I almost missed this one in the scrum of this past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, when Representatives Paymar and Martens tried to jam down a ban on law-abiding citizens carrying their legally-permitted firearms in the Capitol complex, the Strib’s Abby Simons wrote the paper’s follow-up piece.

It ended with a quote from Representative Martens; like most of Martens’ statements, it reeks of crap from rhetorical stem to stern.  But I’ll emphasize the part I want to focus on today:

Heather Martens, executive director [Ha ha ha! – Ed.] of Protect Minnesota, an organization geared toward ending gun violence [Ha ha ha! – Ed.] and an advocate for the ban, said the intimidation happens when a loaded firearm is worn openly, as it was earlier this year during a hearing.

“There is no history of someone like that being a meaningful deterrent or being able to stop an attack,” she said.

If you read this blog,  you are smarter than that. 

John Lott showed how “someone like that” – multiplied by millions – have deterred hundreds of thousands of crimes in shall-issue states, as compared with discretionary or non-issue states (back when there were more of both). 

As to stopping those attacks?  Well, we’ve been through this before.  Here’s a partial list of attacks stopped by law-abiding, non-police, private citizens with legal firearms:

• The Pearl, Mississippi school shooting, where a teacher grabbed a gun and stopped the two shooters.
• The Appalachian Law School shooting, where a would-be mass-murderer was stopped by a couple of armed students.
• A robbery that was devolving into a mass-shooting in Virginia was stopped by a CCW permittee.
• This episode in Texas recently
• An episode in Richmond, VA in the nineties where a shooter who intended to copycat the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre (in Killeen, TX) was stopped after killing one person, by another citizen with a legal handgun.
• The New Life Church shooting spree in Colorado Springs in 2007, ended by Jeanne Assam.
• This episode in Texas, where an armed man killed a mass shooter (and died, himself); it’s generally agreed he saved several lives in the process.
• An unknown “good samaritan” in South Minneapolis prevented himself from being murdered, two years ago. 
• A bouncer in Minneapolis prevented himself, and very possibly a number of other people, from being carved up like Christmas hams a few years ago. 
• Details are still sketchy, but it’s very likely one “VT” of Saint Paul prevented a murder – his – and possibly his friend’s a few weeks ago. 

If Heather Martens – or any of her supporters and employees – are talking, the rule of thumb is “assume they’re lying”.  Because they are.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

House extended ban on all-plastic guns for another 10 years.  Meaningless gesture.  Nobody gets shot with them, banning them won’t stop people from making them any more than banning cocaine stops people from using it.  Posturing to divert attention from real government failures in every other area.

My grandson has a plastic gun.  He carries it in a holster on his cowboy belt when he rides his hobby horse.  I wonder if Rep. Paymar is intimidated by that, too?

Joe Doakes

Heather Martens will no doubt make them a priority in the next session.

To prevent them from “intimidating” other kids.

You think I’m joking.  But if I’ve learned anything living in a city full of liberals with no fear of being held accountable, today’s sardonic jokes are tomorrow’s laws.

Or yesterday’s laws, in some cases.

If you go to the little email widget that “Protect” Minnesota uses to try to spam legislators, you’ll see this text pre-filled.  I’ll highlight the money quote:

Minnesota is one of only a few states that allows private firearms to be carried at the state Capitol without screening. In addition, committee chairs don’t have the authority to keep people from carrying guns into hearings — no matter how volatile the topic of discussion.

At the Nov. 5 committee meeting, a public safety official described and example of a concealed carry permit holder expressing anti-government sentiment and a plan to bring a gun to the Capitol. Members of the committee who support gun carrying expressed their disapproval of such behavior.
But sitting right in the hearing room was a group aligned with the gun lobby wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Nobody on the committee appeared to realize that Guy Fawkes was known for his attempt to blow up the English Parliament, and a recent movie glorified Fawkes’ effort.

The safety risk of loaded firearms is known – but the use of guns for political intimidation is becoming more brazen every year. This is unacceptable in a democracy. Our public safety officials and legislators should be allowed to know when individuals are coming in with guns and keep guns out of all or part of the Capitol complex.
It would be irresponsible to wait for a tragedy to happen in Minnesota before making our Capitol safer. Please give law enforcement and legislators who run hearings the ability to protect our free speech and our safety at the Capitol.

I have to wonder – has Representative Martens actually been to an “Occupy” rally (back when the were still happening)?  The places were crawling with those creepy masks.

But let’s take Heather Martens at her stated word.  The legislature has to guard against “Anti-Government Sentiment?”

So now Rep. Martens is trying to gut the First Amendment, too!

Here’s the letter I sent back through their little email spam-bot widget:

Representatives,

This, like everything “Protect Minnesota” has ever written or said, is a lie.

Capitol Security staff are pretty clear about it; carry permittees are the most polite, least bothersome groups of protesters that ever show up at the Capitol.

By the way – the “anti-government sentiments” Ms. Martens is referring to was a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask. Ms. Martens is filling in the details about “blowing up the Capitol” – because, as usual, she’s lying.  And, apparently, she’s no more comfortable with the First Amendment than the Second.

Please stop wasting taxpayer time participating in Heather Martens’ Joyce-Foundation-funded charades.

Mitch Berg
Saint Paul

Not sure it’ll get through, but it was fun to write.

This email came out from Rep Heather Martens (DFLiar, HD66A) earlier this week:

Dear Friend,

Tomorrow at 10:30 am, the legislature’s committee on Capitol security will decide whether to continue to let people carry loaded guns in the Capitol.

At a meeting earlier this month, it became clear that some concealed carry permit holders have used their loaded guns for political intimidation.

And there’s your lie.

There was no “intimidation”.

Go check for yourself. Call the folks at Capitol Security. They’ll tell you the Second Amendment Rights crowd, guns or no, is the very best-behaved group of protesters that ever comes to the capitol. Friendly, polite to a fault, never even the faintest shred of a problem. Which is an amazing feat with group that always numbers in the hundreds every time they show up.

Not a single problem. Ever.

Martens – as always – is lying.

It’s The Bigotry, Stupid: Martens points out that there’s some fear, classism and bigotry at work here:

A legislator on the committee expressed disapproval of such behavior.

I don’t doubt that “a legislator” might have said something like this. Some DFL Metrocrat no doubt does have an aversion to guns, and people carrying them.

But why do we pay them any more attention than we would a legislator who was afraid of black people?

It’s entirely possible some ninny is afraid of people exercising their law-abiding rights.  People get intimidated by free speech, too.  Do we dignify it with a response?  Or do we call it what it is?

(Fact:  the only “intimidation” carried out by an unelected official during the gun hearings was the loathsome gun-grabber who walked up to the daughter of a GOCRA organizer and told her “you’ll be a better person than your father when you grow up”).

But he then said nothing should be done because nobody has been killed yet at the Capitol.

Nor will they ever be – by a carry permittee, anyway. Statistically, you are at greater danger of being shot by a Democrat legislator than by a legal carry permit holder.

I Gotcher Call To Action Right Here: Martens puts out a call to her anemic, arthritic, utterly white little legion:

Please contact committee members to urge them to take decisive action. They should allow security officials and legislators to limit where guns can be carried at the Capitol.

We can’t wait for something to happen in the Minnesota Capitol building in order to make the Capitol safe. And political intimidation should be unacceptable at our state Capitol.

Once more unto the breach, Real Americans.  It’s time to light up the switchboards.

Which ones?  For some reason, the members of the select committee on Capitol Security aren’t published (or at least five minutes of googling didn’t turn up a list).  Start with the Public Safety Committee.  You know the drill.

Last week, we looked at a troika of “gun rights” groups and their singular and plural records.

Last Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising letter for a group called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) that Minnesota Second Amendment activists have been getting.  In the letter – from “Minnesota Gun Rights” executive director Chris Dorr – the sky will fall if the reader doesn’t support the group.

Wednesday, we got a perspective from Iowa on the effectiveness of the Iowa Gun Owners (IGO), run by Aaron Dorr, the brother of MGR’s Executive Director – or, according to an Iowa legislator who’s seen it first hand, the lack of effectiveness.

Thursday we looked at the ties between the Dorr brothers and the scandal that rocked the Michele Bachmann campaign in Iowa – and to the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), a group that earned a reputation for having a big bark but not much bite for the relative impotence of its battle against the anti-rights onslaught in Colorado last session.  We also noted that “Minnesotagunrights.org” is actually registered in Van Meter Iowa.

Friday, we showed that an alarmist fund-raising letter aimed at Minnesotans from the NAGR’s Dudley Brown, that was wrong on nearly every possible point – almost too devoid of fact to have come from Heather Martens.

And today?

More on that in a moment.

In Defense:  Last week, a local Libertarian activist well-known for his involvement in the “Ron Paul” clicque takeover of parts of the MN GOP in 2012 posted the following on his Facebook page.  I won’t name the activist here; let’s call him “Paul Robertson” just to avoid confusion.

I’m adding emphasis:

I have met Chris Dorr and and have worked some of the people helping him on projects in the state. A recent hit piece from a Minnesota establishment blogger noted the connection Chris has to the National Association for Gun Rights.

I’m an “establishment blogger?”

Who knew?

I digress:

NAGR operations chief Dudley Brown is an effective political operative who, an as RNC Rules Committeemember, was a leader at the national convention fighting the establishment power grab. One gets onto the RNC Rules committee by earning the support of entire state and CD conventions, something that is impossible for sham groups to do.

And there’s the point, right there.

Forget for a moment that “Mr. Robertson” is referring to Mr. Brown’s role in the picayune rules battle at the last Republican National Convention that pitted “the establishment” against the thin coterie of Ron Paul delegates (a rules change I oppose, for what very little it’s worth).

The two responses to this are:

1. So What?:   The most we can take from “Mr. Robertson’s” statement is that Mr. Brown can organize caucusees into a group that creates a ruckus to no real immediate effect.
2. That’s What!:  Badda bing.  Re-read #1.

In party politics as well as gun politics, Dudley Brown of the National Association for Gun Rights would seem – by his record, even as emphasized by his local supporter, the pseudonymic “Mr. Robertson” – to be about making the big, “my way or the highway” policy pronouncements that drum up much noise but signify little-to-nothing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with noise.  And Minnesota’s current gun-rights groups – MN-RKBA, GOCRA, and even the NRA (which for the first time in my 25 years of watching the issue in this state is finally starting to take an active role at the Capitol) create plenty of it.  Over this past session, they put thousands of people into meeting rooms, and mobilized tens of thousands of phone calls, emails and letters.  Minnesota’s legislators know where the people of Minnesota stand on the issue – which is why even though the DFL controls the legislature and the governor’s office, and their financial supporters are buying support in the mainstream media, the anti-rights agenda was humiliated this past session.

But there needs to be more than just noise.  If a group can’t deliver results at the Capitol in terms of bad policy shot down and good policy enacted, then why support them?

Minnesota’s gun rights groups – NRA, GOCRA/GOAL, MN-RKBA and the rest – have a record of not just making noise, but winning battles.  Of not just getting people riled up, but getting them focused in a direction that, in good times, expands the human right of self-defense.  Never forget – the battle for “shall issue” carry permitting lasted 10 years, from 1995 to 2005.  The goal was achieved not just by getting people riled up – but by focusing all that passion on results.  And frequently needing to do it against adversity; remember, the DFL controlled the legislature before 2002, and have held at least one chamber for all but two years in recent memory.  And we’ve had exactly eight years of conservative-enough governor in the past thirty (forget about Jesse Ventura).

The Challenge:   But there’s certainly a market for groups in any facet of politics, including Gun Rights, that lead with “death or glory”; “our way or the highway”.  Gun Owners of America (GOA) split off from the NRA 20-odd years ago because they thought the NRA wasn’t activist enough.  And they were right.  And the exodus of members concerned with gun rights spurred the NRA to more, more effective political activism.

But hard-line as they are, the GOA has actually had an effect on politics.  They’ve done things; mobilized voters, won some battles through their own lobbying and activism and shoe leather.

I’m not going to tell you what to think about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, the group we met last Tuesday via its alarmed-sounding fund-raising letter to Minnesota gun owners.

I am going to tell you to consider the evidence;

• “Minnesota Gun Rights” (MGR) is tightly related to “Iowa Gun Owners” – their directors are brothers, and both groups’ websites are registered in Iowa (here’s MGR, here’s IGO)
• As related by Iowa state representative Matt Windschitl – a pro-gun legislator – IGO has a record of being utterly useless in actually passing legislation, has actually hampered the passage of useful legislation, and claims credit for passing legislation in which they were utterly uninvolved.   You don’t have to believe me – listen to him yourself.
• The Dorr brothers were intimately involved in the scandal that has dogged Representative Bachmann – the payment-for-endorsement scandal that led to the resignation of an Iowa state Senator.  So someday if Chris Dorr testifies in front of the Public Safety committee, you think Doug Grow (of the Joyce-Foundation-sponsored MinnPost) won’t bring that up to discredit all gun rights advocates?   You think “Protect Minnesota’s” new PR guy Richard Carlbom won’t dangle that factoid in front of Tom Scheck and Pat Kessler?
• Both the Dorrs are closely involved with the “National Association for Gun Rights”, a group run by Dudley Brown.  NAGR – like Brown and the Dorrs – are closely aligned with the Ron Paul camp; that’s not a bad thing by itself, necessarily.  But it does tip you off to their “all or nothing” approach.   And whatever their political allegiance, while NAGR is long on uncompromising rhetoric, when it comes to the day to day politics of winning the legislative battle for our rights, their record gives the appearance of being all moo and no cow, or worse (to say nothing of willing to misrepresent current events and politicians’ positions here in Minnesota).

Let me be clear here, personally – when it comes to fighting the anti-rights orcs, as far as I’m concerned we should let a thousand lights shine.

But Iowa Gun Owners and the NAGR would seem to have a record of underdelivering on its overpromised rhetoric.  And MGR has no record at all, other than of association with the IGO and NAGR.

Ask yourself – should your hard-earned money be going to a run rights group that has an actual record of delivering people, votes, and policy?  Minnesota already has several of those.  We could use more – as many as it takes to get every possible Minnesota shooter to the polls, and toss every possible orc out of the Legislature and the Governor’s office.

Is there any evidence that Minnesota Gun Rights, Iowa Gun Owners or the National Association for Gun Rights have done anything documentably useful?  Bills passed (through their efforts)?  Lawsuits won?  Chambers packed?  Legislators elected?

I’m waiting to see it.

But it’s your call.

The party that stood four-square behind Representative Ryan Winkler for calling Justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom“…

…has the vapors over two of the most innocuous jokes…

Nov. 16, 2012: “Poor Susan Rice. She’s the first woman in Washington to get in more trouble opening her mouth for a president than Monica Lewinsky.”

Nov. 18, 2012: “I keep hearing about this fantasy football thing. I don’t get it. My idea of fantasy football is where I am the quarterback and Angela Jolie is the center.”

They’re from Craig “Captain Fishsticks” Westover, an advisor to MNGOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson.  And the first one is accurate to a journalistic fault.

And, uh, note the dates.

So they – in this case, “Sam Jasenosky”, who would seem to be an undergrad journalism major (what else) – have been reduced to digging through advisors’ twitter feeds for any sign of political incorrectness to be tortured out of context.

I can hardly wait to see the ABM TV ad next year.

Here’s the fun part, though; ABM are the real sexists:  from yesterday’s post about the GOP candidates:

Julianne Ortman: A genie.

And lest the reader mentally compare Ortman – a graduate of U Penn law school and a former adjunct professor George Washington U  – to the “Djinn” of Arab mythology, they helpfully included video of Barbara Eden playing a jiggly, bubbleheaded blond piece of eye candy:

Because when you’re a Democrat, it’s only sexism if you’re one of the bad guys.

And because that’s what female conservatives are to Carrie Lucking’s little troupe of howler monkeys.

If Paul Wellstone really had all the integrity people said he did, he’d puke.

This past Friday, I talked with Susie Jones, a reporter from WCCO Radio, about the Gun Grab Summit in North Minneapolis. 

Now, I’m stuck in a bit of a conundrum, myself.  On the one hand, I do seek a civil, grown-up dialog.  As a gun owner, I have a vested interest in making sure my “tribe” – the law-abiding gun owner – acts in a way that credits the responsibility that God gave us and that our Founding Fathers recognized in the Constitution (a responsibility that the record shows we’re really, really good at meeting). 

I also have kids.  And a granddaughter.  Violence is an awful thing.  Protecting against violence is one of the reasons I would be a gun owner, hypothetically.

So curbing violence – with guns, knives, axes, fists, cars, sex organs and every other kind – is Job 1 for me, and for every law-abding gun owner I know. 

On the other hand?  It’s hard to stay adult and civil when dealing with “ProtectMN”, the Joyce-Foundation supported astroturf group that has been campaigning against guns – as opposed to violence – under several names for a couple decades now. 

Part of it is that the group – its’ leader, Representative Heather Martens (DFL HD 67A), speaking as a leader and as an individual – has never, ever uttered a solitary substantive word of truth on the gun issue.  Ever.  Seriously – you can tell Ms. Martens is lying when you see her lips move.  She is the most disingenuous person anywhere in Minnesota public life. 

Yes, worse than Carrie Lucking. 

We are constantly reminded that we need to have a “Dialog” about gun violence. 

And “Dialog” requires honesty.  So I’m going to be honest. 

Monologue And Backstory:  The key to “Dialog” is, of course, discussion between two divergent-to-dissenting points of view.  Otherwise, all you have is a monologue. 

Now, in his conversation with WCCO’s Jones on Friday, “ProtectMN”s Leroy Duncan flatly denied that anyone was told not to show up at the event. 

But at least one executive from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance responded to ProtectMN’s invitation to Friday’s event; I reprinted Heather Martens’ response to that GOCRA offical here the other day. 

Now, this is what ProtectMN put up on their Facebook page the other day.  Read it and tell me…:

“It’s time to stop letting our critical national debates be handled by lunatics, and by corporate lobbyists. It’s time for us to take up the mantle of civics and citizenship again, beyond our narrow self-interest.

We need to have a real discussion about the civic duty of gun ownership sooner, rather than later. It’s time for the grownups to start talking, and more importantly, to take action.”

The MN Gun Violence Summit will consist of “grown-ups” talking about how to make our communities safer and reframe the debate about gun policy.

…if all of that Alinskyite framing (“lunatics”, “grown-ups”) sounds like someone looking for a dialog? 

Class Warfare:  Jones noted in her conversation with me that some of the people at the “summit” had complained that the issue was a matter of the plucky, put-upon inner city versus the smug, complacent suburbs – and that shooters just don’t understand life in the inner city.

I refuted them thusly; me.  I live in the Midway.  I’ve had a drive-by shooting in front of my house.  I had a break-in when I was in my house, once upon a time; the sound of my own firearm ended the incident.  Senseless violence?  A four-year-old girl was murdered half a mile from my house, right about the time I had two kids in her age bracket. 

Gun violence affects my city.  My quality of life.  My property value.  Just as much as it does yours, and more than it does those of any of the leadership of “ProtectMN” and “Moms Want Action”. 

And – this is the important part -not a single proposal they’re making, or have ever made, would affect gun violence in the least.

So, Mr. Duncan, please spare us the BS and never, ever play that crap with me. 

And the fact is, many shooters live in the suburbs because decades of DFL mismanagement have left the cities much more dangerous than the subs, the exurbs or Greater Minnesota. 

Indeed, given that Minneapolis and Saint Paul have the lowest incidence of civilian gun ownership in the State and the highest crime rates, perhaps it’s time we considered whether owning guns is a better deterrent to violence than banning them. 

The Potemkin Mission:  But “ProtectMN” isn’t about curbing violence.  Not even a little bit.

Proof:  In the legislative session just passed, most of the Legislature got behind a bill, HF1325, sponsored by Rep. Hilstrom (DFL, some godforsaken Western suburb). The bill would have added mandatory penalties for using a gun to commit a crime, and improved the state’s reporting to the national background check database (a ball the DFL has been dropping for over a decade now)…

…y’know – things that have a record in curbing violence. 

That’s the mission – right?

Not for “ProtectMN”.  They – Martens and the Metrocrat DFLers who controlled the Legislature – fought like hell against the bill that would address violence with measures that have actually worked around the country, claiming it was “The NRA’s Bill” (which was written by a rep with an “F” rating from the NRA, but whatever).  Instead, they fought for useless fripperies like magazine size restrictions, and yapping about cosmetic features of different guns – things that don’t and have never had the faintest impact on violence at the very most.

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

So I ask you – who is actually “dealing with violence”?  And who is acting out a fetish over metal objects?

The Takeaways From The “Summit”:  I’d like to address this to my brothers and sisters, my fellow human beings in places like North Minneapolis and the lower East Side. 

There is a “dialog” to be had about gun violence.  And we, your fellow Americans and Minnesotans of the Second Amendment community, are more than ready to have exactly that.  We, like you, want to make your streets, neighborhoods and homes safer – because they’re our streets, neighborhoods and homes, too.

“ProtectMN” doesn’t care about “violence”.  They froth and fume about guys in Lakeville with AR15s – and you know as well as I do (and Heather Martens does not) that they and their guns aren’t the problem. 

It’s the criminals.  The people who couldn’t pass a background check when they were 18, and sure as hell can’t pass one now.

And let the record show that Protect MN fought against the legislation that would attack them, in favor of attacking the law-abiding, in the past session.

And starting in January, they’re going to ramp up that attack. 

More later.

Today at 10AM, “Protect Minnesota” and a coalition of mostly white, mostly upper-middle-class, entirely left-of-center groups will meet, as we discussed yesterday, to try to figure out how to suppress the Second Amendment for the law-abiding Minnesotan. 

Yesterday, we discussed the invitation – and how they’re really not interested in any solution that doesn’t involve infringing on the law-abiding, having rejected the RSVPs of Second Amendment activists.

But what about the agenda itself?

The invite – from “Protect Minnesota” The Brady Factory – says:

Find out what’s next in this important work and what your role can be. Sessions include:

— Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention

— Developing effective media strategy

— A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota

— Grassroots lobbying

— Creating change with personal stories

What are they talking about?

Let’s turn this into real English:

Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention:  Whose narrative are we talking about, here?  The one in the media?  That one is certainly gun-grabber friendly.  Or are you talking about the one out there in the larger society – the one that keeps answering “guns in the hands of the law-abiding are a good thing” at the ballot box?

Developing effective media strategy:  I presume this means “expanding on their current strategy of having their plutocrat benefactors sponsor friendly media and pay for sympathetic “news” coverage”.

A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota:  “Deep Dive?”  You don’t need no stinkin’ deep dive.  I’ll tell you what you need to know; for the past 40 years, our self-appointed “elites” have been trying to set gun policy.  From 1974 through 1994, it worked.  Then Minnesota’s gun owners got organized.  Since then, the “elites” have been shut down, and haven’t won a battle that wasn’t handed to them by a judge.

Take that time you were going to spend in your “deep dive” and do something useful.  Maybe take a walk.

Grassroots lobbying:  This should be a fun session.  The gun-grabbers have no “grass roots”

White, upper-middle-class, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, free-range-alpaca-wearing, white-liberal-guilt-stricken perma-scowling Saint Olaf alums from Linden Hills, Crocus Hill and Saint Louis Park. These are the closest the gun-grabber movement gets to “grass roots”.

They have astroturf.  They have a few activists (see photo above) and a lot of money from liberals with deep pockets.

And that’s it.

Creating change with personal stories:  Go ahead.  Bring your personal stories.  We’ll bring ours.

The meeting should be fun.  And by “fun”, I mean “clogged with self-righteous but badly-informed bobbleheads”.

If any of you Real Americans attend as ringers, please send me your report.

In the previous piece about tomorrow’s “Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities summit “, I said “You’re invited”, sort of.

It’s not actually true.  A number of members of the Twin Cities’ human rights community responded to the invitation on Facebook – because the meeting invitation noted that “We all have to step up”, and nobody, but nobody, wants to curb gun violence more than the law-abiding, responsible gun owner [1], and so a number of Second Amendment human rights activists did step up, and RSVPed to the invite. 

And some of them have been getting responses:

“Dear [Redacted]

I am writing to inform y ou that the meeting on Friday, for which we received your RSVP, is not open to you.  If you come, you will be asked to leave.

Regards,

Heather

Presumably that’s Heather Martens, “Executive Director” and sole member of “Protect Minnesota’. 

So apparently when they say everyone needs to “step up” to prevent “gun violence”, they only mean “people who want to ban guns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen”. 

I wonder if theMinnPost,or Minnesota Public Radio, both of whom are sponsored by Joyce Foundation, the group of liberals with deep pockets who are “ProtectMN’s” only real source of money, will note that in what will no doubt be their embarassingly effusive coverage of the “event?”

[1] As evidenced by the fact that it’s us law-abiding, responsible gun owners that actually point out that the bulk of the gun carnage is being carried out by criminals, and most of the innocent victims are black children in places like Chicago.  The Twin Cities gun-grabber movement, being almost exclusively upper-middle-class white liberals (and, in terms of positions of power, white as the driven snow), seems only to concern itself with the deaths of children who look like their parents are NPR executives.  I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

We’ve written before about “Moms Demand Action”, the gun-grabber astroturf group financed entirely by liberals with deep pockets, and “run” (and, I suspect, almost solely inhabited) by Jane Kay, a woman whose hatred of the law-abiding firearms owner is so toxic as to frankly make me worry about her well-being.

Jane Kay (l) with Rep. Heather Martens (DFL – 67A) and Rep. Michael Paymar, at last spring’s gun grab hearings.

Mama Jane has a website, now.  And through the miracle of Web 1.0 technology, it gives the Moms and the group’s “member” their sympathizer or two the ability to put lies, long-debunked research and bobbleheaded long-discredited scare stories out in front of Congresspeople via Twitter in bulk loads.  Sort of the “Ugly Black Gun” of Twitter interfaces, designed to spit out untruths as fast as a group of orcs can click.

Or to put it in IT terms, a Spam Generator.

They’re using the #gunsense, #Savethe9 and of course #momsdemandaction tags.

If #MomsDemandAction had more than a few members, it’d be fun to jack the hashtags.

But of course, the point of groups like Moms Demand Action and “Protect Minnesota” isn’t getting members, or even producing social media.  It’s getting the compliant media (like the MinnPost, which is sponsored by the same groups that sponsor both of the gun grab groups) to present them as if they’re real groups, to gull the gullible into believing that there is an organized, organic gun-grab movement.

There isn’t.  But you’ll never hear it from Doug Grow.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO writes about a recent Roger Simon jape at conservative legislators – by way of addressing a much larger question; why aren’t the media offended by the left’s assumption that they’re biased?

Simon’s column reminds me of a point I’ve been making for years. Most mainstream journalists roll their eyes at the idea the MSM is biased. It’s a tired argument, I know.

It is.  I’m tired of having to make it.

And yet – as Goldberg shows us – it’s not only true, but getting more and moreso:

 But it’s simply remarkable that when supposedly objective reporters move on to the opinion column racket they reveal themselves as utterly conventional liberal Democrats. When any longtime New York Times reporter rewarded with a column at the Times or elsewhere — Nick Kristoff, Bill Keller, Maureen Dowd, Anthony Lewis, EJ Dionne et al. — rips off the mask it turns out that they were exactly as liberal as conservatives suspected…Just going by the law of averages, some of these reporters should turn out to be conservative or libertarian or at least ideologically heterodox. But it almost never happens. Indeed, when the Times needs to find a conservative columnist (Bill Safire, David Brooks, Ross Douthat) it always has to hire outside its own shop.

It’s true in the Twin Cities, too; the Strib had to hire think-tanker Katherine Kersten to give its columnist’s row a veneer of balance (as a generation of Strib columnists tut-tutted about What It All Meant).  While the non-profit MinnPost originally claimed to want to shoot for multipartisanship, the best they could do was Cyndi Brucato – as a reporter.  That, on a site staffed with DFL apparatchik Doug Grow, former Dayton comms guy Brian Lamberg, and a raft of other committed libs.

Jay Carney got his job working for Joe Biden, and later, Barack Obama because his employers knew from the get-go that the Time reporter was ideologically simpatico with the administration. The same goes for Linda Douglas, not to mention Richard Stengel, Shailagh Murray, and many others. I wonder if any of them ever feel insulted when Democratic politicians just assume that supposedly objective reporters would make great partisan hacks?

Locally?  Not only are the left’s “alt” media clogged with refugees from the Strib, PiPress and other mainstream outlets, but there’s been a steady parade of regional journos that’ve found post-media homes in the DFL, at left-leaning non-profits like MN2020, and as comms people for liberal pols.

Because it’s a safe assumption, I guess…

On the one hand, Jennifer Rubin at the WaPo points out 15 signs shutdown fans have “drunk the koolaid“:

There has been, to put it mildly, some mass self-delusion going on in right-wing circles. Here’s how to tell if you are suffering from the ill-effects of the echo chamber.

On the other hand?  Steven Hayward atPower Lineis a convert:

First of all, like the sequester, have the majority of Americans noticed its effects beyond what the media has been screaming about?  The bullying tactics of forcibly shutting off public spaces like the World War II memorial on the mall has surely inflicted damage on Obama that, had he behaved with minimal restraint, he might have been spared.

Beyond this, have there been riots or even public demonstrations against the shutdown?  The political-financial crises in Europe and elsewhere in recent years have seen mass protests and street riots (Spain, Brazil, Greece, Bulgaria, etc).  Where is Occupy Wall Street when Obama needs them?  To the contrary, much more of the political energy appears to be on the Tea Party side right now.  Pretty clearly the shutdown terrifies liberals and journalists—and that’s about it.

Of course, it might be pointed out that this is a faux-shutdown: 80 percent of the government is up and running.  This is analogous to TSA airport security: it is shutdown theater rather than the real thing.  Stop sending Social Security checks and see what happens.

A fair point, but this leads to the next big question: which party most needs the government to be up and running?  Ask yourself which party is the party of government and you’ll know the answer.  With 90 percent of the EPA furloughed, what’s the downside here for Republicans?

More seriously, to the extent that shutdown and “government dysfunction” in Washington causes the public to hold Washington in even greater disgust than usual, who does this hurt the most?  Democrats need the public to have some degree of confidence in government for their expansive schemes to succeed.  Which brings me to the latest soundings on public opinion that Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg have put together and displayed in the charts below. 

Bottom line: public confidence in Washington D.C. is at lows not seen since the 1970s.  (And we know what happened at the end of that decade.)

The takeaway?  I think a competent GOP leadership could make this into a net win in 2014 for the GOP.

Which means we’re screwed.

But for the Tea Party, anyway.

Earlier this week, the Joyce Foundation collected another installment on its payment for the MinnPost’s PR services in pursuit of disarming the American people – in this case, a “Community Voices” column by by Rebecca Lowen and Doug Rossinow, who are listed as “history professors at Metro State”.

Those who fail to learn from history, it’s fair to say, teach history at Metro State.

And if this reflects the current state of the victim-disarmament movement, it’d seem their strategy has shifted to “ad homina” and “making things up”.

(more…)

To:  Joel Kramer (CEO/Editor), Roger Buoen and Susan Albright (Co-Managing Editors) Don Effenberger (News Editor)
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  They Get What They Pay For

Esteemed Editors:

I was never much of a reporter.  I could always do the “who, what, when, where, why and how” of a story just fine, and earned a living at it, off and on.  But it was never really my thing.

But I do remember, when I worked in the business, that the fastest way to get a reporter, producer or editor up on their back legs was to suggest that journalism partner with business or government to do the job.  They would say – with righteousness rivaling any Baptist minister or Trappist monk – that Journalism’s mission was to be a check and balance on government, business, anyone with power.    To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.   Any whiff of filthy lucre was to be kept on the other side of the thick wall and locked door that separated the Sales department from the newsroom. 

Media analysts – I’m thinking Garfield and Gladstone’s “On The Media” on NPR, and the whole Romanesko borg – go through gyrations worthy of a Talmud symposium sifting through the ethics of mixing journalism and money. 

Now, theMinnPosttalks a big game about journalism.  And you’ve certainly staffed your site with a lot of people with long pedigrees in the regional news business.  And Brian Lambert. 

But I’ve noticed on one issue that your site gets a fair chunk of money from from the Joyce Foundation.  The Joyce Foundation also bankrolls most of the major gun control organizations in the United States, including Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts and “Protect Minnesota“. 

And along with this financial link, the MinnPost’s coverage of Second Amendment issues has gotten more and more slanted, and not a little bit risible in the bargain:

• Doug Grow has positively fawned over Heather Martens and Jane Kay (of “Moms Want Action”, another astroturf anti-gun group that gets money from the same pool of liberals with deep pockets that bankrolls Protect MN and, I suspect, the MinnPost); his coverage has been less “journalism” and more “holding a rhetorical slumber party”.  His piece on Rep. Hillstrom’s counter to the Paymar/Hausman gun grab bills – one of which Martens, a lobbyist, read into the record, a bizarre flouting of House rules – was so devoid of fact I concluded it could only have been written in advance. 
• I’ve got nothing but respect for Eric Black as a journalist – but his coverage of Second Amendment issues and their Constitutional history this past year has been a fount of inspiration for us on this blog. 

The MinnPost gets big bucks from Joyce, and starts a wave of anti-Second-Amendment (I’ll be charitable) cheerleading.  Coincidence?

Which leads us to this week, and Susan Perry’s piece on an academic “study” on gun violence.  It was a puff piece about a junk study…

…and it was sponsored – as noted in the story’s headline – by UCare.  An arm of the government of the State of Minnesota.  Now, leave aside that that government is currently controlled by the extreme metrocrat wing of the DFL party.  Here’s the question:  if journalism is supposed to hold government accountable, should be finacially beholden to government?

Or does that only count when it’s not a DFL sacred cow being promoted?

Because when your “journalism” is being done at the behest of issue-oriented non-profits and the government you’re theoritically supposed to hold accountable, isn’t it really just public relations?  Or campaign media?

Thanks,

Mitch Berg
Uppity Peasant

 The MinnPost – a non-profit-run institutional blog established the the intention to get a jump on the next wave of institutional journalism – gets a whole bunch of money from the Joyce Foundation.  Joyce also bankrolls Minnesota’s “largest” gun grabber group, “Protect Minnesota”, and Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”, as well as paying academics to deliver the conclusions they want. 

Is that financial relationship related to the fact that the MinnPost has, whenever the subject of guns and the Second Amendment is at hand, turned itself into a risible propaganda organ for the gun-grabbing extreme left?

From Eric Black’s recycling long-obscure legal theories about the origins of the Second Amendment to Doug Grow’s naked puff-piecemongering in support of Heather Martens’ checkbook advocacy group, the MinnPost would seem to be working hard to earn the $50K or so they got from Joyce. 

The latest?  Susan Perry, a “Health” reporter who has pulled her weight in the past on theMinnPost’santi-gun beat. 

Confederate soldiers! With guns! Defending slavery! This is what the MinnPost think you, the law-abiding gun owner, genuflect to.

Yesterday came this piece, entitled…

Well, no.  We’ll get to the title in a bit.  But I’m going to pull a quote from the end of the story first.  I’ll add emphasis for weasel words and a particularly dim strawman:

“Although correlation is not synonymous with causation,” write Bangalore and Messerli, “it seems conceivable that abundant gun availability facilitates firearm-related deaths. Conversely, high crime rates may instigate widespread anxiety and fear, thereby motivating people to arm themselves and give rise to increased gun ownership, which, in turn, increases availability. The resulting vicious cycle could, bit-by-bit, lead to the polarized status that is now the case with the US.”

“Regardless of exact cause and effect, however,” they add, “the current study debunks the widely quoted hypothesis purporting to show that countries with the higher gun ownership are safer than those with low gun ownership.”

So – seventeen paragraphs into a nineteen paragraph article, we hear that the reasearchers aren’t actually drawing conclusions (in attacking a “widely quoted hypothesis” that nobody quotes at all). 

Which is a bit of a letdown for a story whose headline…:

“Idea that ‘guns make a nation safer’ is debunked in study”

…fairly screams “We’ve got a big big big conclusion here!”

 The Rhetorical Slalom Between The Strawmen: I’ll throw this out to the shooters in the audience.  Was this premise…:

The idea that “guns make a nation safer”

…as new to you as it was to me?

Anyway – the “premise”…

…is not true, according to a study published today in The American Journal of Medicine.

In fact, the study found just the opposite: Countries with a low rate of gun ownership have significantly fewer gun-related deaths than those with a high rate.

Right.  In the same way that areas where couples marry have higher divorce rates than areas where they just shack up. 

The study – and Perry’s piece – are honest, in a very dishonest sense; they scrupulously point out that gun death rates are, mirabile dictu, lower in places fewer guns.  But the “study” is equally scrupulous in avoiding apples to apples comparisons, or correlating their conclusions to any data that doesn’t fit inside their razor-thin premise…

…which is to attack a case (“Nations with few guns have higher gun crime rates!”) that, for the life of me, I’ve never heard a single credible person make – about nations, anyway. 

Cherry-Picked:  Perry notes that…

The U.S. leads in gun ownership — and gun deaths

The analysis found that the United States has far and away the highest rate of gun ownership, with 88.8 privately owned guns for every 100 people (“almost as many guns as it has people,” Bangalore and Messerli note)…The United States also has the highest firearm-related death rate: 10.2 deaths per 100,000 residents…At the other end of the spectrum are Japan and the Netherlands. Japan has a gun-ownership rate of 0.6 guns per 100 people, while the Netherlands’ rate is 3.9.

Those two countries also had two of the lowest death-by-gun rates: 0.06/100,000 for Japan and 0.46/100,000 for the Netherlands.

But neither Japan nor the Netherlands is fighting a “Drug War”; neither nation has policies that have turned their inner cities into shooting galleries, controlled by people who have nothing to lose by resorting to violence to protect their markets, using entry-level employees who grow up in a culture that glorifies violence and ignores consequences. 

Neither Japan nor the Netherlands has a major geographical region dominated by a culture that was practicing duelling and honor-killing and treating violence as a way of life long before there was a United States – a culture whose crime rates are, at worst, on par with the worst of the inner cities. 

Indeed, both Japan and the Netherlands are extremely homogenous countries; homogenous societies tend to be pretty placid – until they have to flirt with heterodoxy (ask the Koreans and the Ainu in Japan, or the Indonesians in the Netherlands).

Indeed, Perry’s article points – unwittingly – at the truth:

The only country that was a bit of an outlier was South Africa. It had a relatively low gun ownership rate of 12.5/100, but a high (the second-highest, just below the U.S.) gun-related death rate of 9.41/100,000.

And of the countries on the list, South Africa is the only one with a significantly – indeed, pivotally – heterodox society.  One with massive urban dysfunction, to boot. 

Which might lead the rational observer to conclude – or see a correlation, anyway – that guns don’t kill people; societal dysfunction does.

Math Is Hard, And Psychiatry Is Harder:  But let’s look at the “gun death” numbers Perry actually does deign to report – the relative gun murder rates in the US, the Netherlands, Japan and…:

[…the] United Kingdom also ranked low on both lists. It has a gun-ownership rate of 6.2 per 100 people and a gun-death rate of 0.25 per 100,000.

But fully half of the US “gun death rate” is suicides.  And the suicide rate in the US (12/100,000) is half of Japans (21.7/100,000), and equal to the UK’s (11.8), and both the US and UK are 50% higher  than the Dutch, at 8.8/100,000. 

We’re not sure if the “study” concluded that guns and depressed, mentally-ill or chemically-addled people don’t mix, or not.  Perhaps the Joyce Foundation will write a grant to study that?

No?

Is This A Strawman, Or A Begged Question?: Perry’s piece continues:

Their conclusion: “There was no significant correlation between guns per capita per country and crime rate, arguing against the notion of more guns translating into less crime.”

This is the third time in Perry’s piece the “notion” that anyone is comparing national gun rates to crime – at least in nations with working legal and law-enforcement systems, which is what the “study” is limited to. 

And for the record, I’m at a complete loss as to a single credible pro-gun advocate who’s made that claim – between nations.  The variables – societal heterodoxy, cultural conditions, criminal justice issues, different judicial systems – are far too complex to make such a case in an intelligent way. 

But when you start eliminating variables?   By just considering different firearms ownership rates in the US?  It’s not rocket surgery – even I can do it, even though I don’t have to because John Lott et al already did.  At worst, in the United States, places with higher legal gun ownership are very generally safer. 

And that’s just a correlation.  I’m not ascribing causation.

And unlike Susan Perry, I’ll admit that without any obfuscation.

So Let’s Summarize:  Susan Perry’s article reports on a non-comprehensive study whose own authors admit it’s a non-“debunk”-ment, that reached no meaningful conclusion about a premise that nobody advanced. 

Follow The Money:  We mentioned the Joyce Foundation – which bankrolls both the MinnPost and the state’s “largest” gun control group. 

One might ask – is it possible to expect honest “journalism” from a publication that has a financial interest in reporting an organization’s slant on the news? 

I’ll ask – because as Perry’s article notes in its heading, in addition to the Joycers…

This content is made possible by the generous sponsorship support of UCare.

So not only is the MinnPost an organ of an anti-gun extremist group, it’s also on the payroll of…

…the State of Minnesota.

Edward R. Murrow would vomit.

OK, I’m being hyperbolic.  David Frum is not an idiot.

But he is no more accurate than any other liberal on Second Amendment issues – as we see in his Daily Beast insta-opinion on the Navy Yard shooting, which is chock-full of enough ripe inaccuracy to be a Heather Martens piece.

He tries to diagnose gun violence in America:

Yet the gun enthusiasts do have one point on their side: for all the horror of these massacres, they are only a small part of the story of gun violence in America. Most casualties of gun violence will not die at the hands of a mentally disturbed killer seeking random victims. Most gun casualties occur in the course of quarrels and accidents between people who would be described as “law-abiding, responsible gun owners” up until the moment when they lost their temper or left a weapon where a 4-year-old could find it and kill himself or his sister.

It’s a convenient theory.  It fits nicely with the narrative – that it’s the presence of guns, not the people, that’s the problem.

It’s utterly wrong.

“Most” gun casualties, as in “the vast majority”, are suicides.  All of which are tragic; seeing to peoples’ mental health and preventing suicide is important.  But it is in no way the same as street crime.

Of those?  Most occur as a result of “quarrels”, all right – quarrels between rival gangs, or between drug dealers arguing over turf, or adolescent gang wannabees who feel “disrespected”, or small-time hoods who lose their temper or their control and turn crimes of convenience into crimes of passion. 

While Frum isn’t Heather Martens or David Bloomberg or Doug Grow, he does share some of their congenital illogic about the issue:

As David Hemenway notes in his study Private Guns, Public Health, Americans have experienced similar debates in the recent past. “Cars don’t kill people; bad drivers kill people,” could have been the slogan of the auto industry when it resisted safety regulation in the 1960s. The garment industry could have argued: “Flammable pajamas don’t kill children; careless smokers kill children.” And so on. Every accident has many causes, of course, and public safety progresses by addressing each one. To reduce car fatalities, we both installed seat belts and cracked down on drunken driving. Child deaths by fire have been reduced both because pajamas are safer and because adults smoke less.

 Are we supposed to believe that David Frum, a leading public intellectual of the center-center-center-sorta-right, doesn’t know the difference between “making a product do its main job – carrying people, clothing children – safer against the vagaries and tragedies of normal life” and “misuse of a product that is designed to violently poke holes in things”?

I’d certainly hope so. 

Likewise, better mental-health provision would contribute to the reduction of gun massacres. But America’s uniquely grisly record of gun death cannot be addressed without addressing guns.

“Addressing guns”, like “we have to doooooooooooo something”, is one of those vague, generalized blandishments that shows the writer is out of ideas. 

And after this past year, I suspect the anti-gun movement is exactly that.

To:  Carrie Lucking, “Executive Director”, Alliance for a Better Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re:  Chain Of Command

Ms. Lucking,

The “Special Session” to deal with disaster relief teed up a few hours ago.

Just a hint; it might behoove you to copy your audioanimatronic marionette “Governor” Dayton on any legislation that gets proposed, or especially passed.  The vision of your audioanimatronic marionette our “Governor” proclaiming shock at legislation that the DFL has jammed through embarasses this state makes your chain of command look “not ready for prime time”. 

It’s pretty simple; route things from Governor Ms. Messinger, to you, to handler “Chief of Staff” Bob Hume, to Mr. Dayton.  And spend some time making sure he really knows what’s getting written into law. 

You’re welcome.

That is all.

The DFL ran in 2012 on a series of issues that – you heard in on the blogs first – were entirely buncombe. 

So let’s take stock of the things the DFL Alliance for a Better Minnesota said for which they need to be held accountable over the next 17 months or so:

“Property Taxes Will Drop”:  For the past six years, the DFL has been yapping that cuts in Local Government Aid forced property taxes to rise.  It’s a lie, of course; the “cuts” forced city and county governments to make tough choices about their spending, and made them justify their spending to their own taxpayers, rather than passing the bill off to the rest of the state with few if any questions asked.  And as I showed back in 2010, cities and counties jacked up property taxes by vastly more than the amount cut from LGA.  In the meantime, many cities learned to live without LGA entirely; it is they that are subsidizing everyone else’s spending. 

Prediction: the “extra” money from the state will almost entirely be consumed with extra spending (in fact, every single penny of “new” LGA sent to Minneapolis and Saint Paul will go to new spending).  Cities and counties will almost universally raise their property taxes, or at best hold steady.  Any exceptions?  They’ll prove the rule. 

That Economic Outlook:  The Minnesota left has been jumping up and down and beaming like toddlers that made good pantses about a “study” put out by the Philadelphia Fed a few weeks ago that showed Minnesota was clobbering Wisconsin in economic growth.

The “study” also showed that Minnesota was clobbering North Dakota.   Indeed, the “study” showed North Dakota in the bottom 10%, along with Wisconsin. You’ve heard what a wasteland North Dakota is, right? 

Oh, yeah – along with Minnesota in the “yay” column were fiscal and employment basket cases Illinois and California.  Economic powerhouses like North Dakota, Texas and Florida?  In the “Meh” column. 

Do with that information what you will.

But beyond that?  It was a short term analysis of growth, based on exceedingly transient indicators.  And to the extent that it had any value, remember: Wisconsin is still digging out from under decades of wastrel Democrat regimes.  And except for smokers, Minnesota is in the last couple of weeks of the result of over a decade of policy largely controlled by responsible GOP governors and legislatures.  The GOP never got everything they wanted – the shared the legislature from 2002-2008, had only the governorship in ’09-10, and both sides of the legislature but no governor in ’11 and ’12 – but at worst, Governor Pawlenty ran his veto pen red-hot and staved off the worst DFL-predations; at best, they were able to impose some restraint on things. 

But on August 1 – less than three weeks from now – that all changes.  Warehouse taxes, business taxes, wealth achievement taxes (make no mistake, income taxes don’t tax the “wealthy”, they merely penalize people who work for high incomes, leaving trust fund babies like Mark Dayton and Alida Messinger blissfully alone) and a raft of new regulations go into effect, penalizing businesses and – slowly – making Minnesota a lousy place to do business.

It’s already having an effect; Minnesota has sunk to the lowest ranking for new business creation in the nation.  More will surely follow.  And the raft of new regulations is going to brutalize the already somnolent mining industry; it’s literally cheaper and easier to build a tailing-recycling smelting plant in North Dakota and ship the ore – rock! – there than it is to build it where the actual ore is, here in Minnesota. 

Feeling good about that DFL vote, all you Iron Rangers?  This is your livelihood, being exported to a state that already has more jobs than it can fill. 

So over the next year, people have to ask themselves; outside of state government union jobs, who’s really benefited?

Prediction:  Other than “liberal plutocrats”, the answer will be “nobody”.

The Deficit:  The DFL and its toadies in the mainstream media did their by-the-numbers prancing last week over the news that the state’s economy generated $400M more revenue than expected. 

That, of course, was the last quarter of GOP-driven rules. 

In fact, as House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt noted on Twitter, we raised more money with the budget the Democrats called “the All Cuts budget” than Governor Messinger Dayton did with his All-Tax budget. 

What’ll happen this time next  year?

Place your bets.

“We Did It For The Children”:  After a couple of years of efforts to pay off the “Education Funding Shift” – a DFL-spawned accounting gimmick that the GOP adopted to compromise with rapacious DFL minorities and governors in years past – the GOP had most of the “shift” paid down.  The growth in the economy – not the Democrat tax hikes – paid that “shift” down.  The DFL will want to claim credit – and the media won’t challenge him on it in the least.

Over the next two years, education will get more expensive, and the achievement gap…

…will go unmeasured, since the DFL worked overtime to remove accounability from its biggest, most influential bloc of government-union supporters.

But we’ll know.

Who’s Watching The Kids?: The DFL promised that unionization of daycares would improve childcare. 

Easy prediction: the price of childcare will rise, as its availability drops.  More poor Minnesotans will be squeezed out of the market.  The Democrats will need to add a new subsidy program to try to lower the prices whose hikes were their fault to begin with. 

There’ll be more.

I got this letter from “Protect Minnesota” recently.  “Protect Minnesota” was what Rep. Heather Martens (DFLiar – HD66A) had to rename “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota” when it turned out her constant lying had damaged whatever credibility the old brand had.

For those who’ve missed earlier installments of my coverage of Ms. Martens, here’s what you need to know; every single substantive thing she had said about gun issues, ever, throughout her career, has been a lie.  Every.  Last.  Word. 

Here’s her letter:

Dear Heinrich ,

It’s been several weeks since the Minnesota legislature went home. Despite passing one bill to fund improvements in Federal gun background check data, the legislature left gaping loopholes in the law that still allow people who shouldn’t have guns to get them easily.

Well, no.  A bipartisan majority of the legislature realized that Martens’ various bills – copied and pasted as they were from New York and California – wouldn’t change criminals’ ability to find guns; they’d just register the guns of the law-abiding, for further targeting by law-enforcement when and if the political winds swing that way. 

We’d never tolerate that sort of treatment of the First Amendment.  Why the Second?

Martens:

We can’t afford to wait for another mass shooting, so we are not letting up in the push for change. We need your help to have one-to-one conversations with voters about what is at stake, and how they can push common sense state and Federal laws. Can you join a phone bank tomorrow? Click here to help phone on Wednesday, July 10, at TakeAction in St. Paul. (Pizza and air conditioning provided!)

Not that there was any doubt that “Protect MN” was part of the ultra-left hive, but the fact that TakeAction – which, like “Protect MN” is an astroturf group funded by unions and liberal plutocrats – just happened to lend “Protect” a phone bank should tell you something.

With more than 75 percent of Minnesotans supporting universal background checks for gun sales,

…according to a push poll whose results have been reported with flagrant disregard for the context of the original survey question; tomayto tomahto, I know…

we had great success engaging voters all over the state, generating thousands of phone calls and emails to legislators.

Martens has been showing an interesting pattern since her bills got tubed by solid bipartisan majorities (which included a bipartisan majority of all House members signing on to co-author a bill that was a direct repudiation of Martens’ bills (channeled via the likes of Michael Paymar and Alice “The Phantom” Hausman); she’s been reduced to trying to turn defeats into victories, at least in the minds of her utterly uninformed followers.

“Thousands” of calls?  By all accounts, calls ran 50:1 against Martens’ bills.  Even the MinnPost’s Doug Grow, who gets at least part of his paycheck from the same place Martens does (the anti-gun Joyce Foundation contributes at least five figures to both “Protect” MN and the MinnPost, which I suspect is in major part behind the MinnPost’s atrociously ignorant and ludicrously slanted coverage of Second Amendment issues this past year), said it was more like a thousand, as if that was a major accomplishment.

In 2013, we didn’t have time to build the power it takes to reverse the long-term effects of gun-rights extremist propaganda. But we have the public on our side, and we can make the change we need, as long as we keep at it!
Click here to join us and our friends at Mayors Against Illegal Guns for the first in a series of summer phone banks!

And there you go.  Two astroturf groups sponsored by liberal plutocrats and government unions (fluffed by a “news” outlet sponsored by those same plutocrats and their plutocrat-supported foundation) are joining with a group of liberal politicians in another astroturf group funded by another liberal plutocrat to try to keep all us unruly peasants in line.

I’ve said it for twenty years, now; the extreme left has always led with the class-warfare rhetoric – and yet on this, the most populist issue of them all, it’s the left who are the patricians, and the gun rights movement in all its bipartisan and non-partisan millions who are the uppity peasants demanding real freedom. 

I might just have to sign up for that phone bank.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (Orc) is trying his best to try to stymie the inevitable – also the will of the people of Illinois – by dawdling over his veto of Illinois’ bipartisan carry permit bill.

But the bill passed with greater than a 60% majority, and Quinn’s bitchy little veto is likely to get squashed like the legislative cockroach it is.

For days, Quinn has been pushing for alterations to a bill that would end Illinois’ status as the last state in the nation to ban the concealed carry of weapons in public, which the state must do by Tuesday to meet a federal appeals court’s deadline.

And here’s further proof – to paraphrase Fred Thompson in The Hunt For Red October – that Democrats don’t take a dump without trying to gull the low-information voter (with emphasis added):

Quinn recently has been highlighting Chicago’s violence, saying recent shootings show the need for tougher gun laws.

Chicago has the the “toughest” gun laws in the US today, if by “tough” you mean “against the law-abiding citizen”. 

This is so obvious, even Jane Kay and Doug Grow might understand it. 

“There will be a showdown in Springfield,” Quinn told the crowd gathered in Chicago for a bill signing on anti-gang legislation. Afterward he told reporters that lawmakers should examine his changes carefully.

“I don’t think they should override common sense. I don’t think they should compromise with public safety,” he said.

Because ten dead over one weekend “despite” a complete civilian gun ban isn’t “compromise” enough. 

P.S.:  By the way, don’t you dare say there’s media bias.  From the original AP story, with emphasis added by me:

While Quinn’s changes which include a one-gun limit and a ban on guns in establishments that serve alcohol have been embraced by Chicago’s anti-violence advocates, they’ve received a cold reception from lawmakers.

Pejorative much?

As if gun owners are “pro-violence advocates”?

Doug Grow – DFL stenographer and reporter for the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost – is convinced that the GOP is lying about the effects of the Warehouse Tax.

Exhibit A?

Grow writes about the Red Wing Shoes’ opting out of building a new distribution center in Red Wing; it’s something we wrote about here in SITD a few weeks ago.  

According to Grow, the GOP’s line is wrong because the executives involved didn’t step out on stage and burn an effigy of Tom Bakk as the cameras rolled. 

Business Is Hard:No, really; asked if the tax was the sole reason Red Wing Shoes deferred its expansion…:

Sachen couldn’t say that it necessarily would have.

Would the project definitely go ahead if the tax were eliminated?

Sachen couldn’t say that was necessarily the case, either.

He did say that the company, which has a facility in Potosi, Mo., is “in talks with Potosi.” But again, he wouldn’t say that there’s a direct link between the tax and the warehouse project.

Who’da thunk it; a businessman whose business depends, on a certain extent, on not pointlessly pissing people off over politics in this rent-seeking environment, gave an honest answer; there are many reasons that a company does or does not go ahead with an expansion.

Which on the one hand means there’s not a smoking gun hovering over “jobs that won’t be created” leading back to the DFL’s Warehouse Tax (point for Grow).  And on the other hand, it means that there never will be that smoking gun. (Take a point away from Grow). 

By the way – Democrats get hurt when conservatives say they don’t understand economics or business.  Reading this next bit, one would have to say “hurt” is probably less appropriate than “chastened”:

Additionally, it should be noted that the Red Wing Shoes warehouse wouldn’t create jobs — other than construction ones in building the warehouse. Rather, it would allow Red Wing to consolidate its current the five warehouses into one facility. Those warehouses, by the way, employ about 80 people, a number that would not increase with a new warehouse.

Er, yeah. 

Making the business – and the efforts of those 80 existing warehouse workers – more efficent gives the business more profit.  Which gets used to hire more people, design more shoes, improve existing products…heck, even just make staying in Minnesota more tenable.  Which means those 80 warehouse jobs stand less risk of becoming 40, or 20, or 0 warehouse jobs. 

It’d also speak to the long-term commitment on Red Wing’s part to keep those jobs in Red Wing, rather than someplace else. 

Leave The Gotchas To The Comedians: Of course, it’s not just Doug Grow.  Dave Mindeman of mnpAct thinks he’s got the DFL Warehouse Tax’s MNGOP critics over a barrel:

In addition, Rep. Garofalo apparently missed the June 28th Star Tribune clarification on where the tax actually applies…..

Myron Frans, state revenue commissioner, said Dayton has asked him to study the issue, and he has spoken with Red Wing officials about their concerns. He said the tax only applies when the producer or manufacturer purchases warehouse or storage services from another firm.

Garofalo offered no other examples of a potential problem. Thus the Red Wing Shoe factory will NOT be affected by this tax.

In other words, Rep. Pat Garofalo is, as usual, making it up.

And Mindeman deigns to condescdend:

I would hope this legislator will someday learn to get the facts right before making another condescending statement of inaccuracy.

Um, yeah.

Garofalo has actually worked in the private sector.  I know this because we worked for the same company, once upon a time; it was he that actually introduced me to the Drudge Report back when we were both minions at a local Fortune 500.

And he knows – as all of us who work in the private sector and pay attention to things do – that businesses rarely make decisions based on single factors, or on short-term stimuli.  Running a significant brick-and-mortar business (shaddap, consultants) is the ultimate long bet; it involves considering everything; access to the needed workforce, communications, supply chain, price to get product to market, taxes…

…and long-term outlook. 

Red Wing – and Laurence Transportation in Red Wing, who also held off on a warehouse expansion that will be directly affected by the DFL’s Warehouse Tax – is betting against Minnesota in the long term, given the way the climate looks now.

And since Mindeman wants to play the “they curiously ignored a Strib article” game, it’d seem he missed one too; Navarre is up and moving to Texas.  It warehouses products – providing the “value add” that the state is taxing – and also works in e-commerce, which is getting slapped by the DFL’s Amazon Tax. 

So it’s gone:

That was the first time the 30-year-old Minnesota firm had said publicly that it planned to move not just some of its warehousing operations but also its headquarters to the site of its recently acquired Speed FC e-commerce operation based in Texas. Navarre acquired Speed FC Inc. last November for $50 million in cash and stock.

Was it just the DFL’s Warehouse Tax?  Or the DFL’s Amazon Tax?

No.  But both of them, and other changes to the state’s business tax code, had to look ugly to a business that’s already losing money – money that will probably be made up by consolidating operations in a lower-tax locale alone. 

If you’re one of the almost 300 employees being pink-slipped, do you think it makes a difference?

They Also Think Penelope Garcia Is Like A Real Investigator: Back to Grow’s column, where in a quote of Governor Dayton’s chief of staff Bob Hume, he shows that…:

• he is aiming his piece at economic low-information voters, or…
• …he’s an economic low-information voter himself:

Hume is commenting on Garofalo’s call for a special session to get rid of the tax.  If you work in the  private sector, see if you can spot the clinker:

Bob Hume, the governor’s deputy chief of staff, made it clear that a special session is not in the offing.

“This is a stunt, not a solution,” Hume said in a statement. “The Legislature is coming back more than a month before this tax would take effect, which is more than enough time, if revenues permit, to review and possibly revise this tax.”

A whole month?  To make a decision affecting the profitability, well-being or survival of a business?

These decisions get made based on long-term outlook.

And while the state’s long-term outlook is subject to debate, let’s remember that when the DFL-shilling media says things like…:

To date, though, the Minnesota economy is humming at a far healthier rate than the economies in such business-friendly states such as Wisconsin and South Dakota.

…that the economy still largely reflects Republican policy, set when the state had responsible two-party rule (shaddap about Ventura) between 2002 and 2012.   The DFL’s tax and spend orgy still hasn’t largely gone into effect; even the first of the taxes have been wending their way through the process for about a week now, and the worst is yet to come.

Get back to us in a year. 

Around election time, preferably.

Speaking of gun rights – GOCRA sends an advisory:

There is a new astroturf group calling themselves “American Rifle + Pistol Association.” (Here’s the URL — I recommend against giving them PageRank by posting it, though: http://amriflepistol.com/ )

And I won’t post it as a link, for precisely that reason.

They are Obama-cheering, gun-control-supporting, MSNBC-watching, Moms-Demand-Action-loving, MAIG-parroting gun banners.

Don’t be fooled. DO spread the word.

Every few years, the left tries to float one potemkin “gun group” or another.  I can remember at least three over the years – and the ARPA is no exception. 

Here are the screenshots that show [Peter Vogt] the Connecticut converted to Texan Chairman of American Rifle & Pistol Association who is an Obama supporter who is pushing Bloomberg/MAIG’s gun control campaigns while helping to promote Moms Demand Action, a group trying to pressure companies to ban lawful concealed carry so gun owners can’t carry in public anymore and convince gun retailers to stop selling the most popular guns in the country.

They can’t beat us, so they’re going to try to co-opt us.

And they think this is the first time we’ve seen them try it.

SCENE:  At the DFL headquarters, on Plato Boulevard in Saint Paul.  Chairman Ken MARTIN is sitting in his office.

(Carrie LUCKING of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota walks in.  MARTIN springs to attention, salutes).

LUCKING:  As you were.    (MARTIN sits as LUCKING settles into an overstuffed leather recliner)

LUCKING:  So what’s going on?

MARTIN:  Well, we’re hitting the GOP over their War on Womym, we’re telling Minnesotans that taxing the 1% will make them taller and smarter, and…

LUCKING:  That’s not what I mean, and you know it.

MARTIN: Beg pardon?

LUCKING:  Beavis is at it again.

MARTIN:  Beavis?  You mean Represntative Winkler?

LUCKING:  Yes.  His tweet yesterday embarassed the party.  Summon Bakk and Thissen.

MARTIN:  Summon Bakk and Thissen!

(Tom BAKK and Paul THISSEN enter the room.  They stand attention and salute LUCKING, who returns the salute.  They remain standing).

LUCKING:  Explain!

(BAKK smirks at THISSEN with a look of badly-concealed contempt).

THISSEN:  I don’t know, your highness.

LUCKING:  Doesn’t he know he must clear all utterances with me before making them?

THISSEN:  Yes, your highness.  Normally calling black conservatives racist names is perfectly acceptable.

LUCKING:  Right.  But not this time.  How about the media?

BAKK:  Only Rupar has written about it so far.

LUCKING:  Who gave him permission?

THISSEN:  Nobody that I know of.  But it’s mostly been damage control so far, so it should be OK.

BAKK:  And Michelle Malkin and Dana Loesch.

LUCKING: Who?

BAKK:  The Filipina Pole-Dancer and some chick who probably boffed Grover Norquist to get a job.

LUCKING:  Ah.

(Through the window, we see Ryan WINKLER walking toward the door.  He’s singing Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back”).

LUCKING:  Let’s get his explanation.

(WINKLER walks into room, salutes LUCKING – who doesn’t return salute. He awkwardly releases salute…)

WINKLER:  Your highness?

LUCKING:  Explain yourself.   You tweeted this yesterday:

WINKLER:  Well, in my defense, I didn’t know “Uncle Tom” was racist.

BAKK:  What?  It’s up there with the “N”-bomb! A white guy using a term to refer to a black guy as a cringing, servile piece of chattel?

WINKLER:  Well, there’s some debate about that.

BAKK:  Not in like 150 years.

WINKLER:  Well, my bad.  And since when is it bad to bag on oreos who vote Republican?

LUCKING:  That’s immaterial.  What the hell else have you been writing? (Takes out pearl-encrusted iPhone, starts flipping through WINKLER’s twitter account) Oh, what the hell…:

And if Virginia wants a battle flag back from their war to defend slavery, they can march to Minnesota and take it.

— Ryan Winkler (@RepRyanWinkler) June 25, 2013

WINKLER: What?

LUCKING: The Civil War’s been over for nearly fifty years.

THISSEN:  At least!  And the ACLU won!

LUCKING:  Look – give me your Blackberry.  I need to see what else you’ve got in your Drafts.  (WINKLER hands over phone).

LUCKING (Flips through phone):  Wait – calling Representative Hillstrom “Screechy McMenstrual?”

WINKLER:  Is that bad?

LUCKING:  Yes!

WINKLER: But she was derailing Representative Martens’ gun bill!

LUCKING:  Thanks be to Alida that never went out.

THISSEN (quietly):  Still, you save that sort of thing for Republican lawmakers.  Like Tara Mack or Mary Franson.

WINKLER:  Ah.  Point taken.

LUCKING:  Didn’t you learn anything at Harvard Law School?   I mean, the school that great minds like Laurence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz teach at?

WINKLER:  Dershowitz?  Ah!  Good ol’ Schlomo the Money-Grubbing Skinflint!

(LUCKING, BAKK and THISSEN glare at WINKLER)

WINKLER:  What?   Wait – that, too?  You gotta be kidding…

(And SCENE)

Anyone remember this classic?

So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack?

Or this one?

“Bloggers don’t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their every thought with the moon. Like graffiti artists, they tag the public square.”

If you’ve been blogging in Minnesota any time at all, you know these quotes.

They’re from Nick Coleman, in his classic column “Blogged Down In Web Fantasy”, from 2004, in which he declared his sloppy brand of war on the Twin Cities bloggers (“Buh-LAW-gurs”, as he memorably pronounced the word on his unlamented radio show) that were starting to chip away at the sand castle he and his fellow “ink stained wretches” lived in.  The Strib removed the column from their website years ago, but its legacy lives on, in local blogger and national journalism circles.   In it, Coleman claimed that card-carrying journalists like himself were better than bloggers because they’d spent years covering the news, as opposed to bloggers, who merely work for decades and raise families and pay taxes and stuff.   Journalists know the rules and operate with accountability, he said (amid a column attacking someone he never did actually name, which was a dodge of accountability and against the rules for “journalists”).

This was when Nick Coleman was riding high – when he had a three-times-a-week column at the Strib for well into six figures, and a morning show at the local leftytalk station…

…where he indulged a curious predilection for crudely sexualizing people who dared to disagree with him (Go ahead – count the gay jokes in the link.  Only liberals on a liberal station can get away with that much homophobia).

Well, in The Boss’ immortal words, we’re still here and he’s all gone.  From the Strib and AM950 (which I’m told is still on the air, not that anyone cares), at least.  I’m not indulging in schadenfreud, here; I don’t believe in Karma, but what goes around comes around. 

But old journos never die – they just get jobs with left-leaning non-profits.

And they start blogs.   In which they do…

…well, pretty much exactly what Nick Coleman warned us about nine years ago.

The State He’s In – Nick popped up on the radar again.  After a stint writing propaganda for a think tank in Saint Cloud, a couple of college classes (in which a fellow student noted he described himself as a “recovering journalist”) and I-really-honestly-don’t-care-what-else, Coleman resurfaced as the “Executive Editor” of “The Uptake”, a videoblog financed by liberals with deep pockets; think a slightly-downmarket MinnPost with more video and less Brian Lambert.

There, he roams the same halls he used to roam.  And he gets positive reinforcement from other lefties:

That’s Coleman, in the jaunty racing cap. With (from L) Doug Grow (from the Joyce Foundation-supported MinnPost), Jane Kay, some minion, and Rep. Heather Martens (DFL-66A).

And he’s got a blog.  And he still knows stuff…

…about crudely sexualizing his opponents with all the grace of an eighth-grade locker room bully.

As to getting a story right, as opposed to just making things up?  Not so much.

Exhibit A:  The piece he wrote about the open carry activists canceling their get-together at “Open Streets” (we wrote about it this morning).

Remember:  He’s A Professional – I’ll add red emphasis to the frequent, dork-fingered sexualizations just to show how very, very juvenile the old duffer is.  Go ahead.  Scan it. 

The gun-slinging flashers who threatened to bring their guns to town and parade them around openly in Minneapolis and St. Paul have put their warm guns back in their happy pockets and backed down, running away at the first signs of gun-control Mommas and urban bicycling activists.

As someone said on my Facebook page: “Buncha candy asses!”

To be fair, “someone on my Facebook page” is no worse a level of sourcing than Coleman ever did during his “official columnist” career. 

And as we discussed this morning, the story had nothing – bupkes – to do with “gun control Mommas and bike activists”.  Neither of them ever turned up in the decision.  Second Amendment human rights activists mix it up with the usual “gun control mommas” constantly, and win the debate – emphasis on the term “debate” – every single time.  Because the law, the Constitution, the facts and morality itself are on our side.

There are two absolute, incontrovertible facts to keep in mind:

• It’s the threats, Stupid:  MN-RKBA – Minnesotans for the Right to Keep And Bear Arms – cancelled their Open Carry gathering entirely due to the threats of violence.  Legal firearms carriers know it’s best to avoid danger.  That’s what they did.  Period.  There was no more to it. 
• Coleman is lying: He’s trying to help his buddies in the gun-grab movement (see the cozy little group hug photo above) squeedge a victory out of a year where they couldn’t exploit a mass-shooting into a political win at an all-liberal Minnesota state Capitol.  This is the closest they’ve come to one; Coleman is trying, in his ham-fisted way, not to waste the crisis. 

Let me re-emphasize this:  Coleman, and the dim bulb Jane Kay and habitual liar Rep. Heather Martens, are doing the end-zone happy dance over the non-news non-occurrence of a non-event.   

That’s it.  That’s their “victory”, the only one they had, even in a state run entirely by liberals.  For now.

That’s just pathetic.

Insert The Usual Boilerplate – Coleman lays out the scenario.  Sort of:

The story started Monday when a gun-owners group used its Facebook page to invite members to attend the first of this summer’s “Open Streets” events this coming Sunday in South Minneapolis. Although “attend” doesn’t quite cover it: The gun owners specifically were encouraged to bring their weapons and to flash them in public, carrying them openly for the benefit of all those in attendance at “Open Streets,” an ongoing series of good-humored street fairs promoting bicycling and pedestrian rights.

And – Coleman omits – the various virtues of neighborliness.  Second Amendment supporters have been doing events like this for years, most notably our “Open Carry Picnics” a few years back at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, where dozens of regular Minnesotans would gather, eat, talk with their neighbors – many with their legal firearms in plain view. 

If you heard about them, it wasn’t in the news.  The only thing that ever happened was a good time.  In the couple such events I attended (sans visble firearm; that wouldn’t be my style, even if I did own a gun and have a carry permit), I remember one person – white, upper-middle-class, female, oozing “Carlton College” attitude from every manicured pore – running to the park police and demanding mass arrests, and being politely rebuffed because we were doing something legal, in a legal manner. 

He Doesn’t Know Stuff!  – Coleman:

This Sunday’s kickoff event is scheduled for a 20-block stretch of Lyndale Ave. South, one of the south side’s gun-plagued corridors.

And there’s the conceit the left keeps trying – and with the dimmer members of our media and political class, succeeding – at passing off; the idea that guns are the problem.  That there’s a “plague” of guns prowling Lyndale from the Twenties through the Fifties, randomly picking off innocent passersby and kids doing homework in their living rooms.

It’s untrue, of course; we have a plague of people who use guns to enforce their gangs’ rules, protect their (illegal) business’ turf from competition, take out revenge for various slights (in a manner our modern urban culture glorifies), with guns.

Not a one of them has a carry permit.  Not a one of them passed a background check, taken the training course, or bought their firearms legally. 

Maybe Coleman doesn’t know the distinction.  Or maybe he, like the anti-gun groups with whom his “Uptake” shares funders, really really wants the distinction to be blurred. 

If it’s the former, he’s wrong.  If it’s the latter, he’s lying. 

Again.

The Original Classist Gangsta – Coleman – the child of a highly prominent legislator, the stepchild of a prominent publisher – loves to try to pound the outlines of his childhood into the rough-and-tumble Irish-Catholic-In-America myth.  He’s spent a career trying to portray himself as a Studs Terkel “Everyman with a Typewriter” type street journo. 

It’s a crock, of course; the last we checked, Coleman lived in a tony part of Saint Paul, near Grand and Summit, a leafy neighborhood dotted with private colleges and tudor homes.  And more power to him!

But watch Coleman wrap himself in the “urban activist warrior” flag:

 For some reason, the promise/threat of suburban gun flashersbrandishing their weapons along the avenue did not have a reassuring effect on the benighted city dwellers who prefer fewer guns, not more, on their streets.

(“Hey!  We don’t vote on civil rights!” Remember that from the gay marriage debate?)

A quick look at the city’s “shot spotter” maps, in addition to showing an alarming number of recorded gun shots on the city’s North Side (dozens each week), shows that there have been a couple dozen shots fired on the streets in the Lyndale-Hennepin area in the past two months.

Yep.  Now – can Coleman show us that any of them were fired by law-abiding citizens, much less carry permittees?

Of course not. 

Now, it’s time for some classism!:

Imagine how reassured you would feel when hundreds of bearded guys from Andover and Elko show up in North Minneapolis or the Summit-University area of St Paul (“Open Streets” events will take place in both of those communities later this summer) with Bushmasters and Brownings slung over their shoulders or Glocks and Rugers hanging from their paunches.

Condescension for People Not Like Nick is the main color in Coleman’s palette.  That and junior-high pseudo-sexual japery.

It’s also part and parcel of the most cancerous trait of the Left; the battle isn’t ideas versus ideas, or even people vs. people.  The battle they fight is Classes against Classes.  And they define the classes. 

At the very least, it’s a mark of intellectual laziness.  At the worst, it’s a cancer that’s killed millions in the last 100 years.

But let’s run with the thought; what if hundreds of guys from Elko and Andover and Forest Lake – some bearded and paunchy, some elderly and flinty, some young and smokin’ hot, but every last one of them a carry permittee with the legal right to carry a firearm – did show up at the festivals?

What would happen?

The smart money says “Not a damn thing” – other than anti-gunners acting out on their paranoia. 

Thought Experiments for The Unthinking – But since Nick’s in a mood to play hypotheticals, let’s come out and play, shall we?

Here’s a neat mental exercise: Try to imagine hundreds of inner-city residents carrying weapons at the Andover Family Fun Fest, July 13. Just because they can.

Nick, if you’re reading this;  let’s do indeed!

I’ll take you up on your challenge!  Let’s you and I get “hundreds” of “inner city residents” (by which I assume you mean “black people”, as opposed to “family guys who live in Saint Paul’s Midway”, like me), with legal carry permits, just like you had, and just like I may hypothetically have – complete with objective proof that they are law-abiding citizens that the permit conveys – and trek out to Andover on July 13!

And let’s see what happens!

Just think, Nick:  you and me can watch the hijinx unfold!

What do you suppose is going to happen?

Nothing.  Nothing is going to happen.  Oh, some ninny may run to a cop, who’ll investigate, see the “inner city resident” is a regular schlemiel with a carry permit, and gently tell the complainant to relax.   Just like happens with legitimate carriers all over the state or, more usually, doesn’t happen. 

More likely?  The “inner city” – which I suppose does mean “black” or “Latino” or “H’mong”  in Coleman’s mind – carry permittee will tell us to get tied; they have a live to live.

And they’ll be right. 

But let’s do get the ball rolling on this, Mr. Coleman. 

Heres’s How You Tell A Hack With A “Journalist” Badge He Got From A Box Of Cracker Jacks – Next, Coleman drops any pretense of “journalism” that may have evaded extinction, and openly parrots his whiny pals in the gun-grabber movement; I added emphasis to the really demented stuff:

Openly carrying firearms inside the Minnesota Capitol this winter helped gun-law opponents shoot down gun-safety legislation.

Coleman is regurgitating Heather Martens’ delusion that the law-abiding carry permittees who had notified Capitol security of their intent to carry, and visibly wore their legal, permitted firearms into the hearings, were doing it to “intimidate” the legislators.

It’s bullshit, of course.  It was a demonstration of “civil obedience” – showing the legislators that the law-abiding gun owner isn’t the cartoon that ghouls like Jane Kay and Nick Coleman and the City Pages portray to their audiences.  We’re regular schlubs who work day jobs and raise kids, just like everyone else.  And we vote. 

And it worked. 

But Coleman isn’t going to let facts get in his way:

But the tactic backfired this time. Maybe you can intimidate people in the Capitol, but not in the cycling community. Bicyclists wee outraged and told the gunslingers to stay away.

They wavered. Then they cracked. Finally, they called off the whole thing when the Gun Control Mommas stood up to them.

Let me put this as bluntly as it needs to be put:  Coleman is lying.

The “Gun Control Mommas” – “Moms Want Action”, Jane Kay’s toxic little astroturf group with fewer members than “the Uptake” has paid staff – had nothing to do with the cancellation. 

Neither did Coleman’s mythical “cycling community” (Note, Nick:  I’m part of the “cycling community”.  There was no memo). 

Coleman is making things up.  He’s taking correlations (a memo from the impotent Jane Kay, facebook proclamations from wannabe “biking community” spokesbots) and making up a causation.

He’s lying. 

The Gun Flashers ran for cover. By Thursday, the skedaddling gunsters canceled their Gun Wiggle, blaming the liberal media, bicycle punks and the “intolerance” of the mamas who opposed the plan they had clearly hoped would get them some media time and notoriety. Their plan worked, but not the way they hoped. The guns blew up in their faces.

It’s the closest the gun-grabber “movement” – really a collection of astroturf checkbook advocacy groups – have come to a victory in recent years.  And they’re jumping up and down like toddlers that just made a good pants. 

Candy asses.

 That’s big talk, coming from Nick Coleman, a nakedly (ew) partisan blogger who as we’ve shown makes things up left and right to gain “street cred”; a man who knows nothing about anything he wasn’t told by other people in his vanishingly tiny social circle, but who sat down to share his every thought with the moon. Like a grafitti artist holding a spray paint can between his knees, he’s tagging the public square, and doing it very, very badly. 

A man who’ll never answer for any of his lies and distortions because he’s never had to; he’s used and abused the “journalist/columnist’s” factual “get out of jail free” card while enjoying the protection of the Big Institutional Media system his entire career, and who now – let’s be honest – gets paid to parrot the lies he’s told to parrot. 

Same as he ever was.  Just much, much smaller.

UPDATE:  I didn’t even catch all of Coleman’s lies.  Attorney David Gross – one of the legal workhorses of the Second Amendment movement in Minnesota – left a comment which points out even more perfidy. 

One of many quotes worth reading (hence you should read the whole thing):

…Coleman was lying some more, as I read the published material, when he claimed that the Open Streets sponsors were against what Shelley had planned. I guess he can’t help himself from not letting the facts get in his way.
“Priem said Open Street organizers will not ask the gun owners not to attend. ‘Everyone is welcome at Open Streets,’ she said.”

Keep ’em coming.

As I’ve noted a few times in this space, the cultural left, regionally and nationally, is in a panic over the news that the libertarian-conservative Koch Brotehrs are pondering buying some newspapers, including the Tribune Group. 

Last week in the MinnPost – a web publication formed by a former Strib publisher which serves largely as an afterparty for an array of former Strib, PiPress and City Pages writers – Eric Black has a story on the potential Koch purchase of theStrib, told in a tone that reminded me of a scary story a parent might tell a fussy toddler to keep them from jumping out of bed:

Businessman Mike Sweeney, currently serving as chairman of the Star Tribune, says it’s the best gig he’s ever had. He says that covering government in a one-party state presents special challenges to a newspaper. He asserts that the paper is living down its old “Red Star” reputation. And he completely rejects the popular canard that the paper’s economic interest in the new Vikings stadium influences its coverage.

Leave aside the patent balderdash of the Vikings reference; it remained to regional conservative blogs to show the gaping holes in the revenue plan for which theStribwas a constant cheerleader. 

I’m more interested in the “Red Star” bit.  Black goes into no details – but his wording implies that Sweeney indicated that there was a “Red Star” reputation to “live down”?

That would be a big admission, coming from a paper whose party line for forty years has been that they are they objective center, and it’s their critics who are the extremists.

It might have been an interesting subject for inquiry, depending on who attended the conversation – but as Black notes…:

 

In an interview with Larry Jacobs at the Humphrey School Tuesday…

…only our media and academic Brahmin “elites” are ever invited to that conversation.

Which may be why the conversation always reaches the same conclusion.

Anyway, on to the chase:

Oh, and Sweeney said that when the current ownership wants to sell the paper – a time that is in the foreseeable future – if the only willing buyers are the Koch brothers, then such a sale could happen.

 Cue the scary music.

The “K” word has been uttered. 

The question arose on a question from the audience, undoubtedly inspired by some recent suggestions that the Kochs might experiment with buying newspapers.

 

“The time is coming when Wayzata Investment Partners [the partnership that owns the biggest share of the Strib] will want to sell. I spent time on it today,” he said. The owners are certainly interested in what price their property will fetch, but they are also mindful that to a city like Minneapolis, a newspaper like the Strib is a “community asset.”

 

“We also have a special role in the community,” Sweeney said. He said “community asset” more than once. I assume that’s supposed to imply that owners would allow certain non-financial considerations to enter their thinking.

 

His attempt to imply what he wasn’t willing to say caused Jacobs to tell him that he was leaving the possibility of a Koch purchase “up in the air.” So Sweeney tried to leave it at this: When the owners are ready to sell, if the only offer they get comes from the Koch Brothers, “it could happen.”

 

You can take that how you choose. My best guess is that that’s something of a warning to other potential buyers not to put the current accidental owners in that position.

There’s so much to talk about in those five grafs:

What Community? – Sweeney asserts a statement that is itself a question that the entire regional left begs; the Strib is an asset to the community. 

The obvious response is – no, it’s not, it’s a business, albeit one that’s enjoyed a few decades as the senior partner in a duopoly in a dying industry – someone needs to ask the question “so what part of the paper does Sweeney consider to be the “community asset?””. 

So what’s the asset?:  Is it the existence of a newspaper, period?  Well, a Koch Brothers purchase would probably put that existence on firmer ground, even if they didn’t change a single thing.  And if, as seems likely, they do as Fox News did – run a straight news operation with an overtly conservative editorial board and columnist slate, more or less exactly the opposite of the Strib we’ve known this past fifty years – then voila, there’d be no change!

But it’s not the existence of a newspaper that matters to them; it’s the existence of a center-left newspaper with an editorial board and columnist bullpent  and newsroom culture that carries the water for the soft-left DFL establishment in this state, that’s the important part.   That is the only thing threatened by a hypothetical Koch takeover – in the same way that Abraham Lincoln’s head was the only thing John Wilkes Booth ruined in the production at the Ford Theater.

A Community Let Down:  No surprise here; I think that if the Strib wants to claim to be a “community asset”, it has a tough hill to climb. 

But let’s take Sweeney and Black at their words; let’s say the Strib is a community benefit. 

So what?

It’s a business.  Romantic (and wrong) notions that the Strib ever served a higher purpose are subject to all sorts of debates among journalists and news consumers – but Sweeney has a fiduciary responsibility to his investors to get the best return he can.