Richard Day's picture

    DIRE STRAITS IN MINNESOTA


    A portrait shot of a smiling older male looking straight ahead. He has short gray hair, and is wearing a dark navy blazer with a blue styled tie over a white collared shirt. In the background is an American flag hanging from a flagpole.

                       WHAT ME WORRY?

    If you are at the end of your rope, you are at the limit of your patience or endurance. American English

                                                                                                                   Some Idiot.

    Minnesota is at the end of its rope.

    This is a microcosm of what is happening in this country!

    Blame w or blame the repubs....what is is, and what is not is not!

    We ran out of money!

    Not the first time and not the last time.

    We were all warned of this back in 2008....actually long before that before the Great Recession hit us. But like war, we might have been warned but were told to go shopping. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfs6wpjlu28

    George W. Bush told us to go shopping in 2006 to support our nation in its wars.

    But by 2008 we were told that all hell was breaking loose; irregardless of our shopping!

    We lost 50% of the value in our homes.

    We were told we would lose 10% of our workforce.

    We were told we would lose half of our pensions.

    We were told that incomes would go down—at least for the middle class.

    We were told that employers would leave our country and search for better 'feeds'.

    We were told we were fucked!

    http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=58695

    So the repubs, lying as usual took over the legislative bodies and the gubernatorial-ships of many states: 

    Republicans took control of at least 19 Democratic-controlled state legislatures Tuesday and gained more than 650 seats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The last time Republicans saw such victories was in 1994, when they captured control of 20 state legislatures.

    http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-historic-win-state-legislatures-vote-2010-election/story?id=12049040

     

    So what did these new repub majorities do in state legislaures over the last six months?

    Annihilate any chance for abortion in those states.

    Annihilate any chance for collective bargaining in those states. 

    Annihilate any chance for a poor person to get a sandwich in those states.

    Annihilate any chance for a poor person to vote in those states. vote.

    Annihilate all of the Bill of Rights (except for the Second Amendment) for anyone making under $250,000.00/year.

    Annihilate any chance for someone from the middle class to succeed in those states.

    Annihilate any chance for a woman to seek counseling regarding birth control in those states.

    Annihilate any chance for folks to receive a minimum wage in those states.

    Annihilate any opportunity to receive equal rights examination from some corporate employer in those states.

    Annihilate any opportunity to receive medical assistance in those states.

    Annihilate any opportunity to receive justice in the courts of those states.

    Annihilate the hopes of a majority of the folks in those states to the American Dream.

    In Minnesota something really strange occurred.

    Remember you oldies, Minnesota was the State of Hubert Humphrey and Gene McCarthy and Donald Frazier and Walter Mondale and Wendell Anderson and Paul Wellstone (excuse me while I shed a tear)

    (I gotta add here that Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken still make me proud to be a Minnesotan!)

    Well and let us not forget Mark Dayton—Dayton kind of a family name like Rockefeller around these parts.

    Well, for some reason my compatriots lost faith in the Democratic party and elected idiots for its legislature but went ahead and voted in Mark Dayton as Governor. If that had not happened all would be lost.

    Well the fascists in our legislature; that mirror the fascists in the Wisconsin legistature as well as the Wisconsin Supreme Court, decided to go tete a tete with our Dem Gov. And guess what?

    Oh just as an aside, if someone questions me as to whether we have fascists in our Legislature let me remind you that every goddamn piece of legislation that that NAZI government in Wisconsin voted for; our legislators would have asked for more.

    One legislator sponsored a law that would make it a felony for any poor person to carry around more than $20.00 in cash at any one time! If I had a baseball bat and this arsehole walked into my apartment.....http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/03/22/bill-limits-cash-welfare-recipients-can-withdraw/

    We have a microcosm in Minnesota of what is taking place in Washington DC.

    Remember that the U.S. House of Representatives is in charge of the budget!

    We have similar problems in Minnesota:

    http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/shutdown/

    Health and human service spending remains a sticking point. But MPR News reporter Tim Pugmire says House Minority Leader Matt Dean offered a brief but upbeat assessment of the talks. "Things are still moving ahead. That's good news."

    Courts wills stay open. A judge ruled that due process and other constitutional protections require the courts to continue running.

    Don't make a mess. If an environmental crisis hits during the shutdown, it will have to be managed by a "skeleton crew" from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The agency says only about 16 of 900 workers will be running the department in a shutdown, working with private contractors in a crisis.

    What's essential?
    While a judge today ruled the courts must stay open, we're still waiting for another court opinion on what constitutes "essential services" in a shutdown. That will come Wednesday or Thursday.

    Without a deal, most state government operations will stop at midnight Thursday.

    Help us keep watch on the Minnesota government shutdown. Tell us what you're seeing. Share an insight or story and make us smarter on how the shutdown talk is affecting Minnesota

    http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/shutdown/

     AND

    Hennepin County officials have been painting a bleak picture of life in a state government shutdown.

    This afternoon, they backed a plan that would:

    -- close service centers -- offices where citizens get driver's licenses, motor vehicle tabs, passports, and boating and fishing licenses -- on July 5;

    -- continue providing services to people with serious and persistent mental illness or who are in chemical dependency treatment;

    -- continue providing child protective services;

    -- continue all Hennepin County road and bridge projects.

    MPR News reporter Brandt Williams writes:

    Commissioner Mike Opat says it would be a waste of time and money to keep the county service centers open.
    "As much as I would like to think we could stay open, we are an arm of the state and most of those transactions are enough of a share where I think - to keep them open and have people come in only to find out that they can't conduct their business is a bad scenario in a number of ways."
    Commissioners also voted to authorize the county attorney to join a current lawsuit designed to protect funding for core services during a shutdown.

    The county's sending layoffs to more than 1,300 staff.

    http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/shutdown/

     

    Time Magazine's take a week ago:

                             http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079026,00.html

     I just want people to know at Dagblog that Minnesota citizens are going to be without any State aid whatsover except for essentials. Which means if some person in Minnesota is found in the street runover, the officials that are left will take the fellow to the ER. Following that the fellow is on his own.

    That is it!

    Food banks, food stamps, monthly chits ($81.00 a month), dental help....anything you can imagine will be gone....I mean gone! No libraries, no road repairpeople, no license offices, no schools, no state colleges, no ....nothing!

    Do not tell me that there are two sides to this story.

    Because it is pure bullshite. The only difference is that bullshite can be used to help grow crops!

    Interim Order regarding definition of Essential Services that must be provided by the State of Minnesota during shutdown. http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/29/shutdown-ruling/



     

    Comments

    Thanks for reminding me why I am strongly anti-Republican.

    When you look at the actions of the corporatists on the Supreme Court, you realize that the hand-wringing done by Liberals when Sonia Stomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court was unwarranted. The WaPo said that there was little for Liberals during Sotomayor's Senate hearings.A former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School said that Sotomayor's appointment "did serious damage to the cause of progressive in constitutional law."

    Sotomayor is now recognized as a reliable Liberal vote. We shall see how Kagan turns out as she progresses on the court. We have such a great deal of rage for friends, we let our enemies steadily march on.

    http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/91013/sonia-sotomayor-supreme-court-...

     


    When we stay home or vote against our interests, we only allow the Republicans to push their agenda.

    Yesterday Mark Halperin, a TIME editor, called the President of the United States a d*ck for challenging the GOP to do their jobs. It is a disgrace that Halperin was not fired. We have to battle the press, which sugar coats the GOP, and the Republicans themselves.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/30/mark-halperin-calls-obama-a-dic...


    Yeah Halpirin is one big prick!

    So we are just to sit and take it from the likes of Boehner and mcconnell?

    Shite!


    Compassion, patriotism and honestly have left America ... they caught the last train for the coast, the day our freedom's died.


    Well if they keep it up in Minnesota this is going to be one long siege; that's for sure.


    I guess you missed the cue ... the best song that fits Minnesota is Don McLean's Bye Bye Miss American Pie. And I don't believe he'd have an issue with it being used in this manner.


    ......One legislator sponsored a law that would make it a felony for any poor person to carry around more than $20.00 in cash at any one time!

    If you are poor and don't have a bank account, you may exist by going to the phone and power companies to pay in cash in person. Take away the ability to carry cash, and you have a devastating effect on the ability to survive. This legislation was simply meant to punish somebody because they were poor. It acts to keep the person in poverty. It is mean-spirited.


    Pure meanness for sure. If I recall the bill has been amended letting you get all the way up to forty bucks or something.

    My gov aint gonna sign that bill if it ever passes.

    It just underlines the anger out there from the right.


    If I'm not mistaken, back in the days before 1964, in the south a black person could be arrested and fined as vagrants if they didn't have a specific amount of money on them. Usually, the person could not afford the fine, and so was sent to county labor or hired out to a private employer.


    Those "vagrancy" laws were one the reasons that tension between law enforcement and the black community has alaways been high. The elites used law enforcement to enact the venomous policies.


    Forget all that trifling stuff, along with all the wars GWB ginned up on lies and didn't finish, W's negligence on allowing 9/11 as he studied stem cell policy all August 2001, and then opposed an inquiry on 9/11 yet, when it happened anyway, he and Dick gave secret unrecorded unsworn testimony.

    We are talking raising TAXES on Corporations and hedge funds moguls!

    We can expunge memory of the economic collapse at the end of W's disastrous 8 years, his Bday party with McCain while NO residents were floating MRE's for gators, no forget it all.

    Obama's mention of ENDING SPECIAL TAX BREAKS ON CORPORATE JETS is what the Rightwingers are screaming about today, they think it could be the worst policy the federal government has implemented since George H. W. Bush put on a 10% luxury tax on yachts in 1990-which they still remember well, as tax increases are the only thing they do remember (they don't recall tax cuts, or when they do, they say tax cuts create jobs and increase tax collections, all evidence to the contrary).

    For the Beckerheads of the right, the yacht tax was the most heinous economic crime committed by a President in the last 20 years, and now Obama wants, GULP, to hit on deductions for corporate jets!!

    Oh the wailing and the agony! Reducing this fat cat deduction will surely end the American way of life! Who knows, CEO's and hedge fund magnates may even be reduced to penury and have to fly commercial?


    They object to paying taxes on the same corporate jets that they used to come to DC to beg for bailouts?


    Great great point!

    Damn. never thought about it like that!


    The Radical Republicans are savagely attacking the budgets of state university systems, and the people who work in these universities are spitting mad.   I supect this is going to generate more blowback in the end than the Republicans can possibly imagine.  Professors and college students like to talk and write, and they are very articulate.   And know that they have skin in the game, they will be loaded for bear.   It's not just a philosophic debate any more.

    Republicans have taken their resentful war on cultural elites a bridge too far.


    Great analysis!

    Once you have the unions and academia--these meanies might find themselves in a lot of trouble!

    Let us pray!


    Good God, one can only hope, and it's about time.  But I've read dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds of truly articulate arguments against the Republicans in the past 10, 12, 15 years.  The people who gather forces and vote them in apparently aren't reading the same things we are.  They can be struggling and sometimes barely surviving, yet they will not put two and two together and figure out what the problem is.

    How to get through to them?  Lordy, I wish I knew.  They don't like anything about us, so it's not like they're suddenly going to have an epiphany just because somebody somewhere finally put the right words together 


    I was reading the Beast and that Tomasky hints at one way to handle the nonsense.

    We need to be properly prepared and every single time someone like Beckerhead or Bachmann makes up history; fight them. Be properly prepared and fight them. Which is really what sites like Mediamatters do!

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/29/the-end-of-glenn-beck-what-liberals-should-learn.html

     

     


    One part of the problem is that we on the Left spend a lot of time forming circular firing squads to attack each other rather than the Republicans. A recent example can be found at the link below.

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/print/content/it-movement-building-or-i...

    Van Jones recently formed Rebuild The Dream aided by MoveOn.Org. Jones and Rebuild the Dream get immediately attacked by Black Agenda Report for focusing too much on attacking Republicans rather than attacking Democrats. BAR also feels that Jones is merely part of a marketing strategy.

    The purity tests keep us going in circles.


    Arizona State University President Michael Crow,

    Here is a breakdown on Crow's contract:

    •  Base salary: $475,000.

    •  Housing allowance: $50,000.

    •  Car allowance: $10,000.

    •  Additional compensation from ASU Foundation: $100,000.

    •  Pension: $85,500.

    •  Retirement: $16,100.

    Total annual salary and benefits: $736,600.

    Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/06/16/20110616asu-president-crow-contract-extension-brk16-ON.html#ixzz1QnJW7aIU

    The people are sick of Universities, charging so much for an education and all the grant money that goes to these colleges. Crowes business and his salary is based upon how much grant money he brings in to the University. ASU is not the only college doing this

    Congress Must Prevent Harmful Cuts to Social Security and Medicare

    Slashing benefits would reverse decades of progress

    http://www.aarp.org/politics-society/advocacy/info-04-2011/AARP-fights-against-threats-to-medicare-and-social-security.html?cmp=RDRCT-PRTCSR_APR26_011

    Grant money to colleges, costs taxpayers. Who really benefits when a tenured professor, only has to show up in class, once in a blue moon?

    Or why does the taxpayer have to support  grant seekers who in order to continue to get grant money, only have to write a few paragraphs and the money rolls in.

    Money paid by taxpayers to support grant seekers, professors and industry.

    When a student discovers something new, who gets the patent rights?

    This IS the perception out here in Hooverville.

    WE CAN’T AFFORD COLLEGE BECAUSE……..Only the rich can afford to get an education at a prestigious college, and yet the middle class,  still has to pay for their education, through higher taxes.

    We out here in Hooverville, have to pay grant money, so we can give them work.to do, while they go to school?    


    This is really a good point. I audited a class at the local community college and discovered that all the materials were available on the 'inside web'.

    All this knowledge, all these wonderful lectures already recorded and people are forced to spend fifty to a hundred thousand bucks for a BA?

    You should blog this Resistance so more would read it!

    Yeah, commmunity colleges--depending upon the location--are not that expensive. But damn! Our state started out charging no tuition at all and by the time I entered it costs $130.00 a quarter.

    And of course I purchased used books!


    I can't blog Richard, I tried to post something In the News and it doesn't work. I've tried to insert picture and Youtube links like you and others do and it doesn’t work,

    Some are good bloggers like yourself, and others are commenters. We each have a part according to our abilities.


    I am having the same trouble, It is because you maybe running the newest version of IE. Genghis told me to turn off rich-text so I could post a comment but that leaves me with out the ability to do the special formating also.

    If you don't have Firefox it would be worthwhile to download it unti IE gets all the kinks out.  You can post to dag with Firefox easily.  I like it much better than IE.  I have Google Chrome, too, but haven't played with it much.  I use it for the email address I use for my personal FB and that's about it.


    I've been using Chromium lately - the Linux version of Chrome. I like it.


    One cost that keeps growing for the university is the cost of maintaining journals. If you have active research, you need current journals. The cost that institutions must pay publishers for hard copies of journals is astronomical. If you look at the cost of science textbooks and journals for the students, your heart would stop. Even online only journals and texts are sky high.


    Professors are seeking their own levels of 'entitlements' including pensions.

    It is just that over the last three decades, the entire costs passed down upon the student have got to have increased three hundred percentage points....eight hundred percentage points in some cases!

    WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF PUBLIC ED? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF COLLEGE ED?

    This is a tough issue.

    What bugs me again....is that the knowledge is all there!

    Just hidden from the peasants.

    And libraries are the first institution that is dissed during hard times!


    You are correct there is more knowledge that is available literally at your fingertips, however you have to have funds to get access to the information  I wonder if local public libraries have access to resources available through the university via lend via lease arrangements?


    Didn’t you recently touch on the subject of textbooks? (Texas school board?)

    Isn’t it about every 4 years, a new text book is manufactured and the old ones are supposedly obsolete?

    Why do we as a nation have to keep the book binding companies and all the others on the payroll to tell us Columbus sailed the ocean blue in1492. We need a new book to tell us that?

    When you go to the law library,the small pamphlet that accompanies the Westlaw Bound volumes, timely updated information? Annotated

    Change the way text books are made, no hard binding, maybe 3 leaf binders with replicable and replaceable pages. Download when you need one?

    No more expensive books, no more backpacks carrying heavy books.

    No more carrying the book makers. (BOOKIES wanting their cut)

    When an update is necessary put the handicapped and teens to work in the summer, getting the text binders back in shape, for the next school year.

    Recycle the binders, update the pages….. Not the entire book

    I'm tired of planned obsolescence; it's wasteful and costs us energy and money.

    Rather than an enriching an industry that depends on producing a New beautifully bound school book, every four years, eliminate the waste and reduce  the cost of education.

    Let Kinko’s or Office Max compete, to produce the 3 hole educational paper pages.

    Khan Academy is another good way to educate.,

    Help us change education

    http://www.khanacademy.org/

    Browse our library of over 2,100 educational videos...

    You could have a large study hall and one or two monitors or tutors watching the young adults/ kid’s advance at their own speed, by watching the keystroke activity.

    I’m sure the teachers won’t like it.   We knew technology was going to change things.

    We need to cut our costs. Why can't the Democrats get out in front of this issue?

    Sacred Cow?


    Good post as usual, DD.  Our Great Lakes states are in big trouble again and in each and every one of them it's the Republicans who have done it to us. (Your annhilation list makes me shudder.)

    For too many years in Michigan we've had to put up with a Republican majority legislature and so can barely ever get anything done that actually benefits the state.  But now, with Synder and his jack-booted henchmen, sent to us courtesy of the Rightiest of the Right-Wing power brokers, we're terminal and at the end of our small-d democratic lives.

    Publishing that list should mean the end of those folks, and in saner times it might have.  But these are the kinds of insane times that future historians will be analyzing and arguing about for decades.  It will never make sense, but they'll keep trying to make sense out of it.  That is if there is such a thing as historians.  They may be annhilated, too.

     

     


    Dday, why isn't there more about this in the news or even the liberal blogs.  I just heard about it this afternoon.  I hear Dayton is standing up and fighting back which thrills me no end.  What I read suggested that the cons would be blamed for it, which may make a shut down a good thing in the long run, though painful for you who live there in the short run.  Dayton is the first Dem I've thought might be a worthy candidate in 2016. 


    Governor Dayton is fighting the good fight!

    Besides what I have already linked, Josh has been on this:

    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/hours-before-state-government-shutdown-no-budget-deal-in-minnesota.php

    As well a few others who should be linked above including National Public Radio.

    I was surprised when one of those links noted that this is a rare phenomina.

    If this were California or NY; well it would be all over everyone's paper.

    Mark Dayton is a gooooooooooooooood man!

     


    Richard, they are talking CLASS WARFARE over this jet thing at Human Events magazine. Yes, Obama wants to start a WAR! this is a war I can volunteer to fight!

    Obama's Latest Class Warfare Catchphrase: 'Corporate Jet Owners'

    HUMAN EVENTS:The President's got the sound bite rhetoric down. What he means is, he's not backing off on higher taxes for the highest wage earners.
    'Not backing off on higher taxes on RICH PEOPLE! Is it true? Why would a bankrupt country want to raise taxes on rich people??
    Thinkprogress link,:
    “Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. …The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented.”
    States are broke, cutting services, yet we can't look to where the money is piling up to fund essential services for the middle class and poor, or save jobs.

    States are broke, .....look to where the money is

    There are places where we can save the money spent and redirect it to usefulness.
    We can still have a quality education system in America.

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/dire-straits-minnesota-10925#comment-126795

    We need to think outside the box,

    Remember, we didnt allow the buggy whip manufacturers from keeping us from having automobiles.

    No one questions the soundness of cutting our costs  when it comes to our family budget..


    YEAH!

    Class warfare goes on at the street level every frickin day and guess who wins all the battles?


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