Category Archives: Minnesota Politics

Posts about politics in Minnesota

If At First History Doesn’t Go Your Way? Rewrite It Again!

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Good thing Rep. Phillips grew up with a silver foot in his mouth. If he’d had to succeed on his merits, he’d be living in a homeless camp by the Quarry.

Example:

Show the world you know nothing about history by bellowing on social media you’re utterly ignorant.

Uh,, no. You got 1 out of 4. Roosevelt – the president who set the stage for Wilson’s “progressive” orgy – probably qualifies.

Lincoln didn’t promote slavery, so morally-consistent modern Democrats would not know what to do with him.

Jefferson would be a Libertarian; he’d hang out with Justin Amash and Rand Paul.

Washington? Someone who was given the chance at unfettered power, even declaring himself king, and demurred in favor of a constitutional Republic? Not a chance. He’d be a proto-Reagan conservative.

And JFK would get kicked out of today’s DFL. HHH was all but kicked out of the DFL of the 1970s, for crying out loud.

CD3 – please do better.

Law School

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If there are two bright spots in this current legislative session, it is the emergence of Harry Niska and Walter Hudson, as two of the best state legislators in the United States.

Here, Walter finishes the job Harry started, giving the single best explanation of why the DFL, and the StarTribune, are lying about the removal of language, regarding pedophilia from state statute.

Pass this around, like it’s hot.

Irrelevant

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Members of the House of Representatives routinely vote for each other.

The Minnesota House’s hours-long floor sessions are often mundane and monotonous, the chamber regularly half full at best. But when members get to voting on an amendment or a bill, the chamber suddenly looks as bustling as a bee hive.

Members press the green and red voting buttons at their desks to cast a “yes” or “no” vote. But some of them aren’t just recording their own vote. Many stretch, lean over and press the voting buttons for their seatmates, who are gone.

Then, a handful get out of their seats to make sure all the empty seats around them have a vote cast.

Where are the missing members? And why are they surrendering their vote to their seatmates?

Which is technically a violation of the rules, but hey, rules are for peasants.

The reps involved have their, er, reasons:

House members say voting for one another is a longstanding practice and no cause for alarm — though it’s technically against the rules.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, doesn’t believe the practice compromises the legitimacy of the vote.

Walter Hudson goes into the reason behind the reason:

This – the serious work being argued out behind closed doors by the Governor, Speaker and Senate Majority leader, has been a problem since at least the early years of the Dayton regime, if not longer.

The Pandemic made it worse; the state was in effect run by a junta, and the Legislature was of no more use than the Supreme Soviet.

That’s something for a future, good government to fix, if we ever get one.

Its Time

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To: MN Democrat Something Something Labor Party

From: Mitch Berg, Stochastic Moderate

Re: Truth In Advertising

All,

Many of us have been talking with you for years about removing the “farmer“ from your official party name.

With this speech by Rep. Lucy Rehm?

“Solar panels are the new corn?”

Its time. Lose it.

That is all.

Unexpectedly

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SCENE: December 2020.

THE DFL: “The state has a $17.5 billion dollar surplus. This is a monument to the wisdom of the Walz/Flanagan Administration, and will be used to move forward as One Minnesota…

NORMIES: Uh, the “surplus”” is a combination of one-time or shor-time stimulus money from the Feds, and tax revenue driven by people spending all that stimulus money. It’s not permanent. But I bet you people are going to turn all this one time money into permanent spending, aren’t you?

THE DFL: The answer is, go forward, inclusive equity one people one leader one Minnesota!

NORMIES: That’s not an answer…

SCENE: March 2023

THE DFL: The “surplus” was always one time money, and we need to raise taxes”

NORMIES: Uh, that’s what we said.

THE DFL: As always, let’s go forward, inclusive equity one people one leader one Minnesota!

Just A Little Day Brightener

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It’s a gloomy, cloudy Monday morning.

And yet my heart is dancing.

Because it’s another day alive in God’s creation? Sure. Goes without saying, but needs to be repeated anyway.

But beyond that? There’s this:

It’s the Anoka County Attorney slapping down Jamie Becker-Finn over the proposed “safe storage” bill, which would have required all guns to be stored unloaded, with ammo locked up separately from the guns, and required a carry permit to have an uncased, loaded gun in the home, allowing police wide latitude to barge in and check on the above.

It’s fairly clearly a Fourth Amendment shortcut. It would disproportionately affect Black and Latino gun owners. It’s patently unconstitutional.

And any day that starts with Rep. Becker-Finn getting water squirted on her nose is a good, glorious day.

Our Semi-Constitutional Monarchy

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What says “One MInnesota” better than living in a million dollar lakeside mansion on the taxpayers dime?

As Minnesotans stagger through inflation, gas prices and an economy that is teetering on the brink of crisis, the state is putting $6 million into repairing the govenor’s mansion. The governor and his family will be parked in a lakeside house on Sunfish Lake, for $17,000 a month, for 18 months.

Why so posh?

We’re told it’s partly practical:

The state had a 17-point list of qualifications and indicated that the property would need to have security features, be relatively close to the Capitol and be open to “official ceremonial functions,” as is required by state law.

Now, I’m no expert, but I suspect the state’s got no shortage of suitable places for “official ceremonial functions”. We’ll come back to that.

And, we’re told, it’s partly security:

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, the top DFLer in the Minnesota Legislature, said she understands why space, security and neighborhood considerations make temporary lodging for the governor so expensive.

“When you have folks going to protest a governor at his house, you have the entire block of people who are there, not only the governor’s wife and children but the neighbors who didn’t necessarily sign up for this,” she said. “So, I’m not surprised that it’s an expensive proposition to house a governor in a secure location.”

As Hortman’s fellow DFLer Lisa Bender said, public safety is a privilege.

As someone whose house was on the edge of the DFL’s “room to destroy”, I think it’d be perfectly appropriate for the Walzes to get a place in the city, subject to the DFL’s capricious notion of law enforcement. Maybre someplace up at Plymouth and Sheridan.

Governor Klink responded with his usual grace and evenhandedness:

“I’m pretty agnostic, where I lay my head,” Walz said. “I certainly welcome if the legislators’ job is oversight. Go do it. It’s better than banning books. It’s better than demonizing kids. Go do that oversight. I accept whatever they find.”

Speaking of “doing the job” – Governor Klink has been making himself pretty scarce. He hasn’t responded by my repeated invitations – not even a curt “F*** Off” – but even the largely DFL-friendly Blois Olson:

Olson is being a bit of a pollyanna; their strategy is to stay within the bubble wrap; the Governor comes out of the mansion to do carefully stage-managed dog and pony shows like going to pizzerias and donut shops and the occasional train derailment, surrounded by his comms people and nice tame social media droogs, for some cheesecake photos, and then it’s back in isolation.

“Official ceremonial functions?” All the governor does is stuff his face while “Lieutenant Governor” Flanagan looks on, beaming like a proud mom.

They really do think they are royalty, don’t they?

Sticking It To The Man

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A friend of the blog, a member of a public employee union in the healthcare field, emails:

My silly colleagues are having a vote to authorize a strike (which will probably win).

Our contract that they’re negotiating already has won 6 months of maternity/paternity leave, 220 hours of PTO being carried over year to year, our company paying 85% of our health insurance, we get to remain salaried, so we don’t have to punch in/out, we got an increase in the number of people we can allow off for PTO per day, bereavement pay for extended family members, and the company has agreed to a guaranteed 2% raise for the next 3 years.

But, we’re voting to strike because the company isn’t agreeing to a $12 pay increase with a 6% pay raise yearly guaranteed.

Eye roll- glad we’re not as greedy as the company’s corporate heads- you know, the ones who per the union’s own words are at a ghastly 12 to 1 employee pay ratio…

220 hours of PTO carried over?

I’m trying to think if I’ve had 220 hours of PTO in the past two years.

How I Spent My Saturday

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I did a prerecorded show, so I could attend the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus’s annual (after a few years off) Rally at the Capitol.

Huge crowd.

Great speakers – Rob Doar, Bryan Strawser, Reverend Tim Christopher, and an array of pro-2nd Amendment legislators.

Rob – the MNGOC’s political director – was able to announce that most of the DFL’s gun bills – the semi-auto/”Assault Weapons” ban, the magazine limits, banning guns for people under 21 – are dead this session.

But Universal Registration and Red Flag Confiscation bills could still leak through. Hence the rally – and Rob’s injunction that “we need ten of you for every one that’s here”.

If you’re not in the MNGOC already, consider this your engraved invitation.

By the way: I’ve been to a lot of these rallies – like, all of them, ever – and I’ve never seen a police presence like I did on Saturday.

State Patrol, all over the main level. There was an equal number of very bored officers at the lower entrace. There were SP and SPPD cars parked at most of the. intersections within a block or two of the Capitol.

Rumor had it that the cops had been told to expect trouble. No specifics about who was going to cause the trouble, or who felt it; I suspect the Speaker of the House and the Governor indulged their base and wanted to put on a show of force.

Notwithstanding, ,the cops were universally friendly, even helpful. Not to project, but they knew that nobody was going to cause problems.

As Predicted

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Last December 8, when the DFL was crowing about having a “$17.6 Billion Surplus”, I noted tha the so-called “surplus” was nothing but bIllions of dollars in federal Covid stimulus dollars, routine Minnesota DFL overtaxation (plumped up by receipts driven up by inflation in the cost of the goods being taxed, and that all of that that taxation and inflation was going on over an epipandemic surge in stimulus-swollen consumer spending that would end with the subsidies.

And I predicted:

  • The DFL will turn that “$27.6 Billion in Surplus” into permanent spending
  • The economy will slow into recession (as even the DFL’s cheerleaders in their bespoke press are starting to observe).
  • Without the Covid stimuli, and with the economy contracting, tax receipts will crash again. “Unexpectedly”
  • The state will have a multibillion dollar deficit by 2026, probably 2024.

I think it’s fair to say the first bullet is in the 10 ring:

“Seemingly”.

Of course, some are taking this as a cue to celebrate:

No word from Rep. Stevenson if making the trains run on time is next.

My ultimate prediction – billions in deficits – is now inevitable.

No, it’s not just me. Walter Hudson:

So Lets Make Sure We’re Clear On This

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Being. a good parent (or parent-state) means making sure kids can’t get tobacco, or tobacco subvsitutes like vape, even if the vape is a way of quitting smoking (as it was for at least one young person close to me)…

…but making absolutely certain they can chemically and surgically neuter themselves without adult consent…:

The states are the “laboratories of democracy”, and ours is run by Dr. Frankenstein.

There Are Too Many Potential Titles For This Post To Choose One, And I’m Trying To Be A Better Person Than That Anyway

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Governor Walz is “turning power over” to Lt Governor Flanagan for a few hours while he has a colonoscopy.

I don’t not expect DFL goons to roam the streets looking for wreckers while she’s in power. Fingers crossed, everyone. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

However, if all goes well, hopefully we’ll get word as to whether the endoscopist found the code for the model that predicted 20-70,000 dead Minnesotans by July 2020.

SITD Bonus: Rejected names for the post:

  • They Found Esme Murphy
  • Endoscopy Discovers Every Metro Newsroom
  • “Nurse, What’s With All The Lip Marks?”
  • Governor’s Riot Strategy Found
  • MN Media Metaphor Alert

But again – I’m trying to be a better person than that. 

So Many Questions

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The Strib notes that the DFL is going on exactly the orgy of “progressive” legislating I (and everyone with a brain and a useful education) knew they would.

But I come not to talk policy.

I come to take optics.

Look at the photo:

I’ve got a couple of questions:

  • Is this the most badly posed “joy” photo you’ve ever seen?
  • What’s Lt. Governor Flanagan doing, not in costume?
  • Am I the only one who thinks these dailiy photo ops, with staged crowds of grinning rent-a-constituents, are starting to look just a liiiiitle North Korean?
  • Why does the governor look like his endoscopist told him he’s going to have to do the two-day cleanout process for his next colonoscopy?

Go Time

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Governor Klink released his gun control proposals yesterday.

Did he propose to push metro prosecutors to use the sentence enhancement for using guns to commit crime?

Perish the thought, simple peasant.

No, the usual California-stye gruel: magazine capacity limits, age limits, and most importantly gun registration [1].

It’s time to turn out.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus is holding its annual “Lobby Day” on Thursday morning. Come on down to the Capitol. Members of the Caucus will meet you, show you how to find your Rep and Senator in the various office buildings, and help you represent gun owners, face to face, to our legislature.

The legislature takes these days seriously since they know that unlike the astroturf clutches of biddies with ELCA Hair that ProtectMN and Moms Want Action sends waddling around the place, we represent a hell of a lot of actual voters that consider the 2nd Amendment a litmus test. And there are a lot of us out there. Enough to flip a chamber or two in 2024? Yep.

Hope to see you there on Thursday morning!

[1] They’re called “Universal Background Checks” – but the only way to make them “universal” is to keep track of which guns have been background-checked. This creates a set of linked data points – or, as they’re called in the information management business, a “database” . Ringing a bell, yet?

Now Be Thankful

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Amy Klobuchar should be thankful to the feminist goddess that Tina Smith is in Congress.

Because as long as she is, A-Klo is not the dumbest Senator in our delegation.

Shot:

Chaser:

To be fair, Smith says it because she knows Democrat voters don’t do critical thought.

This Is The DFL Majority In Action

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The Senate voted to allow water bottles on the floor of the chamber.

After 45 minutes of debate.

And when I say “debate“ I mean this sort of thing from my “Senator“, Sandi Pappas.

Weird. I didn’t think Democrats believed in slippery slopes?

As someone else put it:

Pouring Water Next To The Fire

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A friend of the blog emails:

Explain to me how adding more bureaucrats terrified of offending a DFL constituency will prevent fraud committed by a DFL constituency protected by the bureaucracy

I don’t think the governor or his staff read this space, so I will try to explain it.

It will work, because we are moving forward together as One Minnesota. with equity and reproductive rights for Minnesotans of all genders.

I may have the details wrong, but that’s what I remember from the campaign.

The Minnesota Way

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Governor Walz released his plan to address, rampant fraud in his executive branch.

Long story short: transfer more money to the political class.

Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment who has closely tracked the case, said the proposals mainly consist of “hiring more bureaucrats.”

“That so many different state agencies are involved points to part of the problem: too many cooks, too many fiefdoms, and no central location where the buck stops,” Glahn wrote in an article this week. 

That should solve things.

Proof Of Concept

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How certain is the DFL that at least a plurality of Minnesota voters just aren’t very good at logic, civics or critical thinking?

Sure enough that they’re treating the $17 Billion “Surplus” a big win for progressive governance, and proof of some divine mandate:

What it actually is, of course, is a combination of:

  • BIllions of dollars in federal Covid stimulus dollars
  • The normal Minnesota DFL overtaxation…
  • …with receipts driven up by inflation in the cost of the goods being taxed
  • All that taxation and inflation going on over an epipandemic surge in stimulus-swollen consumer spending

Mark my words – and I have marked them myself, with “to dos” on my calendar on the first Mondays ijn December of 2024 and 2026: the following will happen:

We’ll check back on this.  Oh, yes we will. 

Downtown’s Back, Baybee! (Part II)

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Close on the news that two of downtown Minneapolis is nicer office towers are going up for auction, to avoid foreclosure?

The Hilton, one of downtown‘s premier hotels, and site of the NARN‘s first big surprise triumph (the 2004 debate party between George Bush and John Kerry, where we expected and planned for 100 attendees, and got more like 700)

Yeah, things are looking up downtown, aren’t they?

Be Still, And Know That We Are Government

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To: Minnesota Peasants. Er, Citize…Subjects. Let’s go with Subjects.
From: Minnesota State Government
Re: Take Comfort

Your paycheck is worth 8% less than it was last year.

The price of food and gas is waaaay up.

Your rent is going up. Lots.

The cost of borrowing has more than doubled.

The schools are failing – and your government blames you for it, and for everything else.

But don’t trouble your hearts, simple peasants. Because while you may suffer, your government is doing just fine.

Because while peasants like you come and go, State Government is forever.

And in that, you should take comfort.

Signed
Minnesota State Government

Bogarted

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The DFL ran the table in the last election.

If they want something passed, they will likely pass it (exceptions exist, and we’ll be talking about them).

Marijuana legalization should be a slam dunk. There’s no need for the party to mobilize its base to get out and pimp for bread and circuses…uh, I mean weed.

And yet they’re doing this:

Seems odd, doesn’t it? Coming up with weed merch for a measure that was a campaign “promise”?

Fearless prediction: the DFL will draw up a weed bill – or amend it onto an omnibus that won’t pass with certain amendments, including weed, included. The DFL will blame the GOP, and use it in two years to get the strung-along weed-voter dupes to trudge to the polls again in 2024.

Place Yer Bets

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It’s finally Election Day and we can all breathe easier now that we won’t have to see Angie Craig’s alternating rictus grin/contorted face of rage multiple times a day on television, social media and other media. But will we see Craig going forward? While I sincerely hope not, it’s difficult to know. So let’s hazard a few guesses on how it will play out today and in the coming days.

Governor: Tim Walz deserves to be tossed out on his well-padded posterior, but I suspect he and Peggy Flanagan will survive. Scott Jensen ran a decent campaign but it’s difficult to overcome all paid advertising from Alida Messinger and the free advertising from the Esme Murphys of the local media.

Secretary of State: Steve Simon is a smooth operator and Kim Crockett is not. Should those traits matter? No, but they do. Simon wins.

Attorney General: We have had the DFL Lucys pull this football away before. Recent polling suggests Keith Ellison is in trouble and that Jim Schultz is leading. Do you believe it? I don’t, but I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Auditor: If the Republicans are allowed to win a statewide office, it will likely be this one. Republican Ryan Wilson has run a fine campaign and you can’t spell blah without DFLer Julie Blaha. The auditor has limited power but a committed auditor can at least turn over a few rocks the DFL would prefer to keep stationary. Wilson wins.

CD-2: While there are 8 congressional districts in Minnesota, apparently only the 2nd is being contested this year. We’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds of ads featuring the odious incumbent, Angie Craig, and her rival Tyler Kistner. It’s been a nasty race and Craig has serious money behind her. She’s vulnerable because of redistricting, but it’s not clear to me that Kistner has made the sale. A left wing veteran’s group has also run some stolen valor ads in the final weekend that may affect the outcome; I have not been able to determine if their claims are accurate, but if Kistner loses, that last-minute attack might make the difference. As an aside, I really wish we’d seen Republicans make more of an effort in CD-3, where it’s been entirely too easy for Dean Phillips.

Elsewhere: Control of the House and Senate are at stake and the deep unpopularity of the Democrats will almost certainly mean Congress will be in Republican hands in 2023. A few guesses on races in other states:

Wisconsin: while the population and demographics of Wisconsin are similar to Minnesota, Wisconsin is not a blue state. Milwaukee and Madison are lefty enclaves, but their overall population is less than 40% of the total population, while the Twin Cities are about 60% of the total population here. As a result, it is easier for Republicans to win. Ron Johnson, the incumbent Republican senator, is a bit on the crusty side, but he’s a smart, effective campaigner and looks to be a good bet to win against his opponent, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, a gladhander in the Hakeem Jeffries/Barack Obama style, but less effective. In the governor’s race, Republican challenger Tim Michels is also a bit crusty, but the fluke incumbent governor, Democrat Tony Evers, is an ineffective milquetoast. Look for the Republicans to win both. Continue reading →

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Rhetoric

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Gotta tell you something that bugs the bejeebers out of me.

Governor Walz’s campaign motto in both elections has been “One Minnesota”.

Now, if you’ve studied History *and* German, that slogan sounds all too close to “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer” – “One People, One Empire, One Leader”. It was the motto of…uh, a regime 80 years ago that left behind some apocalyptic historical, social and political baggage.

In 2018, the slogan was merely annoying – one of those things the kids today refer to as “Microagressions”, which is another way of saying “something that people normally suck it up and chalk up to the cognitive dissonance of human communication”.

But after four years featuring the most incredible peacetime seizure of government power in history, and a long spate of politicized violence, not to mention a campaign of “othering” dissenters from the current ruling party as “Fascists” – the same, morally and personally, as the Godwins Law convicts in the second paragraph up above – it’s not hard to wonder if “One Minnesota” is a warm, fuzzy inclusive thing, or a warning that you’re either *with* “One Minnesota” or you’re against it; an invitation, as Elvis Costello put it, “shut up or get cut up”.

The President’s speech in September, referring to half the country as “Facists”, is exactly what regimes do when they want to draw a wide, exclusive “with us or against us” line through society.

I thought about that while reading this blood-curdling story about the Russian war crimes in Bucha – where they “cleansed” the city of Ukrainians accused by their regime of being “Nazis” and “Fascists”.

Today it’s Ukraine – but it’s the same dynamic that happened in Iraq in the 2000s, and Rwanda in the ’90s, Northern Ireland in the ’70s, China in the ’60s, Greece in the ’40s and ’50s, Finland (ffs?) in the 1920’s, even Kansas before the CIvil War; if you were on the wrong side of the “Us vs. Them” line when “Them” came through town, you and your family…died. Horribly. Then and there, bodies dumped in the street as a warning that we’re now living in One Iraq/Rwanda/Ulster/Greece/Finland/Kansas.

Given the rhetoric we are seeing today – I’ll charitable and say “on both sides”, but my heart’s not really in it – a slogan like “One Minnesota” is just too…redolent. That’s a good word.

You indiscriminately refer to your opposition – political, social, whatever – as “Fascists”, “Nazis” or whatever mortal enemy, against whom your society fought a life or death battle in living memory, that your culture recognizes.

Something causes the gloves to come off. Angry tweets – aimed at people who’ve had that label from that mortal enemy piled onto them – turn to angry words, to angry actions…

…and eventually, to mass murder.

But after the rhetoric of the past few years, escalated over the past few months, it’s not hard to see it happening in a place like