Capitol View: April 9, 2006 Archive

Briefing - Sunday April 9, 2006

Posted at 7:42 AM on April 9, 2006 by Bob Collins

The Washington Post has an article today about President Bush's small group of advisers choosing sides in various GOP contests coming up this year. It's a snapshot column, the bottom of which notes the value of John Kerry's e-mail lists and how it was used to raise $100,000 for Amy Klobuchar in the U.S. Senate race here.

Klobuchar gets some face time at the end of an article about Minnesota's poor record of locking up repeat DWI offenders.

In its Buzz column today, the Kansas City Star notes...

According to The Hotline, the last person elected to the Senate directly from a county-level office was Democrat Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois in 1992. This year, there are at least two major elected county officeholders trying to make similar jumps: Democrat Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota and Republican Mike Bouchard in Michigan.

On the editorial front, the Mankato Free Press gives the Legislature a "B" so far this year. But one gaffe that was pretty glaring...

The Senate has approved a bill to increase the Minnesota sales tax to 6.875 from 6.5 percent to guarantee funding for environmental programs, conservation, the arts and even public radio.

The House has proposed the same sales tax rate, but designated a certain amount to environmental, following a no new taxes mantra. And please don’t ask the House to fund public radio while it’s in Republican control. It’s a futile effort.

Fair enough and not at all surprising, but check the bill, it's funding public broadcasting, as Dennis Anderson accurately pointed out in his commentary last week.

Backers of public broadcasting make similar arguments, particularly those in public TV and radio outside the Twin Cities. (Twin Cities-based Minnesota Public Radio likely would receive little, if any, new money. Most of the new funds instead would pay for the required digital conversion of public TV stations outside the Twin Cities.)

It's actually a good story that's lost in the "big bad public radio" angle because it's actually about digital television. See the government -- the government -- dictated that Public TV convert its signals to digital. Or they will be ordered to shut down.

Now, that factoid may not change the fate of the legislation, but acknowledging it might change the honesty brewing in the upcoming debate. The situation is a result of a government edict, which is the quid pro quo for government funding.

Of course yesterday was a big day in politics in Minnesota and a few bloggers documented it. At Centrisity, they like Obama. Broken Nails provides some good color of the event with Klobuchar.

Jerry Plagge at SD63: Life in a district of blue has the details on the Republican convention on Saturday.