"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Rest in Peace, Civility and Common Sense
Posted 6:34 p.m., May 19, 2004
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It was the sort of thing that have might helped Tim Penny attract more angry-voter attention had he not foresworn publicity stunts while running for governor in 2002. As it was, it was pretty potent symbolism.On Monday, May 17, the ragtag Independence Party of Minnesota staged a mock funeral for common sense and civility in the St. Paul capitol rotunda. The event attracted about two-dozen people, including former IP U.S. Sen. Dean Barkley, and a host of reporters--though I only noticed one TV camera. The IP's former Gov. Jesse Ventura was not present.
The event followed the official closing of the do-nothing 2004 Minnesota legislative session. Lawmakers failed to close a $160 million budget deficit--a figure many expect will balloon next year to at least $1 billion, counting inflation. Lawmakers didn't pass a bonding bill that would have created numerous construction jobs--placing a risky and possibly a bad bet that rising interest rates won't dramatically drive up the price of bonding next year.
Legislators also got nowhere on proposals to extend sex predator sentences or to build stadiums for the Twins, Gophers and Vikings. And as former U.S. Rep. Tim Penny told those gathered, legislators effectively wasted $7.5 million dollars of taxpayer money "just conducting a legislative session that never got anywhere."
What did occur was a bitterly contentious session marked by vitriolic attempts by Democrats to tear down several gubernatorial department heads through non-confirmation votes, succeeding in the case of the education commissioner. What took place was a lockout of Democrats, especially of DFL Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, by a governor who appears to be all civility on the outside, all partisanship on the inside.
"Dean Johnson, who in previous years led the stadium fight in previous years wasn't sort of brought in and made a full partner with the governor in pushing the stadium through this legislative session," Penny said in an interview after the mock funeral.
"So" he said during his speech, "we've got a blame game."
Penny took a swing Republican figures like GOP lobbyist Sarah Janacek, who continue to blame the ill-tempered Jesse Ventura--out of office since early 2003--for the current mood of bitterness at the capitol. "This session proves that the two major parties in Minnesota are capable of gridlock and controversy and lack of accomplishment all by themselves," he said. "The Minnesota voters elect governors and legislators to serve them. They do so with what is now a mistaken assumption that once they arrive at the capitol they're going to be [serving] the citizens."
Increasingly, he said, they are doing their own business. "They're increasingly doing their political parties' business. They're taking potshots and excoriating political opponents. ... But that's the outcome of a two-party system. It fails us time and again. And now that it's back to two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, they're failing us."
Survived by Ideology
A rather crude handout passed out to attendees set the event's theme:
"After a lifetime of service to our state's politicians, Civility and Common Sense perished in the closing days of Minnesota's 2004 legislative session. Weakened and wounded by the increasingly partisan politics of recent years, neither Civility nor Common Sense were able to regain a foothold in St. Paul, and were pushed out of the legislative process completely this year. Both will be sorely missed."The card also read:
"Preceded in death by Responsibility, Sensibility, a Sense of Community, Pragmatism, Common Ideals, Good Will and many other positive attributes."Survived by Haste, Greed, Power-Mongering, Demagoguery, Ideology, Irresponsibility, Short-Sightedness, Vilification, Petty Politics, and hopefully, the state of Minnesota."
Several speakers besides Penny delivered "eulogies" next to a fake coffin adorned with flowers and the names of the deceased characteristics. Speakers included Independence Party Chair and former U.S. Senate candidate Jim Moore and Michael Corbin, the declared Independence Party candidate for state House in District 26B, the seat now held by Rep. Linda Boudreau, R-Faribault (who hammered through last year's conceal-and-carry gun law).
Media Spin
After the event, several reporters gathered around Penny. At one point, Penny reacted like Kevin Garnett getting an elbow in the gut when a reporter, referring to the session just ended, asked: "What really is the harm?"
"That's spin," Penny said, half spinning away from the questioner in frustration.
The reporter is surprised and defensive. "It's a question, it's not spin," he says. "What makes it spin?" To which Penny replies:
"It's fine because none of this stuff needed to be done? If the interest rate climbs next January then there is real harm done, because then we will have to have a smaller bonding package to stay within budget limits. It doesn't get easier to do the bonding bill next year versus this year. [With the stadium bill,] they're going to lose two years anyway. So you lose on both fronts. The costs go up, and the interest costs will likely rise, because they're not going to stay low forever. So there are consequences."The one-time gimmicks and shifts that have been used to largely gloss over this problem will come due right at the beginning of this new fiscal year. So that has consequences. When you play games and enact gimmicks as a way of dealing with a serious question or a problem, those costs don't go away, they come back.
"We already know we're looking at about a $1 billion shortfall at the beginning of the new fiscal year. So where's the solution that anyone has proposed to Minnesota's long-term budget crunch. They haven't. This is not inconsequential. These are major matters. And we'd like to think that governors and legislatures would deal seriously with these matters, but instead we get finger pointing and games and gimmicks."
-- Tim PennyDean Barkley, the former IP appointee to the U.S. Senate (he filled out the dead Paul Wellstone's term), did not speak at the event. Asked if he too would have addressed the do-nothing Legislature had he addressed the crowd, Barkley said:
"I think it's more than that, I think it's the politics in the country is becoming more and more polarized, less and less of a centrist common-sense approach."...I think [IP state Rep.] Sheila Kiscaden had it right: Until the center of the political spectrum manages to organize like the left and the right have, this is going to be this way. And how we organize the center is the $64,000 question."
-- Dean BarkleyBarkley, who garnered the 5 percent of the vote needed in 1996 to earn what was then the Reform Party's major-party status in the state, said herding the cats in the middle of the political spectrum is a monumental task--one he has consistently failed at.
"I've been trying to organize the center since 1992. ... They've got other things to do. They aren't passionate about particular issues."They aren't really passionate about abortion or religion or the environment or some of these other really passionate issues that some of these other people get involved with. They're busy just trying to make their mortgage payments and keep their kids in college. And that's the difficulty in organizing them because there is no real central theme to rally around.
"...I think at the national level, the reemergence of deficit spending is what got Perot going in 1992. And I think that issue is one that gets people mad enough that that could be the rallying point if these deficits continue. It's fiscal irresponsibility, I think that could be it."
-- Dean Barkley
