Beltane                                                                             Waning Garlic Moon

Mid-Summer, the summer solstice, comes tomorrow.  Our eight times a year brief essay on the changing seasons of the Celtic calendar appears tomorrow.

Tim Pawlenty says, “What deficit?”  He claims there is no deficit in Minnesota, just bad accounting.  Bad accountability, yes.  Bad accounting?  No.  If there is no deficit, it is difficult to see what the game of chicken at the Capitol is all about.  It must have something to do with that big number.  What was it?  $5 billion.  Yes.  A deficit.  One caused by following the unusual to business practice of trying to keep business expenses level while decreasing income.  If expenses remain the same–the state budget–, and sales are intentionally allowed to fall off by a no-new sales promise, then?  Deficit.

If, however, expenses for keeping a state of the art business growing increase, then the sales force increases its effort.  Minnesota has been a state of the art state in so many things.  Compassion to the poor.  Education for all citizens.  Environmental consciousness.  Efficient and effective government.  Infrastructure improvement.  Education funding.  Property tax relief.

Now, under the no new taxes regime, we get the poor denied health care and basic needs like housing and food.  High stakes testing has reduced our education system to a teach to the test marathon without even significantly increasing test scores.  A state that gave us the boundary waters and the wild and scenic rivers act plus state level mandates for clean air, clean water, a moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants and a similar action barring new coal plants and importation of new coal generated electricity is tripping all over itself to build an unneeded bridge over the St. Croix and can’t wait to get sulfide mining started.  Aid to local governments has dried up and the state is days away from a shutdown.  Transportation funding, especially for emission reducing forms of transportation like light rail, has tanked.  Education funding for the UofM has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk while school boards are forced to go to the levy to raise funds that should come from the state.  The result?  Rising property taxes.  This is the legacy that Tim Pawlenty wants to share with the nation?

It is a difficult time to have a radical analysis of the nation’s economic infrastructure since so many have tilted toward the center-right ideas of the free market, but it is an important time to have and to apply such analysis.  Who speaks for the poor now?  Who insists on gender, racial and age justice?  When did the guarantee of freedom in America get reduced to the right to carry concealed weapons and allowing states to deport persons?  When did careful interpretation of our founding document get replaced by a secular equivalent of biblical literalism?  We are deep into a time of unparalleled meanness in our politics.

It’s as if Jesus said, “I come to bring solace to the rich, recovery of  cash for those who already have much, release to the plutocrat yearning for more wealth, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s bounty for all those who already have a lot.”

It is no secret that children starve and adults go without health care in this the richest nation on earth. The left, the radical left, needs to heal its fractures and get back to building its base.