Skip to main content

Give people some credit, Lessard says.

Bob Lessard waited until a few ours before the deadline to file as a Republican candidate for Attorney General.

“I kept hoping that someone would file that really was filing to protect the Constitution and laws of Minnesota,” the 80 something former Minnesota State Senator from International Falls, said. “Nobody did so I filed.”

Lessard says he has two reasons for running for Minnesota’s Attorney General.

One reason is that he’s concerned that Republicans want to repeal Minnesota’s Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution.

“You know it’s in their party platform,” he asked.


Lessard, along with Staples area Senator Dallas Sams, were the co-authors of the bill that eventually went before Minnesota voters as a Constitutional amendment to fund environmental and arts projects with a quarter of one percent sales tax. Fifty-six percent of Minnesota voters voted yes on the Constitutional amendment.

“I’m not in favor of governing by initiative and referendum like they do in California but sometimes you need to give the people some credit,” Lessard said. “The people wanted this and they voted for it and the vote should be respected.”

Lessard, who also authored the legislation (and 1988 Constitutional amendment) that allowed fifty-percent of lottery profits to be used on environmental projects, says legislators from both the DFL and GOP have a tendency to raid dedicated sources of revenue.

“At first fifty percent of the lottery money was supposed to go to the environment through the Legislative Commission on Minnesota Resources,” he said. “Then the Legislature whittled it down to forty percent for the environment and sixty percent for the General Fund. They also put the money from unclaimed prizes in the General Fund. That’s wrong.”

Lessard is afraid the legislature is going to go after the Legacy Amendment funds in the same way. This last session the Republican controlled legislature used Legacy Amendment funds for water and sewer treatment system improvements.

“That’s wrong. That not what the Amendment was for. Those things should be in the bonding bill. If you start doing that you’ll wipe out the Legacy funds very quickly.”

So, Lessard is concerned that if the Republicans can’t repeal the Legacy Amendment head on they will hollow it out from the inside.

“This fund is not a cash cow,” Lessard said. “The people voted for this and if they knew what was going on they’d be outraged.”

Lessard says he has another reason for running for Minnesota Attorney General.

“All the other candidates want to use the office to advance their political and ideological agendas,” he said. “If they want to do that they should run for the legislature.”

Lessard says that the office of the Minnesota Attorney General is supposed to limit itself to uphold the laws and Constitution of Minnesota.


“If they want an activist Attorney General they should move to New York or California,” he said. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Senator Gazelka: Prepare for End Times

Review by John King “Marketplace Ministers are part of how the Lord will reach the peoples of the earth in these last days.” Author Paul Gazelka wrote this astonishing sentence near the conclusion of his 2003 book, Marketplace Ministers , but it is a good place to start here because it so neatly encapsulates the message of the book which is that business people, by spreading the Gospel, are in a unique position to prepare us, for the end of the world.   Gazelka, an insurance salesman in Baxter, Minnesota, devotes chapters one through four to the story of his religious calling and how he came to adopt the “marketplace” as his personal ministry.  He goes to some length, relying in part on the “Fivefold Path” from Ephesians to convince the reader that the marketplace is a legitimate pulpit to spread the Word.  The remainder of the book, using personal anecdotes and biblical passages, he explains how a marketplace ministry would function and what its usefulness w...

70 years of regenerative and organic research

This was published in The Land earlier this year. - Tim By Tim King The Land Correspondent Kutztown, PA, Rodale Institute, which is headquartered on its seventy year old 333 acre research and education farm near here, has opened its Organic Crop Consulting Services based at its Rodale Institute Midwest Organic Center near Marion Iowa. The Land talked to Dr. Andrew Smith, Rodale’s Chief Scientist and Chief Operating Officer, about Rodale’s expanded services in Iowa and about organic and regenerative agriculture in general. Smith is a former organic farmer and Peace Corps volunteer. The Land: Can you tell me about the Rodale Institute? Smith: We are a nonprofit research and education institution, in operation since 1947, headquartered on our farm near Kutztown Pennsylvania. We also operate six other sites in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Georgia, and California. Rodale Institute aims to grow the regenerative organic movement through research, farmer training, and consumer education. On our si...

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T...