had a lot of drivers meandering about holding their heads in mute incomprehension, which probably caused accidents, until all the “art” was stolen”, or “maybe our schools need to spend their resources on teachers, rather than administrators”, or “maybe if we stopped putting half the boys in special ed for being boys, we’d have a lower Special Ed budget” or “maybe we don’t need to bus kids who live half a mile from school; the obese little monsters could stand a good walk”, or “Maybe we don’t need $300,000 worth of politically-correct electric cars”, or “maybe fourth-coldest state capitol in the US doesn’t need three refrigerated ice rinks” or “maybe taking huge swathes of housing off the taxable rolls for “affordable” public housing that just isn’t “affordable”, and serves no purpose but to turn the cities into warehouses for the poor, primarily to create islands of utterly DFL-dependent voters”…

…or much of anything.

None of the above.  Because it’s traditionally been easier to scare people into submission by threatening to lay off cops, firemen and teachers (rather than meter maids, community organizers and administrators).

Attack on the cities?

Pfft.  The rest of the state has been getting attacked by the cities for a generation now.

What you’re seeing isn’t an “attack on the cities”.  It’s the rest of the state standing up to three big bullies.

And like big bullies, they’ll bluster and phumpher and fume and threaten.

And just like anyone who is responding to a bully, the important job is to stand firm, and not letting their bluster sway you.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 at 7:07 am and is filed under Chanting Points Memo, Minneapolis, Minnesota Politics, St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.