Co-"Gleaner" Max Sparber covered the various breakdowns and reactions to the final Pawlenty budget in great detail Tuesday. But the opposition is not overlooking one highly ironic element, Pawlenty's reliance on $387 million in federal health care dollars to put some bouyancy under his scheme. This comes as the "trash and cash" meme — where anti-stimulus Republicans first trash the idea of federal stimulus funds as unchecked socialism, then happily show up to cash the check when the money arrives to build roads and employ cops in their district — is gaining, uh, currency. The AP's Brian Bakst writes, "The money flows through a special account meant to provide an incentive to states to commit dollars to Medicaid programs. States received extra money through the Medicaid formula as part of the stimulus. Congress is debating whether to keep paying states at the elevated level as it considers President Barack Obama's latest budget proposal. If the money doesn't come through, Pawlenty said he would push for further state spending cuts to make up the difference."

MPR's Tim Pugmire gets this somewhat convoluted quote out of DFL Sen. Richard Cohen: "Cohen ... wondered how a Republican governor, who's also a potential 2012 presidential candidate, can travel the country blasting Washington Democrats for spending too much and then accept some of that money to balance the state budget. Cohen called it a 'slight touch of hypocrisy. If there's a concern on the part of the administration that what the president is doing is not the correct course of conduct, why ... as a state would we participate in that? ... Why would we encourage the president and the Congress to do inappropriate things?' "

Eventually the few reporters still under contract for news organizations will have blogs entirely separate from their host organizations, maybe. It's too bad we aren't there yet, because it'd be interesting to read the Strib's Rachel Stassen-Berger's fully "unmediated" thinking on a visit to her Capitol office Tuesday by Team Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung. He was there to argue ... in classic Team Pawlenty fashion ... that the stimulus-induced Medicaid money discussed above is not really, uh, stimulus money. Writing in Hot Dish Politics, Stassen-Berger first notes, "The measure would have the feds continue to pick up some Medicaid costs from the state and extend a change in financing responsibility first adopted in the [stimulus act] 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009." Then has McClung arguing, "It's not stimulus funds. There are separate pots of money within a larger bill. No economist would tell you that this Medicaid money is stimulative in any way ... The Obama administration never described this FMAP money as stimulus money. Nor did they claim it was stimulative." The next step, I guess, is to ask an economist.

The Strib's Rochelle Olson has a piece with a unique twist, a $115K-per-year Hennepin County prosecutor getting slapped with a defense motion for a new trial based on something she wrote ... on her Facebook page. " 'The posts concerned derogatory statements about people from Somalia, and that she felt comfortable with her case because of a juror who attended St. John's University,' the motion said. [Defense attorney] Lengeling said his client is Somali." The client has already been convicted of first degree attempted murder in the shooting of three people two years ago in the Cedar-Riverside area. But really, prosecutors babble about their cases on Facebook? This one might want to stick with what she had for lunch.

The PiPress runs a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story about a guy who used a GPS app on his stolen iPhone to track it to the home of the thief. "[Owner Tiernan] Paine remembered that he subscribes to MobileMe, a service for his iPhone that synchronizes data between his phone and his home computer. Only then did he discover that the service includes a few other features, including a global positioning system. Paine said he used his computer and the satellite feature to pinpoint on a map where his phone was at that moment. He also was able to see a picture of the suspect's home." Very cool.

KSTP-TV's Maggie Newland and Becky Nahm file a piece on a brief scuffle that broke out at the Capitol Tuesday between members of a janitors union and ... bankers. Love this part of the story: "A spokesman for the Minnesota Bankers Association declined to comment on camera, but said he didn't understand why the union was targeting bankers gathered for Bank Day at the Capitol. Bank Day is a chance for bankers to meet with lawmakers." Say what? Bank Day? "... [A] chance for bankers to meet with lawmakers"? As in "a rare" chance? Unlike any of the other 364 days?

Matt Kane at the Growth and Justice think tank blog posts on the perpetual, all-purpose boogey man of tax rates and their negative effect on business activity in Minnesota. (Gov. Pawlenty's new budget calls for fat cuts for businesses.) "Pawlenty repeated his message that low taxes and limited government are the key to economic success when he delivered his State of the State address this week, but recent state unemployment rates clearly demonstrate that economic development is more complicated than that." "Complicated," you say? As in "complex"? Not "simple" and easy to understand, like a bumper sticker, like the rest of the world around us?

That dine-at-home trend appears to have caught on, with no hint of subsiding. General Mills certainly doesn't think so. The Twin Cities super food processor is anticipating a 22 percent growth in revenue by 2015. John Vomhof Jr. in the Minneapolis-St.Paul Business Journal writes that The General "expects its revenue to grow to $18 billion in fiscal 2015, up more than 22 percent from its forecasted $14.7 billion in sales this year." He includes some good uber-corporate gobbledygook: "The company said it will remain committed to a long-term growth model that calls for low single-digit annual growth in net sales, mid single-digit growth in segment operating profits and high single-digit growth in earnings per share." As opposed to "high-low double-single digits."
 
The implosion of Hobbit Travel last December has travelers still scrambling for refunds on some tickets. But according to a piece by Suzanne Ziegler in the Strib, Sun Country has expanded to handle cruise connections, once a Hobbit specialty. " ... [I]ts new division, Sun Country Vacations, will sell cruise and other travel packages, allowing passengers to book airfare, hotel or cruise ship and rental cars under one umbrella."

Cue the few loonies who lent any credence to that absurd KSTP story of a couple years back on the nationwide cult of "Smiley Face Killers." You know, the organized band of homicidal maniacs preying on otherwise healthy college-age males? Police in La Crosse recovered the body of another 21-year-old man from the Mississippi River. As the AP story reads, the victim "... was a criminal justice student at Western Technical College and a former state champion wrestler. He spent Saturday night and early Sunday at a wedding reception and several bars in downtown La Crosse." Other reports mention signs of someone -- emphasis on someone -- tumbling down the river bank not far upstream from where the body was found. Still, you know if the Smiley Face cult isn't human at all ... and therefore doesn't leave footprints in the snow ...