Berg’s 21st Law is about to get its sternest test.  

More in a moment. 

Who knew there was something too extreme for Richard Carlbom?

The longtime DFL strategist, the guy behind getting gay marriage ensconced in the Minnesota Constitution, replaced Ken Martin as chair of the MNDFL after Ken Martin moved on to a star-studded reign at the DNC.  

And his first crisis is something that he’s gonna need another gay marriage or abortion tempest-in-teapot to fix:  the DSA, rotting out his party from the roots. 

The party just nixed Omar Fateh’s endorsement for Minneapolis Mayor:

 

DFL Party Chairman Richard Carlborn says the decision to remove the mayoral endorsement comes after a review of the challenges found “substantial failures” in the DFL convention’s voting process, and “acknowledgment that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention.”

The CRBC findings after the review show that the voting system for endorsement produced a very inaccurate count of the first, undercounted by 176 votes. 

The findings also state that the entire Ward 5 credentials books were lost by the Minneapolis DFL, causing delegates to have to re-establish delegate status. Additionally, the master check-in sheet at registration was not properly secured.

Huh. So – corruption all the way down…

…according to the DFL?

This is the sort of battle we’ve seen pretty much every major cycle in the DFL:  the crazy activists pick crazier candidates (remember when Keith Ellison was the rational moderate against Matt Pelikan in 2018?) and the state party steps in and jams down the person they want.  

So is the state party strong enough to upend the city party?

Can a civil society survive when society spends more time and effort protecting criminals than the law-abiding citizen?

The Mayor of Boston just made her, and presumably her city’s, priorities pretty visible:

Now, you might say it costs nobody anything – the victims are alive, the attacker dead. Expressing (misplaced) sympathy isn’t going to kill him again, or endanger the victims. Is it?

I see your logic, and raise you Mary Moriarty (open and expand the thread):

But here’s the money quote:

A source familiar with the case told us that charges were declined by Mary Moriarty’s office because the victim was able to fight back.

Got that?

If you defend yourself, that’s all the justice you need.  (How much do you want to bet the intended victim only evaded assault charges because he was a teenager?)

We are getting to the point where the lesson is the one people in all low-trust societies eventually get to; it’s better to handle “Justice” by yourself.  To do the job, to not talk to the police – even enforce the practice – and make offender examples on your own.  

I’d ask “is this what you want”, but this is  the DFL we’re talking about. 

The smartest woman in the world, decided to sound off about crime in the District of Columbia:

we’re starting to see this, along with “a little bit of crime is one of the things you put up with to live in a major city” – the kind of gaslighting rationalization used by the class that ran New York City before Rudy Giuliani took over.

it’s really very Orwellian: convincing an entire population that crime = normality, and seeking normality is the aberration.

and you’re seeing plenty of this from the Minneapolis booster crowds, in between their videos of crowds of people at street fares and families riding around the placid lakes far from the centers of crime; here you go, I’m a Republican tough guy from Maple Grove with your F350; here’s crime-ridden Minneapolis”, as if two things cannot only be possible, but be possible around the corner from each other.

I pity the next Democrat moron, who tries any of this with me.

Lets you wondered what Omar Fateh’s actual priorities might be: 

Not fixing potholes.  

Not making a city in economic freefall into a destination again. 

Protecting illegals from the boogeyman.  

Minneapolis is in the best of hands.  

SCENE. It’s December, 1944.   Bastogne, Belgium.  The men of the 101st Airborne Division are surrounded, defending the vital road junction, as seven German divisions close in. 

Men of Company F, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment – just down the line from the famed “Easy Company”, not the same guys at all – are coming out of their foxholes after a German bombardment. 

PRIVATE JEB RANKIN (a farm boy from Alabama):  Hoooo-iiiie, that was something.  

TECH SERGEANT FOURTH CLASS ANDREW “ANDY” PILSNER (the platoon radioman):  I heard Lieutentant Ratchett in Third Platoon got blown up.  (The others shake their heads in that “glad it wasn’t me” manner). 

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS GUISEPPE “JOE” RANDAZZO (a former streetcar conductor from Southie in Boston):  Rattled my fillings.  

STAFF SERGEANT WILLIE BUXTON (a Montana rancher turned NCO, and the platoon sergeant):  Everyone OK? 

CORPORAL JAMES “JIMMY” STEVENS (a former rendering plant worker from Indiana):  Crissake.  Why do we do this.  

RANDAZZO (Sardonic):  To defend democracy.  

RANKIN (earnest):  To liberate Europe.  

SECOND LIEUTENANT LLOYD MOUNTEBANKE (A Yale Business School graduate who is the platoon leader):  That’s incorrect.  

RANDAZZO: Sir?

MOUNTEBANKE:  This is why we’re fighting:

RANKIN:  We’re sittin’ here thousands of miles from home, so…people can kill babies, sir?

RANDAZZO: Ma’Donn (crosses self). 

MOUNTEBANKE:  You heard the woman.   Carry on.  (Exits into the woods as suddenly as he appeared)

STEVENS: (Sotto Voce) That doesn’t seem right…

BUXTON:  OK, men, that’s enough jawing.   You heard the Lieutenant.  We’re fighting to kill babies. Now get some top cover on those foxholes.  

And SCENE

The good news:  Bloody Mary Moriarty is not running for re-election as Henco Attorney.  

The bad news? It’s so she can focus on “transforming the office” even further:

“I ran for this office to do the hard work; the work that desperately needed doing and the work the voters chose when I was elected in 2022 by 16 points,”Moriarty said in the release. “We’ve become accustomed to elected officials who don’t deliver results and end up more invested in clinging to power than doing the work of the people. That is not me. As I have weighed whether I wanted to spend the last year and a half of my term focused primarily on campaigning or continuing to transform this office, the choice became clear. I want to focus on running the office, rather than running for office.”

The worse news?

Remember – the Cano Corollary to Berg’s 21st Law is called a “law” for a reason:

In Blue city electoral politics, “blue” never gets “lighter” or less “progressive”.  There is only one electoral direction – more “progressive”. 

A symptom of this is when one sees people just barely to the left of a city’s Overton Window referring to the progressive politicidans and institutions in power as “Conservatives” or “Republicans”.  

When Alondra Cano seems like a sane, rational stateswoman, the Frey Corollary is in effect.

Worst – ergo most likely – scenario:  Moriarty spends the rest of her term gutting whatever vestiges of traditional law and order might remain her her office, turns it over to someone who will be subtly running to challenge Omar Fateh, Keith Ellison or Ilhan Omar from the left one day.  

SCENE:  It’s a typical weekday at the MNDFL headquarters.  Richard CARLBOM, the chair, is meeting with activist Avery LIBRELLE and Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, party executive Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, as well as Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN, from the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  She was Lac Qui Parle County Dairy Princess in 1987, and voted “most likely to end up as a freelance political writer” by her sorority at U of M Morris in 1992.

LIBRELLE:  So polling is showing that Minnesotans are getting concerned about the amount of fraud in Minnesota government.  

CARROLL:   I say we do what we always do – bully voters into silence.  

BIRKENSTOCK:  It worked well during the Same Sex Marriage issue in 2012!

CARROLL: (Sotto voce) Brown noser…

CARLBOM: (Beamingˆ). Yeah, those were the days.  But I think we need something different.  The other side has given up the illusion that Minnesota is the same as the one Garrison Keillor talked about.  We need to step up the game. 

LIBRELLE:  How?

CARLBOM:  Hear me out.   We don’t just double down.  We dec-tuple down.  

CARROLL:  We make fraud…cool!

BIRKENSTOCK:  Sort of like “celebrate your abortion” for graft!

LIBRELLE:  How do we do that?

CARLBOM:   We run a campaign showing DFL pols, stakeholders, non-profiteers and the like, revelling in the wealth they’ve gained from…somewhere.  

BIRKENSTOCK:  Show Omar Fateh driving down the street in a Bentley!

CARROLL:  “Don’t you want to be like Omar?”

LIBRELLE:  So pitch defrauding the state as…

CARLBOM:  The ultimate social program.  

CARROLL:  I like it!

And SCENE

When Ilhan Omar says things like this:

…is she:

1. Telling a truth so broad that it is in effect a lie (white men are the second largest racial/gender group in the country; nearly all violence is intra-racial, and there are more of them to perpetrate and be victims, and hypothetically to become terrorisrts)
2. Lying (white men commit proportionally less violence against black men than vice versa)
3. Referring not to violence but to logic and honesty, in which case she’d best fear me?

Thoughts?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

“Too many people cheated the program“

That’s not the best reason to shut it down

“It was a dumb idea in the first place”

That’s a much better reason

Joe Doakes

 

True.  

And when you don’t have DFL trifectas, you get fewer of these dumb ideas.  

Not “none”.  But lots, lots fewer.  

The news broke last week – the Department of Human Services tanked its “Housing Stabilization Services” program before the Feds could start digging into it.

Not that there’s not gonna be some digging anyway.  Joe Thompson, the acting US Attorney for Minnesota, is finding a prosecutorial “targret rich environment”:

We welcome today’s news. Fraud has been eating away at Minnesota’s public programs for years, costing taxpayers billions. Ending the Housing Stabilization Services program cuts off a major source of abuse, but this is just the beginning. The fight against fraud continues, and a broader reckoning is long overdue.

“What” your ELCU-haired sister in law might exclaim, “they’re taking housing from people?”

No, not really.  Bill Glahn explains:

Don’t be confused. HSS doesn’t provide actual housing or anything else that would be considered useful. Instead, the program, operated by the state Dept. of Human Services (DHS), offers counseling services to Medicaid program participants.

Actually, it doesn’t do that either, as Thompson has documented. The “vast majority” of the $100 million in annual spending (of taxpayer funds) goes to outright fraud.

Today, state DHS took the correct step to shut down the program entirely, you can read their letter to the U.S. Medicaid office here. The Minnesota Star Tribune has a report on this major development,

“Vast majority”.

Not a skim of fthe top. 

Not 10% for the big guy. 

Vast.  Majority. 

If Trump does nothing else in office, turning a firehose on the State of Minnesota will make this next 3.5 years a wonderful thing. 

Lieutenant Governor Flanagan [1], one of the MNDFL’s leading public intellectuals, on the economics of healthcare:

So much better to have some dude with a public employee union card, behind a desk at a for-corruption state agency, deciding it for you.  Amirite?

Former Senator Sean Nienow pointed out the inconvenient facts:

[1] Although have you noticed how the social media accounts of Governor Walz, Senator Smith, Lt. Governor Flanagan and, frequently, Senator Klobuchar sound like they’re written by the same person, or at least some people who sound like 20-something guys (I said what I said) interning in the DFL Comms office?

It’s entirely possible that DNI Gabbard is making a mountain out of a molehill. 

But if she’s not…:

A president using national intelligence infrastructure fo try to jink the political order is not only an order of magnitude bigger than Watergate – it is the kind of thing that the system bent over backwards to correct, and overcorrect, in the wake of learning all the information J. Edgar Hoover had collected about Americans.  

If true, it’s a greater threat to democracy than hundreds of riots at the Capitol, no matter who’s doing it on whom’s behalf.  

I may have to promote Berg’s Seventh Law to Berg’s First Law.  

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Liberals are protesting Donald Trump for exercising his authority as President. They don’t want our country to be ruled by a king.

 

But maybe by Lords?  

 

 There are so many examples of liberal Democrats thinking they are above the law, better than ordinary people, entitled to do as they please.

 

The governor going to a French restaurant while the rest of his state is locked down. A governor’s daughter spying for protesters burning down a city, a high official running a secret email server, a legislator getting rich from insider trading…….. the list goes on.

 

 Liberals don’t want Donald Trump to be King but they sure would like to be Lords and Ladies themselves. As for the rest of us peasants in flyover country, if we do not grovel sufficiently before the new nobility,  they will replace us with illegal immigrants who will. 

 

Joe Doakes 

 

I’m not sure whose bright idea it was to put Sen. Nicole Mitchell (DFL – Woodbury) on the stand yesterday. 

It did not go well:

Maybe the defence was hoping the sheer overkill would spawn a sympathy vote in the jury?

The ones who truly don’t deserve a sympathy vote – her DFL enablers::

The wages of DFL control are languishing as a backwater.  

Count the zeros: that’s 90 billion in Pennsylvania…:

Google said it would invest $25 billion in the region in AI and data center infrastructure over the next two years, while investment firm Brookfield said it had signed contracts to provide more than $3 billion of power to Google from two hydroelectric dams on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.

That’s $90 billion, with a “b.” One thing these projects all have in common is that none of them are being built in Minnesota. Instead, this is what we get: from KAAL-TV:

And 33 million in Minnesota:

As KAAL reports, “This new funding is expected to reach 225 new and developing businesses.” That works out to about $147,000 per business. Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania:

The list of participating CEOs includes leaders from global behemoths like Blackstone, Bridgewater, SoftBank, Amazon Web Services, BlackRock and ExxonMobil and local companies such as the Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, which deploys AI to bolster energy capacity. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, will also attend.

Some of this investment would have surely come to Minnesota if not for the many taxes, laws and policies enacted in the past three years to discourage private investment and weaken our electrical grid.

Other than the number of zeros, the big difference is that the big, Pennsylvania number comes from private investors. Ripe marks…er, taxpayers covered it in Minnesota.

So yeah – while I’m not tired of winning at the national level, I’m over it here locally.  

To:  Lieutenant Governor Flanagan
From:  Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re:  I Have Questions.  Let’s Be Honest, You Just Don’t Do Answers.

Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, 

I caught this tweet over the weekend:

I’ve got two questions:

1.  Does This Mean You’re Cutting Taxes?  One of the main reasons families (who can’t afford to leave Minnesota) are “just scraping by” is Minnesota’s confiscatory taxes.  Sales taxes in the metro (when you add local to state taxes) are up over 10%. The overall tax burden, driving by state taxes, is among the heaviest in the nation, and affects people at every level.  

Given that the administration of which you were an aggressively co-equal part squandered an $18B surplus, I need to ask: does this mean you’re repenting of your wastrel ways?

2. Do You Share A Platitude Tech With Gov. Walz?. Your twitter feed is not just an endless series of banal platitudes, but “style”-istically they appear to be written by the same unimaginative pollyanna-for-hire. 

Example:

Perhaps endless streams of platitudes are going to sound the same no matter who the writer is, but it just seems too close to be a mere coincidence. 

3. You Know My First Question Was Sarcastic, Right?  There’s no way “cutting taxes” is ever going to be on the agenda, is there?  Ever?

Rarely do we mere mortals share a time and space with a person like Peggy Flanagan.  

A person who has led by example her entire public life – including her early turn on the Minneapolis School Board…:

…starting the Minneapolis Public Schools’ meteoric rise in achievement over the past 20 years, turning it into the beacon of exceptional learning that it is today.

Well, she’s not resting on her laurels:

Brilliant. 

Know what else are taxes, Madame Lieutenant Goverrnor? 

Taxes.  

Like the ones your administration and legislative “trifecta” jacked up, statewide, after squandering a $18 Billion surplus, accelerating Minnesota’s slide to “below average” in gross product per capita.  

She could be our next Senator.  Or Governor.  Or whatever the machine decides they want her to be.  

I got a quick laugh at this one from Matt Little, who’s running to try to replace Angie Craig in CD2:

I”d love to know what’s this “full range of vision” he’s talking about?

All seven of them voted in absolute lockstep on every single issue.  Not one of them broke ranks with the DFL majority on any vote.  Every last one of them voted to squander the “surplus”, to run up the state budget 40%, for a $6B deficit, for the thoughtcrime database and for healthcare and free tuition for illegals, for ignoring out of state custody orders when parents with Munchausens by Proxy brought their kids to Minnesota to get transed, for red flag gun confiscation and universal registration laws…

…for everything. 

There is not one degree of difference between the voting records of DSA radical Zaynab Mohammed and “moderate” Grand Hauschild.  

Or Matt Little, for that matter. 

The Piglet can’t be happy about this latest Star-Tribune poll:

Gov. Tim Walz’s approval rating has dipped below 50% since his failed run for vice president last year, and about half of Minnesotans say he shouldn’t run for a third consecutive term in 2026, according to a new poll. The results suggest the DFL governor could face headwinds if he runs for re-election again, particularly from voters in greater Minnesota and the suburbs outside Hennepin and Ramsey counties. He also faces opposition from a majority of independents who disapprove of his performance.

The new Star Tribune/Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Minnesota Poll found 49% approve of Walz’s performance and 50% disapprove. A previous Minnesota Poll conducted last September found 53% of Minnesotans approved of Walz’s performance while 44% disapproved.

It’s only the second time Walz’s approval rating has fallen below 50% in the Minnesota Poll.\

It’s hard to read much history into this “Minnesota” Poll; the poll has changed hands so many times since its heyday from 1989-2012.  

But this is not great news for Walz.  

I don’t expect him to go out without a fight, of course; he – or Gwen – palpably craves national office.  The question is, given:

• the extraordinary nature of a third term as governor
• Walz’s unpopularity (which I’m going to guess is worse than even this latest re-dressing of the MN Poll shows, becasue that’s never a bad bet)
• The emergence of other contenders in the DFL – radicals like Peggy Flanagan (who’s terribly overmatched in her Senate race against Angie Craig), and relative moderates like Dean Philips…

…will the Tim Walz brand support another run?

I suspect we’re going to see a huge reconstruction effort.  Which I frankly hope succeeds, at least through DFL convention season. 

Postscript:  wouldn’t now be a great time for the MNGOP to suspend its circular firing squad and actually focus on fundraising and fighting a campaign?

I’m old enough to remember Tim Walz saying we needed to change our political rhetoric.  

And if you’re older than a week, so are you. 

How’s that going?

So, back to normal. 

We’ve had a week of gyrations and caterwauling about “right wing violence” after the ghastly shooting spree carried out by Vance Boulter, who is tenuously associated with the Republican Party.  

We now return to regular programming:

Now, you might think the fact that no party was mentioned is a sure sign that he was a Democrat. 

And you’d be right:

The “expletive” in question was alleged to have been Rep. Jim Nash of Waconia.

So, to borrow a phrase from David Byrne, “same as it ever was”.

Mere months after DOGE took a chainsaw to fuzzy discretionary spending…

A party whose approval is in the 20s, clearly living on graft, and that seems to be having trouble keeping its own house in order?  

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. 

Don’t get cocky.  The Democrats still have all the money in the world, and plenty of “talent” in the wings.  

But I’m loving the flailing. 

And it’s time for one of the great new Minneapolis summer traditions (X thread): 

One apparently dead, five more shot, and one woman injured in the brawl that inevitably followed at Hennepini County Hospital.

Early reports say it was ELCA vs. Missouri Synod.  

Fearless prediction:  Minnesota isn’t done with corruption scandals:

We’re nowhere near the bottom of this barrel. 

When someone – the US DOJ, or a hypothetical future Republican governor – finally starts looking at where the bodies are buried in Minnesota’s non-profit/industrial complex, “Feeding Our Future” will just be the appetizer. 

SCENE:   At the state DFL headquarters in Saint Paul.   Richard CARLBOM, new chair of the DFL, is sitting at a conference table with Edmund DUCHEY, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, all members of Amy KLOBUCHAR’s staff. 

CARLBOM:  So, we’ve got a real problem with white males in rural Minnesota.  That could be a big enough problem that the urban vote machine won’t be able to cover the difference next year.

So – no dumb ideas, people. 

(Thinking ensues).

DUCHEY:  I got it.  What do rural white guys like more than anything?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Racism!

CARROLL:  Misogyny…

DUCHEY:  Hockey!

CARLBOM:  Er…not exactly what we’re looking for…er, maybe we can expand on hockey.  What draws white rural men to hockey?

CARROLL: :  Misogyny!

DUCHEY: VIolence

BIRKENSTOCK:  Being drunk!

CARLBOM:  Bingo!   They lik4 drinking.  

We need to appeal to rural white male Minnesotans love of beer!

CARROLL: Boom! That’s exactly the look we want!

DUCHEY:  Empty glass!  Three sheets to the wind!

CARLBOM:  Er…

And SCENE