7/18/2005 11:15:00 AM Lies, lies and more big, fat, hairy, stinking lies Harrady Copley-Woods on the state shutdown
Haddayr Copley-Woods
End nanny-state government. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Welfare health care. No more tax-and-spend. Tighten our belts. Blah blah blah.
Thanks and God Bless Minnesota.
What? I still have 721 words left? But I’m done. All I need is a brief series of empty phrases. Let’s shut down the newspaper!
Oh. I actually have to produce coherent results for a living.
Spectacularly incoherent Rep. Mark Buesgens (R-Jordan) is crowing with delight over our state government shutdown. He thinks it makes him and the other Republicans in the legislature look very manly. Even if the shutdown is over by the time this goes to print, his party will have shown us all, by golly.
In a recent Star Tribune editorial, he claims South Dakota has it all figured out and that if we don’t stop our greedy tax swilling, everyone is going to move there. This explains the South Dakota fever sweeping our great nation. I was wondering.
He also claims DFL efforts to adequately fund education, health care and services to the poor are “obscene.” You know what’s obscene? It’s a party claiming to embrace Christianity while ignoring Jesus’ words about poor folks. It’s gutting the programs that make our state a wonderful place to live (education, health care, environmental conservation).
You know what else is obscene? It’s planning (and carrying out) a government shutdown and then blaming it on the opposite party. Let’s not kid ourselves, folks: the Republican-
controlled House voted down what the DFL-controlled Senate voted up: an extension in services past June 30. So don’t sprain your wrists finger-
shaking, you liars.
Yes, liars. When you tell us that your budget raises spending for education when in fact you are not even covering the cost of inflation, that is a lie. When you call a new tax on cigarettes a “user fee,” you are lying. If you try to raise revenue through gambling and cigarette taxes, then you were lying when you said we do not have a revenue problem. When you say that we “all” have to “tighten our belts” when in fact the budget is being balanced only on the backs of the poor and working class, that is a big, fat, hairy, stinking lie.
Even the income tax increase on the wealthy proposed by DFL will not cause the rich to pay as high a percentage of income tax as I do, so why all the lying and sniveling?
You think this sounds like class warfare? Here’s actual class warfare: gouging the poor and working class, telling us our state’s problems are all our fault, and then calling us names.
Pawlenty calls MinnesotaCare “welfare health care.” Lies. My family is on MinnesotaCare. I cannot afford the $1,200 it would cost monthly to cover my family through work on my nonprofit income, so I pay $300 in premiums to the state for my husband and children. Affordable, yes, for which I am profoundly grateful. But hardly a handout. And because our claims don’t add up to our premiums, we are paying into the system. But according to Pawlenty, I and my hardworking stay-at-home husband are lazy welfare mammas who want something for nothing and don’t deserve adequate health care.
Republicans who call for desperate people to “tighten their belts” and claim that cuts are just sound fiscal judgment are lying by omission. These cuts hurt real people. Cutting health benefits while simultaneously cutting already under-funded childcare benefits hurts actual living, breathing people. They lose their jobs or their kids. They go hungry. They get sick.
If legislators were willing to take corporations to task and insist they pay actual livable wages and offer affordable health care to all of their employees, perhaps Republicans would have a point. But instead they block DFL efforts to close corporate tax loopholes while handing out tax incentives like candy to the real welfare mammas: bloated corporations. They lean harder and harder on people they have already begun to grind to dust.
So this is my message to the legislature: If you really want folks off of welfare, support them enough to get off of it, don’t yank the ladder out from under them. If you really support family values, keep affordable health care available to families like mine. If you really want to keep our enviable educated workforce, don’t bleed public education dry. And don’t pretend to stand for values you wouldn’t recognize if they bit you on the ass.
Do your job. Be honest. And viva la Linda Berglin.
Haddayr Copley-Woods, despite a full-time job, two kids and extra writing jobs on the side, spends most of her time sucking at the teat of the Welfare State.
Haddayr Copley-Woods actually knows less about politics than she does about writing. Her naivete is mesmerizing. Before calling Republicans "Big fat hairy liars" (It is SOOO irreresponsible to lump all Republicans into one pigeonhole.) Perhaps Ms. Woods should actually research something before writing. It is often helpful when writing to collect little bits and pieces of information known as FACTS. Haddayr: Please put down the Powderhorn Park Pipe of Irish Wacky Weed you've been smoking and look up the Congressional voting records of some of your constituents. You will find Barbara Boxer, Teddy Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and your own deceased Paul Wellstone are as anti-American and as detrimental to traditional American and family values as you can possibly get. Republicans are not your enemy, Haddayr. For the bad guys, look at the politicians that give needles to heroin addicts, rubbers to horny teenage boys, turkey basters to lesbians that want to raise a kid in an abnormal household, abort innocent babies, keep serial killers and pederasts off death row, and spend this country into bankruptcy. Write about those morons for a change. Suddenly SEC investigations and possible stock fraud don't seem so bad in the grand scheme of things.
