Dave Mindeman at mnpAct (?) illustrates why trying to discuss economics with Democrats is such a deeply, abidingly frustrating diversion:

The business community worked hard to get Republicans elected during the last election…Now they say they are nervous about DFL Legislative control.

This is, bear in mind, the same DFL administration that, the week President Obama told America’s entrepreneurs “you didn’t build that”, repeated exactly the same message to a major privately-owned Minnesota corporation.

If they’re nervous, it’s for a reason.

As usual, business get it wrong when it comes to which Party is best for business. And, frankly, most of the perception problem stems from the fact that business always does better when government policies are promoted which favor their clientele and customers…not themselves.

That’s an interesting claim.  Let’s watch Mindeman elaborate on it before we pull the rug out.

Republicans and business generally collaborate on the superficial. They want property tax breaks….they want to limit taxes on the wealthy….they want tax incentives. All of that can free up cash and maybe increase the bottom line to a temporary extent….but they are not really pro-growth policies.

Well, yes and no, and irrelevant.  Republicans and business also favor paring back excessive regulation, and reforming taxes in the long term so that they don’t structurally hinder growth. Mindeman didn’t mention that – but to be fair, no Democrat ever does.

The dynamics of the economic engine are heavily fueled by demand. Business can create demand to some degree but unless their is a thriving middle class that has the means to purchase the goods produced, the economy goes nowhere.

Which leads us to a chicken-egg question; what creates a healthy and prosperous middle class?  Especially given that so many of us in the middle class work for, well, businesses?

MIndeman, being a Twin Cities liberal – where a sclerotically-disproportionate share of the “middle class” is employed by government, has an answer; we’ll come back to that.

First, we have a chanting point to dispense with:

When Democrats are in power, business may not get the preferential treatment they are used to by the GOP, but the broader economy usually does better.

Ah, well, then.  That settles it.

(more…)

SCENE:  MITCH is walking down Constitution Avenue, near the state capitol.  It’s a bright, bright, sunshiny day.  Detached-looking figures wander, aimlessly and slightly out of focus, in the distance.

(Aaron ROSTON, DFL activist, pro-bullying-activist and blogger from Fungus Flats, MN, is standing in the middle of the sidewalk).

MITCH (stepping around ROSTON):  Excuse me.

ROSTON (with supercharged sarcasm):  Oh, yeah, right.  You’re so excused.

MITCH:  Huh?

ROSTON:  Oh, right.  I just  bet you don’t understand me.

MITCH:  O…K…

(Walks onward)

Professor William G. KRIEPPI staggers into the frame as MITCH walks down the street.

MITCH: Hey, Professor.

(KRIEPPI abruptly lurches off the street, walks into a light pole, and falls, insensible, onto the grass, unconscious).

MITCH:  Damn.  Hey… (turns to passing figure, who turns out to be Dark MAYTON, billionaire playboy political consultant), er, can you help this guy?

MAYTON:  The moon is made of olives and I am pulsating.

MITCH (watches as MAYTON walks down the sidewalk.  KRIEPPI snores loudly on the grass).  What a very strange place.

ROSTON:  Oh, yeah. So strange…

MITCH:  Good lord, you’re a wierd little person.

(MITCH walks toward the Capitol,  He is presently accosted by a shadowy figure – that of PLARF BINGNERT, chief project manager in the Rhetorical Engineering department at  the Alliance for a Better Minnesota).

BINGNERT:  Mister Berg, why do you do these curious dialogues?  It’s almost as if you are trying to say something.

MITCH:  Well, usually, yes – but I feel as if this one has gotten out of control.  It’s like…

BINGNERT: WOOOOT WOOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOOP WOOOP WOOOOP WOOOOOP!

MITCH (sotto voce): What the hell?

ROSTON (in distance, walking in tight circle):  Oh, yeah – Mr. Family Values, using swears.  That’s so “family”. 

(BINGNERT wanders aimlessly away).  Po di po di po di po!

(MITCH wanders to the base of the capitol steps, sits on the base of the plinth of one of the statues of the Heroes of Minnesota Social Democracy).  

(Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, narrative-buffer for “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, dressed in Lederhosen and Doc Martens boots, rappels down from a bright orange helicopter). 

CARROLL (yelling shrilly through a megaphone):  HEY!  The GOP wants to sell your children!

MITCH:  No, they don’t. 

CARROLL (still yelling):  The GOP wants to run Minnesota from Mississippi!

MITCH: That’s just bizarre.

CARROLL (still yelling): They want to feed your children assault rifles!

MITCH: That just makes no sense.

ROSTON (yelling from middle of lawn):  Oh, yeah – Democrats never make sense, do they, Merg?

MITCH (sotto voce):  If I say “that’s a fascinating point”, will you go away?

(CARROLL wanders into the distance, shouting random accusations into the bullhorn.  As she and her din recede into the distance, a man dressed in a large purple rabbit costume hops laboriously up the sidewalk and stops in front of MITCH). 

RABBIT:  Hi.  I’m Wyatt RINKLER.  You only do these fantasy dialogues because you are afraid.  And having a melt-down.  

MITCH:  Well, no.  

RINKLER:  I’m too stupid to understand what you just said. 

ROSTON (suddenly up close):  Oh, we’re all too stupid, says Merg.  

MITCH:  (shakes head, as if to shake off a sucker punch)  Beg pardon?

RINKLER:  Yarby yarby yarby.

(RINKLER hops away into the distance, disappears over the horizon).  (Yes, a hoppable horizon is unaccountably visible from the Capitol.  Go figure). 

MITCH (walks up steps to Capitol doors.  ROSTON follows at a distance, making sarcastic-sounding noises that never quite resolve into words).  

MITCH (looking out over city):  Wow.  It must have been the burrito.

(From the Capitol comes an ephemeral shape, that of Cat SCAT, factoid bookkeeper for Take Action MN).

MITCH:  Hey.  Nice day, huh?

SCAT:  I’ll check to see what Daily Kos says.

ROSTON (muted in the distance): Oh, yeah – so nice!

MITCH (past caring):  So does Kos confirm?

SCAT:  Can you confirm that this dialog actually happened?

MITCH:  I can confirm that it did not actually happen.  It’s entirely a figment of my imagination.

SCAT:  So it’s a lie!

MITCH:  No.  It’s fiction.  Fiction illustrates, via storytelling, symbolism, metaphor, satire, humor and other devices, things that non-fiction writing can’t.  

(Senator Tom BAKK and speaker of the House Paul THISSEN walk out Capitol doors)

SCAT:  So you admit it’s false?

ROSTON (on sidewalk, dousing self in strawberry milkshakes): Oh, Merg is never false!

(BAKK and THISSEN pick MITCH’s pocket, replace wallet with a “Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota” leaflet)

MITCH (ignoring ROSTON):  Irrelevant.  It’s neither “True” nor “False”.  It’s fictional, so it’s made up – but it can show what I reasonably believe to be larger truths.  Or not.  Sometimes satire is parody, sometimes caricature.  Sometimes it’s just plain absurdist, with the perceived truths buried beneath a heaping pile of misdirection. Sometimes it’s just mockery.  

SCAT:  That’s just wrong.

MITCH:  Wrong?  You mean, like a liberal TV star pretending to be an over the top caricature of a conservative TV star to satirize conservatives and our alt-media? 

SCAT (looks at at “Crooks and Liars” on IPad, is silent)

MITCH:  Er…Steven Colbert?

SCAT (Dissolves into the ether)

ROSTON (yells at passing teenage girl): Hey!  My sister had capris like that – until my dad got a job!  Who does your hair – Stevie Wonder?

MITCH:  Wow.  Imagine if they’d lost the election.  

(Walks to parking lot.  Gives leaflet to attendant.  Drives off into sunset).

Minnesota is plagued with voter fraud.  The evidence – both empirical (200 convictions in Ramsey County – the only county that the Minnesota Majority was able to browbeat into taking actual evidence seriously) and anecdotal (yet again, the stories from the U of M and many precincts in the Fourth and Fifth CDs demand an investigation that will never come) is everywhere.

Most Minnesotans that pay attention and aren’t bobbleheaded Fraud Denialists – the people who’ve grown adept at plugging their ears and chanting “nya nya nya best system in the country la la la” – know this.

So why did the Voter ID Amendment fail?

Not because it wasn’t needed, or because a majority of Minnesotans who actually pay attention voted “no”.

Dan McGrath – who led the effort from the beginning – has a long, detailed take that oozes the exhaustion and disappointment he no doubt feels, over at True North.   Go read the whole thing; it’ll be easier than copying and pasting the whole thing here.

A few takeaways, both McGrath’s and mine.

• The anti-Amendment crowd outspent the proponents by a daunting margin.  Which is odd, considering that in every poll up to the very end, the measure was passing by a bare minimum of 3:2.  Now, polls are obviously a mess, in this state more than most.  But what could possibly cause a movement to spend that much money to thwart a measure so overwhelmingly supported by so many people, even – initially – DFL-identified voters?   Pure, simple love of the status quo?
• The pro-Amendment forces were not only too small and too underfunded – they were fatally fractured, to the point that some pro-Amendment groups actually fought each other.  Precious time and money was wasted.  There was too little of both under even the right circumstances.
• The movement started out with massive bipartisan support – and then turned the issue into a partisan one.  That might have worked in a year when the conservative/GOP brand was a big winner.  It was clearly not, this year – but the lesson remains; it was a huge mistake to make it a GOP vs. DFL issue; that did the DFL’s framing for them.  This should have been a “Justice versus Fraud” issue, repeated relentlessly and at every opportunity.
• That failure made it easy for the DFL to tie it to the Marriage Amendment, and kill them both with their “Vote No Twice” campaign; it was elegant, and simple enough to drive into the heads of all the low-information voters that dominated this past election.

My prediction:  The DFL is going to build “safeguards” to fraud into the system in the next two years that it’d take a decade of conservative rule to untangle.  Look for voters to not be required to give names at the polls by 2014; by 2016, people will be picking up ballots at WalMart.  By 2018, they’ll come pre-filled from the DFL.

Facetious?  We’ll see.

The Regime is sending diplomats to….

…Minneapolis:

The State Department has announced that it’s sending the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs to … Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Maybe they thought it was “Myanmar”, too.

This part was actually funny:

“Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer will travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 19 where she will be hosted by Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) and participate in a series of discussions with civil society organizations

If the not-remotely-civil Keith Ellison is involved in “civil society organizations”, look for a hidden rocket launcher.

Our Dilettante Playboy Governor is howling mad over the Vikings’ looking into charging “seat license” fees…

..,.that are specifically allowed in the moronic stadium deal he pushed the state into?

Imagine what’s going to happen when he was no opposition.

Do I even need to say it?

Nationwide, it was a 50-50 election, aided by a media that gave up most pretense of legitimacy to play praetorian guard, and a turnout machine that was, frankly,pretty flawless.

It wasn’t helped by Romney’s campaign’s epic technical bobble – putting all its swing-state GOTV efforts into a technical basket that hadn’t even been stress-tested, and which failed miserably under pressure on election day.

But we held the US House.  Unlike 2008, Obama at least has a speed bump or two in his way.

As to Minnesota – well, Katie bar the door.  I’d bet on a budget over $40 billion, and taxes to match.  I’d also bet that Minnesota companies accelerate pushing their blue-collar operations across the borders to North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Mexico and points west.   We’ll still have lots of Fortune 500 companies here, in the same way New York has a lot of them.  But the people who do the building, manufacturing, servicing, warehousing, planning, programming?  These jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back.

The good news?  The Senate elected Dave Hann and some of his best Tea Party underclassmen to leadership – Dave Thompson, Roger Chamberlain and the like . The House leadership under Kurt Kaudt should be similarly aligned to – I hope, dear Lord, I hope – tell the DFL to go pound sand when they try to put a “bipartisan” veneer on their excesses.

After leaving this state with no significant tax hikes, a stable unemployment rate and no deficit, it should be a stark contrast with the state we see in two years.

…as in “Obama inherited all of Bush’s problems”, let’s make sure we’re clear on what the new DFL majority is going to inherit.

• No deficit – indeed, likely a small surplus, when the next forecast comes in.  Yep, accounting gimmicks, K-12 shift, yadda yadda, got it.  Still, it’s not “$6.6 Billion”.  Remember that?
• Low unemployment – among the lowest of any non-North-Dakotan state in the nation.

Place your best on where we’ll be in 2014.

Minnesota’s official line is that we’re very, very proud of the fact that more of our people jam into the polls on election day than any other state.

OK, so far so good.

So I thought – why not take a look at some previous years?

The blue line shows the total turnout – the percentage of elegible voters that turn out for elections in (respectively) 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 (which is missing from the SOS website, and I didn’t want to extrapolate it, but you can assume it, like the other non-presidential years, is in the 50-70% range, for purposes of comparison), 2008, 2010 and last Tuesday.

The red line is the percentage of registered voters that vote.  It doesn’t seem counter intuitive; people who are registered to vote (and the numbers in every case are the “Registered as of 7AM on election day” numbers) are more likely to actually get down to the polls and pull the trigger.

Obvious pattern #1:  Presidential years are bigger for both figures.

But Monday, let’s look into where some of these numbers come from.

To: The GOP Leadership In The Legislature, Whoever You End Up Being
From: Mitch Berg, Schnook Peasant
Re:  Upcoming Session

All,

It’s two months ’til what is going to be a couple of very grueling sessions.

Now, Governor Dayton is an addled bobblehead who is nothing but a marionette for Alida Messinger and the unions that bought the office for him.  Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen are not much but capos for two bodies that are, let’s be honest, more of the same.  Our entire legislature will be owned and operated by Messinger, the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, the unions, the non-profits, and the media that serves as their PR wing.

The calls will go out; “time to be “bi-partisan””.

Don’t do it.

The DFL will be trying their best to give an air of “bipartisan” legitimacy to what is going to be an orgy of tax-hiking and spending.

Resist the temptation to try to go for the Lori Sturdevant seal of approval.

They are going to plunge this state into an orgy of spending, an taxation to support it.  Major Minnesota business are going to ship jobs outstate or overseas as fast as FedEx can jam them onto the plane.  Minnesota’s medical device industry is already evacuating; there will be more to follow.

You need to keep your fingerprints away from the scene of the crime.

If the Minnesota GOP has proven one thing, it sucks at messaging.  You’ll need to learn it, and pronto – because the media will try to portray the upcoming disaster as “a result of GOP intransigence”, notwithstanding their complete control over government for the next (sigh) two years.

Jeff Rosenberg is one of the few bloggers at Minnesota Progressive Project that doesn’t deserve to be under either police surveillance, court-ordered commitment, or both.

But that doesn’t mean he gets how Democrat politics works:

 The very first thing they should do, though, is officially legalize same-sex marriage.

The vote against marriage discrimination was historic. It was uplifting. And it came amidst a number of other wonderful victories for the LGBT community and its allies. But if you’ll forgive me for saying so mere hours after this historic victory, it’s not enough. Not discriminating against same-sex couples any more than we already do just doesn’t cut it. It’s time for full equality, and there has never been a better opportunity.

Somewhere out at Alida Messinger’s estate, a DFL organizer – a union guy, maybe, or one of Alida’s hired fixers with ABM – is saying two things to himself right about now:

• “Alida looks a lot like the bass player for “Sweet”, circa 1974″.
• “Jeff! Bubbie!  Slow down!  Not so fast!”

Like abortion, gay marriage is an issue that serves the Democrats (and parts of the GOP) better unresolved.

The DFL – and Democrats nationwide, as yesterday’s election showed – run, and win, on selling victimization.

If gays – who are a percent or two of the population that votes reliably Democrat – ever stop howling “Why can’t we get married?”, they might start howling “why can’t we find a job” or “why are our taxes so damn high?”

Oh, the courts may settle it for us.  But the legislature?  Forget about it.

…bring a camera.  A smartphone works just fine.  Be on the lookout for irregularities.

Reports are already filtering in from the U of M – students are being encouraged to double-vote (in their home districts and at the U).  It is a fact that the Democrats will cheat; they believe their ends justify their means.

So be watchful.  And report irregularities to the poll-watchers and the Minnesota Majority – don’t go taking the rules into your own hands; you could be wrong, and that’d be embarassing.

But keep an eye peeled.

Hey, it’s not just Republicans who blow each other up!

Awkward: Governor Dayton v. MN DFL

Flames that warm the heart.

Yesterday and Monday, we went over the chronology of the last-minute negotiations and back-and-forth leading up to the State Government shutdown, which started seventeen months ago last night.  The abbreviated time-line:

1. On June 29, the GOP made an offer.  It traded giving some ground on revenue for some movement on social issues.
2. On the morning of June 30, the DFL leadership – Dayton, Senate minority leader Bakk and House minority leader Thissen – demanded $1.4 billion in new revenues.
3. Much discussion ensued.  It ensued under the “cone of silence”; the participants really didn’t let on much about what was going on.
4. At noonish on the 30th, Dayton – without Bakk and Thissen – made an offer that dropped most of the revenue demands, and was pretty close – almost dead-on – with the GOP’s letter.  The letter mentioned no social issues – because they were off the table at this time.
5. More discussion.  More cone.
6. Mid-afternoon, the Legislature sent its counteroffer, including revenue from the “school funding shift” and the tobacco bond money.  This should have settled it – and indeed, was substantially the same as the offer that Dayton finally accepted to end the shutdown.
7. Late-afternoon, the DFL ratcheted back to their morning demands.
8. More cone.
9. At 10PM, the Governor essentially claimed that he was shutting down the government because the GOP had rejected the offer in 7, above, and was unwilling to compromise.

And that was that.

———-

In the hour or so after the shutdown, the GOP Caucus released the contents of the letters that had transpired on the 29th and 30th.  The release included pages 2-4 of this document here:

All Offers

No mention of social policy in there.  it was not an issue.

So the government shut down.  DFL and media narratives aside, it was a disaster for the governor.  Government actually saved money; hardly anyone outside of government missed it; the people largely were apathetic, as the Governor learned on a tour of the state to attempt to rally support that drew nothing but dispirited SEIU goons.   He returned to the  Capitol, and returned to the GOP’s last offer.

And not long after, he gave this talk in WCCO-TV with Esme Murphy – which we’ve featured a time or two:

Dayton lied:

I was unaware on June 30, in fact I was clearly aware to the contrary, that all these social policy issues, from banning stem cell research and everything else, and just really reactionary social policy, was taken off the table.

Esme Murphy let that line pass without comment – as, in fact, she always does, as her mission seems to be to make sure DFL pols get a nice massage on the air.

But nobody else noted the contradiction; of course he was aware.

• The GOP mentioned no policy issues in its June 30 proposal!  As we noted above, it was nearly identical to the governor’s previous offer, differing on a few fiscal tweaks!
• His rejection of that offer mentioned no social policy issues.  Because they were off the table.
• Read the speech he gave as the shutdown started.  Nary a peep about social issues.

Mark Dayton was shot down completely on the shutdown.  And yet the media have allowed him to carry on with the “social policy” canard.

Why?

If I were a cynic, you’d think it was because the media was in the bag for Dayton, and wanted to give him cover.  You’d also think the media were even more in the bag for the DFL – and chanting the governor’s version of the shutodwn is a key part of the DFL’s attempt to retake the legislature, which a good chunk of the media (at least at the management and editorial-board level) clearly wants.

And I am a cynic.

Because the alternate explanation is that the media just isn’t as smart and attentive to details as I am.

And that just beggars the imagination.

So when will the media start “fact-checking” Dayton’s story?  Or their own, for that matter?

Seventeen months ago yesterday, in the midst of negotiations about the budget, the GOP-led Legislature sent Governor Dayton a proposed budget.  It offered some concessions on revenue, and asked for some ground on social issues.

First thing the next morning, June 30 – 17 months ago today – the DFL came out with a counter-offer.

Labeled the “Dayton-Bakk-Thissen Compromise Budget Proposal”, it demanded $1.4 billion in new revenues.  It was a further negotiation, just like the Legislature’s letter the day before.

And – this is important – it had all three DFL leaders on board.  Governor Dayton, Senate minority leader Bakk and House minority leader Thissen all signed off on this proposal.

We’ll refer to this as “The Morning Letter” from now on.

And as the government coursed toward the midnight shutdown, that apparently was where things stayed.

The rest of this article uses this Scribd file, originally from Dayton’s chief of staff Bob Hume, as its source.

All Offers

It’s been popping up around the Twin Cities media off and on ever since the shutdown.

The Morning Letter

Now, much of what went on over the next 6-7 hours is shrouded in mystery; it took place in off-the-record conversations and phone calls and communications that aren’t available to the general public if they’re recorded at all.

Noon: Dayton’s Offer

But the upshot of those conversations – whatever they were – was that at 3PM on the 30th of June, the Governor – alone, without Thissen or Bakk – released a proposal that dropped all tax increases.

There were three significant things about this letter, which we’ll call “Dayton’s Offer”.

One was that Dayton dropped demands for tax increases, in return, Dayton proposed a 50% shift in school funding to the following biennium – the “borrowing from the children” that the DFL and media have worked so hard to pin on the GOP this past year.   It was a major concession by the Governor.  According to sources on Capitol Hill familiar with the negotiations, this was seen by the GOP majority in the Legislature as a key step toward reaching a “lights-on” agreement to prevent the shutdown.

But the other two significant things were actually things missing from the proposal:

1. Bakk and Thissen:  Their names had been on the Morning Letter – but were absent at 3PM.   Sources at the Capitol indicate that that’s because – well, Bakk and Thissen didn’t support it!
2. Any mention of GOP policy proposals:  The Dayton Offer includes no reference to GOP “Social Policy” proposals – because Dayton knew at noon on the 30th that the GOP had taken them off the table.  This is an inference, both by my sources and myself.  It’s also the only logical conclusion.

So as of a little after lunch on 6/30, the Legislature and the Governor – but not Bakk and Thissen – were in basic agreement; no tax hikes, no social policy concessions.

The 3PM Letter

A couple of hours later, at 3PM, the GOP sent a counter-offer.  It involved two tweaks to Dayton’s proposal:

• Cutting the size of the education shift (at the recommendation of Dayton’s Education Commissioner)
• Making up the difference with tobacco bonding

This letter – we’ll call it “The 3PM Letter” – involved accepting the concessions in The Dayton Offer with a few on the GOP’s part.  Otherwise, the two offers were just about identical.

As of 3PM, then, it looked as if the Governor and the Legislature were in agreement, and the shutdown could be averted.

The 4:06PM Letter

Dayton responded about an hour later, at 4:06PM.  Dayton accepted the changes to the education shift – it was his administration’s idea, after all – but tossed the tobacco bonding proposal and renewed the demand for new taxes…

…that he himself had taken off the table earlier in the afternoon!

The GOP’s response expressed dismay at the sudden – I believe the term of art in the Age of Obama is “unexpected” – flip-flop on Dayton’s part – and proposed a “lights-on” bill.

So To Recap…

Just to make sure we’re clear, here:

1. The DFL – Dayton, Bakk and Thissen – demanded $1.4B.
2. Negotiation ensued under the “cone of silence”.
3. Dayton offered to drop the tax demands, and by omission showed that the GOP had dropped their social policy demands.
4. The GOP accepted this proposal, with a few fine tweaks, including one from Dayton’s own administration.
5. Dayton spun on his heels and rejected that offer – ignored it, really – and countered with a flip-flop on taxes.

The “cone of silence” remained in effect for the next five or six hours.  Nobody exactly knows what transpired on the way to Dayton’s big speech at 10PM.

Dayton’s Presser at 10PM

Just in time for the 10PM news, Dayton called a press conference.  Here’s the transcript.

It’s full of prevarications, and one outright lie:

• “Therefore, a $1.4 billion gap remains between our last respective offers.”  But the GOP’s proposal on the 29th offered to compromise with the DFL on revenue.  The conservative base – myself included – would have howled at this, but the GOP was clearly looking to keep the government open.
• “Republicans have offered only to forego their $200 million tax cut and add that amount of spending. While welcomed, $200 million is only a small step toward resolving a $5 billion deficit.”  The 3PM Letter shows that the GOP was willing to go along with some sort of revenue hikes.
• “Today, Representative Thissen, Senator Bakk, and I made two proposals which contained revenues to be raised by increasing taxes only on people who make more than $1 million per year. The Department of Revenue reports that there are only 7,700 of them, less than 0.3% of all Minnesota tax filers.”   Well, no.  Dayton made two offers; Bakk and Thissen only participated in the first one.

The Administration started out demanding tax hikes; the GOP expressed a willingness to compromise.  The Administration then flip-flopped and went back to their first set of demands, ignoring the GOP concessions (for purposes of presenting the media a narrative), with Dayton contradicting himself in the process.

And Here’s Where The Media Tush-Smooching Comes In

The Governor contradicted himself and rejected a proposal that was one minor tweak removed from his own, Bakk-And-Thissen-less offer (“Dayton’s Offer”), leading directly to the government shutdown.

And yet today, 17 months later, the DFL’s PACs and pressure groups refer to it as “the Republican shutdown”.  It’s a Big Lie.  But nobody’s countering it.

I’ve often wondered; what if our society had an institution, maybe even an industry, with printing presses and transmitters, staffed with people whose job and training involves checking up on things that government officials say – and maybe even holding them accountable for the things they say and do?  Heck, even allow this institution to see itself as an aescetic elite who “comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted”, in exchange for, you know, actually comforting and afflicting.

We could use this in Minnesota.

Remember where we started yesterday – with Esme Murphy giving Mark Dayton her usual deep-tongue-kiss on her Sunday Morning Show:

Notwithstanding the contradictions in Dayton’s own proposals that are part of the public record timeline of the negotiations on June 29-30, Dayton runs with the “Social Issues” canard.

The Strib also served, then as now, as Dayton’s de facto stenographer in their “coverage” of the chain of events.

The Star-Tribune also bought Dayton’s line – that the “requested concessions” brought on the shutdown – completely uncritically, without noting the evolution, and then abrupt de-evolution, on Dayton’s position.  The Strib mentioned not a word about the “flip-flop”.

Tomorrow – appropriately, Halloween – the way the shutdown went down, and conclusions about “journalism” and Governor Dayton.

The DFL – and, more accurately, its’ big-money PR operation “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – have been trying to repeat a couple of Big Lies often enough that, over the course of the next two years, a plurality of Minnesotans agree with them.

Again.

One of them is the myth of the “do-nothing legislature”.  But I think even the least-informed Minnesotans are starting to figure out that over the past two years, the talk, even from the DFL’s noise machine, has turned from “We have a $6.6 Billion Dollar Deficit!” to “the surplus isn’t really all that surplus-y”.

Another?  The idea that the GOP is “extreme” and “focused on social issues” – as if the party can’t fiscally walk and chew social gum at the same time.   Please, people; we’re not DFLers.

But today?  We’ll be talking about the other Big Lie; that the GOP “shut down the government”.

———-

Next week’s election is going to have a lot to do with setting the stage for the state’s next budget battle. It’ll be a fork in the road; the GOP path, leading to prosperity, and the Mark Dayton/Tom Bakk/Paul Thissen path, leading to California, Spain and Greece.

Today and tomorrow are also the vital seventeen-month anniversaries of the key dates in the final negotiations leading to the shutdown [1].  I’m going to walk through the events leading up to the shutdown.

The inevitable conclusion is that the DFL’s line is a complete fabrication, designed only to leave the uninformed with a sound-bite to take to the polls with them.  Even Alida Messinger knows that she’ll need more than 43% in 2014.  

We’ll start the whole thing out with a Mark Dayton quote from Esme Murphy’s show. Murphy was doing her usual job – painting the toenails of DFLers on the air – when she asked the governor if he had any regrets about the shutdown:

MURPHY:  The proposal that you ended up agreeing to was basically the one that was offered up on June 30, before the shutdown.  Do you have any regrets now about not taking that proposal and trying to work that out on June 30th that would have prevented the shutdown?

DAYTON:   Well, very significant difference, I was unaware on June 30, in fact I was clearly aware to the contrary, that all these social policy issues, from banning stem cell research and everything else, and just really reactionary social policy, was taken off the table.  That just was not part of my understanding on June 30th it was a very important part of the consideration after the shutdown…

The Governor is lying.  (The governer is also borderline incoherent).

On June 29, 2011, the GOP- controlled Legislature sent Mark Dayton an offer.  Sources on Capitol Hill tell me that this proposal did involve some give and take on policy issues both fiscal and social; in exchange for compromise on revenue, the governor would give some ground on some social policy issues.

It was a negotiation.  That’s where both sides bargain their various chips with each other, to try to get the end result they want.  This, the GOP did.

In other words, the GOP Legislature did what they had been elected to do.  And given that there were some sort of tax hikes – even indirect ones – in the proposal, it was politically risky for a bunch of Republicans who’d been sent to office promising to hold the line on taxes and spending.

And so the proposals went to the governor on June 29.

The next day?

We’ll talk about that that tomorrow.

(more…)

I think this is going to be a humdinger of an election.  Alongside my predictions from this morning – GOP holds both chambers of the Legislature – I think Chip Cravaack will stave off Rick Nolan, setting the stage for what could be an epic realignment in Minnesota politics.

Beyond that?  I think Lee Byberg has laid the groundwork for what could be – let’s be conservative, here – a result that is unexpectedly good, and disconcerting for Collin Peterson.  And I think it would have happened even without his improvident slander of pro-lifers.

And while I think it’ll take a complete economic collapse and mass civil disorder to make Minneapolis anything but a DFL playground, I think Chris Fields is going to surprise people with his results on November 7.  He’s run a masterful campaign; in a just world, there would be no contest; in a district that wasn’t a one-party thug-ocracy, the statesmanly Fields would make short work of the whiny, petulant Ellison.

As to the 4th CD?

Here’s where we need your help.

Redistricting shaved Betty McCollum’s advantage down, but it didn’t gut it.  The 4th Congressional District was as blue as the Oceana Ministry of Truth’s uniforms before redistricting, of course; and it absorbed a lot of purple territory in Stillwater and Woodbury (as well as a few bright-red districts full of Real Americans up in Grant Township).

Which is a huge improvement, don’t get me wrong.

And so Tony Hernandez has been fighting this campaign to win.  And along with that, there’s been a solid effort by a lot  of candidates at the legislative level.  I think we’ve got a solid shot at four or five new seats in the legislature, either flips or open seats, as well as defending the seats we already do have.

And – this is huge – I think Blake Huffman, Dennis Dunnigan and Sue Jeffers have a solid shot at getting on the Ramsey County Commission.  And if that happens, the Ramco Commission will have a conservative majority!

If there’s a habit from the Old Fourth that we need to put to rest, it’s the idea that Saint Paul and Ramsey County Republicans only turn out when they think it matters – competitive Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate races.  The media has done a painstaking, and fraudulent, job of trying to convince them that the Presidential and Senate races are foregone conclusions; they do it to try to convince Republicans not to show up at the polls.

This is where you come in.

The Hernandez Campaign is organizing a phone bank – along with several other campaigns and BPOUs in the 4th CD – to Get Out The Vote, starting tonight and running up until the election.

And we need people to sign up by clicking here and picking a time

Whether you’re a Paleocon, a Neocon, a Ronulan, a LIbertarian, or even an old-school Eastside Kennedy Democrat who’s had enough of the current regime, this is your chance to help convince people that this election makes a difference, and to help cajole them to the polls.

The fact is, Romney has a chance.  Tony Hernandez has a shot at shocking the world – perhaps by winning, perhaps by showing the state that the Fourth is not a safe sinecure and convincing Betty that a nice cushy six-figure gig with a non-profit is a lot less work in 2014.  And if we stick the landing on all five (or more!) of the legislative opportunities and the Ramco Commission, this will have an immediate and lasting effect on politics at the state level.  .

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The cover story in the Minnesota Bar Association’s Bench and Bar magazine this month is “Felony Disenfranchisement, Why 5 Million Americans Can’t Vote This November.” The cover art is a Black man in a jail cell. The authors are two criminal defense lawyers. The article raises all the usual DFL points but with one jarring note. Note this claim:

“Many believe felony disenfranchisement became a popular idea when it was clear the Constitution granted the right to vote to all of its citizens, regardless of race, since this was a method of preventing many blacks from voting. There is strong evidence, arguable rock-solid proof, that the laws were in fact intended to target and ultimately eliminate the black vote.”

And compare it with this complaint:

“Minnesota is not among the states that have made felony disenfranchisement laws less oppressive. In fact, Minnesota has not changed its law since it began disenfranchising felons in 1857.”

Now wait one minute. Minnesota was a territory in 1857, it didn’t become a state until 1858. The 15th Amendment was adopted in 1870, AFTER the North won the War. But felons were disenfranchised in Minnesota 10 years earlier. Early legislators somehow knew that one day the state would send men to fight in a War to gain independence for Blacks and that eventually we would need to lock up those same Blacks to take away their voting rights, so our prescient ancestors quickly adopted this law first!

Since that piece of “rock-solid” proof is obviously false on its face, the rest of the arguments in the article are so suspect as to be unpersuasive. I’d need a lot more convincing before I’d vote to overturn 150 years of unbroken precedent to give convicted felons more rights.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

The anti-Voter-ID movement started by pulling ever-growing “cost impacts”, to put it in the classical Latin, de anus.  Why would wholesale manufacturing of history be a stretch?

Wednesday, I gave my seat-by-seat picks for the Minnesota House.  Yesterday, I took a shot at the Senate.

Today?  We wrap everything up into what pass for my “predictions” for this race, with thanks to Tony Petrangelo at Left MN, whose district-by-district ratings provided the food for thought that led to this particular bit of rhetorical meringue pie.

Disclaimers:

• I claim no scientific methodology behind my picks.  Their rationales vary – from word on the ground in various districts to gut feelings about others
• I also put no personal weight behind them
• Please do not wager actual money base on these predictions

However, while I admit the pure subjectiveness of this exercise, there’s method to the madness.  While Petrangelo, in his original exercise on the subject, noted that he’d kept his race-by-race rating entirely tied to empirical measures like money raised and voting history, there are some other currents involved that led me to make some of my predictions that deviate from Petrangelo’s conclusions:

• Redistricting invalidated a certain amount of history, or at least put an asterisk by it. 
• Some campaigns are running very strong, aggressive races in districts where, historically, their party has not in the past.  History would show a lack of results for the party that this election, I think, may belie. 

But of course, there’s no such thing as a “toss-up” in real-world elections. Those “toss-up” votes have to go somewhere. Petrangelo rated many more districts “toss-ups” than I do. I rated – very possibly erroneously – a number of districts as leaners or likelies, but with others, there was just no obvious way to make the call.

So how do the “toss-ups” break out?

While I thought of simply dividing them up according to the current enthusiasm gap, that’d just be wishful thinking; I already accounted for that, to some extent, in the races I converted from “Toss-ups” in Petrangelo’s ratings to “leaners” in my own.

So I’ll try three different approaches, and pick one at the end:

• Best Case:  This turns into a Romney wave that sweeps into Minnesota.  I’ll say 75% of the current “toss-ups” go GOP.
• Middle Case:  The toss-ups split; in addition, I’ll assume that 20% of the toss-ups that I converted to “lean GOP” will go DFL
• Worst Case:  All the toss-ups go DFL. (I’ll leave my conversions in place to provide an arbitrary fudge factor, since the “all DFL” scenario seems unlikely).

I’m going to take my middle case, and fudge the GOP numbers down one.  Just because.

That makes my prediction:

• Senate: 35 GOP / 32 DFL
• House:  70 GOP / 64 DFL

It’s unscientific.  Heck, it barely qualifies as free verse.

But I’ll run with it.

Yesterday, we teed up with the House.

Today – using Tony Petrangelo’s district by district ratings as a jumping off point – I’ll take my whack at the Senate.

As noted yesterday, my predictions are largely – but not purely – subjective.  That being said, my subjective predictions, when they’re not woefully off (Mark Kennedy in 2006) are usually pretty dead-on (I nailed the 2004 presidential election within eight electoral votes).

As always, you get what you pay for.

Tomorrow, the breakdown for the next round in the Legislature.

Son of Virginia congressman busted by Project Veritas.

Er, I missed what party he’s from. Did anyone catch that?

While the “Left MN” blog seems to be a re-boot of the late, demented but unlamented “Cucking Stool”, the site’s associate blogger Tony Petrangelo is one of those rare Minnesota leftybloggers who ought not be under police surveillance – a compliment I give rarely (becaiuse it’s rarely deserved).  Over the years, he’s written some excellent stuff about polling, redistricting, and the mechanics of politics.

And this past week, he’s been releasing a set of predictions for the MN House and Senate.  He’s done this before, by the way:

This is my second time doing race ratings of Minnesota legislative elections, the first time being in 2010. Here are links to my Senate ratings and House ratings from that cycle. I used a Safe/Tilt/Toss-up ratings scale and prior to the election I rated the Senate seats as 31 total DFL seats (Safe+Tilt), 19 total GOP seats and 17 Toss-ups.

The GOP won all 19 seats I had them winning. They also won every single race I had listed as a toss-up. They also won a race I had listed as Tilt DFL, the Don Betzold – Pam Wolf race. Clearly 2010 was a wave year for the GOP.

Still, as Petrangelo notes, it was a game effort:

That said, I don’t think my ratings did particularly bad especially since there was no sort of adjustment incorporated to account for the broader political context of the election.

We’ll come back to that.

As with my previous foray into race ratings I’ve kept this years version to an entirely numbers based exercise. Meaning at no point is a race rating the way it is because I made a subjective judgement about the quality of a candidate.

There’s some more methodology talk in there, which you should oughtta read, because it’s useful stuff and I don’t disagree with any of it.

Which is notable, in that my own ratings below are largely the opposite.

Well, not entirely; in many, maybe most cases, I agree with Petrangelo.  In many others, I made a different prediction because of some qualitative aspect to the race that isn’t readily apparent in the empirical numbers Petrangelo used.  A race held after a redistricting is going to toss a lot of those empirical measures up in the air – as will a wave election (as Petrangelo discovered in 2010).  While this may not be a wave year, there’s a dynamic at work that I think will affect a lot of these races.

I’ll do the House of Representatives first.  I’ll include the House District, the DFLer, the GOPer, Petrangelo’s rating, and mine; if mine differ from Petrangelo’s they’ll be in bold.

Senate tomorrow!

Remember when Amy Klobuchar, former Henco Attorney, tried to paint herself as “tough on crime”?

Apparently only if the criminal was poor and black:

Perhaps because of the lure of [legendary Ponzi schemer] Petters’ campaign cash or his deep connection to Minnesota Democratic politics, Klobuchar used the power of her office in 1999 to ensure Petters was not charged with financial crimes. And despite significant evidence against him, she cleared the way for Petters to build his multibillion-dollar illegal empire by prosecuting only his early co-conspirators.

One of those co-conspirators, Richard Hettler, told The Daily Caller that Klobuchar was aware of what Petters was doing, yet willingly accepted campaign donations from Petters’ company and its employees.

“She took Ponzi money to get elected,” he insisted.

Read the whole thing.

Because goddess only knows you won’t read it in the Strib until they’re dragged to the story kicking and screaming.

The by-no-means-right-of-center Saint Cloud Times endorsed our old friend King Banaian in his re-election bid in Saint Cloud:

 Given an effective first term, Banaian deserves re-election. He authored the Sunset Commission law and helped college students with textbook prices. His expertise in economics also is a strength.

They also acknowledge that the district is full of government clients who would happily sell the state as whole down the river for extra bread and circuses for state employees:

DFL challenger Zach Dorholt presents a formidable challenge in large part because Banaian’s allegiance to hardline GOP fiscal and business principles might not sell well in a district that’s home to a public university and many public-sector employees.

The paper’s right – King won by 10 votes after a recount, down from a couple dozen on election night, in 2010 – but redistricting was, by most accounts, kind to King.  While some commentators call this race a toss-up, I think that between redistricting and the fact that Obama will have all the coattails of a hunting vest, King will start to pull away this round.

How do you measure success in a politician?

If you’re a liberal, it’s likely in terms of sheer volume of legislation created and money moved about.  Because to a liberal, government is about creating reams of paper, rules, laws, stuff for government to do.

If you’re a conservative, it’s probably more a matter of princple; of getting government out of the way, of taking pointless laws and needless regulations off the books.

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Mike McFeely is a talk show host in Fargo.  He’s the current house liberal at KFGO, which was at one time the WCCO of the Fargo area, and like WCCO has shrunk greatly since its heyday (and since I left North Dakota).  He fills the role Fast Eddie Schultz used to play on the station, the token lefty.  Like Schultz, he’s apparently a former small-market sportscaster; like Schultz, he sounds like it.

And like a lot of liberal D-list pundits and pseudo-celebs, he’s got a jones for Mary Franson, GOP incumbent in District 8B and, like most uppity female and minority conservatives, the same sort of catnip for lefties that Michele Bachmann has been for the past decade and a half.  It started  a few weeks ago, with McFeely’s Schultz-like chanting of rumors that even some of the smarter regional leftyblogs long ago debunked.  McFeely came across in that case as a small-town crone abusing the “power” of his radio bully pulpit (and as much as KFGO has atrophied, it’s still not chicken feed)

I’ll give the guy kudos for at least trying to go legit in this letter to the editor in the East Otter Tail County Focus last week.

Rep. Mary Franson does not represent Greater Minnesota values and, by her own admission, will not have a strong voice for her constituents in House District 8B if she is re-elected.

Now, whenever a critic says their target has said something “by their own admission”, you can usually be pretty sure someone’s trying to play a rhetorical card trick; they admitted nothing of the sort.

While Rep. Franson has made embarrassing headlines nationally and statewide for, among other things, comparing her constituents who receive food assistance to wild animals (a claim she repeated even after “apologizing” for it on social media)

Now, when you’re a sportscaster, you can pretty much babble any kind of crap you want – because it’s just sports.  McFeely – like Schultz before him – seems to think politics is about the same.

But no – the smart people dispensed with that meme, too, and months ago; Franson pointed out, correctly, that long-term dependence dehumanizes people, and casts government in the role of the benevolent, responsible pet owner.   The remarks were taken out of context during a fractious session by a DFL noise machine that exists only to provide grist for their campaign mill.

And like a lot of D-list talk show hosts – and yes, my NARN pals and I are better than this – McFeely and “context” are never really on good terms:

At the event during which she repeated her comparison of assistance recipients to wild animals, Rep. Franson admitted that members of her own party did not support her and distanced themselves from her.

Yep.  During the “Animals” fracas, the House leadership shamefully backed away from Franson – one of several “ready fire aim” moments in a trying session for GOPers.

But teapot-tempests come and go; at the end of the day, always, “it’s the economy, stupid”.  McFeely takes a brisk dip into actual fact:

Despite low unemployment in Douglas and Todd counties

Wait – back up.  This Republican corner of the state is doing pretty well, you say?

Huh.

So let’s take a quick breather and set up some actual, factual history:  Representative Franson was…:

1. …elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010 on a conservative ticket…
2. …to represent a traditionally conservative Republican part of the state…
3. …that’s doing relatively well, and apparently – by dint of having sent a conservative freshman legislator to the legislature in the middle of a grueling recession – wants to keep it that way.

Just so we’ve got that straight.

McFeely:

Instead of spending time in St. Paul fighting for issues specific to her constituents – such as lowering property taxes for farms and small businesses in rural Minnesota – Rep. Franson spent her two years in the Legislature authoring bills that accomplished nothing.

Perhaps McFeely would favor us by showing us the bill where Franson raised – or declined to lower – property taxes.

Go ahead, Mike, We’ll wait.  Cough up that bill.

[Mr. McFeely – don’t look at this next statement.  Scout’s honor?  OK – all the rest of you know that property taxes are the role of county commissions and city councils.  The legislature doesn’t set property taxes.  Now, the Democrats have spent the last two years babbling about how lowering Local Government Aid inevitably raises property taxes.  McFeely would have you believe that on Franson’s watch, taxes rose as a direct, cause-and-effect consequence of lowered LGA.  It’s one of those chanting points the left throws out there to gull the ill-informed.  But, again, that’s the job of the counties and cities.  Assuming LGA was cut.  Was it?  We’ll come back to that – but I’ll give you a little spoiler; McFeely makes Ed Schultz look smart and ethical].

Got that bill, Mike?  Hint:  It’s between the snipes and the half-round squares.

———-

Next, McFeely botches history – and by “botch”, let’s be charitable and assume he just doesn’t know the actual facts involved; if he does, then he’s just lying:

In her two years in St. Paul, Rep. Franson authored 36 bills. None became law. Very few were even discussed or forwarded. Even her own party wasn’t interested in the agenda Rep. Franson was trying to push. That is the definition of an ineffective legislator.

Wait – authoring laws that don’t get passed “defines” “ineffective?”

Let’s go back to the beginning of the post; conservatives don’t believe generating new laws defines success.

But let’s go by the left’s – and McFeely’s – definition of “effectiveness”.  None of Franson’s 36 bills passed into law.

Which is exactly the same record as House Minority Leader Paul Thissen; none of the two bills he authored passed into law, either!

Or how about a more rank-and-file member?  Ryan “The Intellectual Id Of The DFL Caucus” Winkler chief-authored 22 bills.  None passed; none even came close.

And do you know what?  Neither Thissen’s 0/2, Winkler’s 0/22 or Fransen’s 0/36 are even below average – because in a typical session (for example, 2008, the latest one with statistics) over 4,000 bills are introduced, and around 100 get signed.  That’s about 1 out of 40.

In other words, McFeely tossed out a number that is in itself meaningless without context.  Just like the “Animals” comment and his “property taxes” comment; either he doesn’t know what he’s taking about and doesn’t care, or he does and he’s hoping nobody checks his facts.  Like all Democrat campaigns, he – and by extension, the Cunniff campaign that McFeely is supporting – is hoping people aren’t curious enough to poke at those numbers.

Oh, we’re not done.

———-

McFeely turns next from misleading context to just-plain-ignorance:

At the same time, Rep. Franson consistently voted to raise taxes on residents of Greater Minnesota. She supported elimination of the Market Value Homestead Credit, raising property taxes on all Minnesotans and particularly those in rural Minnesota.

MVHC was a subsidy of metro-area housing; it kept metro-area property taxes artificially low, and subsidized spending by the wastrel DFL governments in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth.  Like LGA itself, it transferred money from the parts of the state that support themselves to our basket-case metro areas.

But at least that was a chanting point with a coherent argument.  Next, McFeely wafts away into fantasy-land:

Rep. Franson sided with metropolitan legislators by failing to fight for an increase in Local Government Aid, a tool that provides property tax relief primarily for Greater Minnesota cities and towns.

Local Government Aid, as we’ve discussed in the past, was originally a way to transfer money to poor, outstate towns from the wealthy Metro, to allow them to buy some of the amenities of modern life; modern schools, roads, water treatment plants and the like.  It’s turned into a subsidy of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Duluth (although Iron Range towns get the most aid per capita).

(And while McFeely doesn’t name, and I suspect doesn’t know, the “metropolital legislators” with whom he claims Franson sided, it’s worth noting that the Metro is divided between cities that are constantly begging for more aid, and suburbs that largely receive none).

The GOP ran in 2010 on a platform of returning LGA to its original purpose – supporting smaller towns that don’t have the tax base to buy the necessities of modern government. And how’d that work?

State funding for LGA has been cut 25 percent over the last 10 years and has remained flat since 2010.  Eliminating or reducing LGA will seriously weaken regional centers like Alexandria and small cities like New York Mills.

McFeely gives a statewide number – but since McFeely’s writing about Franson’s performance in re her district, 8B, let’s ask what are the district’s specifics?

Let’s track LGA payments in 2008 and 2011 – payments, not pledges – for the three counties in Rep. Franson’s district, as well as the state averages and the metro areas (measured in per-capita dollars actually paid to the various jurisdictions).  All figures come from that noted conservative tool, the State of Minnesota:

Ah.  So that’s why McFeely gave a statewide number!  Because since 2008 – the only period Rep. Franson had any control over as a legislator – LGA actually rose in Otter Tail and Todd counties; it shrank by an insignificant amount in Douglas County, where Alexandria is. and where as McFeely himself admitted, the economy is doing better than the state average.

So if you’re a liberal?  District 8B’s LGA was steady to slightly up.  More money!  Franson was effective!

And if you’re a conservative?  LGA spending in the district was in line with the GOP’s platform, raising payments to smaller out-of-state jurisdictions that actually need it, and were the original intended target of this spending.  Franson was still effective!

And if you have a functioning BS detector?  Mike McFeely is out of his depth writing about anything that doesn’t involve throwing a ball, and is serving as a trained chimp reciting DFL chanting points he may not understand, and certainly hopes you, the voter in District 8B, won’t.

Like the following:

Under her watch, property taxes have risen sharply…

Although, as the state’s figures show, not because of anything the legislature did, least of all in District 8B.

…while she has embarrassed her constituents with controversial national headlines.

Which were cowardly manglings of context by people who are getting more and more desperate at their prospects in two weeks, and for whom female conservatives are like red capes in front of bulls.

Franson did get an 86 from the Taxpayers League, among many other spiffs from conservative groups.  She was one of the freshmen “Tea Party” class that held the line on things like spending, tax hikes, and giving money to Zygi Wilf, while erasing the deficit, reforming regulations, keeping Minnesota’s unemployment rate way below the national average, and working to reform our state’s business climate.

In short, she did what the majority of (pre-redistricting) District 11B’s voters – mostly Republican, mostly conservative – sent her to do.

And if this is how desperate her opponent, Bob Cunniff, and his campaign are getting, it looks like she’ll do the same for new district 8B.

And if you live in the area, feel free to let the East Otter Tail Focus – and Mike McFeely – know I said so.

———-

So we started the article by asking how you measure a politician.  The answer – whether you’re left or right – most likely involves doing what one is sent to the Capitol to do.  Has Mary Franson done this?  That’s for the people in her district – not talking heads from Fargo or the Twin Cities – to decide.

So how about a media figure, an uninvited pundit?

Getting one’s facts straight, or at least being honest, would be a great start.

MN 7th District representative Collin Peterson – generally regarded as a bit of a blue dog, representing a socially-conservative but farm-bill-money-hungry district – lost his long-time endorsement from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for LIfe, the state’s main pro-life group over his flip on Obamacare.

And he’s done something that’s suicide for most politicians; he’s actually said what he believes, in a video recorded at Concordia College in Moorhead of a conversation between him and a pro-life student:

In the video, Peterson, speaking to Concordia junior Kate Engstrom after posing for what he believed was a photo with her, says the MCCL is “being a bunch of extremists” and the group’s stance on the Affordable Care Act is “the end of them as an organization.”

“They’re now a completely partisan organization,” he said in the video, in response to Engstrom’s questions about the MCCL’s endorsement decision. “When you get into that position, you’re done.”

Oh, yeah – remember when Jim Oberstar referred to his detractors as a “flat earth society?”

Peterson had a similar moment; he apparently believes his pro-life constituents are teh loosers and dummeys: :

 He also said: “The only place it (the dropped endorsement) got reported is on MPR, and those people don’t listen to MPR.”

Further evidence of the same exact phenemonon that got Jim Oberstar tossed two years ago; he acts one way when he’s out and about in  his districit – but when he thinks he’s among friends, or back in DC (or when he just loses control, as Oberstar did), he turns into Mr. Hyde.

Ms. Engstrom – who I believe I have actually met – would have a bright future as a reporter, if news organizations actually hired reporters rather than DFL stenographers (I’ll add a bit of emphasis):

 Engstrom, 20, made the video with a friend. She said she approached Peterson after the event on campus featuring a handful of Democrats because she wanted to speak to him about the lack of the MCCL endorsement… ”I knew that Collin would probably not respond or tell me his actual thoughts on it if he knew it was on camera,” said Engstrom, a political science student who describes herself as a Republican. “I just thought it was really important that people would know the truth of what Collin Peterson thinks.”

And Engstrom gets the “Mr Hyde” bit too:

 She said she believes Peterson assumed she was a Democrat, “so he felt like he could say whatever he wanted.”

She said she found the remarks insulting.

“It made it sound like we were some sort of weird extremists,” said Engstrom, who opposes abortion. “He always claims that he’s a moderate, and in my eyes he’s not really a moderate.”

If you live in the 7th CD, you know that Collin Peterson has been the unassailable blue-dog giant for a generation, now.

But if there were ever a time to dig deep and give of your time and money to support  Lee Byberg, this is it.

Because you’re not “extremists”, and you deserve to be represented by someone who knows it.