In The Interest Of Disclosure

I’m a volunteer for the Tony Hernandez for Congress campaign.  I’m doing some communications work for the GOP-endorsed candidate in CD4 – the usual, nitty-gritty stuff that are the blocking and tackling of the communication effort behind any local grassroots campaign.

As part of the “job” (no, I don’t get paid), I’ll be writing about Betty McCollum.

Long-time readers of this blog know that that is something I do plenty of anyway.  There won’t be much change.

So to sum up:  I’ll be doing what I normally do for free on my own, for free for the Hernandez campaign.  While I don’t get paid, I still find it deeply unethical for bloggers to blog on behalf of campaigns and not disclose the fact.

Consider yourselves disclosed.

 

A Brilliant Idea!

I was watching the replay of Tuesday’s discussion on Marty Owings’ “Capitol Conversations” show, with Greg Copeland (the GOP-endorsed candidate in the SD66 special election) and Rep. John Lesch, one of three DFL contenders that’ll duke it out in the primary next Tuesday.

Toward the end of the interview, the subject of “what is there left to cut?” from the budget of the City of Saint Paul, Copeland brought up the $300K the city spent on a tiny fleet of electric cars.

Lesch responded “OK, that’s $300 thousand.  What else?”

Copeland, inconveniently, hadn’t brought a budget with  him; Marty had to disentangle that particular discussion.

But it just occurred to me; what a golden opportunity for an across-the-aisle discussion!

Rep. Lesch?  Candidate Copeland?  How about we get together with a copy of the Saint Paul City Budget, and go through it, line item by line item, and justify each one’s existence (or removal)?

This sounds like a fantastic idea!

Rep. Lesch (or whomever wins the DFL endorsement); have your people call Mr. Copeland’s people (note: I am Mr. Copeland’s people).  Let’s get this set up.

What a brilliant idea, Rep. Lesch!

Disclosure: I am a volunteer on Greg Copeland’s campaign staff.

Wrapped In The Distraction

So on Tuesday night I sat in on a broadcast of Marty Owings’ “Capitol Conversations” pitting the DFL candidate (Rep. John Lesch of HD66A) against Greg Copeland, the GOP’s endorsed candidate. Both are running for the Senate District 66 special election; Lesch faces a primary challenge from former HD66B representative Mary Jo McGuire in next week’s primary.

(Disclosure: I’m a volunteer on Copeland’s campaign).

Toward the end of the interview (you can see it here), Owings asked Lesch about a piece that appeared in Minnesota Democrats Exposed last week, questioning Lesch’s alleged campaigning in uniform.

I’m not really going to get involved in that issue.  I figure Lesch, a county prosecutor in his civilian life, knows the rules; both he and the US Army/MN National Guard can take care of themselves as re regulations; if it does turn out the county hired a prosecutor who’s too stupid to follow such basic rules – and I don’t believe that’s the case – then perhaps heads should roll there.

So it’s not the allegations of campaigning on Army time that bother me.

It’s Lesch’s reaction to the question.

Owings asked Lesch if he had a response to the MDE piece.

Lesch pointed out the Stars and Stripes tie and pin that Copeland wears.  Everywhere.  Every day.  Every time I’ve seen the guy, he’s wearing one, the other, or both.  (Unless he’s going all Irish on us) and said (I’m closely paraphrasing here; you can watch the video here and judge for yourself how accurate I’m being) he was within the rules (which, again, nobody on the set disputed, then or now), and it’s typical of Republicans to wrap themselves in the flag when it suits them, but to “crap on it” (I believe those were his words) when it didn’t.

Representative Lesch: it’s not “crapping on the flag” to question an elected representative.  We mere peasants get to do that in our society.  Even if we’re not government workers.  You don’t get immunity as a  prosecutor or as a legislator from questions or criticism.  You may see it as “crapping on John Lesch”; if you are correct about military regulations, you may even have a point.

But you are not The Flag.  You serve it – and, via various chains of command, us. The flag doesn’t immunize you any more than any other public servant or employee.

(Watch for at least one “Berg is a chickenhawk” reference from the leftyblog loony bin in response to this.  Any bets on that?)

When In Robbinsdale, Do As The Robbinsdalians Do

I had the honor and pleasure of MCing a fundraiser for the District 45 GOP last night, at The Lodge in Robbinsdale.  The Lodge is, by the way, owned by the same people who own “Bill’s Gun Shop”, right next door.  Guns ‘n booze; God  Bless America.

I got to meet SD45 candidate Nick Peterson, HD45A’s Mark Martin and HD45B candidate Reid Johnson.

Full disclosure; I got some appetizers and – this is fun – a $20 Holiday gift certificate!  In all my years of blogging and doing political speeches, this is the very first bit of portable, spendable consideration I have ever gotten.

Watch for the leftyblogs to start writing about the scourge of conservative bloggers getting gas cards.

The appetizers were delicious.

Expect a photo-essay – probably tomorrow.

Fun Raiser

I just got back from MCing the MN Fourth District GOP Fundraising dinner tonight.  In addition to the traditional silent auction, we had a very appropriate motivational speaker – he spoke about “resilience”, which is something Fourth CD Republicans get a lot of practice with.   If you get a chance to see Roger Revak speak, do it.  Just saying.

We also met some great people; Gubernatorial candidates Senator Dave Hann, Representative Tom Emmer and former State Auditor Pat Anderson came by, as well as a slew of local and district candidates.

It was a lot of fun, which the Fourth is always good at.  Things are tough in the Fourth – but I have  a hunch better days are coming.  The DFL is doing a bad enough job that everntually even the voters’ll figure it out.

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No More Uppity Citizens

Ace on the politically-motivated, officially-sanctioned, illegal smearing of Joe Wurzelbacher:

Wow! That “Sudden Fame Exception” to privacy wasn’t known by many, but it sure seems to have been known by partisan Democratic Ohio bureaucrats!

…The Beacon Journal has learned that, in addition to the Department of Job and Family Services, two other state offices — the Ohio Department of Taxation and Ohio Attorney General Nancy Rogers — conducted database searches of Joe the Plumber.

…Anthony said the database searches on both days were conducted to ensure that the information in Lucas County was being properly reported by the media.

”Wouldn’t that have been a disaster if the lien had been paid,” Kohlstrand said. ”The responsible thing for us to do would be to take prompt steps to make it right.”

 

God Bless You for your service.

Yep.  Glad our Democrat-party-linked state government officials aren’t a bunch of pettifogging ward-heelers abusing their power for political gain or anything.  That’ll teach all you uppity peasants.

Where is the ACLU, anyway?

New Toy

I’ve been doing this blog for five years.  And I’m not going to stop any time soon.

But even at the beginning of the blogging phenomenon, I figured that there had to be a way forward – a next big thing in citizen journalism.  For me, the next natural step forward would be to do some sort of audio production.  I’ve had plans for almost a year to do a podcast – but the technical overhead of recording, editing, hosting and posting for subscription was more effort than I wanted to bite off.  Still, I figured that someday the technology would come to make audioblogging as easy, rewarding and productive as blogging the written word.

And for me, someday is now.

Ed, of course, beat me to it:  he’s up and going on BlogTalkRadio – a new service that will do for audioblogging what Blogger.com and Townhall.com did for web blogging; make audioblogging simple, user-friendly and (most importantly of all) ubiquitous.  Best of all, it avoids the one big problem I always had with traditional podcasting; it allows live talk, complete with call-ins; it has all the interactiveness of blogging, but it’s live!.

Yeah, I’m stoked.

I’ll be starting a show shortly, too. 

Listen Live   I’m doing a test broadcast tomorrow, and then will start a regular show on at BlogTalkRadio.com.  I’ll be rolling out a new site for my own podcasts (along with the space available on BlogTalkRadio), hopefully over the weekend.

Here’s the important part; BlogTalkRadio is, (Ed and I notwithstanding) heavily dominated by left-of-center talent.  Ed and I, of course, are looking to help change that. 

More details as they become available (and by all means, listen to Ed’s show)

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What I Did Last Night

Not many things will get me to miss a two-hour 24.  But it was worth it.

I attended a “Lincoln’s Birthday” fundraiser for Minnesota Senate District 62 last night, at Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis.  Dan and Karen Mathias and their kids organized the event, and did a fantastic job.  About sixty of the hardcore faithful (including BuddhaPatriot and the ubuiquitous Pink Monkeybird) turned out to see a panel hosted by Annette Meeks and including Katherine Kersten, David Strom and (who doesn’t belong in this picture?) me discussing the state of conservatism today – the way we got here, and where we go. 

I had a blast, of course.  Great company, great dinner, and a great time. 

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