Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

The various “occupy” groups want to operate outside the rules of ordinary civilized society . . . as long as everyone plays nice.

Reports of unsanitary conditions and even rape remind us that life without order brought by consensus is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Too much government is bad, but too little is bad, too. What Conservatives offer is Just Right.

Wonder how long it’ll take the OWS crowd to figure out what the Founding Fathers knew 200 years ago?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

What’s the old saying?  “A conservative is a liberal that’s been mugged; a libertarian is a conservative that’s been audited?”  Maybe we’ll need to add “A new conservative is someone who’s seen “democracy” in action?”

SCENE:  Mitch, watching the morning news and blogging.

MITCH: Hey – what’s that?

MITCH’S AUDIENCE, IN RESPONSE, AS ONE: What’s what?

MITCH: Listen…

MAIRA1: We hear nothing.

MITCH: Exactly.  We’ve gone through an entire local newscast without a single reference to “Occupy Minnesota”‘s antics!

MAIRA1: Wow.  That is weird.

MITCH: Right!?

We’ve been talking for quite a while now about the activities of “Draw The Line Minnesota“, part of a chain of astroturf pressure groups being established across the Midwest to put pressure on the redistricting process.

My prediction a few months back, when “Draw The Line” started pitching its game to the usual fawning suspects in the media: there would be an elaborate show of “multipartisanship” for the media to show to the world – sort of like the Congress of Soviets in the old USSR.  Then, “Draw The Line” would release the maps – elaborately gerrymandered maps, which would favor the DFL to an absurd degree – that they were going to release all along.

So far, I’m batting about 1000.

Well, OK – about .800.  I didn’t bank on “Draw The Line” getting a squeaky wheel like Kent Kaiser into the mix.  A few weeks ago, he wrote a letter to the Judicial Redistricting Board pointing out that the bipartisan “Citizens’ Commission” was a sham – a group of well-meaning, earnest people who were being used as window-dressing for a conclusion, and a redistricting solution, that’d been decided in a locked back room well out of public view, and which was a gerrymandered DFL-centric abomination.

But the wheel has indeed squeaked.  Last night on “The Late Debate” (as reported by Gary Gross at LFR), Kaiser took on “Draw The Line” again:

Prof. Kaiser made news by telling the listeners that Common Cause MN were distancing themselves from the Citizen Commission because 2 of the members, Prof. Kaiser and Anne Mason, were Republicans.

That clearly violates one of the top two priorities listed on DTL-Minnesota’s website:

“The campaign seeks to create a better redistricting process in Minnesota that uses the following principles:

1. The redistricting process should be independent and nonpartisan, to minimize the influence of elected officials and political parties in creating districts to their own political advantage.

2. The redistricting process should be transparent to the public”

As Gross pointed out, the commissioners did try to do the job as advertised – something for which I didn’t credit them in advance:

Actually, the Citizens Commission tried living up to both principles. DTL-Minnesota’s powers-that-be corrupted the process, first by making the Commission a partisan effort, then by having Linden Wieswerda draw the redistricting maps, then embargoing the maps until they were filed with the Special Panel on Redistricting.

So if you take Kaiser at his word – and I do – even Common Cause is giving up on the fiction so consistently aped by the media that the “Citizens’ Commission” is anything but window-dressing.

So let’s step through the chronology:

1. The Minnesota Legislature passed a redistricting plan – drawn largely entirely by Republicans (which is one of the prerogatives of winning), but which met the letter and spirit of the body of redistricting law that has sprung up around this process over the past forty years or so.
2. Governor Dayton – notwithstanding the fact that the DFL had no counterproposal – vetoed the Legislature’s map, sending it to the courts.
3. A group of left-“leaning” groups – Common Cause, the Minnesota Council of Non-Profits, the League of Women Voters and Take Action Minnesota – propped up “Draw The Line Minnesota” (DTL).
4. DTL formed the “Citizens’ Commission”, a 15 member panel with two identified Republicans, intended to take “public feedback”.  This, they did.
5. DTL also deployed some cool web toys, allowing pretty much anyone to try to draw their own redistricting map…
6. …which, as we later found, was more or less the equivalent of giving noisy kids in the back of the car a coloring book so they’ll shut up on a long trip.  DTL, notwithstanding all its talk of “transparency”, hired a longtime DFLer to draw its real maps, in secret, and embargoed until the deadline to hand them over to the judicial panel.  The “Commission”‘s feedback was basically a sham.

I think it’s interesting; when I appeared with “Common Cause Minnesota’s” Mike Dean on “The Late Debate”, I invited him onto the NARN;  he had been palavering for the previous two hours about the need for multipartisanship, after all.  His response – I published “Fairy Tales” about “Common Cause”.  (I admittedly erred in the actual source of some of the organization’s funding, and in the scope of one IRS 990 form I produced – which didn’t change the ideology behind their money one iota).

As we can see now, Dean was committing an instance of Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”

Who’s telling fairy tales, now?

To my liberal readers: I’ll send you on your way to “FACTCHECK” me on the total number of actual vioent incidents at every Tea Party (not dubious associations made by people dying to pin anything they can find to the Tea Party) in the past three years.

It will come to much, much less than has happened in Denver in the past 48 hours.

About eight officers scuffled with a group of protesters, according to The Denver Post, and police confirmed to the newspaper that they used pepper spray and either rubber bullets or pepper balls to break up the crowd.

Denver police spokesman Matt Murray said protesters knocked an officer off his motorcycle and other officers were kicked by demonstrators.

Murray said seven protesters were arrested, including two for assault and one for disobedience. He said some demonstrators had received medical treatment on the scene, but no one had been taken to a hospital.

Now, the real point is this: remember when every dodgy, questionable (and questionably) racist sign, expression of pique, dubiously-linked incident or dodgy endorsement was evidence that the Tea Party was proof that the conservative movement was racist?

Here’s the tally so far, according to John Nolte at Big Government. 

1. NY: 10/1/2011 — Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge
2. Madison, WI: 10-27-2011 — Madison Occupiers Lose Permit Due to Public Masturbation
3. Phoenix: 10/28/2011 — Flier at Occupy Phoenix Asks, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?”
4. NY: 10/18/2011 — Thieves Preying on Fellow Protesters
5. NY: 10/9/2011 — Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters Accused of Living in Filth as Shocking Pictures Show One Demonstrator Defecating on a POLICE CAR
6. NY: 10/7/2011 — Occupiers Rush Police … More
7. Cleveland: 10/18/2011 —  ‘Occupy Cleveland’ Protester Alleges She Was Raped
8. NY: 10/10/2011 — ‘Increasingly Debauched’: Are Sex, Drugs & Poor Sanitation Eclipsing Occupy Wall Street?
9. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — Man Accused of Exposing Self to Children Arrested
10. 10/12/2011 — Iran Supports ‘Occupy Wall Street’
11. Portland: 10/16/2011 – #OccupyPortland Protester Desecrates Memorial To U.S. War Dead
12. Portland: 10/15/2011 — #OccupyPortland Protesters Sing “F*** The USA”
13. Chicago: 10/17/2011 — COMMUNIST LEADER Cheered at Occupy Chicago
14. 10/15/2011 — American Nazi Party Endorses Occupy Wall Street‘s ’Courage,‘ Tells Members to Support Protests and Fight ’Judeo-Capitalist Banksters’
15. Boston: 10/14/2011 — Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents
16. Boston: 10/11/2011 — Boston Police Arrest Over 100 from Occupy Boston
17. New York: 10/11/2011 — “You Can Have Sex with Animals.”
18. New York: 10/15/2011 — Harassing Police with Accusations of Phony Injuries
19. New York: 10/9/2011 –  ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ Protesters Steal from Local Businesses
20. New York: 10/25/2011 — Three Men Threatened to Kill 24-Year-Old Occupy Wall Street Protester for Reporting Rape
21. Baltimore:  10/18/2011 — #OccupyBaltimore Discourages Sexual Assault Victims from Contacting Police
22. Portland: 10/27/2011 — Occupy Portland’s Attempt At Wealth Redistribution Ends In Theft
23. Los Angeles: 10/14/2011 – Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall Street
24. 10/27/2011 — A Death Threat From an Occupy Wall Street Protester
25. 10/27/2011 – Anti-Semitic Tweet From Occupier or Sympathizer
26. Boston: 10/20/2011 — Occupy Boston Doesn’t Want Police Involved in Rape
27. New York:  10/5/2011: Anti-Semitic Occupier Screams About Jews, Israel
28. New York: 10/4/2011 — Occupier Taunts Jewish Man
29. Boston: 10/2011 — Occupiers Block Street
30. New York: 10/2011 — Occupier Tries to Steal Police Officer’s Gun
31. New York: 10/27/2011 — Occupiers Block Traffic, Get Arrested
32. Oakland: 10/27/2011 — Occupiers Throw Garbage at Police
33. Oakland:  10/19/2011 — Abusive #OccupyOakland Protesters Ban Media from Tent City
34. Eugene, OR: 10/19/2011 — Occupiers Displace Farmers’ Market Threatening Hundreds of Jobs
35. Portland, OR:  10/18/2011 — Capitalist Offering Jobs at Occupy Portland Finds Few Takers
36. NY:  10/20/2011 — #OccupyWallStreet Threatens Businesses, Patrons
37. NY: 10/14/2011 — Violence Breaks Out During #OccupyWallStreet March Toward Stock Exchange
38. NY: 10/14/2011 — Protesters March On Wall Street, Scuffle With Cops
39. Oakland: 10/19/2011 — #OccupyOakland Protesters Threaten Reporter
40. Oakland: 10/26/2011 — Occupiers Scuffle with Police
41. Oakland: 10/24/2011 — Protesters Storm, Vandalize, Shut Down Chase Bank
42. Dayton, OH: 10/22/2011 — Protester: ‘F*ck The Military, F*ck Your Flag, And F*ck The Police’
43. Chicago: 10/14/2011 –  Protesters’ Message At #OccupyChicago Rally: ‘Destroy Israel’
44. NY: 10/23/2011 — #OccupyWallStreet Supporter Rants Against Israel, Jews
45. NY: 10/22/2011 — #Occupy Kid: ‘Burn Wall Street, Burn!’
46. NY: 10/21/2011 — New Yorkers Fed Up With Noisy, Defecating Protesters
47. Oakland:  10/21/2011 — Occupy Oakland Evicted After Reports Of Crime And Intimidation
48. Oakland: 10/19/2011 — #OccupyOakland Out of Control: Rats, Graffiti, Vandalism, Sexual Harassment, Public Sex and Urination
49. Chicago: 10/26/2011 –  Occupiers Under Investigation by FBI for Links to Terrorism
50. Cleveland: 10/29/2011 — Rape Reported at Occupy Cleveland
51. Dallas: 10/24/2011 — Police Investigating Possible Sexual Assault Of Teen At Occupy Dallas
52. Bloomington, IN: 10/26/2011 — Man Claims Occupy Bloomington Protesters Drugged, Handcuffed Him
53. NY: 10/10/2011 — Sex, Drugs and Hiding from the Law at Wall Street Protests
54. Glasgow: 10/26/2011 — Woman Gang-Raped
55. Boston: 10/23/2011 — Occupy Boston Protesters Arrested For Dealing Heroin – With 6 Year-Old in Tent
56. Portland: 10/16/2011 –  Sex Offender Registers Occupy Portland Camp as Address
57. Denver: 10/15/2011 — Occupy Denver Demonstrator Accused of Groping TV Photographer
58. Lawrence, KS: 10/25/2011 — Sexual Assault Reported at Occupy Camp
59. Minneapolis, MN:  Bricks, Rocks, ‘Riot Supplies’ Discovered by Police
60. Phoenix, AZ:  10/27/2011 — Neo-Nazis Patrol “Occupy Phoenix” With AR-15′s
61. Chicago: 10/26/2011 — Occupy Chicago Invades City Hall
62. 10/26/2011 — ACORN, Occupy Email Talks About Assault on Banks
63. 10/26/2011 –  OccupyWallStreet Strategy for Reports of Violence Against Cops
64. Chicago: 10/26/2011 — Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers Wows Occupiers
65. Chicago:  10/25/2011 — Ayers Coaches  #OccupyChicago, Callsg for School ‘Occupations’
66. 10/26/2011/ — Occupy Protests Have Jewish Leaders Concerned
67. Wash DC: 10/27/2011 –  OccupyDC Leftists Provoke Police – Hang Flag on Top of DC Statue
68. Albuquerque, NM:  10/26/2011 — Occupy Squatters Riot With Police
69. San Diego: 10/25/2011 — Flag Used as Chew Toy by Occupier’s Dog
70. Oakland: 10/25/2011 — Occupiers Throw Bottles at Police
71. NY: 10/27/2011 — Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Rush Limbaugh Is Bigger Threat Than Al-Qaeda
72. 10/27/2011 — Occupy Wall Street Launching First Nationwide General Strike in America Since 1946
73. NY: 10/28/2011 — Fox 5 News Reporter Assaulted at OWS
74. 10/28/2001 — Total Occupy Arrests Made Thus Far: 2750
75. Nashville: 10/28/2011 — 30 Arrests Made at Wall St. Protest
76. NY: 10/20/2011 — Former Marine Tries to Taunt Police into Violence
77. NY: 1023/2011 — Islamist Group Joins with Occupy Wall Street
78. Los Angeles:  10/13/2011 — Roundup of Overt Occupy anti-Semitism
79. NY: 10/12/2011 — There are No Anti-Semites at Occupy Wall Street. Except for This Guy
80. Missoula, MT: 10/20/2011 — Drunk 11-Year-Old At Occupy Missoula, Adult Arrested
81. Oakland: 10/28/2011 — Bounty Out On Police Officer?
82. Manchester, NH: 10/28/2011 – Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at Occupy NH rally
83. San Diego: 10/28/2011 – 40 Occupiers arrested
84. Boston: 10/24/2011 — Occupy Boston Vandalism of Banks
85. Boston: 10/25/2011 – Store Owner Suffers 4 Break Ins Since Occupy Boston Began
86. Portland: 10/28/2011 — Portland Police: Buckets of Excrement Scattered Around #OccupyPortland Camp
87. Seattle: 10/20/2011 — Two Possible Occupiers Charged With Assault
88. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — Armed Felon Arrested at Occupy Seattle
89. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — A Tent Fight and (At Least) One Arrest at Occupy Seattle
90. Seattle: 10/17/2011 — Over 50 Cops Clear Westlake Occupation, Make Eight Arrests
91. Seattle: 10/13/2011 — Cops Arrest Several Occupy Protesters
92. Seattle: 10/13/2011 — Chanting Protesters Surround Police After Officers Arrest Two
93. Denver: 10/29/2011 — Protesters Clash with Police at OWS Denver
94. Austin: 10/13/2011 – Occupy Austin protesters arrested for blocking cleaning Crews
95. Calgary, CN: 10/28/2011 — Occupiers do $40,000 in Property Damage
96. Cincinnati, OH: 10/21/2011 — 23 Arrested, Remains of  protests fill two dumpsters
97. Sacramento: 10/19/2011 – 9 arrested in ‘Occupy Sacramento’ protest
98. Sacramento: 10/13/2011 – Four More Occupy Sacramento Demonstrators Arrested
99. Austin, TX: 10/22/2011 – Man Arrested After Knife Incident at Occupy Austin Camp
100. Nashville: 10/29/2011 — Tenn. Protesters Arrested For 2nd Straight Night

To:  “Occupy…” in all your various and seemingly indistinguishable forms.
From: Mitch Berg – one of the 53%
Re: You Blew It.

Dear Occupant:

I’m Mitch Berg.  Most of you who are huddled down at Government Center – sorry, I just can’t call it “People’s Plaza” – right now probably think of me as “the enemy”, on one level or another.  But I’m a guy who works for a living, and pays taxes (oh, lord) and is not “too big to fail” and who reacted to the bailouts on Wall Street with the same anger – albeit not the same response – that you folks had.

And a call from my old friend Tom Swift on my show a week or so ago got me to thinking.

Tom pointed out that the “Occupy” movement had the potential to be every bit as big a deal as the Tea Party – if they had stuck with themes that really resonate with actual Americans; the revulsion with government (of whichever party) picking winners and losers, pouring public money into bailing out banks that then sat on the money (for whatever reason), and the roots of the foreclosure crisis, which is hurting the responsible just as much as the wanton these days.

But y’all blew it.  As Dave Ramsey notes, rather than protest around and about a clear message – like the Tea Party, which for a movement with no cohesive leadership is very “on-message”, as they say – the “Occupy” movement, says Ramsey, is…well, just a big fuzzy cloud:

The beauty of being vague is that anyone who has any emotion can get caught up in the excitement and join your crusade. They’ll just get mad at something and assume that you’re both mad about the same thing. Put a few hundred of these people together, and boom. You’ve got a crowd, a headline and a lot of attention … but no message.

And Ramsey isn’t one of those people telling you Occupiers to take a shower and get a job, necessarily:

A lot of people on Twitter are saying I totally agree with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demands and goals. The only problem is that I have no idea what their demands and goals are. And neither does anyone else. If all you ever do is stomp around, yell and hold up signs protesting a million different things, sure you’ll get some attention, but over time, you’ll just look foolish. You end up coming across like a three-year-old having a temper tantrum.

This is what’s happening to the OWS movement. They’re being discredited because no one has stepped forward and really stated what it is they’re after. The whole group is just coming across like a bunch of jacked-up, jobless, wannabe hippies. That’s not going to change anything in this country. You’ve got to state your goals clearly if you want to accomplish something.

And that’s the big difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy party; the Tea Party got angry about something and seized on protest (and lots and lots of action) in response. Seriously, everybody can sum up in one sentence why the Tea Party exists, even some of its less-dim detractors.

But the Occupiers seemed to protest first, and try to figure out why later.  At a General Assembly meeting.

Obama still gets more money from Wall Street than all GOP candidates put together:

Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data.

Obama’s key advantage over the GOP field is the ability to collect bigger checks because he raises money for both his own campaign committee and for the Democratic National Committee, which will aid in his reelection effort.

As a result, Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. The numbers show that Obama retains a persistent reservoir of support among Democratic financiers who have backed him since he was an underdog presidential candidate four years ago.

So – will “Occupy Wall Street” move its masses (I slay me) to DC?  Or are they really just a Potemkin protest run by the Democrats?

Remember back in 2009?  When the Tea Party rally came to Saint Paul, did its business, set about the task of changing Minnesota and the US, and paid their own bills – which, naturally, launched a round of conspiracy theories as to who paid for the materials and porta-potties and so forth?

Well, “Occupy MN” certainly hopes you don’t.  The weeks-long excellent adventure for college “progressives” and superannuated hippies has cost you, the over-taxed Minneapolis and Henco taxpayer (and let’s be honest, probably the rest of us too)  a quarter of a million dollars

The cost of Occupy Minnesota protests is starting to add up for Minneapolis police. Tuesday afternoon, Sgt. William Palmer says the total cost to the Minneapolis Police Department is closing in $100,000.

Palmer says the city has had to pay $43,500 for approximately 726 hours of overtime. “While the MPD has worked proactively to reduce overtime this year, these hours were unavoidable,” said a statement from Minneapolis police.

Additionally, Minneapolis police say approximately 1,245 hours have been spent in the planning and support of the protest prior to the overtime. The cost for this time is approximately $56,000, according to numbers released by Minneapolis Police Department.

Minneapolis is broke, remember?

And Henco is on the hook too:

These costs are only for the Minneapolis Police Department.

Hennepin County officials said Tuesday their costs for supervision and management is $152,295.

Let’s start chanting.

“They Are The One-Hundredth Of A Percent Of The 99%!”

Everybody sing!

(To the tune of Crosby Stills and Nash’s “Woodstock”):

I went down to the “Peoples’ Plaza”,
They were several hundred strong.
And every chant was a blast
of self-abnegation!

We are cogs, we are sprockets,
We are eggs in The Peoples’ Omelet!
And we’ve got to get ourselves,
into unison!

Not sure why this bit – from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” – popped to mind:

It just sprang to mind. Just like…pow:

By the time they got to Woodstock, they were half a million strong. But by the time they assembled on Freedom Plaza on Tuesday morning to plan the day’s civil disobedience, they numbered only 53.

 

Attempting to emulate the Occupy Wall Street protests, Washington activists and some out-of-town guests set themselves the lofty goal of occupying the Hart Senate Office Building. “We are there to shut the place down!” organizer David Swanson told his small band of followers.

Or, for that matter, this one – from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”:

Honest.  No idea whatsoever why it jumped to mind:   

But how to do this with only a few dozen demonstrators? Well, Swanson said, they could push all the buttons on the elevators — the way naughty children sometimes do in apartment buildings. “There are people who are wanting to go into the elevators and fill them and not get out and push all the buttons,” he said. “If you like that, do it.”

This set off a lengthy debate in Freedom Plaza, at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street NW, as activists came to the microphone to argue the pros and cons of elevator disruption.

“Let’s face it, our numbers are not enough to shut this building down,” said the representative from Veterans for Peace. “I think pushing elevator buttons is stupid.”

You go and read the whole thing while I figure out why those who movie clips came to mind.

To: The Regional Mainstream Media
From: Mitch Berg, Prole
Re: Your Coverage of the “Overentitled, Overeducated White People For Big Government” Rally

All,

“Field of Dreams” was a great movie. And one of its hook lines was, indeed, “If you build it, they will come”.

But repeating “The rallies are building! The rallies are building!” (koff koff Alix Kendall and Tom Bultler) several times every newscast doesn’t actually mean that this exercise in Obama-fluffing is ever going to become an actual populist “uprising”

That is all.

MBerg

(PS – Seriously – I know you want to have a big headline story, but this is the kind of stuff that people are going to be laughing about for years.  The Channel Nine morning news at 7AM devoted a solid four minutes to the protests, clogged with references to “watching the nationwide protests as they spread across the country”, as if it’ll actually happen if you say it once an hour).

When Van Jones yapped about the “American Autumn”, I’m sure he didn’t bank on Mark Steyn running with the analogy;

In case you don’t get it, that’s the American version of the “Arab Spring.” Steve Jobs might have advised Van Jones he has a branding problem. Spring is the season of new life, young buds and so forth. Autumn is leaves turning brown and fluttering to the ground in a big dead heap. Even in my great state of New Hampshire, where autumn is pretty darn impressive, we understand what that blaze of red and orange leaves means: They burn brightest before they fall and die, and the world turns chill and bare and hard.

So Van Jones may be on to something! American Autumn. The days dwindle down to a precious few, like in whatever that old book was called, The Summer and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I get the feeling an awful lot of the attendees at “Occupy Minnesota” treated America as a recycling project; if you’re done witn it, try to find a way to re-use it…

But better yet is his description of the “protesters” themselves…:

If you’ll forgive a plug for my latest sell-out to my corporate masters, in my new book I quote H. G. Wells’s Victorian Time Traveler after encountering far in the future the soft, effete Eloi: “These people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be made.” And yet he saw “no workshops” or sign of any industry at all. “They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going.” The Time Traveler might have felt much the same upon landing in Liberty Square in the early 21st century, except for the bit about bathing: It’s increasingly hard in America to “see how things are kept going,” but it’s pretty clear that the members of “Occupy Wall Street” have no plans to contribute to keeping things going. Like Michael Oher using his iPhone to announce his ignorance of Steve Jobs, in the autumn of the republic the beneficiaries of American innovation seem not only utterly disconnected from but actively contemptuous of the world that sustains their comforts.

Contempt for the creative class?

Yeah, Steyn’s got a point.

“Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) – and this weekend’s “Occupy Our People’s Plaza In Extremism” (OOPSIE) – are taking their orders from the Democrat hierarchy:

The front page of the http://occupywallst.org/ proudly announces that numerous union groups will be present in New York today to join demonstrators in marches taking place this afternoon.

“Together we will protest this great injustice. We stand in solidarity with the honest workers of….MoveOn.org,” states the website, as well as listing numerous other organizations.

What is MoveOn.org?

MoveOn.org is a lobbying organization that routinely backs Democratic candidates. The group aggressively supported Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign and is now “Perhaps the lead lobby organization for his policies….apart from Obama’s own Organizing for America,” reports Source Watch.

At about this point, some “progressive” will chime in “but but but the Tea Party was controlled by the GOP”.  Nah. I mean, there was all sorts of cross talk – like, me, among many many much bigger and more important people – and plenty of Tea Partiers, Conservatives and Republicans, individually and as groups, shared beliefs and goals.  There’s overlap, to be sure.  But the Tea Party scared, and challenged, the mainstream GOP in a way similar to the Ron Paul challenge in 2008, only many, many times bigger.  The Tea Party changed the GOP – not the other way around.

All the reeking hippies and college bobbleheads and union slackers and MoveOn.org yentas and Code Pink harpies in New York and, this weekend, in Minneapolis?  They’ve got it exactly the other way around.

And it’s going to be fu-u-u-un pointing it out to them.

The Twitter account for “Common Cause MN” – the stealth-progressive astroturf group that campaigns for speech rationing and higher taxes – commented on the Iowa GOP caucus on Saturday:

Did you know that people have to pay to vote in Ames Straw Poll? That’s messed up! #stribpol

Promptly, other Twin Cities lefties added “it’s like a poll tax!”…

…apparently unaware that the Iowa Straw Poll is a GOP event.  Not an election.  Not a caucus or primary that determines who goes on the ballot.  It’s a fundraiser and PR event.

I pondered asking them if they knew that party caucus events charge admission, too…

….but I don’t want to have anyone popping any aneurysms.

So on Wednesday, the day after the Wisconsin recall election, “Common Cause MN” – the stealth progressive astroturf group – tweeted:

RNC fundraising email credits voter ID law in WI victories. Even they agree that it is designed to suppress voter turnout. #stribpol

That sounded serious!  There’s nothing quite as low-rent as trying to keep people from the polls that actually belong there.  And Common Cause insinuates that the Wisconsin GOP used a “Voter ID” law to keep people away from the polls (stop me if I’m wrong about the insinuation, but it seems pretty clear to me).

So I thought I’d check it out.

Someone forwarded me a copy of the email from Reince Priebus, GOP national chair.  I include the letter in its entirety, redacting only the name of the recipient (who forwarded me the email).  I bolded the reference to voter ID:

Dear [Redacted],

The Republican Party won a great victory over the Big Union bosses and Obama Democrats last night, and we could not have done it without the support you have given the RNC.

Last November, Wisconsin voters elected new leaders to get their state back on track. When they did, union bosses lost their allies in the state house and vowed to stop at nothing to return Wisconsin to the failed politics-as-usual. They orchestrated a recall election for selfish political retribution — all the while Governor Scott Walker and Republicans in Wisconsin worked to put people back to work and turned deficits into surpluses.

Yesterday, Wisconsin voters reaffirmed their support of Republican leadership in their state and rejected the reckless spending of Wisconsin Democrats and the downgrade-inducing policies of their Washington counterparts. The people have given their seal of approval to Republicans’ successful efforts to balance the budget and ensure a healthy economy.

Because of your support of the RNC, [Redacted], we were able to help the Wisconsin Party’s grassroots efforts and provide strategic resources to keep our majority in the state senate.

We provided staff on the ground;

Funded a voter ID program;

Worked with the Wisconsin Party on contact lists and a Get-Out-The-Vote plan;

Provided Get-Out-The-Vote technology and equipment to the state party; and,

Funded the absentee ballot program.

None of this would have been possible without your financial support of the Republican National Committee.

We are currently laying the groundwork to take the fight to the Obama Democrats nationwide in the 2011 state and 2012 presidential elections. We intend to challenge Barack Obama in every state, fund a robust Get-Out-The-Vote program and get the truth about the disastrous consequences of his economic policies around the liberal media filter and directly to the voters so we can defeat him in 2012. But we cannot do it without your continuing generous support.

[Redacted], help us lay the foundation to win back the White House, regain total control of Congress and ensure Barack Obama is a one-term president by making a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more today. Please give as generously as you can. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Reince Priebus

Chairman, Republican National Committee

So the only reference to “Voter ID” in the letter is to voter identification – which means “finding out who in your district is likely to vote GOP, and making sure every last one of them gets to the polls”.

Not asking for an ID at the polls.

Further proof that the best way to tell if “Common Cause MN” is lying is to see if their lips are moving, or their fingers are touching a keyboard.  Or both.

Reading the news here at Shot In The Dark puts you ahead of the entire lefty community.

For example, it was a week or two back that we pointed out that the MinnPost was peddling a poll re the government shutdown that, to be mild, deserved some scrutiny; it was produced in conjunction with Rob Daves, the former majordomo of the Strib’s “Minnesota Poll”, a longtime laughingstock among polls which, I strongly suspect, served mainly as rhetorical Prozac for DFLers.

Sure enough, the various chains of the Minnesota non-profit cluster-hug – and the MinnPost, we must duly note, is a Minnesota non-profit, albeit one that makes magisterial protestations of journalistic detachment – are reciting the chanting point.  The latest?  The “Minnesota Budget Project” – of whom more later.

They write:

Two out of three Minnesota residents want state leaders to balance the budget using a mix of tax increases and spending cuts, according to a new MinnPost poll. It found 66 percent favor a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Only 23 percent want spending cuts only.

If you’re of a mind to connect dots, here’s how it looks; one non-profit – one with protestations of objectivity, but whose entire chain of command and most of whose staff has a long association with at least the center-left – uses a source that, long history of curious and one-sided inaccuracy notwithstanding, has a veneer of “authority” via a long, ostensibly prestigious association with the Star-Tribune; other non-profits, in turn, use that (possibly gravely flawed) information to try to skew public perceptions of a debate of vital importance to the DFL, to whom all of the various non-profits are in one way or anotehr associated.

Now, the MinnPost will protest that they are an independent, detached, “objective” news organization.  For purposes of this discussion, I’ll even take them at their word.

But this “story”, and the chain the information takes, suggests something that we need to look into more deeply; the closely-intertwined nature of Twin Cities’ “non-profit” political action organizations.

More later.

As we face a new shutdown – our first in six years – it might be useful to go back in time and look at this account of life, and death, during the’05 shutdown.

From the late, great “Kool Aid Report”, here it is.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

It’s actually getting comical, reading the breathless scare stories about the shut-down. As if there were no way to handle these calamities:

No State Troopers! Oh, gee, that would suck. Those guys don’t do any real law enforcement anyway, Sheriff’s Deputies do. I recall a judge once aptly described the State Patrol as the grown-up version of high school hall monitors handing out notes saying “No Running!” Lay-off Hell, abolish ‘em completely.

A cop friend of mine calls them “collection agents for the insurance industry”.

No Zoo! Nobody to feed the animals at the zoo! We have a perfectly good zoo, at Como Park. Give away the animals to other zoos out of state, lay off all the zookeepers, shutter the facility, sell it to a developer for large lot hobby farms.

Tired of seeing all those stupid TV “news” segments full of people whinging about not being able to go jogging at Afton?

No camping at State Parks! So? Since when is your vacation choice my responsibility? Nobody paid for my motel room, when I was on vacation. Go to the KOA campground, if you must camp.

For that matter, screw the gates.  I paid for that state park. I’m going there, closure or not.

Have to let all the Prisoners go! Ship ‘em elsewhere, promise to pay later. Everybody knows there eventually will be money and if there isn’t, then yeah, let ‘em go. What do you think happens when the government falls, as during the Civil War? We’re not to that stage just yet; but if the governor continues to play chicken, holding everyone hostage until he gets his tax increases, then maybe we see how bad things will get.

If the governor can’t run the government, then why have one?

The “people” voted (sometimes two and three times) for a guy that we warned you could not possibly run a viable government.  We were right.

No city or county internet! Apparently, they’re on a contract to buy services from the state. Might want to shop around for an alternate provider, huh?

These problems can be solved. All it takes is gumption.

So let’s have gumption.

I’ve said this to some of you before.  As Mark Dayton’s little game of chicken careens toward its intended denouement, I’ll say it again.

Come back with your shield, or on it.

You hold the high ground.  Use it.  We didn’t send you there to cave.

And I don’t believe, in your collective heart of hearts, that you intend to.

But just in case you had any doubt where we, the people who sent you there, stand?

Make Dayton – or, more accurately, his union and special interest owners – squirm.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

When the state government shuts down, it won’t be spending tax money, right? So why should I pay state taxes for the portion of the government that’s shut down?

I’m willing to pay for what I get, but fair is fair – if they’re not providing the service, I shouldn’t have to pay for it. I propose we only pay for what’s deemed “essential.” If that’s 10% of the budget, we pay 10% of the taxes; the rest, we keep. Even Cy Thao should agree with that.

That’d be Cy Thao, the former St. Paul state senator who famously said:

When you guys win, you get to keep your money.

When we win, we take your money

And when you’re not working, we should keep our money.

Because while we, the taxpayer, may not have “won”, it’s for sure that by floating Mark Dayton into office on a wave of toxic sleaze, all you state workers lost.

I got an email from a friend of mine who works in Information Technology:

I was riding in a van last night with a state worker (going to our sons’ soccer game). He said that the state workers are being “laid off” this time rather than furloughed like in 2005. Furlough means that they basically take time off without pay, which many businesses have done to prevent layoffs.

It makes sense, in many cases; give out unpaid “vacation” so that workers

Dayton wants layoffs so the state workers can immediately apply for unemployment benefits (benefiting the unions).

Not to mention pumping up the utilization of that state service, to plump up future budget requests.

It also means that from an IT perspective, they have to shutdown workers computer/system access, return their computers. Essentially follow all the normal steps if someone was laid off without the prospect of returning or if they had turned in their notice of resignation. Incredibly wasteful, given that it isn’t the intent to permanently get rid of the state workers.

The DFL wants to show the people  of Minnesota who’s boss.

The Pioneer Press has declined to give an endorsement in the Senate District 66 special election:

It’s not that long ago that we endorsed Ellen Anderson for another term as state senator in District 66, covering northwestern St. Paul and Falcon Heights. On Tuesday, voters will select a replacement for Anderson, who resigned last month to accept Gov. Mark Dayton’s appointment as chair of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

Their rationale was less a sign of political ecumenicism …:

Anderson is a member of St. Paul’s dominant Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, and her district, like all in St. Paul and Minneapolis, is considered a “safe” DFL seat. So the DFL candidate on Tuesday’s ballot, former state Rep. Mary Jo McGuire of Falcon Heights, will be favored against the Republican, former Maplewood city manager Greg Copeland of St. Paul.

… than localistic power-mongering;

We choose not to make a recommendation in this race. Both candidates have their strengths, but each has a ways to go to reach Anderson’s level of expertise and advocacy. A more competitive profile in the district might require DFLers to broaden their appeal, and might also have stirred more competition on the Republican side.

Which isn’t entirely a bad thing.

It’s a minor victory for Copeland; the PiPress, despite a few high-profile breaks (endorsing Bush in 2004, Coleman in ’08) generally hews to the DFL party line.  “No endorsement” is usually as close as non-shoo-in Republicans will get to a PiPress endorsement.

We heard from both candidates the sentiment that neither side can have its way. That is a message worth taking from the citizenry to the Capitol, whoever wins on Tuesday. And if this remains a “safe” DFL seat, McGuire faces the challenge of using her security to build expertise and influence, as Anderson did in the area of energy and the environment.

Pork!

Still, there’s an underlying sentiment…

More broadly, St. Paul faces the challenge of learning how to speak “Republican.” This is important not so much because control of the Legislature has turned from DFL to GOP, though that matters, but because of the times we’re in. In districts that are too “safe,” favored candidates can win without serious challenge to the premise of their favored policies.

That is not an advantage, because these are premise-rattling times, and the ability to reimagine public priorities and how they’re managed is essential.

…that more of our idiot media could stand to learn from.

Yesterday, the Campaign Finance reports for the last Gubernatorial election came out.

And the media finally noticed – sort of – what you learned on this blog last July; Mark Dayton outspent Tom Emmer 2:1, and that most of the money came from “outside groups”.

MPR had the best report, at least compared to the rest of the Twin Cities media:

Democrat Mark Dayton and his allies spent significantly more than Republican Tom Emmer and his allies to win the race for Minnesota governor.

Alliance for a Better Minnesota, a group working to elect Dayton, spent $5.7 million in the race, helped by big contributions from labor unions and Dayton’s family. Most of Alliance’s money was spent on ads criticizing Emmer.

“Most of” it.  Heh.

I’m going to add some emphasis here:

Labor unions spent more than $2.2 million to help elect Dayton, with money coming in both before the election and afterward to help the recount effort. The Democratic Governor’s Association spent $1 million, and Dayton’s family and his ex-wife gave more than $900,000.

Tom Scheck’s piece yesterday included a sound bite from Ken Martin, the head of “Win Minnesota”, a PAC that funneled money to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (ABM):

Ken Martin, who ran the umbrella group that financed The Alliance for a Better Minnesota, says donors were energized to elect the first Democrat to the governor’s office since 1986.

“People invest in politics on all sides, and it’s not for any other purpose than to support the candidates that they feel are going to best represent what they believe in,” said Martin. “Frankly, the payoff is a better Minnesota, and they believe Mark Dayton was the candidate to make that happen.”

Martin’s statement implies that there was some huge groundswell of grassroots financial support in $20 and $50 donations from Ma and Pa Minnesota.  There was not; the money to run Dayton’s sleazy smear campaign came from big institutional donors, national Democrat sources, and Dayton and his family.

More emphasis added below:

Alliance for a Better Minnesota outspent the two groups backing Emmer — MN Forward and Minnesota’s Future. Minnesota’s Future, funded mostly by the Republican Governor’s Association, spent $1.4 million on the race. MN Forward, who received contributions from businesses like Target and Best Buy, spent nearly $1.8 million.

Catch that?  That, of course, is why the DFL spent six months caterwauling (with the help of their kissin’ cousins in the media) about the “corrosive effects of corporate money in politics”  Minnesota business managed to contribute all of 2/3 what unions did.

Can’t have that, can we?

By the way, it’s interesting that business donated $1.8 million to the conservative, pro-business Emmer, while…:

On the DFL side, companies including Kwik Trip, Anheuser-Busch, Pfizer and SuperValu gave a total of $88,000 to groups helping to elect Dayton and support him during the recount.

Unfortunately, I already patronize none of these companies.

Dayton’s campaign also outspent Emmer’s. Dayton spent $5.3 million in 2009 and 2010, helped by a $3.9 million in loans to himself. Emmer spent $2.8 million.

That’s a lot of Renoirs.

Naturally, the chattering classes’ objections about “the toxicity of money in politics” referred to corporate money.  Not labor unions, and not trust funds from South Dakota.

Remember all that crap at the State of the Union about “fiscal discipline?”

Apparently they mean “after they bankrupt the entire nation“:

The latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office are up from previous estimates because Congress and President Barack Obama teamed up in December on bipartisan legislation to extend Bush-era tax cuts that were due to expire. The new estimates will only add fuel to a raging debate over cutting spending and looming legislation that’s required to allow the government to borrow more money.

I don’t know how much more Hope and Change I can handle.

Republic of Korea special forces recapture a tanker from Somali pirates, killing eight, capturing five, and rescuing the entire crew unharmed (except for the tanker’s captain, who suffered a non-lethal gunshot wound):

President Lee Myung-bak went live on national television to announce the successful conclusion of the five-hour operation, 1,300 kilometers northeast of Somalia.

Mr. Lee told the country South Korea will not tolerate future attacks on any of its nationals.

ROK special forces, with help from unspecified “other nations”, apparently snuck up on the tanker:

News reports say a navy ship from Oman was on the scene to support the South Korean operation.

On board the Malta-flagged chemical tanker was a crew of 11 Burmese, eight South Koreans and two Indonesians. It is operated by South Korea’s Samho Shipping.

Military officials in Seoul say a South Korean naval destroyer, the Choi Young, with 300 special forces aboard, tailed the hijacked ship for days before moving in early Friday.

The ROKS Choi Young. Because I can, that's why.

I know, I know; look for peaceful solutions, they’re impoverished, yadda yadda.

But 21 innocent sailors are free today.

Yay, ROK!