Zach Rodvold – a campaign staffer – is upset about Michele Bachmann’s round of “Taxin’ Tarryl” ads.

The problem is, the only thing he does is continue to repeat the same Big Lies the rest of the DFL is beating to death this campaign:

If Michele Bachmann wants to talk about fiscal responsibility – let’s talk. Tarryl Clark consistently voted to hold down taxes on 95% of working Minnesotans,

Well, no.  She supports Obamacare and the sunset of the Bush Tax Cuts, both of which will tighten the screws on all Minnesotans, in the exceedingly unlikely event she’s elected.

including reducing the burden of property taxes.

And this is one of the DFL’s most cynical lies.

This all ties back to their Local Government Aid canard; local governments, the story says, have to raise their property taxes when the state cuts LGA.  Conversely, cities and counties can lower property taxes when the state pays more LGA launders that spending burden through the Legislature and down to the rest of the state’s taxpayers.

Of course it’s BS; that was one of the rationales behind pushing all state education spending up to the State during the Ventura regime; local districts just displaced the spending and kept, or ratcheted up, the taxes.

There is no reason to believe that paying more LGA would make the DFL-controlled, spendaholic Twin Cities and Duluth any more responsible – much less induce them to cut property taxes.

Unlike Bachmann, Tarryl has taken tough votes to balance budgets

And that’s another DFL Big Lie – that “balanced budgets” are, in and of themselves, a virtue.  They’re not; they just mean that state government is completely paid for with the revenue at hand.  If you tripled the size of state government (and its spending), but confiscated three times the revenue to pay for it, they could say “the budget is balanced”, all right; it’d be balanced on the taxpayers’ backs. (Heck – they could quadruple taxes and brag they had a surplus!)

If there’s one byproduct to the Tea Party movement and the electorate’s swing to the right this past year, it’s that the DFL realizes they need to couch their rapacity in pseudo-responsible weasel words like “balanced budget” and “property taxes relief”.

Between the lines, it’s the same old rot.

During the campaign, two of the lefty memes that irritated me the most were “Obama’s smart“, and “Obama was an Ivy Leaguer” and, its close cousin, “Obama was a constitutional law professor”.

None of them is especially a qualifier for the office of President.

The “ConLaw professor” is the easiest disposed of; the President will never need to litigate the Constitution; he or she only needs to understand it.  Indeed, all the ideal president really needs to know about the Constitution is how to follow it.  Any good policeman or modestly-bright college graduate knows more than enough about the Constitution to be President.  And the President who thinks they can outfox the Founding Fathers is especially dangerous.

The Ivy Leaguer bit is a little harder – but I think it’s getting to the point where going to an Ivy League school should be a disqualifier for the Presidency; indeed, maybe we should trade the whole “natural-born US citizen” requirement to drop in that restriction.  I dunno.

But the fact is, the very best thing an Ivy League education, in and of itself, says about someone is that between the ages of 14 and 22 or so, that person understood how the paper chase was played well enough to earn spectacular grades and punch all the other Admissions Committee-friendly tickets and earn the scholarships it takes to afford to attend an Ivy.  In vastly more cases, it means that they come from families that both impressed upon the young ‘uns the need to have that upmarket diploma (and its most important fringe benefit, access to the upmarket alumni network), and the means to make it happen.  After about age 23, the best question for an Ivy grad is “what have you done for us lately?; too many wave their diploma around in their mid-thirties like Andy Bernard in The Office and his years at Cornell; they remind me of high school quarterbacks whose lives peaked at the homecoming game their senior year, and never quite got that good again.

And of course, while several great or at least decent presidents have gone to Ivy League schools, our best have been self-educated (Lincoln) or come from obscure midwestern schools (Reagan, who attended Eureka) and have had to earn their way through life on merit, rather than alumni connections.

But the “he’s smart” bit is the one that strikes me, ironically, as the dumbest “qualification”.

Doy.

Betty McCollum notwithstanding, it’s hard for anyone to get anywhere in public life without being “smart” in some sense of the term or another, whether it’s Thomas Jefferson’s world-altering intellect or Lyndon Johnson’s brutal political “street smarts”.

But the least useful, it’d seem, is the bookish, “Lookit me, I’m an Ivy Leaguer and you’re not!”, air of unearned condescension that you get from the overpraised, the overweening, and…

…the President:

To be blunt, Obama suffers from a lifetime of others excessively praising his intellect. It insulates him from ideas and facts that conflict with his pre-existing liberal rubric (so “every economist” believed his stimulus would work). It leaves him unprepared to engage in real debate with informed opponents (e.g. the health-care summit). It skews his understanding of how geopolitics works, as he imagines that his own wonderfulness can sway adversaries and override nations’ fundamental interests (the Middle East). Is he as well read as George W. Bush? As intellectually creative as Bill Clinton? As grounded in history as Harry Truman? Let’s get some perspective here.

It’s a deadly combination — intellectual arrogance and lack of sympatico with the public — that leads him again and again to stumble. And when his shortcomings lead to embarrassment or failure, he strikes out in frustration — at Israel, at the media, and at the American people. The image of himself clashes with the results he achieves and the reaction he inspires. No wonder he’s so prickly. You’d be, too, if everyone your entire life had told you that you were swell but now, when the chips are down and the spotlight is on, you are failing so badly in your job.

That, indeed, may be Obama’s great legacy;  that “The Peter Principle” may soon be called “The Obama Principle”.

Writing over at Culpable Stew, Aaron Klemz read my piece earlier this week, and flew into a violent, petulant rage, throwing things and losing control of his bodily functions and making bystanders wonder if he had some serious medical condition.

(I figured I’d shut down the left’s “so and so had a cow…” “argument” once and for all).

Anyway, Klemz thinks he’s got me (and Gary Gross) on my “cop-killer bullet” story from earlier this week – the bill written by Ted Kennedy that would have given the Attorney General the power to determine which bullets were “cop-killer” bullets.   The bill got shredded, losing by about a 2:1 margin.

Klemz’ rationale?  The language protects us!

But here’s the thing, in both Gross’ piece and Berg’s attempt to pile on, they love to cite legislative language except for the section which mandates exactlyhow the Attorney General will determine which ammunition is armor piercing (that would be section 926(d)):

Enh. I saw it. It didn’t change anything.  But here it is, with emphasis added:

(b) DETERMINATION OF THE CAPABILITY OF PROJECTILES TO PENETRATE BODY ARMOR–Section 926 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:“(d)(1) Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this subsection, the Attorney General shall promulgate standards for the uniform testing of projectiles against Body Armor Exemplar.

“(2) The standards promulgated under paragraph (1) shall take into account, among other factors, variations in performance that are related to the length of the barrel of the handgun or center-fire rifle from which the projectile is fired and the amount and kind of powder used to propel the projectile.

“(3) As used in paragraph (1), the term `Body Armor Exemplar’ means body armor that the Attorney General determines meets minimum standards for the protection of law enforcement officers.”

Back to Klemz:

Oh, you mean they’ll actually have to do objective tests? And that these standards, like all regulatory determinations, will be subject to oversight from the courts? And you mean that this determination is made in comparison to “standard ammunition?” Oh, and you mean that not only does the ammo have to be actually armor piercing according to objective tests, it has to be also “designed and marketed as having armor piercing capability?” That’s some “stroke of a pen.”

And this amendment failed nearly 2 to 1?

Yeah.  Proof that Congress isn’t always stupid.

There are two ways to look at any piece of legislative language; from the perspective of one who takes government language at face value and trusts government to act on the intent spun for legislators, and from that of someone who actually pays attention to history.

Liberal Attorneys General and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms (and now Explosives!) that report to them have a shameful record of manipulating gun control laws to maximize their control and the number of otherwise law-abiding gun owners they can prosecute under some grounds or another.

So if you are a liberal who looks at phrases like “shall promulgate standards for the uniform testing of projectiles” and says “Look! Standards!  In writing!”, then you are ignorant of the BATFE’s history.  During the Clinton Administration, the BATFE took the “standards” for importing firearms set under the 1994 “Crime Bill” and perverted them into a byzantine maze that seemed to be designed to entrap people who tried to be law abiding gun owners, but didn’t make a hobby of reading federal non-legislative regulation.  The “standards” observed during the “assault weapon ban” were…well, non-standard.  They made no sense.  Full-powered battle rifles like the HK91 would be allowed if they had a “thumbhole” sporting stock, while the less-powerful SKS would be banned because…it had a folding bayonet?  The rules were kept intentionally vague, and changed often, largely (it was believed) to entrap more law-abiding citizens – because it was almost impossible to stay ahead of the BATFE and the Attorney General’s “standards”.

And the “armor-piercing bullet” “standard” is, if anything, even more prone to abuse; your 30.06 hardball that you take deer hunting might be armor-piercing (because it’ll definitely shred most body armor), or it might not (because it’s pretty conventional), or it might be above certain loadings and muzzle velocities, or it might be any of the above depending on the “standards” the AG sets and – most importantly – the way the BATFE interprets the “standards”.

The bill lost 2-1 not because Republicans hate cops (as Klemz slanderously hints), but because of the record of the BATFE and, by extension, the federal government and setting standards like this.

(Klemz, with typical sorosblogger subtlety, entitles his “article” “Defending Cop Killer bullets, because that’s what they do”.  Well, no.  Unlike the Dems, the GOP has always proposed the laws that actually protect cops, and the rest of us too.  Of course, while Dems like Dayton are at the moment running away from their gun-control history, once you get them into places where they have complete control, like Chicago, we see the real truth; Liberals really hate  cops or black children).

(Isn’t the “disagreeing with me is a symptom of hatred” thing just a hoot?)

I ask my DFLer friends why they plan on voting for Mark Dayton.

“Because Tom Emmer is an angry extremist white man!”

“Because Target is anti-gay!”

“Because Emmer will cut the budget”…

…and so on.

But none of those responses answers my question; why are you voting for Mark Dayton?

Open thread for liberal commenters:  Why are you voting for Mark Dayton?  Actual reasons, please.

As we began the march toward the primaries, and I saw that Mark Dayton had (according to the KSTP poll) a 13 point lead in the race over DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher, I sat back in my seat and wondered “Why?”

Why Mark Dayton – a superannuated playboy with a 30-year habit of treating electoral office as a hobby?

“Because he can?”

Sure, but that explains a lot of people running for office.  Leslie Davis and Peter Idusogie and Ole Savior all ran for governor “because they could”.  They didn’t have the deep pockets of the Dayton and Rockefeller families to bankroll them, of course – but deep pockets alone don’t win primaries, much less elections; if they did, we’d be talking about “Governor Corzine”, and “Former California Governor Huffington”, for that matter.

It takes more than will, and it takes more than just money.  It takes skill and organization to spend all that money effectively in order to beat the combined brawn of the entire DFL machine to start a campaign, have it gain traction across this state, and take it through the primaries.

And that takes people who know the DFL; people who know the people whose palms need to be greased; people who know how to get out the people who get out the liberal votes; it takes people who know where the bodies are buried and how to put more there, as it were.

———-

One of those people is Ken Martin.

Martin is currently the director of “Win Minnesota“.  If you read this blog, you know who they are: they are a PAC that launders the Dayton family’s political contributions to “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” and the “2010 Fund” and the other arms of the Dayton Campaign’s tightly-wound little money-laundering and distribution machine.

And in 2006, Martin was Mike Hatch’s campaign manager, orchestrating an epic smear campaign against Tim Pawlenty that came within a cat’s whisker of winning.

———-

Mike Hatch needs no introduction.  A longtime legislator, former head of the DFL, former Attorney General, and two-time gubernatorial candidate, Hatch could be quickly but fairly described as the Lyndon Johnson of Minnesota politics.

Mike Hatch

Hatch has never been bashful about exerting his power.  During the nineties, he essentially ran Minnesota’s healthcare industry from the Attorney General’s office, using the AGO’s power to force the likes of HealthPartners to insert his cronies into controlling positions (on “consumer protection” grounds, naturally).

In 2003, Hatch tried to use the power of his office to try to intimidate the Commerce Department into pushing for an illegal settlement with a Florida-based insurance company – an effort that involved a shady potemkin contribution that amounted in my opinion to virtual blackmail against his political opponents, including the Minnesota GOP.  I reported on this story in 2003 (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five).

After his failed gubernatorial bid in 2006, Hatch went on to “consult” at the Attorney General’s office, with his successor and longtime protegé, Lori Swanson.  It was, according to sources familiar with the arrangement, a potemkin consultancy; Swanson had served so long as Hatch’s understudy that the two were basically one and the same entity, for policy purposes.

It’s an open secret among Minnesota’s chattering classes that Mike Hatch is by no means ready to shuffle off into the sunset – at least when it comes to wielding political power.

And Hatch remains, by all accounts, close friends with Ken Martin.

———-

“So what?”, you might ask.

Here’s what.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are a superannuated playboy hobby politician with a reputation for being a blunderer.  You’ve been “serving” inside the beltway, or been out in the political cold.  Your last experience in state electoral politics was in 1995, when you left (hypothetically, mind you) the office of State Auditor.

What do you need to succeed?

A Chief of Staff who knows where the bodies are buried, and is dying to bury a few more.

And if you are – again, hypothetically – a long-time political majordomo who still thirsts for power, but has been rejected for the endorsement to get it via electoral means?  How do you find that power?  By latching onto a (hypothetical) administration led by an inconsequential candidate who is nonetheless capable of providing boundless funding to get elected, backstopped by an even less-consequential running mate (Yvonne Prettner-Solon, whose record is as negligible as her opponent’s, Annette Meeks’s, is impressive), that’s how.  And then getting appointed to a position to influence the weak-kneed top of the ticket.

Rumors are trickling around Minnesota political circles that Hatch  is angling for the Chief of Staff gig in a Dayton Administration.

A source with knowledge of capitol  politics tells me that her or his sources saw a group of key Dayton staffers in the back room at a south-metro Perkins restaurant not long before the primaries.  With them, according to the source, was Hatch’s pal and former campaign manger Ken Martin.

———-

Again, you might say “So what?  It’s just a staff gig!  A guy’s gotta earn a living!”

But Mike Hatch as Chief of Staff brings up all sorts of wrinkles.  It seems fair to conjecture, given Dayton’s ineffectiveness as a leader and inexperience at executive office, that a Chief of Staff Hatch would have a very strong influence on the policies of the executive office.  He also remains the de facto Attorney General; via his years at AG, he has an inordinate influence in the Commerce Department.

In other words, in a Mark Dayton administration, Mike Hatch would have unprecedented power for an unelected official in Minnesota.

“He’d be the King of Minnesota”, quipped my source.

Lori Sturdevant is doing her most important job; trying to spin the DFL’s sows’ ears into silk purposes to buffalo the thin film of metro liberals and outstate oldsters who still believe the media into thinking they’re looking at a silk purse.

Here’s the sow’s ear:  the DFL’s endorsed candidate is a superannuated playboy hobby politician who’s been buying elections for his collection for thirty years.  His name’s been in peoples’ living rooms – first as a news story (most expensive campaign in Minnesota history), then as a punchline (running like a scared kitten in 2005, leaving 534 other legislators to face the terrorists alone).  He just ignored the DFL endorsement, wasted millions of DFL dollars in a fruitless primary, and once again proved the impotence of the DFL endorsement for state office – based purely on his campaign budget and his appeal to outstate oldsters who remember, or mistake him for, his father. Or grandfather.

Behold: Silk Purse!

THE ECONOMY’S BEEN AWFUL for too long. Voters are looking for familiarity and a message of hope. Along comes a candidate for governor who fills that bill, even though he stands apart from his party, and who has special appeal in northern Minnesota.

Sow’s ear: Dayton is to the DFL what Bob Dole was to the national GOP in 1996.

Silk purse:

Is it 1982 all over again?

Sow’s ear:  There are parallels with 1982, that dim and dismal time in Minnesota history:

Mark Dayton’s narrow DFL primary victory Tuesday was reminiscent of the late Gov. Rudy Perpich’s comeback 28 years ago. Then, Perpich benefited from a well-known name, a title that assured attention — “former Gov.” — and the loyalty of his fellow Iron Rangers. He bested Warren Spannaus, who as a former party chair and attorney general had the DFL machine on his side, much as House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher did this year.

The parallels between Dayton’s campaign to date and Perpich’s are numerous enough to raise suspicion that the “former U.S. Sen.” is consciously following Rudy’s 1982 playbook…Like Perpich, Dayton skirted the DFL establishment without alienating it. Like Perpich, Dayton emphasizes quality public education as the best ticket to a better economy. And like Perpich, Dayton is a quirky but genuine guy whom people easily underestimate.

Silk Purse:  There is none.

Well, not if you’re a DFLer.  For the rest of us, Speed Gibson works Sturdevant over like Mike Tyson punching out Santino from Project Runway.

Mark Dayton is “Perpichean” she says, even though the Perpich was no ultra-liberal. She’d know that if she’d bothered to read the unsigned lead Editorial on the next page.

Dayton is asking for Minnesota to again make its top personal income tax rate one of the highest in the country. That’s where it ranked 25 years ago — when a DFL governor, Rudy Perpich, pushed hard for its reduction to improve business competitiveness.

As the senior DFL mouthpiece at the Star Tribune, Sturdevant is of course overlooking the biggest similarity between Perpich and Dayton: erratic, inexplicable behavior. Perpich, you may remember, fancied himself a Presidential contender, doing goofy things like dying his hair jet black and changing “Rudy” to “Rudoloph G” Perphich. Dayton’s issues you likely know already, but that’s just “quirky” according to Sturdevant.

And by the way, Dayton does not really emphasize quality education, just more money. Perpich was a true education reformer (Charter Schools, e.g.), and did in fact improve the quality of education for those able to access those options.

When will the Strib cop to the fact that Lori Sturdevant is nothing but a full-time DFL flak in journalists’ clothes?

I’ve been saying that Michele Bachmann will win re-election in the Sixth Congressional District by eight points.

After seeing Tarryl Clark’s performance in the primaries – getting just under 2/3 of the vote against an opponent that dropped out two months ago – I’m thinking I was too pessimistic.

I’m predicting Bachmann by 10.

I caught most of the DFL goober debate on MPR last night.  For the benefit of those of you who did not, I’ll sum up the gestalt of the three candidates’ positions:

DAYTON:  “I’m gonna raise taxes!  And I”m gonna keep on raising them until things improve!”

KELLIHER: “Hey, lookit how relatively responsible, sane and conservative I seem compared to Dayton!”

ENTENZA: “We don’t call it spending, we call it an inves…hey, I just spent five million dollars and every  nickel of it went to bashing Tom Emmer, rather than explaining to Minnesota why I’m a better DFL nominee than the other two candidates!  Why, it’s almost as if my spending did nothing but benefit Mark Dayton!”

The latest polls show Dayton up by eleventy-teen bajillion points.  Stick a fork in Entenza.  As re Kelliher, the DFL endorsement remains the kiss of death.

Bring on Wednesday, baby!

Speed Gibson has probably the best summary I’ve seen of the DFL’s endorsed slate in the primaries tomorrow.

Granted, Speed’s a conservative – but even with that understood, he’s not impressed:

In a game of poker looking at these five jokers, I’d draw five.

Margaret Anderson Kelliher (Governor):  “Margaret” as she seems to be calling herself now is just plain inauthentic.  She certainly didn’t learn her big city liberal values from that farm upbringing she keeps mentioning and that’s the point.  She doesn’t want us to think she’s a big city liberal.  Neither does Matt Entenza, whose campaign is following the same theme, poor boy from Worthington.  Mark Dayton is also a big city liberal, but at least he doesn’t deny it, in fact, doubling down by promising the largest tax increase by far of these three Primary contenders.

Finally – a pundit who correctly uses the phrase “doubling down”!

Dayton has two other advantages, family money and superior political skills.  Margaret is a big city liberal, but not quite yet at least, a big city liberal politician as she’ll likely find out this Tuesday.

John Gunyou (Lt. Governor): You’ve met this type of individual many times I bet even if you haven’t met Mr. Gunyou or seen his presentations as I have.  These people make lists of problems, then sit back and wait for you to solve them.

No kidding.  Watching John Gunyou talk reminded me of watching former Saint Paul mayor Jim Scheibel, after he’d left office to become a “housing advocate”.  I sat for half an hour watching him speak; his message was “the poor need attractive, comfortable housing near mass transit”; when asked “Um, how do we afford it?”, his response was basically “If you care, you’ll figure it out”.  The audience cared deeply enougn, naturally, to universally endorse spending other peoples’ money on it.

Mark Ritchie (Secretary of State): In just one term, Mr. Ritchie has undone this office’s sterling national reputation built by Joan Growe (1975-1999) and Mary Kiffmeyer (1999-2007).  He was soon caught lying about misuse of his office’s resources, then went on to be materially involved in swaying a tight election toward now Senator Al Franken.  Mind you, former Senator Norm Coleman deserves full blame for losing this election.  It shouldn’t have been this close against an arrogant buffoon like Franken.  But most damning for Mark Ritchie is that he has done absolutely nothing since then to tighten up the many lapses and inconsistencies that left many on both sides concerned about our state’s ability to run fair elections going forward.

The next liberal hamster who chants “our electoral system is the best in the nation” is going to wish they hadn’t.

Rebecca Otto (State Auditor): Let me put it this way: if Rebecca Otto can competently perform these duties, the office should be abolished.

Hah!

Lori Swanson (State Attorney General): The sudden opening with then incumbent Mike Hatch running for Governor in 2006 probably thrust the decision to run upon Lori Swanson sooner than she wanted and it has certainly showed these past 3+ years.  The staff was unhappy day one.  She had to bring Hatch back initially because she so obviously couldn’t handle the job initially.  Those things have settled down, but she remains a Hatch clone who envisions her office as primarily consumer protection bureau.  It’s easier work and you get to fawn before the media, right or wrong.

I used to think our DFL constitutional officers were underachievers.  I was wrong, of course; they were just overpromoted.

This is the weakest slate of state office candidates the DFL has put up that I can remember, all of them people who can’t or won’t competently do those jobs.  I’ll include Dayton and Entenza when I further clarify that raising taxes in this economy alone is job-killing inc

Wednesday morning is going to be Day One of the golden age of Minnesota conservative blogging.

Al Franken?  Treating the Senate like a comedy club?

Go figger:

Franken, who was presiding over the chamber from the dais, gesticulated and made faces while McConnell explained his opposition to Kagan, according to witnesses.

The television cameras broadcasting the speech on C-SPAN remained fixed on McConnell, missing Franken’s antics from the Senate president’s chair.

McConnell grew increasingly angry as Franken made fun of him before a crowded public gallery and Senate aides lining the chamber walls. Senate aides said they were shocked that Franken would flout the decorum of the chamber during such a solemn occasion.

After McConnell finished his remarks, he walked up to the dais and rebuked him.

“This is not ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,” McConnell said, making reference to Franken’s career as a writer and actor on NBC’s long-running comedy show, according to a witness who overheard the exchange.

While Franken offered his apologies, I can’t imagine that it’s even occurred to most of the thousands of people who’ve served in the Senate over the centuries to even think about mocking another speaker.

But we tried to warn you.  Yes, we did.

Remember when the left was up in arms over the Bush Administration’s “invasions of privacy?”

Either does the left:

The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.

But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.

So let’s take stock here:

The Obama Administration has amplified all of the Bush Administration’s worst traits – spending four times as fast, worthless on immigration and outstripping even the worst and mostly false allegations against Bush at civil liberties – and given up on all the good traits, the tax cuts and America-first philosophy.

I’m hoping for change.

I’ve often wondered how senior citizens pay our various cities’ rampant and always-rising property taxes on fixed incomes.

The House DFL doesn’t!

May 5, 2008 – the House was debating HF3149, regarding property tax reform.  Laura Brod proposed an amendment that would have had the state refund a portion of a property owner’s property taxes, provided he/she was eligible for property tax relief, on a sliding scale depending on their (low, low) income.  The end result – a person would pay no more than 5% of their income in property taxes.

The amendment came to a vote (see page 11323).  Tom Emmer (and Brod, naturally) voted to help struggling property owners.

Margaret Anderson Kelliher voted against it, along with most of the DFL; the amendment failed 71-58.

Later in the day, Brod offered a similar amendment, limiting the refunds to people over 65 (scroll down to page 11325)

Emmer and Brod voted for it.  Kelliher voted against it.

Apparently she’d rather get publicity for talking about capping property taxes than actually do ot.

I suppose that DFLers voting against squeezing revenue out of people would be a little like vampires voting agianst free blood.

Not just the funniest political vid of the season so far…

…but one of very few David Byrne impressions better than mine.

The Tic-controlled Congress has the  confidence of 11% of the American people:

Gallup’s 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage point lower than the previous low for Congress, recorded in 2008.

To put this in perspective, used car salesmen got 24%, Lindsay Lohan got 18%, and the Snooki from Jersey Shore clocked 14%

The part that should have gotten the headline?  The Presidency dropped from 51 to 39% over the past year.

Let’s see if we can get it into single digits!

A few weeks back, Tom Emmer appeared on MPR’s “Mid-Morning with Keri Miller”.

Now, while I have credited MPR’s Newsroom with making a game attempt at providing balance, MPR’s programming is pretty much a pro-DFL morass.  Miller is less overtly a DFL flak than her predecessor, future former “Air America” prop Catherine Lanpher, but only barely.

Her interview with Emmer should have been an embarassment.    Tough questioning is one thing – and a good thing! – but Miller’s stock questions were accompanied with condescention, badgering and hectoring.

So all three DFLers are going to be on Miller’s show today.  Think Miller will be as concerned about specifics as she was with Emmer?

Think we’ll see questions like “Mr. Dayton, if we end state contracting, will we just stop doing the work, or will the work go to more-expensive unionized state employees?”, or “let’s say you tax “the rich” at confiscatory rates; how much of that five billion deficit your DFL caucus ran up; how much of the deficit will it kill off?  Be specific!”  “Mr. Entenza, you talk a lot about “Green Jobs” – but the record of “Green Jobs” in the US at large and in Spain has been dismal at best.   How is your plan not doomed?”  “Speaker Kelliher – so get specific here;  your “plan” makes a lot of vague blandishments about squeezing money out of people; how exactly do you close the deficit and spend as much as you’ve promised?’

How often will Miller sharply, mockingly purr “That won’t save much!”?

Any bets?

And when, not if, the DFLers squeeze by without any serious challenge, will Erik Black sniff about how vague they all were?

I’ll be an interesting day.

Obama’s “financial reform bill”  is full of paybacks to Obama constituencies

Principal among them is a measure to make it easier for unions, environmental groups and other activist organizations that hold shares to put their representatives on the boards of directors of every corporation in the United States.

The so-called “proxy access” provision, which activist groups say they will use to try to improve oversight of corporate financial practices, has provoked a backlash from the Business Roundtable, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other major non-Wall Street business groups.

This is one of the “reforms” that threw Britain into a tailspin in the fifties through the seventies; institutionalizing the control of unions and other pressure groups over other aspects of British society; it ensured the acceleration of Britain’s decline.

Other provisions of the financial legislation, which goes before the full Senate on Thursday for a vote and likely passage, favor Democratic constituencies directly by requiring banks and federal agencies to hire and do more business with them.

The bill would create more than 20 “offices of minority and women inclusion” at the Treasury, Federal Reserve and other government agencies, to ensure they employ more women and minorities and grant more federal contracts to more women- and minority-owned businesses.

The agencies also would apply “fair employment tests” to the banks and other financial institutions they regulate, though their hiring and contracting practices had little or nothing to do with the 2008 financial crisis.

“The interjection of racial and gender preferences into America’s financial sector deserves greater media exposure” before Congress debates and passes the massive 2,400-page bill, said Kevin Mooney, a contributing editor for Americans for Limited Government’s daily newsletter.

Right – but to “expose” it would “expose” them to the same charges of “racism” that greets every voice of dissent.

Wanna talk policy?

Or you wanna dump pennies on candidates?

Here is the attention-whoring, self-promoting face of the Minnesota DFL.

It’s “Robert Erickson”, and we’ve run into him before, of course:

He’s convinced himself that Minnesotans want open borders, and that making sure immigration is safe, available  and legal is for squares.

And he interrupted yesterday’s town hall meeting to dump a bag of pennies on Tom Emmer.

So you wanna talk about immigration, DFL?

I think we’re more than ready for that discussion.

Make sure you send that oh-s0-special lad Robert to have that discussion with us, DFL.

Let’s talk!

Dog Bites Man:  DFL-linked pressure group lying like a bunch of crack addicts caught with a stolen Lexus.

Man bites dog;  Twin Cities media checks the facts against objective reality.

If you read the Twin Cities center-right alternative media, you know that “Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota” is the most honesty-challenged roomful of bags of suppurating demi-human byproduct since Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund was still on peoples’ rolodexes.

But if you get your news from the Strib, the PiPress, MPR, WCCO or KARE11, you’d never know.

But KSTP5?  Glory be – truth matters to someone!  Channel Five’s “Truth Test” segment went over A4aBM’s latest TV ad effort and, well, probably lost the A4aBM account for Channel Five.

The ad tries to link Emmer … to Governor Tim Pawlenty. It claims Emmer sided with Pawlenty and opposed a plan that would force CEOs and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

This claim is false, at least according to the date of a house vote cited in the ad. On May 10th, Emmer did vote against a bill that would have increased income taxes by $443 million through the creation of one of the highest tax rates in the nation. But it makes no mention of CEO or corporate taxes. Every house Republican voted against it, along with 16 Democrats.

And it gets better:

The ad also claims the two supported a plan that created a huge deficit and cut funding for items such as health care, education, and job training.

This claim is also false. It’s a reference to the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Pawlenty’s 2009 unallotment plan the legislature did not vote on. The ruling did have the effect of reinstating nearly $3 billion from the previous year’s deficit, but it didn’t create a new deficit.

And that man is getting down and gnawing that dog’s leg to the bone:

Based on the series of misleading or false claims, this ad gets an “F” on the Truth Test.

The center-right blogosphere has been catching A4aBM in lies ever since their web site, Twitter and Facebook accounts and ads all went on the air, two minutes after Emmer won the nomination last May.

So why does the DFL and its minions try such transparently, stupidly, sloppily deceitful propaganda?

Because it’s not aimed at smart people.  It’s aimed at the people the DFL counts on for winning elections; people who don’t pay attention; people whose understanding of issues stops at the last slogan they heard; people who bring nothing to democracy but a vote for the DFL.

It doesn’t have to pass scrutiny, if they know their audience won’t scrutinize it.

Our liberal elites in action:  liberal talk host Bill Press says Obama’s polls are collapsing because  Americans are a bunch of spoiled brats; Brian Maloney transcribes:

I think this says more about the American people than it does about President Obama. I think it just shows once again that the American people are spoiled. Basically, spoiled– as a people, we are too critical. We are quick to rush to judgment, we are too negative, we are too impatient. Especially impatient. We want it all solved yesterday, and if you don’t, I don’t care who you are — get out of the way.

And again, basically spoiled. To the point where it makes me wonder if it’s even possible to govern today. I gotta tell you, I don’t think Abraham Lincoln — who certainly didn’t get everything right the first time — could govern today. I’m not sure Franklin Roosevelt could govern today, the way we are again. Just about like spoiled children. And it’s Americans, and it’s the media, and if we don’t get instant gratification, then screw you is basically our attitude.

Bill Press:  Get a grip.

You think Ronald Reagan got carried to success on the shoulders of the entire American people right after his election?  Please – the media certainly sniped at him nonstep (then as now).

And yet he succeeded (not that you can tell that to people like Bill Press).

Competence helps.

 The lastest KSTP-Survey USA poll shows Michele Bachmann up over Tarryl Clark by nine points with four months ’til the election.

Someone named “Alec”, a “diarist” at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, has a Matthews-y tingle running down his leg:

Someone else can write a nice front page post, but I am very excited by this. Bachmann 48, Clark 39. MOE 4%. Hard to believe the IP candidate only got 6%. With no name recognition, Clark is only down by 9. Bachmann is below 50% and her name rec is universal.

Four months ’til the election, with Clark benefitting from a blitz of advertising and friendly-to-fawning coverage in the Twin Cities media, before Bachmann has even really started seriously campaigning.  Seriously – Bachmann has yet to spend figurative dime one on her campaign.  There is no need to, not yet.

The “name recognition” is a red herring, too; all Bachmann’s negatives are in play, but Clark – a tax-and-spendaholic in a year and a district where that should be poisonous this fall – has only started to turn people off.  As “Alec” notes, she has no name recognition; that may be the best thing going for her so far.

And given the polarization of the numbers in the KSTP poll, I’m going to suspect that independents – who are breaking GOP nationwide – are not really sounding off yet.

Joe “Chloe” Bodell comments:

We’ll dig into the numbers later — but thanks to Alec for getting the news out to the ‘sphere.

This is good-to-great news, folks. – promoted by Joe Bodell)

Well, run this good-to-great news; at this point in 2006 and 2006, if memory serves (and I believe it does, but stop me if I’m wrong) Patty Wetterling was around nine points back in a bad GOP year, and Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenburg was closer than that two years ago in a much, much worse year.

I’ve been predicting an eight-point Bachmann win by November.  I’m seeing no reason not to be optimistic.

 A lot can happen in four months, of course.

Gary Gross also covers the topic.

It was one of the Senate’s stranger friendships; Barry Goldwater and Paul Wellstone.  The two were at the opposite extremes of American politics, but they admired each others’ passion and commitment to their principles.  They became fairly close friends.  Wellstone even attended Goldwater’s funeral.

But that doesn’t mean that Wellstone was ever remotely tempted to vote as a fiscal conservative, or that Goldwater broke ranks with conservatives from his friendship.  Admiration only goes so far.

Even in notoriously liberal Minnesota, crowded as its Metro and Arrowhead areas are with invinicble DFL voters, this could be a rough year for the Democratics.

And it’s when times get tough that some people, at least, start reaching, hard, for plans.

Grace Kelly, noted 9/11 truther writing at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, believes she has the answer.  She notes that the “Goldwater/Wellstone” phenomenon means that people who are passionate about their principles often have more in common, politically, than mushy moderates who vote more on the basis of pragmatism or, as with so many moderates, last-second gut reaction. She even has a graphic:

So far, so good.

But then comes the unsupportable conclusion:

This model would suggest that persuading strong Republicans who hate Emmer politics,  would be a persuasion that would stick until the election and possibly even create more Democrats.

Well, that’s simple.  Because while many highly-committed conservatives will get along, at least socially, with many highly-committed liberals because of the same “birds of a feather” phenomenon that made friends of the likes of Goldwater and Wellstone, you will find very, very few “conservatives” who support outrageous tax hikes, featherbedding state employees’ unions, or out-of-control spending.

Break into the strong Republican social networks and wonderful other things would start happening because the opinions are held on false information and false logic.

That’s right.

Because nothing endears one to a social network into which one is trying to “break” like exuding the belief that “everything you believe is wrong” (especially given that history shows conservatism to be pretty much inevitably right about the things that really matter).

An outsider has a hard time changing the group, however an insider could really be impressive. So why are we leaving these groups alone again?

If I had to guess?  The DFL is leaving us alone because there is no huge reserve of conservative Republicans who disagree with Emmer’s politics, or who would do anything with any DFL policy (much less the far left ones) other than line their bird cages with ’em.

Hope that helps.

Democratic Governors tell the President that bucking the beliefs of 70% of the American people might not work so well for them:

At the Democrats’ meeting on Saturday, some governors bemoaned the timing of the Justice Department lawsuit, according to two governors who spoke anonymously because the discussion was private.

“Universally the governors are saying, ‘We’ve got to talk about jobs,’ ” Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, said in an interview. “And all of a sudden we have immigration going on.”

He added, “It is such a toxic subject, such an important time for Democrats.”

Note to any Democrats who actually have to deal with the American people; it’s all about the ideology.

Allegations of rampant vote fraud…

…brought by Democrats against Obama, from the 2008 Democratic Primaries.

Read the whole thing.

And then ask yourself if you really believe it all stopped cold at the end of the Dem primary/caucus season.

Suddenly, this song – admittedly wrenched out of original context – seems to be merely dumb, rather than crushingly stupid:

It’s as if a lightbulb switched on sometime since 2006!

via YouTube – Let’s Impeach the President – Neil Young.