A night of beauty and class.

I accomplished one of the most difficult and challenging tasks over the weekend; I judged a Miss America-sanctioned scholarship pageant Saturday night. Not an easy thing to do. Congratulations to Emily Wyman, Miss Brainerd Lakes 2008 and congratulations to the other seven young women who performed so well. You did not make judging easy. And thanks and congratulations to Vicki Randall and Bill Musell for resurrecting the pageant six years ago, keeping it going, and making this a class offering. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

New Picture

By the by, this was taken in Tucson earlier this year. The young lady is my wife, Carol.

Campaigning on the ground.

Just a little update on how I spend my time these days. Yes, radio broadcasting and doing the news was a lot different. But there is something in common. One of my favorite activities then was meeting listeners. And now I'm meeting voters, in their homes. Most of them have definite concerns about state government and most of the concerns are about taxes. Few have said how happy they are that they now get to pay for more people on the state health care program, MinnesotaCare. Few have said they are happy they now get to pay a little more for gas and few have said they look forward to October when the state gas tax will go up another nickel or so. And few have said they are pleased as punch to know the new education funding bill will cost taxpayers an additional $1.6-Billion a year, every year, for who knows how long. None have said that. Perhaps they believed all those things deep inside and just didn't want to share with me.
This is a part of running for office that has immediate rewards and I'm not talking about sore feet and new mosquito bites. The reward is getting to meet voters face to face, knowing the future of the state is in their hands. We'll be fine. The doom and gloom merchants are wrong. Our best days are still before us.

Money for public education, the simple, easy way.

Let's break this down into easily digested bites.
Minnesota's education funding system is not broken but flawed. Funding should be equal, school to school, student to student. Therefore, the current convoluted system should be replaced with one that spends the same for each student. To keep this amazingly good public education system functioning, there also must be some way to make sure schools spend within their means. And government has to get off the backs of public education; no more unfunded mandates, period. So, in order to make sure this solution remains short, concise and simple, I'll stop typing now.
But we'll get back to it in the future.

PAYING FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

Hold on to your pocket calculators folks. The Dispatch is absolutely right about education finance. Its not fair and balanced, it’s lopsided and plays favorites. The questions we should be asking is how did it get to be that way and is House File 4178 dubbed the ‘new Minnesota Miracle’ the right way to fix it. A friend of mine gave me a copy of the 151-page education funding manual recently. Just about every page features yet another way to ‘equalize’ funding from an extra couple of hundred dollars for districts that recently consolidated to extra money because high schools in one district are farther apart than those of another. I’ve heard a number of officials say funding should be so much per pupil, period and the Democrat-controlled state legislature is pretty proud of the $800-Million delivered to public education in 2007. But somehow we’ve gotten to 151-pages of taking money from this pile and adding to the other pile. With the continued tug-o-war between Metro and outstate lawmakers, do we believe simply adding more money to all the categories will be a permanent solution? Governor Ventura was right; there will never be enough money.

The Dispatch editorial is right about its last line too; restructuring should be a top priority for 2009, just like it should have been in 2008. House Education Finance Chair Mindy Greiling told me last November that the reform committee was ready to meet again in January and a solution was very close. She introduced HF 4178 in April. Greiling told me then that the ‘second Minnesota Miracle’ would increase education funding by $1.6-Billion per year plus another $600,000 to replace local property taxes. Greiling said the money would probably come from increasing the state’s sales tax. The House Education Finance Committee held a supposedly official public hearing in Brainerd Monday night, June 16^th. Taxpayers paid for seven legislators, a state government staff member and his 5 assistants to sit and listen to 20 more-money-for-education devotees and me. And the wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round.

Public hearings are supposed to be official gatherings of information and encourage citizens to give testimony on both sides of an issue as opposed to rubberstamp bills worked out ahead of time and cast in concrete. I was the only one who spoke against the bill. Everybody else thought the Red Sea had been parted once again.

A Brainerd teacher recently took me to task for ‘inappropriately’ mentioning I was the House District 12A challenger running against the temporary chairman of the committee for that night thereby politicizing the procedings. The 12A incumbent is not a member of that committee so his ‘official’ role in that ‘official’ public hearing was, what? Officially?

First, we need to decide what public education in Minnesota includes. Then we can get a better idea of what it should cost.

What is a conservative?

Good question. I'm supposed to present a short lecture on this and other political topics later this summer so this will be good practice.
A friend once asked for help to decide which political party to join. My advice was to think about what she believed in, what values were most important to her. She said she believed in freedom, liberty and self-determination and believed they were the most important elements that has made the United States of America the most successful, prosperous nation in the history of planet Earth. She said she believes that capitalism and its respect for private property is the most practical and successful economic theory invented so far and that it has made not only her nation great but is now transforming much of the rest of the world. She said the sanctity of human life is most important to her and that she believes it begins at conception and should be protected and honored until natural death. And that the most important amendment in the US Bill of Rights was the 2nd, the one that guarantees government will make no laws prohibiting citizen's God-given right to keep and bear arms. And it was most important because without it, the rest would be academic at best. Then I told her to take those beliefs and find the political party that embodies those beliefs most closely.
Up in my neck of the woods, I talk to people everyday who believe those same principles but still vote for candidates from a party that does not. Members of this party seem to be on a crusade to soften them, broaden them, always for the best of good intentions regardless of the consequences. I was talking to a young friend last week who told me an incumbent public official had lied to her. I asked her if she was going to vote for him again and she said yes, because she belonged to his political party and they believed in so many of the same things. I reminded her that he had lied to her, about a vote he'd made. She said she understood but she still wasn't going to change her vote. I reminded her, once more that he had lied and decided to move on.
Our political beliefs and principles shouldn't be up for grabs depending on what our friends think or how polished the latest political flavor happens to be. And they should bear critical scrutiny, mostly from ourselves.
If a political party has changed, perhaps its time for you to change too.
There are 134 days left before election day, 2008. Discover your truth and hang onto it with both hands.

Welcom to the official campaign blog.

Welcome. This is the official campaign blog for the election of David Allan Pundt as he works toward becoming the next Minnesota State Representative from House District 12A. The district includes the cities of Baxter, Brainerd, Crosby, Ironton, Riverton and some of the most beautiful rural areas in the state of Minnesota. Ah, let's throw in Wisconson, North and South Dakota, Michigan, Ohio, upstate New York, and lots of other places. It's a beautiful world and I am blessed to be fortunate enough to live here.
Until a short while ago, I was the news director for KLKS in Breezy Point, a beautiful little town about 20 minutes north of Baxter where I live now. About five years ago, I started thinking about running for political office. Every journalist has an opinion and I kept mine to myself as much as possible and presented news and information as balanced as I could. But eventually, it became too frustrating to have an idea of where I wanted the nation and my state to go and see it go the other way. I believe in conservative family values, low taxes and constitutionally-limited government, the elements at the foundation of what made this country the best place to live on the planet, past or present. Ronald Reagan said once that the government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have. Those of us who pay taxes shell out roughly 43% of what we produce to be governed, by local, state and national bodies. At the beginning of the 20th century, that number was closer to 7%. It's been an expensive tap-dancing experiment in socialism-lite and the sooner we give up on failed notions of how to run a country, the better.
Join me on this merry adventure into getting involved first-hand. Politics has been a spectator sport for me since I was in college, mostly because I was a responsible journalist that parked his opinion at the door when he went to work. I left that work behind for the time being to see what I could do myself, to stop complaining about the government part-time, to throw myself into the fray and discover if I could do any better. No matter what happens, it's going to be an interesting journey. Later. David