Don't Talk About What They Want to Talk About, Talk About What I Want to Talk About

Just give Zygi the money and move on. That's the message from that ever-reliable source of conventional wisdom, Lori Sturdevant:

Count this Twins fan among those rooting for a new Vikings stadium to be authorized this year. Not next year or some other someday. This year.

Why the haste, when the team hasn't (yet) summoned any moving vans?

Because as long as the state's most popular sports team's facility needs go unmet, discussion of those needs won't end. And all that talk depletes a valuable and finite resource -- the attention of the voters and their elected representatives.

As always, this is baked wind. The Vikings don't need a new stadium. They want one. They could continue to play in the Dome indefinitely, but they don't want to. And the Vikings are entitled to feel that way, but it doesn't compel anyone in the government to take action on their behalf.

Second, I'm hardly convinced that the talk concerning the stadium is really depleting "a valuable and finite resource -- the attention of the voters and their elected representatives." From what I can tell, most of the lege is puttering along on any number of other issues and has been waiting to see what is brought to them. I've personally blown through a lot of pixels on the matter, but it's hardly the only thing we talk about.

Sturdevant apparently wants to just cut a check and move on to other issues:

It's a distraction, just when demographic and economic change should rivet public focus on the Big Challenge that Minnesota is confronting.

And that is?

Rather, it's about finding the best possible answer to this question: How can Minnesota preserve and enhance the asset on which its prosperity depends -- its well-educated, highly productive workforce?

Maintaining Minnesota's education edge ought to command top billing at the Capitol from now until the last baby boomer "checks out" of her assisted-living facility. To thrive, an aging society needs to maximize the skills, productivity and incomes of its working-age members.

She left out the main thing -- maximizing the revenue one can hoover out of the wallets of the working-age members. Because the Lori Sturdevants of the world need to be the ones to figure this stuff out.

The conceit in this instance is the same as always -- the demographic problem is something the government needs to solve. Of course, lately we've been talking a lot about mandated access to birth control, so we seem a little bit confused on the topic. But that's nothing a legislative committee, or maybe a blue-ribbon commission or a public-private partnership couldn't solve, if only we had the will to do it.

Maybe it could work. Perhaps we could set up the commissions with equally matched numbers of males and  females and send them off to a offsite conference someplace, then pair them off for "research purposes." It would certainly be a way to get some folks who otherwise spend their time playing video games in the basement to get more involved in the political process.

Somehow, I don't think that's what Lori has in mind, though. Actually, it's this:

Last year's moves to bring the latest research to bear on the teaching of reading are highly promising. So is a start on a new teacher evaluation system. When it's in place in a few years, it's expected to provide a basis for teachers to be rewarded and/or weeded out based on effectiveness in the classroom.

The bill that would require employing the new evaluation system when determining who will get pink slips when schools downsize might be considered premature, given that the system is still in the works.

But it also might be considered a welcome affirmation from the people's representatives about this state's intention to meet its Big Challenge. The tenure-bending bill says that Minnesota is serious about preserving instructional quality, even and especially when money is tight.

Well, that's all fine in the abstract, but Sturdevant's beloved DFL remains the political party that can stop any reform from happening. It also happens to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Education Minnesota, which has been fighting seniority rules with hammer and tong.

And at bottom, this is why the discussion that Sturdevant wants isn't likely to happen any time soon. There's too much incoherence in it. Asking for reform, while favoring Education Minnesota, is a lot like looking to improve demographic situations while demanding universal access to the Pill. You can't reconcile it and therefore any discussion of the "Big Challenge" is going to be fruitless.