Parties, their trademarks, and 2010

Our Minnesota major political parties have no way to protect their trademarks. We have neither party registration nor closed primaries. Anybody can claim a party and the only check is an open primary in which it is possible that nobody who will admit publicly to be a part of that party can affirm the claim for the designation, no matter how baseless it might be.

So we have established the party endorsement system. It may not be as inclusive as a primary, but it worked in most cases for quite a while. And the endorsement system allows for a lesser funded candidate to seek office. But the endorsement process can lead itself to being perceived as a process which favors “insiders” and even the most honorable of our political types is tempted to cater to those who suspect insiders when the endorsement does not go their way, especially if their candidate is well funded.

If parties stuck with their endorsement system and consistently refused to recognize or cooperate with those who flaunt the system, they might have been able to preserve the endorsement system, but the violations they have increasingly continued to tolerate have led many more candidates to seek the nomination from the multi-partisan public without obtaining or even trying to obtain the one-party endorsement.

This leads to people dropping out of the caucus-convention system. After all, if your input is deemed irrelevant, why waste the time and effort? Soon only those who have a really deep interest in a candidate[s] or cause[s] or whose livelihoods is directly affected by the future[s] of people in the political class are the only ones participating.

So with so few people participating these days and those who do being so much less representative of the general electorate, you cannot generally obtain a GOP endorsement if you don’t oppose all tax increases, suggest that lesbians and gays deserve the same measure of civic freedom that straights have, or fail to give lip service to pro-life people and causes and you may as well try not to get DFL endorsement if you are not “pro-choice,” or oppose gun control. [Of course, as I have noted before we all favor choice, just that we don’t agree on which subject merit the right or which side one should take. Take minimum wage, seat belts, or smoking for example.]

In a Thursday post. Doug Grow of MinnPost asks, “Can either party endorse a candidate for governor who will appeal to mainstream Minnesota?”

I noted in a previous post, the DFL has not been able to endorse a non-incumbent candidate for governor since 1970. Lest you think I am singling out the DFL, it should be noted that the GOP has only succeeded twice in the same interval [1978 for Al Quie and 2002 for Pawlenty] and has had its own failed endorsees such as such as Wangberg, Ludeman, Grunseth, Quist, and Norm in that period.

I am beginning to suggest that we allow parties to control their own trademarks and to allow them to take responsibility for them. People could wonder whether that would close the system to many others, centrists and extremists, so the same law that would give parties this control would need to address this but there are ways it could be done.

Unlike Mr. Grow, I personally do not think that Pawlenty’s veto of the earlier [August] primary really has much effect on the situation. But Grow notes that under our recent three-party system that one does not need to appeal to a majority of the voters to get elected, quoting Tim Penny as saying, “But we now know that 42 percent plus 312 votes is electable."

But wouldn’t it be nice if we could elect somebody decisively for a change? [The right somebody, of course]

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, revisited

Now that Pawlenty is out of the race for governor next year, people around the republic are wondering what he is thinking for 2012.

And it’s not just local media.

Among the other out-of-state stories and commentaries is one from Nate Silver of fivethrityeight.com. He calls Pawlenty a “hockey dad” and notes that our governor’s approval ratings have been nothing remarkable but suggests that he could be a factor.

Silver seems a bit disdainful of the whole Republican field and those who will choose their candidates and gives us the quote of the day which may say more about him than about Pawlenty, but is interesting nevertheless:

“If I were him [Pawlenty], I might talk a lot about guns -- but not so much about God.”

Should the DFL be happy now that Pawlenty's out?

I am sure that there are DFLers who are happy with Commissar Pawlenty’s announcement that he will not run in 2010.

I wonder whether that might not be premature. Nobody has ever been elected to a term which would make him/her mayor for a term exceeding eight consecutive years so unseating Pawlenty certainly would have seemed possible.

On the other hand, we need to look at history. What do Warren Spannaus, John Marty, Mike Freeman, Roger Moe, and Mike Hatch all have in common?

They were all non-incumbents endorsed by the DFL for governor.

None was elected.

Even Rudy Perpich as an incumbent was defeated twice.

The DFL only been able to endorse and elect a non-incumbent for Governor only three times and the last time was in 1970.

Will the streak continue?

[Of course if somehow Pawlenty ends up running for re-election anyway, this whole post will need re-evaluation.]

Time to lose the hula hoop -- and the gyrator too

I have never believed in selective veto because it seems to me to take power from the people other people elected and recent events have done nothing to change my mind, so I found the editorial [which primarily addressed Pawlenty’s political future] interesting.

So i find this editorial in the Albert Lea Tribune, as copied by MinnPost interesting.

Get rid of or at least redefine unallotment, and take a hard look at whether line-item veto really works. It was a political fad, like a hula-hoop, and our state bought it. Time to lose the hula-hoop.

All hail, his [what's his title?]

I had been wondering about what we should now call our distinguished governor. I [and a few others] have used Governor Plenty, but that really is just a cheap shot based on a name, not a name which really reveals any particular insight into the person being named.

But his decision announced yesterday unallot and avoid legislative processes, evading normal legislative processes [about the closest thing allowed to a coup d’état allowed under Article IV of the US Constitution] tells us that he should be given a better title.

There is a post on the blog “Liberal in the Land of Conservative” which suggests the title “King Pawlenty.” I understand the thinking, but wonder whether that is the best title. King tends to suggest he obtained his power by inheritance, rather than by seizure. “Tsar” presents similar problems and even His Excellency does not have that level of power. The nature of this assumption of power seems more worthy of a “Generalissimo” but, despite playing commander-in-chief when the National Guard is deployed, he is not military enough. “Shah” seems just too strange to Western tastes. “Fuehrer” seems more appropriate to the way His Excellency, the governor, has assumed his power, but we cannot think of the word without thinking of Hitler and genocide and whatever his flaws.

I think I need to think a bit and welcome anybody’s suggestions.

Meanwhile, Senjum and Marty Seifert [“Sir Punisher”] and other legislative sycophants stood by His Excellency in front of that ornate mantle where governors haven given us their pronouncements on pretty much everything for years.

And I think my suggestion which I have raised several times for one weekly legislative session per month instead of 120 days concentrated in winter and spring has even more merit. [To be fair to CCM readers, I have never posted that here. I had intended to put it in after the legislative session was over and a better post mortem could be done and I probably will. In the meantime, you can dig out your slide rules and calculate 5x12x2.]

Pawlenty in 2010?

A SurveyUSA/KSTP poll says that Minnesotans are against Governor Pawlenty seeking a third term. The margin is 57% to 31%.


Although people often talk of US Senators as being obvious candidates for President, President Obama is the first one to reach that office since JFK [1961]who was the first since Warren Harding [1921]. Governors have done better and several governors have run for President in recent years. Most, including Carter and Reagan waited until they were former governors, but Bill Clinton and W were sitting governors when they were elected.


[Clinton even had to take time off the campaign trail to go to Arkansas and sign a death warrant. He did not want anybody to think he was soft on criminals. W, being the leading civilian executioner in US history did not have that problem.]


I don’t know which would work best for Pawlenty. You would think that GOP bigwigs would blanch at selecting somebody who has never received a majority of his state’s vote, especially when he hasn’t even been able to make his own state red. So it would not surprise me if Pawlenty ran again to achieve that majority.


Of course, he might lose.


Richard Nixon was elected President after losing a gubernatorial election. But [with memories of Lloyd Bentsen talking to Dan Quayle] Pawlenty, you are no Dick Nixon. And if you don’t measure up to Nixon, how low must you be?

Observations on forgiveness and parole

Doug Grow of MinnPost has written about the release of Kathleen Soliah to parole in Saint Paul.  In the course of this, he has talked with Harry Flynn, the retired Catholic Archbishop of Saint Paul about the release of Kathleen Soliah and the idea of forgiveness.  [link] [link]

 

I have not been entirely comfortable with some who agree with me that Ms. Soliah, a California person, should serve California time in California.  I have suspected that the police organizations in both states would not have taken this position if police had not been the target of one of her crimes.  And I imagine that Pawlenty’s tepid request to Schwarzenegger was pure grandstanding.  [Yes, politicians do that.]

 

But as much as I think that Soliah’s parole should be served in California, I have never said that what she did was beyond forgiveness, either divine or personal.  I do not know Rep. Laura Brod and while at least one legislator/clergyperson has labeled her statement a call for “retribution,” I cannot guess the motive for her statement, but she noted,

"Forgiveness is a separate issue from where she serves her time.  …This case is different because it involves domestic terrorism and threats to law enforcement. Minnesota is not her home.  Minnesota is where she hid from justice."

 

Grow’s coverage of the matter shows a distinctive bend in favor of the parolee.  Eric Ostermeier, posting in Smart Politics, takes a distinctively different position.  He notes that Soliah’s crimes do not make her the “ordinary” parolee and suggests that her “exemplary” live while here seem less distinctive when one remembers that she was a fugitive the whole time.

Archbishop Flynn notes [per Grow]

Repentence is to look in a new direction. It is to hear with new ears, see with new eyes. … Has she repented? She certainly had taken on a different life [when she began a new life in St. Paul]. Has she made public statements [of remorse]?  I don't think so. But I don't think she'd do today what she did then

But, as the archbishop notes, forgiveness is a part of most traditions, that it does not require remorse, and forgiveness frees us.

Changes at KSTP

Sometimes people think that talk radio is a medium marketed to angry, white males.  That is probably a simplification, but I admit it sometimes seems true.  [Of course, I am a white male and I do get angry some times.]  And I do admit it.  I listen to KSTP.  The days of Dick Pomerantz, Mike Edwards, Jesse Ventura, and Barbara Carlson are long gone and the station has become much more ideologically oriented in its talk programming, but I still listen quite a bit, although not to everybody there.  I cannot abide that ThompsonO’BrienDavis guy and think they have some terribly paranoid syndicated men [being male may be a prerequisite at the station] on weekends sometimes.  I believe that good talk radio has to be about more than politics and agenda pushing, yet recipes, dream interpretation, and entertainment and celebrity gossip [e.g., WCCO in the morning] can only go so far before you find yourself reaching for the dial and saying, “All right, KBEM, let’s have some jazz”.  [Unfortunately WCAL has not been an option for four years now.]  And perhaps now KSTP is moving toward more a less ideological format, although the recent canning of Tommy Mischke is confusing.

 

Matt Thomas and the rest of the sports coverage is good [although like all sports coverage in this area there is way too much ice hockey], Joe Soucheray [who clearly has replaced Jason Lewis as the one they consider the franchise player of the station] can be interesting when he isn’t letting his obsessions with a few themes such as global warming and Franken-Coleman carry him away, and I have usually switched my dial to the Pat Reusse sports[?] updates when I am listening to the radio and it is time for one.  Jim Souhan seems to be filling in well in the former Mischke early afternoon slot [although it apparently is not a permanent arrangement] and A. L. Brown who is limited to one bad time slot and some occasional guest hosting [lovely oxymoron] may be the best they have.

 

So, anyhow, Pat Reusse is now the new morning drive time guy.  By Hubbard standards, Reusse is considered some kind of “liberal.”  Although on his inaugural show this morning, his primary guest was Governor Pawlenty.  This could be an interesting development.  We’ll just have to wait and find out, I guess.

 

In the meantime, former KSTP morning guy David Brauer who now writes for MinnPost asks today, “Hey Pat Reusse, are you crazy?” and wonders why a man Reusse’s age would make such a move.  To quote a local television station, “Good question.”

 

It will be interesting.  And in a somewhat related note, Brauer is also suggesting that Jack Rice [who seems like a conservative guy not so hung up on things and who keeps topics moving] may be leaving WCCO.  [Of course, so are a lot of other people.]

FYI: 1006 Summit

The last time I was in the Governor’s mansion was in 1974 when Wendell Anderson was governor where with about 100 other people. I had a light supper and talked with a lot of other people who were [or thought they were] some of the movers and shakers of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party and/or the state of Minnesota.

I don’t know when or if I will ever get back to that building, but I will pass on that the mansion will be open for public tours [with no apparent political connection required] on the first three December Thursdays, from 1 to 3 in the afternoons.

And once a Maverick was a cheap Ford [not entirely a pun]

Well, some of the vengeance that Pawlenty and company wanted on the Override Six had come about and more likely will. It seemed very strange for Republicans to go against other Republicans for doing the will of the Chamber of Commerce.

And now Pawlenty’s national party wants to glorify mavericks.

Interesting.

We never heard of President Scoop Jackson. Or Orville Freeman. Or Herschel Loveless. Or Henry Wallace.

So McCain went North to the Future for his running mate instead of to the North Star State.

He decided against Pawlenty in favor of a younger person, a woman. [There is an interesting parallel with the senator's love life there, but it is probably off topic.]

Actually, our governor was probably never high in McCain’s eye anyway. History is full of people who have been thought of as likely running mates who never got the honor. John F. Kennedy had almost every Democratic governor [including Orville Freeman] whose state had wavering delegates convinced that he was going to be the one and then chose Lyndon Johnson, a person nobody suspected [and who because of the choice did become president]. Almost every other GOP office holder in the country was surprised when the first Bush picked J. Danforth Quayle of Indiana.

Historically, the choice has not always been the candidate’s. Until FDR went to Chicago to accept his party’s nomination in person it was not unprecedented for candidates who were to be on the same ticket to not even have met. Party leaders had a role and they forced candidates, even incumbent presidents to remember that. It wasn’t until about three decades after World War II that the parties seemed to finally concede the nominees this privilege. They forced FDR to dump Henry Wallace for Harry Truman in 1944. In 1956 Adlai Stevenson decided to not fight the leaders and throw the choice up to the delegates. In 1972 George McGovern had a hard time selling Thomas Eagleton when his own delegates thought they were truer believers than their own nominee. There was even a GOP effort to bolt at the choice of Agnew in 1968. each other beforehand.

Pawlenty may feel jilted. Romney may too. But that’s politics and may simply be testament to McCain’s acting ability, possibly mixed with the flawed mirrors which seem to be in every politician’s abode.

And Sarah Palin will be the second post-war governor and the first since Agnew to be nominated for Vice-President by a major party.

More about the jury system OR And justice for all -- the low-cost way

I wrote about our jury system a bit recently when I posted on the forthcoming reduction of pay for jurors in Minnesota District Courts.

We all know that the jury system is not perfect and I suppose that this reduction will not make it any more perfect.

I recently had the opportunity [??] of serving as a juror in the Second Judicial District [i.e., Ramsey County]. I was not selected to be on any jury.

I did get to fill out a questionnaire for the Foster case, but they managed to select a jury before they got around to interviewing me. It is probably just as well as I suspect that I knew [or at least thought I knew] too much before hand to be a fair and impartial juror.

Now a jury has been impaneled in Kandiyohi County to hear the case against Olga Franco for the accident with the school bus which killed four children and unleashed the expected bigotry from Governor Plenty and Marty Seifert. [Previous posts: first, second]

I wish them well.

When I was in college I studied both American History and American Government and we learned about the various checks and balances in our system. Two of the lesser mentioned ones are the executive pardon and jury nullification. The former usually does not get much mention until January 21 of presidential inauguration years [Scooter Libby, Alfredo Gonzalez and who else next year? Cheney?] and I would bet that many people had never heard of the latter before the O.J. Simpson case. But they are important.

A jury returned what probably was the only verdict it could in the Foster case. Those who are convinced that justice was served poorly can only hope that there will be a Higher Court later on.

Jim Ragsdale of the DPP wrote about the Foster case on Sunday’s editorial page. I commend it to your attention. As he noted,

Aaron Foster was found "not guilty" of third-degree, unintentional murder. That is not the verdict Barbara Winn's relatives wanted, and they understandably erupted after it was read in court. Nor did it fit the "cold-case" narrative the Winn-Foster matter had acquired in the media, including a moving program on "Dateline NBC" in May titled "Justice for Barbara."

But it was a reasonable verdict based on the remaining evidence of Winn's death in her Maplewood home in 1981. It was a splash of cold water on our faces, reminding us the courtroom has its own rules and ethics, chief among them that the prevailing narrative doesn't matter. What matters is the evidence; the presumption of innocence for anyone charged of a crime; and the need to prove a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt" before sending a defendant off to prison.

Those standards protect us all but do little to assuage the pain felt by children who lost a mother and who feel her killer got off.

Some people suspected that the whole matter was brought up so late as a result of Bill Finney challenging Lord Fletcher for sheriff two years ago. There is not doubt that Finney’s reputation has been smirched and this verdict will not clear that up. Ragsdale notes that Finney has said that he feels damaged and that he did nothing wrong.

The final paragraph of Ragsdale’s column seems a fair summary of the whole matter, at least as far as judicial matters are concerned,

That is where the story begins and ends — with the tragic death of Barbara Winn. The cold-case narrative did not end where the momentum was pushing it — to a conviction. But the jury was not part of a TV program. They made a tough call based on the facts presented to them, and that's why we stand when they walk past us.

We can only hope that the folks in Willmar can reach the right conclusion about Ms. Franco.

Of course they won’t be able to do that unless the lawyers on both sides give their best efforts and the judge keeps things fair.

And those $10/day jurors will be earning their pay.

People want to work. What’s so bad about that?

It is not local and not even in Minnesota, but the recent ICE raid of Agriprocessor, Inc. in northern Iowa near Postville has received a fair amount of local attention.

More than 400 people were detained and taken elsewhere to be held. His Eminence, Jerome Hanus, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dubuque has condemned the raid.

And it happened while the United Food & Commercial Workers were conducting an organizing drive.

What a coincidence!

So workers’ families are disrupted and their children’s educations endangered. What do you suppose will happen to the employers who will benefit from this bit of federally- sanctioned and implemented union busting?

People want to work. What’s so bad about that?

And if it had happened here, can you imagine how much fun Pawlenty and Seifert would have had?

Another Voice on Central Corridor

Sometimes as this "Central Corridor" has moved on towards its seemingly inevitable and certainly destructive end, I have felt like the only person concerned with the “little person” on University Avenue, the only one who was thinking on the right track about light rail on that street. Even Governor Pawlenty's veto [referred to in Grounds for Hope on Central Corridor? 4/7/08] seemed to be only a minor impediment.

I just read an article by kitkat on mnblue which helps make some of that sense of loneliness evaporate.

I don’t want to get too carried away with agreement. Kitkat seems to be a believer in transit which I still believe a tool of economic segregation [Cf. Transit and Taxes, 12/7/07] but he/she does see the injustices of the University Avenue proposal and points out its anti-progressive nature.

Kitkat notes that business ownership is one of the few means through which poor people can accumulate wealth and that University Avenue provides three things which can lead to profits for people who don’t have wealth to start out with – high traffic, affordable rent, and frequent public transit which comes within a block of the business.

Bringing through a train which stops at one-mile intervals and cutting busses back to half-hour intervals would damage those business not near the stations severely and make rents or purchase prices near the stops prohibitive, kitkat notes.

Making the neighboring businesses and residents suffer for some planner’s idea of progress still does not seem fair. As I noted in another December post, [Moving the Train, 12/16/07]

It beats me how a train that doesn’t stop and pick up people can have more riders than one which does, but leave the wonks [who, of course won’t be riding the thing themselves or trying to run businesses on University Avenue, or sleep in a house on Sherburne or Aurora] to come up with some kind of explanation.

Kitkat has put more work actual footwork into this matter than I have and seems to have reached similar conclusions on this particular project and I commend his/her post [which will be seen by a lot more people than the dozen or so who look here] to your attention.

Norm Coleman disappointed by Central Corridor veto, Pawlenty backpedaling?

Please make no mistake. I did not approve of Pawlenty’s massive, wholesale quantity, hostile anti-urban line item vetoes made so vindictively Monday. The man is evil and an enemy of the city! [Actually, it is not my role to proclaim him any more evil than we all are, but he brings about evil deeds. And he may not be any more an enemy of the city than other suburbanites, but he is in a position to make this more manifest.]

I did note the veto of Central Corridor rail funding and quoted Representative Hausman as saying that the veto had single-handily killed the boondoggle [mournful for her, joyful for those of us who have been trying to save our city and University Avenue].

Although, I had suggested that there might be hyperbole involved, it was a time for hope. Sometimes even bad people can do good things for bad reasons.

Today we learn in an AP story carried by the DPP that Norm is not happy about this veto of a boondoggle he has supported for 20 years, but the official gubernatorial spokesperson Brian McClung says that Pawlenty still has the “utmost respect” for our senior Senator.

And it reports that on his radio show this morning that Pawlenty said about the project, “It may come back, we'll see,"

Somehow, it just won’t die.

Grounds for Hope on Central Corridor?

Governor Pawlenty has vetoed $70,000,000 for Central Corridor funding,

Representative Alice Hausman is quoted as saying,

"In my opinion the governor single-handedly killed the central corridor,"

[from Minnesota Daily:]


I don’t know enough to know if this will actually kill the train or not. There may be some hyperbole here or it may be just that somehow this will go through anyway with costs being shifted to local taxpayers.

But we can hope.

It would be overly simple to note that His Excellency is from Eagan and that people who live in Eagan and other suburbs live in those places because they are the enemies of city people and that Governor Plenty’s dislike of us combined with the absence of any Republicans in our city’s legislative delegation does not make it the easiest to obtain any funding for our interests, so I will likely be putting more up about the governor’s line-item vetoes announced today most of the news does sound like bad news to city people, but I want to examine things more first.

County Now Deeper in Transit Ripoff

Although, transit continues to be as phony as a smile in Williams’ Arena in March, our County Commissioners today decided to make us pay a sales tax to fund it. And the proceeds from this theft cannot be used for busses, only for trains.

This action was made possible by the legislature in the veto-overidden Transportation bill from earlier this year's session. [To avoid giving His Excellency the Governor too much credit, it seems highly unlikely that this tax was the reason for the veto.]

In relative silence and without a public hearing, six commissioners [including all who represent the Capitol City] signed on to this new ripoff.

Note: Earlier posts mentioning transit can be found by clicking on the label “transit” on the right. The first one “Transit and Taxes” [12/7/07] is probably the most oriented to the theories supporting transit.

Sales tax is mentioned in Pawlenty and LeVander: Republican Governors and Sales Tax [3/7/08]

Randy Kelly to MnDot?

Randy Kelly for Transportation Commissioner?

It might happen. Or at least that is the subject of a Joe Kimball Minnpost post.

I don’t know what the Senate thinks of their former colleague or what Mr. Kelly thinks is his political future [if any], but accepting an appointment like that [and I don’t know what I think Pawlenty would see as the upside for appointing him] would seem to seal his conversion to the GOP which was actually made in 2001. [And if Pawlenty were to go to Washington, where would that leave him?]

It’s a shame. Randy really is a good man and we’d be better off if we hadn’t rejected him last election, but it seems to me that he’d be better off if Pawlenty chooses somebody else for this honor.

Do we really want to share Governor Plenty with the nation?

Aren’t we glad we have Tim? Are we really sure that we want to share him with the nation?

His Excellency, Timothy Pawlenty, Governor of the once-Great State of Minnesota, has always been against new taxes. [Increased fees are a different thing. Ask anybody who has been tagged for a seat belt violation or tried to buy a pack of cigarettes.]

He even wants to give us a break on our sales taxes, a really big one. It will save one cent every time you spend eight bucks.

But to make up for that he wants to reduce the property tax credit for renters and renters only. [As any GOP insider can tell you, tenants are second class people for the most part, anyway who aren’t going to vote, or if they do, will not vote for people like Governor Plenty, anyway.]

A Minnesota Monitor post today by Jeff Fecke [How Tim Pawlenty's tax cut helps you] gives some more illumination, ending with the following revealing paragraphs:

Yes, if you're the type of consumer that makes big-ticket purchases of electronics -- not to mention yachts, where you could save $250 on a $200,000 purchase -- you might actually see some benefit from Tim Pawlenty's big tax cut.

Incidentally, Pawlenty did call for one tax increase on Friday. Well, not so much an increase, really, but a decrease in the property tax credit for renters, from 19 percent to 16 percent. Now, if you pay $950 a month for your 2-bedroom apartment, that will cost you an extra $342 next year.

Again: Aren’t we glad we have Tim? Are we really sure that we want to share him with the nation?

Pawlenty and LeVander: Republican Governors and Sales Tax

I am getting too old to understand some things, I guess.

Sales taxes used to be anathema to DFL types while Republicans thought them a creative way to raise government funds. They were, and still are, regressive ways of taxation.

HISTORICAL NOTE: In 1966, Governor Karl Rolvaag promised that as long as he was governor there would be no sales tax. His Republican opponent, Harold LeVander merely promised to veto any sales tax.

After LeVander was elected, the legislature gave us the first state sales [3%, labeled “general excise” for politically euphemistic purposes] enacted. LeVander did as promised, but after vetoing the sales tax, he called the legislature into special session so they could override his veto.

BACK TO THE PRESENT: So it seems a little surprising that Pawlenty today [link] suggested that, even though the state is facing another large deficit, that the sales tax be lowered.

Actually, at first glance, this seems like a better way of getting money that people would spend into circulation than the federal solution [Cf. earlier post] since it sneaks the money in gradually and subtly, but this new Pawlenty idea does make one wonder what will not be funded since we all know that Governor Plenty doesn’t support tax increases of any kind, even crossing the Chamber of Commerce to veto the gas tax for transportation and sales tax for transit bill earlier this session.

Does it make you wonder what audience our governor is playing up to? Is that audience in Minnesota? or is it a specific person from Arizona? or what?