Friends In High Places
By Mitch Berg
The big that confuses me so much about this story – the DFL jamming down a $10K appropriation to help one of their colleagues settle an issue with her “day job” outside politics – isn’t that the DFL is basically pickpocketing taxpayers to help one of their own with a private matter. (Emphasis added):
This all started when Rep. Bianca Virnig of Eagan was elected to the House as a Democrat in a special election and sworn in last January serving a district in the Eagan-Mendota Heights area. Her new position as a state lawmaker created a conflict with her employer, Brightworks, a non-profit established by the Minnesota Legislature in 1976 to provide services to public schools and school districts, according to its website.
“When she returned to her employment her employer dramatically cut back her hours and her pay based on her new job she held as a part-time state legislator,” Rep. Jamie Long, DFL Majority Leader, said at a House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday. “Since this was related to her work as a Minnesota representative we are proposing we pay for those legal costs.”
No, after years of DFL corruption eating up hundreds of millions of dollars, seeing something in five digits almost feels like watching “The Andy Griffith Show”.
The part that fairy astounds me is that, after getting elected to the legislature, either Rep. Virnig or “Brightworks” had a problem with the arrangement.
The DFL set up the non-profit/industrial complex specifically to serve as a farm team and lobbyist ranch for their regime. A potential politician starts working with one of the state’s maze of public unions, pseudo-parties or poiltical/social non-profits, spends a few years making contacts and learning who buried the political bodies, and then run for office, already fully groomed as a DFL candidate – who goes on to do their mentor group’s bidding, and eventually to lobby for them and/or groups like them when and if they leave office
So the corruption doesn’t confuse me. The fact that either Virnig or Brightworks had a problem with each other does.
December 6th, 2024 at 7:15 am
Time for this
https://thepoliticalinsider.com/200-years-ago-davy-crockett-perfectly-explained-the-limits-on-government-spending-not-yours-to-give/
December 6th, 2024 at 11:22 am
i don’t get this either. You want to run for the legislature. You approach your employer to let them know and work out an agreement. Maybe the employer tells you they can’t spare you and if you run, you need to quit. Maybe your employer says OK but we need to work out how your work gets done and a revised pay schedule. Why was this not all worked out earlier???? What happened? Are MN taxpayers now going to be on the hook for legislators legal fees? What if some woman brings assault or rape charges against a legislator while he was at a legislative event?
December 6th, 2024 at 12:17 pm
I’m torn on this. I knew Rep. Virnig as a friend of a friend back when I lived in Minnesota. That was 16 years ago, before she was married. One of the nicest people I’ve met.
Granted, I understand people change over time, but we should wait for more details to emerge.