So the “debate” among the DFL candidates for the non-partisan Minneapolis mayor’s race took place yesterday.
What happened? Probably nothing all that newsworthy; it was a debate of DFL candidates.
For a non-partisan race.
Of course, Cam Winton – who is running as a fiscal conservative and social moderate – was left out of the debate since he’s not a DFLer (anymore).
There’s been a flurry of emails between Winton and the Humphrey Institute. And I personally wrote Dr. Larry Jacobs and the Humphrey Institute to get clarification on the debate about the debate.
The debate looks a little like this – and I’ll paraphrase both sides, since the email trail is a long one:
Winton: The Humphrey Institute should not be running partisan debates for a non-partisan race. It violated the Humphrey Institute’s mission. And shunting him to the separate “losers debate” with the likes of Leslie Davis and, I dunno, Howling Cat LeLouche and Fancy Ray McCloney and having a DFL-only debate is a straight up sign of bias.
Jacobs: The Humphrey Institute is aware that there is intense competition for the DFL endorsement – and this debate is analogous to the intra-party debates in the run-up to, say, the Presidential or Gubernatorial primaries. The Humphrey Institute invites plenty of Republicans to marquee events, and Winton is going to be the subject of a separate event with plenty of media coverage [other than the “Losers’ Debate”]
Perhaps Jacobs’ explanation – that the partisan debate is a nod to a traditional endorsement process – makes sense, in and of itself. Maybe. The Minneapolis mayor race is officially non-partisan, so the “endorsement” should be meaningless – but we all know that in Minneapolis, it’s not. It’s an important bit of PR in Minneapolis, a city full of people who vote party first and foremost.
And that’s the part that sticks in my craw.
So here’s a question for Dr. Jacobs: since the DFL-only “debate” is designed to inform voters in advance of an endorsement that is…
officially meaningless, but…
worth much in terms of intra-party public relations,
then it follows the entire exercise of the debate is a DFL PR event.
Yes, kudos to Dr. Jacobs and the Humphrey Institute for doing the “make-up” appearance with Dr. Jacobs. It was the right thing to do, certainly.
But I’ll stifle my endemic snarking about the DFL mien of most regional pseudo-government institutions (like Humphrey) and ask, seriously – why does the Humphrey Institute carry on with an event that the changes in Minneapolis’ electoral system has turned into nothing but a DFL campaign event?
Early on, I was struck by the boilerplate language in the [assault weapon ban] and magazine ban bills … And then I read this:
From the middle of the article:
“A Cuomo administration source is flatly denying the governor’s claim that his new anti-gun SAFE Act was carefully drafted, saying the governor himself wasn’t even aware of some provisions when it was hastily enacted into law.”
“The governor thought the limit on the size of [gun] magazines would only apply to assault-style rifles, not to handguns,’’ said the source.
“That’s why there’s the big problem now with handguns, among other things in the statute.’’
The legal sale of virtually all semiautomatic handguns will soon be impossible because Cuomo’s law limits the size of bullet-holding magazines to seven shots [or, at least temporarily, not – see below], virtually none of which are manufactured for sale.
“Much of what’s in the law was drafted by people connected to Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady Center, not by the governor’s staff,” the source said. “That’s why there are so many problems with it.’’
Much like Representative Martens from 66a and the Colorado experience of having 4 MAIG full time lobbyists parachute in and haunt the halls of government, We are getting boilerplate laws that have PROVEN they don’t work.
Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing and expecting a different result? Maybe if we do it harder this time …
Oh, it’s all that.
And it’s also another example of Berg’s Seventh Law – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”
Remember last year, when the GOP controlled the legislature and the lefty message machine’s boogeyman-du-jour was “ALEC” and their “model bills” – no different in any way than the model bills put out by every political action group from the teachers union to the AARP, but framed as a dirty word for the low-information voter by the DFL message-bots?
These aren’t the first bills – especially in re guns – that’s looked like it was copied off the web and pasted into a Word file and submitted, so far this session.
It’s been my contention for quite some time that Heather Martens – “Executive Director” and likely sole steady member of “Protect Minnesota”, and unelected Representative from House District 66A – has never, not once in her entire career as an anti-civil-rights pundit, made a single original statement that was substantially true.
Martens (center) adjusting the leashes on Jane Kay of “Moms Demand Action” (left) and Rep. Paymar (even farther left, but to the right of the picture) last week.
Martens’ weekend press release about last week’s legislative actions didn’t just continue the pattern: it was an epic howler that deserves to be sent to every state legislator, with a goal of getting Martens laughed out of the Capitol by everyone that cares about the truth:
NRA Lobbyists Fail — Background Checks Move to House Floor
Yesterday, the Minnesota Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee passed H.F. 285, a bill that would ensure background checks for all pistol and assault weapon purchases at gun shows. The bill passed 10-8 and will head to the House floor. Despite only covering gun shows, Rep. Paymar, the chair of the committee, has vowed that H.F. 285 will ensure that universal background checks are debated on the House floor. Click here to read the whole story.
How many ways is this story wrong?
What “NRA Lobbyists” “failed”?: While the NRA has sent a rep to put in an appearance at one hearing, all of the heavy lifting against the DFL’s gun grab bills was carried by the MInnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – which, unlike “Protect Minnesota”, is an actual grass roots organization with thousands of actual members, hundreds of whom came out to support civil rights over this past month while “Protect MN” managed, on a good day, maybe a dozen. Martens is lying.
With More “Failures” Like This…: Martens’ posting is an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. Gun-show background checks – which are useless in preventing crime, would have saved not a single life at Newtown or Virginia Tech, and are only a burden to the law-abiding citizen – are the very last of the measures with which the extremist DFL metrocrats marched into battle last month. The Metrocrats and Martens have been decisively rebuked by bipartisan majorities on…:
Ugly Guns Untouched: Banning “Assault Weapons” – which proved useless in preventing crime from 1995-2005.
Citizens Not Hamstrung In Face Of Violent Criminals: Restricting magazine sizes – again, useless in preventing crime of any type, much less mass killings.
The Law-Abiding Citizen Prevailed: Making Minnesota’s carry permit laws more niggling and onerous – from the effort to run applications past unelected police chiefs rather than elected sheriffs, to eliminating recourse for unjust denials, the DFL tried to make law-abiding carry permittees – among the safest constituencies in all of Minnesota, with a violent crime rate a couple of orders of magnitude below the general public (including metro DFL activists)
Success Has Many Fathers: Failure Is An Orphan: Most importantly; a bipartisan majority of the entire House, including many DFLers, signed on to a bill specifically targeted as a rebuke to “Protect Minnesota” and the extreme Metrocrat left. Half of the House, over 100 total members from both parties, co-authored the Hilstrom bill; Paymar’s bill had eight.
And all of this with a DFL legislature that is fundamentally disposed to support Martens and her organization’s agenda.
Viewed against that context – which, naturally, neither Martens nor her sycophants in the regional media will never provide – the conclusion is inescapable; “Protect Minnesota’s” 2013 agenda been a complete failure.
But Martens has successfully defended her title as least truthful lobbyist on Capitol Hill. So at least there’s that.
For a funding mechanism that was originally billed to deliver $35 million in revenue per year, and continuously revised down to $17 million and then $1.7, the process of assigning blame should have been viewed as inevitable. But like a legislative Atlas, who would shoulder the majority of the ownership of such a flawed model? Gov. Mark Dayton, who was so publicly aggressive in his defense of a new stadium? The hapless former Republican legislative majorities who acquiesced to the bill? The Star Tribune, whose rampant conflict of interest with any Metrodome-site construction should have called into question their vocal support?
While flawed, the gambling board’s sales estimates were extremely detailed, including the number of bars and restaurants that would adopt e-gambling, the number of devices in play, what hours they would be played and how much money would be wagered.
It projected 2,500 sites would be selling electronic pulltab within six months, or nearly 14 bars and restaurants joining in per day….
Nearly a year after those projections were made, about 200 Minnesota bars and restaurants offer electronic pulltabs, not the 2,500 that had been predicted. Electronic bingo games have just been introduced.
Average daily gross sales for electronic pulltabs have increased to about $69,000, but sales per gambling device have declined.
The firms may have been making bad assumptions about the capacity for Minnesota to support increased charitable gambling, but at least the firms’ figures came out of experiences in states like Montana, South Dakota and Oregon. Still, the basic math of the gambling mechanism was public knowledge long before it was formally added to the final bill.
Minnesotans spend about $1 billion in charitable gambling, which equals the comparatively paltry sum of $36 million in revenue. The Vikings stadium, requiring $35 million a year to cover the State’s $348 million share, would necessitate charitable gambling to either double to $2 billion or entirely overrun the current charitable competition. In that light, it’s little wonder that other charitable organizations were not asked for their opinion. A decision that now is being heavily criticized as charities across the State say some version of “I told you so.”
All the finger-pointing in the world doesn’t help hide the reality that the responsibility for flawed legislation needs to rest with the political leadership that authored it – a fact even the Star Tribune acknowledges:
“There was a willful blindness … driven by pressure politics,” charged David Schultz, a Hamline University political analyst and a professor of nonprofit law…
“This was a deal that was going to happen no matter what,” Schultz said. “The governor wanted a stadium. The money couldn’t come from the general fund. The charities had been asking for electronic games.”
I went to the House Public Safety Finance committee hearings on the Paymar and Lesch gun bills last night.
More on the event itself a little later.
But I thought this bit was interesting.
The hearings were scheduled for 5:30. At around 4:45, House staff started passing out copies of an amendment that Paymar reportedly planned to propose for the bill. Here’s the link to the amendment. Paymar – the committee chair – waived the Legislature’s new 24 hour waiting period on amendments to get it in for the hearings. He also passed the word that no public testimony would be taken.
Recap: 45 minutes before the committee hearings – which took place at 5:30PM on March 21 – the DFL committee chair distributed an amendment that fundamentally changed the tenor of Rep. Lesch’s bill.
Now take a look if you will at the time-stamp on the file. I circled it, so that even I can’t miss it:
9PM the night before. That’s right around 20 hours.
So I have a few questions:
Rules, Apparently, Are For Peasants: From the House permanent rules, section 6.22:
6.22 PUBLIC TESTIMONY. Public testimony from proponents and opponents must be allowed on every bill or resolution before a standing committee, division or subcommittee of the House.
Paymar’s amendment substantially changed Lesch’s bill, by adding a niggling background check restriction to a bill that largely focused on reporting information and sentencing criminals.
How does this not rate public testimony?
Ethics Are What The DFL Says TheyAre:Paymar waived his party’s own rule on the waiting period for amendments to jam down a fundamentally bill-changing amendment, sitting on it for nearly a day after reneging on his “promise” to Rep. Hilstrom before dumping it outside the hearing room 45 minutes before the hearing.
If only the ethics committee could hear about it.
If Only We Had An Institution, Full Of Highly-Trained People With Years Of Experience Asking Questions And Who’ve Convinced Themselves That They Are A Monastic Elite Apart From Society With A Mission Of Keeping Institutions On The Straight And Narrow. Perhaps With Printing Presses And Transmitters: More on this later.
Michael Paymar is going to attempt to jam down amendments wrecking perfectly good bills – like Hilstrom’s and, to an extent, Lesch’s – which are supported by a bipartisan majority of the House. He’s going to do it because the DFL’s lotus-eating metrocrat pandits find guns in the hands of the plebeians distasteful.
Upon further review – the Minnesota Vikings spent a fortune to acquire their new stadium.
The Vaseline Dome has re-entered the media picture in the last few weeks, as new concerns have been raised about the viability of the electronic pull-tab funding mechanism which has fallen $13.2 million short of yearly estimates. Or more accurately, completely fallen apart since the State had expected the pull-tabs to generate $15 million a year, putting the threat of needing general funds to finance a luxury item back on the table.
Flawed or not, the stadium financing figures aren’t the only numbers that have come to light in recent weeks. We now know how much Zygi Wilf and company spent in their multi-year lobbying effort to build a stadium in the exact same location as their current home – $4,270,000.
Via MPR’s Capitol View and Paul Tosto
The Vikings were the 6th largest lobbyist group (by dollars spent) in the last six years. And while the $610,000 spent last year as the stadium was finally approved was a drop in the bucket of the estimated $54 million spent by all lobbyist groups in 2012, the $1.5 million used by the Vikings during 2011-12 would have made them the 3rd largest lobbyist of the cycle. Even lobbying powerhouse Education Minnesota spent slightly less at the Capitol in that period. Purple pride indeed.
$4.2 million for $975 million is a tremendous value (although the Vikings spent millions more in stadium-related advertising). But the end product may not look like such a deal if the financing structure collapses in on itself. Which begs the question – what happens when the State finally admits the pull-tab solution isn’t working?
The state’s $498 million share of the $975 million project is to be paid for through sales of electronic pull-tabs. But the final two pages of the stadium bill provide for two “blink-on” funding provisions as backups. The first is an NFL-themed lottery and the second, if necessary, is a 10 percent tax on luxury suites.
And what of the doomsday scenario, where all three provisions fall short of the money required for the state’s annual payments? At that point, from what I can tell, the state would have to produce money from its general fund — something Gov. Mark Dayton promised not to do when campaigning for the facility.
Would either of these other solutions generate the revenue necessary? A Vikings-themed lotto doesn’t sound fundamentally different than the pull-tab concept. The Minnesota Lottery brought in $123 million in profit last year, but that’s among 9 different games. A 10th lotto isn’t likely to expand the number of people playing, only shrink the total amount left that would otherwise go into the State’s coffers. Besides, over 70% of the funds generated by the lottery go either to paying winners or towards lottery administration.
The most likely end game for the Vikings stadium financing shell game lies within the 10% luxury suite tax. Current suite rental prices aren’t terrible by NFL standards, running around $15,000 to $26,000 a game. Slapping another $1,500 or $2,000 is unlikely to cause any corporation to abandon their suite, but certainly won’t make the Vikings happy as they compute what to charge going forward.
The only real problem with the luxury tax idea is that it was envisioned as a last-gasp measure, meant to fill in a minor funding short-fall – not the State’s entire share. If the Vikings lotto goes the way of the pull-tab, that’s precisely what the tax will become. And if that occurs, the political football of using general funds will be kicked right at Mark Dayton’s 2014 prospects.
For a decade, I referred to former longtime Minneapolis machine senator Wes Skoglund by the sobriquet “Lying Sack of Garbage”. The reason was simple; every time he opened his mouth on the subject of firearms and the Second Amendment, he lied. Every. Single. Time.
Skoglund left office some years back, apparently out of fear that carry permit holders from the Crips were stalking him. And for the years since then, Representative Heather Martens has had to carry the load of lying about gun owners, firearms and the Second Amendment, during what were the lean years for the gun-grabbing orc movement.
But it’s a new day for the DFL, and a new leader has stepped up. Michael Paymar is everything Skoglund used to be.
Only a few hours earlier, Paymar reached an agreement with a fellow committee member, Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, that gutted his universal background checks bill. In exchange, Hilstrom agreed to a bill that would extend background checks to private sales made at gun shows — but not to other private sales, such as those made over the internet or among neighbors or friends.
Paymar said at that time that the agreement kills universal background checks for all private sales, but that closing the “gun show loophole” was a major step forward.
On Wednesday he said, “The agreement we had with the Speaker is that Rep. Hilstrom would agree to the gun show loophole language, and that the Speaker would allow a vote on the House floor.” But once that more limited bill reaches the floor, Paymar said, an amendment will likely be offered to re-insert universal background checks.
“I refuse to let the Legislature take a walk on this thing,” Paymar said. “I refuse to let the leadership not be accountable for a bill not coming to the floor.” He added, “I can’t believe we’d walk away from the Legislative session and not have a vote on it, up or down.”
Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, a member of Paymar’s committee and a leading advocate for gun-owners rights, accused Paymar of “trickery and deceit.” He said Paymar assured members Tuesday night that universal checks were dead.
“And now he’s overtly admitting, that was just for committee,” Cornish said. “I think he’s going to lose a lot of DFL support.”
Let’s hope so.
I’ll quote Paymar from the Strib piece again:
“I’m not giving up on this,” Paymar said. Once a bill comes to the floor, he said, “I am guaranteed that someone will offer an amendment that will offer each member, Democrat and Republican, the chance to vote on this issue. I want people to take a stand on this issue, up or down.”
So do I. I want to see every Martha Forging DFLer put their vote on the line on that amendment. Oh, my, yes. I surely do.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails in re a Pioneer Press piece on last nights’ House Public Safety Committee hearings and the, er, standard of logic on the DFL side:
“If we don’t believe that criminal laws deter people, than I don’t know what purpose all of you exist for here in this room. Because clearly, people do abide by laws,” [Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association boss Dennis] Flaherty said. “And this notion that if we pass this, criminals won’t by abide by it, well that could be said about everything from speeding to virtually every crime you create here in this room.”
Then where is the need for this law? Let’s outlaw gun crimes and let anyone have a gun and just be lawful.
And we can outlaw poverty and ignorance too. And bad breath.
Until you admit the reality that some people DO NOT follow the law, and identify who those people are, you can’t craft a solution to prevent those people from committing gun crimes. Democrats are still in denial. Flaherty is still a moron.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Flaherty is doing his job – shilling the line of his organization, which is itself a DFL-controlled pressure group as much as a “union”.
I went to the Capitol last night for the House Public Safety Finance Committee hearings on Michael Paymar’s “HF 237”, better known as “The Bad Gun Bill”, a bill rife with nannystate abuse-fodder.
The rest of the story? It’s got a lot of photos, and I don’t want the entire blog to load like a dog, so the rest of the story is after the jump.
When the subject is the Second Amendment, the DFL has a long standing pattern of moving committee meetings around, largely to keep non-DFL constituencies from being able to drive in from Greater Minnesota.
And they’re doing it again.
The Public Safety Committee hearing originally scheduled for this morning at 10AM has been pushed to 7 tonight. Downside; people who made special arrangements to be there this morning – which most of us Second Amendment people have to do to get to these things – are screwed. They’ll be doing whatever it takes to try to find some bilious rationalization to pass the stupid Paymar bill – supported only by Metrocrat extremists – and ignore the Hilstrom bill, supported by Real Americans on both sides of the aisle.
Good news? I’ll be there. And so should you. Here are the details: the Real Americans are meeting starting at 5:00 p.m. outside the Room 10 at the State Office Building, just west-southwest of the Capitol. If you can, wear a maroon shirt, or better yet, a GOCRA t-shirt if you have (or can score) one.
And call the committee members. This info is via GOCRA; they are…:
Representative John Ward (DFL)
651-296-4333
E-mail:rep.john.ward@house.mn
Thank Rep. Ward for his past support of your gun rights and encourage him to resist pressure from metro gun banners.
Representative Shannon Savick (DFL)
651-296-8216
E-mail: rep.shannon.savick@house.mn
Rep. Savick is a rural DFLer who needs to be reminded that her constituents will not tolerate new gun control.
Representative Steve Simon (DFL)
651-296-9889
E-mail:rep.steve.simon@house.mn
Rep. Simon is a smart, principled lawyer. Remind him that the Supreme Court has affirmed the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right, and that stripping due process doesn’t make us more free or more safe.
Representative Brian Johnson (R)
651-296-4346
E-mail: rep.brian.johnson@house.mn
Rep. Johnson is new at the legislature this year, and will be under a lot of pressure to cave to gun control. Tell him to stand firm for our rights.
Then, call and email your OWN senator and representative and give them the same message.
From the March 19, 2013 Pioneer Press article on Democrats’ e-bingo gamble,
“As of late February, budget planners were forecasting about $1.8 million in tax revenue from charitable gambling in fiscal year 2013 for use on the stadium. Estimates last fall had been about $15 million higher, Massman said.”
Democrats planned to bring in $15 million to pay for the Vikings stadium, but we’re bringing in less than $2 million? What a blunder!
Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 19) at 10 a.m., the House Public Safety Committee will hear and vote of HF237, Rep, Paymar’s Punish Gun Owners Act.
We need to show up in large numbers to tell the House members to REJECT the infringing bill and instead hold a vote on Rep. Hilstrom’s Criminal Control bill, HF1325.
Please show up as early as possible for good seats, and wear a maroon shirt (or your GOCRA shirt, if you have one!)
I can’t make it, but if you’re anywhere near the Capitol I certainly hope you can. And make sure you join GOCRA – the single most effective advocate in Minnesota for the law-abiding gun owner, and perhaps one of the most powerful grass-roots political organizations in the state.
Senator Dave Osmek (GOP SD33) writes – and I’ll add emphasis:
Here’s a really bad bill: SF271 (Champion). Its not the language in the bill…it’s the repealer. We’re repealing all residency requirements for drivers licenses. Its designed to allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.
Of course, we all know what else you can do with a driver’s license. Vote. Not to mention that a driver’s license is one of the primary forms of ID for an I9 form or getting a passport.
It passed Transportation/Public Safety on a DFL party-line vote. I complained hard about this thing. In talking with one of the more “reasonable” DFLers after the hearing, he said: You’re making too much out of this, Besides, they all vote for US (giggle…giggle).
Remember – it won’t be “election fraud” if it’s perfectly legal by the time of the next election.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!
I’m back! I’ll have House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt on to talk about the Health Insurance Exchange bill, among other things – and then Senator Julianne Ortman and I will talk about the dueling gun bills in the Legislature.
Brad Carlson is back on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!
(All times Central)
So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:
Gov. Dayton told a stunned luncheon audience that Minnesota is among the best places for business in the country, contrary to the Chamber’s message.
He said government spending is right in the middle, and that the state’s tax rank is dropping.
Dayton said he never heard the same criticism when Republican Tim Pawlenty was governor for eight years, and he asked his staff to investigate.
“And we could not find a single instance of the chamber calling for spending reforms during those eight years,” Dayton said. “Evidently, in your view, spending reform is needed only when a Democrat is governor.”
Messinger Dayton also said he was sticking firm to his promise to hike taxes on “the rich” (meaning “successful entrepreneurs and professionals who didn’t have the foresight or the fiscal and legal clout to move their money to dynasty trusts in South Dakota”, as opposed to, say, him).
A couple of observations:
Gov. Dayton told a stunned luncheon audience that Minnesota is among the best places for business in the country, contrary to the Chamber’s message.
He said government spending is right in the middle, and that the state’s tax rank is dropping.
Dayton said he never heard the same criticism when Republican Tim Pawlenty was governor for eight years, and he asked his staff to investigate.
“And we could not find a single instance of the chamber calling for spending reforms during those eight years,” Dayton said. “Evidently, in your view, spending reform is needed only when a Democrat is governor.”
A few observations:
Governor Whinypants: Business never complained about spending on Pawlenty’s watch? Huh?
During the first term, business complained about things like “health impact fees” – stealth taxes framed as compromises with the DFL in a legislature he didn’t completely control. Just ask Sue Jeffers. On the other hand, he generally held the line on taxes, pursuant to his pledge to the Taxpayers League.
During the second? Pawlenty was faced with a wastrel DFL legislature; business rightly figured he was the last line of defense against the sort of pillaging the Messinger Dayton Administration and the Legislature have in mind.
And they were right then, and they’re right now.
Profiles In Leadership: This is leadership? “If you don’t see things my way you’re a poopyhead?”
Reverting To Stereotype: Conservatives pillory liberals for being innumerate, having stunted knowledge of economics outside of Paul Krugman’s ravings – the type who think raising the minimum wage cures poverty.
It’s on stories like this that you realize; the stereotype exists for a reason. .
Dave Mindeman at mnpACT put it a little differently, by way of cheering Governor Messinger Dayton on in a piece titled “To the Chamber of Commerce: SHOVE IT” in a flight of Oscar Wilde-like whimsy..:
So Dayton dropped the sales tax proposal with the caveat that his increased income tax on higher income earners would go forward.
But they object to that as well.
“Hey, we left your top line alone, more or less; you can’t complain if we attack your bottom line, now, can you?”
They continue to promote the addage that this tax will affect small business…and yes, here we go, the “job creators”. They continue this argument even though the Department of Revenue has shown that only 6% of small business would be affected. And again, we are only talking about the highest portions of their income. If they are making substantially more than $250,000, why the huge objection to paying some back to a state that has benefitted you greatly?
I can see Messinger’s Dayton’s disconnect; she he has never worked, and has no concept of what business is about. Not sure where Mindeman comes at it from, and I’m not sure that it matters.
Messinger Dayton is daring business to pick up and leave.
Death came to me the other day as I was shopping for crackers.
No, not in the whole black robe and scythe get-up. In fact, he looked a little bit like a Ryan Winker speech sounds.
But I digress. We started talking.
DEATH: OK, so how about “death”? Whatdya think?
ME: Well, I’ll choose life, if I have any say in the matter.
DEATH: Right, right. No problem. I’m all about the “win-win” – well, as long as I’m not walking around in the robes, naturally.
ME: Naturally.
DEATH: So how about a compromise. We take “death” off the table, and settle for a concussion and a toxic intestinal infection?
ME: Er…that’s not much of a compromise…
———-
This past week and a half, Representatives Paymar and Martens Hausman introduced stupid, oppressive, constitutionally likely-dodgy gun grab bills. Think “death”.
In response, Representative Hilstrom and Senator Ortman filed good gun bills – bills that ratchet up the consequences for mis-using firearms. Think “life”.
Latz’ bill would take most of the provisions of the Hilstrom/Hortman bill, and plop in all of the worst features of the Paymar/Hausman/Stalin gun grab bills.
According to GOCRA, the “compromise” bill would bring us:
Universal Registration:
These bills would require universal registration of pistols and sporting rifles, implemented through a “universal” background check, — twice: The bills would require every sale of such guns to go through a licensed dealer, who would charge $25 per transfer. These transfers would still require a permit to purchase, for which the House bill would charge you another $25 annually.
Rights Delayed
The bills extend the time that sheriffs and police have to process a purchase permit from five to seven business days, and allow the law enforcement official to fingerprint the applicant and extend the deadline to 30 days.
Easier Carry Permit Denials
The bad bills would allow sheriffs the judgement to deny a carry permit on the basis of a subjective “likelihood” that the applicant was dangerous.
More Difficult Carry Permit Appeals
The bad bills positively encourage abusive denials: they remove the sheriffs’ obligation to pay an applicant’s legal fees when a permit denial is overturned — a safeguard that has kept sheriffs departments honest, and bogus denials fairly low, for almost 10 years. The Sheriff’s Association has not asked for this unfair reversal of law.
The bad bills also lower the sheriffs’ standard of proof of danger to self or other others from “clear and convincing evidence” to the mere “preponderance of the evidence.”
Due Process Protections Gutted
The bad bills would remove legal protections against losing your firearm rights. Currently, before you lose your right to own a firearm, you must be convicted or committed by a court. Under the new bill, any involuntary hospitalization, even overnight, would disqualify you from owning guns indefinitely.
Making The Law Abiding Into Convicts
The bad bills set a very low standard of proof for conviction of serious gun crimes, using the phrase “knows or has reason to believe” to convict sellers who reports a gun stolen, or who sell a gun to a person who later commits a crime.
More Difficult Civil Rights Restoration
The bad bills increase the difficulty and expense for a person who has paid their debt to society to regain their civil rights.
Intersting how the DFL wants felons to be able to vote while they’re still in jail, but never have a chance of getting their Second Amendment rights back.
Hearings Tonight!
The Senate is holding hearings on both the Good Gun Bill and Latz’ bill – I’ll call it The Polished Turd, since that’s about what it is – tonight. Hope you can make it.
And keep on lighting up the phones at the Capitol, especially for members of the House and Senate committees involved. Sources at the Capitol tell me your efforts are making a difference. It’s not even close; pro-Second Amendment traffic from Real Americans is crushing commentary from nannystate orcs. This needs to continue, and accelerate.
Earlier today, I urged the Senate GOP to get up and get behind Rep. Deb Hilstrom’s gun bill, which I call “The Good Gun Bill”.
About an hour ago, Senator Julianne Ortman introduced a companion bill in the Senate (SF 1359).
The bill has the same objectives as Hilstrom’s bill in the House:
Cracks down on “Straw Purchases”
Improves the state’s data reporting to its own background checks and the Feds’ “NICS” system.
Improves Reporting of court records showing ineligibility to own guns due to mental health reasons – and creates the state’s first process for people to get their rights restored.
Clamps down on felons and repeat criminals who use guns to commit violent crimes.
And it does all this without addressing, much less infringing, the rights of the law-abiding gun owner.
My opinion – and it’s just my opinion? The GOP needs to get behind this. A lot of legislators – including a few outstate DFLers – have put a lot on the line to defy their party’s Metrocrat inner circle. In this case, DFL Senators Lyle Koenen, Kent Eken, Dan Sparks, Tom Saxhaug and LeRoy Stumpf have gone against the Metrocrats. This is a good thing (and having David Hann, Senator Warren Limmer, Senator David Osmek, Senator DaveThompson, Senator Jeremy Miller, Senator Julie Rosen, Senator David Brown, SenatorBranden Petersen, Senator Dan Hall, Senator David Senjem, Senator Roger Chamberlain,Senator Mary Kiffmeyer, Senator Bill Weber, Senator Eric Pratt, Senator Michelle Benson,and Senator Paul Gazelka on board isn’t chicken feed).
The Sheriff’s Association, likewise, has reversed its usual behavior, and is supporting the law-abiding gun owner; this behavior needs to be reinforced with support and success.
The Good Gun Bill is good politics. The GOP in the legislature needs to do this.
Because it’s never too early to start the campaign season.
Former Sen. Norm Coleman’s announcement last week that he would forgo a challenge to incumbent Gov. Mark Dayton may be remembered in hindsight as the starting gun for the 2014 election cycle in Minnesota. With Democrats holding all the offices of note, the only real interest among political junkies is which Republicans will make bids for statewide office. Having only won two cycles in the past decade (2002 & 2010), the GOP cupboard is sparse, with many of the party’s once rising stars now out of office.
So who’s left to run for governor in 2014? In the spirit of the upcoming NCAA Tournament, we’ve made our brackets (sort of) and started the ball rolling towards months of endless chatter on who should or could lead the MN GOP out of the statewide office wilderness: (more…)
If politics were easy, everyone would be doing it.
If Second Amendment Human Rights politics were easy, Andrew Cuomo would be a poli sci professor at Lackawanna Community College.
After last week’s introduction of DFL Rep Deb Hilstrom’s gun bill – I call it the Good Gun Bill, as opposed to the DFL’s raft of gun grab legislation – there’ve been two annoyances; some Second Amendment activists have come to the opinion that it’s just another gun control bill, and some Republican legislators seem stand-offish to it.
Both are mistakes.
It’s Not Even A Compromise – Read the bill. I did. It does what all of us pro-Second Amendment people say gun bills should do; makes life harder for criminals, leave the law-abiding citizen alone.
Some might see Hilstrom’s an urban DFLer, or that the bill is supported by a major law enforcement association, and assume it’s a DFL shill. It’s not.
It increases sentences for gun-related crimes and ties up a loophole in Minnesota’s NICS data reporting that was supposed to have been tied up by the DFL legislature years ago.
That’s pretty much it.
Read the law; there is no stealth gun grab provision written in invisible ink. It’s all right there.
This is a bill that Second Amendment people should support on Second Amendment grounds. It is not an onerous compromise; it is the sort of thing Second Amendment groups have been proposing all along.
Optics – Rumor has it that some Republicans in the Senate are hinky about the bill because they don’t want to be seen to be operating with the DFL.
Let’s think this one through. There are three reasons this is just plain wrong.
For starters; as I noted above, this is a good bill. This is, indeed, the only good gun bill in the Legislature that has any chance of passing.
Second: You neglect the “security mom” voter at your own peril. They are a form of low-information or single-issue voter, all right – and there are a ton of them. And Sandy Hook freaked them out bad. Statistics – like the fact that both violent crime, including murder, including mass murder – are down 40% in 20 years don’t matter to them, and their votes count just as much as yours. They are the ones who bellow “we have to dooooooooooooo something!” after every tragedy.
And here’s a teaching moment; showing the “security moms” that “doing something” can actually be productive, and seizing the messaging on this issue – which is, by the way, one of the very few issues that seems to be breaking the GOP’s way so far this session – is a good thing.
And the fact is, you can not let the DFL come out as the unalloyed good guy on this one; do you want the DFL to be able to go to Greater Minnesota crowing that “WE were the ones with the common sense solutions on guns?” After the Metrocrats’ crimes against democracy last month?
Finally: this is a chance to throw the DFL-enabling media’s “Bipartisanship” slur back in their face. You know as well as I do the DFL only cares about bipartisanship when they’re in the minority – but working this issue, and winning it, gives you an instant hot-button to throw back into Lori Sturdevant and Keri Miller’s faces when they squirt their crocodile tears about “bipartisanship”.
Passing this bill shuts them up, it gives the low-information but not-too-addled voter their catch word, and it gives us a gun bill that actually does something useful.
If the MNGOP drops the ball on this one, it’ll be a very, very bad thing.
So what did all of that money from DFL plutocrats buy in the 2012 elections?
Maybe a seat in the legislature, on the relative cheap?
Guest writer Bill Walsh found a correlation – not a link, mind you, but a correlation – that might bear some looking into.
———-
DFL Receives Tremendous Return on Investment from Election Day Stipends
The definition of correlation is “the mutual relation of two or more things.” For today’s discussion of the 2012 campaign finance reports, let’s focus on the correlation of two things:
Just days before the general election, the Minnesota DFL Party paid “canvasser stipends” to 40 individuals who live on or near Minnesota Indian reservations, especially the Red Lake Reservation.
The vote for president in the four precincts that make up the Red Lake Indian Reservation was 2,165 for Obama to 39 for Romney.
There’s nothing illegal about these two sets of facts, but they do make an interesting correlation.
The canvasser stipends totaled $13,400 and ranged from $200 to $500. They were all paid on November 5th and 6th, the day before and the day of the general election. They included a $3,500 payment to Jamie Edwards of Brooklyn Center for “canvassing coordination.”
Sixteen of the stipends were paid to people living in Bagley, Ponehah, Red Lake, and Redby, all precincts in and around the Red Lake Reservation. Six of the stipends went to the same street in Bagley: Wild Rice Loop. Four of the stipends went to the same house: 26681 Wild Rice Loop.
Five of the stipends were paid to addresses in Naytahwaush near the White Earth Reservation. The rest of the stipends are divided between the White Earth Reservation and the Mille Lacs Reservation.
So what did the DFL get for their money?
The easiest way to analyze the effectiveness of this program is to look at the precincts in the Red Lake Reservation, where we know the vote is 100% Native American.
Precinct
Obama
Romney
Ponemah
385
1
Red Lake Agency
826
17
Redby
606
15
Little Rock
348
6
Total
2165
39
In the four precincts that make up the reservation, the total vote for president was 2,165 for President Obama and just 39 votes for Mitt Romney. That’s 98% for the Democrats. The overwhelming DFL vote pattern continued down the partisan ballot. In the Ponemah precinct, the vote was 385 to 1. Just one vote for Romney? You would think ten or fifteen voters would have voted for Romney by accident.
These lopsided results can be seen on the other reservations but it’s not as obvious. For example, the precinct that includes the town of Naytahwaush on the White Earth Reservation (Twin Lakes Township) voted 185 for Obama to 29 for Romney.
The Native American vote only added to the victory margin for President Obama and Senator Klobuchar in Minnesota, but it had a more profound effect on the makeup of the state legislature. In House District 2A for example, DFLer Roger Erickson defeated Rep. Dave Hancock by 1,829 votes. His margin on the Red Lake Reservation was 1,916 votes. It’s hard to win a legislative district when you lose four precincts by almost 2,000 votes.
Again, I am not alleging anything illegal happened here. On its face, it is just a correlation. Historically, there is no reason to expect that Native American voters in Minnesota would vote in favor of the Republican ticket. But the 98% vote total should at least raise some questions.
The $13,400 spent on this canvasser program is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions spent on the 2012 election by both sides. Certainly the tribes in Minnesota give more campaign money to Democrats than Republicans, but their advantage is not as lopsided as it is with the unions. And the political interests of the tribes down south with successful gaming operations don’t always line up with the tribes up north.
There are two approaches to this problem for the Minnesota Republican Party heading into the 2014 election.
One approach would be to make sure we have poll watchers in all of these precincts next year to make sure the election is free from intimidation and voter fraud.
But a better and more long-term approach would be to directly reach out to Native American voters and convince them our plans for economic opportunity, entrepreneurship, job creation and especially education reform deserve a stronger look. This outreach needs to be sincere and should include a two-way conversation that results in real proposals put forward by our leaders at the legislature. We can easily show the policies of the DFL have not benefited Native American families and they are taking their votes for granted.
This outreach needs to start now, not just days before the election. And it needs to involve a commitment to make life better, not just $13,400 in election day stipends.
The Shorter Anti-Unionization Activist: “Unionization would force us to,raise prices. Forcing us to unionize to accept state aid payments would cause me to stop accepting kids who get state assistance. Providers can already join the union; in eight years, out of 11,000 providers, exactly 57 have joined. I already work hard on improving the quality of the care I provide. By the way, the stories of unethical behavior on union reps’ parts in the card check process are true and omnipresent. We are independent businesspoeple! If we wanted to work inside of a larger organization, we’d have stayed with our old careers!
The Shorter Rep. Nelson (author of the union jamdown bill, and a carpenters union activist in his per-legislative life): Unions all help provide better quality care, training, and standards.
The Shorter Response To Nelson From Providers: Um, those are the job, in order, of existing licensing authorities, and myself.
The Shorter Pro-union Daycare Provider: I’m a loving nurturing person. I teach my kids. Aren’t teachers unionized?
The Shorter Union AFSCME Rep’s Case, with the actual thought completed in parentheses This bill won’t force anyone into a union! (It’ll merely give a mass of unlicensed fly-by-night providers the right to compel all you licensed providers to unionize to if you get state money.
The Shorter Committee Chair Joe Mullery: Unions don’t skim anything.
The Shorter Mary Franson (leading opponent of jamdown, and a former provider herself):. This bill isn’t about improving care. It’s about enriching union officials and funneling dues money to the DFL-supporting unions.
The Shorter Carly Melin (27-year old second term rep who was carted directly to her district after graduating from Hamline Law just in time to meet residency requirements, and neither has kids nor any notable non-legislative post-law-school job history): Hey! Don’t insult the unions!
The Shorter Results:. Six in-the-bag-for-the-unions DFLers “yes”, five Republivans “no”.
I was down at the State Capitol yesterday for a press conference, as Representative Deb Hilstrom (DFL Brooklyn Park) introduced the gun bill/s we talked about yesterday.
The bills, as we noted yesterday, would exert the state to solve actual problems – close gaps in the background check system, add mandatory penalties for using guns in crimes or possessing them illegally…
…y’know. Controversial stuff.
At the presser, I saw a big group of legislators from both chambers and both parties lining up to support Hilstrom’s proposal. Reps, Senators, Democrats, Republicans – it was probably the most bipartisan assembly I’ve seen that wasn’t in the lounge at the Kelly Inn after hours.
Not just legislators; guys in uniform. They weren’t just there for the fun of it – guys in uniform never are. No, they were from the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.
And I saw media. Oh, lord, did I see media.
And Heather Martens was there, naturally; where there is truth about the Second Amendment, Martens will be there. To lie. And lie and lie and lie (note to the media who bothered to speak to her; she has uttered not one substantial word of truth in her years at the capitol. Ask me).
And the “groups” she represents put out a call for their “membership” to turn out in force to oppose this bill – probably remembering the hundreds of Second Amendment supporters who turned out daily to oppose the DFL’s gun grab bills a few weeks ago.
We’ll come back to them.
One person who was not there was Doug Grow, from the MInnPost.
To be fair, I haven’t seen Grow in person in over 20 years; I might not recognize him.
But judging by the story he wrote about the conference, and the bill itself, even if Grow was there, his story was pre-written, and would have appeared in exactly the same form had Mothra emerged from the Supreme Court chamber shooting flame from wherever Mothra did whatever he did, since I never watched the movie.
Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, has discovered again that there is no comfortable middle ground when the subject is guns.
At noon at the Capitol, Hilstrom, standing with Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek and Rep. Tony Cornish, the gun-toting legislator from Good Thunder, introduced a gun bill that she said “can bring people together’’ on the volatile subject of guns.
“Gun-toting”.
Scare quotes.
No, no bias here.
The Astroturf Consensus
Grow, like most of the Twin Cities mainstream media, labors under the delusion that there’s a large, organized mass of people supporting gun control, and that they were out in force yesterday.
Her words were still echoing in the Capitol when critics, who had hoped for much stronger actions from the Minnesota Legislature, lambasted the effort of Hilstrom and a bipartisan group of 69 other legislators to “close gaps’’ in current state gun law.
“This is just a band-aid over a huge problem,’’ said Jane Kay of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, an organization formed in the days following the mass shooting of school children in Newtown, Conn.
Only in America can a two-month old pressure group with fewer members than there were legislators standing behind Hilstrom get the breathless adoration of the media. Which is what “Moms Demand Action” and “Protect Minnesota” both are; astroturf checkbook advocacy groups funded by liberal plutocrats with deep pockets – with “membership” numbers in the single digits.
Provided they share the goal of fluffing the left’s withering narrative on gun control.
Of course, Grow wasn’t the only offender; Pat Kessler of Channel 4 asked Hilstrom why the bill included no universal background check which, he asserted, “70% of Minnesotans oppose”.
The correct answer – the polls ask people about background checks without explaining the consequences of those checks as the DFL and Governor Messinger Dayton currently propose them; they will result in a de facto gun registry, which is a necessary first step to universal confiscation.
More on gun-related media polls in another piece soon.
The Pre-Written Story
But Grow himself is the real problem here. His piece, while short on the sort of insight that actually engaging people on both sides of the issue might have given it, is long on evidence that Grow wrote the story long before yesterday’s press conference.
There’s the inflammatory reference to every leftymedia member’s favorite boogyman:
The bill has the support of the National Rifle Association, presumably because it does nothing to require background checks on all gun sales and because it does nothing to restrict sales of military-style weapons or even the quantity of rounds in ammunition magazines.
Well, no.
The bill has the support of gun-rights organizations because instead of wasting time and effort putting niggling restrictions on the rights of the law-abiding that didn’t affect crime in any way the first ten years they were tried, they actually address the real problem; criminals, the insane, the addled, and the holes in the data the state sends to the Feds for the background check system.
(And while the NRA makes a nice, recognizable, stereotyped boogeyman for the lazy propagandist, the NRA actually has very little to do with the day to day heavy lifting of the gun rights movement in Minnesota. It’s the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance that turned out 500 or more people a day to attend the gun grab hearings a couple of weeks back. Grow either doesn’t know that, or doesn’t want people to know that. You know where my money is).
More evidence that Grow wrote the story entirely off of DFL and “Protect Minnesota” chanting points?
Despite the fact that it’s a bill that authors hoped would unite people, it seems to be dividing. Yes, there was a mix of Republican and DFL representatives standing with Hilstrom, Cornish and Stanek. But there were no law-enforcement organizations represented at the news conference where the proposal was unveiled.
That’s false.
Here’s the video of the press conference:
See all those guys in uniforms?
Scroll in to 1:12. That’s Sheriff Rich Stanek, Hennepin County Sheriff, speaking on behalf of the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.
Either Grow is lying, or he wrote the entire story with no knowledge of the facts of the story.
Short On Fact, Long On Jamming Words Into Peoples’ Mouths
Grow follows by saying…:
There also were no DFL senators, though presumably the bill will be as attractive to outstate senators as it appears to be to many outstate DFL representatives.
Grow throws that in there as if it’s a substantive fact related to the bill itself. It’s not. While most outstate legislators no doubt remember the DFL debacle of 2002, it’s also more than plausible Tom Bakk wants to keep his powder dry.
In other words, presence of no DFL senators is a non-factor, unless you’re a low-information reader.
Grow next swerves through fact – and in so doing, undercuts his own premise. I’ll add emphasis:
Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul, and the chairman of the House public safety committee, has indicated he has no desire to have the bill heard by his committee. Paymar is pushing a bill that would require purchasers of guns at flea markets and gun shows to go through background checks.
Yet, given the large number of co-authors with Hilstrom, there likely are ways for the bill to weave its way through the legislative process.
Yes. There are a large number of co-authors; so many they had to submit it not one, not two, but three times to get them all on. Over half of the House is signed on as authors of the bill.
Michael Paymar wants to thwart the will of the representatives of over half of Minnesota’s voters?
Putting Thirty Shots From An AR15 Into A Strawman
Finally, Grow takes his whacks at some of the legislators who’ve violated the DFL’s narrative:
[Representative Tony] Cornish, usually a lightning rod in the gun debate, said he was taking a different role regarding the fate of this bill.
“Several of my statements (in the past) have been controversial,’’ he said. “Today my role is to be a peacemaker.’’
No sooner had he said that than he uttered a statement that raises the hackles of those hoping for stronger gun measures.
“I want to thank the NRA for helping (on the bill),’’ he said. He went on to say that the bill “contains nothing for gun owners to fear.’’
Er, who’s “hackles” got “raised”, here? And why?
Was it the involvement of the NRA? Your dog whistles aren’t our problem.
Or was it the quote about gun owners having nothing to fear? Is that the actual goal, here?
Hilstrom, in her seventh term, refused to talk about her true feelings of the bill. Rather, she kept speaking of the importance of “passing a bill that will solve real problems.’’
She did point out that she never has sought the endorsement of the NRA and that in the past she has received a “C,’’ “D,’’ and “F’’ from the NRA.
OK.
So what?
If she’s doing the right thing – which, for a majority of Minnesotans, is “solving problems”, rather than attacking the law-abiding gun owner – then I don’t care if she’s a life-time “F” rating. And I don’t care about her true feelings; I don’t care if she’s being used as an escape hatch by the DFL to get out of the embarassment of the Paymar/Hausman gun grab bills.
Guess Who!
Finally: I owe the Twin Cities media an apology. I’ve said that Larry Jacobs is the most over-quoted person in the Twin Cities media. And he is. David Schultz is right up there.
But in the “single-issue” category, Heather Martens – “Executive Director” and, near as we can tell, one of less than a half-dozen members of “Protect Minnesota” (and de facto representative of House District 66A) and a woman whose entire body of public assertions is lies, dwarfs them all:
Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, derided the bill as “NRA-approved.’’
Boo! Boogeyman! Hiss!
Listen, MinnPost-reading dogs! There’s your whistle!
“Any bill that fails to address the gaping holes in our background check law falls far short of the public’s demand for the right to be safe in our communities,’’ Martens said in a statement.
And there’s another lie. The bill does address the gaping hole that exists in the background check laws.
No, not the misnamed “gun show loophole”, which is another media myth. The real gap is the data that the state isn’t sending to the feds; the Hilstrom bill fixes it.
GOCRA’s Mountain, Grow And Martens’ Molehill
Leaving aside the fact that Grow got pretty much everything in this story wrong – and wrong in a way that suggests not only that he wasn’t at Hilstrom’s press conference but that he wrote the whole thing straight from chanting points long before Hilstrom took to the microphone – the most pernicious thing about Grow’s story is that it tries to create the impression that there’s a genuine battle between two titanically-powerful sides to this debate.
There’s not.
In terms of legislators? A bipartisan sample of over half of the House is on board co-authoring Hilstrom’s bill(s). A thin, runny film of metro-DFL extremists is backing the Paymar/Hausman/Simonson gun grab bills.
In terms of the public? Last month, GOCRA put out a call for people to come to the Capitol. And they did.
No, really:
“Protect Minnesota” and “Moms Demand Action” put out a call yesterday for people to come out and protest against Hilstrom’s bill.
Here they are:
Well, not literally. But no, other than Heather Martens, nobody showed up.
There are literally more DFL legislators co-authoring Hilstrom’s bill than there are members of “Protect Minnesota” and the “Moms Demand Action” put together.
After a month of barbering and nattering about dim-bulb gun-grab bills, there’s a chance at returning to sanity at hand.
Over the noon hour, Representative Deb Hillstrom – a DFLer from Brooklyn Park and a prosecutor by trade – introduced a new bill. And this bill has the potential – unlike all of Hausman, Paymar and Simonson’s vacuous, time-wasting, copied-and-pasted twaddle – to actually do some good.
Hillstrom’s bill treats law-abiding citizens like law-abiding citizens, and punishes criminals for committing crimes.
It’s been submitted three times – one, two and three – although all three are identical. This, according to a second-hand source, is a way to get around the maximum number of authors.
To summarize; the bill:
Facilitates the reporting of criminal and mental health commitment data to the national NICS database (more or less as Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill would have done before Governor Messinger Dayton vetoed it last year. The bill also cleans up the time lag in Minnesota’s reporting of such data.
Creates a mandatory sentence enhancement for violent felons. Many cities in Minnesota have similar laws; Saint Paul has one (although Susan Gaertner pretty much always used it as plea-bargain fodder when she was County Attorney). This would provide a five year sentence for violent felons in possession of firearms; for a second and subsequent offenses, the sentence would be 10 or 15 years, respectively.
Makes false reporting of a gun theft a gross misdemeanor.
Establishes categories of people ineligible to possess pistols or “assault weapons” (and, except for kids under 18, any firearm at all), including people with records of juvenile delinquency (including those who’ve been shunted into pre-trial diversion programs for violent crimes), those who’ve been committed for mental illness or drug abuse, people with regular or gross misdemeanors in the previous three years (including gang crimes, hate crimes, building zip guns, stalking, fourth-degree burglary or rioting), cops with substance abuse issues, people with domestic assaults in the previous three years (or domestic assaults with firearms, ever).
A five year mandatory sentencing enhancement for using a pistol or “assault weapon” in a felony (with 10 and 15 years for repeat offenders).
The bill also provides a due process for people who’ve been civilly committed to get their firearm rights back.
The bill is a huge step in the right direction; it actually punishes criminals, rather than law-abiding citizens (as Paymar, Simonson and Hausman’s bills do).
Rep. Hillstrom – a metro DFLer – is to be complimented for introducing it.
Of course, it needs to get through committee. The members of the Public Safety Finance Committee (names and numbers are below the jump) need to get flooded with phone calls supporting the Hillstrom bill.
No, I mean flooded. And get your representatives, too, whatever side they’re on.
After wasting a solid two weeks of the legislature’s time with a raft of gun grab bills that had no business seeing the light of day, the DFL is back at it.
Michael Paymar is pushing a rights-crushing omnibus gun bill so obnoxious it needs to be handled with tongs – a bill that punishes the law-abiding first, and worries about criminals…uh, they’ll get back to you on that.
In the meantime, the House GOP will be announcing an alternative bill later today – one that goes after criminals, and leaves the rights of the law-abiding citizen where they belong.
And call the members of the House Public Safety Finance Committee and tell them that the Paymar bill isn’t fit to wipe the hindquarters of a sick goat on a 100 degree day.
Via GOCRA, here’s the contact info for the committee, along with some commentary on each individual committee member:
Let’s show Rep. Paymar’s that Minnesotans oppose his assault on our rights by defeating his bill in his own committee. Ask them to SAY NO to the Paymar bill (HF237) and SAY YES to the GOCRA-approved alternate bill.
Representative Michael Paymar (DFL) – Chairman 651-296-4199
E-mail: rep.michael.paymar@house.mn You can suggest that Rep. Paymar simply scrap his bill and sign on to the alternate bill.
Representative Paul Rosenthal (DFL) – Vice Chairman
Rep. Rosenthal authored HF294, which would gut the civil rights protections of Minnesota’s Permit to Carry Law by allowing sheriffs to deny permits on the weakest of grounds. Tell him he should be working to punish criminals, not law-abiding citizens.
Thank Rep. Hilstrom for her strong rejection of registration schemes, as well as magazine and rifle bans, and thank her for supporting the alternate bill. (One newspaper has reported that she will be the alternate bill’s chief author!)
Rep. Mullery has been an opponent of gun rights for a long time. Remind him that if we work together, we can improve mental health and conviction reporting, and make our existing laws work better.
Remind Rep. Schoen that as a police officer, he knows who the real bad guys are: they’re not the law-abiding Minnesota gun owners, and they won’t follow new gun control laws any more than they follow the existing ones.
Rep. Simon is a smart, principled lawyer: he knows that the Supreme Court has affirmed the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. He also knows that stripping due processdoesn’t make us more free or more safe. But you can remind him anyway!
Rep. Simonson is a new representative. Remind him that gun control is DFL Kryptonite: it has cost the House its DFL majority before, and it will again.
Representative Slocum is a co-author on several gun control bills this session. Tell her that focusing on the bad guys, not law-abiding gun owners, is the place to start.
Remind Rep. Uglem that the Second Amendment is not about hunting — it is a fundamental human, civil and Constitutional right, worthy of the strongest protection.
