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Tuesday Talk: What do you envision for MN in 2025?
In his State of the State address last week, Governor Dayton said, “I often wonder how our children and grandchildren will judge our stewardship. Will they thank us for leaving our state, nation, and world in better condition than when we inherited it? Or will they ask, ‘How could you have left us with such a mess?’.” Dayton goes on to say he’s hopeful about the future of Minnesota.
When you envision the Minnesota of 2025, what do you see?
Comments:
February 21, 2012 at 6:57 pm
A person who uses the name “Rob” replied to my 10:04 a.m. Comment at 11:01 a.m. To respect the Ninth Commandment of the Christian Bible, when “Rob” reveals his or her full first name and last name, I will respond to the content of his or her reply.
February 21, 2012 at 5:41 pm
Hi Bernice,
I must do a better job of making my sarcasm evident. The Santorum rant was meant to show how absurd he sounds. Please, I beg of to believe me, I am not in agreement with Rick inSane- torum.
Sorry about the bad messaging.
.
February 21, 2012 at 4:30 pm
It is very interesting Katie that you and Governor Dayton only consider the legacy of the land. Minnesota has now earned the title of one of the 16 most racist states in the nation with Black graduation rates down to 25% in Duluth. Both the Metro cities are well under 50%, and then there are Native Americans across the state in the same boat or worse. The problem here is the more power we have shifted to the legislature and teachers union, the worse this problem has gotten. It isn’t just education, our Federal Copy of the “DRUG War” proves public employee racism even further with 9 times as many people of color targeted as whites. Then of course there is the addiction of the poor for profit. The results are the same if you look at ADHD, BiPolar, Depression, and a dozen other disorders, it is public employees who are the addictors or direct accomplises. Your beloved socialist centralization of power is failing in every instance. What works in our system is local control and power and it is the only thing that will return us to a just society.
February 21, 2012 at 4:16 pm
Rob, you and Mr.Santorum seem to side with those who say we are “a Christian nation” instead of viewing America as our founders did. This is as dangerous to us as citizens as naming another religion “official” if our political leaders belonged to it.
Allowing an official state religion leads to government that tries to force everyone to conform to their view—the official religious belief.
History shows that those who do not conform to the state religion were labeled heretics during the Inquisition and tortured until they changed their minds; or were waged war upon in the 11th century-Crusades; or feared and falsely labeled “terroristic” if they are Muslims in our own time.
The Constitution says to honor the right of every person to choose his/her own religious belief free of interference AND to choose not to take part in religious activities if we do not wish to.
February 21, 2012 at 2:14 pm
As I read through the many wonderful statements of desires for the return to the Minnesota we use to have, I had to agree with them all. I recall so well my first months in Minnesota in 1940 the beautiful clear lakes, wonderful Fall Colors, and even the Armistice Day Blizzard. Jobs were plentiful and I was paid twice as much as I had been in Texas,with shorter hours.
Little wonder I chose to make it my home when my husband was sent to Germany with Patton’s Army in March 1944.
We raised a family of four here in the home in which I still live. Our children had good education available and we gladly paid for it. Our community was building a school per year for the baby boomers for several years.
We had good government and good leadership through the years.
I realize the world has changed for the worse in recent years, its all about money and keeping corporations happy since they pay the big campaign bills.
I would at least like to go back to the early 90’s when we passed the
Bipartisan Minnesota Care Bill. When Legislators had courage to make decisions on their own and not try to rule by constitutional amendments. I envision Minnesota as the State where affordable health care is available to every person, where we have a good education system that can put us back on top there again and our environment is clean and pure again. It could be done
February 21, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Rich,
Didn’t you hear Rick Santorum, the leading Republican presidential candidate for president? We, humans, have “dominion” over earth’s resources. God put them here for our benefit and their importance should not be artificially elevated. We can exploit resources as we see fit.
Furthermore, global warming is a hoax forwarded by secular progressives with a twisted theological agenda.
Environmental conservatism is ant-bible. I hope this helps you understand what is wrong with our secular Gov. Dayton.
February 21, 2012 at 11:04 am
In the prepared text of his 2012 State of the State address, Gov. Dayton begins by saying:
“My father, Bruce Dayton, is 93 years old. Sundays, we have lunch together at his home in Long Lake, where I grew up. Sixty-two years ago, my father bought 40 acres of mostly woods and a cornfield for $6000.
“He and my mother built a house there, and we moved into it when I was five years old. Over the years, my father acquired 130 more acres.
“He was the first person in Minnesota to restore his fields to their original prairie grass and flowers; and he has now donated his property to the people of Minnesota, which the DNR will preserve as one of the few remaining “old-growth” forests in our state.
“Last October, as we surveyed the beautiful fall colors on trees bordering his field of prairie grass, I said to him,“You know, dad, you have been a very good steward of this land. It is in so much better condition than when you bought it.”
“I often wonder how our children and grandchildren will judge our stewardship. Will they thank us for leaving our state, nation, and world in better condition than when we inherited it? Or will they ask, “How could you have left us with such a mess?”
But then he presents recommendations on how to stabilize and improve our government’s efficiency and our state’s economy that totally ignore how human-induced global warming will likely adversely impact our state’s economy and other aspects of its quality of life.
Over 150 years of CO2 and other human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have locked our planet into decades of record global warming. The International Energy Agency recently published a report which warns that unless the emissions are sharply reduced by 2017, adverse climate changes will begin to be irreversible. For example, because of ocean warming and acidification, reef systems that feed over a billion people are beginning to die. Given the inertia of our planet’s governments, a sharp reduction won’t happen. For example, to supposedly “improve Minnesota’s business climate,” in 2011 the GOP-controlled House and Senate passed bills that rescinded the limits on coal-fired power plants and their emissions. Gov. Dayton vetoed them.
By themselves his vetoes won’t prepare our state for the adverse climate changes that are occurring and will increasingly occur by 2025. What is needed is a comprehensive plan implemented by legislation that will enable our state to ADAPT as best as it can to the environmental, social and economic impacts of global warming that will likely occur for the rest of the 21st century
Business as usual won’t accomplish that for “our children and grandchildren.”
February 21, 2012 at 10:04 am
Greece’s former conservative leaders built the giant debt for which the IMF and some countries (Germany, UK, US) are demanding be repaid out of the hide of its ordinary citizens. The president who might have defaulted to save his country was booted out and replaced by a conservative who now actively helps to reach an unbearable level of poverty and suffering and to privatize industries that the government has until now count on for income.
American conservatives have done their best to sink our country into a similar pit with spend-but-collect-no-revenue policies. Governors of states like Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and New Jersey are attacking good government state by state in efforts to kill unions, public schools, environmental and financial regulations—you name it. Here they are doing their best to limit the right to vote and other liberties that are ours as citizens.
Well before 2025, I HOPE our whole country will have realized that it does not want to be governed by a corporate elite that structures everything to serve its own wants. We will elect, for our current and future progressive governors, legislators who put the needs of people ahead of those of the Koch Brothers, et al. We will again have a just economic system that, yes, allows peoople to get rich—but not at the expense of the poor.
February 21, 2012 at 9:50 am
Since the “tax rebate” early in the Ventura Administration we have gone toward more regresive taxation, reduced spending on schools and infrastructure, and a general slowing of state progress.
I do see an increase of wind power because of the mandate. HOever we are still in denial of the needs for change away from fossel fuels.
We need to do some serious reconsideration and design of public school and adequately fund them or have out grand childern fall way behind the global compitition.
February 21, 2012 at 9:10 am
I see Liz Cheney (Dick’s daughter) as governor, a MN militia with a standing army of 1 million men and the extinction of walleye,loons and public schools.
February 21, 2012 at 8:59 am
If we don’t act immediately to mitigate global climate change, and adapt renewable, clean energy across the board, then the world we leave our children and grandchildren will not be very pretty. Our political system and mainstream media are entirely focused on preserving the present status quo. That’s why they are focusing on issues like contraception and voter id and same sex marriage and not a peep about how fossil-fuel-led climate change and unchecked population growth are destroying the capability of our earth to support human life or many other species.
The ruling class wants to feed us garbage via iPads and “smart-phones” while taking away our air, soil, water, forests, wildlife, the fruits of our labor, and ultimately our rights as human beings.
Bernice Vetsch says:
February 21, 2012 at 8:00 pm
And I’ve probably read too many REAL messages using the same language you did. Sorry also!