Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton visited Shakopee Monday night for a town hall meeting where a few people couldn't wait their turn to have a civil discussion and instead mocked, heckled and interrupted Dayton. Rather than rely solely on the Star Tribune's recap of Monday evening's meeting I decided to delve in to the cesspool of the comments section which seemed to contain plenty of additional name-calling and finger-pointing. Maybe those who were acting childish at Monday night's evening had taken to the Strib's comments section to keep the ball rolling.
To be fair, Dayton said plenty of borderline stupid stuff such as lawmakers deserving a pay raise for a job which consumes a whole 1/3 of the year. On the flip side, though, it's rather curious why he was being filmed by a Republican organization in an area which is already strongly Republican. It's entirely possible that Dayton was simply being baited by planted attendees but he also needs to realize that much of society has a general hatred towards our nation's lawmakers -- especially that they vote for their own pay raises while they can't balance the budget or dig our country out of a mounting hole of debt.
I, for one, don't have much faith in anything above the city level of government due to the finger-pointing, name-calling and overall divisiveness that exists once party affiliations are thrown into the mix so childish behavior at any level of government doesn't really surprise me. Maybe lawmakers do actually deserve a pay raise but they definitely shouldn't be allowed to vote on their own pay. I don't get to do that in my line of work, neither should they.
As for the behavior of Shakopee residents, I am leaning towards the analogy of a few bad apples spoiling the whole bunch.
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