Posted on 11/01/2002 9:10:08 AM PST by SarahW
...I was keen to see where Mondale landed on foreign policy. I tuned into his press conference this morning, expecting to learn something. And I did.
He wants to make sure children are ready for school.
He said that. It wasn’t his top issue; I’ll grant. But it nagged me all day. Does he want to set national standards for peanut-butter thickness on lunchtime sandwiches? Have a national initiative to encourage parents to put the milk money in childrens’ coat pockets the night before school? The entire press conference was full of these vague declamations - it was a litany defrosted from 1984, and made one wonder how things could be so bad after the eight marvelous years of the Clinton administration. I mean, it’s like we’re at square one - the environment is being ravaged, Big Money corrupts the political process, America is in cowboy mode, tax cuts are favoring that spat-clad Monopoly guy with the cigar and the silk top hat, minorities wail under the boot of oppression, and Minnesota needs a well-connected elderly white corporate lawyer to fight - FIGHT! - the entrenched interests represented by other well-connected white corporate lawyers.
Later, via Drudge, I found the text of an upcoming Mondale ad. It accused Norm Coleman of giving public money to two companies that had laid off 750 workers last year.
Oh, that’s rich. Coleman did indeed lend public money to Lawson Software to lure them to build a big new office building in St. Paul - an $84 million loan made possible by tax-increment financing. I abhor outright gifts to companies just to convince them to build pretty buildings, but using TIF to revitalize downtown St. Paul is a defensible position. Reasonable people can argue about it. And when they’re tired of arguing about it, because it’s boring, they can chew on this:
Northwest Airlines received $230 million from the Federal Government in bailout money after 9/11.
Northwest has cut 10,000 jobs since 9/11.
Walter Mondale is on the Board of Directors of Northwest Airlines.
Oh: and Walter Mondale gets 24K in free airline travel a year from NWA.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS? Mechanics, laid off! Flight attendants, laid off! Baggage handlers, sent into the snow and forced to sell matches to buy a withered beet for supper, while Mondale sits in first class and has steak and pays nothing! Nothing! ...
(Excerpt) Read more at lileks.com ...
Well worth clicking on the URL above for the whole post halloween treat...
The undying link is http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/02/1002/100204.html#110102
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