Dayton says nation needs new direction

By Brad Swenson

Pioneer Staff Writer

      CASS LAKE - Both Minnesota and the nation need new directions, says U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton, who lamented education spending cuts and a wrongheaded war in Iraq.

      Dayton, DFL-Minn., was the keynote speaker late Saturday afternoon at a fish fry for state House 4A DFL candidate Frank Moe of Bemidji. But Dayton also plugged Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s Democrat run for president.

      If President Bush and Vice President Cheney win re-election, “nothing will hold them back,” Dayton said to about 150 supporters. “We need a dramatic new direction.”

      Dayton, while giving high praise for U.S. troops in Iraq, said it was time for them to come home and leave Iraq to the defense of Iraqis. The Minnesota Democrat stirred criticism last week as he boycotted a speech by Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in his appearance before Congress.

      “We have 138,000 courageous and patriotic men and women serving over there,” Dayton said. “But their family members do not want their spouses, children, brothers and sisters over there 18 months.

      “I want the citizens of Iraq to stand up and defend their own country,” Dayton said. “We are just stage props in patrolling the cities and borders for them.”

      It is time for the Iraqi police and national guard to assume the lead role in defense, he said, “and we gave them the right to do that.”

      Supporting the troops means “bringing them home alive,” he said to about `150 people at the fish fry held in the reservation’s early childhood center.

      Later Saturday, Dayton went to Mahnomen to attend the Minnesota National Guard’s 2nd Battalion, 136th Infantry Dinner where he joined in honoring men and women who recently returned from serving in Kosovo and Bosnia.

      “Our biggest threat is not in Baghdad but the terrorist operations plotting against the U.S., which should have been wiped out,” Dayton said. “We are creating another generation of terrorists.

      “I praise our troops, but the Iraqi people have got to be responsible for their own country,” he said, offering that Kerry has given an accurate assessment that the Bush administration wrongly targeted Saddam Hussein and Iraq instead of relentlessly pursuing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

      And Dayton said Bush’s economic policies have sent jobs overseas to the expense of American workers. “It is time to outsource the Bush administration,” he said.

      Just as Kerry is needed to replace Bush in Washington, Dayton said Moe is needed to replace Rep. Doug Fuller, R-Bemidji, in the Minnesota House.

      “This district has not had a DFL representative in St. Paul for a few years, but it will in Rep. Frank Moe,” Dayton said. “You have a great candidate who is committed to public service and who understands public education.”

      Minnesota has “defunded” K-12 education, he said, especially under Republican House control. Public education spending is actually 12 percent less now than in 1990 the last year a DFLer was in the governor’s mansion.

      “The defunding of public education is the greatest public policy disaster in my lifetime in Minnesota,” he said.

      In addition, higher education tuition in Minnesota is now the third highest in the nation, Dayton added. “That’s shameful.”

      Partly to blame, he said, are the great GOP House tax giveaways of the last few years that benefited property taxes in wealthier metro-area suburbs, he said.

      “If Minnesotans knew the values and principles of generations has been sacrificed now to protect property tax reductions of the rich in Edina, I think they’d be outraged,” Dayton said. “That’s why we hold elections.”

      Moe said he would support the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe’s effort to join with Red Lake and White Earth Bands and the state to jointly run a casino in the Twin Cities area.

      Moe noted that Fuller had voted against bills allowing Red Lake and White Earth to join in a casino, while supporting efforts to locate slot machines at the privately owned Canterbury Park

the so-called racino proposal.

      “I support tribal sovereignty and the tribe’s effort for the casino, and will do all to further that concept,” Moe said.

      Fuller and state Sen. Carrie Ruud, R-Breezy Point, are slated to meet with tribal leadership on Wednesday.