Minnesota politicans – DFLers all – have blessed the rest of us with three quotes that sum up the difference between conservative and “progressive” politics – and, indeed, the evil of progressivism – more concisely and starkly than all of the Poli Sci PhDs in the world have done through all of history.

Back in 2007, it was Saint Paul DFL Senator Cy Thao, who said “When you guys win, you get to keep your money.  When we win, we take your money!”.

In 2009?  Larry Pogemiller, who said “I think it’s silly to assume people can spend their own money better than government can”.

Both of these statements can be read as “politicians slipping up and telling the truth”; they’r funny, as far as that goes.

But both statements also point out what is so profoundly wrong with “progressive” politics; it exists by not only sponging off the labor of others, but by trying to convince them that being sponged is in and of itself noble.

And now we have a third.  Last Sunday, on the Esme Murphy show, Elliot Seid  – the capo for the Twin Cities Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said “We don’t have a spending problem. We have a revenue problem!”.

In other words, everything that everyone earns in this state should be suject to being appropriated, until government’s appetites are met. Maybe exceeded just a bit, just to be sure.

The quote has an inside shot of winning this year’s Charles Townsend award.

And it, along with Thao and Pogemiller’s quotes, should be printed up on T-shirts by the GOP and handed out at the fair this summer.

…last winter?  After Congresswoman Giffords was shot, and the entire American Left was wetting its pants about the most oblique possible references to “violent rhetoric” and “the degredation in tone?”

Ryan Lyk of the Minnesota College Republicans snapped this shot – of someone in a Minnesota Association of Professional Employees T-shirt – at the demonstrations around the Minnesota State Capitol last night.

Ryan Lyk has his account of the evening over at the MNCR’s blog.

A little later, a group of individuals in wheelchairs started yelling at us and telling us that we were “killing” disabled, homeless, and sick people. The police shut them down, but it just got worse from there. A little while later, a man came up to us and said “history will repeat itself and all of your heads will be cut off.”

The unions are pretty classy, aren’t they?

This was really just the tip of the iceberg. We had people poking our eyes with umbrellas, having their 8 year old children trying to cover up our signs, trying to push us and stifle our free speech, flicking us off, cussing at us, antagonizing us, harassing us… the list goes on and on.

What is truly important, though, is that throughout the entire night, we stood strong and stayed above the fray. We never worked to stifle the oppositions free speech, we never threatened them, and we were never disrespectful.

Of course, to plenty on the left, conservatives’ existence is taken as a sign of “disrespect”.  That was certainly the vibe out at the Capitol last night.

I went down to the Capitol last night to see what was going on.

I walked up John Ireland past the State Office Building, and saw people – many if not most of them wearing identical T-shirts from the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees – gathering in knots and clots around the Mall, many carrying pre-printed signs (“Tax the top 2%!” and the like).   It was as clear as it ever is; it takes a lot of money to show what a bunch of working stiffs they are.

I found a group of College Republicans gathered near the top, stage left (to the audience’s right).  They assembled with their handmade signs fairly early in the evening.  One of them – Ryan Lyk, one of their leaders and a long-time Twitter correspondent of mine – related a story; one of the “protesters” had walked up to them just before I arrived, and said (in and among a rambling discourse) that he’d “cut the heads off” the College Republicans.  Then he’d apparently scampered away; they always, always do, I noted.  The CRs reported the “man” to the police, but nothing more came of it.

As I was discussing that incident, I noticed a guy – short, mid-forty-something, in a sleeveless “Everlast” T-shirt – standing in front of the CRs, talking aggressively, ostentatiously taking cell phone calls and talking loudly about “We’re about to start it up with these people”.  Then, he took his cell cam, turned around, and snapped a picture of one of the College Republicans’ women’s butts as she was facing up the stairs.  From very close range.

Let’s get this straight; he walked up behind a teenage girl and snapped a close-up of her ass.

About this time, I flipped on my camera’s video function – catching him just as he checked out his work, slouching down the steps toward the rest of the crowd.   Then he turned and noticed me taping him.  He flipped me two middle fingers.  “Did you get that?”, he gurgled, laughing an addled-sounding laugh.  I kept on taping; he walked up the steps, trying to look intimidating; he got directly in my face put his cell phone maybe two inches from my face, and snapped a cell shot.  He reeked of alcohol.   He walked away, looking like every loudmouth aggressive drunk looks when they’re prancing about the pool tables at the bar, puffed up and aggressive and daring someone to cross ’em, bellowing about the picture he’d taken.

Suffice to say, we reported him to the cops too.

There was another guy – mid-forties, with that “academic” look about him, who wandered up to the CRs and started trying to pick an argument.   He brought up tuition costs – and while I went there intending mostly to be a fly on the wall, photographing and videotaping, I had to join in.  “Why do you think tuition is so high?”

He stared into my camera.

I explained a little basic economics; how if you pour money into the market for a good or service that is in limited supply – like seats at the U – the prices will rise.

He stared some more.

“What do you think about that?”

“Don’t photograph me.  My face is copyrighted”.

I hadn’t heard that one before.  “You’re in a public place…”, I responded.

“Could you please not photograph me?”

And that was the best argument I heard from any of them all night – or, truth be told, from almost any liberal, on any subject, ever.  But I digress.

At any rate – before long, dozens of people in MAPE T-shirts crowded around the dozen or so CRs.

A young woman with a guitar was meandering about the place; while I placed her (correctly) as a “progressive”, she actually spent nearly as much time arguing with the union members who were, by this time, crowding around the CRs, alternately trying to obscure the view of their signs and, occasionally, to heckle them.

Photo courtesy Kate Paul

She actually wanted to know what it was that made people be Republicans.  I gently corrected her – I’m a conservative – but in all my years of being a hate-choked agitator, I can’t say as I’ve ever been asked to explain that, impromptu.  I told her I’d grown up very liberal; that Reagan’s prosperity was huge, and that his ending of the cold war was bigger still, and since I’ve been working in the real world I’ve found absolutely nothing about “progressive” ideology that makes any sense.

The conversation got harder and harder to have – the chanting around us was getting pretty intense.  The T-Shirt Crowd were chanting loudly.  And some of them seemed genuinely offended by the presence of the CRs on the Capitol steps.   One guy – doughy, fiftysomething, with long, stringy, frizzy gray hair in dire need of a comb – kept bellowing “why don’t you all get jobs!”.  I did at one point append “…so you can work ’til you’re 75 so he can retire at 55”.  But I think it got lost in the din.

I had to leave around 10:30.  It was getting dark out, and I had to be up at 5AM.  Laura Gatz from Princess Politics showed up a little later, and snapped this photo of the Capitol lights shutting off:

Photo courtesy Laura Gatz

Which, if you’re not from St. Paul, you should know never happens; the Capitol is always lit.

I’ll upload photos and video when I get some free time here…

Mark Dayton, from a bit on the TV news yesterday, on his veto of the GOP’s budget bills:

“The problem…apparently…seems to lie with some of the extreme right wing members, especially the new ones, who don’t seem to know how government works”.

So Tom Bakk’s stupid remark about the GOP freshmen not being part of the government club…

…is the official DFL party line?

Along with the whole “everyone who opposes Dayton is an “extremist”” schtick?

The office of the effort to recall one of the Fleebaggers has been burgled (emphasis added):

Green Bay police are investigating an apparent break-in at the office of the “Recall Dave Hansen”effort at 1136 W. Mason St.

Petitions, a computer and T-shirts were among the items reported stolen, police said.

I know that when I’m looking to score crack money, nothing draws my eye like page after page of signatures.

The Democratic state senator is among the lawmakers being targeted in recall efforts stemming from Wisconsin’s ongoing budget controversy.

The burglar or burglars broke a window to make entry, police said. The incident occurred between 5 p.m. Thursday and 8 a.m. Friday, police Lt. David Paral said.

Organizers of the effort, in an email to media, blamed the break-in on “the (opposition) of ‘Recall Dave Hansen.'” Police said they did not have descriptions of suspects.

Total value of the missing items is slightly more than $1,000, Paral said.

Or, depending on how you view Wisconsin politics, several billion dollars.

Of course, we don’t know it was Wisconsin Democrats or Union supporters that pulled off the heist.

Really.  It could be a crack addict who figured she could pawn stacks of signatures.  Maybe she thought they were Packer autographs.

Hey, it could be.

The voters of Wisconsin have spoken.

Even after two months of gnashing and thrashing and sniveling, The People of Wisconsin have reaffirmed last November’s results.

After the media and left (pardon my redundancy) all but declared it a Kloppenberg victory and referendum on Walker.

And it just goes to show the media – just because liberals swarm in Madison doesn’t mean an entire state has drunk the koolaid.

You’ve heard the news: corrected tallies put Prosser on top after a 7,500-vote swing.

Naturally, the Democrats are upset.  It’s almost folklore; only Democrats benefit from mysterious and opaque swings in votes!

Kloppenburg supporters reacted with alarm, pointing out that Nickolaus had worked in the Assembly Republican caucus during the time that Prosser, a former Republican lawmaker, served as the Assembly speaker and that Nickolaus also had faced questions about her handling of elections as clerk.

In the liberal world, a public servant’s work in public service is “experience” for Democrats, and “evidence” against Republicans.

And show me a public servant that hasn’t “faced questions”.

“Wisconsin voters as well as the Kloppenburg (campaign) deserve a full explanation of how and why these 14,000 votes from an entire city were missed. To that end, we will be filing open records requests for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the county,” Kloppenburg campaign manager Melissa Mulliken said in a statement.

Yeah, Ms. Mulliken!

And while you’re at it, let’s get answers about all the irregularities in Hennepin County!

Oh, wait…

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) raised the possibility of an independent investigation over the recovery of the votes.

“This is a serious breach of election procedure,” he said. “We’re going to look further. She waited 24 hours to work this. And she waited until after she verified the results, making it that much more difficult to challenge and verify the results.”

‘We went over everything’

I suppose Wisconsin Voters should be happy Barca didn’t make his announcement from a hotel in Chicago.

Of course, not every Wisconsin Dem is chanting the party line.  I’m adding some emphasis:

But at the news conference with Nickolaus, Ramona Kitzinger, the Democrat on the Waukesha County Board of Canvassers, said: “We went over everything and made sure all the numbers jibed up and they did. Those numbers jibed up, and we’re satisfied they’re correct.”

As a Democrat, she said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you something that’s not true.”

Waukesha County Executive Dan Vrakas, who sat in on Nickolaus’ news conference, said voters can be confident in the results because “all the votes are in that office. If anyone wants to look at them and verify, they can.”

This is a great day for America.

Liberal Wisconsin judge hijacks the rule of law, and then tells lawyers not to criticize her for it:

Before wrapping up a brief hearing Wednesday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi offered a word of caution to attorneys involved in high-profile lawsuits over collective bargaining in Wisconsin.

Sumi said emotions are running high over two cases she is hearing regarding Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to eliminate most collective bargaining for public workers. That “spirited debate” is important in a democracy, but attorneys must keep in mind their professional ethics, Sumi said.

“They all have a responsibility to promote and not denigrate the judicial branch and, more importantly, the rule of law,” she said.

This is like Rep. John Lesch saying Republicans are “crapping on the flag” for criticizing him.

“Judge” Sumi: you, and especially your decision, are not “the judicial branch and the rule of law!”

She advised lawyers to review state Supreme Court rules that say: “A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge….”

She referred to public comments made by attorneys after a Tuesday hearing, but did not elaborate.

It’s the “when did you stop beating your wife” defense.

Joe Doakes of Como Park in St. Paul – a government worker, by the way – sent me an email:

This is an excellent article.

It’s a link to a John Tevlin piece in the Strib.  We’ll come back to that.

It was sent to me by another government employee. Some government employees feel as if budget cutters are attacking the employees on the grounds of worth, as in “you’re not worth what we’re paying you.” That’s off-putting to them, their families, to mushy-middle types.

It’s a good point.  It’s a bit of messaging that conservatives should mind – because you know that the left and media (pardon the redundancy) will exaggerate it for their own purposes.

Which is a great segue into Tevlin (we’ll  come back to Joe’s point in just a moment, here).  Tevlin’s a lower-budget Nick Coleman; he uses the death of a county worker last week in the flooding in southwest Minnesota…:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker never met Mike Struck. Nor have most of the politicians who are demonizing public employees in order to advance their own careers and agendas.

…as a rhetorical cudgel in a “public versus private employees” battle that serves the DFL juuuust fine:

Some legislators like to portray anyone who has a government job as lazy, incompetent and overcompensated.

(Just as some columnists like to portray any criticism of big government as an attack on all government workers , which is itself lazy and overcompensation.  Just saying).

It’s too bad they didn’t know Struck, because it’s important to remember that for every construction worker you see leaning on a shovel, for every nonchalant clerk at City Hall, there are many guys like Mike Struck, who showed up every day, worked his butt off, made your roads safer and cleaner, and ultimately gave his life doing his job.

And he did it all for $44,000 a year.

Clearly we need more Mike Strucks in Saint Paul…

…but that’s an unhelpful digression – for reasons I’ll explain later.

Struck, 39, was killed this week when his backhoe flipped over and fell into a creek at Seven Mile Creek Park, between St. Peter and Mankato, not far from his home town of Cleveland. He was part of a frantic attempt by Minnesota Department of Transportation workers to prevent flooding in southern Minnesota ahead of the melting snow.

“He was cleaning debris from a culvert to prevent flooding,” said Rebecca Arndt, a regional spokeswoman for MnDOT. Trying to protect his neighbors from harm and damage to their property?

“Yes, that’s exactly what he was doing,” she said.

According to his friends, Struck was the ultimate public servant.

“He loved his job,” said Wade Adams, a friend and co-worker. “I would swear he drank two Red Bulls before he came to work every day, he had so much energy. Whatever you needed to do, change a cutting edge or a flat tire, Mike was always the first one to be there to help. He was a very hard worker, and he was proud of his job.”

It’s a tragedy that Struck died.

But what we have here is a case of offsettling “rhetorical laziness” penalties.

Plenty of public sector workers work very hard, and deliver great results.  My father – a teacher for something like 40  years, and a very good one – was certainly one of them.  Ditto my  mother’s parents – my grandma, who taught her whole career, and my grandfather, who taught for a couple decades before he left the profession to sell drugs [1].

We all know public-sector workers who do good work – firefighters and paramedics and cops, of course, but also teachers and public works people and yes, even bureaucrats in areas that much of society would struggle to call “essential government services” or, more to the point, “services that government, rather than the private sector, should provide”.

So it’s lazy, self-indulgent and ethically cowardly to say “all public workers are a waste”…

…just as it is to day “questioning government spending is spitting on Mike Struck’s grave”.

Which, alas, is Tevlin’s M.O.   That, and pointless politicizing of tragedy:

That’s why the current backlash against public workers riles them now.

“I get so fed up with people who think we have cushy jobs,” said Lillie. “Mike was disgusted by it because people don’t understand what we go through, what we give up. One of my friends said, ‘Your job sucks, you’re on call 24/7.’ That’s right.”

For $44,000.

And there’s John Tevlin’s rhetorical laziness at work.

Clearly Mike Struck’s life was worth vastly more than $44K, even including the pension.

You could ask whether Mike Struck made the same kind of money a private-sector heavy equipment operator/construction worker/handyman would make $44K, or whether that private sector worker should be compelled to work until he’s 70 so that Struck and his colleagues can retire at 55, ,or whether his job might not have been a better value had it been outsourced (or not)…

…but both of those dodge the real issue.

The real issue is not whether public sector workers, as individuals, or even as a class, are or are not overpaid, a great value, lazy, diligent or good human beings.

The real issues are “at a time when we, the private sector taxpayers, are suffering, is it our obligation to sacrifice disproportionally to insulate the public sector from any inconvenience?“, and “can some of government’s jobs be done better outside the public sector – or not at all?”

Naturally, it’s more convenient for Tevlin, and better advances the DFL, to advance the chanting point that “questionintg government” equals “attacking government workers”, along with shutting down schools and making grandma eat dog food.

Doakes:

A better message might be “you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing for the government, you should be doing it for private industry.”

And “given all the talk of “community” that the public sector pushes to justify its existence, shouldn’t the public sector – with no malice intended against public workers – be expected to share in some of the sacrifice we in the private sector, who pay their bills, are?

(PS:  By the way, I’m with Tevlin on this part:

Note: Mike Struck’s colleagues have started a fund to educate his children. Make checks payable to Mike Struck Memorial Fund, c/o Nicollet County Bank, 220 S. 3rd St., St. Peter, MN 56082.

If you can…

(more…)

Wisconsin investigators announced on Friday that they’d figured out who sent the really really stupid death threats to Wisconsin’s GOP senators:

On the day Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed his Budget Repair Bill into law, authorities announced they had identified the sender of emails that threatened to kill the Governor and Republican members of the State Senate who supported the proposal.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation and the Wisconsin Capitol Police say they have investigated numerous threats against elected officials over the last four weeks. Thursday Night, the Division of Criminal Investigation identified and located a subject suspected of sending at least two of those threats.

“The Division of Criminal Investigation takes these kind of threats seriously and will follow through with the investigation and prosecution whenever possible,” DCI Administrator Ed Wall said.

Upon questioning, the suspect subsequently admitted to authoring and sending two e-mails threatening to kill the Governor and members of the Senate.

And that suspect has reportedly confessed

News that the state Justice Department has identified one suspect in connection with death threats sent to Republican state senators comes as at least a minor relief to Sen. Glenn Grothman (R-West Bend).

“They caught someone? Good,” he said Friday night. “I am waiting to hear the background of the type of person who would do such a devious thing.”

Ed and I have had enough of the Fleebaggers.

Last Saturday, we took the entire catalog of Western popular music hostage – and we promised to kill a different song every week until the Fleebaggers returned to Madison, and stopped holding Democracy itself hostage.

And we meant it.

A week ago, we assaulted Tom Petty’s legacy with “Fleebaggin”.

Last Saturday, it was “Dems On The Run”, making John Lennon roll over in his grave out of sympathy for Macca.

And this Saturday?

“Lawyers, Cheese and Bratwurst”.

Ann Althouse notes that some of the protesters are starting to lose it:

I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders. Meade was at a demonstration, photographing it. A demonstration is — to a clear-thinking person — a collection of people asking to be seen, wanting to be photographed. Yet when they perceive that Meade isn’t one of them they flip — it’s a Flip camera — into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who’s finding out what’s going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their “plant” theory. And it’s not just a theory. They know he’s a plant.

Context?  Sure – read the piece.

Stipulated:  SNL hasn’t been funny since Norm McDonald left the show.

Still – as everyone in the media noted during the 2008 campaign, when  you’ve lost SNL, it’s significant.  Or something.

Just saying:

Stereotypes?  Doy.

A stereotype that, for some unconscionable reason, a huge chunk of America buys into?