Are you reading this? You are? So the rapture didn’t happen Saturday, did it? Some 200 million righteous Christians weren’t swept safely into heaven while earthquakes — sent by God, of course — thundered around the globe and ushered in five months of teeth-gnashing hell on earth for the unbelievers left behind.

But broadcast evangelist Harold Camping proooomiiiised.

Actually, he said the Bible guaranteed the doomsday Saturday, an apocalyptic proclamation he and his followers spread nationwide via billboards and brightly painted RVs, including a fleet that rolled through Duluth last week. Wonder if the billboard companies and pimp-my-RV shops were paid up front.

Regardless, it’s back to work…, including in St. Paul, where lawmakers may already feel like they’re living a hell on earth. The legislative session is supposed to conclude today, but anyone who believes it will probably also believed the 1994, Y2K, May 21, 2011, and Mayan calendar doomsday predictions, or even that the Virgin Mary would visit Kettle River back in the early 1990s.

(Actually, the Mayan one isn’t supposed to happen until next year, meaning, yippee, we get to go through this again.)

Our lawmakers certainly have been acting as though they expected the world to end before they had to actually finish their work of passing a budget and solving a $5 billion deficit.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton has bent a little on his insistence that the budget and deficit fix include tax increases; he has scaled back his proposed increases. Republican lawmakers, who make up the legislative majority, meanwhile, have shown no signs of budging from their pledge not to raise taxes — no way, no how, not on anyone or for anything (except maybe a Vikings stadium).

“Republicans say they were elected on a platform of not raising taxes. Fair enough,” the Free Press of Mankato, opined last week. “But the same voters elected a governor whose platform — very clearly stated from the start — was to raise taxes on the wealthiest in the state.

“Apparently the voters expected the two sides to come down somewhere in the middle.”

But will they, without a special session or government shutdown that’ll cost us taxpayers plenty?

Sure. An evangelist somewhere may even be willing to guarantee it.

— Duluth News-Tribune, May 23