Target is getting a lot of crap from the usual pack of The Very Challenged, who are appalled that corporations can now donate money to campaigns that best support policies they (their boards, really) deem to be in their shareholders’ fiduciary interest (in the same way that unions have always been able to).

Expect a lot of  really ugly, stupid invective against Target – and expect it to get worse before it gets better (at least rhetorically; what are these shining lights of liberal “ethics” gonna do, switch to WalMart?)

However, one good turn deserves another; this advertisement is provided to Target free of charge.

Now, if your grocery section can actually stock some tabouli mix, we’ll be cooking with gas.

Of course, it’s not just Target that donated to Minnesota Forward; Polaris, racked by the DFL’s taxes, is holding on by the skin of its teeth.

Hope it drives some business to you guys:

Davisco Foods, based in LeSeuer?  A plucky little outstate company that’s fighting in the international market, and could use all the help (or at least the least possible amount of interference) it can get?

Hubbard Broadcasting – owner of Channel 5, KS95, Chicktalk107 and AM1500 The Sports Megilla?  Well, they do compete with my show and with Salem, which owns my show.  And they did pass on the chance to hire me as KSTP’s program director back in 1991, not that I hold a grudge.

So I’ll stick with a simple “attaboy” for HBI.

And I’ll draw the reader’s attention to the fact that these four corporations have spent about half as much on this race as the Dayton family alone, and a small fraction of what AFSCME, the SEIU, the MFT, Education Minnesota, the AFL-CIO, the UFCW and the Teamsters will end up spending.

And the rest of us – the Minnesotans who actually pay taxes – don’t have the option of boycotting any of them.

UPDATE: As I noted this morning, Minnesota’s big corporations, being in Rome, have to do as the Romans do; in addition to a decades-long tradition of being good corporate citizens, they also have been exceedingly friendly to liberal causes; as a commenter below noted, Target lets their GLBT group use the Target logo; most of your major Minnesota corporations (and I’ve worked with many of them) are very aggressive about promoting women and minorities, donating to non-profits, sending staff out to work on Habitat projects, helping subsidize mass transit, and on and on.

Careful what you wish for, lefties.  You geniuses, you.

Charlie Quimby’s main headline today:” Doing the Tip Credit Shuffle”

Charlie Quimby’s main headline tomorrow:  “I don’t think Dewey really won…”

Just saying.

A few weeks back, Tom Emmer appeared on MPR’s “Mid-Morning with Keri Miller”.

Now, while I have credited MPR’s Newsroom with making a game attempt at providing balance, MPR’s programming is pretty much a pro-DFL morass.  Miller is less overtly a DFL flak than her predecessor, future former “Air America” prop Catherine Lanpher, but only barely.

Her interview with Emmer should have been an embarassment.    Tough questioning is one thing – and a good thing! – but Miller’s stock questions were accompanied with condescention, badgering and hectoring.

So all three DFLers are going to be on Miller’s show today.  Think Miller will be as concerned about specifics as she was with Emmer?

Think we’ll see questions like “Mr. Dayton, if we end state contracting, will we just stop doing the work, or will the work go to more-expensive unionized state employees?”, or “let’s say you tax “the rich” at confiscatory rates; how much of that five billion deficit your DFL caucus ran up; how much of the deficit will it kill off?  Be specific!”  “Mr. Entenza, you talk a lot about “Green Jobs” – but the record of “Green Jobs” in the US at large and in Spain has been dismal at best.   How is your plan not doomed?”  “Speaker Kelliher – so get specific here;  your “plan” makes a lot of vague blandishments about squeezing money out of people; how exactly do you close the deficit and spend as much as you’ve promised?’

How often will Miller sharply, mockingly purr “That won’t save much!”?

Any bets?

And when, not if, the DFLers squeeze by without any serious challenge, will Erik Black sniff about how vague they all were?

I’ll be an interesting day.

I’ll be on Rob Port’s “Say Anything” show on KZFG “AM1100 The Flag” in Fargo at 6:35 Monday morning to talk about the Alliance for a Better Minnesota’s role as a front for Dayton family money in trying to buy the Minnesota gubernatorial election.

I’ll be running links to the live video stream and the chat room starting about 3AM Monday morning.  Tune in via any means necessary (including AM1100’s live stream)!

So far in this campaign, as the DFL hammers its way toward its primary next month, most of the attacks against Tom Emmer have come from a shadowy group, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”.

I’ve busted them repeatedly stretching the truth and/or lying; Channel Five followed suit earlier this week.

But who are these people?  And where did they get the money to run all these slick (if utterly truth-free) ads, and all these posh (but amateurishly-designed) websites?

Because they run through a lot of money!

2006 Campaign – We first heard of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota” (A4aBM) during the 2006 campaign.  During that outing, A4aBM spent $2,545,162 – about $2.3 million of it in ads against Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Where did that money come from?

Their donor list is as follows:

• CWA COPE $5,000
• MAPE $5,000
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $5,000
• MN AFL-CIO $5,000
• United Food Comml Workers $7,500
• Ma Mah Wi No Min Fund1 (Mille Lacs Tribe) $7,000

Unions and Native American gambling interests so far; no big surprises.

• Tom Kayser (MN) $7,500  [One of Mike Ciresi’s cronies]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $15,000
• MN Nurses $15,000
• United Steelworkers $22,000
• Afscme Council 5 – $25,000
• Lks and Plains Carpenters $25,000
• IBEW MN State Council $25,000
• Intl Union of Operating Engineers $25,000
• America Votes MN $30,040 [aka “ACORN 2.0“]
• Coalition for Progress $50,000 (Mich)
• Laborers Dist Cncl $60,000
• Pat Stryker (CO) $100,000
• SEIU MN State Cncl $100,000
• Educ. MN $135,000
• Tim Gill (CO) $300,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $746,000
• Win Minnesota $778,500;

So – out of two and a half million dollars spent, about 20% – about $449,000 – came from those whom I thought were the most likely suspects, the unions.

And nearly 2/3 came from two sources – “Alida Messinger”, and a group called “Win Minnesota”.

We’ll come back to both of them.

2010 Campaign So Far – To date in the gubernatorial campaign, A4aBM has raised $93,386 (as of this past Tuesday).  They’d spent $72,383 of it as of Tuesday (on ads that were, as we ascertained earlier this week, wall to wall bullcrap).   Of that $93,386, 79.636 of it came from the “Win Minnesota PAC”.

So that’s two election cycles in a row (so far) where “Win Minnesota” has been the leading funder of scabrous hit pieces against Republican candidates.

Win Minnesota?  Seems pretty innocuous, doesn’t it?

Who is “Win Minnesota”, And Who Funds Them? – Here’s the list of major contributors to “Win Minnesota” during the 2006 campaign.  I’ll be adding the emphasis for reasons that’ll become fairly obvious:

• Anne Bartley (San Fran) $25,000 [Linked via the Rockefeller foundation to Alida Messinger – whose maiden name was “Rockefeller” and who…well, we’ll get back to that.  She’s also linked to Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Leadership Council” and former Clinton administration figure]
• Shayna Berkowitz (Mpls) $100,000; ]
• John Cowles (Mpls) $20,000; [Why yes, the former Strib publisher!  But don’t you dare say the Strib is biased!]
• Andrew Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• David Dayton (Mpls) $5,000;
• Eric Dayton (Mpls) $1,000;
• Mark Dayton (Mpls) $25,000;
• Mary Lee Dayon (Mpls) $100,000;
• Vanessa Dayton $1,000;
• Sandra Ferry (NY) $50,000; [Yet another Rockefeller – sister of Alida Messinger]
• Barbara Forster (Mpls) $25,000; [generic liberal with deep pockets]
• Roger Hale (Mpls) $100,000; [Former Daytons’ executive]
• John Harris (PA)$20,000;
• Myron Kunin $5,000; [Hair care tycoon]
• Kim Lund (Mpls) $25,000
• Darlene Luther 47A Committee $10,000 ;
• alida Messinger (NY) $165,000;
• Midwest Values PAC (Franken) $20,000;
• Linda Pritzker (TX) $30,000; [Scionette of the Hyatt fortune, big-time liberal with deep pockets; major donor to MoveOn.org]
• Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux $10,000;
• Tina Smith (Mpls) $10,000;
• Linde Uihlein (WI)$100,000; [Schlitz heiress, long-time political plutocrat]
• Julie Zelle (MN) $5,000

That was a lot of Daytons, and people linked with the Daytons…wasn’t it?

So how about this year?

So far in 2010, “Win Minnesota” lists the following donors to “Win Minnesota”‘s current warchest (currently worth $1,173,500), again with emphasis added by me:

• Andrew Dayton $1,000
• David Dayton $50,000
• John cowles $25,000 [Remember him from 2006?]
• MaryLee Dayton $250,000
• Emily Tuttle (MN) $5,000
• Ronald Sternal (MN) $5,000
• Alida Messinger (NY) $500,000
• James Deal (MN) $50,000
• Roger Hale (MN) $10,000 [Remember him from above?]
• Barbara forster (MN) $25,000
• Democratic Governors Association $250,000;

So of the $1.1 and change million warchest, $851,000 came from Daytons, and Alida Messinger.

But wait!  There is another fund registered with the state, with a different account number but with the same email and street addresses, that has $850,000 socked away but has spent no money.

And where did that $850,000 come from?

• Alida Messinger (Mpls) $50,000
• Win Minnesota $50,000
• Education MN $250,000
• Laborers District Council $100,000
• MAPE $50,000
• IBEW MN State Council $50,000
• MN Nurses Assc $50,000
• Local 49 Engineers $25,000
• Vance Opperman $50,000
• Afscme Council 5 $50,000
• MN AFL-CIO $25,000
• SEIU MN State Council $50,000
• AFSCME (Wash DC) $50,000;

And who is this Alida Messinger who has contributed so mightily – over $1.46 million over the past four years! – to the cause of disinforming Minnesotans about Republicans?  Other than the youngest daughter of John D. Rockefeller III?

The ex-wife of candidate Mark Dayton.

So “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” is essentially a front for a group of unions and, to the tune of millions over the past four years, Mark Dayton’s family, friends and ex-wife.

They are paying millions of dollars to advertise – and hiding it from casual view behind two layers of astroturf.

Mark Dayton is trying to buy the election, but he’s taking great pains to make sure you don’t know about it.

Flip through the leftyblogs (or don’t; I mean, I pretty much have done it for you; you can thank me later).

Check out how many of them are chanting variations on “WaiterGate is the defining moment of the campaign” and/or “Emmer will never never evah! recover from WaiterGate!”

Huh.

Our liberal elites in action:  liberal talk host Bill Press says Obama’s polls are collapsing because  Americans are a bunch of spoiled brats; Brian Maloney transcribes:

I think this says more about the American people than it does about President Obama. I think it just shows once again that the American people are spoiled. Basically, spoiled– as a people, we are too critical. We are quick to rush to judgment, we are too negative, we are too impatient. Especially impatient. We want it all solved yesterday, and if you don’t, I don’t care who you are — get out of the way.

And again, basically spoiled. To the point where it makes me wonder if it’s even possible to govern today. I gotta tell you, I don’t think Abraham Lincoln — who certainly didn’t get everything right the first time — could govern today. I’m not sure Franklin Roosevelt could govern today, the way we are again. Just about like spoiled children. And it’s Americans, and it’s the media, and if we don’t get instant gratification, then screw you is basically our attitude.

Bill Press:  Get a grip.

You think Ronald Reagan got carried to success on the shoulders of the entire American people right after his election?  Please – the media certainly sniped at him nonstep (then as now).

And yet he succeeded (not that you can tell that to people like Bill Press).

Competence helps.

Joe Bodell at Minnesota “Progressive” Project  thinks he’s onto something:

Although I will take credit for “Waitergate”. Seriously, why has no one thought of that yet?

I’m nothing if not eager to answer questions.

There are two reasons, Joe:

1. The Association of Sentient Pundits has declared a ten year moratorium on “…gate” analogies, over a year ago.  “They’re overused to the point of self-caricature”, said Rajiv-Bob Singh, spokesman for the ASP.  “We found it necessary to declare a moritorium for the preservation of the pundit trade”.
2. Um, because while very few waiters make $100K, allowing for the Tip Credit will allow restaurants to hire twice as many waitstaff (or make other improvements, or take a profit in the notoriously lean hospitality industry), while all but a thin film of waitstaff won’t notice the difference, since they’re getting their money from tips anyway.   In other words, “Waitergate” (sorry, ASP) is a cutesy label in search of a controversy – and try as the media and the leftyblogs may to manufacture a controversy, the dog just don’t hunt.

I’m always happy to help.

Brian Lambert, writing at The Same Rowdy Crowd, laments the the state of journalism’s self-congratulatory, clubby order of high-priests-of-information that allowed Rolling Stone to “scoop” the establishment press (or should we say, the more-establishment-y press) on the McChrystal story; the idea that RS beat the NYTimes and the rest of the mainstream/dead-tree/agenda/establishment media to the story mortifies him…

…and strikes him as part of a larger pattern:

As bad/squirrely as McChrystal’s attitude was, as revealed in the Rolling Stone piece, I don’t know that it compares to the spectacular failure of what I facetiously refer to as “business journalism”. Talk about an off-site publicity/fanzine approach coverage. There’s no question the Pentagon and Congress will cut off access in a split second if they think you’re likely to print something negative. But on a Main Street level, where homey little Mom and Pop operations like UnitedHealth, Denny Hecker, Tom Petters, etc. operate, the coverage, until the moment of (shocking!) collapse is invariably one of uncritical reverence and, well, fanzine adoration. Jack that up to the national level and you see prevailing attitude toward AIG, Lehman Brothers, CitiGroup and Goldman, Sachs … prior to the implosion.

In other words, the “gatekeepers”, the Fifth Estate, the institution that it is claimed comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, the one that constantly tells itself and whomever us us still pay attention that it is what keeps Democracy viable, isn’t doing its job.

Of course, if you’re a Twin Cities conservative, it’s not news; the entire weight of the Twin Cities media has been harnessed to the DFL’s needs for so long it’s hard to care anymore.

So if the “establishment” media don’t actually dig out the hard stories, and exist primarily to get their collective id in the form of Barack Obama or other such sonorous bobbleheads elected to office (and obstruct and defame their party’s opponents), then what early good do any of them serve?

Sullivan links to a blog post by ex-Marine and award-winning writer, Davis Morris, who says, “It’s an unfortunate staple of Beltway journalism that has bled over into war reporting that most reporters are loathe to burn their sources by writing derogatory things about them. To be blunt, most reporters are as career-obsessed as the officers they’re interviewing and they don’t want to poison the well. This is doubly true if the officer being interviewed is a four-star general. There is a simple reciprocity involved: if you want to be invited back to ride on The Boss’s helicopter, if you want continued access, you’d better not write about his soft spot for strippers and gin.”

Substitute “business reporting” for “war”, and “CEOS” for mere “officers” and “executive jet” for “helicopter” …

Or substitute “covering state senate and US senate votes” for business or war, and “Barack Obama” for “CEOs”…

…and you get the same idea.

Are we seeing a pattern yet?

Now, Matt Taibi, also over at Rolling Stone, (on the blog), weighs in ripping Lara Logan. (Does the title, “Lara Logan, You Suck”, tell you anything?) CBS’s implausibly good-looking Chief Foreign Correspondent for essentially accusing Hastings (of the McChrystal expose) of unprofessional journalism.

Taibbi, who has written some terrific stuff about Wall St. sharks (post-facto, alas), holds nothing back defending the “outsider” journalism game from the Revenge of the “insiders”.

“I have been there, when some would-be “reputable” journalist who’s just been severely ass-whipped by a relative no-name freelancer on an enormous story fights back by going on television and, without any evidence at all, accusing the guy who beat him of cheating. That’s happened to me so often, I’ve come to expect it. If there’s a lower form of life on the planet earth than a “reputable” journalist protecting his territory, I haven’t seen it.

Which is, of course, where we bloggers come in. We have beaten the stuffing out of the mainstream media so many times we’ve lost count.    And we’ve taken the MSM’s demonstrable lack of integrity from meme to joke to truism to weary bromide in less than a decade.

So – why should anyone care what they say anymore?

Can we finally stick a fork in the entire milieu of the “professional journalist”?   Extinguish the entire cult of the high priests of knowledge?  Acknowledge the fact that the “journalistic profession” (actually a glorified craft, even at its best) is a fossil?

Bill Salisbury, the longtime Capitol reporter for the PiPress, is a generally credible reporter on Minnesota politics issues.

But even Deans of Journalism make their errors.

Salisbury wrote in this piece (to which I’ll add emphasis):

A liberal advocay [sic] group today released the first TV ads attacking Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer.

The political arm of the Alliance for a Better Minnesota spent more than $500,000 to start running the 30-second spots statewide, according to their press release.

In the interest of clarity, Salisbury should have written “A liberal advocacy group today released the first TV ads attacking Republican candidate Tom Emmer that the DFL and Minnesota left actually had to pay real money for“.

Otherwise, great job!

When the local political listserve “E-Democracy” wanted to complete its slide into being a full-on DFL echo chamber, its management instituted a “civility rule” that, essentially, held that all criticism of liberal opinion was “uncivil”, you knew things were circling the drain.

So it’s a kick to see the news that überliberal haunt “Democratic Underground” – the Dundy, as some of us call it – is h clamping down on criticism of Obama or Democrats:

“Forget about criticizing Obama,” warned PJ Gladnick, Examiner Opinion Zone blogger and operator of a blog called “DUmmie FUnnies” which pokes fun at Democratic Underground members.

So, if you suggest “that a particular point of view is required in order to be a Democrat, liberal, or progressive,” call someone a conservative, make a comment that’s “too rhetorically hot, too divisive, too extreme, or too inflammatory,” prepare to be booted

Here are some more samples of the ludicrous list of rules violations:

“Telling someone to ‘shut up,’ ‘screw you,’ ‘go away,’ ‘f–k off,’ or the like;” “belittling someone for being new or having a low post count; “negatively ‘calling out’ someone who is not participating in the discussion.”

That is just the beginning…

Insensitivity, which includes “weight or other physical characteristics” and “use of insensitive terminology.”

“Over-the-top assertions of bad faith” in Obama, or “advocating voting against Democrats, or in favor of third-party or GOP candidates; broad-brush smears against Democrats generally; broad expressions of contempt toward Democrats generally.”

“A sustained or organized effort to demean, belittle, bully, or ostracize another person; digging up or posting personal information about any private individual, on DU or elsewhere; stalking someone across discussion threads or forums.”

he final tally of new rules: 60. Whew.

Check ’em out.

The net effect of these overstated policies is to decrease discussion, Gladnick said.

He said it’s pretty easy to tell what’s been posted before and after the policies went into affect — before, there was a lot of criticism of the president, especially regarding the oil spill. Now, you can barely find comments implying a misdeed.

“Right now, you really see it about the Gulf,” he said. “Whereas before the rules, DU was rife with criticism of how Obama has handled the oil spill, now, such complaints have ceased.”

Of course, that’s the goal of campaign finance reform, the “internet kill switch” and the Fairness Doctrine.

So maybe the Dundy isn’t so far off track after all.

Eric Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project complains about John Kline:

Kline is notorious for rarely if ever appearing in public.  Kline only appears at events where the contact is either with pre-screened, conservative-only audiences or the questions are screened in advance.  Kline doesn’t debate.

Either do Keith Ellison – a prickly little man who can’t tolerate dissent – or Betty McCollum, who would be overmatched  debating Anna Nicole Smith.

Pusey is writing on behalf of “Powers“, the DFL’s endorsed victim in the 2nd CD.  Powers, a construction worker who beat Shelly Madore in the “unified” DFL in the 2nd CD, is on his way to getting maybe 30% this November.

“Plus, we’re getting lots of hits on our website after every parade or event,” he continued.  “People are checking me out further after they first meet me.”

To be honest, I’d like to see debates in every district for every race – but I can see why Kline doesn’t take the chance in a district where he has a crushing advantage, in a city where the media will wrench everything he says out of context.

Not sure that Ellison and McCollum have the same excuse…

During the 2006 election, the Star/Tribune ran a story about Alan Fine, the GOP candidate for the Minnesota house against then-candidate, now-representative Keith Ellison.

The piece, with a byline from reporters Rochelle Olson and Paul McEnroe, but which reportedly included a lot of reporting from Erik Black, dropped right before the election, and covered a 12-year-old domestic violence case in which Fine was arrested after a reported altercation with his then-wife.

I looked at the story and thought, for a variety of reasons, that it stank to high heaven.  Scott Johnson at Powerline , being a lawyer, was able to put fact, or lack of it, to the   Strib’s “coverage”; the Strib piece omitted the facts that there was no physical evidence of abuse, no charges were ever filed, the arrest was expunged from Fine’s record, that Fine had eventually won custody of their minor child (a rarity in contested divorces in Minnesota), and Fine’s ex-wife later went on to get arrested for…domestic abuse.

I asked the Strib why all these facts got left out of Olson and McEnroe’s story.

“It was an editorial decision; there wasn’t enough room”, went the response.   But that was dodgy; in an exercise in which I left out some of the puffery and marginalia from Olson and McEnroe’s original story, I got in all the facts with plenty of room to spare (in terms of word count and column-inches).

So you may ask; why did the Strib run an incomplete story that related an inaccurate story that served only to slander a Republican candidate against the candidate that the DFL and Star/Tribune both endorsed?

Do I need to start over, or what?

———-

The problem is, if last week is any indication, the regional media is getting worse – even more selective in its relation of fact, bespeaking an even more bald-faced desire to get Democrats elected.

Last week, the Strib’s Pat Doyle ran a piece purporting to report on some of Tom Emmer’s legal wranging.  I covered it at the time,  calling it a “dog bites man” story of a lawyer…practicing law, and dealing with some of the collateral stresses that come with practicing small-town law; an embezzling office manager, a complaint from a former client, some other issues.  Even on a “Dog Bites Man” level, the story was thin, runny gruel.

The single story of the four that seemed to perhaps hold water was the tale of the landscaper that, to read Doyle’s account, lost a lawsuit against Emmer and his wife Jacquie.

Now, if you take Doyle’s account at face value, Emmer looks like a parsimonious weasel who wriggled out of a bill on a technicality:

In small claims court, District Judge Kathleen Mottl awarded Poppler his entire claim. She added that Emmer’s “request for reimbursement of ‘attorney’s fees’ is wholly inappropriate, as he represented himself.”

Emmer took his appeal to District Court, where his lawyer argued that he wasn’t responsible for the landscaping bill because his wife had initiated and modified the job.

Earlier, Mottl had disagreed with that notion. “She essentially did so as her husband’s agent,” she wrote.

But District Judge Dale Mossey ruled that Emmer was not responsible for his wife’s actions. Poppler said Jacquie Emmer has not paid the $1,237.

He said he’s considering suing her, but he is concerned about attorney’s fees.

Sounds pretty damaging.

And sources out on the campaign trail tell me that the tale has raised some eyebrows.

But Doyle’s story is missing some key facts.

———-

A Minnesota Tenth District Court document, “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order” for Case Number CV-07-7141, filed on December 28, 2007, includes the following “Findings of Fact” (transcribed from the order), relates the conclusions of the judge, after a December 13 hearing in Buffalo between Tony Poppler and defeandant Tom Emmer.:

1. In May of 2006, Jacquie Emmer contacted Plaintiff, seeking the performance of landscaping work.  Plaintiff and Ms. Emmer discussed the scope of the work and the price to perform that work.  Plaintiff and Ms. Emmer entered into an oral contract to perform the work.
2. On June 22 and 23, 2007, Plaintiff performed the work requested.  During the work, Mrs. Emmer requested additional work to be performed and Plaintiff agreed to perform it.  Part of this additional work included removal of certain dirt.  Mrs. Emmer and Plaintiff did not discuss the specific cost of the additional work.
3. Defended is married to Mrs. Emmer.  During the course of the project, Defendant looked over some of the work that had been performed and said that it looked good.
4. Defendant never asked Plaintiff to perform any work whatsoever.  defendant never agreed to pay for removal of dirt.  There is no evidence that Defendant directed Mrs. Emmer to seek landscaping services or to remove dirt.
5. Plaintiff has been compensated for all materials and labor except for, possibly, the removal of dirt.  Plaintiff does not seek recovery from Defendant or Mrs. Emmer under any theory of contract.  Plaintiff does not seek recovery from Mrs. Emmer under any theory.  Plaintiff seeks recovery from Defendant on a quasi contract theory of unjust enrichment.

Re-read number five.   It says that, as a matter of fact, Poppler didn’t try to sue Mrs. Emmer, the person with whom he had the “contract”.  He’s trying to get the money out of Tom Emmer for “unjust enrichment“.

The “Conclusions of Law” are pretty succinct:

1. Plaintiff’s performance of landscaping work at the direction of Mrs. Emmer does not unjustly enrich Defendant. Schumacher v. Schumacher, 627 N.W. 2d 725, 729 (Minn App. 2001).

In other words, the basis of Poppler’s suit – that Tom Emmer was “unjustly enriched” by the flap between he and Jacquie Emmer – had no basis in law.

And the “Order for Judgment” is one simple line:

1. Defendant is entitled to dismissal of Plaintiff’s claims, with prejudice, and to tax his costs.

I’m no lawyer, but it looks as if Mr. Poppler and Jacquie Emmer had a misunderstanding about billing – even though as the court directly noted, he was paid for everything but the dirt removal.  Poppler went after Tom Emmer and, after an appeal, lost, and was compelled to pay Tom Emmer’s court costs.

A source with knowledge of the situation emailed: “Basically, [Poppler] didn’t sue Jacquie because he couldn’t – he did not have a contract and he would have lost. So he tried to sue Tom for “unjust enrichment.” In the findings of fact, the judge wrote that he didn’t have a case against Jacquie. He ruled that the guy sued the wrong person. And he gave Tom court costs. A clear victory for the Emmers“.

But to hear Pat Doyle tell the story, you’d think it was one of a pettifogging attorney welching out on a contractor, and getting away with it on a petty technicality.

Pat Doyle would seem to have printed all the news that fit…the Strib’s narrative.  It’s of a piece with the 2006 smear of Alan Fine, the 2000 smear by association of Rod Grams (reporting on his son Morgan’s addication problems while omitting the fact that Grams had had very little contact with his son; his ex-wife had custory), and other among the Strib’s greatest hits, and might prompt a thinking person to say “there’s a pattern here”.

I will be asking Pat Doyle for comment.  Don’t hold your breath; most Strib and PiPress reporters seem to think they’re above answering questions from peasants.

Say that a news reporter, hypothetically, writes an article in which he both selectively omits crucial facts about a story in order to present a picture of a candidate to present a technically-accurate but in fact misleading picture of that candidate to the public, and plagiarizes another journalist.to get some of that material.

Which of these infractions will get the reporter’s editors, managers, ombudspeople and colleagues the most exercised?

The plagiarism, naturally; the story will generate abashed corrections, a firing, in-depth-analyses and apologies, and endless discussions and not a few news stories about the reporter’s offenses against the craft.

The selective reporting?  Despite the fact that it presented an ultimately misleading impression of an important story, journalists will largely wash their hands of it.  The editors will nod their heads and say “everything in the story was factual, and things were left out because of space constraints”.  The ombudsmen will write a piece on how perhaps more care is required in sourcing, but the story was ultimately factual, and thus fair.  Other journalists will shrug their shoulders and say “sh*t happens”.

And for the candidate, it just did.

The most interesting thing about the Washington Post/David Weigel case isn’t so much the incident itself – Weigel’s participation in a hush-hush liberal list-server with many of the nation’s “elite” left-leaning journalists, his off-the-record slurs against conservatives, or the fact that a fellow “elite” lefty journalist decided to dump a bunch of the offending emails.

Although that seems to be the part that the WaPo thinks is most important.  The Post’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, took a whack at writing the WaPo’s nostra culpa (or perhaps Weigel culpa) yesterday, hitting all the important points – if you’re a left-leaning journalist:

Weigel bears responsibility for sarcastic and scornful comments he made in e-mails leaked from a supposedly private listserv called “Journolist,” started in 2007 by fellow Post blogger and friend Ezra Klein. Weigel’s e-mails showed strikingly poor judgment and revealed a bias that only underscored existing complaints from conservatives that he couldn’t impartially cover them.

I read this, and I thought “liberal journalist sniffing down his nose about conservatives when he thinks he’s in private?  That’s not even a “dog bites man” story.  That’s a “dog pees in grass” story”.

But his departure also raises questions about whether The Post has adequately defined the role of bloggers like Weigel. Are they neutral reporters or ideologues?

This is a question that can only come from Planet Beltway.

Here’s a better question:  a newspaper which is widely believed to have a left-of-center editorial slant hires a reporter from the liberal propaganda-blog Washington Independent (a corporate cousin of the Minnesota “Independent”, both run by the ironically-named “Center for Independent Media”, all of which were founded by liberals with deep pockets to spread propaganda for the Democratic Party), to essentially serve as a journalistic anthropologist, a Jane Goodall-like figure to translate the mysterious ways of all those inscrutable enigmas between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre.

So why should the half of the American people and news consumers who identify as conservatives not see that as overt, institutionalized condescension?  As one of the most powerful media organs in the country telling its readership “we will have one of our specialists translate all this vaguely-scary, wingnutty, teabaggy stuff into acceptable, non-accented English”?

Weigel did an interview last winter on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross (full transcript here) where talking to a elite-media-club member in good standing Terri Gross, he lets his guard down.

Mr. WEIGEL: He was elected in 1984 and he left on his own volition in 2002. I mean he was in no danger of being defeated. He just retired to become, like a lot of former congressmen, a lobbyist with some political interests.
GROSS: Okay. So what are his interests in funding the Tea Party movement?

Mr. WEIGEL: One thing Armey would say is that he doesnt fund the Tea Party movement. He loves to contrast what they see as union thugs and ACORN putting Democratic rallies together with Tea Party people gassing up their cars and driving to Washington for his rallies. There’s some dishonesty there.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. WEIGEL: I mean Freedom Works is always on the scene. It helps set these things up. It’s got full-time activists who help get permits. And I mean I’ve been to a couple of events at Freedom Works’ office where theyll have huge, you know, nice buffet spreads and things like that for Tea Party activists and conservative bloggers to meet and strategize.

Mr. WEIGEL: He was elected in 1984 and he left on his own volition in 2002. I mean he was in no danger of being defeated. He just retired to become, like a lot of former congressmen, a lobbyist with some political interests.

GROSS: Okay. So what are his interests in funding the Tea Party movement?

Mr. WEIGEL: One thing Armey would say is that he doesnt fund the Tea Party movement. He loves to contrast what they see as union thugs and ACORN putting Democratic rallies together with Tea Party people gassing up their cars and driving to Washington for his rallies. There’s some dishonesty there.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. WEIGEL: I mean Freedom Works is always on the scene. It helps set these things up. It’s got full-time activists who help get permits. And I mean I’ve been to a couple of events at Freedom Works’ office where theyll have huge, you know, nice buffet spreads and things like that for Tea Party activists and conservative bloggers to meet and strategize

Not that Weigel was systematically unfair – although he strains to connect the John Birch Society to Glenn Beck.  Read the transcript for yourself; you be the judge.

The WaPo’s Alexander asks:

And, given the disdainful comments in his e-mails, there is the separate question of whether he was miscast from the outset when he was hired earlier this year.

The bigger question is “how could anyone who was paying attention “miscast” Weigel as anything but a left-leaning writer who would treat conservatism with the same giggly, hipster post-irony of an Ira Glass or a Robert Sagel?”   Weigel’s history is pretty well-known,   Even I could have told them; Weigel spent some time years ago (ten years ago at least) covering a Minnesota electronic-democracy group; while Weigel seemed to be a fair enough guy, there was no mistaking his political sympathies.

But the problem isn’ t that a liberal paper sent a liberal to cover, and translate, conservatism. It isn’t even that that reporter turned out to say naughty things about conservatives when he thought he was off the record.  Most conservatives accept that as the norm.

So the WaPo’s editors miss the point when they say…:

“I don’t think you need to be a conservative to cover the conservative movement,” [editor] Narisetti told me late today. “But you do need to be impartial… in your views.”

He said that when Weigel was hired, he was vetted in the same way that other prospective Post journalists are screened. He interviewed with a variety of top editors, his writings were reviewed and his references were checked, Narisetti said.

“But we’re living in an era when maybe we need to add a level” of inquiry, he said. “It may be in our interests to ask potential reporters: ‘In private… have you expressed any opinions that would make it difficult for you to do your job.”

…because the real point is not that reporters can be “impartial”, any more than I can.  They need merely to be honest about their biases – because there is no such thing as a neutral reporter.  Objectivity is a myth – and the idea that the WaPo thought they could pass off a secret club-member like Weigel as “objective” isn’t nearly as insulting as the fact that whole “conservatives in the mist” exercise entirely about a sense of preening cultural superiority.

Alas, it took only one listserv participant to bundle up Weigel’s archived comments and start leaking them outside the group. The result is that Weigel lost his job. But the bigger loss is The Post’s standing among conservatives.

There, Mr. Alexander needn’t worry; the Post never had much to lose.

The other question that actually matters relates to “Journolist”, the hush-hush email discussion group where “elite” left-leaning  journalists swapped ideas and mapped out approaches to big stories.  Journolist was founded by Ezra Klein, formerly of the ultraleftyblog Pandagon, with whom I went ’round and ’round back when blogging was mostly done for the love of the game.

And Klein, like Alexander, is mostly concerned about the damage this flap does to his craft-within-a-craft, the pseudo-journalistic institutional blog:

In a column about Stanley McChrystal today, David Brooks talks about the union of electronic text, unheralded transparency, 24/7 media and a culture that has not yet settled on new rules for what is, and isn’t, private, and what is, and isn’t, newsworthy. “The exposure ethos, with its relentless emphasis on destroying privacy and exposing impurities, has chased good people from public life, undermined public faith in institutions and elevated the trivial over the important,” he writes.

There’s a lot of faux-intimacy on the Web. Readers like that intimacy, or at least some of them do. But it’s dangerous. A newspaper column is public, and writers treat it as such. So too is a blog. But Twitter? It’s public, but it feels, somehow, looser, safer. Facebook is less public than Twitter, and feels even more intimate. A private e-mail list is not public, but it is electronically archived text, and it is protected only by a password field and the good will of the members. It’s easy to talk as if it’s private without considering the possibility, unlikely as it is, that it will one day become public, and that some ambitious gossip reporters will dig through it for an exposure story…

Well, yeah.  Klein’s right here; I study how people and computers interact for a living, and faux intimacy and lowered inhibitions are why online discussions quickly degenerate into name calling, why online dating is an intense whirlwind, and why online commerce, with its instant gratification, is so popular.

But the real story in this flap – and the real damage it does to “journalism” – has little to do with the formalities of the journalistic craft, or the pathologies of online communication.

Klein:

A newspaper reporter opposing the Afghanistan war in a news story is doing something improper. A newspaper reporter telling his wife he opposes the war is being perfectly proper. If someone had been surreptitiously taping that reporter’s conversations with his wife, there’d be no doubt that was a violation of privacy, and the gathered remarks and observations were illegitimate.

Right.  So let’s continue the analogy.

Dozens of newspaper reporters who oppose the Afghanistan war gather online, in a “secure” undisclosed virtual location they share with other journalists and plenty of hard-left pundits, to discuss how they can affect the coverage, to shade it to a desired political end.

Ethical or not?

What do you think the Washington Post’s ombudsman would say?

The fact that the Washington Post felt it needed to report on conservatism as a matter of cultural anthropology is insulting, but just dumb; a waste of resources, and of credibility to the conservative community even before the Weigel flap.

The fact that “journalists” are discussing how to politically shade their coverage to achieve desired political ends – as some of Weigel’s emails showed – is the real issue here.

I’d love to see an editor, an ombudsman and a journalist address that.  All the other questions are just side issues.

Need month-old debunked out-of-context defmatory news?

The DFL website is your one stop shop.

Does anything about this “story” sound familiar to you?

Tom Emmer recently came under fire for his ties to the organization You Can Run But You Can’t Hide International, and its leader Bradlee Dean who has equated homosexuals with pedophiles and encouraged his followers to stand up and “enforce God’s laws” on their own.

Why yes – if you read Shot In The Dark for the truth about current events, you have.

When asked to address his relationship with Dean and his organization, Emmer simply said “these are good people.”

Now, if you are smart you know everything that the DFL say about Tom Emmer is a filthy, rotting lie, and if it’s in the Minnesoros “Independent” or any other leftyblog you need to distrust but verify.

Yes, I said “filthy rotting lie”.  From the categorical debunking of Andy Birkey’s out-of-context hit piece earlier this month:

The “ties”, according to Birkey, are:

An almost-two-year-old “donation” of $250, in the form of buying seats at a You Can Run benefit dinner in November of 2008.  This, by the way, was long before YCR was on the regional media radar – although Birkey continues to refer to this “donation” with context and time frame carefully buried.

Tom Emmer stopping by and getting photographed at the YCR booth at the Minnesota State GOP Convention (as he had stopped by every single gathering of conservatives anywhere in Minnnesota for the past year).

An appearance on “Sons Of Liberty”.  By that token, RT Rybak, a former NARN guest, must be a conservative sympathizer.

Tom Emmer calling Bradlee Dean and his associates “nice people“.   It’s perhaps an inconvenient truth to Andy Birkey that Bradlee Dean and Jake MacMillan are nice people.  They may have different beliefs than Andy Birkey and, also, me.  And perhaps it’s easier to believe people who disagree with you are foul people with horns growing out their heads.  But Dean and MacMillan and their wives and associates are a genial bunch.

And that’s it.  That, according to Birkey, is the extent of Tom Emmer’s “link” to YCR.

There is no involvement.  To say otherwise is a lie.

But this is the DFL we’re talking about:

“Is Tom Emmer kidding? Good people indeed,” said DFL spokesperson Donald McFarland. “Tom Emmer stood up for a man who called members of the GLBT community predators, who has encouraged violence against homosexuals and would like to impose his narrow-minded beliefs on the whole of America.

OK, Donald McFarland, here’s your choice:

• Show is where Emmer “stood up for”Bradlee Dean”, or
• Admit you’re lying.

We’ll be in touch.

To:  Ben Adler

From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant

Re:  Your supernaturally stupid Newsweek piece

Mr. Adler,

I’m convinced that your piece, “Why doesn’t the media interrogate Tea Partiers’ Beliefs”, was a “black” parody written by a Tea Partier as a spoof of arrogant, agenda-driven inside-the-beltway dismissal and the media’s own smug self-satisfaction.

You wrote:

The media’s enduring, and understandable, fascination with the Tea Party movement continues unabated, as this weekend’s coverage demonstrates. Unfortunately, what appear to be false notions of objectivity—or perhaps a lack of interest in policy—is preventing that coverage from illuminating what the movement actually represents and what it would do if empowered.

“The Media” started its coverage of the Tea Parties in April of 2009 first by trying to pretend it didn’t exist.  Then it collaborated with the Democrats’ juvenile mockery for most of the spring. Then it dutifully chanted that the Tea Party was a bunch of violent rednecks.   Then it dutifully chanted in turn that it was a bunch of rich bitter white guys.

No, Ben Adler, I’m pretty convinced that it’s you that’s completely ignorant…

…no.  That’s unfair.  Or, rather, too fair.  I’m convinced it’s you that is driven completely by an institutional narrative about all those uppity peasants.

Case in point: the Associated Press just published a 2,300-word stemwinder examining how and why a variety of individuals became involved in the Tea Party movement without once asking what precisely the platform consists of. It tells you the back stories of representative Tea Partiers, dutifully quotes their antipathy toward government, taxes, and deficit spending, and their horror at the accusation that they are motivated by racial animus. But the reporter seems never to have posed any serious questions about what tradeoffs they would make to achieve their stated goals.

Well, that would be a fair criticism, if it weren’t for the fact that you pretty clearly have substituted “parrot the narrative” for “asking serious questions”, yourself.

No, really:

The closer you look, the more the Tea Party just looks like any other right-wing populist movement: it is motivated by fear of immigration, fear of new religious modes of expression, racial resentments, opposition to gay rights, and claims about taxes and spending that often don’t add up under scrutiny. Isn’t it time that we stopped treating the Tea Partiers like a curious sociological phenomenon and starting holding them to the same standards we should hold all mainstream politicians to?

Like the standards Newsweek held Barack Obama to?

Ben Adler:  you are the one that deserves the questions; your piece clearly oozes fear and beliefs that, ahem, could use the scrutiny – beliefs the AP article undercut, which is no doubt why  you are circling the wagons.

So here’s what we can do, Ben:  come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network with Ed Morrissey and I this weekend.  We can have a dialogue; you can ask us those probing questions about the Tea Parties that you’ve been fantasizing about.  It’ll be a two-way deal, of course; we can get to the bottom of your own ignorance, and maybe even enlighten you a bit.

Or at the very least start holding you to the same standard we should all mainstream media figures.

That is all,

Mitch Berg

The Strib goes after Tom Emmer’s professional life in a hit piece today by Pat Doyle.

The piece, titled “Emmer’s Feisty Spirit Fuels Legal Fights”, relates four stories:

Emmer has mixed it up in civil cases and filed a report that led to a criminal case, court documents show. He has aggressively litigated some cases. His wrangling over money or other business matters is described in court documents, an ethics probe and interviews.

As opposed to the way the rest of the world behaves when swindled, dued and attacked?

The first incident related to an office manager that swindled over $7,000 from Emmer’s law office:

McElroy’s lawyer, Chad Throndset, wrote in one court document that Emmer was “scapegoating” her to justify the firing and “to cover up illegal and unethical business practices, client claims of illegal billing and legal malpractice, and to create a smoke screen.” Emmer called that accusation “unfounded and libelous” in one court document.

Three years after the case began, prosecutors agreed to “suspend prosecution” until Oct. 20, 2010, when the charges will be dismissed if she avoids similar charges, pays Emmer $14,146 and writes him a letter of apology. “The case was resolved with an order for full repayment of the moneys taken and an apology,” Emmer said in his written statement.

In other words, Emmer got redress from someone who’d swindled him.    Is that “feisty” or “temperamental”, or a victim’s right under our criminal justice system?

It’s Emmer 1, DFL/Strib 0.

Next – a landscaper sued Jacquie Emmer for shorting a payment for some landscaping work:

Emmer gave him $2,000 and said in his statement that the landscaper “overcharged for work.”

When Poppler took Emmer to small claims court to recover the remaining $1,237, Emmer sought $3,600 in attorney’s fees for his time in small claims court. Poppler didn’t back off.

In small claims court, District Judge Kathleen Mottl awarded Poppler his entire claim. She added that Emmer’s “request for reimbursement of ‘attorney’s fees’ is wholly inappropriate, as he represented himself.”

Emmer took his appeal to District Court, where his lawyer argued that he wasn’t responsible for the landscaping bill because his wife had initiated and modified the job.

Earlier, Mottl had disagreed with that notion. “She essentially did so as her husband’s agent,” she wrote.

But District Judge Dale Mossey ruled that Emmer was not responsible for his wife’s actions. Poppler said Jacquie Emmer has not paid the $1,237.

This bit leaves a slew of questions.  What were Emmer’s grounds for withholding the money – and I mean all of the grounds?  And why did the District Court toss the suit?

Emmer 1, Strib/DFL 0, one tie.

In another case, a woman sued Emmer in 1996 for a collision in which she’d been injured.  Emmer, it was claimed, ran a stop sign; Emmer claimed the sign was obscured.

Emmer’s attorney, Michael Schwartz, said the claims against the state and county for sign maintenance “served to protect the rights and safety of all motorists in the area.” He said all claims were settled.

So it’s Emmer 1, Strib/DFL 0, one tie, one “Get a life, he defended himself”.

Next:  Emmer sued someone for injuring him:

Emmer also sued a Dakota County man in 2003 for leg injuries Emmer said he received when the man’s vehicle struck him while he was standing in a driveway, according to court documents. Emmer claimed partial disability. The case went to mediation and Emmer won a $187,500 award. But the Dakota County man’s lawyer had difficulty getting Emmer to sign a release as part of the deal, court records show. After pressing for a year for Emmer to sign, the lawyer threatened to compel his signature. “Whether it be simple neglect, such neglect is inexcusable,” attorney Nicholas Klehr wrote in a court document. He said last week that the case was resolved to his client’s satisfaction.

“The claims were amicably and equitably resolved and the settlement was finalized without court involvement,” said Schwartz, who said selection of an annuity company to handle some of the payout delayed the process.

So it’s Emmer 1, Strib/DFL 0, one tie, one “Get a life, he defended himself”, and one “Gosh, legal proceedings taking a long time, notify the media…oh, wait you did!”

A client made an ethics claim against Emmer for a bill that’d caught him by surprise:

The director of the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility rejected the recommendation, saying that the rule doesn’t require regular written billing and that Emmer claimed he discussed the fee structure at the very beginning.

“Best practices would indicate that sending clients regular billing statements would be prudent in preventing situations like between Mr. Emmer and Mr. Ahlstrom,” the director added in the office’s written determination.

I’m not sure what percentage of lawyers get some kind of ethics complaint or another, but I’m told it’s rather high.

So it’s Emmer 2, Strib/DFL 0, one tie, one “Get a life, he defended himself”, and one “Gosh, legal proceedings taking a long time, notify the media…oh, wait you did!”

Finally – Emmer and a former law partner had a falling-out:

The dispute was settled. Lively said he and Emmer are barred from talking about the dispute because of a confidentiality agreement, but added, “It was just time to part ways. … Tom and I had been friends for a very, very long time and I really hold no animosity toward him at all.”

Said Emmer: “The case was resolved with the terms being honored.”

So it’s Emmer 2, Strib/DFL 0, one tie, one “Get a life, he defended himself”, one “Gosh, legal proceedings taking a long time, notify the media…oh, wait you did!”, and one “go figure, lawyers sueing each other, and how about some details?”

Can you see why the media wants to get at Emmer’s plan?

QUESTION:  Do you suppose Pat Doyle will cover this story?:

After a leave of absence, necessitated by health problems, from his position as a State Office Manager for Senator Dayton Brad Hanson was fired. He subsequently sued his former employer for discrimination on the basis of a disability and for failure to pay overtime compensation under the Congressional Accountability Act. Dayton argued, and continues to argue before the Supreme Court, that the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution grants him immunity from this action and therefore the suit must be dismissed. This case will turn on the issue of whether an administrative or personnel decision, such as firing an employee, is a legislative act within the meaning of the Clause.

Any bets?

Last week, we discussed the media flap over what amounts, in the end, to Tom Emmer’s not releasing details on how he plans to change Minnesota government until he actually has an opponent.

Politics In Minnesota Weekend summed up the details:

On Monday, Tom Scheck reported a piece for MPR that digs into Emmer’s publicly stated plans to downsize state government.

The Emmer campaign responds via an “Emmer Truth” section of its website, implying that claims made by Sheck’s story are inaccurate and cherry-picked.

Enter Dave Mindeman (mnpACT!) and Eric Black (MinnPost), who call EmmerTruth “pretty weak” and “winging it.” Jon Tevlin at the Strib also gets his two cents in, basically repeating the cries for Emmer to get specific.

Mitch Berg (Shot in the Dark) and Gary Gross (Let Freedom Ring) hit back, generally with two points: Scheck’s and Black’s reports wereinaccurate/mangled the context, and it’s a legitimate and sensible strategy for Team Emmer not to give up the “master plan” so early in the campaign season.

Charlie Quimby (Across the Great Divide) comments on Berg’s blog: “I think if you put Emmer’s full statement in front [of] 100 voters, not many would find it definitive or conclusive or clarified.” And Berg in reply: “As to how 100 random users would perceive Emmer’s statement … I don’t disagree; presentation counts … But is it the media’s job to relate the actual facts, or to reinforce confusion?”

A terrific question, if a little antagonistic in the wording.

Antagonistic?  Moi?

The piece, by…well, I never got the name, but it’s someone on the Politics In Minnesota staff – summed up the issues pretty well, so far.

But perhaps more to the point, there was nothing confusing in the MPR piece. In fact, both EmmerTruth and the conservative blogs skip the entire point of Scheck’s reporting while digging around in the semantics: Emmer, as a candidate, has promised major redesigns of government, but the programs and agencies he’s highlighted so far are playing with thousands or millions of dollars, not billions. The “could not should” distinction is sort of absurd.

To be fair to Gary and I, we were reacting to the presenting issue; we had leftybloggers and the media chanting “Emmer said he’d hack a third of State Government!”. 

But the real issue is the beef.

Now, to most of the Twin Cities media, that question is…:

 If the media’s job is to relate actual facts, then it’s perfectly reasonable — no, responsible — for the media to ask Emmer, the candidate for Minnesota’s highest office, what he would do if elected. If the answer is, for now, that he’s not sure, then it’s the media’s responsibility to say so.

True. 

But it’d be useful for the media to also note that Dayton (and Kelliher, Entenza and Horner’s, not that it matters) plans are no more articulate; if Emmer is saying “Cut Cut Cut!”, as John Tevlin wrote, then the Four Stooges are responding “Tax Tax Tax!”, with no more articulation.

I hate to repeat myself, but I think I summed up my most serious response to this in my response to Erik Black last week:

Black:  And [Emmer] owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)

Let me get this straight:  the DFL candidates have been “unclear”, but Emmer “owes” everyone an explanation now …?

Why does the MinnPost hold Republicans to a different standard than the DFL?

When Mark Dayton and the other three soon-to-be-chum contenders appear on Midmorning with Keri Miller, will Miller press any of them for details on how their “Tax, Baby, Tax!” agenda is going to lead to more (non-public-employee union) jobs?  How they lead to recovery?  How they will defy history by actually improving the economy?

Will Nick Coleman and John Tevlin and Lori Sturdevant demand more details amid their inevitable victorian vapours?

Will Erik Black and Tom Scheck write pieces noting how vague they’re being?

So there are two questions for everyone that’s demanding answers from Emmer, the Tom Schecks and Erik Blacks and John Tevlins and Charlie Quimbies:

1. Where is the scrutiny of Dayton and the other three?  The double standard was plain as day in the Black quote above; why do you, as a group, observe it?  Or does supporting the status quo (only more of it) get one a pass with the media?
2. I asked this before, I’ll ask it again:  What is in it for Emmer to put his entire platform out there six weeks before the DFL has a candidate, for the DFL-leaning media to spin and soften up while the DFL goes through its primary contortions?  How would that benefit Emmer and the MNGOP in their quest to win the race?  Because this race isn’t about making the media’s job easier, or making the DFL’s job easier; it’s about saving Minnesota.  Why does Emmer “owe” Minnesota any more than his opponents do?

 A listening tour is a fine populist idea, but with Minnesota accumulating red ink in Deepwater Horizon-like volumes, a candidate — from any party — should be able to talk state finances in real terms. We don’t buy the idea that campaigns for office build policy proposals around a master plan that remains absolutely secret until the last possible moment.

“Last possible moment?”  Of course not.   What’s unreasonable about waiting until he faces the real opponent, as opposed to the opponent’s legions of ringers?  Because Mark Dayton isn’t his only, or even his most serious, opponent in this race.

The Tea Party and the avalanche of dissatisfaction that are at Emmer’s back are driven by a fairly articulate demand for real answers; if Emmer doesn’t do better than the “Tax Baby Tax!” crowd, that’ll be a big problem.

I”m pretty comfortable he will have the goods on August 11, when Mark Dayton finally starts his campaign.

Imagine how much  better criminal justice would be if prosecutors and judges worked with defense attorneys to speed up the judicial system?

Or if accountants and auditors were on the same team?

Or if the President, Congress and the Supreme Court spent less time checking and balancing each other, and more time working on ways to help each other increase their power?

Well, no.  They are all terrible ideas.  The whole point of having adversarial systems built into government is to ensure there’s accountability, or at the very least a speed bump in the way of unlimited power on the part of CEOs, Presidents, Governors, Congresses…

That’s why of all of Jesse Ventura’s mind-dissolvingly stupid ideas in his time-warpingly stupid administration, the dumbest of all was his constant lobotomized yapping for a unicameral legislature, so government could “get stuff done”.  Of course, keeping government from getting “stuff done” with impunity is one of the great virtues of both the bicameral legislature and the two-party system.

Of course, the Minnesota DFL has never understood this.  Their primary frame of historical reference is the period nationally between 1933 and 1980, and in Minnesota until about 2003;

This is a good thing; it means everyone’s working to hold everyone accountable.

Which may explain a lot why Doug Grow thinks this is a good idea:

The relationship between Mary Cathryn Ricker and Valeria Silva stands in sharp contrast to the common education confrontations that have dogged public education in Minnesota in recent years.

Ricker, head of the St. Paul teachers union, and Silva, the St. Paul school district’s superintendent, meet often and banter easily.

“Mary Cathryn asked me to attend a workshop (sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers),” recalled Silva.

“It was on a weekend,” Ricker said.

“I told her I’d go, but if I’m going on a weekend, it proves I must love you,” Silva said.

The two women laughed.

An alliance between the union and the superintendent’s office is no easy thing to maintain. Silva admits that even some members of her high-ranking staff are leery of how quick the superintendent is to pick up the phone and call Ricker.

Well, I’m glad someone at 360 Colborn is doing their job…

And Ricker suspects that at least some teachers are uncomfortable with a union leader who spends considerable time at district headquarters.

Which may be the most depressing commentary on the mentality in public education today that I’ve ever heard.

Silva is distressed by the public attitudes toward teachers — and the teaching profession. It’s hard enough, she said, to attract people into the profession, given the relatively meager starting paying, compared with other professions. But after years of bashing, fewer and fewer people even believe the profession deserves respect.

“Any other culture,” Silva said, “a teacher is greatly valued. That’s been lost here.”

Ms. Silva: get back to me about this episode, which your district has been trying to ignore for five years.   Until you have an answer that wouldn’t insult my dog’s intelligence, I won’t value your “profession”.

Maybe Mary Rickert will ask on my behalf?

Channel Five is going to be releasing their next round of Minnesota Gubernatorial campaign polling today; they’ll reportedly be running DFL Primary numbers in the afternoon newscasts, DFL/Emmer matchup numbers at 10. 

It’s going to be a lot closer than the last poll Channel Five ran, which showed Emmer with a nice lead; it could very well show Emmer running behind.

The DFL/Establishment Media (pardon the redundancy) and their minions in the Sorosphere will try to spin this as a setback for Emmer;  their goal is to demoralize you, the conservative in the street.

Don’t buy the hype.  And don’t let anyone else buy it.

The GOP convention is six weeks in the past, and Emmer’s campaign is in the “face to face” stage; Tom is using his two month head start to travel the state, meeting people, shaking hands, kissing babies (or teaching them how to check) and listening to people around Greater Minnesota.  He has no ads running; the only “news” his campaign is making right now is the manufactured variety the DFL/Media toss out there.  

In the meantime, the DFL are moving into the peak of their primary season; they’ve got TV ads moving, they’re in full campaign mode, and they – at least, Anderson-Kelliher and Entenza and Horner – are working full-bore to increase their name ID (which is the least of former Senator Dayton’s problems).   They’re in the news – and even if you leave out the mainstream press’ outbreaks of partisan fawning, they are filling more space right now.

And the Emmer vs. DFL numbers will be skewed by the fact that none of the DFLers are “for real” yet; since none of them is the official candidate, none of them has any realy sticky negatives – unlike Emmer, against whom the DFL and their drinking buddies in the media are circling their wagons. 

So it’s to be expected Emmer’s numbers are going to cool off just a tad.  Indeed, if the Dems don’t post a lead of some sort, against a GOP candidate who is still building stateswide name ID, it could be considered a bit of a slap in the face at this point in the campaign, under the circumstances.

Remember – in September in 2002, Tim Pawlenty was trailing Roger Moe and Tim Penny, if you believed the polls.

So stay strong, Real Americans.  We have not yet begun to fight.

Who would win if two major networks got into a gunfight over Helen Thomas’ seat in the White House press conference room?

Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon says Bloomberg is a bad choice for Helen Thomas’ seat because it’s a “financial niche news outlet,” but Bloomberg’s Al Hunt contends that “no news organization is more committed to Washington or White House reporting” than his employer.

Answer:  the world.

Speed Gibson has a question that hadn’t occurred to me yet:

A name popped into my head today: Bob Woodward. I wonder if he’s still working. If he’s working, I wonder what he’s working on. I wonder if he’s working on … President Barack Obama, much as he did President George W. Bush, multiple times. Woodward’s “Bush at War” was published in November of 2002, recounting the first few months after the 9/11 attack. So, will there be a Woodward book this fall of 2010 on some aspect of the historic Presidency of Barack Obama?

It’s not like there’s not material:

The problem is, of course, where to start. The Stimulus that didn’t. National socialist health care? The Gulf oil spill? His mess of a foreign policy? The bailouts? Where to start? Maybe it won’t be Woodward, but I have to believe some Obama perspectives will be appearing in time for Christmas.

Well, no.  Writing about Obama would be racist.

Back during Desert Storm, Saturday Night Live – which still had Phil Hartmann, Dennis Miller, Jan Hooks and Dana Carvey, and was hence still funny at the time – parodied one of the military press conferences that were such a staple of the coverage of that war, way back when.

In it, a stoic military officer (played, if I remember correctly, by Kevin Nealon) stood, trying to remain unruffled, as “journalists” asked a series of increasingly absurd questions:

REPORTER:  “Tell us, Colonel:  what will be the targets, strike times and units involved in any air raids today?” 

OFFICER:  “Um, I am afraid I can’t, er, discuss that…”

ANOTHER REPORTER:  “Colonel, when exactly will the ground attack take place, and where?”

OFFICER:  “Um…”

The media’s coverage of Tom Emmer’s gubernatorial campaign reminds me of that skit.

I noticed this bit in Erik Black’s piece in the MinnPost that I covered yesterday (and that Black’s old colleague John Tevlin, in true “Circle The Wagons!” style, also covers today, in nearly identical thoughts if not words):

[Emmer] owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)

I asked yesterday – Emmer “owes” the people “straight talk”, while the DFLers merely get a mild joshing nod?

Still, I’ve heard this from a few people; “If Emmer’s so great, and if he’s going to rebuild government, then where is his master plan on how he’s going to do the whole thing?”

I gotta confess sometimes, I”m curious myself.

But it doesn’t take a political consultant or an especially curious journalist to see that…:

1. We are still two months away from having a DFL candidate.
2. We do, however, have a huge pool of establishment journalists, “alternative” media figures who are dying for material, and…
3. …a legion of DFL hacks and flacks whose mission it is to try to take the battle to Tom Emmer during these two months, to try to derail any momentum he builds while the Dems are noodling around with their primary process (and, let’s be honest, most of the “establishment” media in #2 above is at the very least sympathetic with, if not actively working to promote at some level, the DFL).

So with that in mind, tell me – what sense would it make for Tom Emmer to release “the master plan” for his administration, two months before there is an alternative to compare it to?  All that would do is give the DFL and the media (that is, let’s be honest, largely on the DFL’s side) time to define, frame, and re-spin it, long before the Dems ever have a candidate, much less a “plan” to “scrutinize”.  Which I put in scare quotes, since I’m not willing to take it on faith that anyone in the Twin Cities’ establishment media will “scrutinize” the DFL’s “plan” so much as run cover for it; that’ll be, as usual, the job of the conservative alternative media.

What’s Emmer’s plan?  I dunno.  His rhetoric is certainly building up expectations; if he’s not swinging for the fence, he’s at least aiming for the outfield. He’s be nuts not to, in my humble opinion; this is a year when people want to see results, and are showing everyone who cares how sick they are of arrogant, rapacious, thud-witted goverment and the bills it leaves us.

But is he wrong to sit on that plan until it matters?  Even if , horror of horrors, it leaves the state’s chattering classes and the designers of the DFL’s Chanting Points less material for the time being?

I’ll give you my answer when I see Mark Dayton’s plan.

(more…)

I could make Scarlett Johannson the happiest woman in the world.

Let’s see if Tom Scheck and Erick Black start staking out Ms. Johannson’s house.

It might be easier than answering the questions about their coverage of the Emmer campaign.

———-

Tom Emmer launched “Emmertruth” – a site dedicated to countering the media’s context-mangling DFL-agenda-m0ngering – yesterday.  And right in the nick of time.

This past April, Emmer appeared on Gary Eichten’s mid-day show on MPR.  Eichten asked Emmer a hypothetical question about how he’d hypothetically handle Minnesota’s budget.

Now, as someone who talks on the air live for two hours a week with no more “editing” than a dump button in case Ed starts cursing again, I’ll tell you – every so often you say something on the first try that isn’t quite right.  So you take another pass at it.   This happens even if you’re very good at speaking off the cuff – which, by the way, Tom Emmer is.

Most print news people – like Erik Black, formerly of the Strib and currently of the MinnPost – have a hard time with this; they can go their entire career without a “rough draft” going out to the public.  And MPR’s Tom Scheck perhaps is the wrong person to ask about it, since MPR is about as  spontaneous and unedited as the Catholic Mass.

Anyway – according to Emmertruth, this is what happened, with emphasis added by me:

Emmer did initially say the overall budget should be around $40 billion, down from the current level of $60 billion. But seconds later he clarified with the definitive statement that we “can reduce government easily by 20% in the next four years.” When Scheck chose to use the $20 billion figure instead of the more definitive final word on the question, he made a critical and material journalistic mistake.

Here – in Tom Scheck’s piece on the subject, which extensively quotes state bureaucrats on why Tom Emmer should not cut state bureaucracy – is the quote in question:

In late April, he suggested he could eliminate a third of overall state spending, roughly $20 billion.

You be the judge – but from where I sit, Scheck is wrong, or misleading, when he uses the $20 billion number. Emmer said – in the definitive take on the hypothetical question – he’s cut 20% over 4 years. Not that he’d immediately slash $60 to $40 billion.

It’s not rocket surgery to expect that the local mainstream media will circle its wagons to defend the rest of the media.  And some of the regional  media, including Erik Black’s former bosses in the Strib editorial board, are pretty transparently working to see a DFLer gets elected governor this fall, as usual.  And while I’m the last person in the world to impugn the integrity of MPR News – whose standards I’ve repeatedly praised in the past – their coverage of Emmer bears watching, since Emmer has spoken of cutting the state’s subsidy of MPR.

Black continues:

he has launched a feature called “EmmerTruth,” in which he will set the record straight about distortions of his record, position and statements.The first couple of entries, though, are pretty weak. In one, he complains that MPR reporter Tom Scheck said that Emmer would cut $20 billion in state spending. But Emmer says he never said he would cut $20 billion, only that he could.

And then…what?

He went on to clarify the whole thing!

So why did Scheck choose to go with the initial – and, via Emmertruth, admittedly bobbled – take on the hypothetical, when the clarification is, with a nod to Regis Philbin, “the final answer?”

And why did Black ignore this?   Do the facts matter, or is it all about playing “gotcha” with off-the-cuff answers to hypothetical questions?

Black concludes:

I’ve about convinced myself that Emmer owes Scheck an apology.

I’m dying to figure out why.

And he owes the voters of Minnesota some straighter talk, not about what he could do, but what he would do to balance the budget. (Not to say that all the other guv candidates have been clear abut how they would do it. They haven’t.)

Let me get this straight:  the DFL candidates have been “unclear”, but Emmer “owes” everyone an explanation now – so the DFL and its friends in the media can bag on it at their leisure until the DFL picks a candidate?

Why does the MinnPost hold Republicans to a different standard than the DFL?

DISCLOSURE:  I recently signed on to have occasional posts from this blog re-posted on MinnPost.  We’ll see how that works out now, won’t we?

UPDATE:  Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring and True North covers this as well.

CORRECTIONS:  In the original take on this story, I’d forgotten that there is, technically, a GOP primary.  That’s right, Leslie Davis and Ole Savior get their moment in the electoral sun.  Als0,  I had the wrong date for the original broadcast on the Eichten show that spawned this “controversy”.

I checked out the big headline on Twin Cities überleftyblog MNPublius this morning, and I started to worry:

Horner campaign gaining support of influential Republicans

…and read the lede…

Tom Horner is becoming a serious problem for Tom Emmer and the Republican party.

“Wow”, I thought.  “This could be serious business.  What “influential Republicans” have lined up behind the big-tax, big-spend, big-government Horner?

I read on, drum roll playing in my head:

•  Bryan Anderson, press secretary for former Rep. Gil Gutknecht
• Former Pawlenty communications director Dan Wolter

 To which I responded “Huh” and “Huh”?

Two press guys?  One for a Congressman who ran too far to the center and got beaten in 2006, and another that’s been out of the governor’s office for years?

Two guys who’ve never won an election?

Two guys who may have never even changed a single person in their lives to switch a vote?

One guy I’ve never, ever heard of, and another that I dealt with oh-so-briefly back during, if memory serves, George W. Bush’s first term?  Both of whom I suspect are known only to wonks and media people, are utterly unknown to anyone who doesn’t eat, drink and live politics?

It’s ludicrous, and I suspect even Jeff Rosenberg knows it. 

Here’s what’s happening:  faced with Emmer’s two-month head-start and very anti-establishment message, and knowing that at the end of that they’ll have to sell Minnesota either a national laughingstock or a woman whose entire platform is summed up “spend money like a crack whore with a stolen Platinum card”, the  entire regional Sorosphere (paid or not) is trying to repeat a couple of transparently bogus lines so many times that people start to believe them:

1. That Tom Emmer  – who is running on making government more sane and responsible and less expensive – is “extreme”.
2. That Tom Horner – big-government, big-tax, big-spending PR flak with establishment connections that’d make Chris Dodd blanche with shame, and who once slapped an “R” after his name, back when “R” in Minnesota meant “DFL with better suits – is an alternative.  But only for Republicans, mind you.
3. That the Emmer campaign is “scared” of Horner.  You see it in practically everything every leftyblogger in Minnesota writes about the subject.  What an amazing coincidence, huh?  (Aint’ so, by the way.  I am utterly unconnected with the Emmer campaign, but I know plenty of people who are.  Let’s just say they’re looking forward to the end of primaries, to say nothing of November).
4. That, indeed, every single thing that every single conservative/Republican blogger says or writes in any medium for any reason is motivated by “fear”. 

I’ll say this in their defense; if I was looking forward to having to support someone like Mark Dayton  or Margaret Anderson Kelliher against a Tom Emmer, I’d stick with repeating big lies in the hopes that gullible voters will believe it, too.   After all, it worked 18 months ago.