Nice op-ed in this morning's Strib

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Imagine Minnesota Republican Party officials boasting about their governor's "educational investment'' (also known as government spending), which "by itself more than equals the state budget for all purposes just four years ago,'' including a 379 percent increase in community-college funding.

Think about a Minnesota GOP governor facing down stingy critics of his major increases in appropriations for education, domestic courts and mental-institution reforms, and scolding them for "placing first and primary emphasis on dollars rather than human values.''

Picture a Republican governor (and a corporate executive, no less) proudly calling himself a "liberal,'' pushing for tax increases and higher-education improvements, advancing civil liberties and human rights, setting aside thousands of acres for wilderness protections, and embracing the very concept of government "as the way we do things together.''

This actually happened. Each of these three leaders -- in order, Harold LeVander, Luther W. Youngdahl, and Elmer L. Andersen -- fit a distinctively progressive mold of Republicanism that shaped Minnesota and helped produce a state that for many decades has been described as one of the most successful and prosperous in the nation.


http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/26845499.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUJ
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I'm one of the commentators there, using the pseudonym that I first developed in my previous city of residence, and I'm pleased to report that it's getting overwhelming approval.

[dflprincess]

1. I wonder where all the wingnuts that usually comment are?

With any luck, their heads may have exploded when the read the paragraph about LeVander, Youngdahl & Andersen.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. I don't know, maybe the drive time right wing screechers have all told their

captive audience of stuck-in-traffic suburban white males, "Don't read the Strib this morning. It's full of evil, evil I tell you!" :-)