{"id":1219,"date":"2006-05-22T21:55:08","date_gmt":"2006-05-22T21:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1219"},"modified":"2006-05-22T21:55:08","modified_gmt":"2006-05-22T21:55:08","slug":"getting_our_pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1219","title":{"rendered":"Getting Our Props"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know that I live in a great town, but our little corner of the Midwest doesn’t figure very prominently in the national consciousness.  That’s why it’s always good to see a major media outlet give us a little love.  In Kiplinger’s list of 50 Smart Places to Live, the Twin Cities came in at #2<\/A>.  It praises our diverse economy, our arts scene, and our scenic parks and lakes.  You would think our elected leaders would want to pursue policies that would preserve and enhance our quality of life–the same quality of life which is earning us media attention.  Alas, you would be mistaken.  A proposal in the Legislature to raise the sales tax ever so slightly (we’re talking a fraction of a penny) for dedicated funding of natural resources and the arts died an ignoble death at session’s end<\/A>–in part because House Republicans remain steadfast in their refusal to consider a tax hike (unless it’s for a new baseball stadium, in which case it’s perfectly acceptable<\/A>).<\/DIV>
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I ran into a lobbyist friend this evening who had worked on this issue on behalf of arts organizations.  It sounds like friction between the outdoor and arts lobbies might have hurt both their causes.  I’m sure Republicans will defend their action as a principled stand against tax-and-spend liberals, but I think Minnesotans don’t mind paying a few cents more each year for a state that doesn’t just work, but thrives.  We do a lot a things well in Minnesota, but we can also do so much better.  <\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that I live in a great town, but our little corner of the Midwest doesn’t figure very prominently in the national consciousness.  That’s why it’s always good to see a major media outlet give us a little love.  In Kiplinger’s list of 50 Smart Places to Live, the Twin Cities came in at […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-jF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}