So the highly respected State Economist Tom Stinson says Minnesota is now in a recession after some dismal job numbers were released. Gov. Pawlenty said, "Tom Stinson tends to be a bit on the pessimistic side, to put it charitably." Not much charity there. Ouch.
Now Senate Democrats are calling this the "Pawlenty Recession." Ouch again. Dems want to "pass an economic stimulus package" that amounts to re-passing and re-hashing last session. It looks to be a long session with lots of desire to re-pass and re-hash last session.
Pawlenty said it's "not helpful for people to get overly pessimistic or overly scare people." Recession is a scary word, but I'm not sure most people would call the state economist an alarmist, rather most call him cautious.
Back to the Democrats; at least their event featured some real people like the passionate plumber Tom Hansen who said, "this isn't a Democrat/Republican deal, this is workers with no insurance in serious trouble." Sen. Tomassoni opened with this being the "we told you so press conference." Reporters don't get excited about re-passing and re-hashing. The first three letters in news are N-E-W!