At Intellectual Conservative, Gary Larson looks at how Governor Doofus Shut Down Minnesota:
State employees helped Dayton achieve high office, narrowly beating over a conservative Republican in a three-way race, even after his undistinguished Senate career. Now laid-off state workers suffer the consequences their guy's excessive budget demands, his vetoes. Who says politics do not have repercussions?
Truth is, Dayton is almost solely responsible for the state shutdown. Yet the uninformed, including those mobbing the Capitol, blame "the Legislature" for the shutdown. Their ire is woefully misdirected.
One pro-Dayton TV spot tags Republicans for the shutdown. It is simply a lie, no other word for it. The 30-second spot claims [and I quote it verbatim] "Republicans want to send out pink slips to state workers." Come again? Truth is, Republicans want folks at work, on the job, not shut out. That why they passed balanced budgets, for heaven's sake. Ones that DFLer Dayton vetoed. Don't the people "get it?" Media, too?
Simply put, Dayton held Minnesota budget hostage for his massive tax hikes. It was his way, or the highway. This, in spite of the fact that 80% of Minnesotans, in a recent local KSTP-TV survey, said they want NO TAX HIKE. (In an economy tanking, or tanked, with high unemployment, that much should be obvious.)
Bottom line: Even the biggest budget in state history was not enough for this tax-happy governor with a deer-in-the-headlights look. So he shuts down government, putting out of work "his people." Targeting the rich, sort of whipping boys -- or better yet, straw men-- he attacks the successful, the job-creators, the job-expanders.
What, Dayton worry? No way. His South Dakota-based blind trusts provide him with millions to tap. Those who voted for this DFL governor, this utter failure as a United States senator, don't have a choice. They lose their income. No South Dakota blind trusts for them. Let them eat cake with, ah, sour cream filling?
Soak-the-rich strategies, result of envy and green-eyed jealousy, are forms of class warfare. Tax-the-other-guy (one behind the tree?) resonates with less affluent, the uninformed and, apparently, with mainstream media.
It's amusing to note how much friendly fire Dayton has brought down on the side he purports to support in his campaign of class warfare. As Gary notes, many of the state employees now out of work are people who Dayton claims to be looking out for and who helped put him in office last November. Now, he's proposing to raise taxes on cigarettes as part of his latest offer to resolve the budget impasse. Guess who that additional tax burden is going to fall most heavily on? Not the top-hat, striped pant, monocle millionaires that Dayton has aimed his rhetorical guns at.
Oh well. We all knew that a few eggs would have to get broken to make the Better Minnesota omelette, didn't we?
