Yesterday, I posted Larry Pogemiller’s YouTube video. It’s one of the most outrageous YouTube’s I’ve seen. This afternoon, Janet is posting about it too. When Jeff Johnson wrote an editorial about this, Sen. Pogemiller immediately responded with this editorial:

I was a little surprised to learn that a Republican Party leader in the St. Cloud area chose to write to the Times about remarks I made to my constituents weeks ago at my town-hall meeting in Minneapolis. (“Pogemiller’s words show laws of land are obsolete,” Wednesday.) My surprise turned to disappointment when I saw the author also chose to strip my remarks of any context, so please allow me to fill in the gaps.

It’s true that I said, “It’s simplistic and naïve to say people can individually spend their money better than government.” I went on to say, “I don’t care how rich you are you can’t build a freeway system by yourself.” I also said, “… you can’t build a public educational system by yourself.”

The point is obvious. In a democracy we join together to provide police and fire protection, road and schools. It is simplistic to suggest that we can do these things on our own.

Larry Pogemiller
Senate Majority Leader
Minneapolis

Bear with me a little while I make my point. I attended a health care forum in St. Cloud in early January. The event was hosted by Tarryl Clark. Sen. John Marty was the special guest that evening. During that meeting, Sen. Marty said that “We have to start looking at health care as a community need, just like we view the police department or the fire department.” After the meeting, a woman who identified herself as a retired nurse from the St. Cloud VA Hospital told me that the VA system was a perfect illustration of how well socialized medicine works. That was her term, not mine.

Still later, a woman with the GMHCC gave me a factsheet on Sen. Marty’s health care reform legislation. It was a single-payer system. In other words, state-run health care.

Now Larry Pogemiller expects us to believe that, while talking amongst hardcore DFL activists, that he wasn’t speaking from a socialist/utopian mindset? We’re to believe that he’s simply misunderstood, that his statements were taken out of context, that he’s a capitalist at heart?

I’ve yet to see anything from the DFL legislature that proves they’re capitalists. I’ve seen more than a few bits of proof that they’ve got socialist tendencies.

Technorati: Larry Pogemiller, John Marty, Tarryl Clark, Socialism