Saturday, January 27, 2007

Meet the new DFL...Same as the old DFL?

Gary and I attended a town meeting involving our local Minnesota State legislators today. The cast included Assistant Senate Majority leader Tarryl Clark, Representative Larry Haws, and my district's representative, Steve Gottwalt. The meeting actually centered around environmental issues; and I won't go into details. But I do have some observations:

With regard to bipartisanship: There was a concerted effort by all legislative attendees that there was now a new spirit of cooperation in St. Paul, and that the democrat majority would make every effort to reach across the aisle in that new spirit. Also, Ms. Clark talked a good talk about being fiscally conservative, and believing in zero-based budgeting.

However, upon lunching at the local Panera after the dog n' pony, Mr. Gottwalt related that the state DFL party had an awfully funny way of displaying bipartisanship. Specifically, as one example, during a session a DFL legislator leaned toward Mr. Gottwalt and stated, "You guys won't get one thing passed this year--you know that, do you?" Mr. Gottwalt also related when a DFL legislator (heretofore unnamed--for now) who helped to lead the committee that conveniently voted themselves a pay raise in the initial session. Reportedly, the politician had stated something to the effect of, "Don't worry. There has never been anyone who hadn't been re-elected because they raised their (own) pay. The voters won't remember."

I think what this politician (like many politicians nowadays) may fail to remember is that up til now, there hasn't been a blogosphere with long memories.

Oh, and by the way--for yours and others' edification, politicians actually have lost their jobs for voting themselves pay raises.