The GOP minority in the Senate managed to filibuster the daycare union jamdown last night – as in “up until 7AM”.

It wasn’t a “filibuster”, per se – the GOP added over 80 amendments to the jamdown, and debated them vigorously.  As of sixish AM, they’d gotten through a couple dozen, with dozens to go, and Tom Bakk tabled the  bill.  There are other things to get done.

Like maybe a budget.

The jamdown may come back.  But so will the amendments.

Cross your fingers, and stay tuned.  The good guys may pull this one off.

I got this via email yesterday; it’s on Facebook:

A friend of mine was a Sovietologist with an almost prescient ability to predict what the Soviets were doing internally. When asked by her doctoral advisor how she did it, she said ‘I listen to what they are saying about us.’ I realized a long time ago that that is a way to decrypt liberal statements. Whenever they say something… odd, simply reverse it. ‘The right wing is engaged in the politics of self-destruction’ thus becomes ‘The left wing is engaged in the politics of self destruction.’ ‘There is a vast right-wing conspiracy’ becomes ‘We are part of a vast left wing conspiracy’. ‘We will have the most transparent administration’ becomes ‘we will have the most opaque administration.’ Seriously, try it. You’ll find that more and more things make sense.

If you read this blog, you’ve known this for years.

But it’s good to see it spreading.

Anyone who believes that the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups was – as pointed out in the emphasized bit below…:

IRS officials said last week that the focused review of conservative groups was initiated by lower-level civil servants in the IRS Cincinnati office, not by political appointees in Washington, and that it wasn’t politically motivated. They say it stemmed from a misguided effort to centralize review of a growing number of applications for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status.

They want us to believe, to paraphrase Fred Thompson in “Hunt for Red October”, that “low-level civil servants take a dump without direction from above?”

Show of hands for anyone that’s buying it.

There is a lesser included question in this flap; the country is flooded with 501(c)4 non-profits.

Tax-exempt social-welfare groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code are allowed to engage in some political activity, but the primary focus of their efforts must remain promoting social welfare. That social-welfare activity can include lobbying and advocating for issues and legislation, but not outright political-campaign activity. But some of the rules leave room for IRS officials to make judgment calls and probe individual groups for further information.

Organizing as such a group is desirable, not just because such entities typically don’t have to pay taxes, but also because they generally don’t have to identify their donors.

So while conservatives (especially in Minnesota) have tried for years to work through their traditional party functions, done entirely under the scrutiny of Democrat-controlled “Campaign Finance” boards, subject to endless niggling politically-motivated investigations and enforcement actions…

…while the Democrats, especially the MNDFL, have funneled more and more of their money through 501(c)4s, which are regulated – but regulated in such a way as groups like the League of Women Voters get to operate as a de facto liberal PAC while, as we’ve seen, conservative groups come in for extra political scrutiny.

At the hands of “low-level employees”, naturally.

The DFL’s mulligan on the Care Provider Union Jamdown bill worked this time.

This story is from Demko at the MinnPost:

The vote came just two days after the bill, sponsored by Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, stalled in the finance committee on an 11-11 vote. Two Senate DFLers — Terri Bonoff of Minnetonka, and Barb Goodwin of Columbia Heights — joined all Republicans in voting against the controversial measure, which could affect upwards of 20,000 workers.

On the second vote, Bonoff joined her fellow DFLers in voting in favor of sending it to the floor. Goodwin again voted against the proposal.

Bonoff’s explanation was an early-morning chuckle:

Bonoff made it clear that her vote was not an indication that she supports the unionization proposal. “Make no mistake, I’m not changing where I stand on this bill,” she said.

But Republicans argued that a vote to move the bill to the floor — even without any recommendation — was no different than voting in favor of it. “Don’t fool yourself,” said Sen. Michelle Fischbach, R- Paynesville. “This is just like voting yes.”

The DFL are in a jam, of course; if the unions don’t get thousands of new dues-paying members, stat, the DFL’s major non-Alida-Messinger, non-plutocrat funding stream dries up solid pretty quick here.

If it stalls anywhere else, look for DFL legislators to go on hunger strikes, and then start taking hostages.

I almost wrote “more hostages”, but that’d be a little dramatic.

Wouldn’t it?

I got this yesterday from a source at the Capitol:

 “People are beginning to whisper the words:  Special session.  As of late yesterday afternoon, the final Finance bill (Transportation/Public Safety) was finally released, which included a 7.5 cent gas tax increase.  With not a single omnibus bill back from conference committee and [Transportation/Public Safety] still in the Tax committee (and you can’t take up any bill until 3 days of notification), there is no way we will have a complete budget prior to 5/15, at the earliest.

Also, wasn’t it Tom Bakk that said we won’t take that up until we have a budget?  

With not ONE omnibus bill to run the State government on the Governor’s desk, we don’t have a budget.”

Let that rattle around your noggin for a bit; the DFL that ran by telling the people (wrongly) that the MNGOP was focused on social issues has just spent nearly the entire session trying to unionize daycares, grab guns and legislate gay marriage – and stands a chance of needing a special session because the DFL Senate, House and Governor can’t agree with each other. 

This is what happens when you put the arrested adolescents in charge.

Last week reported that entrepreneurial activity in Minnesota was the worst in the entire US.

But the whole country is reeling.

Usually the “recovery” from a recession is a great time to start a business; in the “creative destruction” cycle, it’s the time when creativity happens; as money starts to flow again, people start businesses.

But not this time.

Glenn Reynolds:

So what’s to blame for this change? A lot of things, probably. One reason, I suspect, for a job market that looks more like Europe is a regulatory and legal environment that looks more like Europe’s. High regulatory loads — the product of ObamaCare and numerous other laws — systematically harm small businesses, which can’t afford the personnel needed for compliance, to the benefit of large corporations, which can.

Likewise, higher taxes reduce the rewards for success, making people less likely to invest their money (or time) into new businesses. And local regulatory bodies, too, make starting new businesses harder.

But I wonder if the biggest problem isn’t cultural. Since 2008, this country hasn’t celebrated achievement or entrepreneurialism. Instead, we’ve heard talk about the evils of the “1%” ” about the rapaciousness of capitalism, and the importance of spreading the wealth around. We’ve even heard that work in the public sector is somehow nobler than work in the private sector.

Countries where those attitudes prevail tend not to produce as much entrepreneurialism, so it’s perhaps no surprise that as those attitudes have gained ascendance among America’s political class and media elite, we’ve seen less entrepreneurialism here.

The process of changing this nation from a culture of building and innovating into one of consuming and demanding has taken decades.  But Obama seems to be close to closing the circle, creating the first nation to go from benign tyranny to freedom and all the way back.

Joe Doakes emails:

Pointing this out is, without a doubt, racisssss

Click the image to go to the original article.

Joe Doakes

The article from which the map came notes that Democrats are busily trying to recruit stolid pro-gun candidates in red states, even as they work to try to attack the Second Amendment at the national level.

The answer? Maybe ban guns in the hands of Democrats?

Nah.  Maybe Democrats need to realize not only that their party are hypocrites on this issue (in Minnesota and nationwide), but that guns are the least of the issues where that’s true.

No news here; the Sequester, like every “school layoff” in every city that isn’t Detroit, is basically the same as everyone’s old alcoholic significant other threatening to kill themselves; an abusive, co-dependent way of browbeating and bullying people into giving in.   The “cuts” – really a whiz-in-the-wind reduction of an increase – are designed to gull the gullible and intimidate the weak and dependent.

The FAA Controller furloughs were a great example; the furloughs will save a fraction of the FAA’s consulting budget, or travel budget, or any number of other expendables that don’t directly affect the agency’s mission.

But squeezing the flying public shows the peasants who’s boss.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Local community celebrations suffer from Obama Administration tax-hike hostage-taking: “Give us the money or the fly-boys get it.”

Note this quote: “Maj. Darrick Lee, spokesman for the Thunderbirds, said a typical season averages about $9.75 million and the Air Force needs to focus its resources now on its mission in Afghanistan.”

Seriously? We’re cutting back airshows all the sudden because we need a lousy $10 million to fight the war in Afghanistan? Dude, we spend that every hour over there and there’s no end in sight.

An entire season of Air Force goodwill (and recruitment advertising) that also directly boosts local economies costs about the same as two Obama vacations; a grant to redesign Southwest Canyon Road in Beaverton, Oregon; or the missing first payment on bankrupt car maker Fisker’s federal Green Energy subsidy loan.

I could understand cutting airshows if the federal government suddenly got Libertarian Fever and cut airshows IN ADDITION to these other boondoggles . . . but the administration shows no sign of fiscal prudence, only political punishment. Longer lines at airport security, laying off air traffic controllers, grounding military flying teams: these are directly aimed at making life miserable for ordinary taxpayers who haven’t demanded higher taxes quickly enough, so they must be punished for it.

Hostage-taking used to be a gangster tactic, now it’s Democrat standard operating procedure. That should tell us something.

Joe Doakes

Spare the rod, spoil the taxpayers.

To: President Barack Obama
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Optics

President Obama,

You made a big show of flying the “Newtown Parents” – white, upper-middle-class suburban Americans all – to the White House on Air Force One.

I have nothing but sympathy for the parents of Newtown.  Losing a kid is the worst thing I can imagine.  And God willing, imagining is all I have to do so far.  Knock wood.

But I’m wondering – were there any bereaved parents from Chicago on the plane?   Any standing with you in the Rose Garden yesterday?

No, Mr. President.  You surrounded yourself with bereaved parents who looked like NPR producers and CNN reporters, rather than residents of projects and parents of “working families”.  Why was that?

Because it looks to me like you’re trying less to make America – including the parts of it where black people are being gunned down daily – safer, and more like you’re trying to get white, upper-middle-class people to dig deeeeeep for the next Congressional election.

That is all.

President Obama’s effort to jam down a gun grab died yesterday in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The effort was politically dodgy from the beginning; even with the saturation media coverage of the Newtown massacre, most Americans weren’t fooled; the facts remain that mass shootings are at low historical rates and violent crime overall is dropping (outside Chicago).   Only 4% of the American people consider controlling guns a vital issue.

But that didn’t stop The One from trying.

Krauthammer put it well; the entire push was emotional blackmail (emphasis added):

“If you’re going to make all of these emotional appeals,” he said, “you’ve gotta show that if this had been law, it would have stopped Newtown. It would not have. It’s irrelevant. I wouldn’t have objected, I might’ve gone the way of McCain or Toomey on this, but it’s emotional blackmail to say ‘You have to do it for the children.’ Not if there’s no logic in this, and that I think is what’s wrong with the demagoguery that we’ve heard out of the president on this issue.”

And in defeat, the emotional badgering only got worse.  From the President’s Rose Garden speech immediately after the vote (emphasis added):

“The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill,” Mr. Obama said in the White House rose garden about 90 minutes after the vote. “It came down to politics.” …

“This pattern of spreading untruths … served a purpose. A minority in the U.S. Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms, even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery. It’s not going to happen because 90 percent of Republicans just voted against that idea.” …

And, as always, he accused Republicans of politicizing the issue.

Remember Berg’s Seventh Law:  “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”   When President Obama accuses Republicans of “politicizing the issue”, he’s saying he’s angry because they politicized it better than he did.

The gun legislation was never about controlling guns, and it was never “about the children”.

John Hinderaker at Power Line spelled it out clearly (emphasis added):

As we have noted more than once, pretty much everything Obama does is intended to stir up the Democratic Party’s base to drive turnout in 2014. Obama knows he can’t do much of anything as long as the GOP holds the House, so his primary goal is to stoke outrage on the left, in hopes that 2014 will look like 2008 and 2012, and not like 2010. So no doubt he hoped that some gun control measure–any gun control measure!–could get through the Senate, so that pressure, probably irresistible, could be brought to force a vote on the same proposal in the House. Not so that it might pass, but so that House Republicans would be on record voting against gun control. Obama could have raised countless millions from his fervently anti-gun base to go after the more vulnerable such Republicans. Now, the issue won’t even come up in the House, and Obama and the Democrats will have to find something else.

That, I think, is the best explanation for the profound disappointment that Obama showed today.

If those children hadn’t promised Obama a way to save the second half of his term, Obama would have never attached his political future to it.   They’d have been of no more use to him than, say, the people killed in Benghazi.

And the media would have let it fade into tragic history three months ago.  Like Benghazi.

It’s like Easter for Democrats.

Liberals will occasionally try to sound “moderate” by claiming to favor “partnerships” between government and business.

These “partnerships” usually amount to one of a couple of things:

• The worst of both worlds; the inefficiency of government combined with the lean capitalization of a business
• The government picks a winner

In neither case do things work out well, as a general rule.

Except with this example, perhaps the most successful public private “partnership” in all history.

Just saying; if my financial planner hasn’t put a ton of money into Glock USA and Sturm Ruger, we’re gonna have to talk.

They warned us that if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d be flirting with fascism before too long.

And they were right.

The topline number has all the mainstream media bobbleheads a-tingling; unemployment is “down to 7.6%”.

It’s wind in sails, of course; the labor participation rate has dropped to 63.3%, the lowest it’s been in ten years of measuring, and the lowest it’s been so far in this recession.

Which means the actual share of the work force above the age of 16 actually working is 58.49%.

That number is…:

• Almost 2.5% lower than the day Barack Obama took office (60.58%)
• Statistically the same as October, 2010 (58.5%), when unemployment peaked at 10%.
• Marginally up from December of 2010 (58.2%), when the recession bottomed out (and which looks like a statistical fluke, coming between two months in the 58.5% range)
• Marginally better than the low-points in this calculation (58.18, in November 2010 and July 2011, when the unemployment rates were 9.8% and 9.1%, respectively).

It takes a lot of lipstick to make this look like anything but a pig.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Senator Franken’s monthly newsletter arrived.

He co-sponsors legislation to reverse federal law and let us unlock our cell phones and choose our own carriers. Airwaves are interstate commerce so properly federally regulated. Free market is good. Excellent work, Al. A+

He sponsors a poetry contest for children of military families. This is pandering, Al, not substantive help for veterans or their families; but it’s a harmless waste of time that could be spent doing worse things. C.

He co-sponsors federal legislation to give Minnesota money for courthouse security, arising out of the shooting in Cook County two years ago. How much to spend on local courthouse security is not a federal issue, it’s a county issue, Al. F

He co-sponsors a meaningless resolution to keep wrestling an Olympic sport. Might as well urge The Donald to drop the Miss USA swimsuit competition. It’s a private entertainment business decision, Al, not a federal issue. F

Overall grade: D+

Talk about grade inflation.

2013: Governor Alida Messinger Mark Dayton says he’s shocked, shocked to find that projections regarding the gambling revenue that were a vital part of the state’s “contribution” toward the new Vikings jamdown stadium were developed with input from the gaming industry:

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton says he wasn’t aware that projections of how much revenue new forms of charitable gaming would generate for the Vikings stadium were developed with input from the gambling industry.

But the head of the state gambling control board said the consultations with businesses — which were needed to create a new model from scratch — were repeatedly discussed in public.

And a former lawmaker who pushed the charitable gaming legislation in the state House said he thinks the governor is trying to distance himself from projections that now look wildly optimistic.

“People are just looking for places to point blame, that’s all,” said John Kriesel, a Republican former state representative from Cottage Grove.

Cue the harps.  Let’s flash back to 2013:  Governor Messinger Dayton, after meeting with Roger Goodell and his goons, is led by his leash to the forefront to lead a jamdown of a stadium deal; at the head of a NFL-paid campaign that convinced Helga Braid Nation – the lowest-information voters in a state full of union bobbleheads – that the Vikings were on the very verge of moving from one of the NFL’s strongest market.  The Braids inveigled  most of the DFL and a few deeply-misguided Republicans into voting for a plan that some of us warned you at the time had no chance whatsoever of succeeding.

Today? If only Christian Ponder could throw as hard as Dayton passes the buck:

“I think it should have been disclosed,” Dayton told the Associated Press. “I think obviously in hindsight, given the serious overestimation that occurred, that those sources should have been disclosed very publicly in the very beginning and people could have exercised the caution that probably was due given those sources.”

But is Dayton telling mumbling the truth?

Tom Barrett, head of the gambling control board, said it always was clear that gambling firms were being consulted on the new devices, costs and other issues relevant to building a revenue projection.

A presentation from the gambling control board to the Senate Taxes Committee in December 2011, for example, states the board plans to gather “input from industry representatives.”

“The input was helpful, but they didn’t drive (the process),” Barrett said of the gambling firms. “They were asked, ‘Do you see any problems with the methodology?’ And in defense of what was before the board and how we approached it, I still stand behind the methodology.”

The fact is, there’s plenty of blame to go around.  Most of the DFL, and all too many GOP legislators, were cowed by the NFL and the Helga Braids.  The GOP – which then held the majority in the Legislature – allowed Idiot Stadium to become the most important issue in a session that should have been about reforming government.  Most of the DFL were their usual vote-grubbing craven selves.

But the buck – especially the buck that involves the actions of an executive branch that pushed in its own passive aggressive style for this jamdown – stops with the Governor.  Whoever that is.    

It’s abetted, of course, by a Twin Cities media that was even more in the bag than usual; sports is big money for most of the media, and potentially salvation for the Strib, at least temporarily; the money the Strib would earn selling the land needed for the stadium development drove the arm-twisting that led the stadium from Arden Hills back downtown, and it drove and drives the paper’s entire coverage of this sorry debacle.  The Strib served as Roger Goodell’s PR agent just as surely as Governor Messinger Dayton served as his lobbyist.

We’re broker than we’ve been since the fifties.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

To hear the President tell it, the sequester cuts are so deep, so devastating, the very existence of the nation is threatened: mass poverty, rain of fire, dogs and cats living together, the end of days.

The actual amount of spending cuts that take effect in 2013 is around $50 billion.

By odd coincidence, the US foreign aid budget for 2013 is also around $50 billion.

Seems to me any fifth grader could figure out a way to implement the sequester cuts without harming a hair on any American’s head.

The question then becomes: is the President smarter than a fifth grader?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Perhaps a more relevant question:  does he need to be?

John Cusack asks the question most of us had the answer to five years ago.  I add emphasis:

“One is forced to asked the question: Is the President just another Ivy League A**hole shredding civil liberties and due process and sending people to die in some sh*thole for purely political reasons?” asked actor John Cusack in a recent piece published yesterday on TruthOut.org.

Cusack was sharply critical of President Obama’s decisions to continue President George W. Bush’s drone program and continuing the war in Afghanistan.

Yep.

And he’s an Ivy League as*hole for having a Homeland Security director who turns peaceful right-wing protesters into a fearsome fascist terror network, dabbles with reinstating the “Fairness Doctrine”, squatted on the Fourth Amendment, accelerated the militarization of the nation’s police, nationalized healthcare and tore the Constitution to shreds.

Glad you’re finally catching on.

To:  Everyone in the USA
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant who’s been through it all before
Re:  “Sequestration”

Hey, everyone,

You may not remember this, but we’ve been through all this before.  Remember the “partial government shutdown”, back in the nineties?  It was a whole big nothing-burger.

Oh, the Clinton Administration tried to make sure that the people felt whatever pain was generated – closing parks, cramping down on the voters.  But as a rule, the whole thing affected nobody.

And here in Minnesota, we had a “complete” shutdown two years ago (which, again, wasn’t – the courts kept most of the government going as “essential”).  It lasted a few weeks.  Then Governor Messinger Dayton abandoned it, when he realized Minnesotans, for all his efforts to squeeze and scare them – shutting down state parks and highway rest areas, threatening to lay off teachers – barely noticed any difference.  While the media did its best to prop up the Messinger Dayton line, the people of Minnesota heard the gales of calumny but saw and felt a big fat nada burrito.  Even Governor Messinger Dayton – as cosseted and isolated from reality as his staff keeps him – noticed; on his trip around the state to whip up support for the DFL budget, he saw tepid crowds of union droogs, and a few professional protesters, and realized he had nothin’ (which may be why Dayton makes so few public appearances these days).

So it’s time for “sequestration” – the “radical” budget cuts that Obama and the super-di-duper commission agreed to as a stick to lead everyone to the “carrot” of an actual federal budget.  We’ve been waiting nearly 1,400 days for a budget from the Democrat-addled Senate, so Washington figured a “stick” was needed.

By the way – how radical and drastic are those cuts?:

Yep. They’re not even cuts.  They’re reductions in the increase.  Indeed, almost completely worthless, if cutting spending is your goal, but really nothing but a fart in the wind; sort of like “dropping HBO” in your family budget, even though your gas bill is rising and your teenage kids are costing more and more.

Obama will try to make “sequestration” hurt; he’ll slow down the TSA lines, he’ll gundeck some ship overhauls and clamp down some military maintenance budgets, he’ll inveigle some big cities to lay off a few cops and teachers, he’ll shut down Yellowstone as the cameras record photos of crestfallen children.  Hell, Joe Biden may even personally try to close the gates at Disney World.

But there is no there, there.  It’s a scare tactic, engineered by Obama and his compliant media.

It needs to be ignored.

That is all.

The DFL-controlled House of Representatives is debating – surprise, surprise – a “Red Light Robo-Cop” bill that would contract a private company to get photos of red light violators and refer them to the cops:

 Supporters said installing traffic cameras at intersections would improve public safety. Chief author of the bill, DFL Rep. Alice Hausman of St. Paul, said she has found that red light cameras reduce traffic deaths.

I suppose Rep. Hausman’s constituents should be happy she actually showed up rather than subcontracting her job out to one lobbyist or another.

But Rep. Hausman isn’t the only DFLer who yells “off what?” when a lobbyist tells them to jump:

The committee chair, DFL Rep. Ron Erhardt of Edina, said he wanted the committee to vote on the bill but later decided to table it after a lobbyist for a company selling the traffic cameras sent him a note. Erhardt later told reporters that the bill did not have the support of the committee and would likely have been defeated. He said the committee may consider the bill later but only if there is enough support to pass it.

My big question today:  “has the DFL actually given office space in the Capitol and State Office Buildings to lobbyists?  Perhaps with staff?”

The Minnesota DFL announced via its Twitter feed yesterday:

GAMALIEL, a faith-based network, and Asamblea de Derechos Civiles kick off “Dream for All” with vigil outside Bachmann’s WP office today.

— Minnesota DFL Party (@MinnesotaDFL) February 20, 2013

Rep. Bachmann doesn’t have a Waite Park office.

Nor was her “mobile office” in Waite Park yesterday.

Bills to address nonexistent problems, demonstrations at nonexistent offices?  Tomayto tomahto.

I’ve been a little nervous about this for weeks.

Let me explain:

The Minnesota GOP is a shambles – but this state is full of conservative people.  And while conservatives are not the kind to stand around waving signs for any old thing, when you get us riled up, we turn out in droves, and we punch way above our weight.  One conservative out on the street speaking out is worth four or five figures of Alida Messinger’s money.

And the DFL knows this; they know that while they’ll get inundated with hard-working, well-informed, taxpaying folks when they propose radical and stupid legislation, that – unlike the people who turn out (and, often, are paid to turn out) for their events, they work for a living, don’t have unions giving them time off, can’t leave their lives on hold while they play politics for an extended time.

And so they’ve been proposing an avalanche of radical and stupid legislation:

• As I’ve noted (and will be noting today and tomorrow), a raft of gun laws almost bizarre in their absurdity.
• A rules change in the House seemingly designed to poke Republicans in the eye.
• A flip-flop on the “school shift” so seemingly clumsy it could come from a Betty McCollum speech.
• A groaningly extreme sales tax plan that only the Iranians would stick us with, one that not just tax experts and economists but even Democrats who work in the private sector think is stupid.

On the one hand, it’s the DFL getting control of the wheels and levers of power after ten years of incomplete control, which has to be a little like an ex-con looking for a hooker after ten years in jail.

Still, it’s made me a little nervous.  And I can’t be all wrong, because it makes Dave Thul nervous too.

There is only so much in the conservative activist excitement bank. You can get our people out once, twice, maybe three times in droves during a session, and after that fatigue as well as lack of vacation time come in to play. I can’t say with complete confidence, but it sure looks like the DFL is ramping up the outrage on issues they really don’t intend to make a full court press for-gun bans, tax hikes on the poor, tax hikes on businesses, ect. They are getting us to waste our ammo on targets that don’t matter, so we will be low on ammo when the real battle starts.

If there’s anything more insidious than overestimating your opponent, it’s underestimating them.

The DFL has to know that even in the best of times the GOP runs on volunteers (2000 and 2004) or the passion of activists who somehow scrape up the time and energy to move mountains (2002, 2010).

If you were Ken Martin Mark Dayton Alida Messinger, it wouldn’t be rocket science to see that the weakest link remaining in the GOP is the energy and passion level of the volunteers and activists that are, really, the party’s only real resource at the moment.

Even some DFLers – the thin film of them that actually have to manage things in the private sector – are figuring it out.

This piece has made the rounds; it’s from the San Fran Chronicle, in a piece that gurgitates a whooooole lotta Minnesota myths:

“We’re screwed,” [Printing company owner Dik] Bolger said, if the tax goes through. His 79-year-old company competes nationwide and overseas for work with major brands like Chanel. “If you’re bidding for a $100,000 job on a national basis and tax expenses push you a couple of percent higher, then I’m not competitive.”

And I’m hearing this from businesspeople – some political, some not, and mostly off the record – all over the place.

For generations, Minnesotans lived out the progressive argument that high taxes and high services were what gave the state its fabled quality of life.

One thing Minnesota Democrats never, ever get; the “Minnesota Miracle” – creating a high-tax, “high-service” system that actually prospers – depends on several factors:

• Being the uncontested biggest economy…
• …within a national economy that has no serious competition (as the USA did not, between 1945 and the mid-seventies)…
• …allowing near-unbridled prosperity…
• …which supports boundless government spending.

Aren’t the Democrats the ones who complain that their opposition is in the back pocket of lobbyists?

We’ll come back to that.

We’ll also come back to this:  until redistricting last February, I spent close to two decades in the old House District 66B, which was represented by long-time DFLer and teachers union mouthpiece Alice Hausman.

Hausman, speaking at an event for which she apparently couldn’t find a lobbyist to substitute for her.

Republicans in the district used to call her “Alice The Phantom”, because she was rarely seen out and about in the district, except for the odd photo op.  Redistricting put her in 66A – but she’s the same Alice Hausman she ever was.

Like I said, we’ll be back.

——–

I went to the Capitol last night.  As usual, the number of pro-Second Amendment people dwarfed the number of orcs – in the overflow room I was in, it was 100 to about five, and that was much closer than it usually gets.

While all of the Republicans on the Public Safety committee stayed through the full three days of testimony, a variety of the DFLers picked up and left the hearings.

Hearings for the bills their people were introducing.  Representative  Hilstrom, Savick, Schoen,  Simonson and Slocum were largely absent from the morning’s testimony – at least, testimony from opponents of the gun grab bills.  I’m going to hazard a guess they’re present for the votes.

But more egregiously, Representative Hausman was absent for the readings of both of her gun grab bills – the magazine capacity bill and the “assault weapon” grab.   Which is not uncommon in the House; Reps have busy schedules, and it’s not uncommon for other representatives to fill in for them.

So who read Hausman’s gun grab bills?

Heather Martens, “executive director” (and, likely one of about three actual members, and that’s being charitable and assuming that they don’t actually charge to be members) of “Protect Minnesota”.

Heather Martens, exploiting an earlier crime victim in front of the Minnesota House.

(No, I’m not kidding.  The late Joel Rosenberg used to tell stories of going to “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota meetings – Martens had to rename the group again after what was left of CSM’s credibility evaporated a few years back – where Martens presided over a table with nothing but Second Amendment activist ringers.  Not a single actual gun-grabber showed up for these meetings)

Martens – who, as has been noted in this space for the past decade, rarely if ever says a single truthful or factual word about the gun issue in public – read both of the bills to the committee for the record.  It’s the job the Representative is supposed to do.

This was brought up to Michael Paymar, the committee chairman.  He said it was fairly common for people to fill in for Representatives in front of the committee.

Which may or may not be true, but I’m going to hazard a guess that those people who fill in are almost never registered lobbyists.

I say “almost never”, because it’s against the House of Representatives’ purported “Permanent Rules“:

2.39 EXECUTIVE BRANCH OR LOBBYIST PRESENCE IN COMMITTEE. No House committee, division or subcommittee shall permit any member or staff of the executive branch, registered lobbyist, or lobbyist principal, to be seated at the committee table with members of the House during official proceedings of committees of the House.

“Presenting a bill to the committee” certainly counts as being “seated at the table with members of the House”.

So the facts are these:

• Representative Hausman was absent – according to staff, off doing non-House business – during the introduction of not just one but both of her gun grab bills
• Both of her bills were read by a registered lobbyist
• If a Republican had done this, there’d be an uproar
• BONUS FACT:  After all of the DFL’s whinging about “model bills” last year, in an attempt to impugn ALEC, all of the DFL’s gun grab bills are cribbed from legislation in other states, and are pretty obviously not just model bills, but really stupid ones

So there you go, District 66A. Your voice has been given over to a special interest group.

Are you proud today?