I doubt you noticed this morning but negotiations broke down between the parties last night and Minnesota’s government went into shutdown mode:
Talks imploded Thursday between DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders in the final hours before a midnight deadline, and Minnesota began a historic government shutdown.
“This is a night of deep sorrow for me,” Dayton said in an address at 10 p.m. that was punctuated by jeers and hisses from Republicans, including some lawmakers.
Personally I’m glad the state went into shutdown mode. There are some valuable lessons that people need to learn and the only way to learn them is through experience. One of those lessons is the centralizing services is a bad thing because when the monopoly entity falters and stops providing those services everybody is negatively affected. If there were competition on all markets any single private entity failing would only affect that entity’s customers whom would then be able to go to a competing service.
I firmly believe that this entire shutdown is nothing more than a pissing contest to get votes during the next election. Both parties are blaming each other for the shutdown which has lead to parks and rest stops being closed on the 4th of July, a travel heavy holiday. Having parks and rest stops closed on this holiday ensures the maximum number of people will be negatively impacted in a way that they’ll easily notice (honestly the schools shutting down during the summer doesn’t affect too many people). People will remember the 4th of July where they had to go somewhere besides a state park and take that into consideration come voting time.
Either way the state shut down and all is still well. No riots are occurring in the streets, nobody is being murdered that wouldn’t have been had the state been running, water and electricity still work, and the highways still function.