The marvelous pig

This is Taylor Swine (get it?). She’s an Emmer spokespig, and although she is by all accounts a marvelous pig, too, she’s not the subject of today’s parable. Her picture was just handy.

A reporter got a tip that a farmer has an unusual pig on his farm, so the reporter drove out to the farmer’s place. As he approached the farm, he noticed some pigs in a lot, and as he got closer, he saw that one of them had two wooden legs. The reporter was anxious to find out about this pig came to have artificial legs.

He knocked, and the farmer came to the door. After introducing himself, he said, “That’s a pretty unusual pig you’ve got there. Can you him me about him?”

“Wal, sure,” replied the farmer. “That is a marvelous pig; let me tell you! A couple of months ago, the chimney started a fire in the house during the night. We were all asleep. That pig saw the fire, crashed through the gate, ran up here, and created a ruckus that woke us all up. If it hadn’t been for that pig, we’d probably all be dead. Yep, that’s a marvelous pig, all right.”

“That’s an amazing story!” exclaimed the reporter, “But what I meant was how did it come to have artificial legs?”

The farmer shrugged and said, “A pig that special, you don’t want to eat all at once.”

And so it is with Tom Emmer’s budget ideas.

From Dayton's spokesperson Katie Tinucci: "Rep. Emmer's plan will cut funding for Higher Education by 14%, K-12 Education by 14%, and Local Government Aid by 33%. He will thus cause huge increases in property taxes, higher college tuitions and seriously damage the quality of education throughout Minnesota. Furthermore, his drastic cuts in funding for Health and Human Services will restrict access to essential health care for those most in need."

He won’t eat the pig all at once, of course, just piece by piece.