Category Archives: Liberty

The granddaddy of all civil rights.

A State Without Limits

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This one’s important, and needs some action on your part to prevent a corrosive overreach of government power.

I also got this one from GOCRA yesterday; it’s not a “gun rights” thing, but it’s an important civil liberty issue, and it needs your attention:

Minneapolis Police (as well as many other departments) use automated license plate readers to log millions of times, dates, and locations of cars every month. They know where you were, and they keep this data as long as they want.

A proposed law, House File 474 (and Senate companion SF385), would force police departments to immediately delete data on non-suspect cars (like yours).

This bill is scheduled for a vote [today] in the House. If you think that the police shouldn’t track the every move of innocent citizens, ask your state senator representative to support HF474/SF385.

Please get on the horn and contact your Senator and Representative, and ask them – politely – to vote “Yes” on SF 385 and HF 474.

The police have no need to be able to track everyone, everywhere, all the time.

None.

We Don’t Have Popularity Contests For Civil Rights!

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As yesterday’s vote in the House showed, Minnesotans don’t tolerate putting civil rights through popularity contests.

The message was loud and clear – if you oppose civil liberty (even for something that’s not a civil liberty, but a private contract that society has over the years turned into an entitlement), you are a bigot, and will be called a bigot until you shut up and go away.

Excellent!

Now that all you newly-minted libertarian absolutists have won your battle, you’ll need something to occupy all that energy; you’ll need new targets for they keen-eyed intellectual nimbleness you’ve developed over the past 18 months of shouting over your opponents that they are bigots.

There is a small minority of Minnesotans who, operating from a racist, sexist, paternalistic, authoritarian notion of the social order, have been working to systematically working to deny Minnesotans of a vital civil right that is not only enshrined in the constitution but one that we were all born with an instinct to practice, one every bit as powerful as the instinct to procreate, and much stronger than the urge to mate – self-defense.

These bigots – whose intellectual lineage traces back to the slave-owners’ desire to neutralize his property – want to force you to deny how you’re born.

So I urge you to join my new group, “Minnesotans United For All Liberties”, and help drive bigotry from our state.

Will you join?

Or are you a bigot?

(Written with a nod to Dave Thul, whose wisecrack sent me off to write this…)

Like Rain On Your Wedding Day

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Constitution of the United States says Congress shall not infringe the peoples’ rights.

Congress passes a law infringing those rights.

The Kansas state legislature says they won’t honor that that law infringing their rights and furthermore, they’ll arrest anybody who tries to enforce it.

The Attorney General of the United States says the Supremacy Clause makes Congress’ law more powerful than Kansas rights and threatens a lawsuit if Kansas interferes with federal agents infringing Kansans’ rights.

I find it deeply ironic that the highest federal law enforcement official waves the Constitution as his authority to violate the Constitution.

Joe Doakes

I think it qualifies as “irony” at the very least.

Two Americas

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As John Edwards used to say, there are two Americas.

On the subject of freedom versus safety, there certainly are.   And one of the Americas – the one that would give up liberty to get safety – is growing, and the other, the ones that are pretty hard-core about liberty?  That one’s shrinking.

Wendy Kaminer, writing a few weeks back in that noted conservative tool, The Atlantic,  noted that while in any group – especially a group of 660,000 like Boston – there will be heroes and cowards and lots in the middle, but when the heat is on, people will retreat to the comforting arms of Mother Government.

No matter what we say:

David Ortiz brags that “nobody is going to dictate our freedom,” and I assume he hasn’t heard of the Patriot Act or warrantless wiretaps, much less the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. Dennis Lehane can be excused for declaring that “they messed with the wrong city,” but don’t take seriously his confidence that not much will change: “Trust me,” he adds implausibly, “we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this.”

Of course we will. We’ve been surrendering liberty in the hope of keeping ourselves safe for the past decade. The marathon bombings will hasten our surrender of freedom from the watchful eye of law enforcement. The Boston Globe is already clamoring for additional surveillance cameras, which are sure to be installed to the applause of a great many Bostonians. You can rationalize increased surveillance as a necessary or reasonable intrusion on liberty, but you can’t deny its intrusiveness, or inevitable abuses.

Every disaster – at least the man-made ones – lead to calls for less liberty and more government control.  Sandy Hook – a disaster that could have been prevented or controlled by precisely one government intervention, an armed cop (or teacher – or, for that matter, parent) led to the biggest surge in demand (real and astroturf) for paring back the Second Amendment in 25 years.

Kaminer notes the disconnect between Americans’ and their leaders’ words and their actions:

You shouldn’t deny the fear that drives the diminution of freedom. You’ll only end up looking foolish. “A bomb can’t beat us,” President Obama assured Bostonians three days after the attack. “We don’t hunker down … we don’t cower in fear.” Yes we do. Less than 24 hours after Obama left town, hundreds of thousands of us were “sheltering in place.”

Of course, the very act of living with a civil government involves giving up some freedom; getting a drivers license, paying taxes, following procedure and voting and negotiating to reach consensus with your idiot neighbors to change the rules we all go by, having a police force; all of them involve surrendering some form of liberty.  And most of us, even the most libertarian, go along with some of it, since they’re broadly considered acceptable trade-offs.

But a new CNN/Time/ORC poll shows that Americans – at least, the Americans who take polls – are willing to trade more and more:

A new poll shows a willingness by 4 out of 10 Americans to give up some civil liberties to figåht terrorism. But they don’t want the government eavesdropping on their cell phone calls or emails.

The CNN/Time/ORC International Poll shows that concerns about terrorism have increased since the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings. Forty percent say they are worried someone in their family might become a terrorism victim. That number is up 6 percentage points from a CNN poll conducted on the 10th anniversay of 9/11.

When it comes to security versus personal freedoms, 81 percent favor expanding use of cameras on streets and in public places. That’s up 20 points since 2001. Seventy-nine percent favor using facial-recognition technology to search for suspected terrorists at public events.

But only 30 percent want the government to increase monitoring of cell phone and email conversations to prevent terrorist acts. Slightly more than half, 55 percent, favor law enforcement monitoring of online chat rooms and other forums.

But commerce need not worry:

Americans are still mostly refusing to respond to terrorism by changing their routines. Seventy percent said they would not be any less likely to attend large public events in order to reduce their chances of being a victim of a terrorist attack.

This is pretty dire stuff – or, if you’re a DFLer, music to your ears.

It’s easy to take the hard-Libertarian tack; “he who trades liberty for security ends up with neither”.  And it’s true; the search for the bombers in Boston itself showed this, metaphorically speaking.  The people of Boston “voluntarily” hunkered down, “voluntarily” let their houses be searched (or so the government and media lines went) – and waited nearly a day at Mother Government’s mercy with no result, before the younger Tsarnaev was found by a civilian.

But if you’re concerned about the future of liberty in this country, the behavior of government isn’t your biggest concern – although that is truly worrisome, with the government confiscating guns, food and supplies after Hurricane Katrina, making up watch lists of average Americans involved in mundane non-left causes, police departments acting officially in ways that used to be considered “rogue” (all the while militarizing themselves to an extent that’d boggle the minds of cops 30 years ago), its behavior after Sandy, and now the Boston Dragnet.

No, your biggest concern is your fellow Americans.

Partly it’s things like the polls above; so many well-meaning Americans are willing to trade liberty for (short-term) security.

More so?  It’s the way that our larger culture is stigmatizing the very concern for liberty.

More on that later.

Unintended Consequences

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In 1996, the Minnesota Supreme Court adopted the requirement that every lawyer licensed in Minnesota periodically attend Continuing Legal Education classes on Elimination of Bias. It’s been 15 years. Has any progress been made? What measurement is used to determine the extent to which bias has been eliminated from the legal profession? Donald Rumsfeld, pondering the problem of Middle East terrorists, famously asked: “Are we killing them faster than we’re creating them?” What metric is the Supreme Court using to measure reduction in bias in the legal profession?

In other words, how will we know when we’ve won? And if, as I strongly suspect, the answer is “it never will be possible to eliminate bias in the legal profession,” then aren’t we wasting a lot of time and money chasing unicorn dreams? The practice of law is tough enough these days, and the cost of days off to sit in class plus the fees for the classes themselves are passed along to the customers along with rent, taxes and all other overhead. And if it turns out the insulting, humiliating and degrading classes are making lawyers MORE biased rather than less . . . .

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Given the record of most government programs – a war on poverty that made us poorer, urban renewal that made cities crappier, education spending hikes that are followed by stupider students – it doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Bring The Whisky And Cigars To The Funeral

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This year’s battle to destroy the Second Amendment is dead – at least in DC.

I’ve said it for years; the gun control debate is the most ironic battle in American politics.

The left – the movement that floats on Soros and Rockefeller and Allen and Opperman and Messinger money – loves to paint itself as the party of the working stiff, the fabled “99%”; it likes to pretend the right is white, rich and disconnected from the world.  The left, back to its historical roots, is built on the idea of struggle between classes.

And yet gun control is the most class-focused debate in America today.  Our elites – of both parties, in some cases – loathe the Second Amendment, or at the very least think it’s a quaint doddering relic.  It’s the American mainstreet – the real 99% -that supports the Second Amendment.

The plebeians just keep defying those patricians.

Reason notes this as well:

Whatever the merits and popularity of the specific measures that went down to defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, I think the Establishment fails to appreciate the depth of American support for the Second Amendment. NPR and other media have lately noted a growing libertarian trend in American politics. That’s not just about taxes, Obamacare, marijuana, and marriage equality. It also involves gun rights. After each high-profile shooting, support for gun control rises. But it tends to fall again in short order, as public opinion reverts to the baseline of strong support for gun rights.

And the fact that controlling guns is only a vital issue to 4% of the people indicates that the vast majority know the score; guns don’t kill people, people do.

I’m going to add emphasis below:

I was struck by this poll graphic in the Washington Post on Wednesday. Despite the virtually unanimous support for stricter gun control in the national media, along with other opinion shapers such as Hollywood and the universities, and despite the mass shootings that have received so much attention in our modern world of 24-hour news channels, Americans are becoming more convinced that guns make your family safer.

The media in particular exhibits a persistent form of Pauline Kael syndrome on the subject of guns; they accept gun control as an ideal almost completely without question, and seem nonplussed that the nation ignores them.

But yet they continue their narrative – that the NRA is a astroturf checkbook advocacy group supported by Big Gun and Big Business.  Yesterday, some in the media breathlessly reported the departure of Adolphus Bush from the NRA board as a “blow to the NRA”.

It’s not.  The group’s membership is up nearly a quarter since Newtown.  It’s just shown the entire country that it can shut the media down on Capitol Hill.  It’s just shown it commands more of the hearts and minds of this country’s real people than the President does, at least on the gun issue.

But that’s not the narrative, now, is it?

“Your Numbers Are Like Voodoo”

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(SCENE:  Mitch BERG is standing in the line for car tabs at the Saint Paul Sears with Avery LIBRELLE)

LIBRELLE:  I saw your blog post about the restaurant in Mower County that is offering discounts for gun nuts who bring guns into their restaurants.

BERG:  Yeah.  That’s pretty cool.

LIBRELLE:  I’m sure there’ll be a mass shooting there soon.

BERG:  (shakes head silently, with deep weariness)

LIBRELLE:  What this does mean is that they should raise their minimum wage.

BERG:  (wearily)  OK, I’ll bite.  Why’s that?

LIBRELLE:  Because the owner is giving away money.

BERG:  Er…huh?

LIBRELLE:   Discounts.  That’s money he’s giving away.  That means he could afford to increase his staff’s wages.

BERG:   Er, the discount – leaving aside the extent to which it might be a personal protest statement – is what’s called a “loss leader”.  It’s designed to get people to come out, bring their non-gun-carrying friends – to get people in the door.  Once they’re through the door, that’s more traffic, more word of mouth, more potential to win over customers that keep coming back and spending more money.

Sort of like when Chipotle has their Free Burrito Day.  They lose money on that day’s burritos – but hopefully create loyal repeat customers who come back later to pay full price.

LIBRELLE:  Well, if they can do that, they can afford to pay the dish washers and waitresses and counter staff more.

BERG:  Er, why do you think businesses do that?

LIBRELLE:  Because they’re rolling in money at the expense of the worker!

BERG:  No, it’s to increase business.  It’s called Marketing, and Advertising; spending a little money so that there’s more business, which in turn brings in more money, which eventually goes into things like paying off investors and turning a profit and expanding and remodeling and buying a new oven and, by the bye, salaries.   Because a successful restaurant can afford to give a raise, while an unsuccessful one can’t even retain workers.

LIBRELLE:  Giving away the workers’ money in this way is like the Bush Tax Cuts.  That money is needed.

BERG:  Government doesn’t need to advertise or market.  And even if the money were “the workers’ money”, it’s part of marketing a business, to try to make it successful  Like spending money on advertising, or on having clean restrooms and unripped seats, or laminated menus, or quality ingredients and attractive preparation and presentation; it’s about making people come to your business, and then making them want to come back.

But – and I can’t stress this enough – the business’ revenue is not “the workers’ money”.  The person or people who started and run the restaurant – which provides the jobs for “the workers” – has the job of using that money to the business’ best advantage, to promote and maintain the business.  Which includes paying salaries.

LIBRELLE:  It’s more important that they pay the salaries.  Without the workers, the owner is nothing.

BERG:  Er, what now?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the workers that make the business.  Without the workers, there’d be no business.

BERG:  I’m sure that’s news to every sole-proprietor entrepreneur out there…

LIBRELLE:  Look at Bain Capital.  Mitt Romney didn’t even show up to work for months at a time.  And yet the janitors had to show up every day.  Bain could have prospered without Romney, but not without janitors.  The janitors deserved the money more than Romney.

BERG:  (Stands, gobsmacked in stunned silence)

LIBRELLE:  Without those janitors, Bain would have failed.

BERG:  So you’re saying that janitors can manage venture capital better than managers can empty trash and sweep floors?  Or that restaurants would spontaneously form in Mower County without someone to rent a building, set up a kitchen and a counter and some tables and buy some inventory and hire and train some cooks and waiters and dishwashers.

LIBRELLE:  Of course not.

BERG:   OK, then…

LIBRELLE:  I’m saying that without janitors sweeping the floors, the capital would never have been managed.  Without a dishwasher, there’d be no restaurant.

LOUDSPEAKER:  ”Number 36″

BERG:  Oh, that’s my number.  What’s yours?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, I don’t have one.  I just love hanging out here.

BERG:  (shuffling toward the window)  You what?

LIBRELLE:   Yeah.  It’s a great lesson on how business should work!

BERG:  Huh.  Wow.  And to think some people say liberals don’t understand business.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Right?

(And SCENE)

Continue reading →

More Of This Please

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Mower County restaurant in southern MN offers a discount for customers exercising their First Amendment rights (or, as it’s referred to in 1930′s gangster movies and in the not-very-imaginative media and absolutely nobody else, “packing heat”):

Steve Nagel owns Langtry Cafe in the Mower County community of Brownsdale. Nagel says every Thursday is “conceal and carry day.” Customers carrying their guns to the restaurant will get 15 percent off your meal. And if you carry a gun openly, it’s a 25 percent discount.

Nagel’s restaurant has hosted conceal-and-carry permit classes in the past. KAAL-TV reports two classes next month are already sold out.

Nagel says most of his customers have a permit to carry, so he doesn’t mind giving them a discounted meal for demonstrating their Second Amendment rights.

Note to Twin Cities restauranteurs; do you have any idea what an enthusiastic market shooters are?

Just saying.

The Ultimate “Public-Private Partnership”

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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.

Where Their Mouths Are

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The Democrats nationwide are fond of trumpeting the factoid that “police chiefs’ organizations” and “police unions” roundly favor gun control.

Of course, police chiefs associations are dominated by top major-city cops, who pretty universally serve at the pleasure of liberal democrat machines.  And the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers’ Association is pretty closely tied with DFL-dominated unions, so their opinion is always an extension of the DFL party line on any issue.

When you get into law enforcement groups that depend on popular voting for their jobs – like the Sheriff’s Association in Minnesota, for example – things get a little less predictable.

But what if you polled actual street cops?

Second Amendment rights groups have long known, at least anecdotally, that actual policemen – as opposed to the uniformed politicians they report to in major cities and larger suburbs – roundly support the Second Amendment and the right, and competence, of the actual law-abiding citizen.

But now we know for real:

Among the findings of a survey by the industry website PoliceOne, which tallied responses from 15,000 verified active and retired law enforcement professionals, police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership or accessibility, editor Doug Wyllie said.

The survey found that 91.5 percent of respondents believe a federal ban on the manufacture or sale of semi-automatic weapons would have no effect or a negative effect on the reduction of violent crime.

There are bad apples on the street, of course.  But most cops know the simple truism that the likes of Representatives Paymar and Martens, Senator Lumberg Latz and Governor Messinger Dayton can’t quite retain; the law-abiding citizen, whether they’re carrying a revolver or an AK47, isn’t the problem.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

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In the four months since Sandy Hook and the Administration’s declaration of war on the law-abiding gun owner, twice as many states have strengthened their observance of the Second Amendment as have weakened it.

Although note that the Wall Street Journal article on the subject and its attendant illustrations…

…invert the meanings of “strengthen” and “weaken”, in their New York-centered way.

And yet the media continues to claim astronomical percentages of the people support anti-gun legislation.

We’re #34!

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No, that’s not (just) the Gophers’ ranking in Big 10 football.

It’s the Mercatus Center (and George Mason U’s) assessment of Minnesota’s relative level of freedom among the fifty states:

The state’s taxes are higher than average, but otherwise the state’s fiscal policy does not deviate much from the norm. Minnesota spends more than average on parks and public welfare. Selective sales taxes (not including alcohol, tobacco, and utility taxes) and individual income taxes stand out as particularly high.

On most regulatory policies Minnesota fits comfortably into the middle range of the states, but the state does stand out in a favorable manner for the quality of its court system and for miscellaneous regulations—mostly due to lack of a certificate-of-need (CON) law. On the other hand, Minnesota scores poorly on health insurance and labor market freedoms. Mandated benefits add 53.7 percent to the cost of a policy without mandated coverages, and the state requires both rate bands and “prior approval” of new rates in both the small group and nongroup markets.

On both firearms and marijuana policies, Minnesota is quite a bit more regulated than the average state. The state is ripe for change in both areas.

And to those among you who will doubtlessly call Mercatus a conservative tool, here are their recommendations:

  • Trim taxes and spending in [areas suggested earlier in report].
  • Roll back health insurance mandates (for example, mandates for speech and hearing specialists, osteopathy, dietitians, occupational therapy, reconstructive surgery, port wine stain removal, ovarian cancer screening, infertility services, and Lyme disease treatment). Even having average health insurance mandates would have raised Minnesota four places on regulatory policy.
  • Enact legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.
North and South Dakota are #1 and 2, respectively.

Cool widget in this study? If you believe that single-payer healthcare and gun control equal freedom, you can do your own map using your own criteria.

For for it.

As it happens, my fairly libertarian map (stressing personal, fiscal and regulatory freedom)…

…tracks pretty closely with the original.

When In Nicosia, Do As The Nicosians Do

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The European Union told Cyprus it had to raise 6 billion Euros in order to get 4 billion more from the EU to bail out its banks. Cyprus waited until banks closed last Friday to announce a “one-time” tax on bank accounts. Accounts with less than 100,000 Euros would pay 6.75%; larger accounts would pay 9.9%, all automatically deducted and sent to Berlin.

The idea is . . . unpopular. Cypriot banks are still closed to avoid massive runs of people trying to grab their money before the government does.

It occurs to me, this isn’t a new concept. Didn’t Larry Pogemiller propose a shift away from income taxes toward net worth taxes about six years ago, in a bid to shift the burden of paying for a Nicer Minnesota away from “working families” over to “wealthy retirees?” I don’t remember the automatic deduction feature in his plan, but the basic idea is the same. In fact, it’s older than that. When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied: “Because that’s where the money is.”

To heck with being an outlaw, Willie should have been a government bureaucrat! He was just ahead of his time, is all.

Luckily, that could never happen here. The President might have the Constitutional power to drop Hellfire missiles on unsuspecting Americans, but he can’t just take money out of their bank accounts. He can’t, right? Right?

Joe Doakes

Don’t be silly.

We’re “doing fine”.

Obama’s Black List

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The Southern Poverty Law Center – which is sort of the intellectual NKVD of the hard left – is publicizing its “list of patriot groups” to be watched.

“Patriot” in scare quotes, by the way, is the SPLC’s shorthand for “hate”.

Here’s the list in Minnesota:

  • Alarm & Muster: The Modern Day Alarm Riders - Statewide: This is a national group.  Gotta say I don’t know much about ‘em.
  • Constitution Party - Redwood Falls:  Huh.
  • Genesis Communication Network - Eagan: The broadcast home of libertarian on-air professor Jason Lewis as well as conspiracymongering huckster Alex Jones.
  • John Birch Society - Statewide: Question for you: outside of SPLC news releases, when was the last time you even heard of the John Birch society?  I used to say that if the JBS didn’t exist, the left would have to invent them – but at this point, it’s more like “keep them on life support”
  • Oath Keepers - Statewide:  The idea of getting law-enforcement agents and the military to pledge to uphold the Constitution even if asked not to is “hate”? 
  • The Republic for the united States of America and The Republic for the united States of America — Republic Congress - Statewide: Huh.
  • Tenth Amendment Center - Statewide: I supposed limiting the power and scope of government, as the 10AC advocates, is a hate crime in the eyes of the SPLC.
  • We Are Change - Duluth: Fighting government abuse?  So hateful.
  • We the People - Shoreview: I’ll believe ‘em when I see ‘em.

Wonder what I need to do to get on their list?

Heck, maybe we all already are!

The Care-Provider Unionization Debate In A Series of Nutshells

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The Shorter Anti-Unionization Activist: “Unionization would force us to,raise prices. Forcing us to unionize to accept state aid payments would cause me to stop accepting kids who get state assistance. Providers can already join the union; in eight years, out of 11,000 providers, exactly 57 have joined. I already work hard on improving the quality of the care I provide. By the way, the stories of unethical behavior on union reps’ parts in the card check process are true and omnipresent. We are independent businesspoeple! If we wanted to work inside of a larger organization, we’d have stayed with our old careers!

The Shorter Rep. Nelson (author of the union jamdown bill, and a carpenters union activist in his per-legislative life): Unions all help provide better quality care, training, and standards.

The Shorter Response To Nelson From Providers: Um, those are the job, in order, of existing licensing authorities, and myself.

The Shorter Pro-union Daycare Provider: I’m a loving nurturing person. I teach my kids. Aren’t teachers unionized?

The Shorter Union AFSCME Rep’s Case, with the actual thought completed in parentheses This bill won’t force anyone into a union! (It’ll merely give a mass of unlicensed fly-by-night providers the right to compel all you licensed providers to unionize to if you get state money.

The Shorter Committee Chair Joe Mullery: Unions don’t skim anything.  

The Shorter Mary Franson (leading opponent of jamdown, and a former provider herself):. This bill isn’t about improving care. It’s about enriching union officials and funneling dues money to the DFL-supporting unions.

The Shorter Carly Melin (27-year old second term rep who was carted directly to her district after graduating from Hamline Law just in time to meet residency requirements, and neither has kids nor any notable non-legislative post-law-school job history): Hey! Don’t insult the unions!

The Shorter Results:. Six in-the-bag-for-the-unions DFLers “yes”, five Republivans “no”.

Berg’s Seventh Law In Action, Part MMMCCXIX

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Republican “xeroxes” a bill:  Leftymedia chants indignantly.

Democrat not only copies and pastes a bill from a special interest group, but allows that special interest’s registered lobbyist to sit in in the role of a legislator to introduce and read the bill into the record?

{crickets}

Berg’s Seventh Law may be the single most prescient thing I’ve ever written.

DFL: “Dependable For Lobbyists”

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Two weeks ago, we noted that “Representative” Alice Hausman handed the job of reading “her” gun grab bill over to registered lobbyist Heather Martens.

Martens represents “Protect Minnesota”, a gun “safety” “group”.  I put “group” in scare quotes, because if the “group” has more than half a dozen “members”, I’d be frankly amazed.

But “Protect Minnesota” has a big budget, and big-money donors.  They are what’s called a “Checkbook Advocacy” group – a “public interest” group with few if any members, but lots of money and powerful lobbyists.  ”Protect Minnesota” can be fairly and accurately called “astroturf” – fake grass roots.

So – Alice Hausman turned her chair over to a checkbook advocacy group.

We’re not done yet.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the bipartisan push to scupper the “RoboCop” bill in the Legislature.  As we noted, DFL committee chair Ron Erhard was basically a marionette for  yet another checkbook advocacy group, the “Traffic Safety Coalition”.

The TSC is another checkbook advocacy group affiliated with the Robocop industry – which is closely politically and financially tied with Chicago strongman, former Obama majordomo and possible Democrat presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel.

John Gilmore at Minnesota Conservatives unpacks the various groups involved; refer to the link just above for the ties to Emanuel:

  Shortly after I received the cheerleading email for this legislation, I sent it to a number of extremely competent republican activists. Suffice it to say that we tweeted the results of what we found simply by using The Google.

Could not, you know, alleged reporters do the same? Work backwards from the front group Traffic Safety Coalition to Redflex, the Australian company who bought four lobbyists (and apparently at least two GOP senators) to push the legislation, to Resolute Consulting, who “manages” the Traffic Safety Coalition non-profit! Who owns Resolute Consulting? Greg Goldner, a thug who has greased the skids for the loathsome, greasy Rahm Emanuel.

Oh: Redflex got into a lot of trouble in Chicago, too. If you’re too corrupt for Chicago, you set some kind of record. Redflex actually stopped trading its stock recently because of investigations into its affairs.

And Gilmore notes the laziness of the local media’s “coverage” of the story:

Worse, the Traffic Safety Coalition is lazily termed by the Star Tribune as “a national non-profit.”

A non-profit! Lars Leafbladism™ strikes again. If it is a non-profit, only pure motives can obtain. A front group for a thug PR guy of Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago? Why, who would suggest such a thing?

Well, nobody in our media, to give the rhetorical question a literal answer…

What Do The Flight 93 Terrorists Know That Janet Napolitano Doesn’t?

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At least some police departments are, finally, teaching the victim pool in our nation’s “gun free zones” that sitting quietly and waiting to be butchered doesn’t actually prevent any deaths.

Law enforcement agencies have begun adopting a new policy on so-called “active shooters,” encouraging civilians to take safety into their own hands and take down gunmen who threaten them at work or school.

This approach is gaining momentum in the wake of tragic incidents in Newtown, Connecticut and the Oikos University shooting in Oakland.

At San Jose Evergreen Community College, police have trained teachers, staff and students to follow specific guidelines during this kind of emergency.

The campus police chief credits this training for their coordinated response last December when a gunman was thought to have entered one of their buildings. “Some folks even said I know now whether it is time to hide or the right time to fight back,” said Chief Raymund Aguirre.

Fighting back works.

As we saw in the Clackamas Mall shooting, three days before the Sandy Hook shooting last winter, fighting back with a gun works even better.

Eventually someone will put two and two together; if resisting murderers is good, resisting them with lethal force is better.

We’ll have a related story – and one that ties in with my “Urban Renewal” piece the other day – coming up at noon.

Incremental

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One problem with gun control is over-breadth. To keep firearms out of North Minneapolis, we must ban them statewide, even nationwide and perhaps worldwide, or else they’ll just trickle back in as people move around.

Maybe the problem is freedom of travel? That doesn’t appear anywhere in the Constitution or the amendments, it’s a right invented by the Supreme Court and the early cases dealt with travel Between states. But what about travel Within a single state? Can we limit that?

Perhaps Minneapolis could impose reasonable restrictions on travel into or out of North Minneapolis? Close off all but a few streets, set up a checkpoint and search everyone coming into the North Minneapolis Sterile Zone for ugly guns and high-capacity magazines. That would create a safe and peaceful Gun Free Zone where it’s most needed but still allow people in rural Minnesota to keep firearms for hunting and self-defense. Nizel George would not have died in vain.

Reasonable restrictions on a right that’s not even mentioned in the Constitution. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Saint Paul could use the same idea – a wall around the city, with a fee to get out - for economic development!

The Constitution doesn’t mention anything about “no walls around cities!”

Due Process Is For Suckers

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I wonder if shooting a policeman’s family is considered Domestic Terrorism such that President Obama can issue a Secret Kill Order authorizing the drone operators to drop Hellfire missiles on this guy Dorner?

I know he’s accused of serious crimes and I assume this is the same level of enthusiasm and dedication the LAPD puts into every homicide investigation without showing any favoritism at all because of who the victims were or who the accused killer is; but I’ve got to admit, it is a bit comical that the largest and best equipped police force in the world can’t find one guy supposedly camping in the mountains. God help them if LaRaza ever decides to get serious about reclaiming California.

Actually, this situation sounds familiar. A terrorist with a $1 million price on his head hiding in the mountains and nobody can find him to end his reign of terror. They need to call in . . . Barak “The Slayer” Obama!

I see there’s an update – he’s not the first, some cattle rustlers in North Dakota were the first. So I guess that makes it okay, then.

Joe Doakes

Now that Janet Napolitano is finding terrorists (right-wing ones, anyway) under rocks, I imagine we’ll find out sooner than later.

Open Letter To Ron Paul

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To:Ron Paul, Personality Cultist and Former Presidential Candidate
From: Mitch Berg, Crabby peasant and former big-L Libertarian
Re: Dumb

Mr. Paul,

Y’know, I try. I really do.

But when I see things like this on Twitter…:


…I’m more than a little tempted to say that the best thing you can do for your libertarian cause, and those of us who subscribe to at least parts of it, it so shut up and find yourself a little piece of pasture to go out to.

And go out to it.

Please.

That is all.

Posting this on Facebook yesterday caused a bit of a kerfuffle.  Some Paul supporters asked me why I was attacking Libertarianism.

I’m not, of course; I am a libertarian-conservative, and have been since long before it was cool.  I was – and am – criticizing Ron Paul.  But it’s a little discouraging how many of his supporters conflate the two.