The Parable Of The WASP Who Nearly Ate Minnesota

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

Having lived in Minnesota or next to it for most of our lives, we feel particularly blessed that we have had governors of three political parties who had an intense interest in community goals and the quality of life of all citizens regardless of position or wealth. Even the Independent, knuckle-dragging “The Body”  Jesse Ventura, wrapped in a colorful boa and almost totally innocent of governmental history, was bright enough to pick good people to run the departments of state while he garnered a few bucks in and out of the ring. He did no harm and gave a colorful wake-up call to the Republican and Democratic parties.

But do we ever miss the Andersons of both parties, Rudy Perpich (twice), Karl Rolvaag, Harold Levander, Al Quie and Arne Carlson. All of these men reached across the aisle, shared jokes and drinks, and maintained a state that often led the United States in quality of life, civility, economic stability and growth and political leadership.

And then came Tim “Toolittle” Pawlenty, who sold his integrity and personal political philosophy, if he had one, to 50 Minnesota millionaires and billionaires occupying the ghettos of Wayzata, Edina, and Lake Minnetonka. Toolittle needed lots of money to run for governor and his only attributes were a good haircut, a pretty face, a seemingly pleasant disposition and a good radio voice. The campaign to change Minnesota began under the direction of his handlers. First came the phony “no-new-taxes” pledges. Minnesotans didn’t catch on soon enough to Toolittle’s scam of forcing cities and towns to raise property taxes to maintain a modicum of public services.

Remember the big argument about whether fees were taxes?  Remember when the Minnesota rich and super-rich actually paid the same rate of income tax as janitors, secretaries, farmers, waiters and cooks? In his eight years Toolittle almost succeeded in turning Minnesota into Mississota. During the Pawlenty disaster, literacy and education rankings took a big hit. Once on top, we now rank in the middle or below in all phases of education according to Education Week. Civility declined, the power of the veto erased the twin arts of compromise and negotiation.

From Panderer to Suckhole To WASP

I was pleased when Michele Bachmann was elected to the U.S. House.  At least her crazy, loud, divisive mouth was out of Minnesota. It was such a relief to sic her on the national press and the national body politic for awhile. She wasn’t disrupting the Minnesota Legislature anymore. So what if she runs for president. I’m confident she’ll blow off both of her feet with her mouth before she gets close.

But Toolittle is another matter. He is a smooth talker, a panderer, a “fancy” man in nice empty suits, and he follows the implicit directions of his handlers. He could be dangerous. A panderer is defined as a person who serves or caters to the vulgar passions or plans of others, especially making money. It’s the only goal of Toolittle’s handlers, and he seems willing to dedicate his political life to that goal.

But he is not only a panderer, he is a suckhole. Now, that is a more derogatory term, but anyone who has played a game on diamond, ice, court, or gridiron knows what I mean. A suckhole is the baseball player who refuses or deliberately fails to bunt a man over because he wants to hit to increase his own batting average. Or he is the hockey player who always hangs out by the red line and boards so he can get a cheap puck and score while his teammates play defense. Or he’s the basketball player who hangs out under the basket or is a dribbling ballhog. Just watch Kobe Bryant some night when he is unhappy with his LA Laker teammates. He hogs the ball, scores 45, and his team loses. Or he’s the wide receiver who doesn’t block when he’s downfield.

But Now Toolittle Is Running For The Republican Presidential Nomination

In his first term as governor Toolittle was a mere panderer. He sucked up to his millionaire and billionaire owners and began to carry out their instructions to drown government in the Lake Minnetonka bathtub. He often pimped his way across the state, romancing Chambers of Commerce and constantly repeating the “no-new-taxes” mantra of his wealthy masters. In his second term he added suckholing to pandering, always in the limelight searching for the puck or ball. Then he began to think he would seek to live in another mansion. This is when he started to go way beyond pandering and suckholing.

I didn’t run across a term or metaphor that fit his latest efforts until I read Richard Dawkins’s “The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution.” Dawkins has spent his life writing about scientific facts discovered by Charles Darwin and other evolutionists. His “God Delusion” is another great read.

I found many Toolittle metaphors in this paragraph by Dawkins: “Ichneumon wasps…lay their eggs in live insect prey, such as caterpillars, but not before carefully seeking out with their sting each nerve ganglion in turn, in such a way that the prey is paralyzed, but still stays alive. It must be kept alive to provide fresh meat for the growing wasp larva feeding inside. And the larva, for its part, takes care to eat the internal organs in a judicious order. It begins by taking out the fat bodies and digestive organs, leaving the vital heart and nervous system till last–they are necessary, you see, to keep the caterpillar alive.” If you recognize that the poor and the middle-class are the helpless caterpillars and Pawlenty and his handlers are the wasp larva eating away on the live carcass, you are on the right track.

Do We Want This WASP To Use His Sting In The U.S. Capital?

Here is what disturbs me about Toolittle:

:: He did nothing about the homeless in Minnesota. We now have the most on record–over 9,000 per day. He stung them when few were looking.

:: Middle income taxpayers in Minnesota are now subsidizing tax breaks for the richest families in the state. The wealth of our millionaires doubled under Toolittle’s administration and their state and local tax rates have decreased by four percent. Another sting.

:: In a bizarre attempt to gain the attention of the nutcases who listen to nothing but Fox News/Tea Party radio personalities and TV anchors he is now referring to the national debt as a “pile of poo.” He doesn’t say anything about the fact he and Lurch squatted over the debt for eight years.

:: At one time when he was in the Minnesota Legislature, Toolittle was one of only 11 Republicans who voted to include gays and lesbians in the state’s Human Rights Act. (Ssshhh! Don’t let this out! It will hurt Timmy’s chances with the crowd that might nominate him!) Now he opposes everything about gays: civil unions, service in the military, gay marriage, gay and lesbian rights, and even–is it Bernie and Ernie of Sesame Street who are gay? He says if he is elected he will repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” That would be a major sting. It is quite sad to see personal ambition override commonsense, fair play, and human rights. Toolittle is trying desperately to gain the support of The Family Leader, an anti-gay Iowa group that has such inspiring messages such as “Gay Sex Kills,” “Homosexuality Is More Dangerous Than Smoking,” and “Homosexuality Is Not Hard-Wired.” They argue that same-sex marriage, legal now in Iowa, will bring on polygamy. The stinger is out.

:: Evidently Toolittle has supped at the George Bush brain. When Lurch lost his first election he said he would never be “outChristianed again.” Toolittle’s Bible-thumping is coming a bit late but he has to get the support of the God, guns, and gays crowd somehow. Now he says the United States is a Christian nation because “it is in our founding documents.” The Constitution has no reference to a God. The Declaration of Independence has a reference to “Nature’s God.” Heck, that could be a reference to Mother Nature or Al Gore. Toolittle needs to study the religious history of the colonies. Our first immigrants came from England, France and other European countries to escape religious persecution. They fought the idea when several colonies tried to establish state religions.

:: Toolittle once supported a system of cap and trade to help solve the increase in global warming. In the early part of his two terms he thought we needed to reduce greenhouse gases. (Keep this quiet or he will lose all the climate change deniers). Here is his latest political Tower of Babbling about global warming: “All of us should be in favor or reducing pollution, but we need to do that in a way that doesn’t wreck the economy. Cap and trade is the wrong approach.” He doesn’t say what the right approach is. Only three years ago he though cap and trade was the right approach. Here comes the stinger again!

:: Toolittle neglected the state and its citizens so much, particularly during his second term, that the state fell from being in the top ten in nearly everything to the middle of the pack or worse.  From third in education to 36th is a sign of failure in both policy and funding. The achievement gap among races widened. He made it easier to carry a gun and made it harder for the poor to get an abortion. He ignored worsening water quality, rising poverty, and the exploding gap between the rich and the poor. Sting, sting, sting.

:: The hallmark of Toolittle’s transportation policy was the collapse of the I-35 bridge after numerous inspections showed it desperately needed repair. He spent weeks spreading the blame around as much as he could.

:: In education, art and music classes were cut from public schools and class sizes grew to be the largest on record. Tuition at Minnesota colleges and universities are among the highest in the nation. The average Minnesota college student now graduates with a $30,000 debt.

:: Local property taxes increased between 15 and 20 percent annually while property values declined. Toolittle’s state auditor said smaller towns did not need libraries. That’s a real stupid sting.

:: Supreme Court judges say there’s not enough money to run a fair court system.

:: In his last year he rejected a $850,000 federal teen pregnancy prevention grant while he approved $500,000 in abstinence-only money that cost the state $379,000 in matching funds. Such an act picks up Tea Party and Bible-thumping support. The problem is no one has found an abstinence program in the entire country that actually works. Evidently the stinger doesn’t work on hormones.

:: Toolittle pandered to his wealthy handlers by vetoing a DNR bill which would have improved the water quality of Minnesota lakes and imposed new rules about dock and home sizes and beach restoration. His wealthy patrons on Lake Minnetonka did not like the new rules.

But the worst sting of Toolittle was the constant cutting of health services for the indigent, poor, and lower middle-class in each budget cycle. He stripped many thousands of MinnesotaCare health insurance (I remember 21,000 poor in one sting) with veto after veto. In one fell swoop a legislative change engineered by Toolittle and his Wayzata friends forced 17 hospitals outside of the Twin Cities area to stop serving poor residents. Toolittle has only one plank in his political platform–no new taxes. He is bereft of intellectual thought, empathy, and vision. Examine his speeches.

Remember the wounded deer incident last year? Hunting ethics requires a hunter to trail a wounded deer until he finds it. Toolittle shot a deer, wounded it and failed to join in trailing it because he “had” to leave the hunting grounds for a political fundraiser. A typical Toolittle act that tells it all.

Last week Toolittle was down in Phoenix in the Arizona zoo reciting his credentials to 2,000 Tea Party “Patriots.” While yelling “Take back our country!” he was waving a copy of the U.S. Constitution, describing “the royal triangle of greed: big government, big unions, and big-bailed out businesses.” He got only one out of three right. Greed and big business. He never said a word about the fact between 2002 and 2008 Minnesota was 50th in per-capita state revenue because of excessive income tax cuts in 1999 and 2000. Between 2002 and 2010 Minnesota ranked 42nd in the rate of personal income growth and 35th in rate of jobs growth. College tuition more than doubled during Pawlenty time. Participation in health insurance was way down. Property taxes spiked, according to the Tribune. Minnesota rich and super-rich now pay a lower rate of income tax than the other 95 percent of taxpayers. Toolittle came very close to renaming St. Paul Jackson, after the capital of Mississippi.

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)