Category: Minnesota Politics

by Dave Mindeman

Global warming got a lot of hearings yesterday. The Minnesota legislature had a joint committee "informational" session on the issue. The US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Barbara Boxer, also had a broad discussion on the topic.

Lots going on, but in the end, isn't it just a lot of extra hot CO2 emmissions?

The World War II generation has been dubbed the "Greatest Generation" by a Tom Brokaw book. Unfortunately, the baby boom generation may go down as the "Worst Generation" and their great-grandkids may be classified as the "Last Generation"..... unless we have less talk and more action on Global Warming.

Not only have the Baby Boomers spent their kids inheritance but it looks like they may very well carbon footprint them out of existence. This situation requires some real leadership. But that is another commodity upon which we are sorely lacking.

The debates on Global Warming will go on as surely as the temperatures will rise. During yesterday's legislative joint session, Sen. Mike Jungbauer-R, East Bethel issued a press release criticizing the exercise because it did not include speakers who would question the growing consensus about global warming. There are certainly some desperate doubters -- two new books have been released recently that "theorize" global warming as a natural solar phenomenon. One of these books, "Unstoppable Global Warming", tries to convince us that we are in the midst of a natural cycle that occurs about every 1500 years.... the book was written by a physicist and an economist. Another book is called "The Chilling Stars" which relates the earth's temperature to the creation of,( more or fewer), low, wet clouds that cool the earth. They say that global climate models can't accurately register cloud effects.

So, you will probably see these books quoted as an answer to the "hysterical" calls for action on Global Warming......even though they don't account for the recent unprecedented spike in temperatures that corresponds to human industrial activity. I don't know all the details of these books, but I am sure the proponents of the status quo will be filling us in.

Still, the time for discussions should be over. We have to do something to reduce the carbon emissions.... if for no other reason then a purely selfish one.... to rid ourselves of dependence on foreign oil. And even more selfishly, Minnesota can be a leader in alternative fuels and energy and that can generate a new economic cycle that can create jobs and a healthier life for all our residents. Action is needed...bold, decisive action that takes some risks and invests in the future.

Speaker Kelliher described the joint legislative information session as "potentially historic". Well, I don't think a lot of lawmakers jawboning about potential actions in the future as much more than an historic footnote..... unless, incredibly, actions do follow the words.

Category: Minnesota Politics

By Christopher Truscott

In his inaugural address nearly 102 years ago, Theodore Roosevelt paraphrased an adage handed down through the ages in the Book of Luke when he told his audience: "Much has been given to us and much will rightfully be expected of us."

More than a century later, Minnesotans gave the DFL Party a strong mandate by handing it overwhelming majorities in both houses of the Legislature. After four years of gridlock, the November election results were a call to bold action, not a nudge toward another session of weak-kneed incrementalism.

Voters responded to DFL promises to lower property taxes, properly fund education, improve the transportation system and, yes, provide health care coverage for the 70,000 uninsured children in this state.

Barely a month after the Legislature started work, however, it's the kids living in poverty getting tossed out with the dirty bathwater of past legislative sessions.

That Tim Pawlenty abandoned his interest in insuring all children is no surprise. The governor has proven time and again he's given to big promises and little action. But the Senate DFL's leading plan is both stunning and shameful.

Under the plan the governor unveiled earlier this month, just 13,000 uninsured children would get coverage. The Senate DFL's top proposal, which would grant coverage to another 20,000 children, is better than Pawlenty's, but being the best amongst the terribly mediocre is hardly a badge of honor.

The House DFL leadership, to its immense credit, is sticking by its goal to "cover all kids." Decried by its opponents as too expensive, the $250 million House plan amounts to just three-quarters of 1 percent of the total $34.4 billion state budget Pawlenty proposed last week. That's a small price to pay when it comes to providing affordable health care to children from the poorest Minnesota families.

Near the end of his 1905 inaugural, Roosevelt called on the nation to demonstrate "the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal." He demanded of himself and those around him the very virtue in such short supply in modern politics: guts.

It's true that voters respond to grandiose promises, but in the long-run they demand action and results. Past leaders in this state had great dreams and the courage to follow through on them, making Minnesota a quality-of-life leader across the board in the last quarter of the 20th century.

As we near the end of the first decade of the new millennium, Minnesota faces daunting challenges. Some, like overhauling a broken health care system and reforming education, will take several years to resolve, but $250 million to insure 70,000 children is a quick and easy fix to a problem that's perplexed us for too long.

There's just one question that defines at the most basic level who we are as a society: How do we care for our children?

Best intentions don't matter to parents who work hard but can't provide insurance for their children. It's what gets done that counts. Legislators in both chambers have bold visions, but history won't judge them by their dreams, only their actions.

Christopher Truscott can be reached at chris.truscott@gmail.com. At this point he'd make a joke about DFL senators neutering themselves, but at least the procedure would probably be paid for by their state-provided health insurance. There's nothing funny about kids going without coverage.

Category: Minnesota Politics

By Christopher Truscott

In the three State of the Union addresses George W. Bush has delivered in his second term, Osama bin Laden has been mentioned just one time.

If you got up to go to the refrigerator during the president's speech last week you might have missed the only reference he made to the man who planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York, Pennsylvania and suburban Washington, D.C.:

"Osama bin Laden declared: 'Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

That's it. In a 5,600-word speech, bin Laden merited just one 17-word sentence. How things have changed.

In his speech to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, the president vowed we would "bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies."

"I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it," Bush told a nation in mourning. "I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people."

Yet more than five years later the murderer of America citizens gets nothing more than a single mention in a State of the Union address.

In 2001 the president said we would relegate bin Laden and his followers to "history's unmarked grave of discarded lies." Today, however, "nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed in the Middle East."

The Bush administration has done more than yield, rest and relent – it's moved on.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who was supposed to bring foreign policy and national security credentials to the administration, declared in 2001 that "In the end, we can't wrap it up unless we do get (bin Laden)."

Appearing on CNN last week, Cheney was asked about the fugitive al-Qaeda leader by Wolf Blitzer.

"Well, he's – obviously, he's well hidden," the vice president responded.

He later told Blitzer "one of the most dangerous jobs in the world is to be No. 3 in the al-Qaeda organization," referring to successful U.S. attempts to capture or kill bin Laden's deputies.

The revolving door of No. 3 men in al-Qaeda speaks volumes about the prowess of the American military and intelligence community. The inability to snag bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, his second-in-command and regular guest on al-Jazeera via submitted video, is sad testimony to the apathetic incompetence of this administration.

At this writing there are 132,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq compared to just 24,000 Americans and an additional 20,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan. During the 2002 debate over whether to launch efforts to topple Saddam Hussein, the president and his surrogates said war in Iraq, which never attacked us, wouldn't undermine efforts in Afghanistan. It's now clear the administration was either woefully misguided or blatantly lying.

This president's foreign policy legacy will not only be defined by the war he chose, but also for the enemy he brushed aside.

No matter how many times the president chooses to ignore bin Laden, he can't run from the fact that the guy he wanted "dead or alive" is still at large and instances of terrorism are up worldwide since 2001.

After the Sept. 11 attacks the world rallied to our side. Now we're making another generation of enemies in Iraq. Bush can't gloss over that, either – no matter how many times he tries to make the long-since debunked link between Saddam and that terrible September morning.

We're caught in a quagmire in Iraq. It's not the central front in the war on terrorism; it's a civil war in which we have no rightful part. At the cost of more than 3,000 American lives, we've accomplished our stated pre-war objectives – ousting Saddam, eliminating the (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction threat and establishing democracy. The rest is up to Iraqis. It's their decision whether to choose the path of freedom or the destructive avenue of tyranny. More American bloodshed won't make the government in Baghdad any more likely to take responsibility for its people.

After four years of "stay the course," it's time for a change. Not an escalation, as the president announced earlier this month, but a real new course of action.

A staged withdrawal from Iraq over the rest of 2007 will put to an end the stream of senseless American deaths in someone else's civil war. It will allow more troops to be deployed to help Afghanistan stave off a Taliban-led insurgency. And it will put a more robust force on bin Laden's trail because, quite simply, if you kill Americans you deserve to face justice. Bush was right about that.

Christopher Truscott can be reached at chris.truscott@gmail.com. This space is usually reserved for a joke and while the author can think of several, he'll use this space today to direct readers to Hal Kimball's excellent blog. We'll return to the regularly scheduled wisecracks Wednesday.