{"id":1896,"date":"2008-04-07T18:57:45","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T18:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1896"},"modified":"2008-04-07T18:57:45","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T18:57:45","slug":"held_hostage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1896","title":{"rendered":"Held Hostage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every political observer in Minnesota anticipated that the governor would probably take his red pen to portions of the recently passed bonding bill, but I don’t think anyone imagined that he would cut funding for the planned Central Corridor light rail line<\/a>. After all, he included the funding in the original bonding proposal he sent to the Legislature. The remarks he made to the press today make it clear that he’s using the project as a bargaining chip to reassert his waning power. If the DFL doesn’t bend to his will in budget negotiations, he’ll deny them a much-anticipated public works initiative. <\/p>\n

It’s an interesting gambit and perhaps Pawlenty sees this as an opportunity to boost his conservative street cred. After all, his name is probably on McCain’s short list of veep picks. Still, letting this project go forward might do more to solidify his legacy as governor. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person to take the long view on things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every political observer in Minnesota anticipated that the governor would probably take his red pen to portions of the recently passed bonding bill, but I don’t think anyone imagined that he would cut funding for the planned Central Corridor light rail line. After all, he included the funding in the original bonding proposal he sent […]<\/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-1896","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-uA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896","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=1896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}