“You want to include people and make them feel part of the group. In direct contrast to those who are drawn only to exclusive groups, you actively avoid those groups that exclude others. You want to expand the group so that as many people as possible can benefit from its support. You hate the sight of someone on the outside looking in. You want to draw them in so that they can feel the warmth of the group. You are an instinctively accepting person. Regardless of race or sex or nationality or personality or faith, you cast few judgments. Judgments can hurt a person’s feelings. Why do that if you don’t have to? Your accepting nature does not necessarily rest on a belief that each of us is different and that one should respect these differences. Rather, it rests on your conviction that fundamentally we are all the same. We are all equally important. Thus, no one should be ignored. Each of us should be included. It is the least we all deserve.”

If that is true about me, is it any wonder that I believe it is horrible for government to discriminate against gay couples who are lawfully excluded from obtaining the same benefits through committing to each other that straight couples have?

That is why I am very happy today’s vote by the state Senate was a vote for equality in marriage.  Everybody who wants to marry, can be included.

A lot of people in my district were surprised when Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington) voted to support the law in the state House.  I actually wasn’t.  I’ve been following Pat Garofalo for years, and I don’t believe he was against gay marriage when he voted to put the amendment on the ballot in 2012.  I just don’t think he had the political guts to stand up the way John Kriesel did.  And I called him out on that before the vote, urging him to vote what he believed, not what was good for him politically.

This time he voted for freedom, and I thank Rep. Garofalo.   And well I commend him, I am proud that the Minnesota DFL took the initiative to tackle this subject despite the impending threat by Republicans that this will divide the state like nothing since the Civil War.  That is absurd!  Anybody who follows politics today knows that topics no longer hold for more than a few months.  Where was the TEA Party in 2012?  Divisive issues holding for decades are a piece of history in politics.  People care about right now almost exclusively, and let’s face it, very few of us are going to be affected by gay marriages, other than a lot of people are going to be buying a bunch of wedding gifts soon.

This will pass and be a nonfactor in 2014.  Sure Republicans will try to use it as an issue, and I certainly hope they do, because it will carry very little weight?  I’m sure Rep. Garofalo will have a challenger, but really what’s the point?  He simply voted to let people make their own life choices without government limiting their abilities to do so.  Isn’t that what conservatives want?  That idea of letting people “make their own life choices” is why I find it funny that Sen. Dave Thompson (R-Lakeville) who regularly uses the term “nanny state” to describe Minnesota laws, voted to let our Minnesota government continue to make the decision for citizens about who they can or cannot marry.  Do you agree that is hypocritical?

As Sen. Thompson and his nanny state hypocrisy embarks on a run to try and defeat Gov. Mark Dayton, I am thankful that Gov. Dayton also supports this legislation, and that two of the three people who represent me in State government said yes to this bill giving people more freedom.  Thank you Gov. Dayton and Rep. Garofalo!  Hopefully Sen. Thompson will make a better choice next time when he is forced to choose between what he says he believes, and what he believes will work best for him on the floor of the Republican State Convention.

StarTribune 3/31/13: Lame-duck Cravaack handed out large raises to his staff

This is exactly why I vote for people who demonstrate love and compassion for people first. You cannot trust politicians when they say they will cut taxes or spending, or eliminate waste. But when a politician has demonstrated sincere concern for other humans, and cares how people and families live and survive, you know they will vote to make their lives better, even if they eventually fail on spending promises.

Chip Cravaack was a huge government spending hypocrite! He talked continuously about “what’s best for all Americans.” He attacked Oberstar and Nolan on trust, spending, and government waste. He was a TEA Partier, which should mean he is concerned about how our taxes are spent. And he voted to cut aid and college grants for many people who needed it. I think it is safe to say, he didn’t like “welfare.” But apparently that only applied to people he didn’t know personally. People who pledged an allegiance to him were fine getting welfare. When he lost the 2012 election, he gave his full-time staff and friends a 93% government pay raise for the final two months of their government employment. And worse yet, this government spending hawk, and welfare hater, admits he gave them government welfare. Cravaack said “at the end of the year, I maxed out everybody because I had no idea how long these guys would be out of work.” He gave them extra unemployment. If any of them claimed unemployment Americans paid them twice!

It wasn’t his money to dole out to his lackeys. This is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t trust politicians who care more about taxes than people. This is why I don’t trust politicians like Chip Cravaack, John Kline, Michelle Bachman, Tom Emmer, or Dave Thompson, whose solution to everything seems to be lower taxes and less government. I want politicians whose solution is to improve lives for the next several generations, not to give me an extra $50 at the end of the year. I believe these are self-righteous politicians who want control and prestige more than they really care about their ideals. If these politicians were Doctors rather than lawyers, they would have a God Complex, and a few that I’ve met might have that anyway. In the end, I think they will do what benefits themselves and their friends not what benefits the rest of us, despite what they say.

That’s why it is so unimaginable for me to vote for Republicans these days. I think at one time, there were Republicans who cared about the future and families, and still had plans for less spending. Now it seems caring about people is a bad thing in the Republican Party, and the world and those less fortunate are jokes to them. I can’t see myself voting for anybody other than a liberal in the near future. It is about compassion first, even if fiscal responsibility is second. That’s not happening on the right side of the aisle.

That seems odd doesn’t it? But, in reality, we don’t elect our Minnesota senators by using an electoral college based on county population, so why should we do it for the president. Every vote should count, and every person in the US should care about the presidential race. That is not the case right now. If you are a Democrat living in Alabama, you have no input in the presidential race. If you are a Republican living here in Minnesota, you also have no input into the presidential race. In fact, because of the Electoral College, more than 80% of Americans get ignored by presidential candidates every election. That means less than 20% of the population in so-called “swing states” decide who the president is for the rest of us. In 2012, it was Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia, 13% of the nation’s population!

It seems so logical to elect the person who gets the most votes. That is what every other election does. It would engage more people. Democrats in Alabama have somebody to vote for, just like Republicans in Minnesota. How many people feel like their vote doesn’t count, so they don’t vote? That changes with popular vote. As I said before, we don’t elect others using an Electoral College type system, why reserve an old outdated system to vote?

Many opponents are against it because it means Democrats will more easily win by concentrating on metropolitan areas exclusively, but I would argue that isn’t the case. In the Electoral College, Minnesota has ten votes and Alabama has nine. That is plus 1 vote for the Democrat. Minnesota, hasn’t voted for a Republican since Nixon, and Alabama hasn’t voted for a Democrat since the Dixiecrats moved to the GOP in the 70s. But if you look at the vote totals for the two states in 2012, Romney beat Obama by over 200,000 votes: Obama – 2,341,288 votes, Romney – 2,574,028 votes, despite the fact that Minnesota has half a million more people and a much larger voter turnout, Romney won.

The truth is, that electing a president by a national popular vote would elect moderates, almost every time. Super-liberal Democrats concentrating metropolitan areas would be no more likely to win that super-conservative Republicans concentrating on the south and rural areas. That frightens both Democrats and Republicans. But every vote should count, and I think a lot more would be accomplished without the extremist candidates parties put forward.

It wouldn’t bother me, and I am guessing he is laid back enough to not be bothered either, but I digress. Now Dave Thompson has 1,831 followers on Facebook and Pat Garofalo has 414 followers, although that is his campaign page since I am not “friends” with him like I am with Dave, but I did send him a friend request…

So you would think if I looked at another politician with 4,362 “friends” – almost twice as many as my two legislators combined, I should be able to find a couple of insulting words about the opposition right away, right? I looked at Paul Thissen’s Facebook page. I think that is a pretty fair comparison, I think Dave Thompson will be, or at least should be, the leader of Republicans in the legislature, and Paul Thissen is obviously the top DFLer in the legislature. Pat Garofalo is an idio… I mean, Pat Garofalo is not a leader.

I went back as far as I could go, counting over 80 individual comments before I stopped counting comments. No “friend” of Paul Thissen insulted Republicans in the least. Interesting, huh? Posts were positive, the word compromise appeared several times, and yet, in Dave Thompson’s most recent Facebook post, two of his 1,831 “friends” call people they don’t agree with “idiots.” Maybe the legislature could get more done if there wasn’t as much discounting of the free opinions of people they have differing opinions with.

Funny that Michael is more contitutionally knowledgeable than John Roberts apparently/

As I mentioned before, the debt ceiling is their own problem for not getting work done to improve the economy, while still spending tons of money on war. Congressman Kline voted to support President Obama a few weeks ago when the President basically said about raising the debt ceiling “Congress created this debt mess, Congress ran up the national credit card debt, so it is Congress’s responsibility to pay for what they agreed to spend.” And now that John Kline agrees with that by supporting President Obama with his vote to raise the debt ceiling, he knows he can no longer run on debt issues without looking like a giant hypocrite. On a side note, he never should have been able to run on that anyway, he has been in congress since 2002, when he supported every Bush budget, every Bush budget voodoo reporting gimmick, and Republican establishment spending. If you recall, he didn’t become against earmarks until it was obvious that Democrats were going to take control of the House in 2006.

Without that golden election ticket, he and other Republicans can only deride a program that will quickly become entrenched in society, and will quickly become a safety blanket for people who want to start small businesses, but who have preexisting conditions. Or middle-aged Americans who have health issues that prevent them from continuing to work, that before would have bankrupt them. And when we realize how many people truly just need a little consistent mental health help to become productive members of society, then what are the Republicans going to argue with when a majority of the country likes it?

Of course there will always be people who hate it, doctors who hate it, and politicians who hate it, but this is a democratic (small “d”) country, not a consensus country. Remember for years Republicans wanted to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, now many of them are “defenders” (and I use that word sarcastically even if they do not) of those programs. Since Republicans can’t do anything about Obamacare, it is about time they buckle down and get some real work done that truly improves the country, instead of complaining about something that you have no ability to change in the near future.

Silence.

Sounds pretty ridiculous doesn’t it?  But that is exactly what Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are doing about the debt ceiling.  The debt ceiling isn’t for future spending, it is for past spending.  Congress has already agreed to spend that money, and now Republicans are basically calling up taxpayers and saying, Congress has a spending problem, and the only way we can do anything about it is to become deadbeats and do what Donald Trump keeps doing and just quit paying the bills.  Sounds pretty ridiculous doesn’t it?

Here’s how you fix it.  Step one: raise the debt ceiling to account for what you have already spent.  Step two: cut future spending so you don’t have to worry about the debt ceiling anymore.  Hello? McFLy??

It isn’t that difficult.  Well maybe you need a step 1-1/2, get corporate money out of politics so politicians don’t spend money on crap to keep donors happy.

“Not getting a budget agreement with the governor shouldn’t turn into a financial windfall for legislators.”

See? That’s what I am talking about. He is absolutely standing up to his principles of helping to personally correct the state’s budget problems by doing everything he can, no matter how small, to protect the finances of Minnesota taxpayers.

It’s funny, did you know House legislators get paid a per diem of $66 per day of work, on top of the $31,140 in taxpayer paid salary they make for a part-time job. It makes me wonder, with only a 25 mile commute to the Capitol compared to other legislators who have to spend the night in St Paul, Pat Garofalo must receive one of the lowest per diems in the Minnesota House.

Let’s see let’s look at the numbers… Here it is in 2012… Pat Garofalo only received $11,418 in per diem. See that’s not – WHAT!?! ELEVEN THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED EIGHTEEN DOLLARS!?! That is the most in the house, and about $1,500 more than the second highest per diem taker.

I don’t understand. I thought…

Well, at least he isn’t the highest per diem taker overall. Republican Senator David Senjem took $11,438 in per diem. Wait. Wasn’t David Senjem the Majority Leader? He must have worked a lot more than Pat Garofalo. And he only took $20 more than Pat!?! What’s that you say? Senate member receive a 30% higher per diem than House members? That means in House dollars, David Senjem’s per diem would have been only about $8800.

This just doesn’t make sense. I thought Pat Garofalo was a fiscal hawk. But he took 15% more in per diem than the next closest member, and he doesn’t even need an apartment.

This is very distressing. Well I guess we can be glad that his salary is only $31,140, so his pension doesn’t include his per diem. I mean that would be wrong if in private business, an employer was forced to contribute to a 401(k) for the employee’s expense reimbursements.

WHAT!?! FOR LEGISLATORS THEIR PENSION INCLUDES THE COST OF THEIR EXPENSES!?! SO HE GETS ANOTHER $1,700 IN PENSION ABOVE HIS TAXPAYER FUNDED PAY OF $42,558 FOR A PART-TIME JOB!?!

Funny thing is, Pat Garofalo initially said he was retiring for the legislature last session. He probably figured since he was retiring, he might as well take everything he can from the taxpayers to get his just reward for his services, including a fatter pension. The only thing this proves is that Pat Garofalo is in politics for himself. In third-world countries, people become politicians and police to get ahead and take what they can for their selfish benefit. It is pretty sad that Pat Garofalo is treating Minnesotans, and more specifically his neighbors, with the respect of a third-world dishonest politician.

It’s time to change things.

While Minnesota is controlled by DFLers, across the border in Wisconsin, Republicans recaptured total control.  With two states that are so similar, what is the difference? One word, gerrymandering.

In 2010, Republicans controlled everything, and drew new lines to help them win seats.  Minnesota’s lines were drawn by nonpartisan judges.  A couple weeks ago, Wisconsin voted for Barack Obama, even though a native son was on the ballot for the Republicans.  Wisconsin also elected a Democrat to the senate in Tammy Baldwin, over a former popular Republican governor.  Yet, the State House is controlled by Republicans with a 20 vote margin, and the State Senate is controlled, narrowly, but controlled by Republicans.

Gerrymandering has always been a tool to maintain power, and Wisconsin in 2012 is a prime example.  That’s why Minnesota needs to eliminate one party’s ability to gerrymander, and instead establish a fair and nonpartisan board to redraw district lines after the census every ten years.

Establishing a nonpartisan board would eliminate a lot of useless chatter, eliminate a lot of wasted time legislators should be working to make Minnesota better, and ultimately save taxpayers money.  So many Republicans used the phrase” it is just common-sense” to pass voter ID amendment.  That wasn’t common-sense, it was completely political and partisan.  If we change this procedure, neither side benefits from this, and neither side loses from this.  That is exactly what common-sense is.

Let your Minnesota legislators know that you want to take redistricting duties away from a political body and make it a nonpartisan practice.