What the $^@# is Wrong?

Minnesota politics may not be the highlight of this season’s national political front, but there are some interesting things going on with Minnesota Governor Candidate, Tom Emmer.  Here are just a few.

Server Wages & Tips

Emmer stated that he supports a tip credit which would allow servers to be paid under the current minimum wage while claiming that some servers get paid over 100K in wages.  Wait! He stated that isn’t what he meant.  He retracted his statement to say that he wouldn’t reduce their wage, he would freeze their wage so it wouldn’t go up if the minimum wage for Minnesota goes up.  Well… that is a hell of a lot better than what he said back in 2005 where he proposed to get rid of Minnesota’s minimum wage all together and calling it “Socialism”  (Source 1 2)

DWI Legislation and Arrests

A very strong ad from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota really hits home for me as does what Emmer proposed as legislation.  Here’s the ad:

After watching that and after my own life experiences of having my father killed by someone who had been drinking and driving in 1999, it infuriates me that Emmer would try and purpose a piece of legislation that would get rid of the civil penalty of a DWI, allow the person to keep their license until they are convicted, as well as making drunk driving records private after 10 years have passed. Here is the bill summary and the proposed bill.  It probably wouldn’t shock you that Emmer himself was convicted of 2 DWI’s, one in 1981 and one in 1991.

Emmer’s former campaign chairman, Rep. Mark Buesgsens also got arrested for a DWI as well on September 18th.

At the time of the arrest, he was no longer the chairman and he only served 10 days under those duties.

Cutting Education Funding

Back in April of 2009, Emmer was one of seven people to vote in favor of a bill that would have eliminated state funding for early Childhood Education programs and Head Start programs.  According to a press release from the Minnesota DFL Party, studies have shown that for every $1 invested in early childhood education, it creates $12 in future savings for education.  I do not have a source to back up that data, but I am a firm believer that education is key for not only our state’s economic future but also our countries.

Can you guess who authored the bill?  You got it – Rep. Mark Buesgens.

Here is the bill, and here is the voting record.

Tom Emmer – Cut Education, Drive Drunk, and Cut Server’s pay. Is that is the Minnesota he wants to strive for?