Join Mitch Berg, Brad Carlson and Ed Morrissey live on the Northern Alliance Radio Network at the Minnesota State GOP Convention in St. Cloud.

We’ll be talking with…:

• Chris Fields, MNGOP candidate against Keith Ellison in CD5
• Marianna Stebbins, architect of the Ron Paul surge that’s had such an impact on the MNGOP lately,
• Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard
• Former State Rep Laura Brod
• Brandon Carnack, candidate for HD64A
• Much much more as the day goes on.

Join us from 1-3PMO on AM1280, or on the webstream!

You want bipartisan action that actually benefits the taxpayer?

Here’s your chance.

There is one more chance to stop the Vikings Stadium and send the bill back to the Legislature; convince the Minneapolis City Council to vote against the larceny of their Convention Center budget.

There are two votes that are considered swing-y on this issue:

Ward 1 – Kevin Reich
(612) 673-2201
kevin.reich@minneapolismn.gov

Ward 10 – Meg Tuthill
Meg.Tuthill@minneapolismn.gov
(612) 673-2210

Call ’em.  Politely ask them to reconsider the organized pillaging of the state Constitution and the Minnepolis city charter by Zygi Wilf and his well-heeled friends.

If we can win this, then we can get this back to the Legislature…

…where we can then tell our GOP legislative leadership to grow some cojones and tie the tax reform bill to the stadium, or not bother coming back to work in February.

There is opportunity, here.  Let’s make the most of it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dayton and his minions in the paid PR racket – and I count the editorial board of the Strib among that crowd – are doing what they can to label this past legislature a “Do-Nothing” one.

It’d be more accurate, naturally, to call it “The Sandbagged Legislature”.  Now, I’m not going to say all of “Governor” Dayton’s vetoes, even for bills with astonishing bipartisan support, even for bills Dayton himself had claimed to support, seemed to run according to some kind of script or another.  But I will say that if you look at the video closely, you can see strings attached to his hands and jaw, being pulled by Alita Messinger, Elliiot Seid and Javier Morillo.

But let’s take a moment to go over the winners and losers from this past few weeks in the legislature:

Losers

• Small businesses – who lost out on the front-loaded sales tax exemption, the angel investor tax credit, and reforms to Minnesota’s dismally-high business property taxes.
• Students – who, if you accept that the “Shift” that has been a centerpiece of DFL budgetary policy for over a decade actually harms them, surely must have been hurt by Dayton’s veto of the GOP plan to accelerate the repayment of the “borrowed” money.  Right?
• Private sector workers, whose businesses needed the tax help, and whose jobs are in that much more jeopardy today than they were six months ago.

Winners

• Zygi Wilf – The resale value on his real estate investment has just gotten plumped up astronomically, on the backs of you, the taxpayer.  Especially in DFL-addled Minneapolis.  Hey, all you foreclosed DFL-voting homeowners on the North Side – hope those warm thanks from Zygi Wilf and Jared Allen keep you warm when the Sheriff’s moving y our stuff out on the lawn!
• Minneapolis and Saint Paul – who got a slew of little plums and bailouts.  Thanks, all you outstate rubes!

That’s a start, anyway.

It’s become clear this past few days what “Governor” Dayton’s only real goal has been this past session: provide chanting points for the DFL and its paid messaging service, Alliance For A Better Minnesota.

Well, that and providing Wilfare.

Yesterday, Dayton vetoed a tax bill aimed at helping jump-start small business:

The plan would have given tax breaks for research and development, investment in new businesses, historic preservation and the Mall of America expansion. Tax rebates on capital equipment purchases would have been replaced by upfront tax breaks to small businesses purchasing capital equipment. Included was a provision Dayton sought: giving tax breaks to employers who hired veterans.

And in this lies the three biggest lessons of this entire fiasco of a session. They are simple, but apparently not simple enough to penetrate some moderate Republicans’ heads:

1. The DFL – and especially the media that supports them – loves “bipartisanship”.  Provided it’s solely on the part of Republicans.
2. The DFL’s goal isn’t improving Minnesota, or making a better life for Minnesotans.  It’s getting and keeping power.
3. To get the power back that they lost in 2010, the DFL is engaging in a Big Lie – really, a series of small lies, aimed at winning over the votes of the naive, the addled, the stupid, the ingenuous, the disingenuous and the illiterate.

That third bit?  Right here:

But Dayton said the bill tilted too heavily toward business, to the virtual exclusion of homeowners, renters, farmers and senior citizens…”There is no question that Minnesota businesses have been hit hard by recent property tax increases,” he wrote. “But so has everyone else! … I remain committed to broad-based, comprehensive property tax relief for all property taxpayers, including — but not limited exclusively to — businesses.”

And there’s a Big Lie.  Dayton knows that property taxes are set by local government.  They – accountable at the lowest, most intimate level with their taxpayers – control their own spending.  Dayton, like all the bobbleheaded leftybloggers who also get their chanting points from Alliance For A Better Minnesota, is trying to convince just enough of the ill-informed that this is not to to eke out a legislative victory.

And here’s the message I want to make sure gets out:

After weeks of intense lobbying, state business leaders were unhappy with the veto.

Jobs – real jobs that help the economy grow, not state jobs – come from business.  Now, I’ve heard some business owners say they are disgusted by the performance of the MNGOP in this past session,.

In response, here are  your two answers:

• Yesterday, we noted that the GOPers that were sent to kick butt for lower taxes have been largely holding their ground.
• Here, in this veto, you see the bloody conundrum; sending the GOP home this November to “teach the party a lesson” will leave Mark Dayton in complete control.

If you are a Minnesota businessperson, the lesson is clear:  if you are Zygi Wilf, government is here to serve you.  If you are not?  Then government is here to tax you, regulate you, to force you to unionize…

…and eventually strangle you.

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

Which is politics, and to be expected.

But it’s also at least in part wrong.

Hear me out here.

———-

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

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

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

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

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

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

———-

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

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

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

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

Senate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on that at noon today.

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

I’ve got a few episodes all plotted out.

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

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

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

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

No, the Strib say so:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or until someone tells them “no”.

Which would devastate nobody…

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

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

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

But they graze up against the truth at least briefly:

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

And there you.

“Bipartisan” legislation.  Everybody wins…

…but the taxpayer.

And that, as they say, is all.

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

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

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

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

It’s a lie, of course.

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

This, really, shows several things:

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

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

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

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

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

I’m going to spend a little time going over the votes of the Republicans who supported the stadium.

Let’s start with the Senate.

You can look at a fairly interesting map of the votes in the House and Senate; the map isn’t entirely unpredictable; third-ring exurban Republicans voted (mostly) against it; Republicans in swingy districts, and moderates, voted “yes”.

Let’s break ’em down:

Democrats voting yes

I’m not going to bother analyzing them – they’re all hopeless anyway.

Bakk (Cook); Bonoff (Minnetonka); Cohen (St. Paul); Goodwin (Columbia Heights); Harrington (St. Paul); Higgins (Minneapolis); Kelash (Minneapolis); Koenen (Clara City); Langseth (Glyndon); Latz (St. Louis Park); Metzen (South St. Paul); Pappas (St. Paul); Reinert (Duluth); Rest (New Hope); Saxhaug (Grand Rapids); Sheran (Mankato); Sieben (Newport); Skoe (Clearbrook); Sparks (Austin); Stumpf (Plummer); Tomassoni (Chisholm); Wiger (Maplewood)

Democrats voting no

Now, I’m pretty sure Mark Dayton has to be loving the fact that the GOP is the party tearing itself apart over this – the only eight DFLers voted against the bill:  Dibble (Minneapolis); Dziedzic (Minneapolis); Eaton (Brooklyn Center); Hayden (Minneapolis); Lourey (Kerrick); Marty (Roseville); McGuire (Falcon Heights); Torres Ray (Minneapolis)

Republicans voting no

No arguments here.  They’re the good guys and gals:

Benson (Ham Lake); Brown (Becker); Chamberlain (Lino Lakes); Dahms (Redwood Falls); Daley (Eagan); DeKruif (Madison Lake); Gazelka (Brainerd); Gerlach (Apple Valley); Hall (Burnsville); Hann (Eden Prairie); Hoffman (Vergas); Kruse (Brooklyn Park); Lillie (Lake Elmo); Limmer (Maple Grove); Newman (Hutchinson); Ortman (Chanhassen); Parry (Waseca); Thompson (Lakeville); Vandeveer (Forest Lake); Wolf (Spring Lake Park)

Carlson (Bemidji); Fischbach (Paynesville); Gimse (Willmar); Howe (Red Wing); Ingebrigtsen (Alexandria); Jungbauer (East Bethel); Koch (Buffalo); Magnus (Slayton); Michel (Edina); Miller (Winona); Nelson (Rochester); Nienow (Cambridge); Pederson (St. Cloud); Robling (Jordan); Rosen (Fairmont); Senjem (Rochester)

I have to say I’d hoped for much better from Niennow, who has been as solid a supporter of the taxpayer as there is (UPDATE:  And rightly so.  Nienow’s vote was apparently a parliamentary dodge.  My apologies).  And I didn’t expect much from a few of the others – especially the retiring Michel, who has nothing to lose – sad to say.

But for the rest?

I think an explanation is in order.

It looks like the stadium is a done deal.  The fat lady is warming up in the locker room.

And people – Republicans, mostly, although there are exceptions – are angry about it.   Some are angry enough to start a Facebook group to yak about un-endorsing Legislators (Republicans, naturally, mostly) who voted for the stadium.

Now, setting up Facebook pages is easy and cheap.  Primarying legislators is work, and expensive.   Keep it all in context.

But there is a valid point, there; Republicans ran on a “fiscal responsibility” platform – and then caved in to a billionaire seeking Wilfare.

There is a valid response; the team tapped exploited this state’s boundless reserves of sentiment for our team.  And they exploited the key fact about Mark Dayton; he was elected by the stupid, and Dayton and his people know how to make the stupid turn out.  Daily during the stadium debate yahoos in purple staggered about the halls of the capitol and wrote beer-stained letters and misspelled but irate emails demanding that the stadium pony up for their recreation, their “tradition” (of losing), “their” team.  And that adds up to votes.  Stupid, entitled, spoiled-rotten votes?  Yep.  And they count just as much as the votes of smart, or at least ethical, people.

And the bitch of it is this; a legislator can have voted right on every single issue – the budget, taxes, deregulation – but if they’re threatened with losing office to a worthless DFL challenger who puts on a purple cap and bellows on cue, what the hell good is any of it?

Republicans who voted for the stadium owe the voter an explanation.  There are a few I’m willing to accept; if a conservative with a 75+ rating from the Taxpayers League is in a district where he or she is up by less than five in a district full of pinheads who dress up like vikings, I’ll buy it.

More either this noon or tomorrow, depending on how much I like putting the numbers together.

To: Minnesota Vikings
From:  Mitch Berg – Bears Fan
Re:  Your Fiscal Plans

Dear Mr. Wilf,

if having “Mitch Berg” come to your new bit of political swag stadium and spend money on user fees, or going to some pull tab machine to lose a pre-planned amount of money to pay for the stadium improvements to your investment on the public dime is in any part of your plans, please subtract from your plans appropriately.  Not going to happen.  You will not see one voluntary dime from me.

(I was going to add “If any of my legislators vote for this bit of legislative larceny, I’ll work tirelessly to remove their lame asses”, but I think you know I’m “represented” by Sandy Pappas and Rhea Montgomery, so I’ll be working tirelessly against them anyway).

I’ll be at Alary’s with the Bears fans.  That’s a private sector business.

Unless they demand money from the state to pay for improvements to their real estate.   Then I’ll tube them too.

The Vikings may suck, they may in the Super Bowl.  But you, Zygi, will never voluntarily get a dime from me.

That is all.

It’s been popping up on leftyblogs and leftytweets for the past couple of days – the Minnesota GOP is “Anti-NFL”.

It’s odd that Democrats in Minnesota have picked National Football League to rally around, given their long history of union-busting, affiliations with organized crime, and – most germane, here in Minnesota – making a huge industry out of jacking up states and cities for taxpayer-funded subsidies to support the one-percentiest people of all, professional football owners and players.

The NFL have developed a routine; demand the public pay for stadiums (so they and their owners don’t have to).  When taxpayers and the lawmakers they elect balk, exploit “fan loyalty” (the greatest source of wasted energy in the universe) by threatening to move the team to some other city.  Play the local political parties against one another, like colonials playing tribes against each other, to browbeat the politicians into caving in.

Naturally, Mark Dayton and the DFL, driven by pure cynicism as they are, have taken the bait.  “The GOP will let the Vikings leave!”, they whine.  “They’re part of our cultural legacy!”

And it’s true.

They’re part of that rancid little corner of our “cultural legacy” that says “Give me something for nothing!  Take other peoples’ earnings to pay for my recreation!  My and my family’s obsession with a billionaire’s enterprise justifies taking money from you and your family, by force.  Skål Vikings, suckers!”

So yeah.  I’m anti-NFL. Zygi Wilf and Roger Goodell can, and should, pay for the stadium by themselves; he can dig it out of  his pocket, float a private bond paid for out of proceeds from Vikings enterprise revenue and tapping the vast amounts of private equity that’s been sitting on the sidelines for years.  Or offering stock in a Vikings Stadium enterprise, complete with shopping, parking rental and hospitality, that would be a license to print money.  Or from charging drifters for illicit services at bus stops, for all I care.

But if you care about what’s right, and moral, and ethical?  Everyone should be “Anti-NFL’.

The NFL’s racket has to stop.  Someone has to stand on principle.  If not us, now, then who and when?

$77 per ticket per game.

That’s what the taxpayers will be paying to subsidize the Vikings stadium if the legislature caves in on the deal.

I’m getting those figures from that teabagging wingnut John Marty:

If the bill for the Minnesota Vikings new stadium passes the cost to taxpayers will be $77.30 per ticket, per game, for 30 years, according to an analysis by state senator John Marty, who submitted his findings to his colleagues yesterday (see his full report below). If the taxpayers of Minnesota think $77.30 is too much, Marty has even worse news: the real cost is much greater because his calculation does not include the value of the property tax exemption on the stadium and the parking ramps, nor the value of the sales tax exemption on construction materials.

Never thought I’d post a letter from John Marty that I agreed with – but here you go.

Letter 2.From.sen.Marty

In the meantime, Governor Dayton is holding a lot of key reform proposals – tax reform, LIFO – hostage behind a crowd of chanting purple-clad bobos who’d light their charcoal with the Bill of Rights to get the taxpayers to pay for their recreation.

And pay.

And pay.

If we don’t stop the NFL’s ongoing plunder of state and city taxpayers, who will?

Because if we pay for it now, they’ll be back in 31 years looking for another one, just about the time we finish paying $77 a freaking seat for the one we don’t have yet.

As noted this morning, the Fourth Congressional District GOP made a bunch of money at its convention on April 21.  Like, a lot more than usual; $11K versus the usual $5-6K (of which a couple thousand goes to renting the hall and paying other incidentals for running the event).

That should be a lot of money going to 4th CD candidates, including endorsed congressional candidate Tony Hernandez.  It was in that spirit – having a new start in the 4th CD – that the money was given (bear in mind that only aboiut $6K of that came from actual delegate admission fees; the rest was above and beyond what was required to attend).

But a little bird told me over the weekend that there have been discussions among the new CD4 GOP Executive Committee about spending that windfall to help send CD4’s national convention delegates to Tampa.

Now, I was on the 4th CD’s “Nominations Committee”, which vetted candidates for all CD offices – delegates to the national convention as well as executive committee offices.   One of the questions we asked – along with “do you have anything on your record that could be used to embarass the 4th CD GOP?”, because that’s how the DFL and media roll – was “if you’re elected delegate to the national convention, can you afford the $3-5,000 it takes to attend”, between registraiton fees, travel, food, lodging, and the de rigeur $1,000+ donation to the party.  There were some among the new crowd that thought the party paid for this sort of thing.

No. Not even when times are good at the state party, which, perhaps you’ve heard, they’re not.

Over the weekend, a source with knowledge of the inner workings of the new 4th CD GOP executive committee’s inner workings told me that there was a plan afoot to divert that windfall toward helping the 4th CD’s national convention delegates get to Tampa.   According to this source, the CD’s new chairman felt that giving $5,000 to Tony Hernandez would be “flushing money down the drain” (quote from my source, attributed to the new chair).

That has been the conventional wisdom in the 4th for a long, long time, of course.  But redistricting has moved the needle; the 4th CD was a 70-30 district; with all the moderate-Republican districts in Stillwater, Afton, Lake Elmo and Woodbury, full of people who moved to the burbs to get away from DFL hegemony and its side effects, it’s probably more like 60-40 today.

And that’s without Betty McCollum pissing off 3/4 of the population of Stillwater by opposing the bridge.  And without Tony Hernandez’ ability to reach out to the district’s burgeoning Latino community, who may vote DFL, but who are largely conservatives.

It’s not the same 4th CD that it was two years ago.

———-

Speaking for myself?  I paid my $30 to get into the convention, on the assumption that the money would go (after expenses) toward the business and activities of the 4th CD GOP.  Not sending people to a party in Tampa.

And while I speak only for myself, I’m going to guess that more than a few of the people who ponied up extra money at the convention had that intention in mind.

I started asking around; is there any intention of diverting the windfall convention money to cover travel expenses for the district’s Ron Paul delegates?

———-

I did some checking; as of today, the 4th CD GOP executive committee seems  to be leaning toward supporting Tony Hernandez’ race against Betty McCollum.  There is, apparently, an executive committee meeting and vote tonight at which the matter will be decided.

I hold no elected position in the 4th CD – and I’m fine with that.  Spare time is a good thing – and “power” within the 4th CD is a relative thing.  I get my political thrills as a pundit; being able to help out within the party, or on a campaign, is a bonus.

But there are people in the 4th CD GOP’s new “establishment” who apparently think that their job is to work toward getting Ron Paul nominated.  There is that, of course, and it’s a legitimate aim…

…but their job, once they got elected to positions of party authority in the Fourth, is to work to get the district’s Congressional and Legislative candidates elected.

The new guard in the 4th CD GOP won their offices, fair and square.  But they represent a lot of other people who are ready to work really, really hard to make a difference here at home.

And while they – I – will send our best wishes to Tampa, we want our money working here at home.

And the 4th CD GOP’s leadership would do well to remember that.  They get to run the Party – but it’s not party-time.

UPDATE: the “cyber-meeting” vote is tomorrow- not tonight.  I regret any confusion caused by my error.

UPDATE 2:  It’s possible I got a few of the numbers wrong – one of the hazards of not being an actual elected officer.

It doesn’t affect the actual conclusions at issue.

More later this week.

On twitter, some of the people who want the Minnesota taxpayer to pay for them to have stadium are using the hashtag #fanrevolt, in terms of “revolting” against the Legislature if they don’t cough up the tax money to pay for their recreation.

Not against the Vikings, who can afford to build their own stadium.

Not against the NFL, which organizes the blackmail of every city and state where they want – not “need”, mind you, but want – a new stadium.

No.  The Legislature.  Whose majority was elected on a “spend less” platform.  It’s not like you couldn’t have seen this coming.

I wonder who’s paying for that effort?

…a letter like this’d be popping up any moment now.

———-

To: Minnesota GOP Legislative Caucus
From: Governor Dayton / the DFL Legislative Caucus
Re: Thanks

Our GOP Colleagues,

I know, I know – we call you all sorts of names, we lie about you and your proposals in the press, and we make you endure Ryan “The Pauly Shore of the House” Winkler.  Most of all, we want to spend, spend, spend.  You’re right. It’s a fair cop.

But we gotta give credit where credit is due.   Holding the line on taxes and working to roll back regulations has put the state on a much better fiscal footing than it might have been.  And holding the line on spending, keeping it within the recession-addled revenues we had two years ago, like you did in the 2011 session?

I know, I know – we fought you tooth and nail, and said you hated the children and bla bla bla.   But yep, not only did the February forecast show a surplus, but  revenues are coming in even faster than the forecast thought it would.

So kudos to you, GOP.

Now – could you cut us a break on that whole “paying back the school funding shift” bit?  The treasury’s full of MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY…

…sorry.  I got a little carried away.  Anyway, we’d like to make sure we have single-payer healthcare for pets.  And build a light-rail line from Uptown Minneapolis to Northeast Minneapolis.  And build MPR a new studio, in case their old studio breaks.

Do it for the children.

Sincerely,

The Entire Minnesota DFL

To: The Minnesota GOP Legislative Caucuses
From: Mitch Berg, on behalf of a majority of MN voters
Re: He Who Dares Wins

Dear House and Senate GOP Cauci:

You remember us, right?  After you got your heads handed to you at the polls in 2006 and 2008, losing both chambers, we turned out in droves to put you all back in the majority in both chambers.  We looked at Obamacare’s price tag, and at Mark Dayton’s plans to rifle through our wallets (directly and indirectly), and at the feckless entitled-brat sloth of the ruling DFL supermajority, and your message – govern within our means, where “our means” doesn’t mean “everything we can grab from you” – resonated.

Let’s stress; we did not sent you to Saint Paul because of any special affection for the MNGOP, or because we liked your smiles, or anything of the sort.  It was because you said you were going to make the tough choices, govern like you weren’t there to become part of government, and halt the unchecked growth of Minnesota’s bureaucracy and the government/educational/industrial complex.

And you’ve done a decent job. in many ways – notwithstanding the collapse of the MInnesota Republican Party, naturally.  Reforming taxes, especially business taxes, is huge.  So is Voter ID; in a year, we’ll be a lot less like Chicago than we are now.  That’s all to the good.

But let’s talk about Right to Work.

Minnesota is well down the path Wisconsin was, mortgaging our future to the well-being of the state employees’ unions.  It needs to be stopped.  And you have not only the right bill – the “Right to Work” amendment – but the support of well over 2/3 of Minnesotans, across all political spectra.

Now, rumor has it there are 5-6 of you who are holding out – and the amendment needs three votes to get moving.

We’re going to keep calling the leaderhip – who at the House and Senate are…:

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

…but soon, we’ll have to start calling the rest of you.  This has to happen.  There is no excuse not to.

We sent you there to change things.  This is one of the big changes that’s gotta happen. Small business knows it.  Mainstreet knows it.  And judging by the hysteria it’s already provoked, you can bet the DFL knows it.

So let’s do this.

You might just wake up this November and find that the people who put you there, kept you there.

That is all.

Faced with an amendment that will likely pass 2:1 this fall that will also peel off enough fraudulent votes to cost them some of the close elections (like the last Governor and Senate races), the Democrats are turning on the spin.

Emphasis added to this bit here from the MinnPost:

But opponents say it will make voting more difficult for those who don’t have  the right ID, such as seniors who no longer drive, college students, soldiers overseas and homeless people. And they argue that there’s no evidence that voter fraud is a big problem, and that there are laws in place already.

Dave Thul – regional blogger, activist and senior non-commissioned officer – pointed out in the comment section yesterday:

Every member of the US military on active duty is required to have and carry a photo ID. Every member of the military overseas is required to have said photo ID on them at all times.

Also, every US military member has in his or her unit an appointed Voting Assistance Officer, responsible for implementing the DOD directive that every member of the military will have the ability to vote. Voting assistance officers have the same legal authority as a notary public to sign off on a ballot to certify that the voter provided photo ID.

Huh.  I don’t recall anyone in the media checking on that.  Catherine Richert?  You out there?

Another one’s been making the rounds, this time from the MinnPost article linked above, with emphasis added::

…many voters do not realize that it is not just any government-issued (or approved) i.d. they would need to present at their voting place. It will be a special i.d. for voting only and those who want one will have to purchase and present a government-issued birth certificate or perhaps passport in order to get the voter i.d. card. I’m not sure of the current price of a birth certificate, but a passport cost $100 a few years ago.

The Pro-Voter Fraud crowd – the DFL, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, Common Cause and so on – are passing this meme around (or at least not saying it’s not wrong; they’re telling the students, the poor, and especially seniors that their driver’s license, state ID or existing passport won’t suffice for voting.

I expect the DFL to start telling that same crowd that Mary Kiffmeyer wants to collect bone marrow samples before voting.  Indeed, expect that previous sentence to pop up on at least one leftyblog.

Dayton issued a “mock” veto of the Voter ID Amendment today:

Governor Dayton has ceremoniously vetoed a proposed constitutional amendment that would require people to present a photo ID to vote. Dayton’s veto won’t prevent the measure from going to the voters in November but he said he’s vetoing the bill because the Legislature sent it to him in bill form.

Well, that and to give the DFL a chanting point to put in front of the same gullible Elmers that put him in office in the first place.  “Well, heck, Ethel, if da Govner vetoed it, I should vote against it, ya?”

“Ya”.

Dayton says the amendment could disenfranchise thousands of voters, including overseas military members and seniors who are unable to drive.

Although those numbers come from Mark Ritchie, who can’t even count real ballots; how good could he be at counting estimates?

Dayton says ending same-day registration and replacing it with a provisional balloting system could lower the state’s nation-leading voter participation.

And that’s the DFL’s most curious chanting point on elections; the idea that we cart more people to the polls than other states, absent any insurance that those votes have any integrity, is just bizarre.  By that measure, the elections in North Korea are the best in the world, since 99+% of North Koreans make it to the polls.

If the ballots themselves have no integrity, the number that get cast is meaningless.

“This amendment is a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Dayton said. “It goes far beyond its purported intention to require photo identification. Instead it dismantled Minnesota’s best in the nation election system…

…which is sort of like the Minnesota Twins’ “Best In The Nation” first series in Baltimore.  Or the Vikings’ “Best In The Nation” 2011 season.  Or the Go-Go football team’s “Best In The Big Ten” record last year.

Marks Dayton and Ritchie are going to turn the phrase “Minnesota’s Best In The Nation…” into a synonym for overweening, malignant mediocrity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last Friday, Ramco judge Dale Lindman shot down Mark Dayton’s the SEIU and AFSCME’s big money grap.

It wasn’t even a little bit ambiguous;

Luke Matthews covered the decision at True North:

Judge Lindman didn’t putter around the edges or employ a system of tests.

Lindman went right to the heart of the issue: the authority to conduct an election under Minnesota state law. He boldly stated, “The Minnesota Supreme court has interpreted a labor dispute as involving employer and employee relations.” Without such a relationship, the parties wouldn’t be engaged in a “labor dispute” but in some other kind of dispute.

Game over.

Oh, I’m sure there will be an appeal; AFSCME and the SEIU have deeeeep pockets, and if by some hail-mary they can get Lindman’s injunction ruling and injunction reversed they’ll get a lot deeper.

Matthews goes through a bit of the genesis of this case – one where every single conservative commentator and every daycare provider I talked with (and all by a tiny shaving of those I heard or read) knew from the beginning that the claimed “employer/employee relationship” was bogus?

So, where did Dayton get his odd phrase of “regardless of whether there is an employer or employee relationship?” It was found in the BMS statute.

The union thugs, through Dayton’s order, twisted the meaning of the statute in question. The text of the statute is, “regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.” Proximate relationship of employer and employee probably refers to the legal definition of two parties. It allows that people outside the standard tax definition of employer/employee may have a labor dispute and the BMS can mediate it. Just because they are contract workers and therefore technically not “employees” of a company, it could be a labor dispute. Even if a holding company wasn’t technically an employer of certain workers, it could still be deemed a labor dispute.

The union bosses and their pet pony Dayton tried to use the language to create a new power for the BMS. This would give Dayton’s union allies some truly broad latitude.

And that latitude was, had it become law, potentially even more drastic than the perversions of the Commerce Clause starting during the Roosevelt administration.  Under Dayton’s the SEIU and AFSCME’s version of the law, anyone who receives any aid, no matter how indirectly, from the government, is a government employee.

Daycare workers, some of whom participate in government food assistance programs for low-income clients, and some of whose clients themselves are on assistance, including daycare assistance?  Notwithstanding the fact that the parents are the “employers” and the daycare providers are (very) technically their employees (really service providers, but work with me here), the daycare providers would be “government employees” for purposes of…

…of what?

Being “represented” by government-workers unions.

How far does this get taken?

Are auto mechanics “government employees”, and liable for AFSCME dues, because the cars they repair wouldn’t get far without government roads?

Are the employees of very grocery store that accepts WIC, EBT and food assistance “government employees”?  Do employees of every clinic that takes Medicare and Medicaid payments de facto dues-paying AFSCME members?  (Wait – Obamacare means they will be, sooner or later.  Strike that).

Do Ed and I qualify as “federal employees” – or at least federal union dues-payers – because our radio station operates on a wavelength administered by the FCC?

Never thought I’d compliment a Ramco judge on his, well, judgment.  But kudos, Judge Lindman.

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

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

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

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

And the bill was debated for an hour yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Udstrand at Thoughtful Bastards has, though:

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

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

Udstrand includes a bit of spreadsheetery:

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing!

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

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

He never sent me anyone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe Doakes writes:

Which has a longer history and is more pervasive throughout Minnesota: fishing or listening to classical music?

Why aren’t hunting and fishing a part of Minnesota’s cultural heritage?

DNR needs millions more money to keep hunting and fishing programs available. It can’t have any of the Legacy funds that we were told would go to the environment. Meanwhile, Minnesota Public Radio gets $1.3 million per year from those funds.

The fishing license for Joe Sixpack to take his kids fishing will cost more, so Volvo drivers can continue to listen to Vivaldi without commercials.

 

Divert the Legacy money from MPR to DNR.
Joe Doakes

Como Park

I say “divert” it all back to the taxpayher, and let hunters, fishers and classical music buffs pay for their own recreation.