Fraters Libertas

State O' The State O' Hockey

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty just finished his second state of the state address a few moments ago. Here's the complete text of the address.

I was able to listen to it while at lunch and found it fairly impressive. The writing was a bit hokey at times (if we want to have Minnesota Nice, we need to get Minnesota Tough on criminals-groan), but overall it set out a confident, forward looking vision of the future for the state. And how can you not like a speech that jokes about fossilized sportswriter Sid Hartman and pays tribute to Herb Brooks?

This was my favorite section:

When the budget forecast comes out later this month, I expect it to say we've made about 4 billion dollars worth of progress towards balance, and that we've built 600 million in reserves.

And we did it without raising taxes!

We're not out of the woods yet. We still have some deficit yet to fix now and in the future. But we've made tremendous progress.

The budget was not all we did this past year.

We finally repealed the convoluted Profile of Learning! And, we're replacing it with rigorous, high-quality learning standards.

Even with a mammoth deficit, we maintained per-pupil funding for core K-12 classroom functions.

With a record number of Minnesotans overseas defending that flag and what it represents, we reinstituted the Pledge of Allegiance in our schools. It's high time we did.

We established Job Opportunity Building Zones to bring jobs and growth back to rural Minnesota.

We put the visa expiration dates of foreign visitors right on their Minnesota driver's licenses to help law enforcement fight terrorism.

We positioned Minnesota to become a world leader in the coming bioscience revolution.

We jump-started road and bridge construction with the largest infusion of funding in our history.

We once again made work the focus of welfare reform.

We promoted justice and fairness by enacting lawsuit reform.

We enhanced the environmental protection of our land, air and water, including reaching a one billion dollar agreement to clean up old coal plants. The agreement will yield the most significant reduction in emissions since the federal Clean Air Act.

And remember, we did all this without raising taxes!

He's no Ahnold and his speech will likely attract little attention outside the state. But right here, right now, they're no other governor I'd like to have. (Sorry, some of the speech writing must have rubbed off on me)