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Thursday, April 14, 2005
Smilin' Norm: What Price Second Place?
My Senator, Smilin' Norm Coleman, has still failed to answer my emails from nearly two months ago. I failed to fax him like I said I would. Bad on us both, but more bad on him. On to the news of the emptiest suit in the Senate.
Chickens in pots
Smilin' Norm wants to borrow a chicken for every pot these days. He continues to collect some well-deserved kudos for his opposition to Medicaid cuts. Smilin' Norm supported the abolition of the Paris Hilton tax back in 2002. Let's see if he flip-flops on Hilton or doesn't really feel the need to try to find a way to pay for Medicaid. (Smilin' Norm's funding proposal for Medicaid costs far less than permanently repealing the estate tax.)Smilin' Norm supports new spending for veteran housing in Saint Cloud. Good on him. Today's citizens have two sacred trusts. We must care for those who defended us in dangerous times. But we must also preserve our world, our country, and our environment for the generations to come. Because we owe debts to both, we must reach down deep within ourselves and agree to live with the Paris Hilton tax until every low income veteran has a warm, safe, dry place to sleep at night. (Keep the estate tax and we can pay for Medicaid and veteran housing.)
Smilin' Norm wants $2 million for nanotechnology in Rushford. Perhaps advances in nanotechnology will allow his tooth enamel to be smoothed to a greater shine. This one's cheap enough that we don't need to tap the Hilton Tax to pay for it. Instead, we just need to place 8 Rushfordians on Tom DeLay's staff. He can't keep paying his wife and daughter $500,000 per election cycle while the heat is on, can he?
Smilin' Norm doesn't spend his own money much better than DeLay does. He spent $300,000 to raise $617,000. He spent what he raised trying to win the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He lost by one vote. Ba. Ha. Ha.
Here is Smilin' Norm at his worst. Coleman's subcommittee released a report detailing abusive tax shelters:
In 2003, corporate revenues represented only 7.4 percent of federal tax receipts, the second-lowest level on record, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Sixty years ago, corporations paid half of the U.S. tax bill.
Puttin' the mug to good use
Those pearly whites are paying off. Smilin' Norm continues to get invaluable face time on Fox News. No better way to get acquainted with Republican primary voters. Even though Bush's adventure in Iraq has been disastrously off the charted course for two years, Smilin' Norm is still talking it up:Coleman acknowledged that there was still work to be done.
"It's not an exit strategy, it's a success strategy," said the Minnesota Republican. "Success is this vision that I talked about — Americans embedded with [an] Iraqi army that is on the front line dealing with a policing operation and dealing with military operations and wiping out insurgency."
Protecting pork by porking protection
I want Minnesota to be safe. I want Minnesota to get its fair share of federal spending. I don't even like New York City. (One reason I don't like NYC is that if there were a terrorist attack in Minnesota, no one in New York would hear about it until it was dramatized, set to music, and opened on Broadway. There won't be a terrorist attack in Minnesota, so that's beside the point.) Still -- we need to spend homeland security dollars where they can actually do some good. Increased security at the Shakopee Corn Maze is not a high priority:The cities of Richmond, Va., New Haven, Conn., and St. Paul, Minn., received funding under the urban area security initiative in 2004, but have fallen off the list of top 50 cities this year.
Warner may get support from 15 senators on the committee who represent small, largely rural states, including GOP Sen. Norm Coleman and Democratic Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota. But Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., also plans to offer an amendment to make the grant-funding allocations strictly based on terrorist threats.
Coleman's three way with Santorum
Okay, it was just a press conference. But I'm pretty sure whenever Coleman and Santorum get together, someone's about to get screwed:Like eggs?
If you like eggs and political flunkies, head on down to Albert Lea, uh... last week. For $7 you could've eaten eggs and heard from a Coleman staffer. Whoops. That's what I get for making this a weekly feature.
