MORNING EDITION

GOP budget offer is DOA

To the surprise of no one, the GOP’s “I’ll meet you one-ninth of the way” offer on the budget is pretty much DOA. Reuters writes: “Dayton said he had agreed to meet Republicans halfway by cutting his $37 billion budget proposal by $1.8 billion, but they were unwilling to match his changes. Republicans control both the House and Senate. Republicans said the offer would expire at 5 p.m. Monday local time. ‘We are asking the governor to make us an offer,’ Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch told reporters. ‘That is what needs to happen. The shutdown can be averted. We believe it is completely unnecessary.' " On that last point everyone can agree.

And the GOP will not be out-lawyered when it comes to mitigating the effects of a shutdown. Briana Bierschbach of Politics in Minnesota writes: “ A new lawsuit relating to a possible state government shutdown will soon join a slew of others filed this week, including petitions from Gov. Mark Dayton and Attorney General Lori Swanson, who are attempting to define what agencies and programs would be funded in the event of a shutdown. But instead of arguing to preserve certain services, this motion will seek to cut off all funding in the event Dayton and the GOP majorities can’t come to agreement by July 1 to solve the $5 billion budget deficit. ... Conservative nonprofit group Minnesota Voters Alliance and GOP Sens. Warren Limmer, Sean Nienow, Roger Chamberlain and Scott Newman have all signed on to the suit.”

Don Davis of the Forum papers fills out the ugly picture of what’s coming: “[T]he Legislature’s transportation leaders asked for a special legislative session to pass a transportation-funding bill that could keep up to 10,000 construction and state workers on the job. Dayton rejected the request, saying he will not agree to any part of the state budget until he can agree to it all. Without a special session, legislative transportation chairmen Sen. Joe Gimse and Rep. Michael Beard said, a government shutdown would suspend work on roads across the state and cost millions of dollars to mothball and later restart once a budget passes. On the transportation issue, Republicans Gimse of Willmar and Beard of Shakopee said they plan to launch a statewide tour with their request next week after Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton rejected the idea. ‘There is no logical reason to shut down construction,’ Gimse said.” But there is to everything else?

The town is crawling with lefties … literally. OK, not literally “crawling,” although I’m guessing it was a noisy happy hour last night. But Catharine Richert’s MPR story emphasizes that these lefties — attending the national Netroots Convention — are not shy about their disappointment in President Obama ... for being too conservative. “[A]ttendees of the 2011 Netroots Nation conference packed a session called, ‘What to Do When the President is Just Not That Into You.’ For a segment of the progressive bloggers, writers, activists and voters at their sixth annual meetup being held this year in Minneapolis, the title of the seminar sums up the mood here perfectly about President Barack Obama. ‘I think he's a moderate Republican and I really would have liked to have voted for a Democrat,’ said Marc Sobel, who's at the conference on his own from Boulder, Colorado. ‘I don't know how hard I'm going to work for him [in 2012]. He's going to get all his money from Wall Street.' " Would Michele Bachmann even recognize such  people as the same species?

Tina Dupuy blogs for The Atlantic and takes an interest in organized labor's situation on view at the convention: “The labor movement now talks about Wisconsin in the same way people talk of 9/11: It changed things, says Joseph Geevarghese, [deputy director at Change to Win, a coalition of American labor unions]. Geevarghese notes Wisconsin [is] where the labor movement was born — and now it's seen as the best place to kill it. But now, like 9/11, it's also become a rallying cry. Progressives and liberals (the distinctions and differences have never been clearly explained to me) have largely not paid attention to organized labor. They weren't out supporting unions and union interests, notes Geevarghese, ‘Before Wisconsin from progressives it was largely indifference.’ Communications Director at Change to Win Paco Fabian uses the word ‘ambivalence’ to describe progressives' attitude toward labor. ‘They have no familial relationship with unions. They don't know what unions do,’ he said. ‘It's not that progressives forgot about labor until Wisconsin,’ said Firedoglake blogger David Dayen, who was invited to the session. ‘Everybody did.' "

Sen. Hoffman’s apology is duly noted. Don Davis (again) writes: “As required by the Senate ethics committee on Monday, the Vergas Republican sent a letter to Sen. Barb Goodwin, DFL-Columbia Heights. ‘This letter is intended to be the written apology from me to you indicated by the Minnesota Senate Subcommittee on Ethical Conduct,’ Hoffman wrote. ‘I am certainly sorry for my misunderstanding of what you said and how I subsequently handled it.’ During debate on the health and human services funding bill on May 18, Goodwin told colleagues that state institutions for the mentally ill used to be called homes for the ‘idiots, imbeciles and the insane.’ She used the phrase three times to illustrate how far treatment for the mentally ill has come. ‘Sen. Goodwin just called people with mental illness idiots and imbeciles while debating HHS bill,’ Hoffman tweeted to her followers.
Hoffman has not talked about the incident in public and did not testify at Monday’s Senate hearing, although her attorney did speak.”

The pass-around talker of the day was the item Paul Walsh and Josephine Marcotty of the Strib filed on men and their cars: “Everyone knows the racier the car, the racier the hormones.’ Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have brought scientific precision to that age-old observation, which turns out to be true, but with a twist. Sexual signalling really works — just not necessarily as intended when a man buys the biggest TV or the flashiest car. ‘Men and women both know that that's the guy who wants casual sex,’ said Vladas Griskevicius, assistant marketing professor at the U. ‘But he isn't more desirable as a marriage partner. That's not the guy you want to marry.’ And while the urge to splurge is often blamed on the culture of materialism and incessant advertising, it's probably because of the basic drive to impress the ladies. Other research has shown it's just as true for men in the Amazon forests and the Australian outback who have never seen a TV.” So how would they know that chicks dig a '78 Datsun with moderate rust and extra set of snow tires?

Minneapolis Councilwoman Meg Tuthill (temporarily) backed off on her anti-noise patio ordinance. Tom Horgen of the Strib writes: “Minneapolis restaurant owners have persuaded Council Member Meg Tuthill to postpone Friday's full council vote on her controversial patio ordinance. The proposed ordinance would allow for more restrictive outdoor capacity limits and the banning of outdoor amplified music after 10 p.m. It also would have given officials authority to impose sanctions on noncompliant establishments. Downtown was exempt from the ordinance. Tuthill said a raucous June 6 public hearing, which was packed with more than 100 bar and restaurant operators, helped sway her decision to postpone. She said the city will organize a task force of industry people, community members and the police to discuss the late-night noise issues.” In other words ... the old commission/consensus fallback.

Sally Jo Sorenson of the Bluestem Prairie blog takes a deep interest in Cyndy Brucato’s story here Thursday reporting that Tom Emmer had paid off state GOP recount bills so long overdue. But wait, says Sorenson, GOP chair Tony Sutton set up a special corporate account to handle those expenses. What happened to that money? “Bluestem believes there's a far more interesting question posed by the element of this story that Brucato omitted from the columns. If Count Them All Properly Inc. didn't use money it raised to pay the counties, how was the money Sutton and his minions raised to pay for the recount spent? While neither Sutton nor the RPM are legally obligated to disclose the books of CTAPI, perhaps the failed burrito baron might rise to the level of generosity displayed by Emmer and his committee. Surely, contributors must be wondering where the money went.” That happens a lot, doesn’t it?