How long before Lori Sturdevant starts clucking and exuding victorian vapours that there seems to be no room for “moderates” in the DFL?

Of course, only in a place like Saint Paul could Senator and former police chief John Harrington be considered a “moderate”.  The guy’s got the ABM chanting points down as pat as he ever had the Miranda statement:

“Show me one example of where somebody had fraudulently voted here. Oh, you don’t have one. You have no evidence.

Other than tens of thousands of provisional voting cards – the cards filled out when their vote is questionable, and their ballot is already in the hopper – being returned because the listed person didn’t live at the address?  Other than people listing laundromats as residences?   Dozens of felons convicted?  Hundreds of other cases found, but tossed because, under Minnesota law, “I didn’t know” is an excuse?

Nope.  No evidence at all.

Harrington said he was similarly disheartened during debate this year on the “castle doctrine” self-defense bill, which would have given Minnesotans greater freedom to defend their homes with deadly force. Law enforcement objected to the proposal, saying it could endanger officers, and Dayton ultimately vetoed it.

Of course, there, there’s no evidence.

But while Senator Harrington would be considered, by the vast majority of the US between the Hudson and the Sierra Mare, a “flaming liberal”, he was just tooooo moderate for the whackdoodles of the eastside DFL:

Harrington faced two challengers — Tom Dimond and Foung Hawj — for the party’s endorsement. After four ballots, Harrington had a slight lead over Dimond, a carpenter and former city council member. Delegates decided on no endorsement because it was clear neither candidate could capture the 60 percent needed for the party’s backing. Harrington had 46 percent, Dimond 40 percent, and Hawj had no votes on the last ballot.

Dimond seemed to resonate with delegates who thought Harrington was too conservative for his district and has done little to reach out to Democratic-Farmer-Labor activists since his election. Harrington, however, insisted he was politically attuned to his constituents.

And it’s pretty likely he was.  The East Side is a largely run-down area, hard-hit by the recession, perpetually in transition.  It’s been a destination for new Americans since, well, it existed; wave after wave of immigrants, from German to Irish to Swedish to Italian to Black to Latino to Vietnamese to H’mong to Somali, have coursed through the area, learned to do the American thing, and then moved – first north of Maryland, then out to the ‘burbs.  Most of them are conservatives – they just don’t know that means “republican” in this country.

The DFL “activists”, on the other hand, are vastly more radically left-leaning than their constituents – and farther left than the GOP is to the right.  Harrington – pragmatic local fixer that he is – didn’t pass the progressive purity test.

I’ll await the hand-wringing from the media.

Last night I drove out to Wayzata to give a seconding speech for Dave Osmek and his candidacy for the MN Senate.

For starters, I love driving from Saint Paul and its stifling, smug DFL rule to the parts of the state that actually work – and thus are governed by the GOP.  Places built by hard work, merit, frugality – conservatism.  I love the smell of an R+20 district; it smells like…

…freedom.  Freedom and liberty and prosperity and everything that makes America great.

The inclement weather offered an opportunity…

…as I’d hoped there’d be a huge crash of thunder when I hit my big applause line.

That was not to be.  But the rest of the evening went pretty well.

My first clue I wasn’t in CD4 anymore?

There were nearly 300 voting delegates.  In a Senate district.  That’s more than we had in all of CD4.

It's a full house - almost 300 delegates That's retiring Senator Gen Olson speaking.

Dave’s a long-time friend of the NARN, so it was absolutely my pleasure.  He was running against Connie Doepke, as well as longtime conservative activist Bonn Clayton (who, I did not know, is the father of Tea Party majordomo Mara Souvannasoth.  You learn something new every day!).

It took four ballots – which was the maximum according to the convention rules – but Osmek pulled out to an early lead, and was within two votes of the 60% threshold at the third ballot.  Clayton withdrew and threw his delegates to Osmek after the third, which led to an 81-19% endorsement.

Then the district split into two rooms.  I walked to the cafeteria to cover the House District 33B contest between incumbent Steve Smith and challengers Pam Langseth and Cindy Pugh.

I got a sense of the tenor of the event; Smith, a moderate (who’s earned my personal ire by opposing Joint Physical Custody legislation for years) seems to have been districted out of much relevance, at least within the party.  He had a small clutch of supporters wedged between a large group for Langseth, and an even bigger group for Tea Party organizer Pugh.

I had no idea how much bigger, of course; when the first ballot came back, Pugh had about 68% of the vote, blowing past the margin for endorsement.  Langseth netted about 20 points, meaning that the incumbent Smith netted around 10% of the vote.  I was sitting next to his delegation; he did not look happy, and it did sound as if he was ready to go to a primary against Pugh.

As, scuttlebutt had it, Doepke was going to do too, against Osmek; Twitter traffic painted her as still thinking about it.

As to the A side?  That race – former Senate candidate Joe Arwood and another challenger – are going to the primary too.   They came, literally, to a tie; 75 votes each, 35 shy of endorsement.  So to the primary we go!

But that’s all for August.  For last night?

It’s a great sign when a Republican CD votes conservative.  While both Doepke and Smith   made reassuringly conservative-sounding speeches, both seemingly got hung up by positions they’d taken in Saint Paul that weren’t so much; Doepke voted for the New Generation Energy Act and the Stadium, and against Stand your Ground; Smith voted with the Real Americans on Stand your Ground, but has caved on more than a few other issues.  The district didn’t buy it, clearly.

And it’s gratifying to see a district that doesn’t give a crap what Lori Sturdevant’s going to say about it.

It smells like…victory.

Speaker Zellers and Senator Senjem had barely brought the gavels down on the session when the DFL’s paid PR organs – Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and the unions – and their unpaid ones in the media started chanting the meme: it’d been a “do-nothing” legislature.

That is, of course, objectiively wrong.  The GOP went into the session with big plans, and threw itself into carrying them off.

The DFL and Governor Dayton went into the session with smaller plans:

• Run out the clock
• Veto everything they could
• Hope redistricting would pull their chestnuts out of the fire come November.

It’s not a bad strategy, really; it ties in seamlessly with the DFL’s strategy this past several elections: “lie about everything convincingly enough to sway the stupid vote”.

But in addition to being a really really cynically ofay political strategy, it’s just plain not true. Here’s a sampling of what the “do-nothing’ legislature managed to get past a sluggardly DFL minority and a Governor whose only activities this past session were vetoing legislation and kissing Roger Goodell’s ass:

• Brought the deficit from the “nearly seven billion” of two years ago to a billion dollars and change in surplus today.
• They passed a Voter ID Amendment, which promises to help make MInnesota elections less like Chicago’s
• Furthered policies that led to the creation of 41,000 jobs – almost making up for the 47,000 jobs lost jn 2009 and 2010 when the DFL controlled the legislature.
• Brought Health and Human Services spending increases down from the double digits under DFL mismanagement to just over the rate of inflation.
• King Banaian’s “Sunset Advisory Commission” did something I do not believe any DFL government has ever done; eliminated government offices that had outlived their usefulness.
• Tort Reform
• Changes in school choice laws.

Oh, yeah – and they passed a ton of other bills, which Dayton then vetoed.

Put another way:  a legislature elected by over 50% of each district’s voters was stymied by a governor elected by barely over 40% of the people.

But that matters not to Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota, and its new astroturf spinoff, “Alliance for a Better Legislature”.  WIth nothing to show for their own session, the DFL and its astroturf partners’ only really strategy is…:

• Find a big lie
• Tell it constantly
• Peel off enough stupid people…
• …or fake and duplicate people to flip the Legislature while they still can.

One of the worst takeaways from this stadium fiasco has been the wedge it’s put in the GOP – and which, naturally, the DFL are using on Republicans, inside and outside the party.

Which is politics, and to be expected.

But it’s also at least in part wrong.

Hear me out here.

———-

Conservative voters have become a majority among GOP activists.  It’s why the GOP has morphed from the party of Arne Carlson and Dave Durenberger 15 years ago to the party of Dave Thompson and King Banaian today; the base, and people who vote Republican, want it.

And when the party strayed too far toward being “DFLers with better suits” over the past decade, the voters punished them by staying home in droves in 2006 and 2008, and by voting with the Tea Party and expelling many of the “moderate” hamsters from office in 2010 (to say nothing of many liberals).   They were sent to office with a mission; cut taxes, shink government, get out of the way of job creation, among a few other things.

And they took a good whack at it this session – hobbled by a Governor whose only goal (and job) was to veto everything he could, and the rhubarb at the State GOP (which slopped over into the Senate) they certainly didn’t get it all done.

But the stadium?  That was the bill that’s gotten conservatives exercised, one way or the other.  It’s been amusing to see Ron Paul and Kurt Bills supporters laboriously backtrack to justify spending public money on the single least essential bill government has – Zygi Wilf’s real estate improvements.

The DFL and media (PTR) scarcely need to exacerbate the internecine scrum between Republicans over the stadium (although they are), though. We’re beating ourselves up hard enough.

I’m going to suggest that conservative Republicans have a little more to show for the stadium debate than the DFL, the press and our less sanguine friends may let on.

———-

On the surface, of course, the numbers just aren’t good.  The stadium passed both chambers:  71-60 in the House, 36-30 in the Senate.

The partisan breakdown looked like this (and this is my count, not the official one – I assembled much of this data manually, and errors are very possible – although they don’t really affect the conclusion):

House (and I know, the math doesn’t square with the totals I got from the Strib above – I’ll work on it when I get a moment – and it doesn’t change the conclusion, again):

• For: 40 DFL, 33 GOP
• Against: 20 DFL, 38GOP

Senate:

• For: 21 DFL, 15 GOP
• Against: 8 DFL, 22 GOP.

So on the one hand, it does make sense – the DFL, yet again, voted in greater measure to pick the taxpayers’ pockets.  Indeed, it’s instructive which Democrats voted no (in both chambers, they included Davnie, Dibble, Dziedzic, Eaton, Falk, Greene, Greiling, Hansen (Rick), Hausman, Hayden, Hornstein, Kahn, Laine, Lenczewski, Liebling, Loeffler, Lourey, Marty, McGuire, Mullery, Murphy (Erin), Pappas, Paymar, Scalze, Torres Ray and Wagenius) – for the most part, the ones whose constituents would actually have to pay for the stadium.  It’s the DFL philosophy writ small; make other people pay for your toys.

But the fact remains that there would have been no publicly financed stadium without GOP participation.

And the GOP voted for it; 15 of 37 Senators and 33  of 71 Representatives; a minority within the caucus, but enough to saddle the taxpayers with the bill.

But as the DFL and media (ptr) remind us, there are really two GOPs.  There’s the “moderate”, pre-Tea Party version, and there are the newcomers who came to Saint Paul in 2011 full of whiz and vinegar and on a mission to change government.  They are in fact the majority of the Senate GOP caucus.

What’s the divide in the vote between the “old’ and “New” GOPs?

More on that at noon today.

I’m going to start a new TV show.  I’m going to call it “Profiles in Leadership”.

I’ve got a few episodes all plotted out.

Episode 1:  After decades of weak mayors who futzed around with “due process” and “the limits of government”, Boss Tweed finally did more than pay lip service to the office of “Chief Executive”, and actually used the office of mayor to lead the City of New York!

Episode 2: Putting lesser religions with their notions of “spiritual commitment” to shame, Revered Jim Jones put the leader back into “leadership”, when by the strength of his example he led his followers to put the “Ded” in “Dedication”.

Episode 3:  Unsatisfied to be a regular businessman, Bernard Madoff led his organization to excel beyond all others in its category!

Episode 4: Mark Dayton truly led “his” state in the quest to stick the bill for a billion-dollar spiff to Zygmund Wilf’s real estate investment on Minnesota’s taxpayers in an example of “leadership” for the ages.

No, the Strib say so:

Gov. Mark Dayton’s savvy and indefatigable advocacy for a new Vikings stadium represents the kind of executive leadership Minnesotans should applaud.

In much the same way that Chicagoans should have “applauded” Al Capone getting the prostitution rackets lined up and paying him tribute.

Unlike his predecessor, Dayton did more than occasionally lead cheers for the Vikings — he delivered on a key campaign promise to the people of Minnesota despite significant political risks.

Unlike his predecessor, Mark Dayton makes no pretense of being fiscally responsible, except where that means “taking other peoples’ money to pay off your campaign chits”.

And make no mistake about it; this was a payoff – to the Strib as well as many others.

The Strib needs the Vikings to be in downtown Minneapolis, to be paying big money on that fallow land the Strib owns near the current ‘dome, and to give it another ready market for selling newspapers.  So do the rest of the Twin Cities media, to a lesser degree.  They knew Dayton was a willing stooge for the downtown Minneapolis business interests that want that state subsidy every bit as bad as Wilf did.

And so the Star/Tribune’s coverage of the election race that led Dayton to office resembled  DFL public relations more than journalism – from their careful white-washing of Dayton’s political record to the election-eve “Minnesota Poll” showing Tom Emmer trailing by an improbable margin that certainly induced not a few Republicans to stay home.

The threat that the Vikings would have left Minnesota without a stadium deal this year was real, although to their credit the team and NFL leadership negotiated in good faith.

The negotiations were done in the same “good faith” the Mob uses when “negotiating” with a shopkeeper who is threatening not to pony up protection money fast enough.

Had this market lost the franchise, we no doubt would have seen an expensive reprise of the effort to bring big-league hockey back to the state after the North Stars left for Dallas.

Right!

And we all know how that loss devastated the State of Minnesota…

…well, no.  It devastated hockey fans, who were upset that “their” team got moved elsewhere by an owner that, like Zygi Wilf, wanted better tribute from the local government.

And it devastated the TV and radio stations and newspaper reporters and (especially) ad execs that covered, and sold ads for coverage of, North Stars games.

Other than that?  The loss of the North Stars had much less impact on this city than the loss of, say, the Ford plant.

Thursday’s passage of a stadium bill ends years of debate over the future of the team and the outdated Metrodome.

And the debate will be “ended” for another twenty years.  Until the next round of NFL owners wants their investments buffed up on other peoples’ money.

Or until someone tells them “no”.

Which would devastate nobody…

…but WCCO, KSTP, KARE, Fox Sports North, the PiPress and the Strib.  

Which, to be fair, at least discloses part of their vast interest in this bit of racketeering:

(Disclosure: The current stadium development plan includes one of five blocks owned by the Star Tribune near the Metrodome.)

But they graze up against the truth at least briefly:

The stadium bill, and the bonding bill that went before it this week, were exercises in effective bipartisan lawmaking,

And there you.

“Bipartisan” legislation.  Everybody wins…

…but the taxpayer.

And that, as they say, is all.

I’ve said it over and over – and every day of new evidence confirms it more; the DFL’s strategy seems to be “say whatever we want to (knowing that the media will never, ever contradict us in public, at least not in a way that the majority of voters will ever see or hear),  regardless of accuracy or truth, to sway the ill-informed, the ignorant, and the not-so-bright.  Because their votes (and whatever else we can jam through the polls) count just as much as the votes of the smart and informed people”.

Case in point:  Education Minnesota president t Tom Dooher’s statement to the media yesterday as the session drew to a close; I’ve added emphasis:

“The 2012 Legislature showed that Minnesotans will have a clear choice in November between leaders who truly value public education and those who view our classrooms as places for political games.

“The Republican majority introduced more than 20 bills targeting public education and educators this year. None of them responsibly addressed the most pressing needs of our students, including repaying the state’s $2 billion IOU to its schools, closing the achievement gap and developing a sustainable funding system for the future.

It’s a lie, of course.

The GOP did, in fact, propose and pass a bill that would have accelerated the repayment of the shift.   Governor Fauntelroy vetoed it.

This, really, shows several things:

The DFL’s campaign – say whatever it takes to win in November, truth be damned, is well underway.  The unions and Alliance for a Better Minnesota will soon be buying up millions in airtime to saturate this state with ads saying “The GOP hates kids”.  Mark my words.

Your children are the DFL’s pawns.  To the extent that the shift actually harms children (it really doesn’t; it inconveniences administrations), the DFL showed this session that they’d rather exploit them in November than pay for their education today.

This is what happens when you let “Right To Work” die in committee.  How wonderful would it have been to have every conservative, Republican member of EdMinn walk of the union out en masse at this hypocritical slander?   Or if the 42% of union members who do vote Republican tell their leadership “uh, not so fast” when the unions spend 95% of their dues on Democrats?

Apparently some genius in the majority caucus figured if they backed off on Right to Work, the unions would play fair this election.

This is politics in Minnesota today; one party does the best it can for a better Minnesota; the other does whatever it can to retain power, truth and ethics be damned.

If there’s one issue where the GOP-led Legislature has dropped the ball this session, it’s in letting the “Right To Work” Amendment (henceforth RTW) proposal languish, apparently to die, in committee.

Rumor coming from the Legislature is that the leadership is afraid that the unions will dump a ton of money into Minnesota to fight legislators who support RTW.   The fact is that the unions are facing a full-court press, with RTW legislation or related campaigns (like the Walker recall) going on in more states than ever before; they’re playing whack-a-mole, and while they have a lot of extorted dues money to spend (just less than half on union members are Republicans; about 8% of unions’ political money goes to GOP candidates), they’re spread thinner than ever before; putting one more piece of legislation out there will spread them thinner.

It’s not like the unions aren’t going to go after swing-y candidates in Minnesota – they already co-own the DFL along with Alita Messinger, and they will conduct a merciless, no-holds-barred, no-boundaries-respected smear campaign of every Republican in this state no matter what’s on the ballot this year.  And in a year or two or three?  The DFL and unions will have re-filled their coffers, and have many, many fewer challenges to deal with, for better or worse.

So if not now, when?  If not here, where?

The fact is, according to sources on Capitol Hill, we are three votes shy of passing this thing, and there are six GOP Senate holdouts. 

Leadership can do something about this. I’m going to urge you to contact the leadership of the House and Senate:

• Rep. Kurt Zellers – Speaker of the House (rep.kurt.zellers@house.mn / 651-296-5502)
• Sen. David Senjem – Senate Majority Leader (sen.david.senjem@senate.mn / 651.296.3903)

Tell them – politely but firmly – that 2/3 of the people in Minnesota, including liberals, including union members, support this legislation.  And so do you.  And you’re a voter.

Later this week, we’ll start talking about the reported holdouts.

There used to be firearms ranges in the Twin Cities – places where shooters could go and practice and, perhaps more importantly, teach the kids how to handle and, even moreso, how not to handle guns.

Metro-area DFL governments have pretty much squeezed out all the ranges within 20 miles of the Twin Cities proper.  Today, with the exception of Bill’s Gun Range in Robbinsdale, you have to drive to Burnsville, Lakeville, Blaine and such (along with a private club in Oakdale with some public shooting hours) to find a public range.

Not a few of those old ranges – Braemar in Edina, for example – were absorbed by Twin Cities law enforcement; they became ranges for cops.  They’re maintained at public expense.  And while cops need plenty of practice with their firearms, it’s not like the ranges are hopping 24/7.  There’s slack time (not that the cops shouldn’t get some more practice yet).  And since the public is paying for that unoccupied time, why not give the public access to the ranges they pay for?  If only for the safety instruction that, statistically, saves vastly more lives than any gun control measure?

And so Tom Hackbarth sponsored a bill that’d open up ranges to the public for firearm safety instruction.

And the bill was debated for an hour yesterday.

And during that debate, Assistant Minority Leader Kim Norton claimed that it would cost either $500,000 or $1,000,000 to convert these ranges for public use; according to various accounts, either Norton raised the figure in mid-debate, or a metro DFLer did.

That’s right – in the special little world of the DFL, you need to convert a range (which was a public range, in the case of Braemar among others) to handle civilian bullets.

Clearly the Sheriff’s Association wants this bill killed.  Public ranges aren’t for the public after all.

And if you’re a parent in North Minneapolis or Frogtown who wants to teach your kids gun safety?  You gotta drive and drive and drive and pay and pay and pay.

Because the DFL doesn’t want all those pesky brown-skinned people to know how to handle guns.

At this blog (and much moreso at Gary Gross’ Let Freedom Ring and Mr. D’s eponymous Neighborhood), we’ve been trying to unpack the fabrications behind the Dayton / Bakk stadium proposal – including the fantasy that electronic pull tabs are going to cover the state’s contribution.

One thing I haven’t done is look into what the team supposedly contributes in terms of taxes.

Paul Udstrand at Thoughtful Bastards has, though:

According to [MinnPost’s Joe Kimball] a group going by the name: “Home Team Advanage” has issued a “report” claiming that MN stands to loose $533 million dollars if the Vikings leave the state. HTA claims that the Vikings have generated $320 million in sales tax revenue, and $360 in income tax revenue from Vikings players since 1982.

There’s really no way to avoid the conclusion that these numbers are flat out distortions and fabrications. The $320 million figure comes from a 2009 RSM McGradrey report that was commissioned the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission. I’ve excerpted the relevant table and provided it below:

Udstrand includes a bit of spreadsheetery:

Spreadsheet courtesy the thoughtful bastards at "Thoughtful Bastards", where it's probably much easier to read.

As you can see, the tax contributions since the Metrodome opened are listed in columns starting with the Twins. If you look at the totals you see that the Vikings total has been $166,514,612. So where does HTA get the $320? Notice the total for ALL sports in the very last column is $319,306,727. HTA rounded it (wrongly) up to $320. In other words they almost doubled amount the Vikings have paid by included ALL taxes generated by ALL pro sports activity. The actual vikings contribution once you subtract personal income tax is $52 million. I find it hard to believe a bunch of business boys can’t read a basic spreadsheet so one has to suspect this is NOT an innocent mistake. At best it’s beyond sloppy research.

HTA also claims that the Vikings pay $20 million a year in state income taxes. The actual figure for 2010 was $12 million.

There’s much more.  I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.

And then remember that every single portion of the Dayton / Bakk stadium plan fails to add up – the City of Minneapolis’ contribution, the expected doubling in gambling revenue, or the projected benefits.

Nothing!

As some of you know, I’ve been one of the “establishment” (har di har) Republicans who’s been trying to welcome Ron Paul supporters into the MNGOP.  I tried to make this – along with an opportunity for Paul supporters and the GOP to get together and do something useful – clear in a piece I posted yesterday.

Now, when I mentioned this yesterday, one prominent Paulbot responded “LOLOLOL”.  There’s a backstory there; he’d pondered out loud why True North‘s stable of center-right writers didn’t include any Paul supporters.  I asked him to put up or shut up – to send me some Paul-aligned bloggers who’d been blogging any length of time and who didn’t completely suck as writers, and we’d put ’em on.  The problem wasn’t a lack of outreach on True North’s part; it was that outside of the excellent Katie Kieffer, I’m not aware of a single pro-Paul blogger in Minnesota who’s kept a blog going for more than 2-3 posts.

He never sent me anyone.

Anyway, the fact is I do support the Paul crowd’s activity in the GOP – provided that they’re not there simply to blow it up.

Unfortunately, a small flock of little birds tell me their big plan this month is to bum-rush Kurt Zellers’ district and deliver a “no endorsement” vote.

This – trying to undercut the party if you can’t take control of it – is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.  Vandalizing the one party in the state that has any actual impact on policy that does, however imperfectly, stand for any form of liberty at all, however imperfectly, to “teach it a lesson” about…

…about what?  Not paying sufficient obeisance to a candidate that, whatever his chances of getting the nomination for President, which, important as it is, has nothing to do with the business of the State, Congressional District or Legislative District/BPOU operation of the party?  On behalf of people who will, largely, have little to do with nominating Senate, Congress, Legislative, Mayor, County Commission, City Council and School Board candidates, but less still to do with supporting them once the time for debating resolutions about “Auditing the Fed” is over and the time for raising money, making calls and droppoing lit and trying to get people elected begins?

And for what?  To undercut the GOP Speaker of the House?

Paul supporters – curb your colleagues’ urge to commit political vandalism.  Given that there is only one party in the state whose establishment pays even imperfect service to “liberty”, what are you trying to accomplish?  “Teach the GOP a lesson?

Parties don’t learn lessons.  They reflect the will of those who show up.

And by “show up”, I mean to meetings in January, and for House District special elections in March.

I”ve heard from more than a few Paul supporters who’ve complained that the “establishment” of the GOP – meaning the people who were elected two years ago, whatever their beliefs – aren’t welcoming them with open arms.

How much more explaining to we need to do, here?

Gary from Highland Park directed me to a quote in this piece about a bill that would make concert and sporting event tickets the personal property of the purchaser:

“I don’t see your bill as a free-market bill,” said Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley. “[It’s] the Legislature weighing in and picking winners and losers among competing industries, and that’s something we’re pretty bad at, but never can stop doing, it seems.”

Gary adds “”Isn’t the first step admitting you have a problem? Think he can stop his destructive habit?”

I’m just wondering why Winker’s wasting his time on this, and not out there personally creating more jerbs?

As this post appears, the unions and the Twin Cities astroturf community are gathering at the Capitol to bellow, shout and chant for the right to have Minnesotans’ votes counted as many times and places as the DFL needs them to be counted.  They are going to try to sway the Senate, which will vote this afternoon on putting the Voter ID Amendment on the ballot for this November, where it will likely pass by a huge margin, making vote fraud and DFL hegemony juuuuuust a little more difficult. They want to keep Minnesota a Cold Chicago.

If you’re reading this blog and you’re not one of the occasional liberal sock puppets who chimes in occasionally, you probably have a job.  You may be thinking “I can’t make it to the Capitol at noon for a rally”.

Baloney.

Call your Senator.  Even if you have a DFL marionette for a Senator, they count the numbers of calls, and they pay attention to them.

Let them know that the droogs that are stumbling around the Capitol today don’t speak for you.

And if you are represented by a good conservative?  Encourage and thank them for standing up for democracy with integrity.

We can win this one, and win it big.

…the GOP is focused on jobs.

The “MNGOP’s “Reform 2.0” agenda moved forward yesterday with the passage of the “Tax Relief And Job Creation Act”, which passed in the House.

I wish every working Minnesotan could see this bit from yesterday – Rep. Matt Dean tearing chunks out of Ann Lenczewski, who’d just finished demigogueing against the bill:

Pass it around.

This is going to come up in the Senate soon. And while it’s not as sexy and sound-biteable as the Marriage Amendment or Voter ID, it’s much more important for Minnesota’s long-term future, especially for the parts of Minnesota that actually work.

We’ll keep you posted.

Of all the facile DFL chanting points sluicing outward from Media Matters For America the Alliance For A “Better” Minnesota this session, perhaps the most galling is “The DFL is focused on jobs, while the GOP is obsessing over constitutional amendments over social issues”.

For starters, it’s absurd; the GOP as a rule doesn’t believe government “creates jobs”.  And as we noted at the beginning of the session, the “jobs plan” contained in Dayton’s bonding bill is really just a “Jerbs Plan“, creating a bunch of temporary – ahem, “Shovel-Ready” – construction jobs (for DFL-up-sucking unions and the state workers that supervise them, naturally).  As we saw last January, the job numbers themselves make no sense.

The fact that Minnesota’s unemployment is as low as it is is, in fact, testimony to the GOP’s real jobs plan; keeping taxes as low as possible (given an irresponsible and dogmatically partisan  DFL governor for the past year, and DFL legislatures for the four preceding).

As to the “social legislation?”  The Legislative can walk and chew gum at the same time (the fade on “Right To Work” notwithstanding).  They can do both just as easily as Tom Bakk can propose legislation on the State Beer and whatever else it is he does every day.

But the real difference is this:  while the DFL and Governor Dayton propose to “create” temp jerbs, the GOP is out to make Minnesota a place where business can get established, grow and thrive.

Sources at the Capitol tell me that the Employee Freedom Act – the proposed Right to Work Amendment – is in trouble.

The sources tell me the House GOP caucus leadership is going wobbly, and some caucus members are nervous about the money the unions say they’re going to bring to bear.

It’s time to call your House GOP caucus and its members, especially if you’re a constitiuent.  Encourage them to support the amendment.  Polls show the people support Right to Work by a significant margin.

Fortune favors the bold – and the DFL noise machine will play this like a victory they earned.

House GOP Caucuse:  Please stop the wobbling.

I don’t want to become one of those blogs that carry party press releases (I very rarely do this) and is all about calling people to one kind of action or another.

But this blog has always been about grassroots politics – mine, sure, but everyone else’s as well.

Anyway – the Right to Work amendment gets its hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday.

I have it on good authority that some of the more moderate Republicans on the committee are getting a little squishy on this amendment.  They are afraid of all the union money that’s going to come into the state.  Fact is, the union money will always be there – but with RTW legislation popping up everywhere, it’s going to be spread a lot thinner than it will be in two or four years.  If not now, when?

So if you’ve got a senator on the committee, give ’em a call.  Encourage them to support the Right to Work amendment.  Encourage ’em to remember why they got sent there – and if it’s not a Freshman in the Senate, also encourage ’em to remember how they got the majority.

This just in:  Astroturf protesters heckled Mary Franson in the House Ag Committee, trying to overturn the 2010 election results by demanding her resignation over their context-mangled attack on her.  (The issue was in danger of fading from the headlines; the left can’t afford that)

Here’s her response – emphasis added:

Intimidation and bullying are hallmarks of the far left. The protesters here today exemplify the abusive nature of their political involvement by demanding my resignation and silence. They don’t engage on the tragedy of dependency and poverty because they have no solutions, only threats and theatrics.

No one is fooled or persuaded by these Alinsky tactics and far from resigning, these astro turf events only make me more committed to helping the poor out of poverty. My constituents support my efforts to change that status quo. The public knows stunts when it sees one and today’s orchestrated, manufactured “protests” are just that.

Mary Franson

The poor aren’t animals – but huge swathes of the DFL are a bunch of hyenas.

Mary is under a lot of fire right now – and it’s becoming more and more depraved.  She could use a call from some real Minnesotans, supporting her.

To: Dave Senjem, Kurt Zellers and the rest of the Legislative GOP Caucuses
From: Mitch Berg, Conservative Pugilist Without Portfolio
Re: WTF?

I was talking with a fairly prominent GOP/conservative activist the other day.  He noted that some of you are getting squishy on some core conservative issues – specifically “Right To Work”.

You’re nervous about the amount of money the “labor” movement is going to spend against against you this fall if you pursue this issue.

My question:  If not now, when?  The “labor” movement is spread incredibly thin this year; they’re fighting “Right to Work” in a slew of states, all of them “must-wins” for them.  They have a lot of ill-gotten money, it’s true – but they’ll be playing whack-a-mole in a whole bunch of legislatures.  Next session, and 2014, they will not be.

You were sent to Saint Paul in an epic reversal of fortune from the previous two cycles; you went from plucky but almost irrelevant minority to solid majority in one election.

I’m going to suggest to you that the voters didn’t do that because of anything connoted with the term “Republican Party of MInnesota”, or because they wanted Lori Sturdevant to approve of you.  They threw out the Democrats because you took a courageous stance on the stump, and convinced the voters that they didn’t want Democrats passing the laws.

They did it because the Cauci proposed to change things in this state, and the voters believed them.

So deliver.

That is all.

Ted “Mini-Governor” Mondale wants you, the voter, to believe that 4-2=6.

Metropolitan Sports Facility Chairman Ted Mondale said the electronic pull-tab financing mechanism for the state’s $400 million share is solid, despite questions about gambling revenue projections and the bonds the state intends to sell. Mondale also seemed to be hinting that he’s not worried about charitable gambling operators’ complaints about their taxes:

“As it relates to the revenue estimates. We believe that the total pot in the first year will be $72 million. There will be a final negotiation when the bill goes through with the bars and the restaurants, but we think their revenue almost doubles.

That’d be amazing!

Of course, it’d involve gaming revenues taking a huge U-turn from their past ten years’ performance.  Gary Gross at the Examiner unpacks reality (I’ll add some emphasis):

According to this pdf report, the trend continues. In FY2002, gross receipts were $1,435,426,000. That figure had dropped 31% to $989,906,000 in FY2011. To be fair, that represented a 1% increase in receipts from 2010.

That said, that’s the only increase in gross receipts during the FY2002-FY2011 decade:

FY2010 gross receipts dropped 5%.

FY2009 gross receipts dropped 9.6%.

FY2008 gross receipts dropped 9.8%.

FY2007 gross receipts dropped 3.3%.

FY2006 gross receipts dropped by 4.8%.

FY2005 gross receipts dropped by 3.1%.

FY2004 gross receipts dropped by $100,000. That was listed as breaking even.

FY2003 gross receipts dropped by 1.2%.

FY2002 gross receipts dropped by .1%.

When you factor in the fact that only 4% of all receipts get to charities, there isn’t nearly enough revenue to pay off the state’s share of $398,000,000.

Mondale is saying that charitable gaming will not just turn around a constant bleeding away of receipts, but double.

This is more Democrat economics in action.

As we pointed out this morning, the Minneapolis “contribution” is wobbly as well.

DFL economics; based on phantom revenue growth and nonexistant consensus!

And 43% of this state voted for Mark Dayton exactly why?

MPR’s Curtis Gilbert and Jon Collins report that the Minneapolis City Council is not on board with all the triumphalistic high-fiving from the Administration on the Dayton/Rybak stadium plan, as I noted yesterday.

The proposal would peel money away from the part of the city’s (exorbitant) sales taxes that currently support the Convention Center, which under city charter requires a referendum – which, as you recall, was so effective in stopping the taxpayers from being shaken down to build Target Field:

Gary Schiff championed the charter amendment back when he was executive director of the political organization then-called Progressive Minnesota. Now he is a member of the City Council and he said if city money is involved, then the referendum is not negotiable.

“I could never support a plan that circumvents city law,” Schiff said. “I won’t break the law. I’ve sworn to the law as an office holder. And I’m not going to break the city charter.”

Council Member Cam Gordon, who represents areas around the University of Minnesota, said he still opposes the plan because his impression is that it ignores the requirement to hold a referendum.

“I have a concern that ultimately, it’s probably going to be a judge who’ll have to make this decision. Apparently there’s lawyers, maybe in the city, the Vikings, the governor’s office, who are all working on the rationale to make the arguments that this doesn’t violate the charter,” Gordon said. “But there’s probably other lawyers who could read the exact same rules and ordinances and statutes and say it is violating the charter, and so it may end up going to court.”

Council Member Robert Lilligren said he is “philosophically opposed” to public funding for stadiums. He wants a referendum, but he stops short of vowing to vote no on the plan.

“It’s clear that if the legislature wants to see this stadium plan go forward, they will need to write into legislation a way of circumventing the charter amendment,” Lilligren said.

Council Member Lisa Goodman also opposes the stadium plan. Council Members Elizabeth Glidden, Sandy Colvin Roy and Betsy Hodges previously opposed the stadium plan, although they haven’t yet commented on the current package.

So half of Dayton, Rybak and the Downtown Brotherhood’s plan relies on a tax diversion that may be illegal – as I reported yesterday.

As to the other half?  The mainstreams haven’t quite twigged to the fact that the Dayton-Bakk proposal to divert money from the state’s charitable gambling industry relies on some unsupportable figures; it assumes a doubling in charitable gambling receipts, even though as Gary Gross notes, charitable gambling revenues are trending down, not up.

And the tribes haven’t spoken out publicly yet.  But they will.

So – two takeaways:

1. The “Deal” is a turkey.
2. MPR has given you yesterdays’ “Shot In The Dark” today.

In every engineering company in America, stuck on a bulletin board or taped to someone’s cube, is this cartoon:

Everyone who’s worked in engineering or any kind of analysis has seen this sort of reasoning on projects; you start with parameters, end with a conclusion – and the details will get filled in later, once the stakeholders conquer than whole “Miraculous” thing.

It totally applies today.

——–

The Governor announced his new stadium plan today.

And if you, like me, have been adamant about not spending any public money on enriching Zygi Wilf – well, it’s mostly bad:

The officials were quick to announce the plan does not include any new taxes and includes a hefty contribution from the team.

Dayton said Rosen described the package as “the best deal available that’s possible.”

Dayton said the Legislature and the city must decide whether the state wants to be involved with professional football.

“I believe it does,” Dayton said.

Dayton said he will communicate with the Minneapolis City Council about the package shortly.

Under the “term sheet” announced today, the costs are divided 56 percent public, 44 percent private to put the facility up.

The problem?

For starters, as Gary Gross has been reporting for some weeks now, the public portion of the plan not only relies heavily on electronic gambling proceeds.  The plan presumes that revenue from these sources is going to boom – but it’s been drastically down in the past decade, over 20%.  The plan is to take all the new revenue and hand it over to the Vikes.

And that’s just on the state side.  The other public pillar of the plan involves the City of Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak explained the sales tax structure and urged approval of the package.

But Doug Belden and Dennis Lien didn’t explain it.  It involves diverting the city’s convention center tax – and the City Council has already said no, no, a thousand times no, well, a thousand times.  Rybak is talking, as they say in Latin, de anus.

(Which may be one of very few cases where phrasing something in Latin is actually more gauche than the Englsh original, “out his butt”).

And like the cartoon above, this deal requires several miracles to occur.

The Minneapolis City Council needs a 180 degree change of heart on the “sales tax structure” that Mayor Rybak glossed over.

The charitable gambling market needs to counter its recent history, and not only expand, but hit a major boom.

And, by the bye, the Tribes need to not send squadrons of DFL assassin ninjas out to exact revenge for further eroding their monopoly on gaming in the state.  Which you know, if you follow the interactions between the tribes and the government at all, is about as likely as Ryan Winkler winning an arm-wrestling match with Jared Allen.

This “Deal” is no deal. It is vapor.  It counts on a miracle occurring.

And the City of Minneapolis, the Tribes, and the laws of economics have all outlawed miracles.

UPDATE:  A Capitol Hill wag wrote me: “it would be interesting to track the history of revenue projections from electronic pull tabs. seems rather variable, as in it seems to grow to fit whatever dayton wants to use it for. funny that estimates for gop initiatives never do that.”

I’m sure MPR’s “Poligraph” will get right on that.

You just knew the DFL had this one planned either way.

If the budget forecast had come in in the red, there would have been caterwauling about how the state needed to raise taxes to make the state’s economy stronger.  The incongruity would have escaped the media.

Of course, it came in in the black; about a third of a billion.

And the regional DFL-prop media was quick to pee in the Legislature’s Wheaties; “It’s All Spoken For!”, they were quick to append to the news.

Dayton’s Management and Budget commissioner was quick with the Administraiton’s spin:

Management and Budget Commissioner Jim Schowalter said the $323 million surplus is already spent. By law, $5 million will go to refill the state’s budget reserve. The rest will start paying back the schools. At this rate, Schowalter said it could be quite some time before the state breaks even.

“It’s going to be a while before we have a positive forecast balance even if we have good news rolling forward for years to come,” he said.

That’s going to be the DFL’s line about the surplus: “it’s not really a surplus!  We owe!”

And when it comes up around he water cooler, every Republican, every conservative, every Real Minnesotan should have two responses:

• “Duh.  No kidding?  The DFL spent us into a deep, deep hole between 2006 and 2010, larding up the budget with entitlements that were bound to leave us with a deep hole once the economy went south – and it eventually always goes south, at least for a while.  And when it did, the DFL just asked for more – like, six billion over previous budgets!  Have you learned your lesson yet?”
• “Remember how all the DFL’s talking heads were saying “it’s going to take a lot of work to get out of this deficit?”  Well, welcome to “lot of work”.  Just like when your family falls behind on bills and spends some time playing catch-up; your tax refund and bonus from work go into paying old bills, rather than fun stuff.  Suck it up, little camper.  This is the “hard work”.  Put up or shut up”.

And one thing that is as predictable as the Alliance for a Better Minnesota lying about something; the Dems will call for whatever “surplus” there is to be added to permanent entitlement spending.  And “paid back” to the schools.

Because in the world of the Democrat, or “Republicans” like Arne Carlson, “surplus” is just another word for “money to spend spend spend!”

And if there’s one thing Minnesotans showed us in 2010, it’s that they’re tired of that piece of business as usual.

Was it the money the DFL spent over the past twenty-odd years pushing for the appointment of left-leaning judges?

Was it the money they spent pressuring largely DFL and moderate GOP-controlled legislatures to confirm DFL-friendly judges?

Or was in the money the national left poured into astroturf pressure groups like “Draw The Line” and “Common Cause“, which spent years and millions putting a non-partisan, politic face on the DFL’s naked push for power at any cost?

Or was it all the money that Darth Lillehaug billed?

Who cares?  The DFL got what they needed; another ten year reprieve from irrelevancy:

Most observers surprised that lege map didn’t yield bigger Republican advantageIn the first hours and days after the state’s new redistricting maps landed at the Capitol Tuesday, the collective sense of relief among Minnesota Democrats was unmistakable. Many DFLers admitted to being pleasantly surprised by the final rendering of the state’s new political boundaries, which will help determine the outcome of elections for the next decade. “What was it Churchill said?” smiled one suburban House Democrat. “There’s nothing as exhilarating as being shot at and missed?”Republicans were not so pleased.

The piece is by Briana Biersbach at PIM, and it’s very much worth a read.

Let’s be clear here; the biggest news in the redistricting was that it didn’t reflect what most credible observers on both sides saw  as the inevitable; that rapid growth in healthy, well-run GOP-represented areas wasn’t reflected in the new map, while the mismanaged, needy, sclerotic DFL parts of the state are now disproportionally represented.

The real losers? All of you people who moved to the exurbs and central MN to get away from the DFL.

Thank you, anonymous preliterate wannabe-class-warrior union droog, whoever you were…

In fact, the most confrontational moment came when Rep. Banaian was answering another right-to-work question. Jerry Albertine interrupted, saying “Don’t sit there with your hairspray and your tie, you’ve never worked labor, and say you know what the unions are about.”

…for giving Learned Foot the best straight line he’s had all year:

Heh.

I was out of town last week during Governor Dayton’s frankly weird performance, referring to supporters of the “Right To Work” amendment as “Extreme”.

More on that – it ties in closely with my piece on the DFL’s new PR effort to flood the state with unsupportable memes on wedge issues designed to fool the uninformed and gullible – later this week.

It’s just interesting to note how many “extremists” there are out there, according this SurveyUSA poll covering Minnesotans’ attitudes on the Gay Marriage, Right To Work and Voter ID amendments seem to show that a majority of Minnesotans are, by Governor Dayton’s self-indulgent standard, “Extremists”.

Let’s go through the numbers one issue at a time:

Marriage Amendment

This is the weakest of the bunch so far; it’s winning by 47-39, and over the top in most of the cross tabs (other than 18-34 year olds, cell phone users, Democrats, Liberals and people making over $80K a year).

This is in line – and maybe a little better – than the results I found in the fall of 2010, when a Lawrence Poll showed that Minnesotans’ preferences swung strongly to Tom Emmer when they were clear that Emmer supported referenda or legislative rulings on the issue, while Dayton and Horner both supported legislating the issue from the bench.

The problem is that these numbers aren’t nearly good enough to pass the bill, given one quirk in Minnesota’s law when voting on constitutional amendments; blank votes are counted as “no” votes.  Everyone who supports an amendment must vote affirmatively “yes”.

So let’s assume the numbers in this poll’s “Not Sures” – 4% overall – break evenly between Yes and No on election day, bringing the actual results to 49-41 in favor; then “Not Votes” stay on the sidelines, becoming “No” votes, making the final vote a bare 51-49 against.  That’s not counting “Ritchie Votes”: the dead, people being vouched into multiple districts, people who aren’t legally entitled to vote, and the like.

Even without that, the measure loses by default. By this count, the Marriage Amendment needs to arf up at least three more points – five as insurance against “Ritchie Votes”.

With a state this polarized, it’s a tall order.

Right To Work

Minnesota is much less polarized here – and it shows.  Governor Dayton’s memes on the subject have been more fact-free and desperate than usual – “right to work states have lower wages!”, he declared, ignoring the other context (closed shop states tend to be more urban, coastal and have much higher costs of living as well as wages) – showing how hard the DFL is going to have to dig for votes on this issue.

“Right To Work” leads 55-24% overall.  It leads in every single cross tab – the narrowest is 35-32 among identified liberals.  Bad news for the DFL – it leads among women even more than among men; more among the young than the old;

More importantly?   Even if you take the 12% “not sure” vote and split it evenly among “Yes”, “No” and “Not Voting” , the numbers become 59-28-13, which really means 59-41 (remember, blank votes become “No”, as noted above).  Even if every undecided voter decides to side with the unions – in other words, the hopelessly unrealistic breaks, things about as likely as me getting a third date with Amy Adams – or just sit the issue out, the issue ends up at 55-45.

It’ll take a lot of “Ritchie Votes” to beat “the extremists” on this issue.

Photo ID

Perhaps the best news of the poll is that the left’s idiot memes about Voter ID – “it disenfranchises the poor, the elderly and college students – are falling not so much on deaf ears, but ears that mock their idiocy.

During the 2010 campaign, the meme of the right was that Voter ID had 2-1 support in Minnesota.  The SUSA poll shows it’s actually 3-1 with a bullet; the measure currently leads 70-23.

The cross tabs?  Again – the measure is more popular among women than men (73% of women favor it, vs. 66% of men); more among younger voters, with a 77-20 lead among 35-49 year old voters); more among the educated (71-24 among college grads ys 63-23 among high school grads); about evenly across all income bands; even by 69-24 in the Twin Cities.

Most significantly?  Only 4% of Minnesotans are undecided on the subject, and 4% more claimed they’ll “not vote” on the issue.  Even if every single undecided voter is convinced to vote against the issue or sit it out, the measure passes 70-31%.

Even Mark Ritchie will have a hard time rigging this one.

Takeaways

Caveat up front; the conclusions below presume the SUSA poll is accurate.  The poll is of registered voters, rather than likely voters, which is inherently less accurate on the one hand, but traditionally skews things to the left on the other hand; for purposes of the conclusions below, I’ll presume those two factors roughly cancel each other out.

GOP legislative candidates need to closely align themselves with the Right To Work and Photo ID issues.  They need to hammer on their support for Right to Work and Voter ID, and the positive things that both bring to this state – more jobs, and an election system with actual integrity (although Voter ID is only one of many reforms needed).

The Marriage Amendment strikes me as a loser for GOP candidates – not because it’s off the ideological beam (although as a libertarian conservative, I’m less enthusiastic about it than some Republicans), but because presuming that this poll is accurate, candidates will spend more time and effort supporting the amendment than being supported by it.  By tying themselves to amendments that seem likely to pass overwhelmingly and which show the deep wedge between the DFL and the GOP, on issues where the DFL is both wrong and diametrically opposed to a crushing majority of Minnesotans, the GOP wins free votes; the Marriage Amendment will cost time and effort to prop up at the polls.  Not to say the votes can’t be found, but it’s going to take a lot of time and effort – which is the job of the various pro-marriage groups, not candidates.

The other takeaway, in light of the Governor’s prate and gabble on the subject(s)?  In every case, with all three of these amendments, the conservative, “extreme” position is the mainstream.

But we knew that.

See more on the subject from Ed Morrissey.