Urban Planning

SCENE: Minnesota DFL Executive Meeting.

KEN MARTIN (Chait of the MNDFL): Next order of business.

INGE “LUCKY” CARROLL (A former guidance counselor at a school for monomaniacs, Inge is Head Meme-Buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”). Our next plan is to start building safe spaces for hard drug use.

STACEY HINTON (Executive Director of “Keep All Racists Eternally Nonplussed”, a white progressive support group). Brilliant.

GRETEL STROMBERG ()Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, Stromberg is married to both a woman and a male illegal immigrant) Here’s the news coverage:

KEN MARTIN: Great piece. Fawning and morally bankrupt without going too over the top.

STROMBERG: Like Esme Murphy. .

KEN MARTIN: Yep. Now, we’ll be building these “safe spaces” at places like Summit and Chatsworth, and Crocus Hill, and down amid the condos across from the Guthrie…

( Entire group sits silently, in disbelief, jaws literally dropping).

KEN MARTIN: Hah! You shoulda seen your faces. Nope, we’re building them among the proles.

(Various expressions of relief)

KEN MARTIN: So – between legal weed and shooting galleries, and the schools teaching the next generation to be ignorant, uncritical , compliant and distracted by contrived grievances, the next generation should be really solid DFL voters!~

Round of applause as the scene fades to black.

That’s Gonna Leave A Mark – On Legal History

Never thought I”d see the day.

In one of the highlights of last week, all nine justices of the SCOTUS united across ideological lines to beat Hennepin County like a pimp beating one of his girls.

Geraldine Tyler owed a $15,000 tax debt on a one-bedroom Minneapolis condo; to pay the debt, Hennepin County sold her home for $40,000 — and kept the extra $25,000 beyond what was owed. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion of the Court that the taxpayer must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more,” effectively ending the practice of home equity theft.

How clear-cut was Henco’s abuse? This clear-cut (emphasis added):

Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined, adding that the county’s action also violates the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.

“Economic penalties imposed to deter willful noncompliance with the law are fines by any other name,” he wrote. “And the Constitution has something to say about them: They cannot be excessive.”

Any day that Henco gets clobbered is a wonderful one.

The Hangover

PJ O’Rourke said it best: progressives in power are like crack whores with a stolen Platinum Card.

They certainly had their party this session – and ended things with a budget-signing yesterday that had Leni Riefenstahl sending a chef’s kiss from the great beyond:

The Law and Order: Missing
The Stalkers and Swatters: Enabled
The rent-a-crowd: De Rigeur
The smug. Overwhelming
The photos: cropped to a fine sheen.

The social media blitz of endzone-happy dancing, featuring gigabytes of the DFL’s one real product, the smug selfie, was worth of Kim Jong Un’s minions.

But the hangover is coming.

The first lawsuit to try to tamp down the Trifecta’s power-sodden overrreach is on the books:

The DFL admitted publicly they were targeting Northwestern and Crown due to their religion – and they didn’t care.

And it ain’t the last lawsuit you can expect to see.

“I’m An Expert!”

Throughout the media, it’s a universal truism: Smart people with personalities go into radio; people who get by on looks go into TV.

It’s conventionally-accepted wisdom throughout the world of mass communications.

I have exactly as much factual oomph saying that as former Channel 5 weatherperson and DFL senator Nicole Mitchell (DFL, what else, Woodbury) talking about the civil liberty law:

She’s referring to Schenck vs. United States – in which an anti-draft protester during World War One sued over having his civil rights trampled on by the Woodrow Wilson administration, often regarded as a toxically stupid decision, one which the SCOTUS reversed in defense of a Klansman’s right to free speech.

But you know what’s more toxic than that?

Let’s say, for purposes of argument, that society has the communal wisdom to abrogate rights “for the public good” without doing vastly more harm than good – again, just for purposes of argument.

Who defines “the common good?”

Traditionally, it was families, churches, and traditional social institutions that had stood the test of hundreds, sometimes thousands of years .

The DFL and Big Left have been tearing those institutions down, and replacing them with…

…themselves.

It’s as plain a statement as there is that the DFL wants your civil rights – all of them – to be political swag to be doled out as rewards, if at all.

Unexpectedly

With great fanfare, Minneapolis and Saint Paul raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour. 

And now, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve says the policy has done…well, exactly what every conservative said it would do:  

 Pay is up 1% among those with jobs – but 2% fewer are employed as a direct result of the policies, and that’s just scratching the surface (emphasis added):

Many economists have reached similar conclusions about minimum wage increases in the past. Still, the size of the impacts the researchers measured — by comparing Minneapolis and St. Paul to data culled from other Minnesota cities from 2017 through 2021 — were eye-popping, especially in low-wage industries.

Take Minneapolis’ retail sector, for example: The minimum wage increase led to 28% fewer retail jobs than researchers would’ve expected from a similar city during the same five-year period. By this comparison, Minneapolis also saw a 20% drop in hours worked and a 13% dip in aggregate worker earnings.

Across St. Paul’s restaurant industry, the city’s 2018 minimum wage hike was responsible for drying up nearly one-third of available jobs, the study found. In “limited-service” (fast food) restaurants, both hours and earnings fell by more than half after the increase took effect.

“Good, they’re mostly terrible jobs anyway” say the white progressives from the non-profit/government/industrial complex. They re literally spinning this as good news – or excuses for more programs.

It’s possible that Big Left isn’t pushing these minimum wages as a way to gut opportunity for entry level workers. But if it were, I’m at a loss for what they’d do differently.

Open Letter To Rep. Vang

To: Rep. Samantha Vang
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Gaslighting

Rep. Vang,

You wrote the “Social Credit” bill (you call it ‘Stop Hate’, but my title is more accurate) that I talked about on my show over the weekend.

You got a storm of criticism – almost all of it justified.

This was your response:

Well,no. That’s not what it does.

Y’see, the market for hate crime far, far outstrips the supply, notwithstanding the DFL’s “Reichstag Firing”. For example:

The mosque fires were set, not just by one guy, the the one criminal in Minneapolis dumb enough to actually commit a crime that Minneapolis’s city government still gives a sh*t about.

No – Rep. Vang’s bill will essentially collect statemens about “microagressions” reported by protected classes.

Bumper sticker they don’t like?

Something overheard in a cafe?

A Trump sign?

Nobody knows. The bill allows no scrutiny, no Data Practices requests, no accountability or transparency of any kind.

It is, in every respect, a “social credit” bill.

Which is a key part of the Communist system, Rep. Vang, that your parents and her people fled.

That is all.

Aggression

There’s sure been a lot of aggressive rhetoric from the DFL, especially its “LGBTQ” caucus, for the past (checks watch) 24 hours or so.

Here’s Alicia Kozlowski, elected representative from Duluth and, as such, person witih a lifetime sinecure of living on the public dime ahead of her:

Wow. That sounds serious.

It’s certainly got Rep Kozlowski’s dudgeon up:

And then there was Rep Leigh Finke with, curioiusly, the exact same type of rhetoric:

https://twitter.com/leighfinke/status/1651756614817394688

Wow. Two marquee members of the LGBTQ caucus making “defiant” noises.

I wonder what’s up with that?

Oh:

A Republican lawmaker was verbally accosted by a Democratic colleague on the House floor Wednesday because she shared a tweet from the organization Gays Against Groomers, she told Alpha News.

Rep. Dawn Gillman, R-Dassel, retweeted a post regarding legislation that would have removed existing language in Minnesota law stipulating that pedophilia is not a protected sexual orientation.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who confronted Gillman about the retweet. Gillman said she was “yelled at and intimidated” by Finke, who apparently shouted “no!” when a colleague suggested moving the conversation off the floor.

“My interaction on Wednesday evening with Rep. Finke left me shaken and fearing for my personal safety. Instead of coming to talk to me, I was yelled at and intimidated on the House Floor,” Gillman told Alpha News. She said that this type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in other workplaces.

The incident was corroborated by multiple representatives who were there. Gillman asked to be escorted to her car after session.

Finke reportedly upbraided [1] Gillman over circulating this article.

Several questions, here:

  1. Is House HR going to get involved, or are they still chasing after Peter Callaghan?
  2. Is House HR going to come after me for writing this?
  3. If this story is accurate, it’d appear that the House Cisgender Caucus is the one that needs a mutual defense agreement.
  4. I wonder if writing this is going to put me afoul of the DFL’s new Social Credit policy?

Speaking of Social Credit policy, I’ll be talking about that, the Giillman/Finke incident, and much. more on the show tomorrow. Tune on in.

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Urban Progressive Privilege: Sign O The Times

The Strib finally hired a new editorial cartoonist to replace the worthless and unlamented Steve Sack.

It’s Mike Thompson.

And he’s brought a new sound to Minneapolis.

No, not the popping of the Glock full-auto conversion.

It’s the wailing and gnashing of entitled, plush-bottom, White progressive Minneapolis Yoo-hoos losing their spit over being lampooned by an editorial cartoonist.

They have no frame of reference. Modern MSM editorial cartoons have all the intellectual diversity of The Colbert Show or NPR.

So the calls for “canceling” Thompson have already started.

It’ll be interesting to see if Thompson is forced to repent of his sins.

Common Cause

A friend of the blog emails:

Reading this news report at Alpha News, I am struck by this question: Why don’t conservatives make common cause with the local Muslims?

They want good educations for their children, just like Moderates, Conservatives, and Christians do.

Muslims by and large are much more puritanical about these sorts of things and very specifically do not want infidels teaching this spiritually debasing poison to their daughters.

What if Senator Wesenberg and Rep Walter Hudson were to personally approach Imams in their district and statewide for their input on this issue. The Qur’an highlights the community of faith between followers of monotheistic religions (Jews, Christians and Muslims), and refers to them collectively as Ahl al-Kitab ‘People of the Book, a phrase that is used frequently in the Qur’an and Prophetic hadith. 

Maybe the fastest way to do this would be for the GOP to amend the education bill with a requirement that ALL MN schools, public, private, and charter be required to have these four books available for their students; “It’s Perfectly Normal,” “Sex is a Funny Word,” “It’s So Amazing,” and “It’s Not the Stork.”. I’ll bet that would shake some peaches out of the trees.

Better yet, someone tell Erin Maye Quade or Leigh Finke to push the amendment.

I bet they’d do it.

As to making common cause with Muslims, especially ones that aren’t tied at the hip to the DFL? The time is long overdue.

DFL Comms: Sonny, Or Fredo?

Every high school homeroom seemed to have that one guy – usually a little maladroit, introverted, not especially socially adept. The guy – it was always a guy – tried to cultivate the impression there was some sort of threatening undercurrent – unspecified after-dark activities, unnamed associates, vague hints that there might be some kind of hidden danger about him, so you’d better not push him too far.

We talked last week about Matt Roznowski – the House DFL Communications director who reported MInnPost reporter Peter Callaghan to House HR, notwithstanding the fact that Callaghan doesn’t work for the DFL .

Maybe Roznowski figures reporters actually do work for the DFL, It’s explain a lot.

Gotta wonder if Roznowski was that guy in high school. Current signs look pretty close.

It’s worth noting that the DFL doubled down to support their guy flexing on…a reporter for a publication supported by Big Leftymoney.

Oh yeah – their communications office apparently doesn’t like peasants criticizing them:

I need to keep reminding myself – drapes don’t have shoes.

BTW, Brian – Lech Wałęsa fought Communists. So yeah, it kinda fits.

Urban Progressive Privilege: Our Vacuous Overlords

I’ve listened to a lot of vapid, trite radio in my life.

Janeane Garofalo’s attempt at a talk show. Most any “audio essay” by David Sedaris. Just about every local show on AM950, from Nick Coleman and Wendy Wilde and Two Putt Tommy and Steve Timmer through Bart McNeil or whatever his name is. Lots of dreadful stuff.

But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anything quite this stomach-pumpingly vacuous as this two year old episode of “Radiolab”, an NPR podcast [1] which combines an oppressive amount of cutesy sound editing with a programming lineup that captures all of the lows of “This American Life” with none of TAL’s occasional highs.

it’s a rebroadcast [2] from a couple of years ago, when the Covid pandemic had come and gone for most of America, but was still leaving the world a Camusian hellscape for the organically-fed fashionably angsty member of the Laptop Class that work for and listen to National Public Radio.

And in it, the plush-bottom yoohoos in the studio seem to be straining to make the case that 2020 and 2021 is a candidate to be horrible years in history, as compared to…

…536AD. When something, a bunch of volcanoes or comet dust or something blotted out much of the sunlight for years, causing a chain reaction of crop failures, famines, plagues (as hungry rats invaded granaries) and wars that led to the death of perhaps 20% of the people on the planet at the time.

But Covid’s pretty bad, too!

Here’s the neat (if nauseous) trick: Listen to it, and you can almost feel like you’re sitting in a “breakfast place” on Eat Street listening to a bunch of non-profiteers bitching about how lack of rent control is genocide.

NPR should really be funding itself.

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Urban Progressive Privilege: It’s “One Minnesota”, And It’s All Theirs

It took a week for the story to get out – but somehow, it did.

A group of Mayor Carter’s staffers showed us what “One Minnesota” looks like when the new gentry cross paths with the proles:

“They just came in, they were obviously intoxicated,” recalls restaurant owner Jason Dorweiler.

He says a group of seven people came in asking for a table, while three men went to the restroom.

“They were very loud, we heard noises from inside the bathroom, outside while service was going on,” Dorweiler explains. “We kind of checked in on them. It appeared that they had urinated all over our floor, which is a bad sign, in addition to them coming in and just being annoying. They proceeded to sit down and were just being belligerent the whole time.”

Too tl:DR,and need a summary? Here you go:

Naturally, they tried to play the victim card after the fact:

A second police report, filed days later, shows Cruz Williams called police, saying she wanted to report an assault.

In the report she says ‘she was trying to de-escalate the situation’ — and that she told the manager she and her friends were going to leave.

No wonder the DFL is so keen on gun control. They’re afraid real. people may start protecting themselves from the DFL.

Our Semi-Constitutional Monarchy

What says “One MInnesota” better than living in a million dollar lakeside mansion on the taxpayers dime?

As Minnesotans stagger through inflation, gas prices and an economy that is teetering on the brink of crisis, the state is putting $6 million into repairing the govenor’s mansion. The governor and his family will be parked in a lakeside house on Sunfish Lake, for $17,000 a month, for 18 months.

Why so posh?

We’re told it’s partly practical:

The state had a 17-point list of qualifications and indicated that the property would need to have security features, be relatively close to the Capitol and be open to “official ceremonial functions,” as is required by state law.

Now, I’m no expert, but I suspect the state’s got no shortage of suitable places for “official ceremonial functions”. We’ll come back to that.

And, we’re told, it’s partly security:

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, the top DFLer in the Minnesota Legislature, said she understands why space, security and neighborhood considerations make temporary lodging for the governor so expensive.

“When you have folks going to protest a governor at his house, you have the entire block of people who are there, not only the governor’s wife and children but the neighbors who didn’t necessarily sign up for this,” she said. “So, I’m not surprised that it’s an expensive proposition to house a governor in a secure location.”

As Hortman’s fellow DFLer Lisa Bender said, public safety is a privilege.

As someone whose house was on the edge of the DFL’s “room to destroy”, I think it’d be perfectly appropriate for the Walzes to get a place in the city, subject to the DFL’s capricious notion of law enforcement. Maybre someplace up at Plymouth and Sheridan.

Governor Klink responded with his usual grace and evenhandedness:

“I’m pretty agnostic, where I lay my head,” Walz said. “I certainly welcome if the legislators’ job is oversight. Go do it. It’s better than banning books. It’s better than demonizing kids. Go do that oversight. I accept whatever they find.”

Speaking of “doing the job” – Governor Klink has been making himself pretty scarce. He hasn’t responded by my repeated invitations – not even a curt “F*** Off” – but even the largely DFL-friendly Blois Olson:

Olson is being a bit of a pollyanna; their strategy is to stay within the bubble wrap; the Governor comes out of the mansion to do carefully stage-managed dog and pony shows like going to pizzerias and donut shops and the occasional train derailment, surrounded by his comms people and nice tame social media droogs, for some cheesecake photos, and then it’s back in isolation.

“Official ceremonial functions?” All the governor does is stuff his face while “Lieutenant Governor” Flanagan looks on, beaming like a proud mom.

They really do think they are royalty, don’t they?

A Hell “We” Can Make Happen

I came across this tweet last week.

At first blush, I thought it was parody, and not especially good.

I moved from there to Assumption B – a chuckleheaded sophomore political science major from Austin, or Seattle, or maybe the University of Saint Thomas. It can be hard to tell parody from reality with them, sometimes.

That’s what I thought. Or, let’s be honest, that’s what I hoped. Parody, or young lefty dolt.

But no. Mr. Lee is a California state assemblyman, detailing the world he and most of Big Left hold out as their idea.

No mention of that social credit score you gotta pass to get into your “public bank account”. No mention of who’s going to be teaching at those “awesome public schools” or building, maintaining and operating that “green transit”, or even why either would exist if people get Universal Basic Income. No mention of how in a world without the generation of value and wealth, the “UBI” will pretty much inevitably devolve into ration tickets, to buy…what? Who’s doing the producing, the farming? Robotic cricket mills creating insect paste is about the only logical option.

Primary Education

The culture war is fought and lost or won in a million little nooks and crannies in our society.

The collective perception of historical ephemera that tumble-dries together to form “the public consciousness” is one of those collections of crannies.

And somewhere in that perception floats the collective dog’s breakfast of ideas and ideals that form the cultural idea of what is and was good, and what isn’t and wasn’t.

You ask most Americans “who was the worst president in American history”, you will get many answers. Conservatives and progressives may differ – Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush likely trend toward the top for both, respectively. There are some consensus picks; Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and a few others.

But among the eternal parade of cultural skirmishes that could stand some winning, the left’s rewriting of history re Woodrow Wilson needs to be turned around and pointed back toward history’s lower colon, where it belongs.

A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.

The roll call of the worst presidents in American history includes some consensus top choices. James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce both contributed mightily to the nation’s slide into the Civil War, and Andrew Johnson did enduring harm to Reconstruction in the war’s aftermath. But all three of those men were repudiated by the end of their single term in office. They left no heirs who would acknowledge their influence, no fleet of academic hagiographers who could see themselves reflected in those presidencies.

Wilson, by contrast, served two full and consequential terms. He was the only Democrat re-elected to the job during the century between 1832 and 1936. He was lionized by liberals and progressives in academia and the media for most of the century after he left office in 1921. In my youth, and perhaps yours, Wilson was presented in history books as a tragic hero whom the unthinking American people didn’t deserve. He was often placed highly on academics’ rankings of the presidents. Princeton University named its school of international relations for him. Even in rescinding that honor in June 2020, the university’s press release declared: “Though scholars disagree about how to assess Wilson’s tenure as president of the United States, many rank him among the nation’s greatest leaders and credit him with visionary ideas that shaped the world for the better.”

Nah. Wilson was a human pile of flaming trash. He was a bad man who made the country and the world worse. His name should be an obscenity, his image an effigy. Hating him is a wholesome obligation of citizenship.

Let us count the ways:

  • He institutionalized racism, segregation and eugenics just as America was slowly evolving out of each.
  • He was the father of the modern administrative state – he brought academic contempt for The People to that bureaucracy, where it’s metastasized for a century now.
  • With the income tax administered by that administrative state, he started the roll down the slippery slope from liberty to corporatist servitude.
  • He started the notion of “the living Constiitution”.
  • His “contirbutions” to foreigtj policy did more than most to facilitate the rise of Naziism, Fascism and Communism; his wartime regime was a catastrophe for civil liberties.
  • He was the father of the “imperial presidency” – taking a slim win (41% of the vote, after Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote) and acting like it was a mandate.
  • And he may have botched the Feds response to the Spanish Flu even worse than Biden and Trump’s Covid campaigns.

Read the whole thing if you can.

Whatever other missions I have in life,extinguishing any lingering ignorance about the loathsomeness of Woodrow Wilson is going on the list.

Unsafe Space

That wave of right-wing terror they’ve been warning us about for the past fifteen years is apparently nigh, and coming for Jacob Frey:

The progressive mayor of Minneapolis is fearing for his life since receiving an uptick in death threats…

Well, yeah. After giving free reign to leftists, including all but inviting “Anti”-Fa to attack Trump rallygoers, of course all those right-wing MAGA hat-clad goons are going to threaten a puling left mayor…

…from left-wing extremists, nearly three years after the unrest over the police-involved death of George Floyd…

.

Wait, what?

The wave of terror is coming from the left?

Why, yes – we’ve commented on this before.

Urban Progressive Privilege: Alone

To: Lieutenant Governor Flanagan,
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Glad You’ve Discovered Light Rail Crime!

Of all the people who’ve been beaten, robbed and murdered on Twin Cities light rail platforms, it’s good to know you’ve paid attention to one of them, finally:

But clearly, you do not ride the light rail. I suspect you hitch a ride to the office with the state patrol, just like the governor. I’m gonna guess you haven’t ridden a train since long before you became Lieutenant Governor.

Just a quick tip from someone who rode the Vomit Comet (aka “Green Line”) day and night for a year and a half; when you’re out there on that platform, late at night, in the city you and the DFL created, you are absolutely, completely alone. Nothing there but you and God. None of your ex post facto happy talk is of the faintest bit of protection against The DFL’s Minneapolis.

To my credit, I figured it would be a victim like this, that got you to finally pay attention to street crime.

Sort of.

That is all.

Tina Smith: Filthy Liar

Senator Smith took to Twitter to shill for “ESG“ – rules that require businesses to make decisions based on “Environment, Social Credit, [woke corporate] Governance l”practices.in other words, replacing fiduciary responsibility with “woke“ “social justice“ (read: Marxist) values.

there are really only two possibilities:

  • Smith really is this ignorant.
  • She knows she can count on a majority of her voters being this ignorant.

Given the last few elections in Minnesota, #2 isn’t the dumbest strategery .

Unexpectedly

To: The Minneapolis City Council
From: Mitch Berg, Unruly Peasant
Re: Threats

Minneapolis City Council Members,

In this Channel 4 story, you are individually and as a body shocked, shocked, that “activists” are getting more angry, even borderline-violent, in their interactions with…the City Council.

In this case, it was over a vote re…it doesn’t matter that much, except it’s something moderately routine, except for the “activists” involved.

Anyway (with emphasis added by me):

After the failed vote, protestors began to shout and scream at councilmembers and approach the dais. The meeting had to go into recess and the protestors were removed before it continued.

During the shouting, an aide for Councilmember Michael Rainville says specific threats were made against Rainville’s family. Councilmember Emily Koski joined Rainville in filing a police report against the protestors.

You can’t have democracy if you don’t allow the democratic process to happen and if you have someone that is fearful for their lives or that of their families because of a vote that they took, that is wrong,” said Mayor Jacob Frey.

Anyone but me remembering when Mayor McDreamy all but told the police to stand down in the face of threats to Trump supporters when they rallied at the Target Center?

Democracy didn’t matter so much then, I guess…

…but that’s a matter for another rant.

The answer comes from Economics 101 – a class no Minneapolis City Council person passed before the class (like the City Council) was taken over by the people from the Grievance Stuidies department; when you reward, or fail to provide negative consequences for, negative behavior that someone sees as benefitting them, you will get more of that behavior.

The Twin Cities “activist” class blocked freeways – and those who objected got the negative consequences.

They attacked Trump supporters at rallies – and were practically feted by the city.

Then, after they ran riot after the death of George Floyd, and the Mayor and Governor decided to follow Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s dubious example and give the mob “space to destroy” Baltimore, they threw the mob a bone; not just an entire (majority black, Latino and immigrant) neighborhood, but an entire police precinct, thinking the mob was some toddler that needed to work out his aggressions, and was shocked, shocked that they just kept going?

In confrontation after confrontation, the city o Minneapolis, and the Walz Administration, has shown those who were willing to resort to violence that not only would there be no consequences, but it would positively help them get their way.

You sowed the poo-storm. You are reaping the poo-storm.

Well, you’re starting to. You’re discovering that, in a Minneapolis (and Minnesota) run by the Grievance Studies department, expecting to be safe is a privilege.

Unexpectedly

That is all.

Inimical

To: Rep. Liz Cheney
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Rep Cheney,

I’m not the biggest fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

For that matters, I’m not the most passionate of your detractors.

But on this issue?

So let me make sure I’m clear on this; if our government is violating the Constitution you’re wrapping yourself in, how long are we supposed to go along with it?

“Our country is governed by the Constitution”

One might hope. But when the government turns the executive branch institutions – the FBI, IRS, BATFE, CDC – against the peoples freedom? When the government trashes the separation of powers and undercuts federalism, and proposes violating the contract under which small states agreed to share some of their sovereignty with big states by eliminating the Electoral College and making the Senate reflect popular rather than state votes…

…how long before dismissing those usurpations with an ofay “Well, the Constitution” isn’t by itself an answer?

Secession is unconstitutional

So?

So was the American Revolution.

Saying “secession is illegal” is like trying to end a moral argument with “…because the Bible said so”. It’s vapid and cowardly. Is it illegal even if the Constitution has been rendered moot? Because saying that is like saying the preservation of government is the point, not the system the Constitution establishes and the eternal rights it enshrines.

Which do you think it is, Rep. Cheney?

That is all.

Clearly They Need One Of Those “In This House…” Signs

Staffer for conservative GOP Latina congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna discusses how loving and accepting the left is:

Berg’s Eighth Law has no exceptions.

I’m Old Enough To Remember…

…when those 87,000 new IRS agents were “only going to go after rich tax cheats“.

The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service today issued Notice 2023-13, which contains a proposed revenue procedure that would establish the Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement (SITCA) program, a voluntary tip reporting program between the IRS and employers in various service industries. The IRS is issuing this guidance in proposed form to provide an opportunity for public comment.

The proposed SITCA program is designed to take advantage of advancements in point-of-sale, time and attendance systems, and electronic payment settlement methods to improve tip reporting compliance. The proposed program would also decrease taxpayer and IRS administrative burdens and provide more transparency and certainty to taxpayers. The proposed program includes several features:

Politicians lie. It’s a fact that was building careers for editorialists, humorists and satirists since long before it made WIll Rogers a well-known man.

But today’s Democrats seem to be counting on, not just gullibility, but active willful ignorance, on a titanic scale.

Also Ran

Secretary of State Simon wants to throw away whatever a little relevance Minnesota has in presidential elections.

No, really. He said it in as many words on Monday:

Let’s be clear about this: the Electoral College exists because smaller states realized that a national popular vote for President would essentially leave the Executive branch of government to be elected by the voters of the most populous states. All the decisions the President and his branch make – the enforcement of all laws, the spending of all budgets – would be determined by the residents of the most populous parts of the country, and those parts would be who the President answered to.

The Electoral College was part of a contract – our Constitution – by which smaller states avoided getting logrolled, and thus consented to join the union.

If they abolish the Electoral College, there is literally no reason for any states other than California, New York, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and maybe Pennsylvania, and the de facto mono-state of New Jersey/Connecticut/Massachusetts/Rhode Island, to remain in the union, since everyone else will be vassals.

Simon is calling for Minnesota to become irrelevant to Presidential politics. .

Let’s be clear: abolishing the Electoral College is, i’ll be charitable, at least as great a threat to American democracy as January 6. And that’s being charitable and meeting the Sixers halfway.

And before anyone responds in the comments with “Hahaha that was settled in 1865” – no. It was settled in 1776.