Swamp Draining, Part 2

"We too, have a swamp in St. Paul which is long overdue to be drained."

There seems to be some varying definitions on what "draining the swamp" means for Washington DC. Most think it means to get rid of this unholy alliance between "K" Street and Capitol Hill. Others think it is the greed which so many develop once they get elected. Still others think it is the cronyism which develops, no matter which side of the aisle one sits on. I think it is all of these PLUS the total, absolute dysfunction that exists in all forms of government.

I think it is great that President Elect Trump has set "swamp draining" to be one of his highest goals. But for us in Minnesota, that is only part of it. We too, have a swamp in St. Paul. And it is long overdue to be drained. Yes, we also have unholy alliances between elected officials and lobbyists. We too have cronyism. And we have absolute government dysfunction coming out of our ears.

Let me give an example from just today. My wife and I had just finished grocery shopping and were standing in the the checkout line. There was a young mother with a toddler and a new born in front of us. She turned to us and said, "You might want to find another line, this is going to take a while". I looked in her cart. She had a fair amount of grocery items, but not too many. Besides, she also had both kids in the cart. I thanked her and told her it was okay. I figured it could not take that long. Big, big mistake on my part.

The woman was a WIC mother. I don't know a whole lot about the WIC program, but I know a little bit. Mostly from being behind WIC mothers at checkout time. This woman had about 10 to 12 different WIC checks. Each check allowed her to buy a certain amount and certain type of food item. So this moderate amount of food this WIC mother had turned into about a dozen separate check out events. And sometimes the wrong food item was in the cart, so someone had to go back into the store and get the one which followed WIC rules. It took almost 40 minutes to ring her up. Our ice cream (true story) started to melt, so my wife had to go back and get a fresh one.

I was not mad nor upset we had to wait over a half hour for this checkout. All I could think about was the total waste of manpower in St. Paul to come up with these crazy WIC rules. Heck, if everyone was on WIC and took a half hour to check out, Cub Foods would be out of business. And who makes up these rules anyhow? Some of her items were organic and they were okay. Others were organic and were not okay. It was entropy at the most extreme.

In the past election, Republicans retained the House and took back the Senate (barely). Two years from now, the Republicans absolutely need to grab the Governor's seat. Not any Republican - we need one who wants to come into St. Paul and drain that swamp.

Two years ago I was part of a campaign team of a very capable man. He had plans how to start the St. Paul "fix". How to start the swamp draining. Unfortunately, he lost. Since then, the swamp in St. Paul has become even deeper.

"Drain the swamp!" should be the mantra should be used by every liberty loving citizen for every level of government. Until government returns to being for the people and by the people, it really is nothing more than a swamp.