By Michael Ferrera

A big burly man clothed in flannel and a Holden Caulfield style hat walked up to me. He spit chewing tobacco on the ground in front of me and after moving aside the fishing lures hanging from his hat, he looked me in the eye and said, “I need your help.” I immediately assumed that his truck was stuck in the mud, or that he had a deer that needed skinning. However, I was incorrect. “Take back my state,” the man ordered me. “Take it back from the people that live here.”I stood there in silence for a minute. He spit on the ground again, narrowly missing my shoe. “You want me, a liberal from Massachusetts, the home of gay marriage and universal health care, a temporary resident of your Midwest swing state, to come and save it?”

We stared at each other for a long time. The wind blew. He spit. “Yes,” the man said to me as he pulled out his revolver and cleaned it. “Look at you, you’re smart and you’re educated. We need people like you to vote here. There are millions of registered Democrats in this state; it’s just that they’re all too scared to vote. We need someone like you to vote for them. We’re in desperate need of people that will make the right choice. And by right choice, I mean the liberal choice. You can help swing this state in the favor of the Democrats and help save this country from all that is evil! This state needs carpet baggers! REPUBLICANS ANYWHERE ARE A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE! SAVE US FROM MARK FOLEY!” the man shouted to me over the roar of his Ford F-350 as he pulled out of the parking lot, hitting a squirrel. He stopped, picked it up, threw it in the back of his truck and drove on. I would never see that man again, but his words live on in my mind, along with the horrific image of that squirrel.

I sat there and thought for a while about what that brave, brave man had said. I need to save this state? I’m not about to refute his observations that I’m smart and educated, but he didn’t even ask me if I knew the issues; it just seemed like he wanted me to vote for the Democrat. Then it came to me on a platter delivered by Amy Klobuchar herself. There are obviously a lot of problems with Minnesota, which is why so many citizens are demanding that out-of-state students vote in Minnesota elections. Therefore, I propose a scheme of representation which has not been used in this country since before 1776, virtual representation.

I propose that we amend the Minnesota Constitution to remove any independent form of government. Listen, Minnesotans have been screwing with this fine state for far too long and it’s time that we take back our state, and what better way to do that than denying them the right to representation. It worked before and it will work again. The representatives from Massachusetts, or any of the other (now) 49 states can handle the small burden that would be placed on them by having to represent the roughly 5 million people in this fine, former state. That works out to 50,000 more constituents for every Senator and a mere 11,500 for each of the 435 representatives in the House of Representatives. Well, actually, let’s see, there will only be 98 Senators, so 51,000 per Senator and there will only be 427 representatives, so that’s 11,709 more for the members of the House. Perfect!

Unlike some in the administration, we will learn from the past. There will be no taxes on stamps, and most importantly, we will never quarter soldiers in houses in Minnesota (unless we need to go to war with Canada, in which case Minnesota will be a first line of defense and will be placed under martial law). After the invasion of Minnesota to free its people from the tyranny of…its people, there will be a 35% property tax for the first 10 to 20 years. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done here and I for one am not in favor of spending upwards of $300 billion purely out of our pockets. First of all, we need to disband the Minnesota National Guard because they are a threat to the new government we’re imposing here. Next we need to fire all government officials and dismantle any form of bureaucracy. After those two first initiatives we will start hunting down former members of the government and bureaucracy through door to door searches. Halliburton has told me they’ll have it all under control by early 2008. When all former officials have been tracked down and tried, we will implement our new form of virtual representation and finally everyone will be happy. Mission accomplished.