Governor "Fees not Taxes" Pawlenty vetos MN Poet Laureate bill

[Oreo]

This guy is too much. He said next thing people will want is a state mime. He's got as much chance as being president as my big toe.
He's so busy raising taxes and calling them fees that he doesn't see his political career swiftly coming to an end.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5432046.html

Minnesota has a state muffin (blueberry), a state photograph ("Grace") and a state mushroom (morel), but it decidedly won't have a state poet laureate.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty rejected a bill that was overwhelmingly passed by the Legislature that would have allowed him to appoint a poet laureate after receiving recommendations from the nonprofit Minnesota Humanities Commission.

The laureate would have been called on to provide verse for "appropriate ceremonies and celebrations" of the state, such as the 2008 sesquicentennial. No state money would have gone with the job.

In a veto message signed Friday and announced Tuesday, however, Pawlenty said he saw no need for such a position.

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[madrchsod]

1. i`m sure garrison will rip

pawlenty a new one..garrison did a good job on bush last weekend.....

[katinmn]

2. we wouldn't want to gain a reputation as a literate,

arts-loving state now, would we?
:sarcasm:

[jean]

3. Timmy doesn't think poetry can co-exist with the muffin and the morel?

More likely, he's worried what a poet might unleash. Laura Bush must have warned him.

Poetic protests against War, Censorship
Fearing antiwar sentiments, the First Lady cancels a White House symposium on the poetry of Whitman, Dickinson and Langston Hughes.
http://www.alternet.org/story/15100

A bit of advice for the Bush White House: Don't pick fights with professional wordsmiths.

First Lady Laura Bush's decision to cancel a White House symposium on the poetry of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes because she feared antiwar sentiments might be expressed has provoked a pummeling of the Administration by poets who would have been part of the February 12 "Poetry and the American Voice" session.

"The abrupt cancellation of the symposium by the White House confirms my suspicion that the Bush administration is not interested in poetry when it refuses to remain in the ivory tower, and that this White House does not wish to open its doors to an 'American Voice' that does not echo the Administration's misguided policies," declared Rita Dove, the nation's poet laureate from 1993 to 1995.

"I had no doubt in my mind that I couldn't go, if only because of the hideous use of language that emanates from this White House: The lying, the Orwellian euphemisms..." added Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Levine, who said that he was sorry the First Lady cancelled the symposium before he could refuse his invite.

snip

[CatholicEdHead]

4. I guess culture is not for him

what a sad waste. It just seems like a honoray ceremonial non-paid post to me.

[loveable liberal]

5. Governor Feesaplenty.

what a grotesque clown timmy is.

[katinmn]

6. Wendy Wilde has been asking people to submit poems

She read some good ones yesterday. :)