Is Detroit’s new-found cause célèbre ignoring the past to cloud the future?

George Clooney had the Sudan.  Bono has Africa.  Anthony Bourdain – and much of the American media – apparently has Detroit.

Michigan’s So Not Grand Central Station: built in 1912 and on the national registry of historic places. It was closed in 1988 and is one of Detroit’s estimated 78,000 abandoned buildings.

In recent months, the city of Detroit has witnessed two narratives arise in Phoenix-like fashion from the economic ashes of the city, often in conjecture with themselves.  One is the purported economic revitalization of the city that gave birth to Motown and the American automotive industry.  It is a narrative fostered by Quicken Loans founder (and Cleveland Cavs owners) Dan Gilbert who, among others, has put millions into Detroit to try and restore its grandeur.  The other narrative, the so-called “ruin porn” seen in picture form below, depicts Detroit as a third-world ghetto.  A Somalia on the St. Clair River.

The former delights the denizens of Detroit with hopes of a better future.  The latter rankles them.  Gilbert himself expressed outrage when 60 Minutes balance their report on the Motor City between Gilbert’s altruism and the destruction of the out-lying portions of the city, comparing it to Dresden after the Allied bombing of World War II.  Gilbert tweeted a defiant message, stating “a city’s soul that will not die was the story & they missed it.”  But even a sympathetic, blue-collar soul as Bourdain, whose CNN show Parts Unknown highlighted the city last night, saw the need to balance Detroit’s attempts to pick itself up off the ground with the stark realities of a city undone.

The Fisher Body Plant: once part of the GM empire

Both narratives ignore the Chrysler in the room – how Detroit got to where it is today.

If the “ruin porn” industry renders pity without judgement, the acts of Dan Gilbert and others, as well-intended as they obviously are, seek a future for Detroit without acknowledging its past or present.  Not once in 60 Minutes‘ coverage did the story’s telejournalism deal with the political causes for Detroit’s decay – a corrupt, one-party institution burrowed like a tick into City Hall.  Equally, if differently, ignorant are the views of Gilbert et al who believe that once their plans to remove all of Detroit’s blight (78,000 buildings), capital will come easily rushing back into the city:

Gilbert is no fan of urban farming, though. When he envisions land cleared of  blight, he sees developers rushing in to build anew…

“When that blight is gone, maybe we don’t have to be talking about shrinking cities because it will be such a rush of people who want to get into low-value housing — when all the utilities are there and the land is pretty much close to free— not exactly free, but close to it — and all the utilities are there, it becomes very cheap for a builder/developer to develop a residential unit, and they are going to develop them and develop them in mass as soon as we get the structures down and maybe we don’t have to worry about raising peas or corn or whatever it is you do in the farm.”

The Highland Park Police Station: even Detroit’s police stations no longer want anything to do with the city

And what will cause developers (yet alone individuals or businesses) to return to a city with the highest property tax rate in the country?  What will encourage retail industries when Michigan’s sales tax is 6% on top of that?  Detroit’s backers can honestly claim that the city ranks no where near the top of the tax chain (Detroit ranks 92nd nationally; Minneapolis is 52nd by comparison).  But the tax climate is far from ideal, especially the dubbed “most dangerous city in America” with a murder rate 10-times the national average.  Throw in a 58-minute response time for police, to attract businesses back, Detroit may literally need the fictional hero RoboCop (to whom a statue is being built – seriously).

There isn’t much evidence that Detroit is about to change its ways.

The Merrill Fountain at Palmer Park: has sat empty for 50 years since being moved from the Opera House. Vandals have stolen much of it.

Since Governor Rick Snyder’s decision to appoint emergency manager Kevyn Orr last spring, Detroit’s journey to bankruptcy has been managed with minimal (some would say no) input from City Hall.  As the case has headed to court, where Orr has testified about Detroit’s long-term debts of $18 billion, city officials have fought the measure almost every step of the way.  The election of Mike Duggan as mayor, the former head of the Detroit Medical Center, has been advertised as the promotion of a turnaround artist.  But while Duggan had success revitalizing the city’s Medical Center, Duggan also ran on opposing Orr’s decisions and comes as a political protégé of former Wayne County Executive Edward McNamara – an official who backed the cartoonishly corrupt Kwame Kilpatrick and had FBI agents and state police raid his own office in November 2002, over alleged corruption in airport contracts and campaign fundraising.  Meet the new boss.

The American Hotel: built in 1926, the hotel is 11 stories high with over 300 rooms. It has remained vacant since the early 90’s.

Oh, there have been the requisite platitudes.  Duggan and Orr have broken bread in what was described as a “very good first meeting.”  And Duggan has said all the right things that a reformer would state, such as being “a huge believer in lean processing. If you are not excellent at making systems work, you cannot survive…”

But the inertia of the status quo has been apparent even after only one week from the election.  The Michigan House Appropriations Committee ranking Democrat Rep. Fred Durhal, Jr. is angry that Duggan hasn’t called him yet.  Metro Detroit AFL-CIO President Chris Michalakis essentially threw down a polite ultimatum that Duggan must “honor” his commitment to working families, while suggesting the labor doesn’t trust the new mayor.  Duggan claims he just wants a seat at the table as Detroit’s debts are solved, and if Synder and Orr are smart, they’ll allow it.

Wilbur Wright High School: closed in 2005, this building actually is among the few on this list that has been demolished. 10,000 buildings have been torn down in Detroit since 2010.

The decision to abrogate Detroit’s city government in the bankruptcy process may have been politically necessary (Detroit certainly hasn’t come to grips with its position despite many, many, many opportunities), but doing so has allowed Snyder and Orr to play the villain while the usual suspects who caused this economic disaster play the victim.  However, it’s also allowed Snyder to take all the credit too.  67% of Michigan voters approved the move back in March (including 41% of Detroit), and the decision has given Snyder a welcome bump in his approval rating.  That’s a short term political fix to a long-term structural problem.

Mike Duggan may be a product of the system that failed Detroit, but he’s viewed warily by both it.  Orr’s contract expires in the fall of 2014; Duggan and the City Council can vote whether or not to renew it – almost literally the only voice they have in the process.  If that’s the first time Duggan has to impact the process, he’ll have likely caved by then to labor, vote to end Orr’s tenure and – more importantly – work to undo reforms set in place.  Should Rick Snyder not return in 2015, an opportunity to address Detroit’s deeper fundamental problems will have passed and a new administration will slap a band-aid bailout on the city, and hope more journalists write about Dan Gilbert than urban hunters who live off of raccoon to supplement their meals.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Opponents of the government should be forcibly committed to insane asylums, without trial but merely by executive order, say Hollywood actor and British talk-show host.  Just as Sissy Spacek was qualified to testify about the suffering of farm wives because she had played one in a movie, Sean Penn is qualified to talk about crazy people because . . . well, fill in the punch-line yourself.

Who says history doesn’t repeat itself?

Joe Doakes

Why do you think MNCare collects all that information, silly?

A mediator ordered the Dayton Administration to pay the legal bills for the plaintiffs against his “unionization by decree” stunt.

From a news release from MN Majority (with emphasis added):

Governor Dayton and the Bureau of Mediation Services yesterday settled to reimburse $60,000 in attorneys’ fees to the home-based child care providers who sued to halt Governor Dayton’s unlawful executive order establishing a unionization procedure for the providers. In Swanson, et al. v. Dayton, et al, the court found that the governor’s executive order exceeded his constitutional authority, struck down the order and awarded attorneys’ fees to the prevailing plaintiffs. The Administration paid these fees in compliance with a Minnesota Court of Appeals’ order earlier this year which said the fees were owed because the Governor was not merely wrong in issuing this unionization order, but had no substantial legal justification to do so at all under Minnesota’s Constitution and laws.

Mark Dayton:  The Law and the Constitution are for peasants.

The providers aren’t done:

 Plaintiff home-based child care provider Hollee Saville said: “This is a great day for the small-business child care providers who resisted the schemes to force unionization, dues and fees on our entire industry, and we plan to continue to resist the new unionization legislation, which is also unlawful.”

And I love the closing quote so much, I’m going to add emphasis to it:

Plaintiff Becky Swanson commented further on the fee payment made yesterday. “This fee payment illustrates that the real ‘extremist’ in the child care unionization scheme is the Governor, who ignored the constitutional limitations on his own authority to do political favors for his union friends, not us self-employed child care providers who resisted this overreach, and whom he arrogantly derided as ‘right wing extremists.’”

It’s the only line they know.

Suck it, commies.

Perhaps you’ve heard; Minnesota’s new “Teacher of the Year”, Saint Paul science teacher Megan Hall seems to have answered the question “are today’s public schools nothing but left-wing indoctrination centers” with a rousing “Hell yeah!”

This is from her acceptance speech, with emphasis added by me:

Teachers are persistent and responsible and generous because we believe that every child in America, regardless of circumstances of birth, deserves a decent chance at a good life. [Applause] From where I stand, teachers create equality of opportunity. From where I stand, teaching is a profession that takes a gritty patriotism. And from where I stand, teachers are American democracy’s last line of defense against the tyranny of the 1 percent

Don’t believe me?  Here’s the video

How over the top was it?  Even the City Pages’ Aaron Rupar seemed to feel a little uncomfortable: “Yeah, maybe that would’ve been a good line to save for when you’re having beers with your liberal buddies after the speech”.

For all I know Ms. Hall is a perfectly adequate teacher – and in my experience in the Saint Paul Public Schools, adequate would have been pretty superlative.

But I have to wonder:  if Ms. Hall is protecting the students from “the 1%”, who is going to protect them from the Saint Paul Public Schools?

Because between the child abuse, the brain-dead kommissariat masquerading as a bureaucracy, and the massive horde of intellectually-walking-dead union members Ms. Hall shares a district with?

I’ll take my chance with those gol-durned rich folks, thanks.

But look at it her way; I suppose if I taught for a district with the worst major-market achievement gap in the United States, with a minority graduation rate lower than Miley Cyrus’ neckline, a district that minority parents were decamping from as fast as they can find open spaces in charter schools or suburban schools via open enrollment, I’d look for a scapegoat too.

Rand Paul proposes a constitutional amendment barring Congress from exempting itself from laws. 

Like, say, Obamacare.

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG climbs out of his car and fishes a big gym bag full of firearms and ammo out of the back seat.  He walks toward the front door of the firing range – and notices Avery LIBRELLE, walking, alone, with a picket sign.  The sign says “A Millian Americans Are Picketting This Gun Rang”.  BERG hides his face, and tries to time his approach while LIBRELLE is walking the other way – but a piece of shiny tinfoil attracts LIBRELLE’s attention back toward BERG).

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  Oh…uh, hi, Avery. What’s new?

LIBRELLE:  I think MoveOn.Org has the right idea!  It’s time to start arresting teabaggers for sedition!

BERG:  Sedition?

LIBRELLE: Speaking out against the government!

BERG: I know what sedition is. That’s not what the House Republicans or Cruz or Paul did. 

LIBRELLE: The “Affordable Care Act” is the law!  And the law is the manifestation of government!   And if you oppose The Law, you oppose Government, meaning you oppose the will of The People!

BERG:  Well, no.  The GOP majority in the House carried out the House’s Constitutional duty to take care of the nation’s purse-strings – a job for which the voters of this country gave them the majority at the polls in 2010 and 2012. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, but the people also elected President Obama twice. He is the government, and his laws are the laws of the land, the revealed word of the people!

BERG:  The President is not “the government”.  The government is the executive branch – the President and his staff and the rest of the bureaucracy – the Legislative branch, and the judicial branch, and – don’t forget this – all of the checks and balances in between all of them. 

LIBRELLE: Well, the “Affordable Care Act” is now the law.

BERG:  So?  The First Amendment says we have the right to free speech, to assemble, and to petition to seek redress of grievances.  Which is, in every particular, what the Tea Party is and always has been. 

LIBRELLE:  What are you, a constitutional scholar?  I’m pretty sure those are all collective rights, just like the Second Amendment. 

BERG:  What now?

LIBRELLE:  Anyway – Obamacare is the law, which means it’s the will of the people, and the government IS the people, so fighting the law is fighting the people.  “Sedition” is probably the nicest word for it.

BERG:  Again – what now?

LIBRELLE:  I’d call it “Treason”.

BERG:  “Treason?”  Actively betraying your country to an enemy in wartime?

LIBRELLE:  Yep.  This country’s been at war against poverty since the sixties.  Obamacare fights poverty.  Undercutting the people in the War on Poverty IS betraying your country in wartime.  That’s the very definition of treason!  We should sic the military on all of you!

BERG:  Huh.  The military.   (Takes stick of gum from pocket, unwraps it, pops gum in mouth).

LIBRELLE:  Tanks.  Choppers.  Whatever it takes. 

BERG:  To preserve democracy.

LIBRELLE:   Yep. 

BERG:  Huh. 

(BERG drops shiny tinfoil wrapper onto the ground.  LIBRELLE chases it, allowing BERG to make his escape).

(And SCENE).

Vacationing senior citizens kept under armed guard in a hotel…

…to keep them from seeing all that shut-down federal land:

Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.

“We’ve become a country of fear, guns and control,” said Vaillancourt, who grew up in Lawrence. “It was like they brought out the armed forces. Nobody was saying, ‘we’re sorry,’ it was all like — ” as she clenched her fist and banged it against her forearm.

It’s time for Real Americans to get out and fight this banana-republic tyranny with the only weapon that matters (until November of 2014); mockery.

Which brings us to a question:  I’ve been looking for a federal monument in the Twin Cities area that’s been closed by the Feds, with an aim toward getting the biggest group of people I can, with the most cameras possible, to do some “civil disobedience”.

This weekend turned bad, naturally.

But I’m looking for a federal installation.  Ideally a monument, but a recreational area will also work.

Ideas?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my various liberal lawyer friends, it’s this; when I see news of the filing of an absurd lawsuit demanding a bizarre amount of money for an insane claim, take a step back and a deep breath.  A filing does not equal a judgment; while the occasional batspittle-crazy judgment happens, the vast majority of bizarre lawsuits end in a dismissal on summary judgment; a judge determines that no actual matters of law are involved, so there’s no need for a trial. 

And the bizarre cases that appeared in a splash of laughter and anger disappear, unlamented and

Over the weekend, the word got out among the usual circles about a Swiss proposal to give every single citizen a $2,600 monthly government-paid income. 

There were two reactions from among Americans I’d broadly call “conservative”; mockery, and a little bit of head-scratching.

We’ll look into the head-scratching first. 

The Big Fix: In his classic book Parliament of Whores, P.J. O’Rourke noted that if we just gave the money we currently spend on social welfare to people whose income is below the poverty line, we could bring every person in the United States up to the poverty line, and save money.  We’d do something that eighty years of “progressive” social policy has “tried” and failed to do; eradicate poverty, at least in a literal, personal-financial sense. 

The Swiss “plan” – assuming it also involved eliminating other poverty entitlement programs – might be a huge step toward simplifying poverty entitlements and, perversely, saving money…

The Swiss Reality– …if there were the slightest chance of it becoming law.

The Swiss federal system allows the National Assembly – the Swiss parliament – to refer bills dealing with major government issues – taxes, spending and big policy issues – to a national vote, very, very easily. 

Switzerland, like Minnesota, is starkly divided along what we’d call “red/blue” lines; the big cities, Zürich and Basel and Geneva, are every bit as clogged with socialist bobbleheads as Minneapolis or Duluth.  But the cantons (states) of greater Switzerland tend to be very conservative. The largest party in the National Assembly is the “Swiss People’s Party” (Scheweizerische Volkspartei, or SVP in German), a center-right party that, unlike many European “conservative” parties, could be recognized as “conservative” by an American Tea Partier. The SVP leads a coalition of center and right-leaning parties that don’t quite have a majority of the Parliament – 94 out of 200 seats in the lower house – but would require absolute unity among their opposition to effectively beat. 

But this isn’t even a parliamentary referendum.  Swiss law allows citizen petitions with 100,000 signatures – out of a population of 8 million citizens, or roughly 2% of the voting population – to force a referendum.

Andthatis how this proposal got on the ballot. 

On the one hand, it allows well-organized grass-roots groups to make a big electoral splash by getting the darnedest hare-brained ideas onto the national ballot. 

On the other?  They almost always get beaten.  A “grassroots” group of Swiss got an initiative to abolish the Swiss military onto the ballot in 2011.  It got a slew of headlines.

And it lost by about a 3:1 margin. 

The election of Jesse Ventura shows that if times are good enough, you can get up to 37% of any population to suspend their good judgement on a lark, when they don’t think it matters that much.

But here, we’re talking money.

This initiative is going to generate a lot of headlines, and a fair amount of mockery from American, left and right, who don’t get how Swiss democracy works…

…and, soon, a 2:1 electoral defeat.

Joe Doakes of Como Park emails:

The Capitol Shooting story is looking less heroic and more like a blunder. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence she was a threat, only that she panicked when she turned into the wrong driveway.

Might make a good opening sequence for an action/thriller movie.

Black, single mother, divorced from abusive spouse, lives in Maryland but commutes to work in D.C. for some government agency. Walking down the corridor, she hears raised voices. Her boss, a nice Latina woman, is being given orders by a flabby middle-aged White man in a wrinkled suit. He demands she harass the administration’s political opponents, a group of Black, lesbian, abused, single mothers called BLAM, or he’ll have Social Services take her kids away.

The man sees a shadow, realizes he has an eavesdropper, gives chase. She runs out of the building. She wants to blow the whistle to higher authorities but her cell phone rings – her kid at daycare has a fever and they insist she pick up the kid immediately. She gets the kid in the car and heads for the FBI to report the crime but D.C. traffic is a nightmare because of the shut-down, streets closed, veterans in wheelchairs protesting at a monument. She turns into the wrong driveway by mistake, the cops yell and draw their guns. She’s afraid they are after her because of what she overheard, panics, drives off, is chased down and shot dead by half-a-dozen Capitol Security cops. Her child is left crying by the side of the road.

A brave investigative journalist decides to take on the Administration to get justice for the child. This is her story. Coming soon to a theatre near you.

I was thinking Julia Roberts for the lead but since you have such a close, personal relationship with Scarlett Johansson, I thought maybe you two could do lunch and work it out. Have your people call hers, won’t you?

Joe Doakes

I’m on it.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Liberals claim conservatives are racists.  They might be right,  There is mathematical proof of it, viewed from the Liberal perspective.

For example, what’s 3 minus 3?  Zero?  That’s a racist concept, an Oreo Integer, an Uncle Tom Placeholder.  Black on the outside, White on the inside, valued less than any other number in society, invented long ago by a slave-holding society that ruthlessly oppressed women and gays.  Zero is racist.

But every fiscal year, what do Conservatives want the budget deficit to be?  Zero.  And how do Conservatives plan to implement their hateful agenda?  Zero-based budgeting.

I’ve got to admit, Liberals may have a point here.  No wonder they’re so careful to completely avoid any contact with mathematical reasoning when they make their budget proposals.  Can’t be too careful to avoid the taint of racism.

Joe Doakes

The Gun Grab Orc movement – led by DNC chairbeing Fran Drescher Deb Wasserman-Schulz – has been pleading “voter suppression” for their resounding defeat in Colorado this past Tuesday.

And they were right.  It was voter suppression that doomed the Senators Morse and Giron in the recall elections.

Their suppression of voters dissenting against them.  David Kopel writes at Volokh:

As it turns out, Morse and Giron sealed their fates on March 4, the day that the anti-gun bills were heard in Senate committees. At Morse’s instruction, only 90 minutes of testimony per side were allowed on each of the gun bills. As a result, hundreds of Colorado citizens were prevented from testifying even briefly. Many of them had driven hours to come to the Capitol, traveling from all over the state.

That same day, 30 Sheriffs came to testify. They too were shut out, with only a single Sheriff allowed to testify on any given bill. So while one Sheriff testified, others stood up with him in support.

Admirably, Morse had urged his Committee Chairs to be polite and courteous to all witnesses, and they were. But President Morse did not follow the standard practice of the Colorado legislature, by which any citizen who wishes to testify is allowed to be heard, at least briefly. The patient endurance of Colorado legislative committees which have heard hour upon hour of testimony on bills about gay rights, motorcycle helmets, and other social controversies is a tribute to our republican form of government.

This, Kopel argues, was a key facet in the recall:

When Morse shut that down, and Chairperson Giron went along, they crossed the double-red line of Colorado government. Had the seven gun control bills (one of which I testified in favor) been heard on March 4-6, instead of being rammed through committees on March 4, the recall might never have happened. It’s one thing to lose; it’s another to thing to lose when you didn’t even have the opportunity to present your reasoning.

Even Michael Paymar wasn’t that stupid. 

And Morse may have been an even bigger coward than Representative Heather Martens (emphasis added):

While the gun control bills were before the Senate in March, President Morse urged his caucus to stop reading emails, to stop reading letters from constituents, to stop listening to voicemails, to vote for the gun bills and ignore the constituents. Giron, presciently following this strategy, had allowed citizens to raise Second Amendment concerns at a single town hall meeting, and thereafter refused to discuss the issue at public fora.

The battle in Colorado turned on many issues;

• Blue-collar Democrats joining the GOP to flush the orcs – as they often do, even in Minnesota.  It’s hilarious; the Demcrats have always been the party of class warfare – but of all hot button issues, it’s the gun issue that is the most strongly divided by class, rather than partisan identification.  And the Democrats are the party of the patricians, every time.
• The Colorado GOP running a flawless campaign.  The Minnesota GOP needs to study this.
• The gun movement turning out the manpower (even as they were outspent by at least 7:1 – 8:1 in Pueblo).  As we’ve seen in Minnesota, passion and relentless work ethic defeats money – at least on this issue. 
• Outrage over the Democrats’ arrogant hijacking of the process to jam down an oppressive law that was against the spirit of democracy in Colorado – even a Democrat-led Colorado – at the behest of carpet-bagging east-coast plutocrats.

More of this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Now Investors Business Daily is claiming that while the IRS was holding up Conservative groups to make sure they didn’t actively campaign to get-out-the-Conservative-vote and thereby run afoul of tax laws, the IRS was also actively teaching Black groups how they could actively campaign to get-out-the-Black-vote without running afoul of the tax laws.

This isn’t the first time in history that the entrenched bureaucracy has chosen the new leader, but it’s not the Change I’d been Hoping for.

And where is the shock and outrage in the press? Uncaring? Or complicit?

hat tip: instapundit

J Doakes

I keep forgetting; does “just following orders” count as complicity?

Remember when his supporters said that one of the dreamiest things about Barack Obama was that he was a “constitutional scholar?”

I said at the time that a President – a good one anyway – needs to know about as much about the Constitution as a good policeman does, and that a Constitutional Lawyer was nothing if not more prone to use his “knowlege” to circumvent rather than uphold the Constitution.

History, as just about always happens, is proving me right.

Freedom-loving, energy-rich Northern Colorado is drawing closer to seceding from the rest of the Democrat-addled state:

“The concerns of rural Coloradans have been ignored for years,” William Garcia, chairman of the Weld County Commissioners, said in a statement. “The last session was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many people. They want change. They want to be heard.”

Three other rural counties — Cheyenne, Sedgwick and Yuma — also plan to place the 51st state referendum on the fall ballot. At least three more counties plan to consider the proposal this week at their commission meetings, said Jeffrey Hare, spokesman for the 51st State Initiative.

Known for its agriculture and oil and gas production, Weld is the largest of the Colorado counties exploring a break with the state after the legislature’s sharp turn to the left with bills restricting access to firearms and doubling the state’s renewable-energy mandate for rural areas.

I pondered this in Minnesota; a similar movement would be less a matter of the productive parts of the state “seceding” from Minnesota than of kicking Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, Anoka and Saint Louis Counties, and the Iron Range, out of the state.  And I suspect that’s a little constitutionally dodgier…

Forming a state isn’t easy: Even if the ballot measures pass, the Colorado state legislature would be required to amend the constitution to configure the state’s borders and refer a request for a new state to Congress.

Approving a 51st state would require a majority vote of both houses of Congress, although the Constitution doesn’t require the signature of the president, Mr. Hare said.

In other words, it won’t happen until the GOP controls both chambers (if then, given the performance of the Boehner caucus).  With any Democrat majorities at all, the idea would be dead in the water.  Can you  imagine what’d happen if Democrat parts of states didn’t have GOP regions to pay their bills for them?

“Again, folks say this can never happen. However, we are starting to hear from disenfranchised groups all over the country,” said a post on the 51st State Initiative’s website. “We are truly a divided nation. It is possible, if not likely, that we may not be the only group requesting from Congress the formation of a new state.”

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed:

No wonder gun control advocates all sound as if they’re talking from the same playbook. They are.

Thank GOD they’re not getting their sample talking points and draft legislation from a special interest group like ALEC. Because that would be wrong.

Joe doakes

Five’ll get you ten this campaign is financed in large part by the Joyce Foundation, which, along with victim-disarmament groups like “Protect Minnesota”, funds the “objective journalists” at MinnPost.

UPDATE:  The original version of this post – complete with comical typos – shows the danger of trying to blog before one’s first cup of coffee.  In the bathroom.  On an iPhone.

On the one hand, correlation doesn’t equal causation.

So I’ll restrain my end-zone happy dance at the news that gun crime in Virginia has plummeted as gun sales boomed:

Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
During the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.
“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.

See also: the rest of the freaking country.

Bit remember – correlation isn’t causation. Knowing that people who live near Mosquitos are prone to getting malaria doesn’t mean Mosquitos cause malaria. But that knowledge can help lead you to the cause. Mosquitos carry malaria.

Do more guns decrease crime? Not necessarily. But there’s enough patterns in enough places to give you an idea that there’s something to investigate that has to do with the availability of guns to the law-abiding.

I expect conservatives and libertarians to be exercised over the news that the White House is establishing a “Nudge Squad” – a group of behavioral scientists who will work with the government bureaucracy to try to help shape citizen behavior:

“Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.

The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would “experiment” with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.

The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a “Behavioral Insights Team.” One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.

On the one hand, it all sounds very Orwellian.  And it is; using the government to shape peoples’ behavior is a short and utterly undefineable step away from using it to shape peoples’ thought.

On the other hand?  Precisely what has the public education system been since its inception?

I noticed this late last week; Buzzfeed noting that the GOP is working on a national level to turn the Democrats’ “War on Women” rhetoric back in their faces:

After enduring an election year in which the Obama campaign advanced a largely successful narrative that the GOP’s platform was anti-woman, the Republican National Committee has spent much of the past month gleefully highlighting the indiscretions and sexual harassment charges of male Democratic politicians.

With a flurry of public memos, tweets, and op-eds, the RNC is working to make the Democratic Party take ownership of Eliot Spitzer, who resigned the New York governorship after a prostitution scandal and is now running for city comptroller; San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, now facing allegations of sexual harassment; and Weiner, whose online sexual dalliances have driven the political news cycle all week, and given RNC communications director Sean Spicer some irresistible ammunition.

I’m inclined to call Reince Preibus and tell him to send his counter-message SWAT team here to Minnesota.

We’ve got a doozy for him.

———-

I had a conversation with a modestly prominent MNGOP source last week. Yet again, the source noted, the DFL-leaning media was trying, in their words, to “shame” a female conservative.

I’m not going to identify the former political figure involved; they’ve asked for people to keep their noses out of their private lives, and I’m going to do exactly that, and urge you to do the same.

But the source referred me to the Twitter feed of Shawn Towle, of “Checks and Balances”, a regional political publication.

Last week Towle tweeted with the breathless glee of a seventh-grader who’s just disovered his older brother’s stash of Playboys:

@ChecksnBalances: @ChecksnBalances: Breaking: alla #weiner style @UMNnews confirmed via source this pic [whose link I’m going to redact] is [the female conservative] 

Towle tries, in successive tweets and with his oddly stunted written delivery (I think “alla” means “a la”), to equate the “incident” – a photo of a female conservative in her underwear – to the Anthony Weiner controversy. 

I’m going to redact the photo; it’s on a “Tumblr” blog with one post – a photo – and no comments. 

And if you have read Shawn Towle, it doesn’t seem a big stretch to think that he does think there’s an equivalence between…:

• …a sitting congressman sending raunchy photos to women who hadn’t actually solicited them, and…
• …someone who is not an elected official and whose mildly racy photos – from an episode amid some extreme marital difficulty – were distributed and published very much against her will.

Or, for that matter, that Aaron Rupar of the City Pages – who writes about this “issue” like he’s covering the fall of the Twin Towers, only with that little tinge of smug, self-righteous prurience he seems to bring to “reporting” on conservative women with marital difficulties or boyfriend trouble – thinks this is a story.

How bad was Towle and Rupar’s “reporting?”  Even Nick Coleman – who rarely has a kind or constructive word to say to anyone to the right of his little brother Chris, the Mayor of Saint Paul – twote:

@NickColeman: City Pages published a pic of [the subject of the story] in underwear? Why on earth? Have they been to the beach? Maybe CP should get out more.

Or stock up on toilet paper.

And Dave Mindeman at mnpAct tweeted:

@newtbuster: [the subject] Story – Embarrassment for Her..Unnecessary For Public http://t.co/DPE18sgV0V

Yep.  This “story” serves no purpose, other than to try to stick it to someone that Rupar and Towle disagree with, in the most personal, ugly way possible.  (And no, none of the links you see in my story lead to the actual “story”)

But the real story here isn’t the fact that a couple of wanna-be liberal journos have gotten themselves a week’s worth of whacking material.

No, there are three real stories here:

Stalking– I’ll take the subject of this story at her word that the photo in question was obtained and distributed illegally.  The woman who is the subject of this story has been cyber-stalked – with the complete, onanistic approval of at least two Twin Cities “media” outlets (and the tacit approval, I maintain, of most of the rest of the media). 

While a civil suit seems a long shot, I do sincerely hope the FBI does in fact find someone to charge in this gross invasion of privacy – and that there are consequences for Towle, Rupar, Checks and Balances and the City Pages.  In a just world, there’d be some way to sue them back to the stone age. 

The Scarlet “C” – It’s that this is the kind of thing that every female conservative in Minnesota faces if they give the Big Left’s smear machine even the slightest whiff of imperfection.  As I said on Friday, there’s a yawning double standard; Bill Clinton’s serial philandering was “Just Sex”; Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner and Jesse Jackson’s sexual (and pseudo-sexual) peccadillos are accepted as the sort of thing that goes along with being great and powerful.  But if a conservative woman for any reason colors outside the social lines that the left abandoned for themselves in the 1970s – gets divorced, has a social life that doesn’t pass their all-critical muster?  They get turned into Hester Prynne with a healthy dollop of puritan-via-Beavis-And-Butthead “shaming” thrown in on top.

Women, to Democrats, are supposed to be barefoot, Democrat, and marching to the voting booth to thank the nice Democrat for their abortion and contraceptives.  Thinking for themselves is the real crime.

 Er, “Blind” Hate – Beyond sheer illogic and “shaming”, though, there’s a whole ‘nother layer of depravity at work here.  What Towle and Rupar have done is isn’t just an Alinsky-ite smear job using the tactics of the internet stalker – which would be bad enough. 

To dig into the personal details of a wretchedly difficult part of a couple’s personal life – a couple that is not currently involved in politics, no less – and pruriently splash it all over the public square?  That’s beyond politics, beyond spite.  That’s the kind of ritual misogyny you see in mobs of inbred cretins stoning a woman for infidelity in some Godforsaken third world backwater. 

If you’re a female conservative, really, that’s what the Democrats – and their junior-league PR interns at the City Pages – are these days; rural Iran with better coffee.

———-

Questioned about this, liberals say “serves them right, belonging to a moralistic party” – which would be illogical even if their own party was itself morally consistent (which it’s not; the self-appointed party of the poor and the working class has left us with a terrible economy for workers.  The self-professed party of minorities has made the economy worse for minorities, and has increased racial strife in this country, all the while mining minority communities for votes.  The putative party of women has made “womanhood” all about the disposition of a uterus).  It’s the ad hominem tu quoque, arguing that personal inconsistency invalidates an argument.  This line of illogic would have you believe that stumping for a moral case is invalidated by not living up to it in every facet of one’s life; it’s actually quite the opposite. 

No.  The only reason this sort of non-story “story” gets covered by lefty “journalists” – and “covered” to the point they risk going blind – is that, true to Alinsky, it makes an example of any woman that leaves the liberal plantation.  It’s done to warn other women – and blacks, latinos, Asians and gays – not to make waves.  To sit down on the left side of the bus, and shut up, or the personal cost to you and your family will be just too high.

The only reason it hasn’t worked so far is that so many of Minnesota’s conservative women have enough guts to make Red Adair look like Woody Allen.

Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” – aka the “Tragedy Exploitation Tour” – will be stopping in Minneapolis (where else?) next week:

Heinrich–

On Wednesday at 10:00 AM, the No More Names bus tour will be stopping in Minneapolis to read out the names of those killed by gun violence and to demand action from our leaders.

Will you join us?

Here are the details:

What: Minneapolis No More Names Rally

When: Wednesday, July 31st, 10:00 AM

Where: US Federal Courthouse Plaza
300 South 4th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55415

The bus departed from Newtown, CT six months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, commemorating those killed with guns — and determined to turn the tide on six months of inaction from Congress.

In each state where the tour stops, it’s up to supporters like you to speak up for laws that protect our communities from future tragedies.

So please join us at the rally on Wednesday:

Thanks for all you do,

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

P.S. — We are planning to read the names of those killed by gun violence in 25 states across the country. But the bus will only keep running with your support. Please pitch in $33 or more today:

I can’t make it Wednesday – duty calls.

But I think an ideal counterdemonstration would be this; for every name read off that was killed by someone who’d never obey any gun law, no matter what it was – someone with a demonstrable criminal record, for example – someone shout out “killed by a criminal”.

If I could make it, I might hold up a sign that reads:

WELCOME, CARAVAN TO EXPLOIT THE DEATHS OF KIDS WHO LOOK LIKE NPR EXECUTIVES’ KIDS. 

WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE OVER ALL THE BLACK KIDS KILLED IN CHICAGO?

I might need some help holding that one.

I was talking with a friend of mine in the retail business the other day. She works at a store in Uptown Minneapolis.

“Minnesota leftybloggers must be working on stories about a vaguely sexual scandal involving a conservative woman” she said.

“Why?”, I asked.

“Because I can’t keep Jergens or paper towles in stock”.

I had no idea what she meant.  (more…)

…that if we voted Republican, racist mobs would pervert the public discourse.

And they were right!

 The IRS Scandal has its roots in DC. It’s not local to Cincinnati, it’s not non-partisan, and President Obama is not isolated from it:

Ms. Hofacre of the Cincinnati office testified that when she was given tea-party applications, she had to kick them upstairs. When she was given non-tea-party applications, they were sent on for normal treatment. Was she told to send liberal or progressive groups for special scrutiny? No, she did not scrutinize the applications of liberal or progressive groups. “I would send those to general inventory.” Who got extra scrutiny? “They were all tea-party and patriot cases.” She became “very frustrated” by the “micromanagement” from Washington. “It was like working in lost luggage.” She applied to be transferred.

For his part, [IRS lifer and tax exemption expert Carter] Hull backed up what he’d told House investigators. He described what was, essentially, a big, lengthy runaround in the Washington office in which no one was clear as to their reasons but everything was delayed. The multitiered scrutiny of the targeted groups was, he said, “unusual.”

This goes all the way to Obama-appointed officials; it’s absurd to think that the President’s inner circle wasn’t intimately involved in the persecution of dissent.

The Administration is running the Clinton-era play, the one they always run when they’re up against it; Delay, Deny, Destroy. 

Maryland Rep. Cummings is doing the Deny part, and doing it absurdly badly:

It was Maryland’s Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel’s ranking Democrat, who, absurdly, asked Ms. Hofacre if the White House called the Cincinnati office to tell them what to do and whether she has knowledge of the president of the United States digging through the tax returns of citizens. Ms. Hofacre looked surprised. No, she replied.

It wasn’t hard to imagine her thought bubble: Do congressmen think presidents call people like me and say, “Don’t forget to harass my enemies”? Are congressmen that stupid?

Mr. Cummings is not, and his seeming desperation is telling. Recent congressional information leads to Washington—and now to very high up at the IRS. Meaning this is the point at which a scandal goes nowhere or, maybe, everywhere.

By Cummings’ logic, Nixon was innocent because he didn’t jimmy the door at the Democrat office at Watergate.

Governor Dayton is going to pay back the unions that bought his office for him – and he doesn’t care how much of your money he spends to do it:

In his relentless effort to pay back the unions for his close victory in 2010, Governor Mark Dayton is sending the state’s lawyers into court Thursday July 18th to argue against a group of childcare providers who are trying to block implementation of a new law. The new law was passed over strong Republican opposition in the 2013 session and will force childcare providers, most of whom are small independent businesses, to join a union.

…unless they stop taking state money, which means the availability of daycare for low-income parents is going to drop. 

Thursday’s court action is just the latest in a long running battle between Mark Dayton and small childcare providers who take care of Minnesota children while their parents go to work.

• Shortly after his election, Governor Dayton tried to force a union vote on childcare providers through executive order. That action was blocked by a Minnesota district court judge who ruled Dayton had grossly overstepped the limits of his power.
• With the help of $11 million in campaign spending from his union allies, Gov. Dayton succeeded in flipping both the House and Senate in 2012 into a more union-friendly Democratic majority.
• During the 2013 session, despite overwhelming opposition from childcare providers and parents, Dayton and his new legislature passed a law that will force small independent childcare providers into a union against their will. The law will also drive up the cost of childcare for all Minnesota families while leaving fewer choices for those with lower incomes.

If you’ve got time to make it to a court hearing, tomorrow (Thursday) would be the day for it.  It’ll be at 9:30AM in room 15E of the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis. 

Governor Dayton is turning his back on Minnesota families by asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed. Show your support for Minnesota families by attending the hearing.

You can be sure plenty of hangers-on in purple and yellow shirts will be there.

George Zimmerman was declared not guilty at 10pm Eastern Time.

Let the demigogueing begin.

UPDATE: Let’s watch the media work to delegitimize the trial, even though judge Nelson seemed to be taking orders from Eric Holder.

UPDATE 2: Well, this was inevitable, wasn’t didn’t it?

Josef Stalin called.

He wants his theatrical version of a “justice” system back.

President Obama’s Justice Department was involved in organizing protests around the Martin/Zimmerman trial, and according to Sanford’s police chief, hijacked what should have been a local investigation:

Bill Lee, who testified Monday in Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial, told CNN’s George Howell in an exclusive interview that he felt pressure from city officials to arrest Zimmerman to placate the public rather than as a matter of justice.

“It was (relayed) to me that they just wanted an arrest. They didn’t care if it got dismissed later,” he said. “You don’t do that.”

When Sanford police arrived on the scene on February 26, 2012, after Zimmerman fatally shot unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, they conducted a “sound” investigation, and the evidence provided no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman at the scene, he said.

It had nothing to do with Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law, he said; from an investigative standpoint, it was purely a matter of self-defense.

The part that annoys me the most about this trial? 

Not just that everyone has picked their sides, based purely on political grounds – even though that’s supposed to be the jury’s job.

No – it’s that our federal government is doing to this trial what they tried to do with “Fast and Furious”; use it to general political benefit for the Administration.  In this case, using a dead 17 year old – whatever the circumstances – as a stage prop to whip up an electoral response in time for the election.  And they’ll try to do the same for the next round of elections, too. 

I use the term “show trial” advisedly; that’s exactly what the Administration is trying to turn it into.

The trial is, in a sense, the least of the problems coming out of this sorry episode.  Our Federal government has added “using the system” to “using their proxies in the media” to affect the “justice” system toward political ends. 

They can do it to anyone.

There’s an old saying: “when the people fear the government, you have dictatorship.  When the people fear the government, you have freedom.”

The government is surely afraid of us; they call half of us “terrorists”.  But I wouldn’t call what we have now “freedom”.