Anti-NRA “Daily Beast” writer wonders why the NRA – which famously rails against domestic overreach – isn’t defending black people in Ferguson Missouri (with the not-so-muted conclusion that it’s all in the racism).

The real answer:  for the same reason the National Organization of Women isn’t protesting against whaling.

The NRA focuses like a laser beam on the Second Amendment.

You’ll note – although the “Daily Beast” writer does not – that the NRA supported to the hilt the action by Otis McDonald, which led to the Supreme Court incorporating the Second Amendment as a “right of the people”.

Odd how that got forgotten.

…this little bundle of joy winds up as a Democrat policy advisor in the next decade.

So let’s get this straight:  the Tea Party fights for the Second Amendment rights of idiot videogamers, who buy games where they shoot Tea Partiers?

Up next:  gang-bangers mugging and beating Freedom Riders.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

News crew investigating “sketchy neighborhood” app . . . gets robbed. You can’t get much more racisssss than that.

Joe Doakes

A Republican is a Democrat who’s been mugged.

I had a great pleasure of meeting seven or eight of my closest friends at the River Oasis Café in Stillwater Saturday morning.

We talked about the cafe last week; they aroused the ire of the entire Minnesota Left – few of whom would ever seem to have been at the River Oasis – by putting their “minimum wage fee” on their receipts:

First things first: It’s a classic American diner – like Mickey’s on West Seventh, or Keys, and not a whole lot of others out there anymore. The food was excellent.

I had the pleasure of talking with Craig Beemer, the owner, on my show on Saturday afternoon (and his wife on Saturday morning). And we learned a couple of things about the place, and the “controversy”.

Money:  One of the left’s main whining points about the public “minimum wage fee” is that it’s “disrespectful to the employees”.  

Of course, it’s a stupid point.  Unlike most restaurants, the Beemers already pay the back of the house staff – the line cooks, dishwashers and the like – better than minimum wage, and (according to Beemer) very competitively with the similar places in Stillwater.  That’s the kind of “respect” I actually cared about when I was a low-wage employee.

The only people making minimum wage are the waitstaff – and when you add on tips, they’re making closer to $25 an hour, often more, and the minimum wage is not an issue. 

Except for the Beemers, for whom the wage hike was a $10,000/year hit on the bottom line.   Remember – restaurants across the river in Wisconsin have a minimum wage of $3-and-change per hour.

Because they have a tip credit.

Power:  Which is what Governor Dayton’s sons asked for earlier this summer.  Andrew and Eric Dayton, owners of “The Bachelor Farmer”, a chi-chi restaurant in Minneapolis, complained to Dadders because the new, higher minimum wage hike was harshing their fiscal mellow.  They asked for…

…a tip credit.

Bonus Explanation For Leftybloggers, none of whom apparently have ever worked for tips:  you don’t work for minimum wage.  Even when there’s a “tip credit” in effect and your “wage” is $3-and-change/hour, like in most surrounding states, you’re still making more.  How much more?  If you work at a crummy place with lousy food, maybe not enough more.  If you work at Manny’s Steakhouse and tend to tables  that rack up $400-$1000 for a meal, you can make well into six digits.  In between?  It’s a complex set of dependencies; waiting skill, clientele, season, even the weather. 

But for all the crap that Tom Emmer took for his “waitstaff making over $100,000” “gaffe” four years ago, you might be amazed at the number of waitstaff that take home solid middle-class “living wages”; $50,000, $75,000 and more. 

Which isn’t bad for a trade that requires no education, licensing or anything but talent and hard work.

Which may be what bothers liberals about all of this.

“If Ifs, Ands And Buts Were Candy And Nuts, We’d All Have A Wonderful Unbedankfest”:  Here’s another note for ignorant leftybloggers; a “tip credit” acknowledges the fact that for a good waiter at a good establishment with a good clientele, the minimum wage is the fringe of their income; the owner can apply some of the waitstaff’s tips to the wage, in effect. 

“I think tipping is just wrong”, whined a massive clot of liberals last week, “and I think we should do away with it; it’s unfair.  They should all just be paid”, they say, reflecting the “progressive” desire to oversimplify the free market (and working for tips is the ultimate meritocracy). 

Of course, it’s been tried.  Not a few restaurants have tried to abolish tipping – paying their waitstaff more, and jacking up the prices accordingly, to a brief flurry of adoring media attention. 

Then they quietly vanish.  And a few years later, the cycle repeats. 

“It’s So Tacky!”:  Tackier than jamming down a minimum wage increase with the barest possible minimum of debate, and then reconsidering when the governor’s kids get into a jam? 

“Why don’t they publicize all the costs that hit their bottom line?”:   Because if they use too much electricity, they can unscrew the lightbulbs in the bathrooms.  If the price of tomatoes goes up, they can use fewer of them in their recipes.  If Ecolab cleaning products are too expensive, they can switch to Servicemaster.   In other words – as with everything in the free market (including restaurant choices), they, the consumer, can say “no” and pick a better option. 

But they can’t switch states.  Tempting as it is for many businesspeople.  Government is the one thing you can’t say “no” to, without having men in uniforms with guns busting down your door eventually. 

And the hypocrisy of a “progressive” movement that twisted itself into knots to try to legitimize the “Occupy” movement turning around and attacking an actual working business for using its right to free speech is enough to put me off my breakfast, were it less delicious.  

“What are you going to do, Berg?  Hang out there all the time?”:  It’s not really about me.  But when in Stillwater – a place I may get to annually – sure why not? 

The “point” they’re shooting for is that conservatives won’t be going there forever, and the liberals among the Oasis’ clientele will stay gone. 

I’m going to guess that most of the people doing the “protesting” have never been there, and would never have gone – and if they did, they were, like most liberals, lousy tippers anyway. 

Anyway – kudos to the Beemers.  And thanks for a fantastic breakfast, a great discussion, and for fighting a battle that a lot more people need to fight.

…when liberals actually realize they have to pay for the “progressive” legislation they demanded.

A cafe in Stillwater tacked on a “Minimum Wage Fee” to their bills, to show their customers – this being Stillwater, mostly DFLers – what their “generosity” with other peoples’ bottom lines was costing everyone. 

Sally Jo Sorenson – one of the handful (literally – maybe five, no more than ten) liberal bloggers in Minnesota who don’t belong under police surveillance – just doesn’t like those peasants getting uppity:

The restaurant industry had tried–but failed–to make the case to the Minnesota legislature for a “tip credit” system under which wait staff could be paid less than the new minimum wage. New legislation raised the state’s minimum wage to $8.00/hr on August 1, with new raises for workers until the wage is $9.50/hr in August 2016.

Accurized:  The restaurant industry’s case had no more chance of being heard in a legislature dominated by a DFL that owed their union benefactors big bucks than Ice Cube has of getting applauded at a Ted Nugent concert.  The minimum wage was going to pass, no matter what. 

And once the DFL has spoken, to the left (via Sally Jo Sorenson), people should just shut up and forget all that “free speech” and “protest” crap. 

The cafe in question should oughtta be careful, of course; next, it’ll be the IRS. 

Reading the smug, PC commenters (as if Sorenson deigns to print any other kind) is just precious.

I’d like to find out what the cafe is, so I can grab breakfast there this weekend and thank them for forcing the Minnesota left to marinade in its own cowardly hypocrisy.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama praises Muslims for contributions in building the very fabric of America.
Really? Name three.

Much as I support recognizing immigrants’ contributions, I got nothing.

Under the Obama administration’s expanding (and likely illlegal, not that that matters) definition of “refugee”, people fleeing Chicago’s violence, or Detroit’s impending mass of water shut offs, would be considered “refugees” for fleeing to Canada.

Except, of course, Canada isn’t going to take them…

When I was five years old, I walked to kindergarten every day. It was three blocks each way. For that matter, so did nearly every other five-year-old who lived within three blocks of the place.

The next year? First grade? I and all my friends walked six blocks each way to school.

My parents would probably be arrested today.

That’s the subject of Ross Douthat’s latest.

And besides the usual snickering at the overweening, overprotective helicopter parent run amok, Douthat points out something much more corrosive:

Third is an erosion of community and social trust, which has made ordinary neighborliness seem somehow unnatural or archaic, and given us instead what Gracy Olmstead’s article in The American Conservative dubs the “bad Samaritan” phenomenon — the passer-by who passes the buck to law enforcement as expeditiously as possible. (Technology accentuates this problem: Why speak to a parent when you can just snap a smartphone picture for the cops?)

20 years of watching John Walsh has turned us into a nation of Dwight Schrutes.

Except when child protective services gets involved, nobody walks away laughing.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Liberals don’t mind open borders because those immigrants won’t take their jobs, or their kids. And government spending doesn’t matter because government loans never have to be repaid. Half a million illegal immigrants have swarmed the border this year, all claiming to be refugees entitled to food, shelter, medical care, in-state tuition and public defenders. Oh, and interpreters, because although they don’t speak English they sure as Hell know their rights.
In completely unrelated news, .22 LR shells are still impossible to find on the shelves, as right-wing kook bitter clinging racist homophobes continue to snatch them up the instant they roll off the truck.
This cannot end well.
Joe Doakes

That which cannot be sustained, won’t be.

Progressives, awash in worry about income inequality, will barber on and on over whether the minimum wage should be $10, or $11.50, or even a Seattle-sized $15/hour.

Conservatives know that the real minimum wage is zero. 

“Diggity”, a new fast-food restaurant concept in Coon Rapids, gets a jump on McDonands, does away with the server:

Diggity functions on an elaborate and expensive system of self-serve, touchscreen kiosks and software that allow customers to place orders directly from smartphones or tablet devices. Diners watch monitors (or their phones) to track the progress of their order and pick it up at the counter when ready.

 Customers can also order takeout online, drive into a designated spot in the parking lot and check in using the restaurant’s wireless Internet connection, which will ping the staff with a request to bring the order out.

“You don’t even have to make a telephone call, which is one more convenience factor,” Cary said.

The system cost six-figures (Cary wouldn’t be more precise), but he said he has no doubt it will pay for itself. The setup from Michigan’s Nextep Systems allowed Hemipshere to hire half the staff a restaurant of Diggity’s size would normally need.

But wasn’t it just the “wow” factor that led to the innovative design? 

Cary and Managing Partner Anoush Ansari said the new model was inspired by Minnesota law mandating a gradual bump in the minimum wage.

Thanks, DFL!  The teen unemployment rate is going to take another hit.

Photoshop out the football and you’ve pretty much recreated Chris Kluwe’s latest press conference

The most famous (or is it infamous?) punter in modern history tries to pin the Minnesota Vikings against their end zone.

Well, in his defense, he no longer has a job to be so focused on.

Chris Kluwe may possess a number of less-than-desirable qualities, but the former punter’s media savvy remains arguably his strongest suit.  Since leveling accusations against the Minnesota Vikings, in particular special teams coach Mike Priefer, of fostering an atmosphere of homosexual hatred which led to his firing by “two cowards and a bigot,” Kluwe has remained relatively quiet.  Perhaps partially motivated by a press corps seemingly less willing to believe him, or realizing that his legal strategy depended upon him dragging many of his former teammates into the mix, Kluwe and his representation had said little about the Vikings’ independent investigation in the past seven months.

That changed Tuesday as Kluwe charged that the Vikings’ investigation has concluded and that the lack of public disclosure over the findings proved Kluwe’s allegations of bigotry:

The onetime punter said Tuesday the team is “reneging on a promise” to release a copy of its completed investigation of alleged anti-gay sentiments expressed by special teams coach Mike Priefer during the 2012 season.

Kluwe and his attorney, Clayton Halunen, announced at a morning news conference that they will file suit against the Vikings alleging discrimination on the grounds of religion, human rights, defamation and “torturous interference for contractual relations.”

The move is self-aggrandizing and potentially premature (the Vikings said the independent investigatory group would provide a report this week).  Had the press conference included accusations of the team of being “lustful c**kmonsters,” it would have been vintage Kluwe.

It was also a somewhat smart public relations ploy.  Now, whenever Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P release their findings, Kluwe can claim his pressure forced the team to do so.  And Kluwe’s willingness to forgo a lawsuit for a monetary settlement that goes towards an LGBT cause also assists both the Vikings, in helping the issue go away faster, and Kluwe himself as even old media allies questioned the punter’s motivations (the KFAN Morning Show, who often gave Kluwe free-rein to voice his opinions on all matter of subjects, openly wondered if he was making a money grab this morning).

But “somewhat smart” isn’t the same as “smart.”  Kluwe’s strategy only truly works if the independent investigation proves some or all of Kluwe’s anecdotes, in particular his claim that Mike Priefer suggested moving gay people to an island and hitting it with a nuclear bomb.  Not unlike the current Jesse Ventura defamation suit, Kluwe’s case ultimately comes down to a “he said/he said” legal battle.  Even if Kluwe is 100% accurate in quoting Vikings’ staff, he would still have to prove a correlation between comments like Priefer’s and his cutting in 2013.  The Vikings can respond about Kluwe’s declining skills and (for the position) high salary – reasons that even Kluwe cited…when cut last summer by the Oakland Raiders.

The outcome of the investigation – or any following legal action – may be pointless.  Kluwe’s defenders will continue to insist the end of his career was due to his gay rights activism, and not his next-to-last finish for punts inside the 20-yard line while making $1.45 million.  Kluwe’s detractors will continue to be maligned as being bothered by his politics rather than his penchant for vulgar name-calling to anyone who doesn’t share his views (on gay rights or other subjects).

Other than attorneys or an LGBT charity, it’s hard pressed to see who benefits from this continued fight.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama wants to get tough on immigration but those darn Republicans won’t let him.  He has asked Congress to let him borrow an extra $3.7 Billion to beef up border patrols and speed up deportation cases.

No mention of the President’s career-long opposition to immigration reform, his decision to sue Arizona in 2010 to stop the state from getting tough on illegal immigrants, or his decision four weeks ago to stop deportations and give work permits to millions of student-aged illegal immigrants.  Here’s where the money goes, 90% for resettlement and public defenders so illegal immigrants can stay in the country.

I wonder why Republicans don’t believe this latest offer is sincere?  They must be racisssssssssssssss

Joe Doakes

What other answer could there be?

No, seriously – after almost six years, you’d think they could come up with another defamatory deflection…

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, in debate with John Thune of South Dakota.

That’s South Dakota.  The one to the south:

A smart fence which is what Senator McCain and I want to build – since he’s from Arizona, I think he knows more about this than the Senator from South Dakota, who only has a border with Canada that is quite different.

Leave aside the logical fallacy -border state congresscritters are just as clueless about our sovereignty as anyone else – huh?

I was apparently born in Canada, and not one of the lower 57.  Who knew?

Remember – they’re the smart party.

Eminem’s daughter, Hailie Mathers, who – along with her father, Marshall “Eminem” Mathers’   tempestuous relationship with her mother – has been behind a lot of Eminem’s output, just graduated from high school.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The IRS official email retention and backup plan is even dumber than mine, and I don’t have one.

Joe Doakes

I wish I could have the two hours of my life back that I spent sitting in meetings for my current company’s record retention policy.

Courtest of, among others, the IRS.

The second-biggest problem this nation faces today – behind the fact that our financial system, left to run the way it is today, is going to crash sooner than later – is the fact that too much of our government operates outside the law.

Of course, that fact grabs headlines when Obama’s administration tramples the law to oppress conservative groups – and by “headlines”, we mean “not in the mainstream media”, but headlines nonetheless.

It even gets notice on the retail level when government’s agents – the cops – make up the law as they go along.

But in the long term, it may be most toxic when the “justice” system decides it can operate outside the law.  Whether it’s a corrupt, pettifogging Mike Nifong bending the rules to help his re-election bid…

…or a piece of garbage in a judge costune who decides the law is what she says it is:

A judge has ordered Matthew Hindes to appear in court or face contempt, despite the fact that he’s out at sea and there’s a federal law meant to help those who are deployed.

Sailor Hindes already won custody of his daughter – four years ago.  Now he’s a crewman on, concidentally, the USS Michigan ,a ballistic missile submarine.

The Serviceman’s Civil Relief Act (SCRA) was designed to protect servicepeople from being ambushed by legal actions (foreclosures, lawsuits, and yes, custody battles) while they’re deployed and defending the country, frequently in situations where keeping focus on their jobs is a matter of life or death for them and – in the case of a submarine crew – 150 other men.   By law, judges are to stay all actions for a minimum of 90 days while servicepeople carry out their duty to this country.

But Hindes’ ex-wife filed a motion in their apparently ongoing custody battle.  And – SCRA notwithstanding – the judge has declared herself above the law, and is demanding that Hindes crap out a miracle:

But circuit court judge Margaret Noe in Michigan denied that protection for Hindes. The Daily Telegram quotes the judge, “If the child is not in the care and custody of the father, the child should be in the care and custody of the mother.” But sailor Hindes argues the child was taken from the ex-wife four years ago for neglect.

Let’s not mince words:  Judge Noe is a martinet, and a pig, and a “human” only in the strictest biological sense of the term.  She is unfit to walk on the same street as Hindes, much less suspend the law in regard to his case.   She is a piece of animal offal with two legs and a law degree.

Military lawyers are now joining the effort to get a delay in the case. In the meantime Hindes remains deployed serving his country.

I hope those military lawyers start with tossing Noe’s actions thus far.  And then impeach “her” from the bench.  And then clap her in the stocks to be pelted with garbage and jeers, especially from other serving servicepeople, not to mention the rare custodial father.  Then it’d be nice to deport her to North Korea, where she belongs and into whose ruling class she would likely fit nicely, at least ideologically.  And I hope they film the whole thing, to show it to any other petty government functionary who tries to operate like the law is their personal byotch.

That’d be merciful.  “Judge” Noe should be happy I’m not this nation’s absolute ruler.  Then, things would get nasty.

Hindes’ supporters have Facebook pages here and here.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Baby killers used to tell pro-lifers “If you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.” It was considered a crushing rejoinder even though it put personal liberty over loss of innocent life. The implication was that a mother taking action to kill her child was so obviously moral that it was beyond reproach.

Seems to me that line could be re-cycled by the Second Amendment crowd: “If you don’t want to carry a firearm, then don’t.” I wonder if Liberals would consider my decision to take action to Prevent someone from killing my child, to be equally valid?

Joe Doakes

If the left approached this issue (or most others) from a logical position…

…well, it’s a moot question, isn’t it?

In regard to Terry Gross’ interview with Hillary Clinton last week – in which the eternally-overrated Gross spent ten minutes badgering Clinton about the “evolution” in her views on same-sex marriage – I’m of two minds, depending on who you are:

If You’re a Liberal:  Gross showed Hillary! up as the hypocrite she is.  Clearly Elizabeth Warren is the only person fit to run for President in 2016.  To accept any less would be to short-sell this nation. 

If You’re a Smart Person:  This piece in The Federalist by Mollie Hemingway sums up nicely the things – not by any means good things – that Gross’ badgering says about modern “progressivism”. 

She badgered Clinton for an answer that Gross was tacitly demanding – self-abnegation over her history on the issue – that Clinton is too smart to give. 

Gross pretended that all of American society outside the NPR-infused ultra-left hadn’t largely changed their minds on the issue in a blazingly short time. 

Gross was also engaging in the ritual that is emerging on the left, the Orwellian need for all “progressives” to show that they were exhibiting PC correct-think on every issue from the very beginning. 

And worst?  Gross is showing how very unskeptical and unenquiring her breed of “journalist” is when revealed dogma is involved. 

Now, I know the popular view among our deep thinkers in the media is that recognizing [the definition of marriage as being an institution where one or more man and one or more woman raised children has been remarkably consistent across societies, systems, religions and eras througout human history] should probably be a capital offense. But to paraphrase and quote something I wrote in “The Rise of the Same-Sex Marriage Dissidents,” marriage is historically understood as being based on the reality that all humans have complete biological systems in their body save one. That one for which we all have only half is the reproductive system — the means by which we propagate the species. Humans have all sorts of relationships but marriage was about sexual complementarity for reasons having absolutely nothing to do with bigotry, obviously.

Now if one wants to change marriage laws to reflect something else, that’s obviously something that one can aim to do. We’ve seen the rapid, frequently unthinking embrace of that change in recent years, described one year ago in the humanist and libertarian magazine Spiked as “a case study in conformism” that should terrify “anyone who values diversity of thought and tolerance of dissent.”

Here in Minnesota, the main persuasive approach of the same-sex marriage crowd (“if you don’t support it without stint or question, you’re a bigot”) was the sort of thing that gave Orwell indigestion seventy years ago. 

I do urge you to read the whole thing.

Tomorrow on the Northern Alliance, I’ll be talking with:

• MNGOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Honour
• Amy Alkon, the Advice Goddess, on her new book Good Manners for People Who Sometimes Say F**k.  And yes, I will be using my radio training to the hilt tomorrow. 

Hope you can tune in from 1-3PM on AM1280!

From Zero Hedge, the “unintended” (?) but inevitable consequence of the $15/hour minimum wage:

With a seemingly endless line of talking-heads willing to ignore essentially every study that has been undertaken with regard the effects of raising the minimum-wage; and propose what is merely populist vote-getting ‘benefits’ for the ever-increasing not-1% who benefitted from Ben Bernanke’s bubbles – we thought the following burger-flipping robot was a perfect example of unintended consequences for the fast food industry’s workers.

Oh, my.

And it’s produced by a what, you say?

With humans needing to take breaks, have at least 4 weekend days off per month, and demanding ever-increasing minimum-wage for a job that was never meant to provide a ‘living-wage’, Momentum Machines – a San Francisco-based robotics company has unveiled the ‘Smart Restaurants’ machine which is capable of making ~360 ‘customized’ gourmet burgers per hour without the aid of a human. First Jamba Juice,then Applebees, next McDonalds…

The end result – says the company?

There are those on the left who say that it’s inevitable, that robots were/are going to replace humans in fast-food kitchens anyway.  The statement itself betrays ignorance about how economics work; the artificial acceleration of wages for what was never intended to be anything but entry level jobs where people trade low-skill labor for low-skill wages and – for the smart ones – work experience.  As the jobs got priced beyond what the labor was naturally worth to the market, the imperative for the “robots” grew.

The opportunity is there, of course, for those who are smart enough to see it and develop the skills for it; for people to build, sell, install, program, maintain and repair the “robots”, this is going to be the good ol’ days.

But those aren’t the people who are marching up and down in front of WalMart, McDonalds and Burger King demanding minimum wage hikes.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Wisconsin lawmakers want to be certain doctors performing an abortion kill only one person at a time. They require abortion doctors to have hospital privileges, in case something goes wrong during an abortion and the mother needs to be whisked to the hospital.

Planned Parenthood says this places an undue burden on women seeking to exercise their Constitutional right to an abortion, and is suing.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Washington, DC has ruled that a law requiring people to appear in person at a government office during government hours to be photographed and fingerprinted and re-registered every three years, does not unduly burden persons seeking to exercise their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms that someday might have the potential to kill someone in self-defense.

Both rulings are based on the Constitution so here’s my question: Why did the Founding Fathers insist it be easier to kill an innocent, than to prevent an innocent from being killed?

Joe Doakes

you’re only innocent”, really, when your story l supports the right agenda.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

You can’t keep convicted murderers locked up for life, it’s intolerable.  They must be allowed day passes to stretch their legs, enjoy life a bit.  They generally come back to prison.  Not all of them, but many.

Sheesh, where is this prison, Stalag 13? Monty Python wouldn’t try this skit, nobody would believe it.

Joe Doakes

The good news?  It’s just the Brits.

The bad news?  The Brits are our canary, and we’re down in the same exact coal mine.

Mark Andrew is a former Henco commissioner and former DFL chair.  He also works in the “green energy marketing” biz.  Since “government” is the primary target of green industry “marketing”, it’s fair to say Andrew is part of our nation’s ongoing green graft racket – by which the “green” industry tries to chivvy tax money from friendly governments.

And as yesterday’s Strib op-ed shows, he really really doesn’t like the Koch Brothers – their refinery (the Flint Hills refinery in Rosemount), them, or their business:

What make’s their businesses so dirty is not just what they do, but how they do it.

Koch Industries’ corporate ethos is to pollute the American landscape with impunity.

(Really, Mark?  That’s their “ethos”?  The Kochs base their behavior on the idea that polluting is a moral good?  That seems a bit far-fetched).

After hours, they fuel a dark labyrinth of propoganda networks to spew out pollution of another kind-disinformation, defamation and denials. Their goal is not to gain market share–it is to rid the world of government oversight of their businesses and the nefarious groups that prop them up. This is how they roll.

Put another way – and in this case an accurate one?  The Kochs use some of their fortune (in the tens of billions) to press libertarian solutions (some of their stances have angered conservatives and would probably have gotten Andrew’s support, if he were intellectually honest, which this article pretty much confirms he’s not).

Oh, yeah – they’re thought-criminals (emphasis added):

The brothers over the years have outspent ExxonMobil’s subsidies of shadow climate denier groups by a 3-1 margin.

But this piece isn’t just an attack on the Kochs.

No – it’s against those polluted by association – in this case, the Ordway Theatre in Saint Paul, which the Koch Brothers help underwrite (again, emphasis added):

It is not so curious then, that the Koch’s would want to align themselves with St.Paul’s Ordway Theatre, one of the nation’s leading non-profit live performance venues. The 14th Annual “Flint Hills International Children’s Festival, presented by the Ordway” opens this weekend, and is the perfect halo under which the conglomerate might dwell for a few days, basking in the glow of delighted children whose lives are put at risk by their business and political actions.

The Koch’s [sic] and the Ordway’s that birthed the theatre couldn’t be a starker study in contrasts…Bathed in a riot of color, the brochure captures multi-colored children carefully photographed and captivated by a phantasmagoria of dance, music, acrobatics and reverie. And not a refinery to be found!

The stagings are fantasy adventures as far removed from daily reality as the Koch brothers’ climate change denials.

One wonders if the Kochs slither about in black capes and top-hats and laugh maniacally as they twirl their waxed mustaches.

What Andrew is trying to do is “shame” the Ordway – and the rest of Minnesota’s cultural community – into putting the Kochs “beyond the pale”.   Something like this:

Look for more of this; well-heeled liberals badgering Big Minnesota into dissociating with anyone who pushes back against Big Narrative.

Because to the Minnesota left, the only act that can be shamed any more is disagreeing with Big Left.

Epilogue:  A local journo pointed out on Facebook that Andrew’s op-ed reads a lot like Andrew’s former boss at the Minnesota Daily – Nick Coleman.

I toyed with responding on Facebook “A badly-written hatchet job, long on name-calling, thoughtcrime-shaming and innuendo and short on fact?  Yes, I see the similarity”.

But I don’t like it when people gunk up my Facebook page, either.   But it never ceases to amaze me – journalists actually think Nick Coleman is a good writer and reporter.

We warned you.

But did you listen?  No!  You said that jobs would not be lost as pay for low-skill jobs was forced upward by government fiat, and that there’d be no unintended consequences – because all consequences, presumably, would be forestalled by foo-foo dust brought down from the skies on the backs of unicorns. 

But there is no foo-foo dust, there are no unicorns, and when you force someone to pay more or less than the free market will bear for something, there will be consequences.

And so there are.