{"id":10934,"date":"2010-05-17T12:43:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T17:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10934"},"modified":"2010-05-17T12:48:47","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T17:48:47","slug":"punch-that-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10934","title":{"rendered":"Racing Toward The Wrong Finish Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservatives see government in the same way as we do the guy who cleans out the septic tank.\u00a0 It’s dirty work that we’d rather not do, and we’re willing to pay a fair price to have it done, but at the end of the day we want a fair deal done, and then we want it to go away.<\/p>\n

Liberals\u00a0 see government like a factory; you put stuff in one end, you get cool stuff out the other.\u00a0 The more stuff you put in, the more cool stuff you get out!\u00a0 And if everyone works together to make sure that factory gets all stuff it needs put in, there’ll be no shortage of cool stuff coming out!<\/p>\n

Lori Sturdevant in the Strib\u00a0\u00a0writes<\/a>;<\/p>\n

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\u00a0A case of the “what-ifs” hit me last week. I was listening to state Sen. Linda Berglin describe her clever ploys for drawing down more than $7 in federal health care money for every new $1 the state spends while still cutting spending overall — and musing about Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s vow to send her handiwork to vetoland.<\/p>\n

What if the Legislature’s ablest health care head had been allied these last eight years with one of the state’s most politically gifted governors? What if instead of being sparring partners, Berglin and Pawlenty had been real partners in remaking health care?<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Then we’d have gotten what we had from time immemorial through the end of the Ventura years; a government that, like any other addict, can always <\/em>find a rationalizion to spend more.<\/p>\n

Slower growth in state spending is the new normal, and Pawlenty has applied a heavy foot to the brake. Through eight years, the GOP governor has muscled more fiscal restraint into state balance sheets than did any of his predecessors in the previous half-century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Re-read that last paragraph.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And everyone finish the last sentence:\u00a0 “…, no thanks to the DFL, the Mainstream Media and Lori Sturdevant”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s crucial now for state government to maximize the bang of every tax buck. Large-scale reform is in order. And in a politically purplish state with a penchant for electing divided government, reform requires bipartisan partnerships.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Plenty of them should have been possible in the past eight years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rubbish.<\/p>\n

While politics is about compromise, bringing real epochal change to government – in this case, breaking Minnesota’s (and especially Minnesota’s “elites'”) smug, smarmy addiction to taxes, spending, entitlement-mongering and wastrelcy – is about taking control and showing the side that you will accept nothing less than a change in the way business is done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The DFL have shown great willingness for “bipartisanship” – where “bipartishanship” means “acting like DFLers”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No more.<\/p>\n

It’s time to get serious with our “elites”;\u00a0 with a small, finite list of exceptions (responding to attacks on our nation, finding kidnapped children, taking care of families of servicepeople, cops and firemen who are killed or seriously injured protecting us all), “bipartisanship” is the wrong <\/em>response to the challenges that face us.\u00a0 Partisanship – fighting for divergent ideas that everyone believes are better solutions than the other sides have to offer – is what makes for better <\/em>government.<\/p>\n

Not necessarily more impeccably-smoothly funded <\/em>government – but keeping government fed is not our mission, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservatives see government in the same way as we do the guy who cleans out the septic tank.\u00a0 It’s dirty work that we’d rather not do, and we’re willing to pay a fair price to have it done, but at the end of the day we want a fair deal done, and then we want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-minnesota-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10934"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10936,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10934\/revisions\/10936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}