When you’re a conservative, distrust of the media – like most large institutions – is part and parcel of the job.
You probably accept that, for whatever reason – from systemic bias to cultural confirmation bias to being paid off by George Soros – that the media has a comprehensive bias toward the left.
And you notice it on some issues more than others. For example, you notice that anti-gun groups – for example, “Protect Minnesota”, led by Representative Heather Martens (DFL – 66A), a woman who has never, not once, uttered a substantively accurate or true original statement about guns or the Second Amendment – gets breathless, slavish coverage from the Twin Cities media, whose mania for “balance” obscures, in their coverage, the fact that the pro-Second-Amendment movement includes thousands of actual activists, while Martens’ group and the other antis muster…
…well, Martens and about a dozen of her pals.
And it doesn’t take a political rocket scientist (?) to notice that while their groups have virtually no electoral clout, Martens is apparently a big enough cheese among DFLers on Capitol Hill that she gets treated like, well, a Representative herself.
So after the hearings broke up last night, I watched who went where for a bit.
After he got done with the media, Rep. Paymar lit his afterburners and ran for the bleachers to meet Representative Martens and Jane Kay from Action Moms:
Kay, Martens and Paymar, talking about how much clout they have when those Million Moms finally show up. Someday. Honest.
DFL stenographer and former Strib columnist Doug Grow – now with DFL PR shop MinnPost – painted Jane Kay’s toenails:
Grow, Kay
Hey, maybe his story about last night won’t be pre-written!
And at the end of the night, you had pretty much every anti-gun activist in town gathered with the DFL PR coalition:
Grow, Kay, Nick “I’m Not The DFL’s Monkey” Coleman (from “The Uptake”), a staff guy and Martens talking, presumably, about what a bunch of wingnuts their opposition are.
Us gunnies? We had the fun down front:
Second Amendment attorney David Gross mixing it up with an anti who claimed we should “learn our history”, that firearms confiscation had nothing to do with the Holocaust. The anti, by the way, reportedly had walked up to the child of one of the GOCRA members in attendance and said “You’ll grow up to be a better person than your father” at a hearing last week. These people ooze class, don’t they?
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!
I’ll be on from 1-3 today. I’ll be talking about my trips to the Capitol this past week, Doug Grow’s really really dumb column, why Republicans should support the Hilstrom bill, a little about Rand Paul, and a big announcment. We’ll also be talking with Twila Brase about the Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) bill, and with Dr. John Kern about the DFL’s bid to abolish teacher basic skills tests.
Brad Carlson is back on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!
(All times Central)
So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:
I was down at the State Capitol yesterday for a press conference, as Representative Deb Hilstrom (DFL Brooklyn Park) introduced the gun bill/s we talked about yesterday.
The bills, as we noted yesterday, would exert the state to solve actual problems – close gaps in the background check system, add mandatory penalties for using guns in crimes or possessing them illegally…
…y’know. Controversial stuff.
At the presser, I saw a big group of legislators from both chambers and both parties lining up to support Hilstrom’s proposal. Reps, Senators, Democrats, Republicans – it was probably the most bipartisan assembly I’ve seen that wasn’t in the lounge at the Kelly Inn after hours.
Not just legislators; guys in uniform. They weren’t just there for the fun of it – guys in uniform never are. No, they were from the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.
And I saw media. Oh, lord, did I see media.
And Heather Martens was there, naturally; where there is truth about the Second Amendment, Martens will be there. To lie. And lie and lie and lie (note to the media who bothered to speak to her; she has uttered not one substantial word of truth in her years at the capitol. Ask me).
And the “groups” she represents put out a call for their “membership” to turn out in force to oppose this bill – probably remembering the hundreds of Second Amendment supporters who turned out daily to oppose the DFL’s gun grab bills a few weeks ago.
We’ll come back to them.
One person who was not there was Doug Grow, from the MInnPost.
To be fair, I haven’t seen Grow in person in over 20 years; I might not recognize him.
But judging by the story he wrote about the conference, and the bill itself, even if Grow was there, his story was pre-written, and would have appeared in exactly the same form had Mothra emerged from the Supreme Court chamber shooting flame from wherever Mothra did whatever he did, since I never watched the movie.
Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, has discovered again that there is no comfortable middle ground when the subject is guns.
At noon at the Capitol, Hilstrom, standing with Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek and Rep. Tony Cornish, the gun-toting legislator from Good Thunder, introduced a gun bill that she said “can bring people together’’ on the volatile subject of guns.
“Gun-toting”.
Scare quotes.
No, no bias here.
The Astroturf Consensus
Grow, like most of the Twin Cities mainstream media, labors under the delusion that there’s a large, organized mass of people supporting gun control, and that they were out in force yesterday.
Her words were still echoing in the Capitol when critics, who had hoped for much stronger actions from the Minnesota Legislature, lambasted the effort of Hilstrom and a bipartisan group of 69 other legislators to “close gaps’’ in current state gun law.
“This is just a band-aid over a huge problem,’’ said Jane Kay of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, an organization formed in the days following the mass shooting of school children in Newtown, Conn.
Only in America can a two-month old pressure group with fewer members than there were legislators standing behind Hilstrom get the breathless adoration of the media. Which is what “Moms Demand Action” and “Protect Minnesota” both are; astroturf checkbook advocacy groups funded by liberal plutocrats with deep pockets – with “membership” numbers in the single digits.
Provided they share the goal of fluffing the left’s withering narrative on gun control.
Of course, Grow wasn’t the only offender; Pat Kessler of Channel 4 asked Hilstrom why the bill included no universal background check which, he asserted, “70% of Minnesotans oppose”.
The correct answer – the polls ask people about background checks without explaining the consequences of those checks as the DFL and Governor Messinger Dayton currently propose them; they will result in a de facto gun registry, which is a necessary first step to universal confiscation.
More on gun-related media polls in another piece soon.
The Pre-Written Story
But Grow himself is the real problem here. His piece, while short on the sort of insight that actually engaging people on both sides of the issue might have given it, is long on evidence that Grow wrote the story long before yesterday’s press conference.
There’s the inflammatory reference to every leftymedia member’s favorite boogyman:
The bill has the support of the National Rifle Association, presumably because it does nothing to require background checks on all gun sales and because it does nothing to restrict sales of military-style weapons or even the quantity of rounds in ammunition magazines.
Well, no.
The bill has the support of gun-rights organizations because instead of wasting time and effort putting niggling restrictions on the rights of the law-abiding that didn’t affect crime in any way the first ten years they were tried, they actually address the real problem; criminals, the insane, the addled, and the holes in the data the state sends to the Feds for the background check system.
(And while the NRA makes a nice, recognizable, stereotyped boogeyman for the lazy propagandist, the NRA actually has very little to do with the day to day heavy lifting of the gun rights movement in Minnesota. It’s the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance that turned out 500 or more people a day to attend the gun grab hearings a couple of weeks back. Grow either doesn’t know that, or doesn’t want people to know that. You know where my money is).
More evidence that Grow wrote the story entirely off of DFL and “Protect Minnesota” chanting points?
Despite the fact that it’s a bill that authors hoped would unite people, it seems to be dividing. Yes, there was a mix of Republican and DFL representatives standing with Hilstrom, Cornish and Stanek. But there were no law-enforcement organizations represented at the news conference where the proposal was unveiled.
That’s false.
Here’s the video of the press conference:
See all those guys in uniforms?
Scroll in to 1:12. That’s Sheriff Rich Stanek, Hennepin County Sheriff, speaking on behalf of the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.
Either Grow is lying, or he wrote the entire story with no knowledge of the facts of the story.
Short On Fact, Long On Jamming Words Into Peoples’ Mouths
Grow follows by saying…:
There also were no DFL senators, though presumably the bill will be as attractive to outstate senators as it appears to be to many outstate DFL representatives.
Grow throws that in there as if it’s a substantive fact related to the bill itself. It’s not. While most outstate legislators no doubt remember the DFL debacle of 2002, it’s also more than plausible Tom Bakk wants to keep his powder dry.
In other words, presence of no DFL senators is a non-factor, unless you’re a low-information reader.
Grow next swerves through fact – and in so doing, undercuts his own premise. I’ll add emphasis:
Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul, and the chairman of the House public safety committee, has indicated he has no desire to have the bill heard by his committee. Paymar is pushing a bill that would require purchasers of guns at flea markets and gun shows to go through background checks.
Yet, given the large number of co-authors with Hilstrom, there likely are ways for the bill to weave its way through the legislative process.
Yes. There are a large number of co-authors; so many they had to submit it not one, not two, but three times to get them all on. Over half of the House is signed on as authors of the bill.
Michael Paymar wants to thwart the will of the representatives of over half of Minnesota’s voters?
Putting Thirty Shots From An AR15 Into A Strawman
Finally, Grow takes his whacks at some of the legislators who’ve violated the DFL’s narrative:
[Representative Tony] Cornish, usually a lightning rod in the gun debate, said he was taking a different role regarding the fate of this bill.
“Several of my statements (in the past) have been controversial,’’ he said. “Today my role is to be a peacemaker.’’
No sooner had he said that than he uttered a statement that raises the hackles of those hoping for stronger gun measures.
“I want to thank the NRA for helping (on the bill),’’ he said. He went on to say that the bill “contains nothing for gun owners to fear.’’
Er, who’s “hackles” got “raised”, here? And why?
Was it the involvement of the NRA? Your dog whistles aren’t our problem.
Or was it the quote about gun owners having nothing to fear? Is that the actual goal, here?
Hilstrom, in her seventh term, refused to talk about her true feelings of the bill. Rather, she kept speaking of the importance of “passing a bill that will solve real problems.’’
She did point out that she never has sought the endorsement of the NRA and that in the past she has received a “C,’’ “D,’’ and “F’’ from the NRA.
OK.
So what?
If she’s doing the right thing – which, for a majority of Minnesotans, is “solving problems”, rather than attacking the law-abiding gun owner – then I don’t care if she’s a life-time “F” rating. And I don’t care about her true feelings; I don’t care if she’s being used as an escape hatch by the DFL to get out of the embarassment of the Paymar/Hausman gun grab bills.
Guess Who!
Finally: I owe the Twin Cities media an apology. I’ve said that Larry Jacobs is the most over-quoted person in the Twin Cities media. And he is. David Schultz is right up there.
But in the “single-issue” category, Heather Martens – “Executive Director” and, near as we can tell, one of less than a half-dozen members of “Protect Minnesota” (and de facto representative of House District 66A) and a woman whose entire body of public assertions is lies, dwarfs them all:
Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, derided the bill as “NRA-approved.’’
Boo! Boogeyman! Hiss!
Listen, MinnPost-reading dogs! There’s your whistle!
“Any bill that fails to address the gaping holes in our background check law falls far short of the public’s demand for the right to be safe in our communities,’’ Martens said in a statement.
And there’s another lie. The bill does address the gaping hole that exists in the background check laws.
No, not the misnamed “gun show loophole”, which is another media myth. The real gap is the data that the state isn’t sending to the feds; the Hilstrom bill fixes it.
GOCRA’s Mountain, Grow And Martens’ Molehill
Leaving aside the fact that Grow got pretty much everything in this story wrong – and wrong in a way that suggests not only that he wasn’t at Hilstrom’s press conference but that he wrote the whole thing straight from chanting points long before Hilstrom took to the microphone – the most pernicious thing about Grow’s story is that it tries to create the impression that there’s a genuine battle between two titanically-powerful sides to this debate.
There’s not.
In terms of legislators? A bipartisan sample of over half of the House is on board co-authoring Hilstrom’s bill(s). A thin, runny film of metro-DFL extremists is backing the Paymar/Hausman/Simonson gun grab bills.
In terms of the public? Last month, GOCRA put out a call for people to come to the Capitol. And they did.
No, really:
“Protect Minnesota” and “Moms Demand Action” put out a call yesterday for people to come out and protest against Hilstrom’s bill.
Here they are:
Well, not literally. But no, other than Heather Martens, nobody showed up.
There are literally more DFL legislators co-authoring Hilstrom’s bill than there are members of “Protect Minnesota” and the “Moms Demand Action” put together.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails to elaborate on the subject of this piece, assailing the MinnPost’s Eric Black’s participation in the resurrection of the long-forgotten “Second Amendment Was Written To Protect Slavery!” meme:
I forgot about this when I wrote to debunk Carl Bogus’ law review article. Bogus relies for some of his historical evidence about firearms use on Michael Bellesiles, saying:
“Most militiamen were not even good shots.[168] We think of men as having grown up with guns in colonial America.[169] We assume they were sharpshooters by necessity. Did not men have to become proficient with muskets to protect themselves from ruffians and Indians or to hunt to put food on the table? Contrary to myth, the answer, in the main, is no. In reality, few Americans owned guns.[170] When Michael A. Bellesiles reviewed more than a thousand probate records from frontier areas of northern New England and western Pennsylvania for the years 1765 to 1790, he found that although the records were so detailed that they listed items as small as broken cups, only fourteen percent of the household inventories included firearms and [Page 342] fifty-three percent of those guns were listed as not working.[171] In addition, few Americans hunted. Bellesiles writes: “From the time of the earliest colonial settlements, frontier families had relied on Indians or professional hunters for wild game, and the colonial assemblies regulated all forms of hunting, as did Britain’s Parliament.”[172]
You remember Michael Bellesiles? He supposedly studied probate records and found practically nobody owned guns in those days, so he wrote a book called “Arming America” saying the scarcity of private firearms ownership proved the Founding Fathers could not have intended the Second Amendment to refer to private firearms ownership, but must have intended it to refer to government militias.
James Lindgren at Northwestern University writes on The Volokh Conspiracy to remember his work taking Bellesiles down. And I know you remember how Bellesiles claimed to have lost his research notes in a flood.
No serious historian believes Bellesiles today. And to the extent Bellesiles is the foundation for Bogus, no serious legal scholar should believe Bogus, either.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Reading Bogus’ original article, most of the citations are to, well, himself. But listing Bellesisles is about on par with listing Milli Vanilli.
Brian Lambert may now respond with a dismissive, name-calling bit of snark before going back to metaphorically painting Mark Dayton’s toenails.
Brian Lambert took umbrage to Joe Doakes’ and my dissection of Eric Black’s anti-gun piece last week in the MinnPost, which cited a justifiably obscure theory by Dr. Carl Bogus.
Look out! It’s gun owners! At least, according to the MinnPost. I can just see the “job” interviews at the MinnPost; “do you now, or have you ever, supported an originalist interpretation of the Tenth Amendment, or ever blasphemed against the Commerce Clause?” Behold the liberal alt-media.
At the conservative consortium blog True North, Mitch Berg goes after our Eric Black on the issue of … “gun grabbin’ ”: [lengthy quote from my piece removed] The sweat stains are showing among our gun-fondling friends.
Over the years on this blog, I’ve made certain observations about human behavior as manifested through online media, like blogs and Twitter.
I’ve captured and codifed some of these observations as “Berg’s Law“, a series of common observations that I’m pretty sure are universal.
One of the most commonly-invoked Laws is “Berg’s Seventh Law”, which states “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.
To: Eric Black, MinnPost
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re: The New JournoList?
Mr. Black,
You built your reputation as a reporter. And for that, I give you all due respect.
I was a reporter, too. Not much of one; a couple of radio stations, some free-lance print work. Nothing big, and certainly nothing to build a career out of – but I did learn one thing, and practice it; a reporter is supposed to ask questions.
And while I apply only the broadest possible definition of “journalist” to myself, I do ask questions. I’m told I’m not bad at it, at least on the radio; even a reporter on your side of the aisle commented on it (I’ll direct you to paragraph 16). So it’s not a foreign concept to me.
Now, far be it from me to gainsay one of the deans of Minnesota political writing, but I’ve got a question here.
Last week, you wrote about Dr. Carl Bogus’ assertion from fifteen years agothat the Second Amendment was written to protect slavery. Now, my friend and frequent commenter Joe Doakes – who actually is a lawyer – pointed out that Bogus’ theory is given no weight by the legal academy, because it’s been pretty soundly debunked and, more signally, ignored by legal scholars; Bogus’ theory is only kept alive by anti-gunners who like, as Doakes put it, to “borrow his degree to lend them legitimacy”.
So here’s what I’m curious about.
Bogus published his theory fifteen years ago. It was roundly shredded in short order. It was substantially ignored (beyond a few trivial references to incidental research) in the SCOTUS’ debates that led to the Heller and McDonald decisions, which respectively adopted the “individual right” definition of the 2nd Amendment and incorporated that definition onto the states.
And yet somehow last week Bogus’ theory was pulled from legal history’s scrap heap and restored to glorious prominence by the gun-grabber left.
Hey! It’s Confederate soldiers, defending slavery! The MinnPost ran this image in Eric Black’s story last week about Carl Bogus’ theory. I’m never going to let the MinnPost live this one down!
So I got to checking. The first I heard about it was a comment on my blog on 1/17, which pointed to your article in MinnPostthe same day; around that time, I started seeing a lot of lefties on Twitter chanting more or less the same thing. Danny Glover and Roger Ebert had spoken or written about it, stating the “slavery” theory as settled fact, around the same time. And the story was churning around the leftyblog fever swamp, as these things do, once the likes of Kos and Crooks and Liars repeated the meme (which meant every bobbleheaded leftyblog carried it like it was the revealed truth).
Disarmed people – Jews, in this case – dealing with the SS, which is short for “Schützstaffel”, which loosely translated means “Department of Homeland Security”. Connect the dots, people. The MinnPost can run its inflammatory, searing, emotionally manipulative images, I’ll run mine. Mine happen to be good analogies based on historical fact, but whatever.
Now, a concerted Googling (and a reading of your piece) seems to show that the “writing” about the subject links back to last Tuesday, when lefty talk show host Thom Hartmann – who is sort of the Dennis Prager of the left, only without the intelligence or credentials – wrote a piece on the lefty überblogs TruthOutand Smirking Chimp , lavishly citing Bogus’ theory.
Oops, I did it again! More disarmed people! The sign above their heads says “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which is German for “Work Creates Freedom”, which was sort of the “Hope and Change” of the era. Again – you publish your inflammatory, emotionally manipulative images? I’ll publish mine.
And I thought the dynamics of the story were interesting; in two days, the “story” of Bogus’ “theory”, which had laid mostly dormant since being shredded in the court of academic and public opinion half a generation ago, suddenly was on the lips and minds and blogs of, it seemed, every lefty, from the fever swamp to Hollywood (pardon the redundancy) to, well, MinnPost and a half a million chuckleheaded leftybots on Twitter.
I’ve been writing online for a long time, Mr. Black. I’ve seen memes come and go. The “come” side usually takes a while; someone writes something, it gains traction, it holds sway, it rolls away like the tide. It usually takes a little while.
The Klan attacking black people! And therein lies the real truth – and the Berg’s Seventh Law reference; Gun Control actually has its roots in American racism. The first serious American gun control laws were aimed at – you guessed it – blacks. In fact, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was written in part in response to a Texas law aimed at former slaves who’d been shooting up Klansmen.
But the Bogus theory went, metaphorically, from zero to sixty in four seconds flat.
Didja notice that?
Anyway, those are the facts; Bogus’ theory came, was shredded, went away for fifteen years, and suddenly re-germinated across the broad swathe of lefty opinion over the course of two measly days. Now, leaving aside the fact that the theory is, well, bogus (as noted last week) – wouldn’t it have been a useful fact for the reader to know that Bogus’ theory has been languishing in academic obscurity for 15 years for a reason? I know, that would have been a statement against your interest and, I suspect, the MinnPost’s, but it’s kinda significant, no?
But here’s my question: aren’t you the least bit curious as to the, er, pace at which this meme swept the left? From “forgotten” to “conventional wisdom” in two days?
It almost seems as if there’s some sort of back-channel communication – one might even call it a list of journalists, absurd as that sounds – a, for lack of a better term, “Journo List” that syncs the leftymedia up on the major chanting points.
No, I know – that’s just crazy talk. I know.
Anyway – did that strike you as odd in any way? If not, why?
That is all.
PS: Well, no. It’s not. Because while the theory that the Second Amendment was “about protecting slavery” is pretty much a fringe, fever-swamp conceit, it is a matter of settled historical fact and Constitutional Law that the roots of the gun control movement are intensely racist.
I hinted at this in the past few weeks; one of the hard parts about being a Second Amendment supporter is that it feels a lot like the movie Groundhog Day. Every time the left goes through one of its spasms of gun-grabbing, they bring up the same, exact, precise points every single time. There is nothing new, ever, under the sun when it comes to anti-gun “arguments”. Never!
And yet every single liberal, especially in the media, receives the same threadbare worn-out arguments from their elders during every spasm of this debate, as if they’ve discovered some new logical Killer Anti-Gun App. And they trot them out with all the pride of a toddler that just made a good pants, repeating the moldy meme with a nod and a knowing, condescending wink, as if they think you’re lucky they suffer fools like you.
And you – me, in this case – shake your head, and re-muster facts that you’ve been deploying since before your children were born, and feel a little like the burned-out gunfighter in a Clint Eastwood movie; I’ve lived this day, or at least this argument, more times than I can remember. I know these facts backward and forward. There is not a corner of the left’s argument that I can’t make better than the lefty I’m wasting my time with.
And on you go.
Fortunately, we’re not alone.
———-
The problem with Eric Black isn’t that he’s a lefty who’s been getting steadily more “out” about it for years, in the “pages” of the MinnPost, whose focus has been sliding away from “legitimate journalism” toward “being a DFL Public Relations organ” for this past year or so.
It’s that he believes, and reports, so much that is just not so.
I read it yesterday, and thought “even in monster movies, there’s only so many times you have to kill the critter before the movie ends”. So with the esteemed Carl Bogus.
Fortunately, Joe Doakes from Como Park – an actual lawyer – took over. I’ll add the odd bit of emphasis to Joe’s email:
God, not that old chestnut again. Carl Bogus? Really?
Okay, facts: Bogus was indeed a law professor. He wrote a law review article for UC Davis in 1998. He admitted there was plenty of evidence the Founders intended the Second Amendment so ordinary people could resist tyrants. But he argued Southern slaveholders probably wanted to keep ordinary people armed to prevent slave rebellion. Therefore, the Second Amendment might have served two purposes: resist tyrants and oppress slaves. Bogus’ explicit argument is that ordinary people couldn’t have resisted tyranny and oppressed slaves acting alone so when the Founders said “the people” they must have meant “state militias.” His implicit argument is that since slavery is bad, the Second Amendment is tainted so we can ignore it.
Bogus’ arguments were immediately rebutted by other legal scholars, see for example “The Approaching Death of the Collectivist Theory of the Second Amendment” by Douglas Roots, 39 Duq. L. Rev. 71.; and “The Supreme Court’s Thirty-Five Other Gun Cases” by David Kopel, 18 St. Louis U. L. Rev. 99. The Supreme Court cited several of Bogus’ works in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) but the majority opinion expressly rejected his collectivist legal theory. Bogus was mentioned in Justice Stevens’ dissent in MacDonald v. Chicago, 130 S. Ct 3020 (2010) as the source for a single statistic on handgun violence, but not even Stevens endorsed Bogus’ collectivist legal theory. Nobody endorses his secret slavery theory.
Bogus’ legal theories are not taken seriously by Constitutional scholars, only by gun-control advocates hoping to rent his diploma to give the appearance of credibility. That’s why Bogus was appointed a director of Handgun Control, Inc. and served on the advisory board of the Violence Policy Center. That’s also why Eric Black cites him. It’s as if the Flat Earth Society suddenly learned of this brilliant mathematician named Ptolemy who PROVED the Sun does indeed revolve around the Earth and thus vindicated what they’ve believed all along. Sorry, fellas, serious scholars have moved beyond that hoax.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
I’m thinking; is there an issue besides guns where a journalist can get away with so much guileless incuriosity as the gun issue?
And wrap that incuriosity in so much misguided-yet-inflammatory rhetoric?
Inevitably, the MinnPost ran a photo of Confederate soldiers along with Black’s piece. I suppose we should be thankful it wasn’t a photo of white guys lynching a black guy, huh? That said, I suspect I just gave some clever MinnPost copy editor another bright idea for the next round of anti-gun articles, along with the next, inevitable citation of Carl Bogus as an expert on the Second Amendment. You’re welcome, MinnPost.
Feminist dogma patrol, maybe, and even that doesn’t generally impact the Constitution.
Mark Dayton’s mental health? That’s not so much “incuriosity” as “a gentlemans’ agreement between journalists and the DFLers who own them”.
What is it about Second Amendment issues that makes so many journalists act like journalists think mere partisan bloggers act?
———-
Nothing against Eric Black, of course. He’s doing his job, which these days seems to be “advancing the DFL and Democrat Parties’ narratives”. It’s good to have a gig.
But the mainstream media in the Twin Cities has gotten a free pass on their habit of just slopping whatever crap fits the DFL’s narrative in front of the public for far too long.
I mean, Eric Black is no leftyblogging bobblehead. He’s one of the Deans Of Minnesota Political Journalism (although to be fair Minnesota Political Journalism has more deans than the MNSCU system).
And while I don’t want to frame the redistricting in especially partisan terms, the fact is that the maps didn’t really adequately reflect Minnesota’s most important current demographic trend – people fleeing the failed DFL-controlled Twin Cities and Duluth, and moving to areas that actually work, which are universally and without exception GOP-controlled. They bent over backwards to maintain the Twin Cities’ control over Minnesota politics, especially at the Congressional level.
Now – before I get into Black’s actual piece, here – let’s go over a tiny little bit of the theory of journalism.
Print journos know that the number of people who actually read any given point in a story drops, almost geometrically, the further into the story you get. If 1000 eyeballs scan the headline, 100 might read the opening paragraph or two. Of those 100, 10 might plod through the middle. If there’s a jump, or if it takes longer than a few minutes to plod through, barring some immediate personal interest, 1 might get to the end of the piece (the numbers are made-up, but they’re neither gratuitously far-off nor conceptually wrong).
So copy editors write headlines that try to lure as many eyeballs as possible into the story – and generations of editors have groused at reporters “don’t bury the lede” – because in print news (and its red-headed stepchild, online journalism), the first impression may be the only impression you get.
And with that headline and its key message- DFL ADVANTAGE!!!! – ringing in my mind, I tucked into the rest of the story:
When the new decennial map of Minnesota’s legislative districts was unveiled in late February, most neutral observers said the DFL had won the battle for a favorable map. But the degree of the DFL victory may have been understated. If the map is destiny (which it isn’t, but it can change the odds), the DFL may have a decent shot at taking back control of both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in the 2012 election.
The degree of DFL victory “may have been understated”.
That’s the lede. And ledes are important for that portion of Minnesota’s population that reads past the headline – which, as we established in the headline, says the maps were a big win for the DFL (“but…”).
And who – other than those “neutral sources” – is behind this claim (and I’ll add emphasis):
DFL State Chair Ken Martin recently told me that the way his party scores the partisan lean of the new districts, the DFL has at least a slight advantage in 73 House districts and 34 Senate districts. If (a big “if” unless and until it happens) the DFL candidates were to prevail in those districts, it would give the party a substantial (73-61) majority in the House and a bare (34-33) single vote majority in the Senate.
So after a headline and a lede that proclaim that the DFL was the big winner, we get the source – Ken Martin. The Chair of the DFL, after coming from “Win Minnesoita“, which is part of the DFL money shell-game that pays for all the DFL’s attack ads (and thus, all of its messaging, period).
That’s it.
So to the reader’s perception, the story really says THE DFL HAS A HUGE ADVANTAGE (according to the head of the DFL).
And we know this…
To be precise for the total political wonks in the audience, the DFL has developed a methodology that looks – precinct by precinct – at DFL votes across the last many elections. (As you can imagine, the partisan breakdown of a precinct can vary from year to year and from race to race within a given year.) The DFL method massages the numbers into what it called the DPI (Democratic Performance Index) of each precinct. And now that they know which precincts go with which state House and Senate districts, they can calculate which districts have a DPI of greater than 50 percent, which means that the DFL should have an advantage in winning and hold that seat.
…because the DFL did a bunch of math…
Before you get too excited (or upset, depending on your partisan preference) you should know that:
a) Martin didn’t release the map of the DFL-leaning districts nor the numbers on which the calculation is based, so skeptics cannot check his statement;
b) The Pioneer Press, which published a similar calculation, reached a significantly less favorable DFL number on the Senate map. (The Pi-Press analysis did indicate that the DFL has the map potential to take back control of the House and gain ground – but enough for control – in the Senate); and
c) Everyone that I interviewed for this post assured me that, while the map is important, it is neither the only nor even the most important thing.
…which was likely b*llsh*t, and even the media knows it.
But it’s worth, apparently, putting as an unvarnished headline and lede.
Why?
Because it’s one of the narratives the DFL wants spread far and wide; their success is inevitable. Don’t ask why – they won’t tell you. Just keep repeating it, Dems. Just interenalize it, conservatives!
The DFL’s main hope this election is to drive down conservative enthusiasm – which slaughtered them two years ago – and try to create some sort of bandwagon effect on the left.
Prediction: An upcoming Minnesota Poll or Humphrey Institute survey will show that A MAJORITY OF MINNESOTANS (from a sample that over-counts DFLers 3:2)APPROVE OF DAYTON’S JOB AS GOVERNOR.
Here’s the dumbest thing anyone has said so far about the transition that the American Independent News Network is undergoing. It’s the usual right-wing boogeyman being trotted out: “Soros pushes the ‘flush’ lever.” Sorry, but AINN had not received any funding from a Soros organization in years.
Maybe – and irrelevant.
For starters, Soros-funded organizations were involved with the franchise early in its existence; the deliciously-ironically-named “Center for Independent Media” got its start in a spare office at “Media Matters”, and you can’t get more Soros-backed than that.
Which is fine – Soros has First Amendment rights, too. The problem was, for the first year or two of the blog’s existence, “editor” Robin Marty stonewalled and denied there was any connection – up until Eric Black confirmed, as he left the blog for the greener (fiscal) pastures at the MinnPost that yes, Soros was one of the sugardaddies that kept the lights on.
Beyond that, though, Mr. Brayton? “Soros” is a sort of shorthand on the right for every “liberal with deep pockets” that is practicing checkbook advocacy, from Alita Messinger to Michael Moore to everyone in between. Sort of like “Fox News” is the lib’s code term for the left’s belief that the media is really conservative, or “ALEC” or “Koch Brothers” or “Richard Mellon Scaife” are the belief that conservative thought just has to be inorganic and merely a front for some sort of shadlowy Scrooges in the background.
These people really do think that anyone who has ever gotten money from any organization that Soros has given money to actually works for Soros and that he calls the shots — even if there hasn’t been any such funding relationship in a long time.
{Facepalm}
No, we really don’t “really do” think that.
What we do think is that, somehow, the Mindy – which has never run ads, but has always paid its “staff” the kind of money that no conservative blog with the Mindy’s middling-to-low traffic numbers ever gets – is getting its bills paid by someone who feels the need to underwrite “progressive” media. Is it George Soros? Or is it someone else? For purposes of criticizing the liberal alt-media, it’s a distinction with only an academic difference. y t
It’s just another way life on Planet Wingnuttia differs from the reality on this planet.
But only if you ignore all context. Which is just another way life on Planet Progressive Alt-Media differs from the reality on this…oh, wait, you already used that.
Oh, and he also says that the organization has “always been a hothouse flower – something that couldn’t exist without massive outside support.” Well, yeah. That’s how non-profit journalism works. It’s how the entire non-profit sector works, including a million different conservative foundations. Few non-profits would exist without lots of outside support. How terribly shocking.
Right, the faux vapors are cute, and all, but the point is that non-profits generally exist for a reason – to promote the sale and use of ketchup, or to lobby for flax farmers, or to reach an audience. Many of us wondered what was that attending purpose to the MinnMon / Mindy franchise over the past six years of being floated – in relative luxury, if you’re a mid-level blogger like, well, me. Its demise is just one data point toward the conclusion that “we were right to wonder”.
The commenters at the Minnesota Post do even worse.
[Wait – didn’t you say that I wrote the “the dumbest thing” ever said on the subject? How many superlatives can you give in one posting? – Ed]
And another, Mike Izon, gets even dumber:
It’s because of the lawsuit. They know they will lose and you can’t get money from a news organization that isn’t making money anyways.
The lawsuit he is referring to is the one filed by nutball extraordinaire Bradlee Dean against AINN and Rachel Maddow. And I laughed out loud at the idea that there are people out there deluded enough to think that has anything to do with the decision to close down some of the AINN sites. I’ll have more on that in a separate post.
I’m told that CNBC’s Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money”, and I have a bit of a resemblance.
So – if Thompson Building and Remodeling, who’ve been sponsoring the Northern Alliance for most of this past five or six years, hires me to endorse their services, even though I don’t make any “Cramer” references whatsoever during the ads, is Thompson “impersonating Cramer?”
We’ll come back to that.
———-
Jill Burcum isn’t the worst, most in-the-bag-for-the-Democrats Strib editorial writer. That “distinction” floats at random between Lori Sturdevant, Jon Tevlin and most of the rest of the staff.
And I don’t mean that to sound as nasty as it probably does. If more of the Strib’s editorial writers were in Burcum’s “I’m a DFLer, but I don’t want to come across like an obvious house shill” weight class, the Strib and its editorial would be less a laughingstock.
Still, priorities are priorities. Burcum takes umbrage, on behalf of Morgan Freeman, at the latest ad for Sheila Harsdorf in her battle for the Wisconsin Senate in the district just across the St. Croix from the Metro against Shelly “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED UNIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON” Moore.
The latest attack ad on Wisconsin state Senate candidate Shelly Moore instantly prompts this question: How’d they get actor Morgan Freeman to do the voiceover?
The reality is that it’s not Freeman, whose authoritative voice made him a logical choice to play God in the hit film “Bruce Almighty” a few years back. Instead, the slippery group funding the ad found somebody who sounds just like Freeman.
So what does Burcum suggest? That established voice-over guys be able to trademark the timbre and tone of their voices, so nobody else can sound like them?
Because Burcum sounds serious:
The [organization funding the spots’] latest effort is nothing less than a fake celebrity endorsement of Moore’s opponent, Republican Sheila Harsdorf, in the recall election taking place just across the border.
Baloney. The guy’s voice sounds like Morgan Freeman, in the same way that I look like Jim Cramer. Did he say “I”m Morgan Freeman?” No. Does his voice say “I’m detached and authoritative, like Morgan Freeman’s?” Sure. Is it of any legal or ethical weight? If it is, then everyone with a passing resemblance to a celebrity who swerves into the public eye in any way loses their stock in trade.
(And this lawsuit, by Bette Midler against a soundalike who sang one of her songs on a commercial, tucks in the legal case. Being a soundalike isn’t in and of itself an issue; Midler’s suit got tossed).
Let’s try this, and see if Burcum squawks.
“DFL and RINOs good. Conservatives bad. Vote for Sheila Harsdorf!”
Now, was that actually Lori Sturdevant endorsing Harsdorf? Of course not. Did I try to leverage the coincidental resemblance of the line I wrote with a regional celebrity’s trademark dogmatism? Perhaps, but so what? Does a celebrity own their tone, their timbre and cadence and presentation?
If so, Burcum might be getting a call from Doug Grow’s lawyer.
The lefties were all atwitter yesterday over a poll in the MinnPostthat purported to show that Minnesotans blame the Minnesota GOP for the shutdown:
By a whopping 2-1 margin, Minnesotans blame the Republicans who control both houses of the Legislature for the recent government shutdown more than they blame Gov. Mark Dayton, according to a poll taken this week for MinnPost.
Predictably, most Republicans blamed Dayton more (by 56 to 10 percent, with the rest saying both sides were to blame or holding no opinion). DFLers blamed the Republicans by an even more overwhelming majority (68 percent to just 2 percent of DFLers who blamed DFLer Dayton).
But the key swing group of self-identified independents was also much more likely to blame Republicans than to blame Dayton. Among independents, 46 percent “blamed” the Republicans, 18 percent blamed Dayton and 25 percent both.
Hm. That sounds bad!
It also sounded familiar – indeed, it sounded right in line with a prediction I made in this space mere weeks ago. Go ahead and read it; Prediction 1 was a month late, and it appeared in the MinnPost rather than the Strib; the piece is written by Erik Black and Doug Grow, former Strib staffers, so the feeling of deja vu was so overwhelming…
…that when I first read this post, I practically predicted the bit that is emphasized in the quote below:
Based on other questions in the poll, it was difficult to say whether the fallout from the shutdown will give DFLers a significant advantage heading into the 2012 elections, as Republicans seek to retain their majorities. Projecting current attitudes onto an election 16 months in the future would be folly.
Also, this poll, conducted for MinnPost by Daves & Associates Research, was designed to take the pulse of the state in the aftermath of the shutdown, not to predict the next election. No likely voter screen was used and sample surely includes non-voters.
And there you have it. The MinnPost gets its polling from “Daves and Associates”. That’d be Rob Daves – the guy who ran the Minnesota Poll for 21 years – the poll whose election-eve polls on Gubernatorial, Senate and Presidential races *always* showed the GOP doing worse – usually much worse – than it ended up doing.
And if it’s a post on politics in Minnesota by Strib alums Black and Grow, who else just has to show up?
Humphrey Center Political Scientist Larry Jacobs said the results of the new poll were “basically bad news for the Republicans.”
“They have to think about this fact,” said Jacobs.”The principles that they ran on in 2010 — that they would advocate for cuts only and would refuse to go along with any tax increase — may still be the principles that appeal to the most enthusiastic base of support they have. But that position seems to be pretty unpopular not only with two-thirds of Minnesotans, but with half of their own party, all of whom prefer a mix of significant spending cuts and at least some tax increases.”
Yep, Dr. Jacobs, whose Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Poll is even worse, and whose methodology was openly and publicly savaged by Frank Newman of Gallup last year after the Humphrey Institute polls were not only grossly wrong (predicting a 12 point Dayton blowout in the gubernatorial race which ended up about a .4% race) but were shown to have systematically oversampled strongly DFL areas of the state.
Both Daves’ and Jacobs’ polls, as I showed last year, shared an interesting trait: if the final result of an election ended up being really close, like the ’08 Senate and ’10 Governor’s race (as opposed to blowouts, like the ’06 Senate race), the Minnesota and HHH Polls *both* shorted Republicans *even more*:
The reason? Well, it’s a known fact that voters are prone to the “Bandwagon Effect”; they do tend to go along with what polls tell them, positively or negatively. My theory – while it’s conceivable that the Strib, Rob Daves, the Minnpost, the HHH Institute and Larry Jacobs are unaware of the “bandwagon effect”, I’d be a lot more convinced if Daves didn’t have a 24 year record of shorting the GOP on controversial, loaded polls when the chips were down (and Jacobs’ polls even worse for seven years).
The poll canvassed less than 600 random adults – not registered, much less likely, voters – and, as usual, it heavily-sampled identified DFLers and unspecified “independents”.
The Twin Cities media have largely been dutiful stenographers during the shutdown, carrying the DFL’s message pretty much verbatim while gundecking the GOP pretty consistently.
Let’s let all that slide for the moment. We’ll come back to it, naturally.
But let’s talk for a moment about the “Old” Twin Cities media’s moldiest meme; that there was once a time when the parties just got along, and agreed to do “what was best for Minnesota”.
It’s baked wind, of course; to the extent things ever worked that way, it’s because the MNGOP used to be both extremely moderate, in the Rockefeller/Stassen mold, and also very weak, especially after Watergate. So when the Twin Cities Old Media says “they just got along and did what was best for Minnesota”, what they mean was “they shut up and passed a “progresssive”, tax and spend agenda without a whole lot of muss and fuss”.
So let’s accept them at their word for a moment. Let’s say that they, the old-school, dead-tree media (I’m looking at you, Lori Sturdevant and Doug Grow and Rachel Stassen-Berger) really do believe in that myth, and really think it led to “good government”.
So how does the behavior of Senate Minority (aaah) leader Tom Bakk and House Minority leader Paul Thissen fit into that meme?
The GOP and Governor Dayton had reportedly reached an agreement on June 30 – the day before the shutdown. The shutdown that had the Twin Cities media wetting its collective pants was minutes away from being averted. Governor Dayton had agreed to drop tax increases – any of them – from the agreement.
[State GOP deputy chair Michael] Brodkorb said he could confirm that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen were in the room when Speaker Zellers and Leader Koch returned to say that they’d accept Gov. Dayton’s offer. At that time, Gov. Dayton said that he’d changed his mind and that tax increases had to be part of the final solution.
It’s important to remember that Speaker Zellers and Sen. Koch returned only 45 minutes after Gov. Dayton’s initial offer. The only thing that’d changed was that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen weren’t in the room when Gov. Dayton made his initial offer but they were there when he’d reversed himself.
Let’s make this perfectly clear; it appears that Bakk and Thissen, after spending the entire session lighting farts in their offices (*), coming out periodically to wag their fingers on Almanac and heckle the GOP’s various plans to their various stenographers the media, did exactly one substantive thing during the entire session; scupper a settlement two weeks ago.
It’s pretty clear that they believe they could play the shutdown for their political benefit in 2012, and get that benefit on the back of state employees, contractors, the service-using public, and those that depend on the state for whatever reason.
Brodkorb then said that “The only thing that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen had done since the start of the session was cash paychecks. You can quote me on that.”
With pleasure.
When will the Minnesota Media raise its collective eyebrow over Bakk, Thissen and the DFL’s exploitation of this shutdown? The region’s conservative blogs have done everything but engrave the story on the back of a “Society of Professional Journalists” award and walk the story into the Strib’s office.
It’s clear at this point that if Thissen and Bakk could tie defective strollers to the GOP, they’d both roll prams full of infants down the Capitol steps, with cameras rolling and the Strib’s editorial staff pondering with mock sincerity “why don’t the Republicans just compromise and fight Big Stroller?”
(*) Figuratively and rhetorically speaking. I have no idea if anyone lit a single fart, and if they did, it’s none of my business. It’s a figure of speech implying sloth, negligence, and passive-aggressive idleness, and as such it’s richly, if disgustingly, appropriate.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson have called a news conference to discuss the state government’s shutdown.
Mondale is a Democrat who represented Minnesota as a U.S. senator in the 1960s and `70s. Carlson is a Republican who served as governor in the 1990s.
No, I don’t think there’s any action on that bet.
Whenever the regional establishment (read: left-leaning) media wants to try to delegitimize the MNGOP in the eyes the vast majority of people who don’t pay much attention to politics, they wheel out Arne Carlson. Carlson, who governed Minnesota from 1990 to 1998, was a Republican, and that’s usually where the media accounts stop, omitting that he governed like a moderate Democrat; indeed, James Lileks used to joke that while he was in DC, he described the Carlson/Perpich race (1990) as “the pro-abortion, pro-gun-control candidate versus the Democrat”.
Gov. Arne Carlson had one of those “hey-wait-just-a-minute” moments Thursday while reading a MinnPost article.
On the surface, the article, about government reform, seemed complimentary of Carlson, who was governor from 1991 to 1998.
Rep. Keith Downey, a leader of the reform movement in the Republican-controlled Legislature, was talking about how way back in the Carlson era a report had been issued calling for structural reforms to help government move from budget to budget more smoothly.
“We’ve been putting off reforms for 15 years,” Downey said. “The time to act is now.”
That’s the line that upset Carlson.
“Who’s this Downey fellow?” he asked me.
“Me”, in this case, is Doug Grow, who along with Lori Sturdevant has been building the gauzy, soft-focus myths about the glory days of DFL/”GOP” cooperation.
And if Carlson doesn’t know Keith Downey, then who the hell cares what he thinks?
A representative from Edina starting his second term, the governor was told.
“If he’s starting his second term, he’s probably part of the problem,” Carlson said.
Can you imagine if Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann or Amy Koch had said something that so fluently mixed arrogance and ignorance?
Carlson contends that his administration didn’t just point out the long-term structural problems in the 1995 report that Downey was referring to. Rather, it made the “reforms” necessary to correct the problems.
Let’s talk about the truth about Carlson’s administration.
He had revenue surpluses most years during his administration.
You know – surpluses. Years where revenues exceeded expenditures. Given that Minnesota’s state revenues are so closely tied to economic performance, through income and sales taxes, a surplus is generally an indicator of a good year.
And most of the years in the nineties were good years. Indeed, from 1990 to 1998 it was ar pretty cha-cha time in Minnesota; after a brief downtown early in the decade as the ’92 recession worked out and the local economy readjusted to plummeting post-Cold-War defense spending, the economy pretty much boomed the whole last 2/3 of Carlson’s reign.
And Carlson took those temporary surplusesinto permanent entitlement spending. The budget more than doubled under Carlson’s regime – spending that was paid for by temporary windfalls during good times.
In other words, Arne Carlson is the problem we currently face in this state; he was the godfather of the autopilot spending increases that feed the all-consuming, ever-escalating hunger for tax revenue that currently hobble our state’s budget process.
Arne Carlson – shut up and enjoy your retirement. You are not just irrelevant and in the way; you are not just a Potemkin Republican that estabishment backslappers like Lori Sturdevant and Doug Grow trot out to beat over the MNGOP’s head.
I’m not sure what bugs me more about this Doug Grow column; the fact that he deemed a bit of screeching DFL illogic newsworthy, or that he doesn’t seem to realize that it’s screechingly illogical at all.
He’s writing about the MN Senate debate over a Human Services bill which would change the way the state delivers health care to the poor, from a bureaucratic entitlement to a voucher system.
Grow:
Apparently, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander.
That little truth came to light during Tuesday’s Senate debate over health care for the poor.
Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, introduced one of the GOP’s plans for cutting Human Services costs by taking about 15,000 single adults out of MinnesotaCare and giving them vouchers so they can buy their own health insurance.
Hann sang the praises of the bill: It will save the state money. It will give the poor more choices. It will improve the health care of the poor. It will get government out of health care. It’s the American way!
No sarcasm clogging Grow’s keyboard there. Nosirree Bob! It’s the Twin Cities Media way! All them poor folks is too dumb to take care of themselves!
But that’s not really the issue here:
Then, Sen. Barb Goodwin, DFL-Columbia Heights, rose to speak. She offered a simple amendment to this GOP plan.
She said her amendment would require legislators to test the plan for two years, before the poor were forced into it.
“I hear what a wonderful deal this is for people,” Goodwin said. “We can determine if this plan is working as it should.”
Amendment greeted with silence
For a moment, you could have heard a pin drop in the Senate chambers. What? Us on this plan?
When columnists try to play mind-readers, it’s pretty my much their own minds they end up reading. Because I know that if I’d been sitting in that Senate chamber, I’d have been quiet, myself. But not from taking offense at someone thinking I’d dream of being lumped in with the hoi-polloi.
No, it’d be because I’d be wondering…:
…if Senator Goodwin gets the difference between people doing a job who get health insurance as part of their compensation – the legislators, in this case – and people who come to the taxpayers for help with getting health care? If she recognizes a difference between someone who takes a job (yes, even an elected one) with full knowledge of what the health benefits are, just like most of us in the private sector do (with benefits that are admittedly not nearly as nice), and…
…if she realizes how much of the private sector is moving in the direction of self-directed health care – where the consumer makes the key decisions about their own health care…
…whether she appreciates the idea that vouchers, compared to the trough-slopping reality of most government entitlement programs, gives the recipient some dignity…
…or, for that matter, giving public healthcare for the poor any chance of being sustainable at all…
… or if any of that matters compared to her prevailing priority – keep the bureaucracy fat ‘n happy?
Doubt it’d be fit all that into a politic statement if I didn’t have the floor.
A rookie senator, Gretchen Hoffman, R-Vergas, stood, clearly offended by Goodwin’s amendment.
“We’re citizen legislators,” she said, adding that she’d waived her right to receive the health insurance benefits that most legislators receive.
After proclaiming her own goodness, she attacked the Goodwin amendment.
One wonders if Grow would ever call a DFLer a “Rookie”, or write off their defense as “proclaiming their goodness”.
“Political tomfoolery,” Hoffman said.
Again there was silence in the Senate. It had been years since anyone had heard the expression “tomfoolery.”
And later, Goodwin said that “tomfoolery” had never been applied to her before.
If “tomfoolery” means ‘incapable of carrying on a logical argument”, I’ll be it has.
Anyway, here’s what they’re arguing about;
Back up for a moment and look at the plan Hann sings the praises of but — as it turned out — wouldn’t want for himself.
Single working adults who have incomes of between 133 percent and 250 percent of poverty-level would no longer be covered by MinnesotaCare, the publicly subsidized health insurance program for the working poor that’s been in existence since 1990. Under MinnesotaCare, low-income working people pay premiums on a sliding scale based on ability to pay.
The Republican plan would force those earning between $14,400 and $30,000 off MinnesotaCare and into the “free” market. With the help of state vouchers, they could select the health insurance they want for themselves.
Hann says that by “allowing” these people to go into the free market, the state would save $100 million per biennium.
And since they’re “single, working” adults – unlike Grow, I’m using using scare quotes in place of an actual argument – it seems like a great compromise. Grow’s, and Goodwin’s, only argument seems to be that Senators don’t want to trade their current plans for it.
By that “logic”, Goodwin and Grow should both shut up and go on welfare, including MNCare.
I’ve read a couple of mildly interesting takes on that premise this past week. Both are worth a look – partly on their merits, and partly as a measure of how much the media’s liberal bias itself serves as a sort of “instrumentation error” in any attempt to judge the media’s bias.
I won’t quote the piece, by Joshua Greenman, at length – partly because as I write this (at 5:45AM on Tuesday morning) the NYDN site is not loading. But the piece’s overall premise is “the media isn’t biased because conservatives wrote the political dictionary”. The money passage:
It’s hard to know where to begin in dismantling the Republican canard that Democrats control the media. Fox News is the most popular 24-hour news network by a whoosh and a cachung. Rush Limbaugh is the most powerful radio host, and lots of little Limbaughs line up behind him. Sarah Palin is the biggest media-political crossover star. And in an increasingly fragmented Internet, the Drudge Report continues to drive more political traffic than any other website. In italics and bold, to boot.
We see the hole in Greenman’s logic, here, right?
Greenman cites as evidence Republicans “wrote the dictionary” a series of media and pundits who were spawned as a response to liberal control of the media. It’s like saying “Mitch Berg, Mr. D and Minnesota Democrats Exposed control Twin Cities’ political debate” when we are in fact the antagonists, not the protagonists.
The New York Times doesn’t decide what words we use, nor does CNN or NPR. Our political vocabulary comes from the mouths of crafty conservatives, and that’s the ultimate proof that they steer the conversation.
Obamacare. Pity the poor congressional and White House staffers who spent hours coming up with the bromidic name “Affordable Care Act” only to see the 2,300 page bill (which Republicans complained Obama played far too passive a role in shaping) get labeled, for all eternity, “Obamacare.” This of course, is an update of the equally elegant Hillarycare. It’s interesting to note that both were used, from the get go, as slurs, unlike, say, “Reaganomics.” (Compare this to, say, “No Child Left Behind,” which has never for a second been called Bushducation – though that would have been pretty catchy.)
Greenman should take a course in the mechanics of language; catchy phrases have to be easy to say; “Bushducation” is almost impossible to pronounce…
…but that’s a digression. According to Greenman, acceptance of conservative-driven language is a sign that the media never was liberal…:
Using the supposedly massive megaphone of the Liberal Media, Democrats, who were sensitive – hypersensitive, in my mind – to the Obamacare implication, tried to replace it with a blander formulation emphasizing insurance regulation.
…which is sort of like saying “if the receiver drops the ball, then the quarterback must have thrown a basketball”. The fact that conservative catch phrases, er, catch, isn’t a sign the media is conservative; it’s a sign that the people are.
John Harris and Jim Vandehei in Politico make a more rational case; it’s not so much that the press is “liberal” as they prefer the appearance of “bipartisan process” to any actual policy outcome:
That is, they believe broadly in government activism but are instinctually skeptical of anything that smacks of ideological zealotry and are quick to see the public interest as being distorted by excessive partisanship. Governance, in the Washington media’s ideal, should be a tidier and more rational process than it is.
I’ve “joked” in the past that when I work at a company, and a manager joins a group and introduces himself as a “process person”, it’s time to get your resume polished up; the group is doomed.
It’s a little cynical – but you know what they say, a cynic is an idealist who got mugged by experience.
The problem with “process people” is that when process meets people, entropy wins, sooner than later; invariably, processes need someone to run them. Someone just like the reporters:
In this fantasy, every pressing problem could be solved with a blue-ribbon commission chaired by Sam Nunn and David Gergen that would go into seclusion at Andrews Air Force Base for a week, not coming back until it had a deal to cut entitlements and end obesity.
Bill Clinton’s best press came when he made a deal with Newt Gingrich on the budget, and George W. Bush got favorable coverage when he reached a deal with Ted Kennedy on education reform and in the brief period after Sept. 11 when the terrorist attacks brought Washington together.
Harris and Vandehei’s point is that Obama has been exploiting this tendency to get better press – and it’s working:
Obama is taking advantage of the press’s bias for bipartisan process, a preference that often transcends the substance of any bipartisan policy. (See: GOP, Dem lawmakers sit together)
It was an easy choice. In the wake of the Democratic rout in November, for instance, it would have been political suicide to risk letting taxes go up. So Obama shrewdly ignored his own party’s liberals and made a big show of wanting to cooperate with Republicans on the Bush tax cuts — and reaped a bonanza of favorable news stories as a result.
It would help explain the likes of Doug Grow and Lori Sturdevant and their constant, unseemly pining for the 1970s and MNGOP that was “Republican”, but in no way conservative; it’s about process, not vision or outcome.
But all of us who polish up our resume when we encounter that bobbleheaded “process-oriented” MBA have a point; process without keen vision is just paperwork and churn.
And even if Vandehei and Harris are right, and reporters, editors and producers are leery of aggressive partisanship, which may be true in some cases – it leads to the same result; people who gravitate toward “process” to manage public affairs tend to be people with fond views of government activism.
As I noted a while ago, I have been tempted for quite some time to write a long, long series of posts trying to explain the basic logical fallacies to leftybloggers. I do this – or would do it, if I ever get the project underway – to improve the quality of the alt-media debate in Minnesota.
A good one to work first might be “correlation doesn’t equal causation”.
Because in the case of the four GOP voters who split from the majority to vote against the GOP’s first budget bill, it’s safe to say that correlation doesn’t equal much of anything.
Rep. King “Landslide” Banaian gave me a bit of a surprise the other day. I saw his vote on the House authorized $1 billion cut legislative package and surprisingly, the conservative, former SCSU Scholars blogger, voted NO….voting with the Democrats.
Well, no. Remember – correlation doesn’t logically lead to causation. He voted – it is safe to say, although I’ve not interviewed King about it – against one of the proposed cuts. King would gargle Drano before he voted “with the DFL”.
Banaian works at St. Cloud State as an economics professor and represents St. Cloud and the surrounding area. The kicker here is that he won his legislative race by a 10 vote margin. Which means that, unlike Senator Newman and his selective constituent recognition, Mr. Banaian is probably wise to consider all comers.
It’s good that Mindeman has discovered this tenet of democracy. Many DFLers, especially in the Metro, never need to learn any of this stuff.
Except I had assumed that Banaian was one of those true believer, first principle guys. He generally talks of government spending with utter disdain and one would think that this particular bill would certainly meet those first principle ideals.
Well, you know what they say happens when you assume…
After all, it hits that unnecessary Local Government Aid and outrageously out of control Higher Ed spending… as well as all of the Commission offices in the executive branch. Would have assumed that to be a no-brainer for Banaian.
I’m not sure – I haven’t interviewed King, or Kriesel, or the other two Republicans who voted against the bill on its first pass. Of course, either has Mindeman. But I’m going to suspect that those were not the reason.
Yet, that pesky RED button went up. Explanation?
Well, Doug Grow at Minnpost, looked into this and found this quote:
The Republican proposal calls for the continuation of cuts made to state colleges by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature to bring the budget in balance last year. Those amount to $184 million for public colleges, including Banaian’s employer, St. Cloud State.
“We’ve taken a couple of pretty serious hits already,” Banaian told an Associated Press reporter in explaining his opposition to the bill. “To do this on extending an agreement by a previous Legislature and a previous governor didn’t seem like the right vote for St. Cloud at this time.”
What?
So those particular cuts were OK last year, but (ahem) not so good this year? Would that be 10 votes worth of caution, Rep. Banaian?
Well, maybe – but both Mindeman and Grow strip out some key context; SCSU took some serious cuts; a lot of King’s voters think it’s time for the U to take its lumps.
All that red meat rhetoric with “first principle” shouts of storming the castle seem to fade when looking toward a new election cycle.
When the DFL – which had a crushing majority in the Minnesota State House, pushed through a massive $435 million dollar tax hike.
They squeedged the increase through on a couple of very close votes; the final vote in the House was 71-63. Bear in mind that the DFL controlled 87 seats up until this month. Tha’ts 87/47 in favor of the DFL; almost, but not quite, veto-proof.
And in the Minnesota Senate? Much worse; the DFL had a 47-21 veto-proof majority in the Senate.
So when it came time for up-and-down votes on the Dems’ pet tax proposal, you’d think – given not only the DFL’s fabled unity, but the power of the mandate with which they’d been sent to Saint Paul to refudiate the Pawlenty government the previous fall, that the votes in favor of the bill might have been 87/47 in the House (or maybe 93/44, given the power of the “moderate Republicans”), and 47/21 in the Senate.
To have performed any worse would certainly have been a sign that the DFL was splintering under the pressure of working with their mandate.
Right?
Well, of course it didn’t work out that way. The DFL carried the bill through the House by 71. Sixteen DFLers crossed over to vote against the bill.
And before that? In an epic bit of political theater, the Senate had to do all but send the Mounties out to find Tarryl Clark to drag her into the Senate chamber to get the bill passed by one vote. A total of twelve DFL senators crossed over to vote against the bill.
And this, at the height of the post-Obama afterglow. When people seemed Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota. Less than a month after the first appearance of the Tea Party, when it still seemed (because the media was trying to paint it) like a fringe-y little brushfire.
Quiz Question: Did this loss of 16 votes in the House, and 12 in the Senate, mean that…:
a)The DFL was fragmenting?: The DFL legislators saw the Tea Party rallies, three weeks early, anticipated the upcoming summer of anger at the Obamacare Town Halls, and were consumed with a wave of originalist fervor, which Larry Pogemiller and Margaret Anderson Kelliher managed to hold together by only the barest of margins, in an epic feat of legislative engineering?
b) That was the plan?: Some DFLers from outstate and outer-tier suburban districts felt nervous about piling taxes on their already-disgruntling districts; they made their reservations known to their caucus’ House and Senate leadership, which did the math – not only for the bill, but for the next round of elections. They figured out how many votes were safe, not only for the bill, but for future elections; they realized that some DFLers – especially some of the ones that had just won squeaker elections in the previous two cycles in usually-GOP-districts – were going to need to be able to deny association with the bill to their voters. The did the math, and made sure they had the votes to both pass the bills and give their more potentially-vulnerable membersthe out they knew they were going to need?
Answer? B, mostly; of course there were DFLers who had objections – but for the most part,notwithstanding the media’s push to impart drama on the proceedings, the votes came as no surprise to anyone in legislative leadership.
Of course, drama sells newspapers.
Last week, the House voted on the GOP’s billion dollar budget cut bill. And the regional DFL and media (pardon the redundancy) hopped around like a toddler who’d just made a good pants – because four Republicans broke with the GOP.
Republican legislative leaders quickly are learning that it’s easier to hold the caucus together when they’re in the minority rather than the majority.
On the first big economic vote of the still-new session, four Republicans joined a united DFL minority in opposing a $1 billion budget-cutting bill that Republican leadership claimed was the “easy part” of cutting into the state’s $6.2 billion deficit.
Well, actually, there were 3.5 Republicans joining the DFL in opposing the bill. Freshman Rep. Rich Murray voted for the budget cuts but then, after voting had closed, switched to vote against the measure, which passed 68-63.
The biggest Republican defector was freshman Rep. King Banaian a St. Cloud State University economics professor and a conservative blogger.
Just a couple of weeks ago, beaming House Republican leaders described Banaian as the caucus’s “Wayne Gretzky” on economic issues.
For non-hockey followers, that means that Banaian was being described as the majority’s economics superstar, its guru, its leader.
Now, right out of the box he said “no” to the first Republican plan.
What happened?
What would Doug Grow suppose happened?
Is it that…:
a) The GOP majority is falling apart, with members – including my radio colleague Banaian, who had heretofore authored and sponsored HF2, a step toward instituting Zero-Based Budgeting, one of the most transformatively fiscally-conservative ideas – already souring on fiscal conservatism, to the immense surprise and shock of the MNGOP’s leadership? Or is it…:
b) Those devilish details that caused the DFL’s leadership to let 16 Reps and 12 Senators seek a little cover, after making sure that they had the votes to pass their tax bill two years earlier? Details that had been discussed between members and leadership for weeks – even since before the session began? Details that made the GOP’s leadership do the math, and figure that they could afford to let three potentially-vulnerable Representatives flake off and still leave plenty of votes to pass the vital bill?
What do you think?
I don’t talk with a lot of legislators, so it’s not like I know any details. But do you suppose that Banaian – who represents an area that includes Saint Cloud State University, which already went through some serious budget cuts, and which would take more with the proposed bill, and who won his seat by 13 votes, the closest margin of victory in the entire United States last November – just might have had a talk or two with Kurt Zellers, who might have gone over the votes one way or the other, and rationed out a few “no” votes to GOPers that might need ’em?
What do you think?
When the DFL needs heavy buckets hauled from the well to the corral, Doug Grow is always there:
Reality crossed paths with rhetoric…
…If Republican leadership can’t hold its caucus together on this first budget vote, imagine how difficult it will be to find conformity as it attempts to cut the remaining $5.2 billion with a cuts-only approach.
Grow taking part in the DFL’s strategy in the legislature; trying to paint the GOP majority as divided in the run-up to Mark Dayton – the weakest governor in recent memory – releasing a budget that is sure to be a big tax-clogged monstrosity. They are trying to find a wedge to pound in between the new majority and the newly-minted activists who put them into office.
To some extent, it’s drawn some blood; a few conservative activists are making disgruntled noises.
We’ll talk about that later on here.
The point being this: relax, everyone. The procedure of getting votes lined up, and handing out some exemptions from party mandates for purposes of planning for future elections, is the very definition of “politics as usual”, and not even in a necessarily bad way.
The larger point is that the agenda is moving ahead – and needs to, in advance of Dayton dropping his fiscal duke in two weeks.
I was briefly at the Capitol yesterday for the signing of the Medicaid payoff bill. It was terribly crowded, and I could only get as far as the outer lobby; it was that crowded.
Toward the end of the speeches, a baby started squalling.
January 3: Session kicks off. Mark Dayton throws a “blue jeans” inaugural. Musical highlight: the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” Choir singing “Look For The Union Label”. For four solid hours.
January 4: The Humphrey Institute releases a poll showing that 80% of Minnesotans want the Legislature to pass Mark Dayton’s budget immediately. Bloggers point out that the poll included only respondents from Kenwood and Crocus Hill. MPR reports that it’s a nice day for a bowl of Cream of Rice.
January 5: The Star Tribune’s Joe Doyle starts a three part series on “obscene corporate profits” and how they benefit “the rich walking among us”.
January 6: Dayton releases his first budget, calling for $40 billion in spending. Delivering the announcement in blue jeans with the SEIU Singers humming “We Are The World” in the background, Dayton notes that he plans to increase revenues to $41 billion. “We’ll finally have a surplus!” he exclaims, as a crowd described by the Star/Tribune as “50,000 womenandchildren at risk” applauds in the Capitol rotunda. The plan calls for big tax hikes on “obscene corporate profits” and “the rich walking among us”.
January 10: The last of Dayton’s Iron Range supporters are finally bailed out of the Ramsey County lockup after the inaugural.
January 12: Speaker Zellers refers the Dayton budget to the House Very Special Boom Zoom Committee” – actually a group of legislators’ children wearing “Junior Representative” t-shirts. Bill dies, and is colored on, and has juice spilled on it.
January 16: Lori Sturdevant notes that “a seasoned group of bi-partisan policy wonks say that the GOP risks getting tossed out by an angry mob if they don’t raise taxes. Conservative bloggers point out that “bi-partisan” in this case means DFL and Green Party members. Presented with the allegations, WCCO TV reports that Brett Favre just loves Chipotle Big Bols.
January 19: Governor Dayton submits a budget bill involving $42 billion in spending and $ 45 billion in taxes. “A three billion dollar surplus”, Dayton announces to a group of senior citizens (“at least 20,000”, according to the Strib’s Pat Doyle) at the Hockey Hall Of Fame in Eveleth. “It’s like a billion hat tricks!”. Keith Ellison solemnly proclaims that the only reason not to vote for the bill is “racism. Racism from all you crackers. Pay the **** up, crackers”.
January 27: Speaker Zellers forwards the bill to the House Budget Committee. The Mississippi House Budget Committee. Which loses the bill.
February 3: The Humphrey Institute releases a poll showing that eleventy-teen percent of Minnesotans demand tax and spending hikes. KARE 11 News finds eleventy-teen people on the street that agree. Frank Newport of the Gallup Group points out that ‘Eleventy-teen” isn’t even a real number, but something Dennis the Menace used to say to show that he couldn’t count. Rachel Stassen-Berger responded with a piece on “The Override Six, Two Years Later: Profiles In Courage And Extremism”.
February 18: Governor Dayton, speaking at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn Center, holds up James Blount, a three-year-old boy, in front of cameras; notes that “this boy is going to go hungry because of GOP extremism and intransigence tonight”.
February 19: Conservative bloggers point out that the “boy”, Blount, was actually a schnauzer that had wandered over from a nearby housing development. Eric Black of the MinnPost responded with a piece on how animal shelters are suffering under GOP rule.
February 27: Dayton submits his third budget, a $39 Billion plan that is very similar to the budget he proposed during the campaign. Conservative bloggers point out that it has exactly the same problems it had during the campaign; it assumes “the rich” (in this case, Minnesotans who are still employed) will pay the taxes rather than moving or getting Mark Dayton’s financial advisor, that the state can fire contractors whose jobs are both legally mandated and involve skills the state’s workforce doesn’t actually have, among many others.
February 28: The Star Tribune “Minnesota Poll” claims that Minnesotans want the Dayton budget passed, that the people want to carry Governor Dayton through the streets on their shoulders, and that violence is about to break out against the Minnesota GOP. Bloggers point out that the survey was conducted entirely at one “Drinking Liberally” event in Minneapolis. Informed of the allegations, KTCA’s “Almanac” embarks on a three-week special on the history of Danish cooking in Minnesota.
March 20: Speaker Zellers assigns the budget to the House Government Operations and Finance Committee.
March 28: Rep. Quam (GOP) of Byron demands that the DFL members of the committee play a game of Twister on the House floor if they want the budget to get out of committee. The committee members comply.
April 8: Nick Coleman, writing his new colum in the Wayzata Shopper, remembers when his father was running things. “The wingnuts wanted to play Twister for a better Minnesota”.
April 12: The Dayton budget comes to a vote in the House. It loses decisively, on state party lines. To signify the defeat, Speaker Zellers ties the budget to a string hanging from the ceiling of the House chamber, and members of the House Republican Caucus whack at it like a piñata.
April 15: Speaker Zellers tells a cheering crowd of 10,000 at the Tea Party rally on the capitol grounds that the budget is dead on arrival. Six pro-tax protesters stand across the street wanly chanting in favor of the Dayton budget.
April 16: The Strib editorial reports that a crowd of “dozens” at the Tea Party rally were evenly split, showing the deep partisan divide in Minnesota politics today.
May 1: , Governor Dayton start making contingency plans for a shutdown. Bloggers point out that the Governor’s plans include evacuating the Governor’s office to Vail, and euthanizing animals in all state parks. Told of the allegations, Keri Miller of MPR wonders on the air “whatever happened to bipartisanship?”
May 14: A day ahead of the deadline, the GOP Caucus introduces a $33 Billion budget that makes steep spending cuts and balances the budget with no new taxes. It passes on a straight party line vote, is sent to the Senate, which also passes the budget by the end of the day. The bill is sent to the Governor.
May 15 Mark Dayton appears at the Hockey Hall of Fame, dressed in a Minnesota Wild Uniform, with Minnesota hockey legend John Mayasich, to veto the GOP budget. “Minnesota demands that we do the responsible thing and pass my budget without all this debate and democracy and crap”, he says, as Mayasich looks on. Bloggers point out that “Mayasich” is actually Alliance for a Better Minnesota chair Denise Cardinal in a bald wig. Told of the allegations, KARE 11 news re-runs the January 4 Humphrey Poll.
May 16: The Strib runs a piece by reporter Pat Doyle, an expose of the “Casualties of the Shutdown”. Doyle, clearly gunning for a Pulitzer, writes a heartrending tale of Minnesotans standing in line at soup kitchens, of families (mostly “womenandchildren”) living in huge “Zellerville” on the Capitol Mall living on McDonalds coffee, and people lining up to throw themselves off the High Bridge. Bloggers point out that government hasn’t actually shut down yet, that nothing Doyle wrote had actually happened, and that the piece was clearly pre-written weeks earlier and run by mistake. Told of the allegations, MPR’s Keri Miller runs a two-hour broadcast on “How Blogs Provide A Chilling Effect On Free Speech”, featuring a bipartisan panel of Larry Jacobs and Nick Coleman.
May 17: Dayton demands the Legislature pass his budget.
May 18: Nobody at the legislature responds.
July 1: Minnesota’s state government shuts down.
July 2: The Strib re-runs the Doyle piece.
July 22: The state budget office notes that business activity is increasing, and tax receipts are rising.
July 23: The Strib editorial board runs an extended interview with Elmer Anderson, who gruffly demands that Minnesota Republicans “think about what’s best for Minnesota” and adopt Dayton’s budget immediately without any of that “commie wingnut debating crap”. Bloggers point out that Elmer Anderson died in 1998, and “Anderson’s” rhetoric read like Nick Coleman writing with a bag over his head. Told of the allegations, MPR’s Mark Zdechlik embarked on a two-week series on “What we can learn about Democracy from the Iroquois”. Salient observation: the Iroquois tradition of “Local Tribe Aid” was considered inviolate.
August 18: The State Budget Office notes that, with no government expenditures and business thriving, the state is in a surplus.
September 2: Katherine Kersten’s column, “Happy Days Are Here Again”, notes that Minnesota is in a much better state with the government shut down. Lori Sturdevant muses in her column that in Wendy Anderson’s day, the governor would have told the State Patrol to arrest Kersten for “making terroristic threats”. Bloggers point out that that is utterly absurd, there is no record of any such demand, anywhere. There is no response to these allegations.
September 23: With no budget in place and government shut down for weeks, Mark Dayton, operating from his office in Vail, orders the National Guard called out to react to what Dayton’s press secretary Tinucci calls the “Terrorist Threats”. Bloggers point out that the “threat” was the conclusion of Sturdevant’s slanderous column about Kersten. The National Guard’s commandant says “the paperwork is in process, call back in July”.
September 24: Dayton exercises his unallotment power on the GOP’s budget. Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch is left visibly speechless on hearing the news.
September 25: Finished with his line item vetoes, Governor Dayton signs a 27 billion dollar budget. Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s Denise Cardinal notes that “Mark Dayton has always been the budget-cutting candidate”. But Andrea Outrage-Guevara, president of Minnesota’s “Alliance of WomynAndChildryn”, speaking at a rally on the capitol grounds that drew “Millions” (according to the Strib), demands that all budget cuts be reinstate immediately or “Dayton will be ousted”.
October 15: Dayton, relocated his office from Vail, sits on a whoopie cushion left in his office by Tony Sertich.
Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer is all over the new Republican theme — Democratic candidate Mark Dayton doesn’t have a complete budget plan.
Emmer hammered the point, made by supportive Republicans repeatedly during the past few days, on a Tuesday spot on Minnesota Public Radio.
“Let’s start talking about the elephant in the room that nobody wants to acknowledge. Sen. Dayton has proposed a plan that is billions of dollars short,” Emmer said. He went on to suggest that Dayton will have to increase taxes more folks than he’s specified — couples making taxable income of $150,000 and singles earning $130,000. “How far are you willing to go?”
Let’s extend that thought for a moment: Mark Dayton is not a dumb guy. And he’s got people on his campaign staff who are even smarter. They don’t own a supercomputer – but they don’t need one to put together the broad outlines of a budget. Their campaign isn’t short of staff or funding, obviously.
So if you think the only budget that the Dayton campaign has is the one that’s on the website – the one that grins a big dumb grin and says “we’re $890 million short” with the same seriousness of a junior high kid saying the dog ate his homework – then I have to say with all due respect that you’re beggaring reason. Either the campaign is incompetent, or they know where that extra $890 million is coming from, and would rather the electorate not know.
And if you assume Democrats and Dayton aren’t just plain stupid, that leaves you with only “b”
“Put it on paper, Sen. Dayton,” Emmer said. (Republicans on Twitter and on blogs have taken to accusing individual reporters of negligence for not following suit.)
Stassen-Berger links to my Twitter account, as well as my “AWOL Media” piece yesterday. I wouldn’t use the phrase “accusing of negligence”, really – it’s got a legalistic tinge to it that’s a little unseemly for free speech.
It just seems that the media, which six weeks ago were hot to get all the details of the Emmer budget, has suddenly gotten incredibly incurious. And yet now that Dayton’s budget has a large, suspicious hole – and there really is no solution but to jack up taxes on the middle class – suddenly it seems that the people don’t have a “right to know”, accorinding to our regional political media.
I mean, did you see Esme Murphy?
She might as well have been giving the Senator a massage. “Do you have any plans?” Er, nope. And it ended there!
Did you hear Keri Miller’s interview with Tom Emmer? Back before Emmer released his budget? She went after him like a barracuda after Charlie the Tuna.
Does the public – especially us middle-class schnook taxpayers – still have a right to know now that it’s the favorite son of Minnesota’s political “elite?”
I mean…:
Dayton has acknowledged that his budget plan comes up nearly $1 billion short. That’s in part because his income tax plan won’t bring in as much money as he had hoped. He has specified how he would make the cuts he’s found, although some are estimates and others have been deemedunrealistic. But he admits a “gap,” which leads opponents to believe he’ll raise more in taxes.
…I’m a complete schlemiel as a “reporter”, and even I see that these are some huge, valid questions!
So David Brauer – who’s never covered up his lefty sympathies, but seems to try to do a decent job anyway – asked via Twitter:
He links to a this Rachel Stassen-Berger story in the Strib, and a Doug Grow piece in the MinnPost. Stassen-Berger did, indeed, note that Dayton’s budget comes up short – but there’s no evidence that I’ve seen (I’m willing to be corrected!) that she’s gotten up at a Dayton presser and said “OK, Chauncey Fauntelroy, if you don’t have to hit the middle class, who do you have to get the $890 million? We’ve got all day, Yale boy” (Those might be my words rather than Stassen-Berger’s).
Grow makes the valid point that…:
…no governor, no matter how popular, will be able to zip a budget package through the Legislature without major changes. In this case, whoever is governor likely will not be elected with a majority of the vote, meaning there will be little chance to claim any mandate, so you can expect nasty legislative fights.
…while basically claiming a pox on all their fiscal houses.
And, most importantly, both of these pieces were two weeks ago. Juuuuust about the time that the non-wonk class – all those actual voters – started thinking about the election.
@mitchpberg Fair question. Would venture Dayton’s gap is well-known, covered and acknowledged. For many weeks, Emmer seemed to be ducking.
Well-known to whom? Political reporters and political junkies and fire-breathing political bloggers? Sure!
The average voter – especially the ones who start paying attention to politics sometime between the first and fifteenth of October?
Hell – I’ve talked with candidates for the State House who haven’t read anything about this yet.
So while I’m not going to say that our assembled mass of journalists are “negligent” for not asking, I’m still curious; when the public has a right to know, does it imply they’re supposed to exercise that right by developing a jones for research?
Look, journos; if your line is “all three of the candidates’ budgets leave questions”, then ask them. That’s what you get the big bucks for. Hell, I’d do it, if any of them (but Emmer) returned my calls! And since neither of them do, I – and, more importantly, we, the entire body politic – have to depend on y’all, Tim Pugmire and Tom Scheck and Bill Salisbury and Rachel Stassen-Berger and Pat Kessler to do it.
Thing is, so far in the race, it’s Emmer that’s been getting the questioning; Dayton seems to be the only one who can get away with saying “I’ll get back to you on November 3”.
Am I wrong?
What say you, Tim and Rachel and Tom and Bill and Pat?
Over the past five weeks, Tom Emmer has released a budget plan that balances the budget, and lays the groundwork for the kind of economic growth that actually sets economies up for the kind of long-term prosperity that makes budget fiascoes like the past four years dim, comic memories.
In the meantime, Mark Dayton’s first budget cratered – came up $3 Billion short – and his second attempt is well over a billion off the mark, and Dayton is now saying budgets don’t really matter that much anyway until he’s elected.
So I’m wondering – where are the media who were so strident about having a budget to fact-check last summer?
Rachel Stassen-Berger? Tim Pugmire? Tom Scheck? Pat Kessler? Bill Salisbury? Eric Black? David Brauer?
Where are all the great journalistic instincts of one of the nation’s putatively top-twenty media markets?
Or don’t the people have a right to know anymore?
Let’s start counting up days until someone in the regional mainstream media – MPR, the Strib, the PiPress, WCCO-TV, anyone covers the vaporous vacuity of the Dayton “budget plan”.
[I just sent the following to Mark Dean, director of Common Cause MN, which just filed a complaint against conservative PAC “Minnesota’s Future” for doing exactly what “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund” have been doing – or about 10% of what they’re doing, anyway…]
Mr. Dean,
I’m Mitch Berg, one of the hosts of the Northern Alliance Radio Network on AM1280 in the Twin Cities.
I’d like to invite you to appear on the “NARN” with Ed Morrissey and I one of these next weekends to discuss your complaint against “Minnesota’s Future”; we’re curious why Common Cause has neglected to file a similar complaint against “”Alliance For A Better MInnesota”, “Win Minnesota” and “The 2010 Fund”, which are doing exactly what you allege Minnesota’s Future has done, only with many times more money.
On the chance it was all a ghastly oversight, I’ll bring a complaint form. We can fill it out on the air together.
While the request is pointed, the Northern Alliance prides ourselves on doing civil, respectful interviews. Previous “non-partisan” guests include RT Rybak, Dane Smith, Eric Black and Rochelle Olson.
We would sincerely love to discuss this before the election.
Let me know if any of the next few Saturdays work. Our program airs from 1-3PM.
The Twin Cities media continues its ongoing wet tongue kiss of Mark Dayton. This time, it’s Eric Black at the MinnPost – who sniffs that if you’re of those weirdos that focuses on big principles and visions of limited government getting out of the peoples’ way, then maybe Tom Emmer might be for you. But…
But if you value straight talk about what a candidate plans to do, based on facts and logic, DFL guv nominee Mark Dayton demonstrated again today at the Humphrey Institute that he is in a class by himself.
That’s another way of saying, apparently, that he droned on about facts and figures for a long, long time.
He also told the press gaggle in the hallway that he may not release the figures he gets from the Revenue Department on his plan, suggesting that it was getting to be unfair that he is so transparent about his taxing and spending proposals while Emmer continues to be so mysterious.
He told [U of M Poli Sci professor Larry] Jacobs that he won’t raise the whole $4 billion he seeks from the taxes he has specified so far, and during his presentation he told the audience that he is “looking for suggestions” of other revenue-raising ideas that will be consistent with his overall determination to make the state tax system more progressive
In other words, for all the “detail” Dayton offers, he can’t close the budget. Even his own budget “plan” says he comes up over $600,000,000 short – and that’s assuming that the legislature under a Dayton Administration, likely to be much more conservative than the 2010 class, would pass a tax hike fifteen times as large as the one that passed by exactly one vote (that of Taryll Clark) in the last session.
So could you please pony up an idea or two, so Eric Black’s narrative can remain undisturbed?
Within an hour or so, Tom Emmer is going to release a plan. It is going to make the DFLers yak up their skulls, because it will not hold government immune from the vagaries of the economy (which is all Dayton and Horner plan to do).
But I’m fairly confident it’ll provide the answers Dayton’s “plan” fobs off for later.
The Minnesota Majority reports (via Fox) that Ramsey County is investigating felons voting in Saint Paul during the ’08 elections:
That’s the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman.
The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes — fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority’s newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records…
…”We aren’t trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can’t be done,” said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority’s executive director. “We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn’t compromised.”
Naturally, the MNGOP is excited about this.
And, equally naturally, the DFL/media spin machine is not.
Writing at the MinnPost, Doug Grow – who was always almost as reliable a DFL shill as Lori Sturdevant – is on fact-check detail:
Now, some context:
In the hyper-excited Fox News reports, Carruthers is quoted as praising the Minnesota Majority study. “What I said is that they did as well as they could do given the data they had, but much of their data is not good,” Carruthers said.
Of the 475 cases Minnesota Majority questioned, 270 examples were just not accurate, Carruthers said.
There are reasons for so many inaccuracies, Carruthers said. For example, because of data privacy laws, Minnesota Majority was able only to get year of birth of many of the people they claimed had voted illegally. But, for the group to be sure it had the right individual, it would have needed the actual date of birth.
“In a state with so many Johnsons,’’ said Carruthers, “you have many people with the same name born in the same year. You have to have date of birth, to be sure you have the right person.’’
I’m suspecting there aren’t that many Johnsons on the list. Just a hunch.
Additionally, Carruthers said, Minnesota Majority would not have had access to changes in sentencing. For example, a person who initially had been sentenced to 10 years of probation may have had that probation reduced during the period of the sentence. At that point, the individual’s civil rights – including the right to vote – would have been restored.
Now, that might hold water.
Still, there were people who voted, or registered to vote, who were not eligible. That’s a felony, and if found guilty, they could face five years in prison and a $10,000, though Carruthers said that would be unlikely.
Not as unlikely as “reform” – or as Doug Grow is to answer the question “how many felons are acceptable?” in an election.
But I am so so so so glad that the likes of Grow are finally focusing on making sure media coverage is accurate. Thank you, Doug Grow. Thank you so very much.
