…you need to get out and support Doug Wardlow.

Over at his new gig at Politics in Minnesota, former City Pages and Minnesota Independent reporter Paul Demko – who is as a rule one of the smarter bloggers in the regional Sorosphere, and I promise you I don’t mean that in the “Jessica Simpson is smarter than Anna Nicole Smith” sense of the phrase, so don’t go there – has what he believes is bad news for Governor Pawlenty:

Fewer than 5 percent of likely Republican voters want Gov. Tim Pawlenty to be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, according to a new Zogby poll.

Zogby? 

You mean, the same Zogby that said Martha Coakley was still winning  the Massachusetts special election the day before the vote was held?

The same Zogby that might be the only poller in the business with a worse record, and a better record at telling Demcrats what they want to hear, than the Star/Tribune’s “Minnesota Poll”?

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the most popular choice, with support from just over 22 percent of those surveyed. Tracking closely behind was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was the top pick of nearly 20 percent of likely Republican voters.

Pawlenty is just shy of five points, says Zogby, who is presumably out golfing with with Senator Coakley, helping OJ find the real killer.

A seemingly grim sign for Pawlenty’s presidential prospects: He received less support than Massachusetts Sen.-elect Scott Brown (5.2 percent). On the plus side, he topped former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (3.9 percent). Of course, those difference are statistically meaningless.

Of course, the polls a year before the 2008 election showed Barack Obama a 27 point dog to Hillary Clinton, too. 

W’e’ve got almost three years ’til the election.  And while I’m far from throwing my gear on the Pawlenty bandwagon, crowing about Pawlenty’s showing at this point smacks more of sour grapes over Minnesota’s current legislative situation than detached analysis.

Brown’s numbers will drop down to where a junior senator’s should be (unless he gets himself deified by the media, like a certain former junior Senator);  Romney and Palin have the same two years of campaigning to do that Pawlenty does. 

Anything can happen.  And this is going to be one hella exciting couple of years.

On the one hand, there’s no such thing as a “safe seat” for Republicans in Minnesota.  Between a mercurial population given to flights of bizarro fancy (Jesse Ventura?  Al Franken?  Hello?) and a deep messianic liberal streak running through the population (Paul Wellstone?  Aaagh!), no Republican should ever get too complacent.

One of the bright spots in the dismal ’08 election was Erik Paulsen, who ran to the right of conventional wisdom (the district was supposed to be much more purple than Paulsen, after nine terms of Jim Ramstad).

But Derek Brigham at the Dogs and True North warns against complacency:

Today I got a request from Katie Nadeau and Sheila Kihne who are heading up the GOTV effort for CD3 this year. They wanted me to make a map to illustrate the reality of just how blue CD3 had become to help dispel the myth that CD3 is an easy territory for the Republican party.

Image by Derek Brigham

I took the 2008 Minnesota House election results map showing the winning party by precinct and enlarged the northwest metro area. Next I cut out all the areas that were not in CD3 (there are a few flaws I left in like SD45 so I did not have to cut off the names). The results?

You see the results on Derek’s map.

I don’t know how many people believe that CD3 is “safe” for the GOP, although I think Paulsen is an excellent incumbent to have in place; he’s to the right of what the “conventional wisdom” said could win, but he’s crafted a pretty careful message to his very mixed district.

Derek goes on to note that there are infinite variables – it’s looking to be a better year for the GOP than ’08, for starters – but now’s no time to relax.  If you live in the Three, and you care about the future of this nation, you need to get out and help not only keep Paulsen in office, but flip some of those baby-blue State House districts to red.

Via Joe Bodell at MN “Progressive” Project, it seems that Rep Tim Walz’s  (DFL, MN 1st District) feet are cooling down in re the notion of passing the Senate Obamacare bill.

Bodell:

One of the remaining options for the health insurance reform effort is for the House of Representatives to pass the Senate version of the bill verbatim, thus avoiding having to send a modified bill back to the Senate for debate, where it would likely die thanks to 41 votes being stronger than 59.

Which, of course, the Dems could “fix” by invoking the “Nuclear Option” – changing the Senate rules to allow cloture, or the shutting down of filibusters, on a majority vote rather than needing the traditional 60 votes.  Which they are loathe to do, since it’ll come back to haunt them when the Senate changes hands again, and that change looks to be closer at hand than they’d figured a year ago.

So it’s back to parliamentary tactics 101:

Thus, [the Tics] need to figure out where House members stand — several have said various things about whether they would vote for the Senate bill, and TPM is making a list — and Minnesota’s Tim Walz looks like he falls into the “maybe” category.

I got the following statement from Walz’s spokesperson:

Congressman Walz has not taken an official stand on whether he would vote for the Senate health care reform bill verbatim if it were put before the House. However, the pay-for-value Medicare reimbursement provisions that currently exist in both bills are an extremely important consideration.

So the absence of a public option in the Senate bill doesn’t sound like a deal-breaker for Walz — but unless it looks like there could be 218 votes for the Senate bill, members are likely to be very skittish about making public pronouncements one way or the other.

“Skittish” is a good word for it.  Walz squeaked into office in 2006 by beating “Moderate” Republican Gil Gutknecht in one of the worst elections for Republicans in recent memory (until 2008).  He represents a largely red district in the rural southwest part of Minnesota, hundreds of thousands of acres of conservative farmers surrounding a tiny blue outpost in Mankato.  He’s right to be skittish; he must looking at Byron Dorgan and Earl Pomeroy’s contortions, and Collin Peterson’s deep ambivalence about throwing himself on a sword for Barack Obama in his very similar Seventh District, and calculating his odds.

CORRECTION:  Yeah, I know – Walz is the First, not Third, District.  I’m a Saint Paul guy.  Anything west of Lyndale is a purely academic concept to me.  As is the concept of “a responsive Congressperson…”

With the departure of Norm Coleman from the gubernatorial race, things are both wide-open and, paradoxically, more focused.  The GOP is down to three real contenders – Tom Emmer, Marty Seifert and Dave Hann.  The DFL is holding steady, so far, at about 12 candidates.  The Indpendence Party shows us the value of those little loopholes in “Major Party” laws.

Dave Mindeman at MnpACT  thinks he smells victory.

Now that Norm Coleman has made his decision and practically every person in the world has given us their opinion, let’s go for one more.

Here’s my opinion.

Minnesota will have a Democratic Governor elected in 2010.

And I, as we shall see, disagree. 

Onward.

Now, I realize that nowhere in that sentence do you see Norm Coleman’s name, but Norm’s decision is a pretty direct translation.

According to the “conventional wisdom” in this state, that’s exactly true.  The CW has it that Minnesota is a purplish-blue state that needs a “moderate” for any statewide office.  Of course, the term “Moderate” – and for that matter, “conservative” – rarely are put into any meaningful context (and the keepers of conventional wisdom in this state, the DFL and media – pardon the redundancy – distinguish the concept of “liberal” no more than an Eskimo distinguishes the idea of “cold”).  And in many elections, that might be OK.

But not this one. 

We’ll return to that.

Without Norm Coleman in the race….

a) The GOP nominee will be either Marty Seifert or Tom Emmer. A contest between the two of them will be causing them to fall all over each other grabbing for the farthest right slot. Besides I can’t think of Seifert without remembering his dalliance with pirates. Arrrgh!

Remember that “no meaninful context” bit I mentioned above?  Here’s where it kinda matters.

Mindeman does what most media/DFL types in Minnesota do; assumes everyone to the right of Arne Carlson is an Attilla the Hun in a gray suit. We conservatives all look the same to Dave Mindeman (and pretty much everyone like him).

But they’re as different as can be; Seifert is a personable pragmatist in the Tim Pawlenty mold – which to a DFLer means “heartless conservative marauder”, and to a conservative means “acceptable, but needs constant scrutiny to keep them from swerving to the center”.   Emmer is the real deal, of course; after years of hearing the left crying wolf over the supposed conservatism of the MN GOP, Emmer is an actual hip-shooting podium-dominating Reagan Conservative.

And to someone like Mindeman, that’s all that one needs to know. 

We’ll come back to that.

b) So far, the Independence Party has not come up with a strong enough name to be a deciding factor. Most of the candidates in the past have had somewhat liberal leanings and siphoned off Democratic votes. Right now, the top prospect is Tom Horner, who will be a bigger drawing card for siphoning off moderate Republicans from the GOP.

In an ordinary year?  Perhaps.  But there are two wild cards in play here (as well as the fact that the Independence Party has become less of a “wild card” than a “soft three”).  Those cards are:

1. This is not a normal year for conservatives.
2. Tom Emmer, in person, resists Mindeman’s facile stereotype.

We’ll come back to both of those.

c) Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I don’t see the Democratic candidate moving (or perceived) as far to the left as is being surmised. With the probability of a primary challenge a virtual certainty, the Dems will have to make a broader appeal much earlier than the GOP candidate. This will give the Democratic candidate (and right now it doesn’t matter who it is), the advantage of broader statewide appeal.

That is a good point, as far as it goes.  The would-be Dem candidate is going to have to play less to the base than in a normal race, and more to real Minnesotans. 

And they’re going to have to, because the DFL Legislature has handed the MNGOP nominee, whomever he is, a priceless gift; their arrogant, self-entitled, spendthrift profligacy in the past two sessions stand a great chance of turning the southwest, northwest, and the third-tier suburbs – the GOP’s stronghold, which got a lot less strong in the past two elections – vibrantly red.  These areas are the hotbeds of the Tea Party movement; the conventional wisdom in the past few elections had it that the third tier ‘burbs were the swing districts, and if they were then, they are moreso now.

d) It is also doubtful that the Republicans will be able to substantially outraise the Democrats in money. Norm Coleman could have presented a challenge in that regard — the rest of the field will have a tougher time. Big donors will be more concerned with Congressional or Senate races. The GOP field wasn’t attracting the big money before Norm’s announcement — and even if they were holding back to see what he would do, that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be an enthusiastic outpouring now….it’s still the same field they were hesitant about.

It’s a possible problem – but it’s focused on “big money”, which is a very DFL-y perspective.  The MNGOP has always been about small donors.  Great case in point – in 2002, Paul Wellstone and Norm Coleman raised similar totals.  But Norm got his money from five times as many people; the donations were smaller, but they made up for it with volume.  And the GOP is turning the corner on winning back the Internet fundraising race; I suspect “big donors” will be a lot less important to the GOP nominee.

e) There will be no GOP primary battle. Republicans think this is a good thing, but even if Norm would have lost in a primary, the attention would have given Seifert or Emmer some serious name recognition. And they need it. The Democrats may have to fight it out, but the media attention will be focused on them and if the winner has the money to stay with it into the general election…. well, same result….. Democrat wins.

Enh.  Depends on the Democrat that gets through, and what the GOP nominee does.  Mindeman would be absolutely correct – if the GOP nominee were totally dependent on the metro media for exposure while the DFL was sorting things out.

That’s no longer entirely true.

And people out there are pissed.  That’s not normal.

It’s too late for someone else to get in. It’s Seifert or Emmer.

Democrat wins

That’d be the conventional wisdom.

It’s been a bad year for conventional wisdom, so far.

More on this tomorrow.

Our state turns its lonely eyes to you.

Especially when hearing from the current occupant of your old office, Rebecca Otto – a skirt so empty she could sit in for Betty McCollum without anyone knowing the difference.

Otto is bagging on her boss, Governor Pawlenty (and apparently trying to make it appear as if she’s done something in her four years in office), claiming that his unallotment of Local Government Aid has caused property taxes to “soar”, according to Jeff Rosenberg:

State Auditor Rebecca Otto has released the 2008 Minnesota City Finances Report, which has some pretty damning evidence of Tim Pawlenty’s financial mismanagement and the impact it has had on our local governments.

Otto’s report shows that over the last 10 years, as state government and federal government have cut aid to cities, a proportional increase in property taxes has followed. “Governor Pawlenty’s no-new-tax mantra, which is a actually a no-new-state-tax mantra, has really impacted Minnesota families,” said Auditor Otto.

Which is, of course, palpable balderdash.  Cities have been accelerating their spending over the past generation, confident that they’d be able to launder their spending through the state’s LGA program, and committing atrocities against accountability like financing Police and Fire through state aid (which cities don’t directly control, except via lobbying and the endless whining we’ve been subjected to) while paying for fluff like Human Rights departments and convention and visitor bureaus with property tax money, the stuff they actually control.

Some say that cities need to cut their budgets. The report points out that when adjusted for inflation, city expenditures have decreased by 7 percent between 1999 and 2008.

What else has decreased, by vastly more than seven percent, since 1999 (or rather in the past three years)?  Something on which cities base much of their funding?  It’s an integral part of the term “property tax”?  I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here.

Although this report highlights cities instead of school districts, it seems very timely to me, considering Pawlenty’s efforts to take money from our local governments to pay the state’s bills. Throughout Pawlenty’s entire tenure, he has played a shell game by making the state’s finances look better at the expense of our local governments, then blaming our cities and school districts for raising taxes, a game that continues to this very day.

Which makes perfect sense, if history for you began in 2002 (and Jeff’s a young fella, like all those MNPublius hYpStRz, so for him it might well have).

But the shell game began almost forty years ago, when the State of Minnesota essentially created the LGA program to allow local governments to launder their expenditures through the state, to conceal their spending by making the more-productive, more frugal, more pragmatic parts of the state pay for the money pits.  Back then, it involved a wealthy Twin Cities paying for an ageing, scrimping outstate; today, it means thriving third-tier suburbs and mid-sized cities subsidizing Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

And making those governments fend for themselves, and holding them accountable for a generation or two of profligacy, is going to be a very good thing, eventually…

…once people see past the media/DFL/regional leftysphere spin on the subject.

This blog doesn’t “endorse” politicians – doy, who cares what a bunch of bloggers think? – but getting Rebecca Otto out of office is an absolute essential.

Conventional wisdom  is wrong; Norm Coleman is not running for Governor of Minnesota:

“I love Minnesota and I love public service, but this is not the right time for me and my family to conduct a campaign for Governor.

Timing is everything. The timing on this race is both a bit too soon and a bit too late. It is too soon after my last race and too late to do a proper job of seeking the support of delegates who will decide in which direction our party should go. The commitments I have to my family and the work I am currently engaged in do not allow me to now go forward.

At the moment, I am tremendously energized by the work I am currently involved in to create a positive, center right agenda for this country. Anger on the left and anger on the right will get us nowhere. In Minnesota, we face a jobs deficit, a budget deficit and a bipartisanship deficit. We must all put aside the bitterness and sniping and remember that behind every job loss and every home foreclosure is a Minnesota family losing hope and confidence.

That changes the Gubernatorial race again.  Until this, it looked like the convention was going to be a movement-conservative rear-guard action to try to sway the primary against Coleman.  Now, with this news and the departure of Pat Anderson from the race to switch to Auditor, it looks like it’s going to be a battle to see which movement conservative – Emmer or Hann – can overcome Marty Seifert’s big lead with the GOP (not necessarily conservative) establishment at the convention.

It’s a whole new race.  And a big opportunity for conservatives – all of you, the Paulbots and Tea Partiers and Tax Protesters and pro-lifers and the whole works – to make a huge difference.

The GOP gubernatorial field has been an embarassment of riches so far, for a good conservative.  Tom Emmer, Dave Hann and Pat Anderson are all good orthodox conservatives; Marty Seifert is more of a pragmatist but certainly acceptable. 

But with the 800-pound gorilla rumors that Norm Coleman is pretty likely to enter the race, some of the air got sucked out of the room. 

And Pat Anderson, who served as State Auditor from 2002 to 2006 (and a very, very good one at that) has decided to run for her old office.

Good for her, I say.

Coleman – so says at least one thread of conventional wisdom – is going to get into the race, likely lose the endorsement but go to the primaries, and have an excellent chance of winning the governor’s office against the pack of gabbling hamsters the DFL will field. 

Coleman is not the perfect conservative, but if the choice is between an imperfect conservatve (who’s voted to the right of John McCain and Jim Ramstad, for crying out loud) and Steve Kelley, Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson Kelliher (especially since the MNGOP is unlikely to flip the House and/or the Senate this fall, not that that’s not going to stop me from trying like hell), the choice should be obvious, if that’s what it comes down to; I am hoping that the presence of strong conservatives Emmer and Hann will drive him to the right, one way or the other.  That’s presuming we all believe the conventional wisdom.

But this is about Pat Anderson.  She’s young.  She articulates a conservative vision in a way that reaches out to people in the middle who might be sticker-shocked by the DFL’s coke-binge-like spending spree.  She’s very sharp.  She’s also been out of the public eye since the drearily unaccomplished Rebecca Otto upset her for Auditor during the 2006 election.  I think four years in the public eye will set Anderson up nicely for whatever comes next.

I first predicted in 2002 that Pat Anderson would be Minnesota’s first female governor or Senator. 

I’ll amend it; she’s got a great shot at being Minnesota’s first female governor or good female Senator.

…and so too should be the plan to spend billions, that we don’t have by the way, on a high-speed link to Chicago.

According to the plan, freight and passenger rail 20-year capital costs could range from $6.2 billion, with nearly two-thirds of that provided by federal, state and local government. The Twin Cities-Chicago line is expected to top $1 billion alone.

The plan was ordered last year by the state Legislature, well before a scramble erupted in many states to push their own high-speed rail plans. That was triggered by the infusion of $8 billion in federal stimulus money specifically earmarked for such rail lines nationwide.

Ah yes, the ubiquitous stimulus “dollars.” A misnomer if ever there was one, as they should be called the stimuless “debt.” There are no dollars, and wasting money on what will amount to be a string of empty tin cans traveling the tundra at high speed will stimulate nothing but the sugar-plum dreams of liberals spending other people’s money to build their little fairy tale world.

We can count on the Gov to lay down across the tracks and stop this nonsense, right?

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, previously not a big advocate of high- speed rail, endorsed the Twin Cities-Chicago route last spring.

[sound of scratching record]

Not so much.

Funny thing is, we already have a high-speed link to Chicago.

Its called an airport.

…where by the way, we just spent a mountain of cash on to add another runway

I’ve seen flights as cheap as $25 to Chicago this year.

The Minnesotan that can’t afford a flight has no business in Chicago.

The Chicagoan that can’t…I’d just as soon he stay down there.

The big Minnesota story du jour is about Mark Dayton’s “coming out” last week about his long battle with depression.

Bob Collins at MPR addresses the issue:

Former Sen. Mark Dayton revealed in a Sunday column that he’s suffered from alcoholism and depression. It’s now an issue in his quest to become governor. In politics, there’s often a price to be paid for honesty.

On Sunday afternoon, a Star Tribune reporter asked Dayton for more details of his admission, but Dayton reportedly said such details are “private.”

Few affliction can kill a candidacy faster than mental illness.

And it’s perhaps a shame that that’s true.  Depression manifests itself in a lot of ways; it’s not infrequently linked with people who are highly intelligent, creative and capable.

In 2002, an advocacy group called the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance released a poll that showed that 24 percent of all Americans would not vote for a political candidate with a mood disorder, according to the Washington Post. An equal percentage said they “might not vote” for such a candidate.

And I’m not one of them.  It’s not the illness; it’s how one deals with it.  George W. Bush is a recovering alcoholic; while his presidency had its faults, they had nothing to do with his illness; the depraved reaches of the lefty fever swamp said more about themselves than about Bush when they claimed he was “obviously” drinking again.  

I’m less concerned about Dayton’s depression than I am about his history of alcohol abuse; he’s been treated at least once.  But again, it’s the results that count.

There are many reasons not to vote for Mark Dayton for governor;  he espouses the same tax-and-spend statist liberal philosophy that has gotten so many other states into deep trouble in this recession; he will tax Minnesota business even closer to the stone age than the current Legislature has; his record in elective office – as Senator and State Auditor – has been uniformly awful; even the liberal lapdogs at Time magazine called him one of “America’s Five Worst Senators“.   He’s an ineffective poltiicians with a dismal record at leadership.

That being said, I hope he stays in the race; his money and connections will drag the DFL’s decision process all the way to next September, if he wants them to.  This is good.

The Star Tribune’s following up on Dayton’s acknowledgment, however, now raises another question in the governor’s race. Should all current candidates now be asked if they’re being treated for any illness or have ever been diagnosed for it?

If people believe that it’s none of our business, then Dayton’s mistake — politically speaking — was in being honest.

Well, I’m suspecting his “mistake” was being a DFLer; the timing of the story tells me (and I say this with no information to back it up – just a hunch) that one of his DFL rivals for the nomination was about to move a big story on the subject; what better time to jump ahead of a hit piece than Christmas weekend? 

Again, that’s just conjecture.

What’s less speculative is the Twin Cities’ media’s disingenuity in covering the “story”.  This is a media market where every aspect of Michele Bachmann’s personal and legislative lives, from her speeches to her choice draperies to the supposed inner workings of her marriage and family are virtually a cottage industry among the local mainstream (to say nothing of lefty “alternative”) media.  It’s a place where the antics of Morgan Grams became front-page news at precisely the moment they had to be to affect his father Rod’s defense of his Senate seat against Dayton (even though Grams hadn’t had custody of the boy in many years).  Where misinformation about Norm Coleman’s apartment was unquestioningly accepted and reprinted during the past Senate race.   Business connections between GOP stalwart Tim Commers and Governor Pawlenty and then-State Auditor and current GOP gubernatorial candidate Pat Anderson got pored over by everthing the Twin Cities media had, looking for a scandal they just couldn’t quite find.

But Mark Dayton’s behavior, and the broad outlines of his medical condition, have been fairly well-known for years among the Twin Cities media.  Scott Johnson wrote about this almost six years ago – and we spent an hour on the Northern Alliance Radio Network back in 2004 talking about the subject, which Scott wrote about again this past weekend:

At a charity auction in 1994 or so I won the opportunity to have Dayton take me and a friend to lunch at the Minneapolis Club. The lunch occurred toward the end of Dayton’s tenure as the Minnesota state auditor. At lunch we argued politics and found nothing on which to agree. The lunch was extremely unpleasant because Dayton seemed to be unable to disagree agreeably. Dayton nevertheless put me on his Christmas card list for roughly the next five years.

Over those five years Dayton used his Christmas cards to discuss the dissolution of his two marriages, his entry into rehabilitation for alcoholism and related therapy issues. His psychiatric challenges were no secret to the many people on Dayton’s Christmas card list, including virtual strangers like me.

In its story today, the Star Tribune reports: “People who have worked closely with Dayton or within the [Minnesota Democratic Party] said they have long known the former senator struggled with mental health issues.” Later the story adds: “Opponents — and even some supporters — have long whispered of his possible struggle with mental illness.”

This was, indeed, the basic outline of the hour we – Scott, John Hinderaker, Brian Ward and I, if memory serves – spent talking about the subject – in 2004. 

Now, if Scott Johnson – a person who was at that time a person of no great media consequence, seven or eight years before Powerline made him a meta-celebrity – knew the whole story, and it’s been fairly general knowledge that everyone, but everyone close to him knew even more, then – given the Twin Cities’ media’s rigorous punctuality in investigating every wart, burp and exhalation from some other politicians, why is the “story” only now getting out?

So I have two questions:

1. What did the Twin Cities media, especially those who cover politics full-time, know?  And when did they know it?  And why was it never deemed newsworthy?
2. There was a time when the media informally swore off covering politicians’ private lives; it was a sort of unwritten agreement, which meant that President Kennedy could squire Marilyn Monroe around the White House with impunity, among many other things.  Fair enough; so why has that unwritten agreement survived so long with favored DFL politicians, when it was tossed under the bus over two decades ago for the GOP?

You know what’d be cool?  If we had a media that’d ask these questions…of the media!

Nathan McLaughlin is the mayor of Clarissa, Minnesota.  And that job keeps him busy enough that America’s Small City Mayor is updated on a relatively leisurely basis.

But it’s good stuff.  McLaughlin brings a fairly keen analytical eye to covering his turf – Clarissa is between Eagle Bend and Browerville [1], up in Minnesota’s reddish-purple hinterland, where Michele Bachmann country starts to dissolve into Collin Peterson country. 

I liked this piece: “Small City Economic Overview and the Policy Bubble“.  Excerpt:

SCSU Scholars economist, King Banaian, shows in a recent study (Slowing Layoffs & Fewer Hires) that while there are fewer layoffs than in previous quarters.  The acceleration in hiring for new jobs just isn’t registering. 

In my conversation with local employers and employees this seems to be the case.  An abundance of caution is being taken to figure out a true direction in our economy.  

Accordingly, one executive, representing our areas largest employer referred to the numerous changes that might be occurring at our state and federal levels. (i.e. banking, health, taxes)  He told me their company just cannot make investments or decisions on a large scale until the legislative actions are brought to a definitive conclusion.

Many of you might remember a post on The Policy Bubble (March 2008).  I had warned about this exact circumstance.  What our free market needs is political certainty on the levels of taxation, regulation, and reform.  Right now business cannot resume until elected representatives in Washington & St. Paul get out of the way.

In a sense, this is how more politicians should blog; give the people coherent analysis, and show why it is you should be in office.

In your wanderings around and about the MOB, make sure you check out America’s Small City Mayor.

[1] Or, to give you a helpful description, it’s about 75 miles northwest of Saint Cloud.

My neighbor and commenter PeterH has been asking in the comment section why conservatives aren’t out rallying against the proposals to subsidize a possible new Vikings stadium.

There are conservatives who make valid cases against stadium subsidies – my NARN colleague King Banaian has written on the subject on an academic level, to say nothing of blogging – and for it (this’d be Katie Kieffer).

For the record,I oppose on princple most government subsidy of anything – not just billionaires’ businesses, but of extended poverty as well.  But I digress.

Without trying to control for political sympathies, let’s find out what the readers of this blog think:

Via the print only edition of yesterday’s Strib;  counties, exhibiting government’s typical foresight, overbuilt on jails just as the crime boom peaked and fell:

In the past five years, Minnesota counties spent tens of millions of dollars to add beds to their jail capacity.

But there are now 18,000 fewer arrests than there were at the start of the building boom.

Mr. Pragmatic responds:  Homelessness problem solved!

(Er – hey!  What happened to the homeless problem?  I haven’t read a single story about the homeless since last January!)

Mark McKinnon at The Daily Beast indulges in the wonk’s favorite weekend pastime – putting together lists.

This one – the top ten GOP contenders.

He’s got Mitt at the top of the list, followed by Palin and Pawlenty.  Not a bad start.

Moving down the list, though, you get the impression he’s trying to gin up some discussion (and apparently it worked, since I’m linking him…).

4. John Thune

If he would run, John Thune could be the Bob McDonnell of the 2012 GOP field.

In a field as deep with center-right conservatives, John Thune is impressive – but in a field where “center-right” includes Romney, Pawlenty, I see Thune – a freshman Senator, let’s not forget – being far down the crowd.  

5. Mike Huckabee

Put a fork in him. While I agree with McKinnon – the clemency decision on Clemmons, who got a life-plus-life sentence for crimes committed when he wasn’t even of legal age; statistically, it wasnt’ a bad bet, although that’s no comfort for the families of the four cops he allegedly killed.

Much worse, in a just world?  He’s no more fiscally conservative than George W. Bush was.

6. Joe Scarborough

Make it stop.

Next – evidence that McKinnon spends too much time among wonks:

7. Haley Barbour

Don’t laugh. Haley’s as wily a fox as anyone out there prowling the political countryside these days. He’s smart, strategic and has been around the rodeo a very long time. Sure he’s a caricature of the classic Southern politician: old, large, white, honey-lipped, and a former lobbyist to boot. But if voters are really tired of Obama, they’ll be looking for the mirror opposite of the man occupying the Oval Office. And that would clearly be Haley.

Barbour is a highly-qualified candidate; he’s an opposite of Obama in more than just the cosmetics that seem to enthrall McKinnon.  He’s a blazingly capable executive; he’s accomplished things – his record as governor of Mississippi stands next to Romney’s and Pawlenty’s in their states.

But is he the opposite of Obama?  Not in the way voters, especially voters who’ve genuinely soured on Obama or Republicans who want to right the ship, will care about.

8. Newt Gingrich

It will never happen.  Please stop talking about it.

9. Mitch Daniels

Daniels has been an extraordinarily successful and effective governor in Indiana, a state that has been recently more blue than red. A no-nonsense, tell-it-like-is conservative, Daniels cruised to re-election by 18 points last year when Obama was winning the state.

I’d not thought about Daniels much – and I think his name recognition is, if anything, lower than Pawlenty’s (and Governor Pawlenty’s been working hard on raising his, in a way Daniels has not, at least at this point in the campaign, for what that’s worth, which isn’t much).

But here, I think McKinnon’s onto something:

10. Rick Perry

The only real question about Texas Governor Rick Perry is why he hasn’t been on any lists until now. He’s already the longest-serving governor in Texas history and may be headed for his third term next fall. Veteran Texas political observer Paul Burka makes a compelling case for why he should be considered:

1. Unlike Huckabee, Romney, and Palin, he is still in office.
2. He is the longest-serving governor in Texas history.
3. He is governor of the biggest red state that sends the most delegates to the Republican convention.
4. He has the best conservative record of any contender.
5. He has assiduously courted key figures in the Republican establishment.
6. The Murdoch news empire loves him. He is the beneficiary of puff pieces in The Wall Street Journal and softball questions on Fox News.
7. He has an extensive fundraising apparatus in Texas that is capable of raking in enough cash to make the race, and he is now in charge of finance for the Republican Governors Association, giving him access to the GOP’s big national donors.
8. He has not one but two strong messages. The first: Washington is corrupt to the core and out of touch with Main Street. The second: the Texas economic miracle.
9. He was quick to understand the significance of the tea party movement and attended many of the early gatherings.
10. With rare exceptions (such as the HPV vaccine controversy), he almost never deviates from the conservative line.

We can go on from there: he’s got huge cred among the Tea-party (aka “Real American”) crowd, and he’s got two-plus successful terms as governor of a huge state.  He’s a “Tenther”, who exudes just the right tinge of “don’t tread on me” that a big chunk of this country wants (and gets from Sarah Palin), combined providing an undeniable conservative alternative that, with a little work, can convince the center to move right (rather than vice versa – which is what people like Huckabee and Scarborough are all about).

Perry’s moved onto my personal long list over this past month or two.

Beyond that?

Watch List:

• Ron Paul: Where are you? The environment is ripe for a libertarian like Paul to stir the tea party pot in 2012.

When you can have a Rick Perry – who brings most of the “libertarian”, and none of the “loose cannon”, why even mess with Paul?

• Jeb Bush: The first son of George H.W. Bush was supposed to be the 43rd President. He is widely respected by conservatives and it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that he could be the 45th, or 46th. And there’s always his telegenic Hispanic son, George P., who could keep the job in the family as 47.

Let’s give this generation a rest, and maybe give P at shot at it someday.

When the state economy, dragged the the abysmal national economy – got dragged down last year (albeit to a much lesser extent than the rest of the nation, though much much much more than neighboring low-tax, low-“service” North and South Dakota), the local Sorosphere and lefty pundocracy leapt about like poo-flinging monkeys on Red Bull; “It’s Timmy’s recession!  It’s Timmy’s recession!”, they yapped, and there was even evidence that some of them knew what a “recession” was.

So with the news that it wasn’t that bad, and that Minnesota – fresh off Pawlenty’s successful rear-guard action against the DFL’s “Happy To Spend Money Like Crack Whores With Stolen Gold Cards” attempted spending spree last session – is S recovering faster than most of the nation (at least, the parts of the nation that got into trouble  by being high-tax and high “service”in the first place)…:

The state gained 2,000 jobs in November, according to figures released Thursday that also contained a revision of October’s results that showed twice as many jobs were created that month as originally thought.

“Compared to where we have been, this is just really good news. I am not ready to start singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ but it looks like we are headed in the right direction,” said state economist Tom Stinson.

{{crickets}}

Where do you find crickets in December, anyway?

Remember before the ’08 election, when the left and media (pardon the redundancy) stood, like Captain Renault, and bellowed “I’m shocked, shocked, that you would enforce an ideological purity test” (against the “Override Six”,  six GOP legislators that stabbed Governor Pawlenty in the back and voted to overrride his veto of a huge spending bill, thereby handing control of the state’s finances over to a bunch of irresponsible, wanton DFLers)?

Either does the DFL.  They are in the process of trying to expunge bad-think from the Mother Party (emphasis added):

Minnesota’s leading state-worker union is endorsing [Debbie] White, a Winona City Councilwoman, for the House District 31A seat Pelowski now holds, said a spokesman for AFSCME Council 5. But a top Winona DFLer, Sen. Sharon Erickson Ropes, said she’s backing Pelowski.

The dueling endorsements fuel an emerging intra-party battle among DFLers in District 31A, which covers the cities of Winona and Houston and southern Winona County.

AFSCME officials and Pelowski traded jabs Wednesday, each accusing the other of lying about the union’s endorsement screening process. AFSCME leaders also took aim at Pelowski for opposing a tax increase to balance the state budget in 2009.

DFL to its minions:  “YOU VILL CLOSE RANKS”.

(Via Gary Gross at LFR)

Minnesota’s Democrats in Washington are  M doing their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of opportunity:

Democratic Sen. Al Franken, who took office in part thanks to the same wave of support that swept Obama in, said last week that he wants to hear more about the rationale behind the plan before deciding whether to support a larger U.S. combat presence in Afghanistan.

In private meetings with top administration officials, he said, they have impressed on him that the surge may be the last chance to reverse the war’s momentum against the Taliban.

He is still unsure the Afghan government is “willing and able to step up to this,” later adding that he wants “to find out through the hearings how achievable all of this is.”

Perhaps he’s trying to bore the Taliban to death?  It could work.

In a reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat, said: “It’s not 2001. It’s 2009. We’ve been through a president asking Congress to support him in two wars. One of them never should have been fought, and the other one was fought about as poorly as it could have possibly been. So obviously you’ve got some highly skeptical people to deal with.”

We’ve also got some not very bright congresspeople to deal with.

Congressman Ellison – to paraphrase your own nonsense rhetoric, it’s 2009, not 2006.  We have a choice; let the Taliban set up another safe haven (and allow them to safely consolidate their safer haven in Pakistan), or deny it to them.

None of your baked wind matters.  Ever, indeed, but especially on this issue.

A-Klo:

“For me, the issue is, do we have good enough partners here?” Klobuchar said. “By asking the questions, you’re not just getting the answers, you’re actually pushing this government policy and the Afghan government to [be] better.”

Klobuchar, a Democrat, said she is “open to this military strategy” as long as there is a sufficient partnership with Afghan civilians.

Um, right.

And how do you propose to get “sufficient partnership” with people who know that if they support us, and we pack up and leave (as you and your party wish) with the job half-done, they will be getting their heads sawed off?

Afghan civilians have been through hell, this past thirty years.  For the entire time, they’ve had to either choose – Soviets/muj, then one militia/another militia, then more of the same, and now US and Centeral Government/Taliban – knowing that if they made the wrong call, they and their families would disappear, and be eventually, maybe found with their hands tied behind their backs, their heads blown or sawed off, if they picked the loser.

And what precisely is it that you are trying to make us, Senator Klobuchar?

About twenty years ago, I read a fascinating profile of and interview with Gus Hall, longtime head of the Communist Party of the USA and perennial CPUSA presidential candidate. 

The thing that struck me about the profile – which appeared in the Strib but was syndicated, if memory serves, from the NYTimes – was that it was set in the CPUSA’s New York headquarters, described as a shabby, run-down office in a crappy part of immediately-post-Dinkins-era Manhattan.  The interviewer described Hall – then in his eighties – and the other commies at the interview as seeming like ancient veterans who gathered to pine for the good ol’ days – with the added hilarity reading the ancient Stalin-cuddler Hall testifying to his belief in and zeal for the CPUSA’s political relevance.

I thought about that, reading a WCCO piece on a smoochfest with Walter Mondale the other day.  Mondale, the former Attorney General, Senator, Jimmy Carter’s veep and Ronald Reagan’s second speed bump, spoke to the “fellows” at the Humphrey Institute, a branch of the U of M that is an academic arm of the DFL in all but name; he basically told all of us political kids to get off his lawn.  Esme Murphy is the reporter.

And he is not amused:

 The 81-year-old Mondale talked of his displeasure at the lack of civility in Washington. Back in the ‘70s, Mondale says, the divide wasn’t as great, and animosity was left for the Senate and House floors. Mondale said, “As Tip O’Neil used to say, ‘politics ends at six o’clock,’ and it did; we would all go to parties together.”

Sorry your social scene petered out, Fritz.  But if you recall, the state of this nation was really really awful back when O’Neill and his little club of drunks were picking at Nixon’s remains, and walking over Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

But Mondale didn’t just chalk up the level of discord to the lack of a decent cocktail hour. He reserved some sharp barbs for the cable talk shows. He blasted “the cable shows’ unremitting diet of poor manners and gross simplification” of key issues.

Right.  Far better to have things as they were in 1974, when Walter Cronkite and Dave Moore told people what to think, and all of the peasants knew their place – on their knees, thankful for a Better Minnesota – and that was that.

And he decried the death of moderate voices on both sides of the aisle. On a recent visit back to Washington, he said, he chatted with Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Mondale said, “Specter told me there are no moderates anymore.”

The funny part?  Mondale would consider himself a “moderate”.

It wouldn’t be a mainstream Minnesota media politics story without a reference to Larry Jacobs, the Keyser Söze of Twin Cities politics:

At the end of the luncheon, the Humphrey Institute’s Professor Larry Jacobs said the spacious room would soon be remodeled to include a tribute to Mondale.  A perfect idea to bring together two icons of such similar views and who shared the same position on our national stage.

There was a  huge difference, of course.  While both presided over a post-Depression Minnesota where Democrats and Republicans differed hardly at all, Humphrey rose to prominence at a time when Democrats were still Americans first.  Mondale was no screeching yippie – but his political peak came when the DFL, and the larger Democratic Party, believed that America certainly could be a great country – but certainly not until the whole country mirrored their every belief.

CORRECTION:  Wow – coulda sworn Mondale was Governor for a while.  My bad. 

Blah.

The networks are running a riveting 911 call audio tape of an elderly woman describing in detail the efforts, for over ten minutes, of an intruder to gain entry to her home.

“They need to hurry. He’s going to break this thing open. When he does, I’ll have to kill him and I don’t want to kill him,” Jackson said during the 911 call.

Gun in hand, she asks the dispatcher for guidance, essentially seeking legal advice. Can she kill him? The dispatcher seeks counsel from a colleague and in essence, gives her the go-ahead to use lethal force and potentially take his life if he gains entry.

And he gone done it.

Using patio furniture to smash through a window, convicted felon Billy Dean Riley didn’t realize he just brought a lawn chair to a gun fight.

“Once he smashed the glass out he stepped into the residence and she used the shotgun to fire one shot which hit the intruder center of the chest and (he) fell back out of the house”

He be dead.

Is she in trouble?

No.

Many states including Oklahoma have adopted the “Castle Doctrine” which essentially stipulates a homeowner can defend his or her home from an intruder with deadly force and can deliberately shoot to kill without legal consequence (save the resultant need for carpet cleaning).

A Castle Doctrine (also known as a Castle Law or a Defense of Habitation Law) is an legal doctrine that arose from English Common Law that designates one’s place of residence (or, in some states, any place legally occupied, such as one’s car or place of work) as a place in which one enjoys protection from illegal trespassing and violent attack. It then goes on to give a person the legal right to use deadly force to defend that place (his/her “Castle”), and/or any other innocent persons legally inside it, from violent attack or an intrusion which may lead to violent attack. In a legal context, therefore, use of deadly force which actually results in death may be defended as “Justifiable homicide” under the Castle Doctrine.

Oklahoma happens to be a “Castle State,” while others have a “duty to retreat” clause wherein the homeowner has a duty to get out of the way of the would-be offender, others grant the homeowner a “stand your ground” clause. I was curious as to the Status of Minnesota.

The intentional taking of the life of another is not authorized by section 609.06, except when necessary in resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or another to great bodily harm or death, or preventing the commission of a felony in the actor’s place of abode.

Minnesota as it were, is a stand your ground state as long as you are in your home. It gets murky outside the home and in public areas, despite attempts to strengthen the law in the interest of would-be victims of violent crimes.

Hmm. I wonder if one’s comment section is considered a place legally “occupied” by the owner and as such…uh, never mind.

MITCH ADDS: Er, not so fast here.  Minnesota’s law is incredibly murky in this area  One of the elements of an affirmative self-defense claim in Minnesota is that the home-owner has to make every reasonable effort to disengage and de-escalate, where “reasonable” means ‘would convince a jury”.  How reasonable is “reasonable?”  It depends on how zealously anti-gun your local prosecutor is.  In Granite Falls, a simple “go away, I have a gun” might get you off.  In Saint Paul, fleeing your attacker until you’re in the very last closet in the very furthest room from the burglar’s entry point might be enough to keep the prosecutor off your back, but that’s no guarantee; the prosecutor might maintain that if you’d actually given the burglar your gun and kids, he’d have gone away and you’d have averted a fatal shooting.  The jury might or might not be another thing – but that means a trial, which means hiring a defense attorney and burning up a whole lot of money.

Rep. Tony Cornish proposed a “stand your ground” bill in the ’07 legislature, back when the grownups still controlled one chamber in the legislature.  It got completely slandered by the ill-informed, in-the-bag media, which called it a “shoot first” bill; has anyone considered the ramifications of shooting second, by the way?  Anyway – a stand your ground law would be a good thing; it’d define how far you have to back down on your own property, instead of leaving it up to prosecutors’ discretion. 

It’s yet another reason we need to win the legislature back this year.

For the benefit of all of you who were either not in Minnesota, or were too young to remember:  Before Jesse Ventura started his career making skepticism look moronic and trite, he was governor of Minnesota.

No kidding!  It’s like 37% of Minnesotans went to parties on election day, got really really hammered on cheap beer and loaded up on Taco Bell burritos, and decided “What the hey, let’s vote for a wrestler!  Duuuuude!  Hahahahaha!”

And while he will not go down in history as our least-successful governor – the economy obliged him by staying nice ‘n successful until just before he left office – he will go down in history as one of the closest calls Minnesota ever had.

“What do you mean, Mitch?”

I mean, if he’d gotten his way, V he’da bollixed things up so bad…

Ventura, who called the four years “a life experience beyond belief,” said his greatest failure was not consolidating Minnesota’s two houses of its Legislature into one body — unicameral. He pushed the issue heavily during his tenure, but it never came to fruition.

Think state government is a hopeless mess today?

From the Baltimore Sun’s “Ring Posts”:

Is there anything that you wanted to accomplish as governor that you didn’t?

Oh, yeah. My biggest failure was not getting a vote on unicameral – one house state legislature. We don’t need two houses. Nebraska is the only state that has unicameral, and in their 70- or 80-year existence of it, they’ve never had a special session due to the fact that they couldn’t find a conclusion to their budget.

That’s right, Jesse.  That’s just what we need; for government to pound out mo bigga budgets like crap through a goose.

And while I try to stay away from rhetoric like ” so and so was the stupidest moron who ever wandered to the head of the class”, if you read carefully between the lines  you can probably tell that that’s what I’d be saying about our former Governor, if I were to write such things.

But it’s a good thing I don’t say things like that:

At the state level, we do not need two houses. In fact it violates the Constitution because it’s supposed to be one person, one vote, but because you have two houses you have one person, two votes, because you have an elected representative and a senator.

{{facepalm}}

Anyway – all you conspiracy buffs out there?  He’ll be bringing that keen intellect to your field, now.

My condolences.

Tony Kennedy, writing in the Strib last week, addresses the latest charter school “crisis”:

Minnesota’s charter school movement, which sparked a national rethinking of public schooling nearly two decades ago, has been infected by an out-of-control financing system fueled by junk bonds, insider fees and lax oversight.

“Out of control”.

Interesting bit of hyperbole, there.  One might almost say it’s “unjournalistic”.

The vast majority of Minnesota’s charter schools putter away, doing their workadaddy hugamommy job of teaching kids, in rented quarters around the state.

Given the cost of rental property, especially in the Metro area, many charter schools gravitate toward low-rent warehouse, industrial and “incubator” space.  The western part of the Midway – full of low-rent office and warehouse buildings – is home to many charter schools; half a dozen are clustered within a few blocks of Fairview and University.  The rental space is affordable and up to code, generally – although if you’re used to public school spaces, to say nothing of showcases like Saint Paul’s Arlington High School, it’ll feel like you’re at a school set up in the garage.

And so some charter schools look for a home of their own, if you will, for reasons not a whole lot different than renters become homeowners; to have a secure home base; to be able to plan without the wacky exigencies of leasing; to have a “home”.

So some charter schools have found a way to own their own buildings.

It took some doing, of course – because state law forbids it, at least directly:

State law prohibits charter schools from owning property, but consultants have found a legal loophole, allowing proponents to use millions of dollars in public money to build schools even though the properties remain in the hands of private nonprofit corporations.

That’s one of those “tomayto-tomahto” things.  Another way to phrase it – arguably more fair and accurate – would be “state law prohibits charter schools from owning property, but they have found a legal loophole, allowing proponents to, in effect, rent their own schools from shadow corporations they set up to build and operate the property”.

The key to making it all work is the state’s lease aid program, which was created 11 years ago to help spur competition in public education by offering rental assistance to groups promoting alternatives to district schools. In the beginning, many charters were located in dumpy strip malls and received no real-estate grants.

But the once-obscure program has snowballed into one of the fastest growing expenses in the state, with building projects receiving little of the vetting that typically accompanies other public works.

It works like this:  the charter school’s governing board starts or affiliates with a company that, on the one hand, supervises construction and, on the other hand, floats a bond issue to pay for the building. 

Now, when a public body – say, the City of Minneapolis – floats a bond issue, they go into it with a certain amount of collateral; the city owns snowplows, artistic drinking fountains, computers, police cars, City Hall and other things that can be hocked to make the payments on the bond.  More importantly, they have taxing authority, meaning that if things get tight they can jack up taxes to make sure the payments get made. 

Big corporations, likewise, have collateral to put up against bonds they might float.  Not “taxes” per se, which is why corporate bonds are a little less popular and secure – a lot less secure in the case of, say, General Motors, after the Obama administration overturned contract law to make sure the unions got paid ahead of bondholders. 

But I digress.

Now, if you’re a tiny little entity – say, a barber shop – you can float a bond issue, presuming you jump through a few legal hoops.  Of course, most people won’t invest in your bond, since you have no collateral other than a Barbasol jar and some chairs, and you can’t raise taxes.  But entities somewhere in between the barber shop and GM can float bonds.  They have less revenue and fewer assets than Fortune 500 corporations; they have more than the corner barber shop; they can’t raise taxes on anyone.  So the bonds are a little, maybe a lot, secure an investment than a municipal or big-corporate bond.  Hence bond buyers expect more interest.

Now, the problem is that since the eighties, and the Michael Milken scandal (which, in those innocent days before Enron and Bernie Madoff, was considered a big scam), these bonds have had a name; a very pejorative name.  A name that the media uses for them as a sort of shorthand – perhaps not understading what it means, or perhaps understanding it perfectly but shooting for that whiff of pejoration that they need to sell the papers (and, perhaps, fulfill the mission that the story’s sources intended fulfilled):

In the past decade, 18 charter schools have been built with $178 million in junk bonds, with financing costs on some projects chewing up nearly a quarter of the funds raised. Twelve more charter schools have taken steps to buy or build facilities, and the state projects annual spending on lease aid to reach $54 million in 2013, up from just $1.1 million in 1998.

“Junk bonds”. 

The technical definitino of “junk bond” is a bond that isn’t rated by any of the big ratings services – Moody’s or Standard and Poor.   It doesn’t mean – to someone in the bond business – that a bond is bad, or good for that matter; merely that it’s un-rated.  Of course, rated bonds are generally considered safer than unrated ones – which is why the unrated, “junk” bonds have to pay higher interest. 

In a sense, “Junk Bonds” are no different than subprime mortgages; they are a way for a group that can’t ordinarily float a bond issue to get financing; the interest is higher and the terms are worse than the more-secure bonds – municipals and the like – but that’s how the market deals with getting financing to less credit-worthy people and organizations.  The only major difference is that nobody is requiring the Federal Government to pay for “junk” bonds that default.

But to “the American street”, the term “Junk Bond” has a corrosive connotation.  Now, I’m not sure if the Strib’s Tony Kennedy knew this – but I’m going to suggest that whomever his “sources” are on this story do. 

It’s not only unwarranted, but it paints charter schools with a brush that slops plenty of paint over onto regular schools, transit districts, water and soil commissions, and municipal governmetns.  Joe from Como Park – a person with considerable in-depth professional knowledge of how local government and bonding works, and who wrote to me under an assurance of anonymity – emailed me about the article:

…look at any small-town municipal bond for a fire station or sewer plant or for that matter, any school district building bond.  Local governments routinely pay hefty fees to financial consultants to help them with the bond process, people like the Ehlers firm mentioned [in the Kennedy article].  Bond financing is a highly regulated jungle of red tape and the people who know how to navigate it are worth their hire.  Criticizing charter schools for paying the same sort of consultant fees that school districts routinely pay for the same services is sheer gall.

People who know how bonds work, know that.  Most of Kennedy’s audience are, unfortunately, not part of that particular “in” crowd.

So why the concern?  Besides the money I mean?

Well, here’s one reason:

State lawmakers are frustrated by the building boom. Since 2000, at least 64 public school buildings in the metro area closed because of declining enrollment. Charter schools are responsible for recruiting away some of those students.

Voila; it’s the competition.  Charter schools are an example of “school choice”; parents are choosing; the district systems are losing.  The establishment sees that parents are fleeing; their response is to try to put a bookhself in front of the escape hatch.

“When district schools are closing, should we allow charter schools to build new buildings?” said Rep. Jim Abeler, R-Anoka, who was cleared in 2001 of legislative ethics charges for voting to boost lease aid even though he personally received the funds from a charter school he helped start. “These are being built with 100 percent state moneys, but who is minding the store on using that money well?”

More importantly, and disturbingly, Abeler was one of two members of the “Override Six” cleared by voters for voting to overturn Governor Pawlenty’s Tax Bill veto.  I don’t know Rep. Abeler’s voting record as re charter schools, but I’m going to guess from his statement above that he’s doing his best to stay nice ‘n tight with the Minnesota Federation of Teachers (please correct me if I’m in error). 

“Out Of Control” and “Junk Bonds”; that’s two inflammatory, almost disinformatory terms used so far to describe the charter school building boom in this piece.  Why not go for the trifecta?

Jim Markoe, a board member of both St. Croix Prep and the building company, said the insider payments were cleared by bond lawyers involved in the deal.

“Everybody has done everything morally, ethically and legally, and I’ll stand by that until the day I die,” Markoe said.

Sen. Kathy Saltzman, D-Woodbury, chair of the Minnesota Senate Subcommittee on Charter Schools, said lawmakers had no idea charter school insiders were taking such large fees on building projects.

“If they have enough lease aid to do bond deals that pay salaries or one-time bonuses to insiders, obviously they are getting more lease aid than they need,” Saltzman said.

“Insiders”.

It has such ugly connotations these days.  It was “insiders” that brought us the Savings and Loan collapse, the Enron debacle, the “backdating” scandal at local corporate giant United HealthGroup, and on, and on.

And the fees involved?  Issuing bonds is complex – as complex as a hundred mortgage closings all in one deal.  Attaching assets, taxes and collateral to what amounts to an otherwise-unsecured IOU – which is basically what a bond is, whether it’s issued by the United States Treasury or Kickapoo Creative Arts Charter and Construction – takes some fairly critical, and rare, expertise, both financial and legal.   Like getting a smooth house closing, or sueing a corporation, it’s not something that can be left to chance, or amateurs; professionals cost money.

On Wednesday, we’ll finish going through Mr. Kennedy’s piece.

And on Friday, we’ll take the concept of  “insider” a step further, and try to discuss Mr. Kennedy’s sources for this story, and their motivations.

I’ve long felt that the MNGOP’s best shot at a pickup in 2010 will be in the First Congressional District (CD), where DFLer Tim Walz beat incumbent moderate Gil Gutknecht in 2006.  Walz was a middling-to-weak candidate, but a likeable enough guy who ran far enough to the center to eke out a win in the second-worst election for Republicans in recent memory.   Incumbency has its privileges, of course; Walz solidified his position last year against a very weak GOP candidate in the worst year for Republicans in recent memory.

Still, if there’s a vulnerable DFLer in the state, it’s Walz; he’s a mushy center-left Congressman of no real distinction, one who’s followed whomever’s ridden the biggest horse in his three exceedingly vanilla years in Washington.  A good conservative reflecting the overall realities of the district and, let us not forget, a better year for Republicans, could make 2010 the year Tim Walz goes back to whatever it was he did before he went to Washington.

The Cook Report is showing early signs of agreement, demoting the race in the First from “Solid” to “Likely” Democrat – and this long before the GOP has even begun winnowing its five contenders down to find a candidate.

I realize you get that sense of edgy rebellion by calling our governor “Timmy”.  And ordinarily I’d not be the one to rain on your parade, however pathetic “your parade” would seem to be.

However, he was elected by a plurality of your neighbors – twice.  So it’s actually “Governor Pawlenty” to you.

That is all.

…and you’re wondering why there are forty nebbishy white guys with professor glasses and Elvis Costello hair cuts in front of you at Subway asking if there’s arugula and if the salami is free-range, and if the line at Caribou is paralyzed by perpetually outraged-looking women who look and sound like Sarah Vowell gabbing about why the Minnesota History Center is allowed to keep “his” in its name, and if you say “teabag” outloud and instead of a nervous titter or an uncomfortable shuffling of feet you get a round of applause so very very unanimous as to feel just a little bit odd?

Not to worry.  “Netroots Minnesota” is going on at the Hilton Garden.  “Progressive” bloggers will be coming from all over Minnesota and, one suspects, beyond, to demand more Hope and Change now!, and to respond in perfect enthusiastic unison “off what and how high?” when George Soros tells them to “Jump”.  Expect to see little clots of nervous twentysomethings who’ve never been east of the light rail wandering around lost; look for graying ex-hippies wandering the streets begging for cops to taze and teargas them so they can be in the news too, unaware that the RNC ended 14 months ago.

Look for the only people of color in the room to the on the panels or working for the hotel.

Some “highlights”

Tools to Hold Your Opponents AccountableSAT, 11/21/2009 – 3:30pm, Ballroom
Think your opponent has some skeletons in the closet? Are they prone to gaffes? Learn how to uncover their public records, negatives and voting record, as well as tracking the candidate on the campaign trail.
PANELISTS: Sally Jo Sorensen, Bluestem Prairie; DJ Danielson, Field Organizer, MN House DFL Caucus, 2008; Laura Askelin, President SEMN Labor Council; Liz McLoone, MN AFL CIO Field Representative & former Senate Majority staff.

In other words, “how to be a blog stalker”.   Because the local leftyblogosphere has such a shortage of ethics-challenged jagoffs who see themselves as ace reporters.

Push ‘N’ Pull: How Traditional Advocacy Organizations and Netroots Activists Can Create Progressive Change Through Impact Journalism and Action
SAT, 11/21/2009 – 10:15am, Town Square Ballroom

A one hour discussion with reporters, advocacy organizations and outreach communicators on how to create impactful stories, reach out to interested advocacy groups, and bring about action that will create real change. We will also walk through a case study of how one article written in September of 2008 eventually forced John McCain to concede Michigan.
PANELISTS: Paul Schmelzer, Center for Independent Media; Hanaa Rifaey, Center for Independent Media; Denise Cardinal, Alliance for a Better Minnesota

Hint to leftybloggers:  save the money on this one; all they do is tell you to call the Republican “crazy” in a thousand different ways.  A good thesaurus will do the trick.

Oh, yeah – and if you ever wondered about the rigorous fairness of the Strib’s coverage of regional politics, wonder no more (emphasis added by yours truly)!

Gubernatorial Candidate ForumFRI, 11/20/2009 – 6:00PM, Town Square Ballroom
DFL candidates for governor will join us at Netroots Minnesota to take questions directly from you. The candidates will be asked questions solicited online via Twitter, Facebook, and email, and in person, during a discussion moderated by Star Tribune writer Lori Sturdevant.

I wonder if Star Tribune writer Lori Sturdevant will badger the DFL candidates to move to the center to return to the sainted “bipartisan” glory days of Minnesota politics?

Any bets on that?

Hey – I wonder if I could get a Strib columnist to host the next MOB party?  Other than Lileks, I mean?

Anyway, welcome to Saint Paul, Netroots (and if I were a classy fella like some of the leftymedia, I’d come up with a borderline obscene sexual reference for your gathering, and believe me, with a term like Netroots, there are a zillion of them, but that just isn’t how I roll).  I’ll be the guy selling “free range cocktails” from the pushcart on the street.

UPDATE:  I missed one:

Netiquette: From Polite to Pit Bull, Where Do You Cross the Line?

FRI, 11/20/2009 – 3:30PM, Phalen Room

We all have candidates we love and candidates we hate. Now it’s time to have an open and frank discussion about how to help our favorites online. Does being polite get you ignored? Does being a pit bull make people hate the candidate as much as they hate you? When is it too much, and how to handle abusive commenters? And, as always, learn how what to deal with anonymous trolls on your sites.

PANELISTS: Minnesota Observer, blogger; Mark Giselson, Kurt Schiebel, blogs as Flash

Since the vast majority of leftybloggers are anonymous trolls (there are exceptions, but I’m talking the rule here), that discussion will be either very short and dry or very, very long and animated.

As far as that “Does being polite get you ignored? Does being a pit bull make people hate the candidate as much as they hate you?”  Well, Flash has the “polite” thing generally down, so I’m going to guess Gisleson is supposed to be the “pit bull”.  To which I’d love to ask – where does “pit bull” start, and “profane and overbearing” end?

And as far as “does it make the candidate hate you” – they really should be interviewing the Dump Bachmann people and, for an extra perspective, people from Bachmann’s office.  I’m fairly convinced that the Dump contributed at least a point to both of Bachmann’s victory margins; between them and the City Pages fairly loathsome cover story this week, I think there’s a two point floor right there that the lefthsphere has given the good Representative.

I don’t go to the WaPo’s Chris Cilizza for keen-eyed observations on conservatives or Republicans. 

But his piece in “The Fix” on the Minnesota goober race provides some junk food for thought:

Norm Coleman (R) isn’t expected to make a decision on the 2010 governor’s race until next year but a new Rasmussen poll suggests the former senator has plenty of time to make his decision. Coleman led the Republican field with 50 percent while state Rep. Marty Seifert at 11 percent was the only other potential candidate to break double digits. Coleman’s lead is almost entirely attributable to name identification gained from his time as mayor of St. Paul and his six years in the Senate but it does suggest that if he decides to run, he will be a clear favorite. On the Democratic side, former Sen. Mark Dayton and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak each received 30 percent of the vote while none of the other candidates scored in double digits. Coleman would give Republicans a chance to hold this seat, which is being vacated by Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) after two terms. But, if Coleman takes a pass this race looks extremely difficult for any other GOP candidate given Minnesota’s Democratic tilt.

Before we get to Cilizza’s actual piece, let’s take a moment to remember how well the “cult of the inevitable” serves the Democrats.  While it’s entirely possible that the second coming of Ronald Reagan would have had trouble in the 2008 election, it’s also a fact that the “inevitability” of John McCain – cultivated through many careful years by the media, who spent the better part of a decade building up John McCain as the “Good Republican”, so they could spend six months tearing him right back down – didn’t serve the GOP especially well in the past election.  McCain was built up to serve as a beacon for “Moderate” Republicans, and “moderates” discredited themselves utterly and completely between 2002 and 2008.   Don’t believe for a moment that Big Media doesn’t desperately want to do the same again; look for a wave of approving stories about what an “acceptable”, work-across-the-aisle kinda guy Republican Mike Huckabee is, sooner than later.

But for the moment, let’s do two things; leave media perfidy out of it (or just accept it as a given and move on), and accept Rasmussen’s numbers at face value, and assume that Norm Coleman’s name ID gives him a prohibitive advantage in the GOP field (and, at first glance – again, let’s accept the numbers at face value – an edge over the Rybak and the ludicrous Mark Dayton), what does it mean?

I’ve disagreed strenuouosly with plenty of my conservative friends on Coleman, based on one key principle – a principle that guides so very much in life.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Coleman, like Tim Pawlenty, is no conservative’s icon.  But like Pawlenty, he is conservative enough, at least on the issues that matter.

Coleman, like Pawlenty, has angered conservatives with a number of his stances over the past 16 years.  But, like Pawlenty, he has been a thoroughgoing conservative on the things should matter; taxes, spending, growth and security.

As Mayor of Saint Paul, he presided over eight years (and keynoted four more) of holding the line on taxes, on living within the city’s means, and on job and business growth – things that are nearly forgotten four years after Coleman’s successor Randy Kelly left office.  Like Pawlenty, his conservatism may fray a bit around the edges, but at its core it’s just fine.

So who do I support for Governor?

I think the race boils down to one thing, if you’re a Republican; not moving the party to the center, but communicating what the right really stands for to give “the center” a reason to move right.

Do I think a thoroughgoing conservative like Tom Emmer, Dave Hann or Pat Anderson has what it takes to communicate the benefits of a real conservative vision to a middle that’s shell-shocked by Obama’s incompetence and excess?  Yes, I do  – and so does the Twin Cities’ media, which is why you never see Tom Emmer or Pat Anderson’s name in print without some variation on “extreme” or “hardline” conservative in front of their names.    I’ve seen Emmer, Hann and Anderson talk with mixed crowds; I’ve even heard Emmer on a liberal-leaning internet talk show – he did a spectacular job of articulating the conservative vision to a non-conservative audience, and I have no doubt Anderson and Hann can do the same  (which is why the Strib and the rest of the Twin Cities media will make sure that they don’t give any of them the opportunity to do it to a larger audience).

But at the moment, I support one thing; fighting like hell – as I put it a few years ago, grabbing one side of the rope or another in our inter-party tug of war and pulling like mad.  Getting out the caucuses early next year and fighting like there’s no tomorrow for your candidate.  Because for Minnesota conservatives, it’s a win-win situation.  Either we get a genuine movement conservative, an Emmer or Anderson or Hann or Seifert, someone who can genuinely articulate conservatism to the undecideds, running for (and winning) the race…

…or we get Norm Coleman, after having to survive a tough, spirited nomination battle against three superb candidates to his right.  Which will make him tack right, while still remaining Norm.  Norm is no slouch at articulating the key tenets of conservatism to a crowd either; and as a “worst case” that isn’t all that bad, having to overcome Emmer, Anderson and Hann will force him to walk the conservative walk in a way he has not had to before.

Which is not a bad thing.

Perfect is the enemy of good enough.  Would I prefer that Emmer, Anderson, Seifert or Hann won with a forty p0int margin?  Absolutely – and I plan on pulling like hell for one of the three of them.

And whomever gets through the convention – Tom, Pat, Dave, Marty or Norm?  I’ll pull like hell even harder for any of them.

Because any of them will make a better governor in these times than Rybak or Dayton.