Rice County Republicans

From the Northfield News website we see an upcoming political event:

[23 Feb 2009] 06:00 PMTown Hall Meeting
State Rep. David Bly and State Sen. Kevin Dahle host a Town Hall meeting to discuss how the economic recession has affected them and to gather input on how best to balance the state budget, from 6 to 7 p.m. at Northfield Public Library, 210 Washington St. Free and open to the public.
[date and emphasis added]

On the Wayne Eddy Affair (KYMN 1080) Friday (20th Feb 2009) he mentioned this event, saying that the Rep. and Sen. wanted people to bring their bullet points ideas on how to balance the budget.  I (being the guest) said that while I find street theater to be obnoxious, perhaps this event might be an exception to that opinion. I suggested that someone should take their little kids in chains, linked to “balls” labeled with “$187,000 debt” to represent the debt we are saddling the next generation with.

($187,000 is the $56T estimate from IOUSATHEMOVIE.ORG for the total liability of the US Government through the retirement of the baby boomers, divided by the 300M or so people we have to pay that debt off.  Of course, if we double our population and double the economy to boot, we can reduce that to only $94,000, which is pretty on paper but not so nice when you try to accommodate another 300M people here.)

Consistent with our vision of how politics ought to work, though, while such street theater might be cute and might get a photo, we MUST continue to be calm, not strident, reasoned, not emotional, and smart not just  slogans. These two politicians are probably expecting a stream of sad stories about current problems tied to budget cuts. That is like measuring the progress in a war by only counting bodies.  Framing the discussion in emotional terms plays into the hands of the demagogue. Instead of stories confirming their already biased viewpoint, they need to hear an equal or greater number of dedicated people reminding them to be leaders and not just rubber stamps for those who would try to convince us to spend our way out of debt.

We are the party of reasoned discourse.