Quick Hits - 2/17/15

Sorry, sorry sorry.  I've been very busy with family commitments.  I have a lot to get too, so:

It's now come to light that some of the dance teams who protested the Faribault High School State Tourney win stationed themselves outside of the Faribault locker room, screaming and bullying at the Faribault team after the awards ceremony.  Once again, the Minnesota State High School League investigated and determined no cheating had happened by Faribault.  Seriously, the coaches for Eden Prairie, Wayzata, Lakeville South, Chaska and Eastview all need to be fired.  Not only for the bad sportsmanship during the awards ceremony, but now, at the very least, being aware of a bullying incident towards the Faribault team, if not being complicit in it.  On one positive note, the Cannon Falls team, another rural team, was the only one who went and congratulated Faribault after their win.  In my mind, this is wealthy suburban schools being furious a rural school won.

In regards to the Dayton/Bakk blow up, where Senate Majority Leader Bakk, after the House and Senate last year gave Governor Dayton the ability to raise the pay rates of state commissioners, rates which had been unbelievably low, fell for the knee jerk reaction trap laid down by the GOP and voted to halt the raises, in turn taking an issue which was a non-issue and making it a major issue, I still don't get it.  What was Bakk thinking?  If it was due diligence, shouldn't that have been discussed last year when they approved the Governor doing this?  If it is oversight, everyone can see the commissioners were getting paid at a far lower rate than comparable positions, and even with the raises, it still puts them under the pay rates of lesser jobs in the state.  If this is Bakk grandstanding, well, good for you. It should also not be missed that many other Democrats who voted to give the Governor this power, voted against him wielding it.  It's so depressing when you see the Democrats get played so easily by the GOP.

Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana, is the latest GOP politician to show how amazingly bad the Republicans are on financial issues.  He followed the template I laid out earlier on the blog; give the wealthiest and biggest corporations massive tax breaks and then, after you've removed a third to a half of your projected income, start to try to work the budget.  He has had a financial mess, raiding every emergency fund the state has to try to fill in budget gaps, and he still comes up way short.  His answer to Louisiana's 1.6 billion dollar budget shortfall?  Leave it for the next Governor to handle.  Where have I heard that before...?  Oh that's right, Tim Pawlenty did the same thing on a lesser scale when he shifted the entire education budget into a future fiscal cycle.

Here's an interesting question:  If a GOP politician was forced to make a choice between a tax increase for the wealthy, an increase which would still put the wealthiest at a percentage far lower than the rest of their constituents, or completely defunding education spending in their state, which one would they choose?  Most of them would quickly choose to defund education.  The funniest part would be the media spinning it as how much better our society will be without an educated populace.

The best part of these conservative states getting absolutely screwed over by their Republican leadership is how they won't change.  Next election, even though 40 years of mostly unadulterated GOP rule in their state have doomed their quality of life for generations to come, Republican voters will still stream into polling stations in Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, and North Carolina and vote R.  I really wonder what it will take for these dim bulbs to wake up.

I've heard very angry rhetoric lately from the right in regards to President Obama, angrier and more bitter than usual.  I'm chalking it up to reality.  No matter how much they have tried to derail his Presidency, how hard they have tried to thwart him at every turn, and how hard they've tried to undermine all of his agenda and initiatives from day one, he's still been a massive success at rejuvenating the economy, something even the most fervent neuvo-libertarian or tea party stooge can't deny anymore.  That infuriates them!  Just imagine if the Republicans had tried to work with him. I don't mean just doing what he wanted to do, but imagine of they just had not been obstructionist all the time.

Once again, if you want the internet to stay the same as it is right now, with you having the ability to pull up any webpage you want, then you are for Net Neutrality.  If you want the internet to be treated like cable television, where you get a basic service package with 40 websites, and, if you want to get any other websites, namely ones who stream television, movies or music, you'll need to pay a premium price, just like cable TV, then you support what the Republicans stand for, getting rid of Net Neutrality.  Your call.

And finally, in regards to the story we talked about of 4th grade kids in Edina being part of competitive basketball teams, as long as there is money to be made, not only will we see kids younger and younger pushed by their parents into the world of competitive sports, but we'll see no end to the amount of adults who will be loud defenders of such unnecessary, intense, and borderline abusive treatment of kids under the age of 10.