I

I wonder if the DFL really thought this through?

We’ve seen what is possible, all right.  

Squandered surpluses.

Erased civil liberties – snitch lines, thoughtcrime databases, and a precedent of abusing emergency power.

Burned neighborhoods, including mine.

A productive class that’s fleeing the state.  

A per capita state product that was in the top 10 nationwide that has fallen to the middle and isn’t done dropping.

Catastrophic social division.

A collapsing Minneapolis  once called “the Athens of the 20th century”, now just another blighted city with nice lakes.

Educational outcomes that just keep getting worse and worse. 

Contempt for the rule of law – by prosecutors.  

The worst Covid aid fraud in the country.

An emerging reputation for corruption. 

Humiliation after his awful VP run.  At least Walter Mondale wasn’t an embarassment.

Eight years of sloganeering and double-talk. 

Yes, MNDFL.  We have indeed seen what is possible.  

I, for one, would love to get unburdened by what has been. 

Tim Walz is running for Governor again.  

The governor who, at best, ignored well over $1B in fraud, set up a snitch line and a badthink database, squandered a $19B surplus, ran one of the most club-footed Covid responses in the country, and supports censoring people like me, wants another go-around.

Even some DFLers have had enough…

…although if Walz doesn’t get the nomination it’ll be because someone to his left beats him.

It’s the law.

SCENE:  Cat SCAT is out patrolling for Republican lawn signs to rip down when he sees Mitch BERG weed-whacking his row of barberry bushes.  It’s too late for BERG to evade. 

SCAT:  Hey, Nazi. 

BERG:  Oh, great…

SCAT:  Shut up.  We’re flying flags at half staff nationwide for the Nazi Charlie Kirk, but we didn’t for Melissa and Mark Norton. 

BERG:  Hortmann. 

SCAT:  I fact check you.  Norton.  

BERG:  OK.   So as with so much of what’s wrong in Minnesota, it’s Governor Walz’s fault.  

SCAT: I fact-check you and prove you false. 

BERG:  Because…

SCAT:  I’m a fact-checker.  

BERG: OK, so how about this:

During the afternoon news conference, Trump said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz never asked him to have flags at the nation’s capitol be placed at half-staff after Melissa and Mark Hortman were fatally shot. 

That same morning, Minnesota lawmaker John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot several times at their Champlin home in a politically-motivated attack.

What Trump said:

“Well if the Governor had asked me to do that, I would’ve done that. But the Governor of Minnesota didn’t ask me. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but I would’ve if somebody had asked me. People make requests for the lowering of the flag. Often times you have to say no because it would be a lot of lowering, the flag would never be up. Had the Governor of Minnesota asked me to do that, I would’ve done that gladly.”

The flags at the Minnesota State Capitol were placed at half-staff after the shootings.

BERG:  Which fits with Walz’s pattern of not really paying attention to the administrivia of running a state – like sending in the National Guard during riots, or paying attention to the tsunami of corruption on his executive branch’s watch, or , well, this. 

SCAT:  LIke I always said, Walz forgot and Trump didn’t do it for him because he’s a Nazi.  

BERG:  Huh.  So what you said earlier…

SCAT:  I never said anything earlier. 

BERG:  Ah.  Gotcha. 

And SCENE. 

Piglet wants to have a special session to try to jam down the DFL’s pet gun bans.  

Even the DFL knows it’s doomed:

They never had the votes; the House is tied, and would depend on at least one GOP “compromising” with the DFL, and not a single Republican in either chamber has made a final vote against gun rights in over 25 years.  

In the meantime, the Senate – which is tied today, and even with the one vote majority the DFL will likely retain after the special election to replace Nicole “the Catburglar” Mitchell, there are 3-4 “moderate” DFLers in very purple districts – Afton, the Arrowhead, Moorhead – who are clearly not thrilled about their prospects if they get saddled with a Metrocrat gun grab proposal.  

Some might remember 2002, when every “moderate” outstate DFLer who’d voted against carry permit reform got crushed, flipping the House to the GOP and paving the way for “Shall Issue” permitting and making Tim Pawlenty’s first term a lot more pleasant. 

So – if the votes aren’t there, why do it?

Remember – Richard Carlbom runs the DFL.   He’s the guy who took a bunch of chanting points and turned it into a social media logrolling and gaslighting campaign that not only got gay marriage passed (which may have been inevitable anyway) but took down the Voter ID amendment, which I’m pretty convinced we’re paying for today.  

I expect this “special session” is mostly an attempt to get a bumper crop of video to wrench out of context to play for the gullible uninformed voter that is the DFL’s stock in trade.  

That, and fundraising. Lots of fundraising. 

The good news:  Bloody Mary Moriarty is not running for re-election as Henco Attorney.  

The bad news? It’s so she can focus on “transforming the office” even further:

“I ran for this office to do the hard work; the work that desperately needed doing and the work the voters chose when I was elected in 2022 by 16 points,”Moriarty said in the release. “We’ve become accustomed to elected officials who don’t deliver results and end up more invested in clinging to power than doing the work of the people. That is not me. As I have weighed whether I wanted to spend the last year and a half of my term focused primarily on campaigning or continuing to transform this office, the choice became clear. I want to focus on running the office, rather than running for office.”

The worse news?

Remember – the Cano Corollary to Berg’s 21st Law is called a “law” for a reason:

In Blue city electoral politics, “blue” never gets “lighter” or less “progressive”.  There is only one electoral direction – more “progressive”. 

A symptom of this is when one sees people just barely to the left of a city’s Overton Window referring to the progressive politicidans and institutions in power as “Conservatives” or “Republicans”.  

When Alondra Cano seems like a sane, rational stateswoman, the Frey Corollary is in effect.

Worst – ergo most likely – scenario:  Moriarty spends the rest of her term gutting whatever vestiges of traditional law and order might remain her her office, turns it over to someone who will be subtly running to challenge Omar Fateh, Keith Ellison or Ilhan Omar from the left one day.  

The news broke last week – the Department of Human Services tanked its “Housing Stabilization Services” program before the Feds could start digging into it.

Not that there’s not gonna be some digging anyway.  Joe Thompson, the acting US Attorney for Minnesota, is finding a prosecutorial “targret rich environment”:

We welcome today’s news. Fraud has been eating away at Minnesota’s public programs for years, costing taxpayers billions. Ending the Housing Stabilization Services program cuts off a major source of abuse, but this is just the beginning. The fight against fraud continues, and a broader reckoning is long overdue.

“What” your ELCU-haired sister in law might exclaim, “they’re taking housing from people?”

No, not really.  Bill Glahn explains:

Don’t be confused. HSS doesn’t provide actual housing or anything else that would be considered useful. Instead, the program, operated by the state Dept. of Human Services (DHS), offers counseling services to Medicaid program participants.

Actually, it doesn’t do that either, as Thompson has documented. The “vast majority” of the $100 million in annual spending (of taxpayer funds) goes to outright fraud.

Today, state DHS took the correct step to shut down the program entirely, you can read their letter to the U.S. Medicaid office here. The Minnesota Star Tribune has a report on this major development,

“Vast majority”.

Not a skim of fthe top. 

Not 10% for the big guy. 

Vast.  Majority. 

If Trump does nothing else in office, turning a firehose on the State of Minnesota will make this next 3.5 years a wonderful thing. 

I’m not sure whose bright idea it was to put Sen. Nicole Mitchell (DFL – Woodbury) on the stand yesterday. 

It did not go well:

Maybe the defence was hoping the sheer overkill would spawn a sympathy vote in the jury?

The ones who truly don’t deserve a sympathy vote – her DFL enablers::

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

It’s good to know that all the other problems in the state have been solved, leaving legislators free to take up this important question.

 

Joe Doakes

After two years of “trifecta”, this sort of frippery is almost a relief. 

To:  Lieutenant Governor Flanagan
From:  Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re:  I Have Questions.  Let’s Be Honest, You Just Don’t Do Answers.

Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, 

I caught this tweet over the weekend:

I’ve got two questions:

1.  Does This Mean You’re Cutting Taxes?  One of the main reasons families (who can’t afford to leave Minnesota) are “just scraping by” is Minnesota’s confiscatory taxes.  Sales taxes in the metro (when you add local to state taxes) are up over 10%. The overall tax burden, driving by state taxes, is among the heaviest in the nation, and affects people at every level.  

Given that the administration of which you were an aggressively co-equal part squandered an $18B surplus, I need to ask: does this mean you’re repenting of your wastrel ways?

2. Do You Share A Platitude Tech With Gov. Walz?. Your twitter feed is not just an endless series of banal platitudes, but “style”-istically they appear to be written by the same unimaginative pollyanna-for-hire. 

Example:

Perhaps endless streams of platitudes are going to sound the same no matter who the writer is, but it just seems too close to be a mere coincidence. 

3. You Know My First Question Was Sarcastic, Right?  There’s no way “cutting taxes” is ever going to be on the agenda, is there?  Ever?

So, with the revelation last week that hiring managers and the MN Department of Human Services need to explicitly justify hiring white (presumably especially male) candidates for jobs, it’s not unreasonable to wonder – there must be some kind of deeply racist person driving these policies.  

Your reasonable question has been rewarded with an answer:

The tipster raised concerns about Phillips and claimed his social media page is “littered with racist comments about ‘white folk.’”

After reviewing a Facebook page under the name Vonnie Phillips — filled with the type of content described by the tipster and a video tagging a woman whose name matches Phillips’ wife in public records — Alpha News sent an inquiry to Phillips’ state email address.

In his response, Phillips confirmed the Facebook page was his and lashed out at Alpha News reporter Jenna Gloeb in a profanity-laced tirade defending his posts.

“Good luck,” he wrote. “My Facebook page is within the ‘protected concerted’ activity guidelines, therefore, do what you want; nowhere on my Facebook page lists my employer; and the person, the gutless, worthless coward that reported me, the hell with them, please tell them I said that fool.”

Ooof. Someone played that one wrong.

And played it, and played it…

The worst part, to me at least, isn’t Phillips’s statements or actions.  

It’s the culture of bureaucratic entitlement that allows bureaucrats to think that they’re OK acting like this on taxpayer time. 

How to make it in America:  Come to America via the immigration system.  Adopt the values that made America great.  Work hard, raise good kids, give a good value for the money. 

How to make it in Minnesota:  Come to America and, in apparently no particular order:  Commit a crime, ingratiate yourself with the bureaucracy, make get lots of taxpayer money.  

Wilson Tindi holds a director position at the Minnesota Department of Education, where he audits taxpayer spending and oversees internal accountability.

…

Tindi was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to register as a predatory offender. His sentence was stayed for five years, but he was also sentenced to 210 days in the workhouse, records show.

However, despite the felony conviction and offender status, Tindi serves as Director of Internal Audit and Advisory Services at MDE, according to public records and his LinkedIn profile.

 

Wonder if there’ll be a riot if he’s fired?

The Piglet can’t be happy about this latest Star-Tribune poll:

Gov. Tim Walz’s approval rating has dipped below 50% since his failed run for vice president last year, and about half of Minnesotans say he shouldn’t run for a third consecutive term in 2026, according to a new poll. The results suggest the DFL governor could face headwinds if he runs for re-election again, particularly from voters in greater Minnesota and the suburbs outside Hennepin and Ramsey counties. He also faces opposition from a majority of independents who disapprove of his performance.

The new Star Tribune/Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Minnesota Poll found 49% approve of Walz’s performance and 50% disapprove. A previous Minnesota Poll conducted last September found 53% of Minnesotans approved of Walz’s performance while 44% disapproved.

It’s only the second time Walz’s approval rating has fallen below 50% in the Minnesota Poll.\

It’s hard to read much history into this “Minnesota” Poll; the poll has changed hands so many times since its heyday from 1989-2012.  

But this is not great news for Walz.  

I don’t expect him to go out without a fight, of course; he – or Gwen – palpably craves national office.  The question is, given:

• the extraordinary nature of a third term as governor
• Walz’s unpopularity (which I’m going to guess is worse than even this latest re-dressing of the MN Poll shows, becasue that’s never a bad bet)
• The emergence of other contenders in the DFL – radicals like Peggy Flanagan (who’s terribly overmatched in her Senate race against Angie Craig), and relative moderates like Dean Philips…

…will the Tim Walz brand support another run?

I suspect we’re going to see a huge reconstruction effort.  Which I frankly hope succeeds, at least through DFL convention season. 

Postscript:  wouldn’t now be a great time for the MNGOP to suspend its circular firing squad and actually focus on fundraising and fighting a campaign?

Berg’s 18th Law got its biggest workout ever over this past weekend.  

Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts.

 

Starting with the first roujnd of tweets at 6AM, the story morphed from:

1. A rabid Trump supporter must have done it
2. An insane narcissist who wanted to go out in a misguided blaze of glory did it. 
3. A DFL irate over the vote over the “healthcare for illegals” vote last week (which Senator Hoffman didn’t buck the DFL on)
4. A Dayton and Walz appointee did it!
5. A guy whose non-profit got gutted by USAID cuts did it. 
6. A Pro-Lifer did it!
7. A guy with a bizarre and incongruous resume did it. 

I started at #2, and due to the 18th Law, gravitated back there by late Saturday afternoon.  I just hoped we’d catch the guy alive. 

And they did:

But the questions are just starting.

This take seems very plausible, given what we know…

With the qualifier “given what we know” doing a lot of lifting.

And again, knowing what we know now, if I had to guess (and I don’t, but I will), I’m going to guess the Boelter is a grab bag opportunist with some vague right-wing trappings, a history of grifting, and a building wave of mental illness.  

One thing I don’t have to guess about:  he won’t be to the right what Luigi Mangione is to the left:

I might have met Speaker Hortman twice, and didn’t form much of a personal opinion – but although I disagreed with 150% of her policies, by all accounts she was a perfectly wonderful human being:

The boundaries of Berg’s 18th Law are arbitrary – 48 hours was a good place to start.   With Boulter in custody, we may start getting things in order.  

Speculation later.  

The top-line number seems depressing, if you’re a Republican. And the DFL wants to double that down while it can:

I know, I know – it’s Survey USA. They oversample metro voters and Democrats.

It’s the second-tier result that’s interesting; on the question of whether he should run for Governor again:

He’s underwater among independents.  I think that’s a first; for some reason, “independent” voters have had a thing for the little Mussolini.  

So you can expect a huge PR effort to burnish his image as he tries to make that two year jump from 2026 to 2028 in some kind of office.  

Here’s the biggest takeaway to me:  you can ask youself who those 58% of idiots are.  Even if you write off a few percent because it’s a SUSA poll, that still means his approval is way above water.  

Which means that the “shut down the government and stick with pure conservative principle” crowd –  I’m looking at you, Action 4 Liberty – would be swimming up the PR stream from the word go, trying to convince voters of the merits of a government shutdown when they still don’t see what national voters plainly saw.  

I’m just the messenger.   

Is there another way to look at this?

85 years ago this month, Winston Churchill unpacked the result of the Dunkirk evactuation and reminded the UK that evacuations don’t win wars.   

And fighting the DFL to stalemates doesn’t save Minnesota – not all by itself.  

But let’s make sure we’re clear on what happened:

The GOP – facing a DFL executive branch and a DFL controlled Senate with a one (possibly illegitimate, but whatever) vote minority – with only a tie in the House, managed to win a smaller budget.   

Not smaller than the one we had before the DFL’s spending spree in ’23-’24 – but that was never on the table with only a tie in one chamber.  The GOP could not pass anything remotely partisan (even HOA reform had its hiccups) – tie votes lose, and anything the House MIGHT have passed would died in a DFL-controlled Senate committee.  

But it was still a huge cut in absolute dollars, and – this is important – the first cut of any kind in recent memory.   Enough for the “burn it all down” crowd?  No, but nothing is.  

Doing better will require winning more elections.  

Can the MNGOP do it?  

I’m not sanguine about the state party – but they really only influence statewide elections (Governor, Senator, the Constitutional offices).  The  Legislative caucuses don’t depend on the state party, and the House and Senate Caucus Committees do a good job worthy of some hope.  

So suck it up. It ain’t over. 

SCENE:   At the state DFL headquarters in Saint Paul.   Richard CARLBOM, new chair of the DFL, is sitting at a conference table with Edmund DUCHEY, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, all members of Amy KLOBUCHAR’s staff. 

CARLBOM:  So, we’ve got a real problem with white males in rural Minnesota.  That could be a big enough problem that the urban vote machine won’t be able to cover the difference next year.

So – no dumb ideas, people. 

(Thinking ensues).

DUCHEY:  I got it.  What do rural white guys like more than anything?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Racism!

CARROLL:  Misogyny…

DUCHEY:  Hockey!

CARLBOM:  Er…not exactly what we’re looking for…er, maybe we can expand on hockey.  What draws white rural men to hockey?

CARROLL: :  Misogyny!

DUCHEY: VIolence

BIRKENSTOCK:  Being drunk!

CARLBOM:  Bingo!   They lik4 drinking.  

We need to appeal to rural white male Minnesotans love of beer!

CARROLL: Boom! That’s exactly the look we want!

DUCHEY:  Empty glass!  Three sheets to the wind!

CARLBOM:  Er…

And SCENE

He’s gonna run for Governor again:

Of course, the little gnome will spend the next 18 months dodging debates.  But his Veep bid last year, and his newfound rise to national prominence, have given people a whole lot more material. 

As has the governor himself:

The little gnome never gets tired of “Nazi” references, does he?

I bet he does not see (badda boom) the problem with this…

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The voting public in Minnesota is almost equally divided between conservatives and liberals.  To ensure our state government is ideologically reflective of its constituents, I propose all state employees in the Executive and Judicial Branches be required to respond to a short survey:

1. This nation was founded by pilgrims seeking religious freedom. The First Amendment is foremost among the Bill of Rights. Have you exercised that right by attending religious worship services within the last month?

2. This nation was secured by ordinary citizens overthrowing the British colonial government using personally owned firearms.  The right to own firearms is second in the Bill of Rights. Have you exercised that right by firing a pistol, rifle or shotgun within the last month?

3. Should the Constitution be applied as the people who wrote it originally intended, or should the Constitution be reinterpreted by modern judges to suit the circumstances of individual cases and changing times?

4. Should criminal defendants be treated equally in arrest, charging, prosecution, and sentencing; or should some defendants be given special consideration based on race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, or political affiliation?

5. The laws and policies of our government affect everyone living within the United States. Should the right to vote be restricted to United States citizens, or should it extend to anyone living within the United States, whether here legally or not?

6. The state has a budget shortage. Without more tax revenue, some government programs must be reduced or eliminated. How much more are you, personally, willing to pay in state taxes to support a Better Minnesota?

I’m willing to bet a brand-new nickel the results would reveal state government employees are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats. We must replace half of them, to achieve an equitable ideological distribution.  Where do we start?

Joe Doakes

By winning a governor’s race, for starters. 

Pepperidge Farm does.

But the DFL seems to have forgotten it:

The DFL has staked its electoral future on giving free healthcare and education to illegals, in a state where the middle class is having a hard time affording either.

Which is something one might expect them to do for their, er, voters.

Huh. 

Hey, look!  The guy who banned  family Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, limited the Cathedral of Saint Paul to ten worshippers (and Kissin’ Cousins’ Sports Bar in Newfolden to 50) and tried to get you fired for not getting vaccinated…:

…is suddenly a liberty hawk!

Minnesota schools failed during the pandemic.  Some might say they collapsed. 

Governor Klink isn’t gonna let that happen again:

Aside from trying to deal with the deficit he created, he’s trying to pay back his cronies in the Teachers Unions. 

Rep. Emma Greenman – who seemed to have found her happy place being the DFL state rep who was most aggressive about shirking her job early in the legislative session, before the District 40B special election – sounded off on the ethics issues with Keith Ellison:

“Political and not very useful” is actually a great capsule summary of Rep. Greenman. 

“…I believe the children are our greatest probleeeeeeemmmmm”.

Hope Walz uncorks on the most insidious form of “privilege”:

Forget for a moment that barefoot running is kind of a fad these days:

Forget the corn-fed American runners.  Let’s talk about Abebe Bikila, the legendary Olympic marathoner who…grew up dirt poor, trained barefoot, and was one of the greatest marathon runners ever.  

Look, nobody’s ever accused Hope Walz of being an intellectual titan. Nobody expects it. Seeing her parents, one would be mad to even think about it.

But you just know she’s going to be running for office soon, don’t you?

For all the aggressive rhetoric that accompany his flouncing and jazz hands, Tim Walz is not exactly a self-assured man.

He almost comletely avoided debating Scott Jensen in the 2022 Governor tilt – limiting it to one debate at a small TV station in Rochester.  For good reason

How good, we learned last summer

It would explain his debate performance in Minnesota; he avoids them like they’re a…

…well, there’s nothing Walz avoids more than a debate.  Even deployment. 

I could fling more pithiness.  Indeed, this weekend on the air I most likely will.

But I’ll leave it to John Kriesel – former state representative, and veteran who lost two legs in Iraq – to do that:

It’s gonna make a presidential run kind of interesting.  Presuming he gets anywhere near endorsement. 

Is Nicole Mitchell the most self-unaware person between Chicago and the Sierra Madre?

Or is the Senate DFL’s social media intern in the dark about Minnesota news because she’s working in as boiler room in Manila?