Kohls: Slash state spending to 2004-2005 levels

Posted at 5:23 PM on September 22, 2009 by Tom Scheck (4 Comments)

GOP state Rep. Paul Kohls of Victoria announced today that he wants to cut spending to 2004-2005 spending levels or about $28 billion. Kohls, who is running for governor, said the state can fund education, public safety, infrastructure and other "nice to haves" but didn't reveal where the billions of dollars in cuts would come from. You can listen to his news conference here.

Listen

Question of the day: Do you listen to the audio files of the announcements/news conferences? Are they worth putting up or should we shelve it? I'm thinking about putting the audio up as the candidates hold announcements, etc. but I'd like your input to gauge whether this is a good use of time. Discuss...

Comments (4)

I listen to some of them, depending on admittedly subjective criteria, like whether I find the topic interesting, whether I think the politician in question is a credible candidate, how close we are to voting, whether some comment s/he made becomes a big news story. As an example of the last point, I've always wanted to hear the entire press conference Lori Swanson gave back in April 2007 that kicked the whole AFSCME brouhaha into the public realm. All that ever got quoted in the press were a couple of sentences.

One additional criteria that's not quite as high-minded is whether there's any entertainment value in the clip. For example, I'm skeptical that Tom Rukavina has a credible chance of winning anything, but he's by far the most fun of the DFL candidates to listen to, so I'd probably click an audio file of one of his speeches/press conferences.

So, I'd say, keep doing it, while exercising your best judgment as to how relevant or newsworthy the clip is.

Posted by Chris | September 22, 2009 6:44 PM

I listen to many of the audio files that are posted with a story. I like having the option to hear an announcement or speech in its entirety directly from the speaker and being able to form my own opinions, versus being fed short sound bites on the evening television news.

I listen to the audio from both political figures that I tend to agree with and those that I tend to disagree with. I am grateful that MPR provides me with the opportunity to take an informed approach to analyzing politics and government by providing audio from press conferences and announcements.

In short, keep posting them.

Posted by Jess | September 23, 2009 10:23 AM

Thanks for the input. It's not a ton of work to post the audio but I was going to stop doing it if there was no interest whatsoever.

Posted by tom scheck | September 23, 2009 10:44 AM

Usually don't listen, but sometimes do. Nice to have the option on those I'm particularly interested in hearing.

Posted by misterc | September 23, 2009 2:16 PM

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