In this year's session, the Legislature gave him some of the things he wanted, including about half of his proposed funding for a sex offender treatment center, and the tab came to just under a billion dollars.
Instead of vetoing it outright, Pawlenty then line-item vetoed the bill down to $680 million -- $45 million below his original proposal.
Huh?
This is an elected leader who wants America to see him as prepared for the Oval Office? Let's review.
2008: Pawlenty's veto of the Transportation bill was overridden thanks to six Republican State Representatives who paid a steep political price for their moderation.
2009: Pawlenty improperly used the Governor's unallotment power to get what he wanted out of the state budget, and is in the process of being beaten down by the Minnesota Supreme Court for the move, which targeted the most vulnerable and powerless people in the state.
2010: Pawlenty used the line-item veto to hamstring the state's ability to fund capital projects, generate jobs, and improve crumbling infrastructure by borrowing money cheaply -- which won't be as palatable an option at some point after he leaves office next year. The federal line-item veto has been ruled unconstitutional, by the way. And by reducing the bill to below his own proposal, he looks good to the fiscal reactionaries who comprise a big chunk of the Republican primary electorate, but like a petulant fool to the other 90% of us.
Much like a child stomping and screaming to get an extra fifteen minutes before bed, Tim Pawlenty is using all the tools at his disposal to get his way -- whether those tools are legal or not, whether they screw Minnesota or not.
Sedition is a term of law which refers to overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.
Just this past weekend, Michele Bachmann spoke at a Tea Party rally in St. Paul, saying
"But mark my words, the American people aren't gonna take this lying down," Bachmann later said. "We aren't gonna play their game, we're not gonna pay their taxes. They want us to pay for this? Because we don't have to. We don't have to. We don't have to follow a bill that isn't law. That's not the American way, and that's not what we're going to do."
An MPP reader happened to be in the neighborhood of that rally, and noted that there appeared to be many more Wisconsin license plates nearby than one normally sees in St. Paul. Curious. In any case, I'm fairly certain that if Congress passes a bill (even without a single Republican vote despite dozens of concessions to Republican demands) and the President signs it (despite those same Republicans playing footsie with the crazies who fervently believe him not to be a natural-born American citizen), the bill. becomes. law.
Anyone care to disagree?
Now, I'm not casting aspersions on Congresswoman Bachmann's knowledge of the Constitution and how bills become law. And I'm not giving up hope that Bachmann will back off this call to refuse the lawful authority of the United States of America just as she backed off her call for Minnesotans not to answer the 2010 Census.
But if it walks like a duck and talks like a seditionist, at what point do we call the damned thing one thoroughly seditionist waterfowl?
I got bunch of pictures to show you guys. I didn't take them, a fellow blogger directed me to the Flicker site where these photos were posted by "Fibonacci Blue." (A link to the original site appears at the end of this post--it's really worth looking at because there's video there, too.)
This was a "tea party" event in St. Paul last Saturday featuring crowd favorite Michele Bachmann as a highlight. (She also rounded up folks to attend via email invites.) Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo wrote a spectacular analysis of Bachmann's speech--pointing out that she was telling the crowd that the health care reforms would not be law even if they were passed. (Link to that Kleefeld piece below, too.)
By their signs ye shall know them. Obama's going to kill our grandmas:
Our absentee Governor Tim Pawlenty has been busted for some shady business. He has diverted money to pay for a staffer to do partisan work. He doesn't have the authority and the people vested with that authority didn't give their approval. Actually, they found out about it late last week.
Pawlenty is also a hypocrite for always talking about how much he supports our troops when he's been stealing from vets for the last year.
When Minnesota motorists paid out $30 apiece for "Support Our Troops" license plates, it's a good bet they had no idea they were supporting Lee Buckley, a political appointee of Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Last year $30,000 from the license-plate fund was used to pay a portion of Buckley's salary. Buckley worked in Pawlenty's office as a $92,000 a year special adviser on faith and community services.
During budget hearings on Pawlenty's office budget this week, Sens. Steve Murphy, Don Betzold and other legislators were furious over what they saw as a siphoning off of the money and a deception to those who bought the plates thinking they were directly helping veterans organizations. By state law, money from the plates is split between the Department of Military Affairs for family members of deployed service members and the Department of Veterans Affairs for grants for homeless and needy veterans.
"For money that was supposed to go to fund things for veterans going to fund people in the governor's office, it's outrageous," said Murphy, DFL-Red Wing, a Marine veteran. "The governor runs around telling everyone he's cutting all these budgets, and then he back-door fills in his own department. I'm just disgusted with this."
I don't think anyone will find this surprising that the Star Tribune buried this article on the inside pages of the Metro section. Imagine if a certain Democratic Senator who recently won a recount against the paper's favorite Senator got busted like this for corruption. Yea ... that'd probably be on the front page, wouldn't it?
UPDATE I dug my Saturday Strib out of the recycling. It was on the front of the Metro. Still, if Franken would have done something similar, it would've been on page A1 with follow up articles through the week.
Lots going on in the wake of Bachmann's "Kill the Bill" rally in St. Paul last Saturday. Much to report in upcoming stories--but for now, let it be known that Minnesota blogger/activist Eric Zaetsch never sleeps. He's cleared up a mystery regarding the disappearance of a "death threat against Obama" in the media coverage of Bachmann's Tea Party event.
The other day I posted an item here about the Star Tribune's coverage of Michele Bachmann's "Kill the Health Care Bill" rally. I noted that the Strib seemed to have erased a reference to an alleged death threat against Obama that had appeared in the original online version of their reporting.
I knew that the Strib had originally reported the threat because different commenters on different blogs had referred to it in threads reacting to the Strib story. But I was unable to find the orignal "cache" version of the article.
Blogger Zaetsch to the rescue. Here is the missing line, as it appeared in the original Strib report of the Bachmann rally:
The rally flashed with anger at times. As Bachmann was saying, "American people are not going to take this lying down," one man shouted, "Kill the bastard!" a reference to President Obama.
If you look for that in the current online version of the story, you won't find it. Apparently the Strib either decided that it did not happen or that they could not substantiate the report.
How did Zaetsch find it after the Strib scrubbed it? He use a cache search called "Bing," which I guess is better than a Google cache search. This is knowledge we may all profit from. Here is the link Zaetsch sent me yesterday, the link to the entire cache version of the "Bachmann's Kill The Bill rally" story:
Our Democracy was based on certain ideals like a constitution that protected rights of people and like separation of powers into three branches of government. Constitutionally making corporations into people has broken the rights of people. The budget and policy rights of the legislature have been taken by presidents and governors. Our Governor Tim Pawlenty's deliberate planned use of unallotment to essentially remove legislature power is part of a court filing, quoted in one of today's recommended diaries on DailyKOS:
It would dramatically change the structure of government created by the Minnesota Constitution if this Court were to sanction a process in which this or any other Governor could sign appropriations into law, then veto revenue bills, and then use unallotment to ignore legislative appropriations and to rewrite the budget according to the Governor's own legislative priorities. This in fact is what has occurred. This use of unallotment was unauthorized by any law and was unconstitutional.
The Uptake will be streaming live coverage of the oral arguments today before Minnesota's Supreme Court.
The executive power has also been abused through how the law is enforced. Republican governors have particularly not enforced selected laws. Now judges and sheriffs are now getting into the process of overruling legislatures through how and which laws are enforced. This totally violates the principles of separation of powers, democracy and values of fairness.
In perhaps the most bizarre twist of all, my local Ramsey county Sheriff's race now has a group of ***DFL*** supporters and perhaps the campaign arguing for voting for the Sheriff based on legislative policy issue stances! My endorsed candidate, Matt Bostrom, from the beginning of the campaign declared that legislative issues are off limits unless they are very directly related to the Sheriff's office. For there is no perception of fairness when officiating civil rights issues when then personal stances of law enforcement officials is known. For example, Sheriff Fletcher is widely known to be a pro-war advocate. Especially law enforcement and judges ought to be selected by character, integrity and fairness (as well as ability to do the job).
So the real questions are: Do we stand up for principles of democracy and separation of powers always? Or is the DFL as bad as Republicans in erosion of Democratic principles when it is in our policy favor? Will we be suddenly for unallotment and expanded gubernatorial powers when we have a Democratic governor?
Another great weekend of delegate chasing across the state. We're still waiting on reconciliation of a two-delegate discrepancy in SD52, and we still don't have results from the 11-delegate Otter Tail County convention. However, other than those thirteen delegates, we're now looking at two virtual ties in the pledged delegate chase, which is almost at an end. I'm including the superdelegates here so we have as close to a complete picture as possible.
Candidate
Pledged Del.
Superdel.
Total
Uncommitted
481
~80
~560
MAK
177.5
46
223.5
Rybak
176.5
1
177.5
Marty
71
4
75
Thissen
66
4
70
Rukavina
45.5
3
48.5
Bakk
25.5
18
43.5
Entenza
29.5
11
40.5
After completing the numbers from several previously missing county conventions, Margaret Anderson Kelliher held a(n approximated) 7-delegate lead among pledged delegates. However, R.T. Rybak had another really good day in the West Metro, and made up that margin to pull within just one. MAK still holds a commanding lead overall, assuming that all the superdelegates show up in Duluth and vote on the floor of the convention.
State Sen. John Marty also had a very good weekend, pulling even with or just ahead of State Rep. Paul Thissen.
Assuming the remaining fifty delegates yet to be elected split somewhat evenly (even if they don't, they won't have a huge effect on these totals), there are basically four tiers here:
1.) MAK vs. Rybak. The two frontrunners will duke it out for uncommitted delegates and the pleasure of being a first-ballot leader in Duluth. It matters.
2.) Thissen vs. Marty. Being in the second tier isn't a bad place to be -- having a base of strong support means you can dictate the course of events, get supporters on to committees that decide how business will be done at the convention, and make deals with other candidates.
3.) Rukavina + Bakk. Rumors of a deal between the two northern Minnesota candidates have not abated -- combining their support bases would launch that candidate (at this point, it would be Rukavina) right into the second tier and might make for an interesting move on the convention floor.
4.) Entenza. The odd man out -- or is he? There have been numerous reports of strong Entenza supporters getting themselves elected out of uncommitted subcaucuses, a good strategic move when you don't have the support base to create your own subcaucuses. Entenza will likely outperform his pledged total indicated here, but by how much?
I'm having some issues creating a screenshot of the entire Delegate Tracker spreadsheet (it's getting very large), so I'll update the post with that later today. Hopefully by then we'll have those thirteen delegates straightened out too.
In an opinion post from last week, my cohort, Bill Prendergast, wrote a comment double-daring anyone to explain how a Democrat could win in Michele Bachmann's district (MN-06). I am taking him up on it.
First of all, the Cook Report ranks MN-06 as R+7. To put this in perspective, Keith Ellison's district, MN-05 encompasses Minneapolis and the western inner ring suburbs, is D+23. Betty McCollum's, MN-04 is St. Paul and inner ring northeastern suburbs, is D+13. John Kline's, MN-02 is the southern suburbs and rural southern MN, is R+4. And Tim Walz's, MN-01 extends across bottom of the state, is R+1. There are numerous instances across the country where Democrats have won in districts more conservative than MN-06.
It is my opinion that ousting Bachmann is tough, but not impossible.
Here are the main factors a winning Democrat must do correctly:
Ground game
Neutralize the independent or Independence Party candidate(s)
Get the media to push key meme's about Bachmann
Capitalize on every Bachmann misstep
Ground game is voter contact. It means knocking on doors, phone banking, appearances and campaign events.
In 2008, 53.58% of voters voted against Bachmann. Unfortunately, DFL candidate Elwyn Tinklenberg only got 43% of it. Despite spending virtually no money and not campaigning, Bob Anderson ran in the Independence Party primary, won it and pulled 10.04% in the general election. A Democrat must convince voters that a vote for the IP is a vote for Bachmann.
The Democrats need to get our state's media to tell the truth about Bachmann. At this blog, we have documented that our TV, radio, dead tree media and even those who have fled the dead tree media and found other havens simply refuse to ask Bachmann any tough questions. They don't ask any tough questions, because if they did, they'd never get access again. There are ways to get them past their timidity and I will elaborate.
Finally, a Democratic candidate has to be ready, willing and prepared to take advantage of every Bachmann misstep, because there are going to be a lot of them. She loves the limelight and seems to be proud that she's viewed as a liar, unstable, erratic, bigoted and one of those burning-eyed crazies who are awaiting the end of times.
- An update on proposed financial regulation, from Crooks and Liars. I'm withholding judgment, trying not to get my hopes too high. My suspicion is that, as with HCR, what we do get will be a first step, nothing more, nothing less.
Still waiting on results from several conventions:
SD33 SD34
SD44
SD52
Otter Tail
If anyone was in attendance and has results from these conventions, drop'em in the comments.
I'm reconciling some numbers from yesterday, but at present it appears that both Margaret Anderson Kelliher and John Marty had great days -- Marty appears to have moved into a virtual tie with Paul Thissen for third place in pledged delegates. MAK has put a little daylight between herself and R.T. Rybak in that measure, but we'll see what happens when we pull in those remaining conventions.
It is just as unnecessary for the media to worry about competition from Fox as it is to worry about competition from Nickelodeon (which, ironically, is a better source for news than Fox, and plays to a smarter audience).
