Hey chumps, don’t get your hopes up

I wrote Sunday about the heavy influence of lobbying in St. Paul after a Mesabi Daily News story detailed how lobbyists outnumber lawmakers 4-1 at the Capitol. I was about to write that one way to improve the state of affairs would be to encourage more citizen lobbying like what you see with “St. Louis County/Duluth Days” going on right now. But if you read the latest Duluth News Tribune story about Duluth Days, you can almost feel yourself getting blown off by members of both political parties. Maybe I’m over-analyzing the text and, naturally, there’s a recession and state budget deficit going on. But I read this story and was sure glad I wasn’t in St. Paul asking for something.