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Republicans reject the attempts
of many Democrats to use the power of the legislature to force
citizens to behave according to lawmakers' personal preferences. |
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Wrong: |
ALLOWING
NON-CITIZENS TO VOTE: Rep. Phyllis Kahn (D-Minneapolis) wants to
amend the Minnesota Constitution to allow local governments to allow
non-citizens to vote in local elections if they have lived in the
community for 30 days. (House File 1899)
ALLOW 16-YEAR-OLDS TO VOTE: Rep. Phyllis Kahn (D-Minneapolis) first
wanted 16-year-olds to vote in school board elections. (House File
428) but then decided to expand her earlier efforts and amend the
constitution to allow 16-year-olds to vote in all state and local
elections. (House File 630). (1) |
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Right: |
Republicans,
unlike many Democrats,
believe that public policy and laws should derive from individuals
who have an important stake and membership in the community, that
is, citizens. Non-citizens do not bear the full responsibilities
that citizens do and have no formal commitment to the community of
citizens and therefore should not be eligible to determine the rules
of the community. It is ironic that Rep. Kahn would imbue the
constitution with the idea that children are competent to make
sophisticated voting decisions when state law is replete with
statutes based on the judgment that children are not fully
responsible for their conduct. If 16, why not 14, and so on? |
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| Wrong: |
Rep. Joe
Mullery (D-Minneapolis) wants to give workers’ comp cash to anybody
who claims that work stress somehow hurt their feelings or gave them
a “mental injury,” even if there is no physical evidence of such an
injury. (House File 2047) (1) |
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Right: |
A "mental injury" basis for a workers' comp claim is
so vague and so easily abused by fraudulent claimants that the law
would do much more damage to the legal system than any benefit it
would provide to a rare legitimate individual, unless you include
trial lawyers. |
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Wrong: |
Called the “Freedom To Poop
Act” by many critics, Rep. Erin
Murphy (D-St. Paul) wants to fine firms and employees $100 if they
do not let a customer use the firms’ non-public restroom if the
customer has any “medical condition that requires immediate access
to a toilet facility.” This could apply to your residential bathroom
if you are having a yard sale or running a daycare center, because
the bill is so vague. (House File 1015) (1) |
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Right: |
When proposing such vague and
intrusive statutes as this one, Democrats like Rep. Murphy show no consideration for the impact they
would have on safety and rights of individual property owners. |
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Wrong: |
Rep. Bill Hilty
(D-Finlayson) wants to change business laws to create “socially
responsible corporations,” into which the Attorney General may
intervene for failure to meet social goals. (House File 404) (1) |
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Right: |
Yet another example of
how elected Democrats employ the power of the state to coerce
individuals and businesses into conforming with Democratic ideology.
This kind of interference in business operations harms the ability
of companies to produce products and services and provide jobs. |
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Wrong: |
Rep. Joe Mullery
(D-Minneapolis) wants judges to decide what is an “unconscionable”
price for any good or service during an “abnormal market disruption”
and impose fines of up to $35,000 for each sale at whatever might
later be found to be an “unconscionable” price. (House File 740) (1) |
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Right: |
Democrats believe that
politicians and judges who
have no knowledge of nor stake in the market place know better
what products should be offered at what prices than do freely
operating buyers and sellers. |
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Wrong: |
Rep. Patti Fritz
(D-Faribault) would require every hospital, clinic, nursing home and
medical facility to ban employees from lifting or assisting patients
to their feet. Instead they would have to purchase hoists,
“engineering controls, lifting and transfer aids, or mechanical
assistive devices.” Employees could lift patients in an emergency.”
(House File 712) (1) |
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Right: |
Some Democrats cannot seem to
recognize the obvious harm produced by their attempts to create the
perfect workplace. Republicans believe that forcing care providers to limit their assistance
to patients to only those mechanical methods approved by the law deprives patients of the benefit of being lifted by a personal
attendant. |
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Wrong: |
Rep. Scott Kranz
(D-Blaine) wants landowners to buy their tenants mobile homes when
trailer parks close. If a resident “chooses not to relocate the home
to another manufactured home park,” then the resident “is entitled
to compensation to be paid by the park owner in an amount equal to
the estimated market value of the manufactured home.” (House File
1205) (1) |
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Right: |
This Democrat believes
that the legislature should be in the business of changing
agreements between landowners and tenants in order to conform with
his view of what those agreements should have been. If this is a
good idea, why should the legislature limit itself to rewriting only
agreements involving trailer parks? |
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Wrong: |
Rep. Phyllis Kahn
(D-Minneapolis) wants to raise the cost of being accused of smoking
in a no-smoking hotel room. A person accused of smoking in such a
room would face a $100 fine, $500 in attorney fees, a $30 service
fee, and the full cost of “restoring the damaged room to its
previolation condition.” Further interest on the cost begins to run,
even if the accused does not receive notice of the violation. (House
File 1825) |
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Right: |
It is stunning to see over and over
again the effortlessness with which liberal Democrats are willing to
apply the heavy hand of penalties to enforce their pet social mores. |
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Sources: |
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1. |
MN House Republicans, Marty Seifert's
office, 2007. |
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