What's FISHY? -- PawLENTY!

Guess who got up at the crack of dawn yesterday morning to try and warn all the people heading out on White Bear Lake at Minnesota's grand "Fishing Opener" to be on the look-out for this Pirate PawLENTY who's known to have sworn in pirate blood not to raise taxes on the wealthy, even if it means holding Minnesotans hostage these last six years. We told all the poor Minnesota fishermen who'd listen to be on the lookout for a real hypocritical character in red driving a slick speedboat and who likes to be called "Governor" but who's doing just the opposite of what pirates used to do when they sailed the high seas: PawLENTY's been stealing from the poor to give to the wealthy! He must still think his "no new taxes" piracy is the surefire, cutthroat way to the GOP Presidency.

Somebody must have heard our call because, lo and behold, after a while a colorful pontoon boat bearing peace flags and flying "Tax the Rich" rainbow colored kites came into view on the water. The colorful pontoon appeared to be trying to catch up with the Governor's speed boat all over the lake which, by now, had become nothing but a large free speech zone, without private property walls or barbed wire fences to stop the messages sent over the bow. The Pirate Governor's speed boat, to be sure, was much faster then the little Minnesotan pontoon trying to bring him to account. But even though the Red Pirate was able to continually zip away, he couldn't avoid the commoners' messages: "Pirate PawLENTY -- holding MN hostage!" and "What's FISHY? PawLENTY!"

In the end, Governor PawLENTY did catch his little fish and something he prized even more: a number of staged photo-ops, which was no doubt what he was really fishing for.

Although the hypocrite Pirate is simultaneously poised to veto Minnesota legislators' new tax plan to fund public school education, nursing homes, long-term care facilities and hospitals and despite facing a $4.6 billion deficit in Minnesota's state budget, PawLENTY thought nothing of using poor Minnesotans' tax money to pay for the several law enforcement boats that served as his personal escort service zipping about the lake.

PawLENTY's slick maneuvers have also kept his old Pirate Pal Norm Coleman's senate seat empty and from providing Minnesotans with their right to representation on the national level. Talk about holding a state hostage!

And can anyone venture a guess as to what it may have cost taxpayers yesterday to bring this "Ramsey County Emergency Management Homeland Security Mobile Incident Command Center" shining like a million dollars and full of officers and intelligence analysts to the Minnesota Fishing Opener?!

We hadn't heard that the annual Fishing Opener, special as it is for Minnesota, had been classified in the upper tiers of National Special Security Events, so we wondered what so many of the Governor's homeland security mates could be doing inside the big patriotically decorated Command Center. Were they tasked, for example, with providing the Governor their best intelligence about where on the lake the fish were biting? Or were they just busy trying to manage the data coming in from their links to National Geo-Spatial Center satellites (links hooked up during the RNC) focused on Minnesota's other 10,000 lakes? They might have been thumbing through their recently issued "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" to find out what kind of special threat was posed by the two of us holding signs across the street, but we didn't see anyone even peep outside the windows of the "Ramsey County Emergency Management Homeland Security Mobile Incident Command Center". So heaven knows what they were up to inside. But, shiver our timbers! -- it didn't look as if the Pirate Governor's big smiling photos and fishing opener came cheap for the poor Minnesota taxpayers.

Quick, let's all ask Jon Stewart's "Daily News" program to expose the piracy that went on yesterday at the Minnesota Governor's Fishing Opener!

Comments

[golfdoc50]

Colleen ran for congress against Jon Kline and lost. If you want to hand the Republicans the governorship again, encourage her to run for that post.

[Pucky]

The spending in Minnesota has gone up enormously.

To what level would the Democrats finally admit that the spending and taxes are too high?

The answer: never.

Since they don't pay the taxes, they don't care how high it goes.

Pawlenty is doing a good job holding the line. Keep up the good work.

[Querent]

Democrats don't pay taxes? Well, of all the idiotic Republican lies I've heard in my life, I've got to admit, at least yours is a new one.

[lastyellowdogintx]

It rather boggles the mind watching the golden gopher train wreck.
You would think that the #$%^$^$ bridge falling in the #$%%$#^# river
would have been a wake up call.

[joebaggadonuts]

Run for Governor, Coleen. Then they will take you seriously.

[GreatNews27]

The rich own congress, the state houses and the media. Restiance is futile.

[joebaggadonuts]

They are not the Borg. Remember the French Revolution.

[jmpurser]

The government of the people by the corporations for the wealthy. Welcome to Ronald Reagan's America.

[Art Coulson]

Without getting tangled up in the politics of the situation, let me clarify a couple of points in Colleen Rowley's post in regards to the Ramsey County mobile command center and its use at the governor's fishing opener last weekend.

Rowley writes: "And can anyone venture a guess as to what it may have cost taxpayers yesterday to bring this "Ramsey County Emergency Management Homeland Security Mobile Incident Command Center" shining like a million dollars and full of officers and intelligence analysts to the Minnesota Fishing Opener?!"

First, thanks for the compliment about the command center. We bought it used some time back from another local agency. Second, I don't have to venture a guess what it cost to bring the command center to White Bear Lake for the opener. I can tell you pretty easily -- I just picked up the phone and asked our director of emergency management. The command center is staffed entirely by volunteers at such events (Sorry, no intelligence analysts were enlisted to watch the governor fish last weekend. Perhaps you've been watching too many spy movies). The only cost to county taxpayers for its use during the fishing opener was about 3 gallons of diesel fuel to drive it to the lake and back. At the average cost of diesel fuel of $2.13 a gallon, the total tab was $6.39.

Art Coulson
Public Communications Director

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks so much, Director Coulson, for responding to all my questions--or at least some of them! It's great when democracy works and we can get answers to things that, on their surface, do look fishy. And it's great your agency is being frugal with the gas, use of volunteers and buying used Mobile Incident Command Centers inasmuch as we all can see the tug of war going on for funding and resources being provided for public safety purposes these days.

I will also compliment ALL the law enforcement folks at White Bear Lake that we came into contact with who were totally professional. The White Bear Police Chief was hospitable, knowledgeable and courteous. One of the Ramsey Co. "Lake and Trails" volunteers who walked by even remarked that he agreed with our banner about health care.

Of course we did see lots and lots of uniformed officers and vehicles who were not "volunteers" on the shore and the lake, to include the boats escorting the governor. So if you could pick up the phone again and try to come up with the total number of officers, boat fuel and the estimated tab, (which is probably not something the mainstream media even asked you, did they?), that would really be helpful and probably informative to Minnesota budget decision-makers.

Thanks again for your helpfulness.

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

Maybe also one of these days, if you want to get together (as it's not really appropriate to air all the dirty laundry history of government boondoggle and off-base actions that we've probably both witnessed--but speaking for myself only, I certainly witnessed in my 24 year career in the FBI), I'd be happy to tell you what my suspicious, questioning attitude is based on. Finally, is there any way that someone could answer my request under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act about the information your agency collected on the peace and social justice groups I asked about who were diagrammed and charted out on "Homeland Security Documents" in connection with the RNC? My request to the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office about these groups was made back in December and it's never been actually answered.

[Dbos]

Just another good old boy . This guy fishes very shallow .

[WinterParkMom]

Isn't he a two term gov? Seems to me Minnesotans don't really investigate their elected officials. Bachman, Coleman, Pawlenty, Ventura? This is why our citizenry needs to be super informed about those campaigning for office of any kind.

In Florida we have the same situation. Charlie Crist has high approval ratings, but that's because he keeps his head down and hasn't directly done anything controversial. It's all being put into the hands of our (republican) legislature, knocking down our light rail bill, closing multiple schools and laying off thousands of teachers and on and on. But yet our state cannot seem to realize that the people they elect for tallahassee and washington do not have their best interests in mind, and they still vote republican. Talk to your neighbors, talk to strangers in the supermarket, at the gas station, at school events. This is the only way to inform those who don't do it for themselves.

[allis1]

That is my frustration as well, too many listen only to sound bites and don't dig deeper,
which leaves them, and all of us, very vulnerable to people like Paw-lenty. I've lived in
Minnesota all my life and I can tell you Minnesotans don't like talking about politics anymore than they like talking about sex and religion in "polite" company. But the stakes are high if we
don't start engaging in more public dialogue.

[tomasedison]

Timmy strikes me as the man-child of the GOP. He will never make it on the national level.

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

This comment from one on the pontoon correctly notes the sacredness in Minnesota of its annual "Fishing Opener".

"Thanks again for including me on the fishing trip. In the beginning, I had to really think about whether I wanted to be out there, because it seems almost a sacred right for all people (not just our friends) to be able to once and a while get away from it all to fish or commune with nature or whatever, without being hassled. But, the stakes are so high in the current standoff between the governor and the legislature, and the involvement of the citizenry so low, I thought that being a bit of a nuisance was appropriate. As I see it, the only way out of the economic mess that we are in is to insist that those who have the most help out the most. Just borrowing billions from our descendants doesn't seem fair, either. We can't let the burden of the bad economy continue to be born by the poorest of the poor. After years of regressive taxes and bail outs for the rich, we finally have a progressive tax bill before the state legislature. But, unless the people rise up to insist on the fairness of progressive taxation, it will just be more suffering by the people who have suffered the most, while the rich and powerful fish and do their thing, insulated from the troubles of the rest. Anyway, this is how I see it."

[Coleen Rowley - Huffpost Blogger]

The comment I posted is also absolutely right, however, about the stakes being so high right now which we felt justified our actions and made them necessary.

On a very serious note, the daughter of one of the other people on the boat had a 20 year old friend who just died of an asthma attack due to not being able to afford health care.

[Peaceful Patrtot]

Thank you for exposing the hypocrite Pirate Pawlenty, who is willing to cut off funding for social services and police and road repair yet is willing to spend extravagant amounts on his fishing opener where he obscenely had the "Ramsey County Emergency Management Homeland Security Mobile Incident Command Center" as if there was an emergency at hand.

[Querent]

Funny. But what is with the strange spelling PawLENTY? I don't quite get that.

[ColeenRowleyMN2]

I guess it's only a bad inside-Minnesota joke that PawLENTY (PLENTY) is fishy here. With the 10,000 lakes and fish here, sometimes things are not as funny to people outside the state.

[repuglycon]

Coleen
Very cool...You are an American heroine. Obama should send for you.

[rovezaleeker]

We won't get fooled again! Tim Pawlenty is a wolf in wolf's clothing. He's just lucky that more East Dakota bridges haven't fallen on poor defenseless taxpayers heads while he has been in charge of raiding the cookie jar.

[Bill Habedank]

Yes, Gov. Pawlenty is a new breed of pirate. This one steals from the poor and gives to the rich. Governor Pawlenty must be tired of supporting welfare moms, among other things. In today's Star Tribune it was stated in an article that today's welfare moms are now your grandmothers in a nursing home.
This "No New Taxes" governor from Minnesota has deceived many. Yes, he is a very crafty pirate. By refusing to support needed government services like fire departments, police, roads construction, bridges, schools or nursing homes he has allowed total state collections of property taxes to now exceed total state income taxes. This has forced local governments and state agencies to also charge higher fees to be able to maintain essential services or in other words a HUGE hidden tax increase.
America, don't be fooled by this crafty pirate come 2012.

[dadw5boys]

Don't Reagan , daddy Bush and G.W. stealing the Social Security Funds to off set tax cuts for millionaires qualify them as Pirates too ?

.

[ColeenRowleyMN2]

The pirates of yore were more like Robinhood but these new pirates, as I said, are the absolutely worst kind: stealing from the poor to give to the wealthy. And you're right, there's quite a few of them now.